Act I. Sc. 1.

THE

COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME TEN

_All rights reserved_

[Illustration:

_Margaret Hazlitt._

(_1771–1844_)

_From an oil painting by John Hazlitt._

]

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

WILLIAM HAZLITT

EDITED BY A. R. WALLER

AND ARNOLD GLOVER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

W. E. HENLEY

❦

Contributions to the Edinburgh Review

❦

1904

LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

CONTENTS

PAGE

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW 1

NOTES 403

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW

CONTENTS

PAGE

Dunlop’s History of Fiction 5

Standard Novels and Romances 25

Sismondi’s Literature of the South 44

Schlegel on the Drama 78

Coleridge’s Lay Sermon 120

Coleridge’s Literary Life 135

Letters of Horace Walpole 159

Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds 172

The Periodical Press 202

Landor’s Imaginary Conversations 231

Shelley’s Posthumous Poems 256

Lady Morgan’s Life of Salvator 276

American Literature—Dr. Channing 310

Flaxman’s Letters on Sculpture 330

Wilson’s Life and Times of Daniel Defoe 355

Mr. Godwin 385

Notes 403

Hunt’s Story of Rimini 407

Coleridge’s Christabel 411

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW

DUNLOP’S HISTORY OF FICTION

VOL. XXIV.] [_November 1814._

We are very much of Mr. Dunlop’s opinion,—that ‘life has few things

better, than sitting at the chimney-corner in a winter evening, after a

well-spent day, and reading an interesting romance or novel.’ In fact,

of all the pleasures of the imagination those are by far the most

captivating which are excited by the representation of our

fellow-creatures struggling with great difficulties, and stimulated by

high expectations or formidable alarms. And if the reader or spectator

have no personal interest in the subject, his emotions are but slightly,

if at all, affected by his judgment concerning its authenticity. On the

contrary, the fictions of genius may be rendered far more engaging than

the greater part of real history.

But the invention of interesting narratives is by no means an easy

exercise; and we apprehend that tales entirely and professedly

fictitious are exclusively the production of a civilized age; and are

never introduced into any nation till long after the genuine exploits of

its own heroes have been sung by its bards (who are the first

historians), for the entertainment and information of ruder times. These

journalists may indeed be expected to exaggerate the truth; and, on very

slender evidence, or merely from the warmth of their imagination, to

represent the powers of the invisible world as interposing their mighty

influence in the shape most agreeable to the prevalent superstitions.

But in relating events which passed within the memory of their hearers,

these exaggerations would generally be kept within such bounds as not to

shock the credulity, and consequently be less gratifying to the national

curiosity, and even to the national vanity of their audience: and hence

sagacious historians are able to extract a probable narrative from the

songs of contemporary bards.

Long however before the period of sober and scrutinizing history, the

more ancient of these songs would gradually receive additions and

embellishments from the patriotic fancies of the persons who

successively transmitted them to posterity; of the extent of which some

idea may be formed from the amplifications with which the account of any

surprising event is adorned, even during a short time after its first

promulgation, as it passes from house to house, and from village to

village. A bard also of one generation, gathering information from those

of another, and from the traditionary anecdotes of the aged with whom he

conversed, would be apt to compose a narrative in which a greater

latitude would be assumed for adjusting it to his own views or to the

taste of his countrymen, according to the remoteness of the time to

which it referred, and his security from the examination of critical

inquirers. And we may well suppose that his audience would receive

indulgently, or rather would indispensably require a high colouring of

the marvellous in the accounts of their favourite heroes.

In ruder times, therefore, the fiction would chiefly consist, not so

much in the troublesome task of inventing incidents, as in exaggeration:

And the tendency to exaggerate would act in two ways: it would on the

one hand enlarge the scale and heighten the colours of the natural

objects and real events which were understood to have existed; and on

the other hand it would multiply as well as magnify, and would render

distinctly visible the supernatural interpositions which were suggested

by the popular creed. When Achilles in a pet retired with his myrmidons,

it is probable enough that Diomed was roused to exert himself to the

utmost in the common cause, and performed wonders in the first

engagements after the secession of his great rival. On such an occasion

it would not be unnatural for his brave companions, and still less for

enraptured parasitical bards, to have expressed their admiration by

saying, that they beheld him as if shining with a light from heaven in

the battle; that Minerva was his friend and protector; that under her

guidance he not only slew many of the Trojan chiefs, but completely

routed and made an incredible havock among the throng of the less noble

combatants, who furiously assailed him, led on by the God of war in all

his terrors;—in short, that Diomed was a match for Mars himself. But the

heroes of the Trojan expedition were seen as visions by Homer and his

cotemporaries: And, according to the representation in the fifth book of

the Iliad, Minerva adorns the warrior with a real star-like flame

beaming from the crest of his helmet; she obtains Jupiter’s permission

to assist the Greeks; rouses Diomed’s courage who had been compelled to

retreat; with her own divine hand, she pulls down the charioteer, mounts

into his seat, and drives to where Mars was combating in propriâ

personâ, but who is soon wounded by Diomed in the small guts, νείατον ἐς

κενεῶνα, and sent roaring as loud as nine or ten thousand men to his

father Jupiter on the top of Olympus. Thus the surprising events which

were but moderately hyperbolized at the time, in the relation of the

eyewitnesses, and ascribed to the secret influences of the supernatural

powers, rather than to the agency of their daylight apparitions, are

wonderfully changed in the representation, at no great distance of time.

The real hero slays his tens; the hero of the men-singers and

women-singers slays his thousands and his tens of thousands: The real

hero is large of bone and strong of muscle; the hero of the poet is a

Hercules; and if not a giant, he is much more—like Tom Thumb he is the

conqueror of giants: Those superior Beings, with whom the popular

religion or superstition has peopled heaven and earth and hell, mingle

openly in the fray: they are seen and recognized as distinctly as any

others of the Dramatis Personæ, and act and converse very sensibly,

sometimes very foolishly, not only with each other, but with their

mortal associates. These superior Beings themselves, indeed, frequently

owe their supernatural character, and in some cases, their very

existence, to exaggeration. The heroes in process of time become

demi-gods; and at last are invested with the full honours and emoluments

of Deities acknowledged and established by law;

‘Romulus et Liber pater, et cum Castore Pollux;

Post ingentia facta Deorum in templa recepti.’

The unknown causes which actuate the material world,—the passions which

agitate the human breast,—and even several of those shadows of entity,

the allegorical characters, have been distinctly personified, and many

of them admitted to seats of greater or less dignity in the sacred

college of Divinities.

But in general the most enormous exaggeration would disfigure those

events which were the most ancient in the national traditions;—those

events which bordered upon utter darkness and appeared to be coeval with

the birth of Time. In a period of such dim antiquity, it appears that a

certain Crown Prince of Crete, very enterprising and very unprincipled,

rebelled successfully against his father, seemingly still more

unprincipled than his son, and carried every thing before him. This

worthy young gentleman, after being worshipped by the Cretans during his

life, very much, we suppose, as other successful tyrants are worshipped,

had the astonishing good fortune, in the course of a few centuries after

his death, to be acknowledged as the King of Gods and men throughout all

Greece, and afterwards through the whole extent of the Roman empire. The

abortive insurrection of his kinsmen in Thessaly was in due time

represented as the enterprise of stupendous giants, who heaped mountain

upon mountain to attack the Thunderer in his Olympian Palace. And as

nobody could tell any thing about the parents of these great men, it was

concluded, with a degree of probability amounting to what in the

language of philosophers is with much propriety called moral certainty,

that they had risen out of the ground like mushrooms. The events prior

to his establishment on the throne, appear dimly in the back-ground of

the sacred mythology—involved in all the awful obscurity of mysteries,

not to be profaned by the scrutiny of impious mortals. We are told that

there was a war in heaven of the Titans against Saturn the chief of the

Gods, for not having devoured his son Jupiter. For it would appear that

this good king, in whose reign, according to the poets, all the world,

except the royal family, were virtuous and happy, had cajoled his elder

brother Prince Titan out of his inheritance, under the express condition

of destroying, or, according to the more elegant mystical account, of

eating his male children as soon as they were born. The chief of the

gods was at first defeated and imprisoned by the Titans, but was soon

rescued and restored by Jupiter, the hopeful Crown Prince, who

afterwards expelled his father, and reigned in his stead.

In some such manner real events are represented by the bards of future

generations; with a strange fantastic jumble of hyperbole and allegory,

converted partly or entirely from a figurative to a literal meaning, the

marvels of superstition, childish fancies, and the brilliant conceptions

of poetical genius; while during the whole time there is but little

invention of incident, and far less of any thing like that artificial

fabrication of a continued fiction, which critics like Bossu have

ascribed to Homer so gratuitously, and indeed in such contradiction to

all that is known from experience concerning the progress of the human

mind in any of the arts.

Fictitious incidents would generally be at first introduced by a much

easier method than invention into the narratives of the bards. The

gentlemen of this ancient, itinerant corporation would naturally, in the

course of their peregrinations, become acquainted with many tales, both

foreign and domestic, not generally known to the rest of their

countrymen; and would be tempted to steal the most striking of the

incidents, whether true or false, and transfer them to the characters in

their own histories. Various instances of such pilfering are every day

detected in the story-tellers of society, as well as in authors both

ancient and modern; and hence it sometimes happens that the same

transaction appears in several different associations. Thus, much use

has been made, in various books, of the transaction so well known to the

readers of plays and romances,—the conspiracy for ruining a lady’s

reputation by carrying her friends to a hiding-place from whence they

could spy the improper behaviour of a person who was dressed so as to

resemble her. This clumsy contrivance seems to have been stolen by

Bandello from Ariosto,—and has been employed both by Shakespeare and

Spenser. And when authors endowed with so fertile inventions condescend

to borrow incidents so ill-contrived, (and indeed they sometimes stoop

to still poorer thefts), we cannot doubt that similar plagiarisms must

have been frequent among the inferior practitioners in the trade of

story-making.

In fact, the piracy of incidents may be traced from the most remote

antiquity down to modern times, in the histories both of supernatural

agents and of mortal men. There are strong presumptions that the Grecian

archives of Hercules, and of Jupiter himself, have been enlarged by

plunder both from Egypt and Asia. The Jewish visionaries superadded to

the truths of the sacred Scriptures many curious anecdotes relating to

the celestial principalities,—which they learned from the authentic

records of their Chaldean conquerors. The Romances of chivalry have been

enriched by contributions from various quarters; from the songs of the

Scalds, the bards of the Northern tribes that overran so many provinces

of the Roman empire; from the tales of Arabia, Persia, and other eastern

nations; and also from the fables transmitted by the classics of Greece

and Rome. Mr. Dunlop very properly rejects any theory which would

ascribe the beauties of romantic fiction to any one of these sources

exclusively, and we shall quote his general account of the subject, as a

fair specimen of his style and sagacity.

‘From a view of the character of Arabian and Gothic fiction, it appears

that neither is exclusively entitled to the credit of having given birth

to the wonders of romance. The early framers of the tales of chivalry

may be indebted to the northern bards for those wild and terrible images

congenial to a frozen region, and owe to Arabian invention that

magnificence and splendour, those glowing descriptions and luxuriant

ornaments, suggested by the enchanting scenery of an eastern climate,

“And wonders wild of Arabesque combine

With Gothic imagery of darker shade.”

‘It cannot be denied, and indeed has been acknowledged by Mr. Warton,

that the fictions of the Arabians and Scalds are totally different. The

fables and superstitions of the Northern bards are of a darker shade and

more savage complexion than those of the Arabians. There is something in

their fictions that chills the imagination. The formidable objects of

nature with which they were familiarized in their northern solitudes,

their precipices and frozen mountains and gloomy forests, acted on their

fancy, and gave a tincture of horror to their imagery. Spirits who send

storms over the deep, who rejoice in the shriek of the drowning mariner,

or diffuse irresistible pestilence; spells which preserve from poison,

blunt the weapons of an enemy, or call up the dead from their

tombs—these are the ornaments of northern poetry. The Arabian fictions

are of a more splendid nature; they are less terrible indeed, but

possess more variety and magnificence; they lead us through delightful

forests, and raise up palaces glittering with gold and diamonds.

‘It may also be observed, that, allowing the early Scaldic odes to be

genuine, we find in them no dragons, giants, magic rings, or enchanted

castles. These are only to be met with in the compositions of the bards

who flourished after the native vein of Runic fabling had been enriched

by the tales of the Arabians. But if we look in vain to the early Gothic

poetry for many of those fables which adorn the works of the romancers,

we shall easily find them in the ample field of oriental fiction. Thus

the Asiatic romances and chemical works of the Arabians are full of

enchantments similar to those described in the Spanish, and even in the

French, tales of chivalry. Magical rings were an important part of the

eastern philosophy, and seem to have given rise to those which are of so

much service to the Italian poets. In the Eastern peris, we may trace

the origin of the European fairies in their qualities, and perhaps in

their name. The griffin or hippogriff of the Italian writers, seems to

be the famous Simurgh of the Persians, which makes such a figure in the

epic poems of Sadii and Ferdusii.

‘A great number of these romantic wonders were collected in the East by

that idle and lying horde of pilgrims and palmers who visited the Holy

Land through curiosity, restlessness, or devotion, and who, returning

from so great a distance, imposed every fiction on a believing audience.

They were subsequently introduced into Europe by the Fablers of France,

who took up arms and followed their barons to the conquest of Jerusalem.

At their return, they imported into Europe the wonders they had heard,

and enriched romance with an infinite variety of Oriental fictions.

* * * * *

‘A fourth hypothesis has been suggested, which represents the machinery

and colouring of fiction, the stories of enchanted gardens, monsters,

and winged steeds, which have been introduced into romance, as derived

from the classical and mythological authors; and as being merely the

ancient stories of Greece, grafted on modern manners, and modified by

the customs of the age. The classical authors, it is true, were in the

middle ages scarcely known; but the superstitions they inculcated had

been prevalent for too long a period, and had taken too firm a hold on

the mind, to be easily obliterated. The mythological ideas which still

lingered behind were diffused in a multitude of popular works. In the

travels of Sir John Mandeville, there are many allusions to ancient

fable; and, as Middleton has shown that a great number of the Popish

rites were derived from Pagan ceremonies, it is scarcely to be doubted,

that many classical were converted into romantic fictions. This at least

is certain, that the classical system presents the most numerous and

least exceptionable prototypes of the fables of romance.

‘In many of the tales of chivalry, there is a knight detained from his

guest, by the enticements of a sorceress; and who is nothing more than

the Calypso or Circe of Homer. The story of Andromeda might give rise to

the fable of damsels being rescued by their favourite knight, when on

the point of being devoured by a sea monster. The heroes of the Iliad

and Æneid were both furnished with enchanted armour; and in the story of

Polyphemus, a giant and his cave are exhibited. Herodotus, in his

history, speaks of a race of Cyclops who inhabited the North, and waged

perpetual war with the tribe of Griffons, which was in possession of

mines of gold. The expedition of Jason in search of the golden fleece;

the apples of the Hesperides, watched by a dragon; the king’s daughter

who is an enchantress, who falls in love with and saves the knight,—are

akin to the marvels of romantic fiction—especially of that sort supposed

to have been introduced by the Arabians. Some of the less familiar

fables of classical mythology, as the image in the Theogony of Hesiod,

of the murky prisons in which the Titans were pent up by Jupiter, under

the custody of strong armed giants, bear a striking resemblance to the

more wild sublimity of the Gothic fictions.’ (Vol. 1. p. 135.)

Thus Bayes is not the only poet whose invention is indebted to his

memory or common-place book; and the art of fictitious narrative, like

every other art, seems to have arisen gradually from very humble

beginnings; and to have consisted, at first, not in the invention of

incidents, but in the exaggeration, natural even to eyewitnesses, in

relating any interesting or surprising event; and afterwards, in

borrowing incidents, true or false, from every quarter, whenever such a

license had the chance of escaping detection, or of being favourably

received.

But the licence, whether of exaggerating, of borrowing, or of inventing

incidents, would be more freely assumed by the bard, and more

indulgently admitted by his audience; and indeed the reports of

travellers, who have always enjoyed a peculiar privilege, would provide

the materials of fiction in greater variety, and of a more wonderful

kind, when the scene of the hero’s adventures happened to be in distant

and unknown regions, inhabited by other races of men, enclosed by other

mountains and other seas, subject to the influence of other skies, and

governed by other gods and another order of Nature.—The Odyssey is a

curious example.—If we except the usual interposition of the usual

deities, the history of what passes in Ithaca and Greece seems to

contain little which may not be more easily conceived to have actually

happened, than to have been invented by the poet. But when we accompany

Ulysses to Italy, Sicily and Ogygia, countries so little known in those

early times to the inhabitants of Ionia or Greece, we find ourselves in

another world. We meet with the enchantments of Circe, the mother of a

large family of enchantresses; and the songs of Sirens—whose fascinating

progeny has multiplied still more extensively both in verse and in

prose. We meet with Giants who devoured human flesh, and are manifestly

near of kin to the raw-boned gentlemen against whom not only the

knights-errant of after-times, but also our dearly beloved school-fellow

Jack the Giant-killer exerted his prowess and sagacity—though we have

some pleasure in remarking that the more modern giants are of a finer

breed, and farther removed from the savage state, as they look through

two eyes instead of one, and live in castles instead of caves. What is

more wonderful, we meet with the road to hell; not indeed the broad way

through the wide gate, so well known and so much frequented by men of

all ranks in every age of the world; but the secret path which it

requires mystic rites to open, and by which a hero, a saint, or a poet,

with a proper guide and good interest at court, may not only descend

with all his flesh and blood about him to gratify his curiosity, but

also return safe and sound, to entertain his friends above ground with

the sights he saw below.

It appears, then, in what manner the bards, prompted by patriotism, and

the desire of exciting the wonder of their auditors, might be enabled,

without any great trouble of invention, to adorn with fiction the songs

which recorded the exploits of their own countrymen; and their freedom

in this respect would be the greater, according to the distance of time

or place. But all restraint would be removed, when the hero of the tale

was a foreigner. The historical truth would in this case be indifferent

to the audience, and the narrative would be more acceptable, according

as it was more extraordinary, affecting, and miraculous. Now it is

obvious, that as the bards were indebted to their powers of amusing

company for their estimation in society, and even for their livelihood,

they would be prompted, by vanity and interest, as well as by their

genius and habits, to provide an ample store and variety of tales; and

not to confine themselves to transactions where they must have been

fettered by the national records or traditions, but to adopt also those

other subjects, where they could employ without control all the

materials which were furnished by their experience, memory or fancy. It

is obvious, too, that recourse to foreign subjects would become the more

frequent, according as the nation advanced in knowledge and refinement,

and ceased to depend on their poets for the preservation of their

history. And when the professions of the poets and historians were

completely separated, the former would be fully and for ever invested

with the privilege of fiction, the _quidlibet audendi potestas_, in all

their narratives, whether of foreign or domestic transactions—subject

only to the remonstrances of the critics, not for telling lies, but for

telling ill-contrived or uninteresting lies.

We have dwelt the longer on the origin of fictitious narrative, not only

because the subject has been strangely misrepresented by the critics,

but also because it is entirely overlooked in our author’s history. And

this oversight seems to have produced another very material defect, the

limitation of his plan to fictions _in prose_.

The earliest fictions are obviously entitled to the greatest attention,

on account of the information which may be extracted from them with

regard to the history, manners, and opinions of the nation and age to

which they belong. They are also connected with many of the succeeding

fictions; so that, by a mutual comparison, they are all rendered more

intelligible and agreeable, more valuable both to the antiquary, the

philosopher, and the innocents who read for amusement. But all the early

fictions are composed in verse; and after fiction became less connected

with history, many of the finest specimens of poetry are also the finest

specimens of fictitious narrative. In fact, if we except a very few

Italian tales, and some of the first-rate French and English novels, by

far the best fictitious narratives in existence are poems. And a history

of Mathematics which should exclude Archimedes and Newton, would not be

more extraordinary, than a history of Fiction which excludes Homer,

Hesiod, Virgil, Lucan, Ariosto, Tasso, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Scott,

Campbell and Byron.

The reason alleged for this exclusion appears to us, we will confess,

altogether unsatisfactory.

‘The history of Fiction,’ says our author in his Introduction, ‘becomes

in a considerable degree interesting to the philosopher, and occupies an

important place in the history of the progress of society. By

contemplating the fables of a people, we have a successive delineation

of their prevalent modes of thinking, a picture of their feelings and

tastes and habits. In this respect prose fiction appears to possess

advantages considerably superior either to history or poetry. In history

there is too little individuality; in poetry too much effort, to permit

the poet and historian to pourtray the manners living as they rise.

History treats of man, as it were, in the mass; and the individuals whom

it paints, are regarded merely or principally in a public light, without

taking into consideration their private feelings, tastes, or habits.

Poetry is in general capable of too little detail, while its paintings

at the same time are usually too much forced and exaggerated. But in

Fiction we can discriminate without impropriety, and enter into detail

without meanness. Hence it has been remarked, that it is chiefly in the

fictions of an age that we can discover the modes of living, dress and

manners of the period.’

In the two last sentences it is plain that the author means prose

fictions, and not fictions in general. But we hope he will consider this

matter a little more deliberately. Even though we should grant all that

he has here stated, it would not afford a sufficient reason for

excluding fictitious narratives in verse from the History of Fiction.

But we apprehend that verse is by no means incompatible with accurate

and minute description; for which we may appeal to the finest poems that

have ever yet been published, as well as to the ruder lays of the bards

in the North and West of Europe, which are of such importance both in

the history of Fiction, and in the history of Society. Of the manners

and characters of the Greek in the heroic ages, we find a distinct and

even minute account in the poems of Homer: but it would not be

adviseable to form our ideas of the Greek Shepherds and Shepherdesses in

any age, from a certain prose romance to which our Author has

condescended to afford a conspicuous place in his history—Longus’s

pastoral tale of Daphnis and Chloe. We doubt much if the manners of

chivalry are as correctly represented in the prose of Amadis de Gaul,

and the long train of prose romances to which it gave rise, and which

occupy so great a portion of the present work; as in the Orlando Furioso

and Gerusalemme liberata, under all the fetters of the ottava rima. The

voluminous histories of Astrea and Cleopatra, the accomplished Sir

Philip Sydney’s Arcadia, and various other celebrated romances, which

are admitted into our author’s history on account of their prose, and

which are chiefly deserving of attention, from the difficulty of

discovering how any body could ever have been at the trouble to read

them, describe a state of society which never existed any where but in

the fantastic imaginations of those writers, who may κατ’ ἐξοχήν—be

denominated Prosers. On the other hand, the Lady of the Lake, Gertrude

of Wyoming, the Bride of Abydos and the Corsair, present in the most

harmonious versification and highest colouring of poetry, many details

of national manners which are not surpassed in accuracy by the plain

prose of that most honest of all travellers, Bell of Antermony. We are

far however from wishing to insinuate that any of the prose romances

which we have mentioned should be excluded from the History of Fiction.

On the contrary we are extremely obliged to Mr. Dunlop for his judicious

and elegant accounts of them. But we regret that the mere circumstance

of versification should have excluded so many capital or curious works

which are essentially connected with a philosophical and critical

delineation of the origin and progress of Fiction in general, and

particularly in the West of Europe.

The present publication, however, although it ought only to be entitled

Sketches of the History of Fiction, is still interesting and amusing,

and in general is respectably executed. But we have only to look at the

first chapter, in order to be sensible of the imperfection of the plan.

This chapter gives a view of the Greek romances in prose, and begins

with a work of Antonius Diogenes in the time of Alexander the Great,

entitled Accounts of the incredible things in Thule, τῶν ὑπὲρ Θουλην

ἀπιστῶν λόγοι. It is now, we believe, extant only in the Epitome of

Photius; and is a farrago of absurd and extravagant stories, which its

author acknowledges to have been collected from former writers. We

mention it only to apprise the reader at how recent a period Mr.

Dunlop’s history begins. At this period, the art of composition, both in

prose and verse, had attained a high degree of excellence; the

departments of history and fiction were completely separated,—though

some irregular practices have existed, down to our own days, of

borrowing the ornaments of the latter department to decorate the former;

fiction had been long cultivated on its own account; the tales which

delighted the Milesians, and which probably borrowed many of their

incidents from the neighbouring and civilised nations of Persia, were

then in circulation; and the intercourse which Alexander’s expedition

had opened with the more easterly nations, must have afforded a copious

supply of materials for the story-tellers of Greece. Thus our author’s

history opens, not in the beginning, but in the midst, of things; an

arrangement which, however commendable in an Epic poem, does not appear

so well adapted to sober history,—not even to a history of Fiction. Nor

does our author, like the Epic poets, fall upon any device for carrying

us back in due time to the commencement of the subject; from which

indeed he is precluded by the artificial limits of his plan.

Of the Greek Romances in prose, now extant, of any considerable length

(if we except the Cyropœdia, which is a fiction of a very particular

kind, and not intended for popular amusement), the oldest is not earlier

than the end of the fourth century. It is the history of Theagenes and

Chariclea, written by Heliodorus, Bishop of Tricca in Thessaly, but

before his promotion to the episcopal dignity. It is deserving of notice

chiefly on account of the hints which it has furnished to succeeding

writers of eminence, particularly to Tasso and Guarini; but we mention

it here, chiefly for the purpose of recommending to our author a revisal

of the principles of criticism which he has laid down in his remarks on

this Romance. To us it appears that a story may possess novelty,

probability, and variety in its incidents; that the incidents may be

arranged by the narrator, so as to keep us ignorant of the final issue

till the last; that it may possess all the ornaments which our author

has enumerated—a good style, characters well defined and interesting in

themselves, sentiments as sublime as any in Epictetus, and descriptions

as fine as in the Romance of the Forest, or as correct as in Bell’s

Travels; nay, to crown all, we can even conceive that the story shall be

written in prose;—and yet, that with all these merits, which are all

that our author requires, it shall be a string of events so unimportant

or unimpassioned, that a second perusal would be quite insufferable.

Have we not seen Mr. Cumberland’s novels?

Waiting to be better instructed, we would merely hint at present, that

the proper merit of a Romance consists in Interest and Pathos, including

in Pathos the ludicrous as well as the serious emotions. A romance is

nothing, if it does not preserve alive our anxiety for the fate of the

principal characters, with a constant, though varied, agitation of the

passions. For this purpose, we must be made to conceive the whole action

as passing before us—to hear the conversations of the different

persons—to see their demeanours and looks—to enter into their

thoughts—and to have each of them as distinctly and individually present

to our mind, as the several characters in the Iliad, in Marianne, in Tom

Jones, or in Cecilia. When the characters are striking, either by their

virtues, vices, or follies—and when our imagination is thus occupied by

a succession of scenes in which these qualities are rendered

conspicuous, and in which our sympathies and aversions, our admiration

and laughter, our joy and sorrow, our hopes and fears, are kept in

continual play—we can forgive many improbabilities and even

impossibilities in the story,—as is well known to the readers of Homer,

Ariosto, and Shakespeare: still less are we displeased with borrowed

incidents,—as almost all our dramatic authors can testify. In fact,

there is generally but little merit in the adoption, or even invention

of the simple incident, compared to the genius of the poet, the actor,

or the painter, who bestows upon it life and passion. Chariclea was

appointed by the priest of Apollo to present to Theagenes the lighted

torch for kindling the sacrifice in the temple of Delphi. They first saw

each other upon this occasion, and became mutually and deeply enamoured.

But how feeble is the impression produced by this dry narrative,

compared to what we feel at Raphael’s glowing picture of the scene, or

compared to what we would have felt if Rousseau had described the looks

and thoughts of the enraptured lovers!—When they were flying from Delphi

to Sicily, their ship was captured by the pirate Charinus, whom

Chariclea implored in vain not to separate her from Theagenes. We hear

without emotion the general account of the event; but how affecting is

it to contemplate, in the picture drawn by the same great master, the

attitude and countenance of Chariclea as she is kneeling at the Pirate’s

feet! And how could Otway have wrung the heart by the dramatic

representation of such an interview!

It is amusing to observe, at the end of this chapter, how the author

endeavours to persuade himself that his history opens with the origin of

fictitious narrative in Greece. After some general remarks on the

romances he had been reviewing, he adds, ‘In short, these _early_

fictions are such as might have been expected at the _first_ effort’—as

if the romances produced several centuries after the Christian era, or

even in the time of Alexander the Great, were the first attempts at

fiction in the country of Homer and Hesiod.

In the second chapter, where the author proposes to review the Latin

romances, the principal article is the Ass of Apuleius, which, from its

great popularity, has been called the Golden Ass. It is an improvement

of Lucian’s whimsical tale, entitled Lucius; and relates the adventures

of the author Apuleius during his transformation into an ass. This

misfortune befel him at the house of a female magician in Thessaly with

whom he lodged, and whose maidservant at his request had stolen a box of

ointment from her mistress, by rubbing himself with which Apuleius

expected to be changed into a bird; but as his friend the damsel had by

mistake given him a wrong box, he found himself compelled to bray and

walk on all fours, instead of whistling and flying in the air. He is

informed by her, that the eating of rose leaves is necessary for his

restoration to the human form. One should imagine that roses might be

found as easily in Thessaly as in this country, where an ass of ordinary

observation and address might contrive, without much difficulty, to

regale himself with one, if he liked it as well as a thistle—and much

more, if it were an object of as great importance to him as to Apuleius.

This poor beast, however, went through many adventures, some to be sure

agreeable enough, but in general very unpleasant, before he had it in

his power to taste a rose leaf. At last, having one evening escaped from

his master, he found unexpectedly the termination of his misfortunes. We

shall quote Mr. Dunlop’s account of this happy catastrophe.

‘He fled unperceived to the fields; and having galloped for three

leagues, he came to a retired place on the shore of the sea. The moon

which was in full splendour, and the awful silence of the night,

inspired him with sentiments of devotion. He purified himself in the

manner prescribed by Pythagoras, and addressed a long prayer to the

great goddess Isis. In the course of the night she appeared to him in a

dream; and after giving a strange account of herself, announced to him

the end of his misfortunes; but demanded in return the consecration of

his whole life to her service. On awakening, he feels himself confirmed

in his resolution of aspiring to a life of virtue. On this change of

disposition and conquest over his passions, the author finely represents

all nature as assuming a new face of cheerfulness and gaiety. “Tanta

hilaritate, praeter peculiarem meam, gestire mihi cuncta videbantur, ut

pecua etiam cujuscemodi, et totas domos, et ipsam diem serena facie

gaudere sentirem.”

‘While in this frame of mind, Apuleius perceived an innumerable

multitude approaching the shore to celebrate the festival of Isis. Amid

the crowd of priests, he remarked the sovereign pontiff, with a crown of

roses on his head; and approached to pluck them. The pontiff, yielding

to a secret inspiration, held forth the garland. Apuleius resumed his

former figure, and the promise of the Goddess was fulfilled. He was then

initiated into her rites—returned to Rome, and devoted himself to her

service.... He was finally invited to a more mystic and solemn

initiation by the Goddess herself, who rewarded him for his accumulated

piety, by an abundance of temporal blessings.’—VOL. I. p. 114.

This romance has acquired great celebrity, from having been pressed by

Warburton into the service of Christianity, in his curious argument for

the Divine Legation of Moses—which we trust is defensible upon other

grounds. We cannot go so far as the learned prelate; though we think it

extremely probable that Apuleius had in view the general idea of

representing, on the one hand, by his metamorphosis, the degradation of

human nature in consequence of a voluptuous life; and on the other hand,

the dignity and happiness of virtue, by his restoration and admission to

the mysteries of Isis. The Golden Ass, however, is not calculated to

make converts from pleasure; and is chiefly valuable as a book of

amusement, written very agreeably, but not without affectation, and

containing some beautiful tales and many diverting incidents.

Of the ancient Latin romances very few are extant; and it is probable

that the production of these luxuries was checked in Italy before the

end of the fourth century, though the Greek writers continued for nine

or ten centuries afterwards to compose tales of various kinds both in

prose and verse. But, while the idle people of Constantinople were

amusing themselves with their novels, the western provinces of the Roman

empire were laid waste by barbarous invaders; and a period of extreme

misery was at length succeeded by a new state of society, a new state of

government, manners and opinions, very different from that which had

been subverted in the west, or from that which subsisted in the refined

and effeminate provinces of the east, but far better adapted to rouse

the ardour of a poetical imagination. Hence arose a new and remarkable

class of fictions,—the fictions of Chivalry, which have so long

delighted Britain and France, and Spain and Italy. They are the subject

of the third and three following chapters of our Author’s history.

It is in this portion of his work, particularly, that we have to lament

the unhappy limitation of his plan. The prose romances of Chivalry were

produced for the most part by Bayes’s most expeditious recipe for

original composition, namely, by turning verse into prose,—being

extremely diffuse and languid compilations from the early metrical

tales; and they are in general of little value to the antiquary, as

neither their authors nor their dates can be ascertained. Amadis de Gaul

is one of the most celebrated; and yet it remains undetermined whether

the work now extant under that title has not been greatly altered from

the original; nor can any one tell either who composed the original, or

who manufactured the present work, or at what time either the one or the

other was written. The early metrical tales are far more deserving of

attention as connected with real history; and if we consider the

romances of chivalry merely as amusements to the imagination, the

subject appears better adapted for verse than for prose. The stately and

formal manners of those ages soon grow wearisome in ordinary narrative,

and require to be enlivened by the rapidity and brilliancy of poetical

description: And who does not feel that the marvellous exploits and

supernatural events with which they abound, deserve rather to be sung to

the sound of the harp, tabret, cymbal, and all manner of musical

instruments, than to be detailed in the sober language of truth, which

is absurdly affected by the prose romancers, who generally announce

themselves as authentic historians, and rail at the falsehood of their

metrical predecessors? Accordingly it is among the poets that we are to

look for the finest specimens of the fictions which we are now

considering; and while the romances of Ariosto, and Tasso and Scott, are

read again and again by persons of all descriptions, even Mr. Southey’s

translation of the great Amadis de Gaul, though it is ably executed, and

has much improved its original by abridging it, was never popular, and

is now almost forgotten.

Our author deviates from his plan so far as to give us a slight notice

of a few of the metrical romances which were preserved in the library of

M. de St. Palaye, the learned writer of the Memoirs on Chivalry. But

with this exception, he gratifies his readers with an account of the

prose romances only; of which the most ancient, and perhaps the most

curious, are those which relate to the fabulous history of England.

Amidst the devastation of the Roman empire in the west, this island

suffered far more than its share of the general calamity. The Christian

religion, which had been elsewhere not only spared but embraced by the

conquerors, was exterminated by the idolatrous and unlettered Saxons who

subdued the British province; and if any of the Britons were suffered to

exist within its bounds, they were only poor despised stragglers of the

lower orders; while the remnant of its chiefs, clergy and bards—its

traditions, its records, its literature, its very language—were swept

into the mountains of Wales, or beyond the sea into Britany. In these

circumstances, it is not surprising that the history of England should

be lost in fable, from the time that the Saxons got a footing in it,

about the middle of the fifth century, till the year 600, in which they

began to be converted, and civilized, and instructed in letters, by

Augustine and the other missionaries of Pope Gregory the Great. This

dark period of 150 years, between the entrance of the Saxons under

Hengist, and their conversion to Christianity, was the age of the famous

King Arthur, his friend Merlin the Enchanter, and the Knights of his

illustrious order of the Round Table, who are the great heroes in the

older romances of chivalry. Not that these good people, although they

fought stoutly against the invaders, knew any thing about the etiquette

and parade of chivalry, which was not instituted as an order till long

afterwards: but the romancers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries

chose to dress in the fashion of their own times, the characters whom

they found in the stories of Wales and Britany, or in the chronicle of

Geoffry of Monmouth, who reduced these stories into the form of a

regular authentic history, ascending to Brutus the Trojan, generally

denominated Le Brut by the French, and Brute by the English poets, who

was the great-grandson of Æneas, and the undoubted founder of the

British kingdom;—a fact which is abundantly confirmed, if it needed

confirmation, by the name Britain, quasi Brutain, evidently derived from

Brutus.

The earliest of the prose romances relating to Arthur, is the history of

Merlin the Enchanter, who was the son of a demon and an innocent young

lady, and favourite minister of Uter Pendragon, the British king. It was

this monarch who instituted at Carduel (Carlisle), the order of the

Round Table; at which were seated 50 or 60 of the first nobles of the

country, with an empty place always left for the Sangreal. The Sangreal,

our readers must know, was the most precious of all the Christian

relics: it was the blood which flowed from our Saviour’s wounds,

preserved in the _hanap_ or cup in which he drank with his apostles the

night when he was betrayed. This relic was first in the possession of

Joseph of Arimathea, by whom it was brought to Britain, and afterwards

fell into the hands of king Pecheur, who, by a beautiful ambiguity of

the French language, might have received this name either from being a

great fisher or a great sinner, or both. His nephew, the redoubted

knight Percival, succeeded to his uncle’s kingdom and to the possession

of the Sangreal; which, at the moment of Percival’s death, was in the

presence of his attendants carried up into heaven, and has never since

been seen or heard of. But to return to the romance of Merlin, which is

a favourable specimen of the class to which it belongs—we shall extract

the following account from our author’s history.

‘Soon after this institution (of the Round Table), the king invited all

his barons to the celebration of a great festival, which he proposed

holding annually at Carduel.

‘As the knights had obtained permission from his majesty to bring their

ladies along with them, the beautiful Yguerne accompanied her husband,

the Duke of Tintadiel, to one of these anniversaries. The king became

deeply enamoured of the dutchess, and revealed his passion to Ulsius,

one of his counsellors. Yguerne withstood all the inducements which

Ulsius held forth to prepossess her in favour of his master; and

ultimately disclosed to her husband the attachment and solicitations of

the king. On hearing this, the duke instantly withdrew from court with

Yguerne, and without taking leave of Uter. The king complained of this

want of duty to his council, who decided, that the duke should be

summoned to court, and if refractory, should be treated as a rebel. As

he refused to obey the citation, the king carried war into the estates

of his vassal, and besieged him in the strong castle of Tintadiel, in

which he had shut himself up. Yguerne was confined in a fortress at some

distance, which was still more secure. During the siege, Ulsius informed

his master that he had been accosted by an old man, who promised to

conduct the king to Yguerne, and had offered to meet him for that

purpose on the following morning. Uter proceeded with Ulsius to the

rendezvous. In an old blind man whom they found at the appointed place,

they recognized the enchanter Merlin, who had assumed that appearance.

He bestowed on the king the form of the Duke of Tintadiel, while he

endowed himself and Ulsius with the figures of his grace’s two squires.

Fortified by this triple metamorphosis, they proceeded to the residence

of Yguerne, who, unconscious of the deceit, received the king as her

husband.

‘The fraud of Merlin was not detected, and the war continued to be

prosecuted by Uter with the utmost vigour. At length the Duke was killed

in battle, and the King, by the advice of Merlin, espoused Yguerne. Soon

after the marriage she gave birth to Arthur, whom she believed to be the

son of her former husband, as Uter had never communicated to her the

story of his assumed appearance.

‘After the death of Uter, there was an interregnum in England, as it was

not known that Arthur was his son. This Prince, however, was at length

chosen King, in consequence of having unfixed from a miraculous stone, a

sword which two hundred and one of the most valiant barons in the realm

had been singly unable to extract. At the beginning of his reign, Arthur

was engaged in a civil war; as the mode of his election, however

judicious, was disapproved by some of the Barons, and when he had at

length overcome his domestic enemies, he had long wars to sustain

against the Gauls and Saxons.

‘In all these contests, the art of Merlin was of great service to

Arthur, as he changed himself into a dwarf, a harp player, or a stag, as

the interest of his master required; or at least threw on the bystanders

a spell to fascinate their eyes, and cause them to see the thing that

was not. On one occasion he made an expedition to Rome, entered the

King’s palace in the shape of an enormous stag, and in this character

delivered a formal harangue, to the utter amazement of one called Julius

Cæsar; not the Julius whom the Knight Mars killed in his pavilion, but

him whom Gauvaine slew, because he defied King Arthur.

‘At length this renowned magician disappeared entirely from England. His

voice alone was heard in a forest, where he was enclosed in a bush of

hawthorn: he had been entrapped in this awkward residence by means of a

charm he had communicated to his mistress Viviane, who not believing in

the spell, had tried it on her lover. The lady was sorry for the

accident; but there was no extracting her admirer from his thorny

coverture.

‘The earliest edition of this romance was printed at Paris, in three

volumes folio, 1498.... Though seldom to be met with, the Roman de

Merlin is one of the most curious romances of the class to which it

belongs. It comprehends all the events connected with the life of the

enchanter, from his supernatural birth to his magical disappearance, and

embraces a longer period of interesting fabulous history than most of

the works of chivalry.... The language, which is very old French, is

remarkable for its beauty and simplicity. Indeed the work bears

everywhere the marks of very high antiquity—though it is impossible to

fix the date of its composition: It has been attributed to Robert de

Borron, to whom many other works of this nature have been assigned; but

it is not known at what time this author existed; and indeed he is

believed by many, and particularly by Mr. Ritson, to be entirely a

fictitious personage’ (VOL. I. p. 178).

Our author has given an amusing enough account, not only of the various

prose romances relating to chivalry, but also of those circumstances in

the state of the western nations which gave rise to the singular

institutions and manners of that proud order, and consequently to this

particular species of fiction; and we are moreover instructed in the

origin of the marvels with which these fictions abound. The subject has

been treated so ably, and in such detail, by former writers, that little

new is to be expected; but we have already had occasion to commend our

author’s judgment,—who has not confined himself to any one of the

theories which have been ingeniously and learnedly maintained on the

topic last mentioned, but has shown that they are all founded on truth,

and consistent with each other.

We shall now refer the reader to the work itself, of which we have

produced abundant specimens. Its multifarious nature is indicated by the

title-page; and it contains much curious information, both with regard

to the particular romances which are reviewed, and also with regard to

the transition of stories from age to age, and from the novelist to the

dramatic poet. But we cannot dismiss the subject, without stating

briefly one or two additional remarks, which we submit to our author’s

consideration in the view of another edition.

It is a material defect that his Reviews are so general, and so uniform

in their style, that although we are amused with their pleasantry, they

enable us to form but a very imperfect idea of the original

compositions. The abridgments of some of the narratives are extremely

jejune; and although he has inserted in the Appendix to the first volume

some curious passages from the old French romances, and has even been so

obliging as to furnish a specimen of John Bunyan’s style in the

Pilgrim’s Progress, and of Mrs. Radcliffe’s in the Romance of the

Forest, these favoured writers are almost the only ones whom he allows

to address us in their own persons. Now it is obvious, that even the

detail of all the incidents in a romance would be a very insufficient

ground for judging of its merit. If the narrative is not animated,

interesting, and impassioned, it is deficient in the essential

requisites. But it is Mr. Dunlop who tells all the stories; and he tells

them in his own way. He tells them indeed agreeably, and in many cases,

we believe, more agreeably than the authors. This, however, is not

precisely the entertainment to which we understood ourselves to have

been invited. At another time we shall be happy to listen to Mr.

Dunlop’s uninterrupted lecture; but on this occasion we expected that he

was to introduce us to a great company of literati,—that he was to show

them off and draw them out: Yet though they are all eager to talk,—being

indeed all of them professed story-tellers, he talks the whole talk

himself, and allows very few of the poor gentlemen to put in a word. It

is true that he is doing the honours, and consequently we expect that he

should prepare us in every case for what we are to hear; but still he

should have let the good people speak a little for themselves, and then

we might have formed some guess of their mettle. Mr. Ellis has managed

this matter better in his specimens of the early metrical romances.

We must likewise observe, that our author is not always sufficiently

attentive to make his criticisms intelligible to those who are not

acquainted with the original works. Thus, after giving us an outline of

the Greek story of Clitophon and Leucippe, he remarks (VOL. I. p. 38)

that a number of the incidents are original (how does he know that?) and

well imagined; ‘such as the beautiful incident of the Bee, which has

been adopted by Tasso and D’Urfé:’ of which mysterious bee we do not

hear another syllable either before or afterwards.

The state of Fiction in modern times is by far the finest and most

interesting part of the whole subject; but our author’s account of it is

extremely imperfect indeed, and seems to have been got up in very great

haste, that the contents of his chapters might have some correspondence

with his title-page. In fact, it is so inferior to what he has shown

himself capable of accomplishing, that it would not be fair to advert to

it more particularly.—There is however one incidental circumstance which

we cannot omit. Miss Burney is mentioned, only to suggest that both the

general incidents and the leading characters in Evelina have been

derived from Mrs. Heywood’s stupid history of Betsy Thoughtless. This is

really too much in the style of the schoolboy critics,—who make a

prodigious noise about originality and invention, without attending to

what constitutes the real value of works addressed to the imagination.

Does it derogate from Shakespeare’s genius, that his fables are not his

own? Or does any person now suppose that Homer invented, or would it

have been much to his credit if he had invented, the story of the Trojan

war, or even the principal events in his immortal poems? We will not

however resume this topic, which we had already occasion to consider;

but only observe, that from whatever quarter the author of Evelina may

have derived the hints of her stories and characters, there are but few

novelists who deserve to be compared to her in the capital merit of a

powerful dramatic effect.

We shall conclude with merely suggesting that our author’s history would

be greatly improved if he were careful to trace the connexion between

the variations in the popular fictions of the western nations of Europe,

and the variations in the political, moral, religious and literary state

of those nations since the first establishment of the feudal

governments. There are not wanting materials and helps for such an

investigation; and as Mr. Dunlop is a man of erudition and research, we

have no doubt that he would find it an interesting amusement for his

leisure hours.

Upon the whole, though we wish to see the History of Fiction executed on

a very different plan, and with a greater spirit of philosophical

inquiry and critical acuteness, we recommend the present publication as

an agreeable and curious Miscellany, which discovers uncommon

information and learning.

STANDARD NOVELS AND ROMANCES

VOL. XXIV.] [_February 1815._

There is an exclamation in one of Gray’s letters—‘Be mine to read

eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon!’ If we did not utter

a similar aspiration at the conclusion of the Wanderer, it was not

from any want of affection for the class of writing to which it

belongs; for, without going quite so far as the celebrated French

philosopher, who thought that more was to be learnt from good novels

and romances, than from the gravest treatises on history and

morality, we must confess, that there are few works to which we

oftener turn for profit or delight, than to the standard productions

in this species of composition. With the exception of the violently

satirical, and the violently sentimental specimens of the art, we

find there the closest imitation of men and manners; and are

admitted to examine the very web and texture of society, as it

really exists, and as we meet with it when we come into the world.

If the style of poetry has ‘something more divine in it,’ this

savours more of humanity. We are brought acquainted with an infinite

variety of characters—all a little more amusing, and, for the

greater part, more true to general nature than those which we meet

with in actual life—and have our moral impressions far more

frequently called out, and our moral judgments exercised, than in

the busiest career of existence. As a record of past manners and

opinions, too, such writings afford both more minute and more

abundant information than any other. To give one example only:—We

should really be at a loss where to find, in any authentic documents

of the same period, so satisfactory an account of the general state

of society, and of moral, political and religious feeling, in the

reign of George II. as we meet with in the Adventures of Joseph

Andrews and his friend Mr. Abraham Adams. This work, indeed, we take

to be a perfect piece of statistics in its kind; and do not know

from what other quarter we could have acquired the solid information

it contains, even as to this comparatively recent period. What a

thing it would be to have such a work of the age of Pericles or

Alexander! and how much more would it teach us as to the true

character and condition of the people among whom it was produced,

than all the tragedies and histories, and odes and orations, that

have been preserved of their manufacture! In looking into such grave

and ostentatious performances, we see little but the rigid skeleton

of public transactions—exaggerations of party zeal, and vestiges of

literary ambition; and if we wish really to know what was the state

of manners and of morals, and in what way, and into what forms,

principles and institutions were actually moulded in practice, we

cannot do better than refer to the works of those writers, who,

having no other object than to imitate nature, could only hope for

success from the fidelity of their pictures; and were bound (in

their own defence) to reduce the boasts of vague theorists, and the

exaggerations of angry disputants, to the mortifying standard of

reality.

We will here confess however, that we are a little prejudiced on the

point in question; and that the effect of many fine speculations has

been lost upon us, from an early familiarity with the most striking

passages in the little work to which we have just alluded. Thus, nothing

can be more captivating than the description somewhere given by Mr.

Burke, of the indissoluble connexion between learning and nobility; and

of the respect universally paid by wealth to piety and morals. But the

effect of this splendid representation has always been spoiled to us, by

our recollection of Parson Adams sitting over his cup of ale in Sir

Thomas Booby’s kitchen. Echard ‘On the Contempt of the Clergy,’ in like

manner, is certainly a very good book, and its general doctrine more

just and reasonable; but an unlucky impression of the reality of Parson

Trulliber always checks, in us, the respectful emotions to which it

should give rise: while the lecture which Lady Booby reads to Lawyer

Scout on the expulsion of Joseph and Fanny from the parish, casts an

unhappy shade over the splendid pictures of practical jurisprudence that

are to be found in the works of Blackstone or De Lolme. The most moral

writers, after all, are those who do not pretend to inculcate any moral:

The professed moralist almost unavoidably degenerates into the partisan

of a system; and the philosopher warps the evidence to his own purpose.

But the painter of manners gives the facts of human nature, and leaves

us to draw the inference: If we are not able to do this, or do it ill,

at least it is our own fault.

The first-rate writers in this class are of course few; but those few we

may reckon, without scruple, among the greatest ornaments and the best

benefactors of our kind. There is a certain set of them, who, as it

were, take their rank by the side of reality, and are appealed to as

evidence on all questions concerning human nature. The principal of

these are Cervantes and Le Sage; and, among ourselves, Fielding,

Richardson, Smollett, and Sterne.[1] As this is a department of

criticism which deserves more attention than we have ever yet bestowed

on it, we shall venture to treat it a little in detail; and endeavour to

contribute something towards settling the standard of excellence, both

as to degree and kind, in these several writers.

We shall begin with the renowned history of Don Quixote; who always

presents something more stately, more romantic, and at the same time

more real to our imagination, than any other hero upon record. His

lineaments, his accoutrements, his pasteboard visor, are familiar to us,

as the recollections of our early home. The spare and upright figure of

the hero paces distinctly before our eyes; and Mambrino’s helmet still

glitters in the sun! We not only feel the greatest love and veneration

for the knight himself, but a certain respect for all those connected

with him—the Curate, and Master Nicolas the barber—Sancho and Dapple—and

even for Rosinante’s leanness and his errors! Perhaps there is no work

which combines so much originality with such an air of truth. Its

popularity is almost unexampled; and yet its real merits have not been

sufficiently understood. The story is the least part of them; though the

blunders of Sancho, and the unlucky adventures of his master, are what

naturally catch the attention of ordinary readers. The pathos and

dignity of the sentiments are often disguised under the ludicrousness of

the subject; and provoke laughter when they might well draw tears. The

character of Don Quixote itself is one of the most perfect

disinterestedness. He is an enthusiast of the most amiable kind—of a

nature equally open, gentle and generous; a lover of truth and justice,

and one who had brooded over the fine dreams of chivalry and romance,

till the dazzling visions cheated his brain into a belief of their

reality. There cannot, in our opinion, be a greater mistake than to

consider Don Quixote as a merely satirical work, or an attempt to

explode, by coarse raillery, ‘the long forgotten order of chivalry.’

There could be no need to explode what no longer existed. Besides,

Cervantes himself was a man of the most sanguine and enthusiastic

temperament; and even through the crazed and battered figure of the

knight, the spirit of chivalry shines out with undiminished lustre; and

one might almost imagine that the author had half-designed to revive the

example of past ages, and once more ‘witch the world with noble

horsemanship’; and had veiled the design, in scorn of the degenerate age

to which it was addressed, under this fantastic and imperfect disguise

of romantic and ludicrous exaggeration. However that may be, the spirit

which the book breathes, to those who relish and understand it best, is

unquestionably the spirit of chivalry: nor perhaps is it too much to

say, that, if ever the flame of Spanish liberty is destined to break

forth, wrapping the tyrant and the tyranny in one consuming blaze, it is

owing to Cervantes and his knight of La Mancha, that the spark of

generous sentiment and romantic enterprise from which it must be

kindled, has not been quite extinguished.

The character of Sancho is not more admirable in the execution, than in

the conception, as a relief to that of the knight. The contrast is as

picturesque and striking as that between the figures of Rosinante and

Dapple. Never was there so complete a _partie quarrée_;—they answer to

one another at all points. Nothing can surpass the truth of physiognomy

in the description of the master and man, both as to body and mind;—the

one lean and tall, the other round and short;—the one heroical and

courteous, the other selfish and servile;—the one full of high-flown

fancies, the other a bag of proverbs;—the one always starting some

romantic scheme, the other always keeping to the safe side of tradition

and custom. The gradual ascendancy, too, obtained by Don Quixote over

Sancho, is as finely managed as it is characteristic. Credulity, and a

love of the marvellous, are as natural to ignorance as selfishness and

cunning. Sancho by degrees becomes a kind of lay-brother of the order;

acquires a taste for adventures in his own way, and is made all but an

entire convert, by the discovery of the hundred crowns in one of his

most comfortless journeys. Towards the end, his regret at being forced

to give up the pursuit of knight-errantry, almost equals his master’s;

and he seizes the proposal of Don Quixote to turn shepherds, with the

greatest avidity,—still applying it, however, in his own fashion; for

while the Don is ingeniously torturing the names of his humble

acquaintance into classical terminations, and contriving scenes of

gallantry and song, Sancho exclaims, ‘Oh, what delicate wooden spoons

shall I carve! what crumbs and cream shall I devour!’—forgetting, in his

milk and fruits, the pullets and geese at Camacho’s wedding.

This intuitive perception of the hidden analogies of things, or, as it

may be called, this _instinct of imagination_, is what stamps the

character of genius on the productions of art, more than any other

circumstance: for it works unconsciously, like nature, and receives its

impressions from a kind of inspiration. There is more of this

unconscious power in Cervantes, than in any other author, except

Shakespeare. Something of the same kind extends itself to all the

subordinate parts and characters of the work. Thus we find the curate

confidentially informing Don Quixote, that if he could get the ear of

the government, he has something of considerable importance to propose

for the good of the state; and the knight afterwards meets with a young

gentleman, who is a candidate for poetical honours, with a mad lover, a

forsaken damsel, &c.—all delineated with the same inimitable force,

freedom, and fancy. The whole work breathes that air of romance,—that

aspiration after imaginary good,—that longing after something more than

we possess, that in all places, and in all conditions of life,

——‘still prompts the eternal sigh,

For which we wish to live, or dare to die!’

The characters in Don Quixote are strictly individuals; that is, they do

not belong to, but form a class of themselves. In other words, the

actions and manners of the chief _dramatis personæ_ do not arise out of

the actions and manners of those around them, or the condition of life

in which they are placed, but out of the peculiar dispositions of the

persons themselves, operated upon by certain impulses of imagination and

accident: Yet these impulses are so true to nature, and their operation

so truly described, that we not only recognize the fidelity of the

representation, but recognize it with all the advantages of novelty

superadded. They are unlike any thing we have actually seen—may be said

to be purely ideal—and yet familiarize themselves more readily with our

imagination, and are retained more strongly in memory, than perhaps any

others:—they are never lost in the crowd. One test of the truth of this

ideal painting, is the number of allusions which Don Quixote has

furnished to the whole of civilized Europe—that is to say of appropriate

cases, and striking illustrations of the universal principles of our

nature. The common incidents and descriptions of human life are,

however, quite familiar and natural; and we have nearly the same insight

given us here, into the characters of inn-keepers, bar-maids, ostlers,

and puppet-show men, as in Fielding himself. There is a much greater

mixture, however, of sentiment with _naïveté_, of the pathetic with the

quaint and humorous, than there ever is in Fielding. We might instance

the story of the country man, whom Don Quixote and Sancho met in their

search after Dulcinea, driving his mules to plough at break of day, and

‘singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles!’ The episodes which are

introduced, are excellent; but have, upon the whole, been overrated.

Compared with the serious tales in Boccacio, they are trifling. That of

Marcella, the fair shepherdess, is the best. We will only add, that Don

Quixote is an entirely original work in its kind, and that the author

has the highest honour which can belong to one, that of being the

founder of a new style of writing.

There is another Spanish novel, Gusman d’Alfarache, nearly of the same

age as Don Quixote, and of great genius, though it can hardly be ranked

as a novel, or a work of imagination. It is a series of strange

adventures, rather drily told, but accompanied by the most severe and

sarcastic commentary. The satire, the wit, the eloquence, and reasoning,

are of the most powerful kind; but they are didactic, rather than

dramatic. They would suit a sermon or a pasquinade better than a

romance. Still there are in this extraordinary book, occasional sketches

of character, and humorous descriptions, to which it would be difficult

to produce any thing superior. This work, which is hardly known in this

country except by name, has the credit, without any reason, of being the

original of Gil Blas. There is only one incident the same, that of the

supper at the inn. In all other respects, these two works are the very

reverse of each other, both in their excellencies and defects.

Gil Blas is, next to Don Quixote, more generally read and admired than

any other novel—and, in one sense, deservedly so: for it is at the head

of its class, though that class is very different from, and inferior to

the other. There is very little individual character in Gil Blas. The

author is a describer of manners, and not of character. He does not take

the elements of human nature, and work them up into new combinations,

(which is the excellence of Don Quixote); nor trace the peculiar and

striking combinations of folly and knavery as they are to be found in

real life, (like Fielding); but he takes off, as it were, the general,

habitual impression, which circumstances make on certain conditions of

life, and moulds all his characters accordingly. All the persons whom he

introduces, carry about with them the badge of their profession; and you

see little more of them than their costume. He describes men as

belonging to certain classes in society—the highest, generally, and the

lowest, and such as are found in great cities—not as they are in

themselves, or with the individual differences which are always to be

found in nature. His hero, in particular, has no character but that of

the accidental circumstances in which he is placed. His priests are only

described as priests: his valets, his players, his women, his courtiers

and his sharpers, are all the same. Nothing can well exceed the monotony

of the work in this respect;—at the same time that nothing can exceed

the truth and precision with which the general manners of these

different characters are preserved, nor the felicity of the particular

traits by which their leading foibles are brought out to notice. Thus,

the Archbishop of Grenada will remain an everlasting memento of the

weakness of human vanity; and the account of Gil Blas’s legacy, of the

uncertainty of human expectations. This novel is as deficient in the

fable as in the characters. It is not a regularly constructed story; but

a series of adventures told with equal gaiety and good sense, and in the

most graceful style possible.

It has been usual to class our great novelists as imitators of one or

other of these two writers. Fielding, no doubt, is more like Don Quixote

than Gil Blas; Smollett is more like Gil Blas than Don Quixote: but

there is not much resemblance in either case. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy

is a more direct instance of imitation. Richardson can scarcely be

called an imitator of any one; or, if he is, it is of the sentimental

refinement of Marivaux, or the verbose gallantry of the writers of the

seventeenth century.

There is very little to warrant the common idea, that Fielding was an

imitator of Cervantes,—except his own declaration of such an intention,

in the title-page of Joseph Andrews,—the romantic turn of the character

of Parson Adams (the only romantic character in his works),—and the

proverbial humour of Partridge, which is kept up only for a few pages.

Fielding’s novels are, in general, thoroughly his own; and they are

thoroughly English. What they are most remarkable for, is neither

sentiment, nor imagination, nor wit, nor humour, though there is a great

deal of this last quality; but profound knowledge of human nature—at

least of English nature—and masterly pictures of the characters of men

as he saw them existing. This quality distinguishes all his works, and

is shown almost equally in all of them. As a painter of real life, he

was equal to Hogarth: As a mere observer of human nature, he was little

inferior to Shakespeare, though without any of the genius and poetical

qualities of his mind.—His humour is less rich and laughable than

Smollett’s; his wit as often misses as hits;—he has none of the fine

pathos of Richardson or Sterne:—But he has brought together a greater

variety of characters in common life,—marked with more distinct

peculiarities, and without an atom of caricature, than any other novel

writer whatever. The extreme subtility of observation on the springs of

human conduct in ordinary characters, is only equalled by the ingenuity

of contrivance in bringing those springs into play in such a manner as

to lay open their smallest irregularity. The detection is always

complete—and made with the certainty and skill of a philosophical

experiment, and the ease and simplicity of a casual observation. The

truth of the imitation is indeed so great, that it has been argued that

Fielding must have had his materials ready-made to his hands, and was

merely a transcriber of local manners and individual habits. For this

conjecture, however, there seems to be no foundation. His

representations, it is true, are local and individual; but they are not

the less profound and natural. The feeling of the general principles of

human nature operating in particular circumstances, is always intense,

and uppermost in his mind: and he makes use of incident and situation,

only to bring out character.

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to give any illustration of these

remarks. Tom Jones is full of them. The moral of this book has been

objected to, and not altogether without reason—but a more serious

objection has been made to the want of refinement and elegance in the

two principal characters. We never feel this objection, indeed, while we

are reading the book: but at other times, we have something like a

lurking suspicion that Jones was but an awkward fellow, and Sophia a

pretty simpleton. We do not know how to account for this effect, unless

it is that Fielding’s constantly assuring us of the beauty of his hero,

and the good sense of his heroine, at last produces a distrust of both.

The story of Tom Jones is allowed to be unrivalled: and it is this

circumstance, together with the vast variety of characters, that has

given the history of a Foundling so decided a preference over Fielding’s

other novels. The characters themselves, both in Amelia and Joseph

Andrews, are quite equal to any of those in Tom Jones. The account of

Miss Mathews and Ensign Hibbert—the way in which that lady reconciles

herself to the death of her father—the inflexible Colonel Bath, the

insipid Mrs. James, the complaisant Colonel Trent—the demure, sly,

intriguing, equivocal Mrs. Bennet—the lord who is her seducer, and who

attempts afterwards to seduce Amelia by the same mechanical process of a

concert-ticket, a book, and the disguise of a great-coat—his little fat

short-nosed, red-faced, good-humoured accomplice the keeper of the

lodging-house, who having no pretensions to gallantry herself, has a

disinterested delight in forwarding the intrigues and pleasures of

others, (to say nothing of honest Atkinson, the story of the

miniature-picture of Amelia, and the hashed mutton, which are in a

different style), are masterpieces of description. The whole scene at

the lodging-house, the masquerade, &c. in Amelia, is equal in interest

to the parallel scenes in Tom Jones, and even more refined in the

knowledge of character. For instance, Mrs. Bennet is superior to Mrs.

Fitzpatrick in her own way. The uncertainty in which the event of her

interview with her former seducer is left, is admirable. Fielding was a

master of what may be called the _double entendre_ of character, and

surprises you no less by what he leaves in the dark, (hardly known to

the persons themselves), than by the unexpected discoveries he makes of

the real traits and circumstances in a character with which, till then,

you find you were unacquainted. There is nothing at all heroic, however,

in the style of any of his delineations. He never draws lofty characters

or strong passions;—all his persons are of the ordinary stature as to

intellect; and none of them trespass on the angelic nature, by elevation

of fancy, or energy of purpose. Perhaps, after all, Parson Adams is his

finest character. It is equally true to nature, and more ideal than any

of the others. Its unsuspecting simplicity makes it not only more

amiable, but doubly amusing, by gratifying the sense of superior

sagacity in the reader. Our laughing at him does not once lessen our

respect for him. His declaring that he would willingly walk ten miles to

fetch his sermon on vanity, merely to convince Wilson of his thorough

contempt of this vice, and his consoling himself for the loss of his

Æschylus, by suddenly recollecting that he could not read it if he had

it, because it is dark, are among the finest touches of _naïveté_. The

night-adventures at Lady Booby’s with Beau Didapper, and the amiable

Slipslop, are the most ludicrous; and that with the huntsman, who draws

off the hounds from the poor Parson, because they would be spoiled by

following _vermin_, the most profound. Fielding did not often repeat

himself: but Dr. Harrison, in Amelia, may be considered as a variation

of the character of Adams: so also is Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield;

and the latter part of that work, which sets out so delightfully, an

almost entire plagiarism from Wilson’s account of himself, and Adams’s

domestic history.

Smollett’s first novel, Roderick Random, which is also his best,

appeared about the same time as Fielding’s Tom Jones; and yet it has a

much more modern air with it: But this may be accounted for, from the

circumstance that Smollett was quite a young man at the time, whereas

Fielding’s manner must have been formed long before. The style of

Roderick Random, though more scholastic and elaborate, is stronger and

more pointed than that of Tom Jones; the incidents follow one another

more rapidly, (though it must be confessed they never come in such a

throng, or are brought out with the same dramatic facility); the humour

is broader, and as effectual; and there is very nearly, if not quite, an

equal interest excited by the story. What then is it that gives the

superiority to Fielding? It is the superior insight into the springs of

human character, and the constant development of that character through

every change of circumstance. Smollett’s humour often arises from the

situation of the persons, or the peculiarity of their external

appearance, as, from Roderick Random’s carrotty locks, which hung down

over his shoulders like a pound of candles, or Strap’s ignorance of

London, and the blunders that follow from it. There is a tone of

vulgarity about all his productions. The incidents frequently resemble

detached anecdotes taken from a newspaper or magazine; and, like those

in Gil Blas, might happen to a hundred other characters. He exhibits

only the external accidents and reverses to which human life is

liable—not ‘the stuff’ of which it is composed. He seldom probes to the

quick, or penetrates beyond the surface of his characters: and therefore

he leaves no stings in the minds of his readers, and in this respect is

far less interesting than Fielding. His novels always enliven, and never

tire us: we take them up with pleasure, and lay them down without any

strong feeling of regret. We look on and laugh, as spectators of an

amusing though inelegant scene, without closing in with the combatants,

or being made parties in the event. We read Roderick Random as an

entertaining story; for the particular accidents and modes of life which

it describes, have ceased to exist: but we regard Tom Jones as a real

history; because the author never stops short of those essential

principles which lie at the bottom of all our actions, and in which we

feel an immediate interest;—_intus et in cute_.—Smollett excels most as

the lively caricaturist: Fielding as the exact painter and profound

metaphysician. We are far from maintaining, that this account applies

uniformly to the productions of these two writers; but we think that, as

far as they essentially differ, what we have stated is the general

distinction between them. Roderick Random is the purest of Smollett’s

novels; we mean in point of style and description. Most of the incidents

and characters are supposed to have been taken from the events of his

own life; and are therefore truer to nature. There is a rude conception

of generosity in some of his characters, of which Fielding seems to have

been incapable; his amiable persons being merely good-natured. It is

owing to this, we think, that Strap is superior to Partridge; and there

is a heartiness and warmth of feeling in some of the scenes between

Lieutenant Bowling and his nephew, which is beyond Fielding’s power of

impassioned writing. The whole of the scene on ship-board is a most

admirable and striking picture, and, we imagine, very little, if at all

exaggerated, though the interest it excites is of a very unpleasant

kind. The picture of the little profligate French friar, who was

Roderick’s travelling companion, and of whom he always kept to the

windward, is one of Smollett’s most masterly sketches. Peregrine Pickle

is no great favourite of ours, and Launcelot Greaves was not worthy of

the genius of the author.

Humphry Clinker and Count Fathom are both equally admirable in their

way. Perhaps the former is the most pleasant gossipping novel that ever

was written—that which gives the most pleasure with the least effort to

the reader. It is quite as amusing as going the journey could have been,

and we have just as good an idea of what happened on the road, as if we

had been of the party. Humphry Clinker himself is exquisite; and his

sweetheart, Winifred Jenkins, nearly as good. Matthew Bramble, though

not altogether original, is excellently supported, and seems to have

been the prototype of Sir Anthony Absolute in the Rivals. But Lismahago

is the flower of the flock. His tenaciousness in argument is not so

delightful as the relaxation of his logical severity, when he finds his

fortune mellowing with the wintry smiles of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble. This

is the best preserved, and most original of all Smollett’s characters.

The resemblance of Don Quixote is only just enough to make it

interesting to the critical reader, without giving offence to any body

else. The indecency and filth in this novel, are what must be allowed to

all Smollett’s writings. The subject and characters in Count Fathom are,

in general, exceedingly disgusting: the story is also spun out to a

degree of tediousness in the serious and sentimental parts; but there is

more power of writing occasionally shown in it than in any of his works.

We need only refer to the fine and bitter irony of the Count’s address

to the country of his ancestors on landing in England; to the

robber-scene in the forest, which has never been surpassed; to the

Parisian swindler, who personates a raw English country squire, (Western

is tame in the comparison); and to the story of the seduction in the

west of England. We should have some difficulty to point out, in any

author, passages written with more force and nature than these.

It is not, in our opinion, a very difficult attempt to class Fielding or

Smollett;—the one as an observer of the characters of human life, the

other as a describer of its various eccentricities: But it is by no

means so easy to dispose of Richardson, who was neither an observer of

the one, nor a describer of the other; but who seemed to spin his

materials entirely out of his own brain, as if there had been nothing

existing in the world beyond the little shop in which he sat writing.

There is an artificial reality about his works, which is nowhere to be

met with. They have the romantic air of a pure fiction, with the literal

minuteness of a common diary. The author had the strangest

matter-of-fact imagination that ever existed, and wrote the oddest

mixture of poetry and prose. He does not appear to have taken advantage

of any thing in actual nature, from one end of his works to the other:

and yet, throughout all his works (voluminous as they are—and this, to

be sure, is one reason why they are so), he sets about describing every

object and transaction, as if the whole had been given in on evidence by

an eyewitness. This kind of high finishing from imagination is an

anomaly in the history of human genius; and certainly nothing so fine

was ever produced by the same accumulation of minute parts. There is not

the least distraction, the least forgetfulness of the end: every

circumstance is made to tell. We cannot agree that this exactness of

detail produces heaviness; on the contrary, it gives an appearance of

truth, and a positive interest to the story; and we listen with the same

attention as we should to the particulars of a confidential

communication. We at one time used to think some parts of Sir Charles

Grandison rather trifling and tedious, especially the long description

of Miss Harriet Byron’s wedding clothes, till we met with two young

ladies who had severally copied out the whole of that very description

for their own private gratification. After this, we could not blame the

author.

The effect of reading this work, is like an increase of kindred: you

find yourself all of a sudden introduced into the midst of a large

family, with aunts and cousins to the third and fourth generation, and

grandmothers both by the father’s and mother’s side,—and a very odd set

of people too, but people whose real existence and personal identity you

can no more dispute than your own senses,—for you see and hear all that

they do or say. What is still more extraordinary, all this extreme

elaborateness in working out the story, seems to have cost the author

nothing: for it is said, that the published works are mere abridgments.

We have heard (though this, we suppose, must be a pleasant

exaggeration), that Sir Charles Grandison was originally written in

eight and twenty volumes.

Pamela is the first of his productions, and the very child of his brain.

Taking the general idea of the character of a modest and beautiful

country girl, and of the situation in which she is placed, he makes out

all the rest, even to the smallest circumstance, by the mere force of a

reasoning imagination. It would seem as if a step lost would be as fatal

here as in a mathematical demonstration. The development of the

character is the most simple, and comes the nearest to nature that it

can do, without being the same thing. The interest of the story

increases with the dawn of understanding and reflection in the heroine.

Her sentiments gradually expand themselves, like opening flowers. She

writes better every time, and acquires a confidence in herself, just as

a girl would do, writing such letters in such circumstances; and yet it

is certain _that no girl would write such letters in such

circumstances_. What we mean is this. Richardson’s nature is always the

nature of sentiment and reflection, not of impulse or situation. He

furnishes his characters, on every occasion, with the presence of mind

of the author. He makes them act, not as they would from the impulse of

the moment, but as they might upon reflection, and upon a careful review

of every motive and circumstance in their situation. They regularly sit

down to write letters: and if the business of life consisted in

letter-writing, and was carried on by the post (like a Spanish game at

chess), human nature would be what Richardson represents it. All actual

objects and feelings are blunted and deadened by being presented through

a medium which may be true to reason, but is false in nature. He

confounds his own point of view with that of the immediate actors in the

scene; and hence presents you with a conventional and factitious nature,

instead of that which is real. Dr. Johnson seems to have preferred this

truth of reflection to the truth of nature, when he said that there was

more knowledge of the human heart in a page of Richardson than in all

Fielding. Fielding, however, saw more of the practical results, and

understood the principles as well; but he had not the same power of

speculating upon their possible results, and combining them in certain

ideal forms of passion and imagination, which was Richardson’s real

excellence.

It must be observed, however, that it is this mutual good understanding,

and comparing of notes between the author and the persons he describes;

his infinite circumspection, his exact process of ratiocination and

calculation, which gives such an appearance of coldness and formality to

most of his characters,—which makes prudes of his women, and coxcombs of

his men. Every thing is too conscious in his works. Every thing is

distinctly brought home to the mind of the actors in the scene, which is

a fault undoubtedly: but then, it must be confessed, every thing is

brought home in its full force to the mind of the reader also; and we

feel the same interest in the story as if it were our own. Can any thing

be more beautiful or affecting than Pamela’s reproaches to her ‘lumpish

heart’ when she is sent away from her master’s at her own request—its

lightness, when she is sent for back—the joy which the conviction of the

sincerity of his love diffuses in her heart, like the coming-on of

spring—the artifice of the stuff gown—the meeting with lady Davers after

her marriage—and the trial scene with her husband? Who ever remained

insensible to the passion of Lady Clementina, except Sir Charles

Grandison himself, who was the object of it? Clarissa is, however, his

masterpiece, if we except Lovelace. If she is fine in herself, she is

still finer in his account of her. With that foil, her purity is

dazzling indeed: and she who could triumph by her virtue, and the force

of her love, over the regality of Lovelace’s mind, his wit, his person,

his accomplishments and his spirit, conquers all hearts. We should

suppose that never sympathy more deep or sincere was excited than by the

heroine of Richardson’s romance, except by the calamities of real life.

The links in this wonderful chain of interest are not more finely

wrought, than their whole weight is overwhelming and irresistible. Who

can forget the exquisite gradations of her long dying scene, or the

closing of the coffin-lid, when Miss Howe comes to take her last leave

of her friend; or the heart-breaking reflection that Clarissa makes on

what was to have been her wedding-day? Well does a modern writer

exclaim—

‘Books are a real world, both pure and good,

Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our pastime and our happiness may grow!’

Richardson’s wit was unlike that of any other writer;—his humour was so

too. Both were the effect of intense activity of mind;—laboured, and yet

completely effectual. We might refer to Lovelace’s reception and

description of Hickman, when he calls out Death in his ear, as the name

of the person with whom Clarissa had fallen in love; and to the scene at

the glove shop. What can be more magnificent than his enumeration of his

companions—‘Belton so pert and so pimply—Tourville so fair and so

foppish,’ etc.? In casuistry, he is quite at home; and, with a boldness

greater even than his puritanical severity, has exhausted every topic on

virtue and vice. There is another peculiarity in Richardson, not perhaps

so uncommon, which is, his systematically preferring his most insipid

characters to his finest, though both were equally his own invention,

and he must be supposed to have understood something of their qualities.

Thus he preferred the little, selfish, affected, insignificant Miss

Byron, to the divine Clementina; and again, Sir Charles Grandison, to

the nobler Lovelace. We have nothing to say in favour of Lovelace’s

morality; but Sir Charles is the prince of coxcombs,—whose eye was never

once taken from his own person, and his own virtues; and there is

nothing which excites so little sympathy as his excessive egotism.

It remains to speak of Sterne;—and we shall do it in few words. There is

more of _mannerism_ and affectation in him, and a more immediate

reference to preceding authors;—but his excellencies, where he is

excellent, are of the first order. His characters are intellectual and

inventive, like Richardson’s—but totally opposite in the execution. The

one are made out by continuity, and patient repetition of touches; the

others, by rapid and masterly strokes, and graceful apposition. His

style is equally different from Richardson’s:—it is at times the most

rapid,—the most happy,—the most idiomatic of any of our novel writers.

It is the pure essence of English conversational style. His works

consist only of _morceaux_,—of brilliant passages. His wit is poignant,

though artificial;—and his characters (though the groundwork has been

laid before), have yet invaluable original differences;—and the spirit

of the execution, the master-strokes constantly thrown into them, are

not to be surpassed. It is sufficient to name them—Yorick, Dr. Slop, Mr.

Shandy, my Uncle Toby, Trim, Susanna, and the Widow Wadman: and in these

he has contrived to oppose, with equal felicity and originality, two

characters,—one of pure intellect, and the other of pure good nature, in

my Father and my Uncle Toby. There appears to have been in Sterne a vein

of dry, sarcastic humour, and of extreme tenderness of feeling;—the

latter sometimes carried to affectation, as in the tale of Maria, and

the apostrophe to the recording angel;—but at other times pure, and

without blemish. The story of Le Febre is perhaps the finest in the

English language. My Father’s restlessness, both of body and mind, is

inimitable. It is the model from which all those despicable performances

against modern philosophy ought to have been copied, if their authors

had known any thing of the subject they were writing about. My Uncle

Toby is one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature. He is

the most unoffending of God’s creatures; or, as the French express

it—_un tel petit bon homme!_ Of his bowling-green,—his sieges,—and his

amours, who would say or think any thing amiss?

It is remarkable that our four best novel writers belong nearly to the

same age. We also owe to the same period, (the reign of George II.), the

inimitable Hogarth, and some of our best writers of the middle style of

comedy. If we were called upon to account for this coincidence, we

should wave the consideration of more general causes, (as, that

imagination naturally descends with the progress of civilization), and

ascribe it at once to the establishment of the Protestant ascendancy,

and the succession of the House of Hanover. These great events appear to

have given a more popular turn to our literature and genius, as well as

to our Government. It was found high time that the people should be

represented in books as well as in parliament. They wished to see some

account of themselves in what they read, and not to be confined always

to the vices, the miseries and frivolities of the great. Our domestic

tragedy, and our earliest periodical works, appeared a little before the

same period. In despotic countries, human nature is not of sufficient

importance to be studied or described. The _canaille_ are objects rather

of disgust than curiosity; and there are no middle classes. The works of

Racine and Moliere are little else than imitations of the verbiage of

the court, before which they were represented; or fanciful caricatures

of the manners of the lowest of the people. But in the period of our

history in question, a security of person and property, and a freedom of

opinion had been established, which made every man feel of some

consequence to himself, and appear an object of some curiosity to his

neighbours; our manners became more domesticated; there was a general

spirit of sturdiness and independence, which made the English character

more truly English than perhaps at any other period—that is, more

tenacious of its own opinions and purposes. The whole surface of society

appeared cut out into square enclosures and sharp angles, which extended

to the dresses of the time, their gravel walks, and clipped hedges. Each

individual had a certain ground-plot of his own to cultivate his

particular humours in, and let them shoot out at pleasure; and a most

plentiful crop they have produced accordingly.

The reign of George II. was, in a word, in an eminent degree, _the age

of hobby-horses_. But since that period, things have taken a different

turn. His present Majesty, during almost the whole of his reign, has

been constantly mounted on a great War-horse; and has fairly driven all

competitors out of the field. Instead of minding our own affairs, or

laughing at each other, the eyes of all his faithful subjects have been

fixed on the career of the Sovereign, and all hearts anxious for the

safety of his person and government. Our pens and our swords have been

drawn alike in their defence; and the returns of killed and wounded, the

manufacture of newspapers and parliamentary speeches, have exceeded all

former example. If we have had little of the blessings of peace, we have

had enough of the glories and calamities of war. His Majesty has indeed

contrived to keep alive the greatest public interest ever known, by his

determined manner of riding his hobby for half a century together, with

the aristocracy—the democracy—the clergy—the landed and monied

interest—and the rabble, in full cry after him! and at the end of his

career, most happily and unexpectedly succeeded—amidst empires lost and

won—kingdoms overturned and created—and the destruction of an incredible

number of lives—in restoring _the divine right of Kings_,—and thus

preventing any further abuse of the example which seated his family on

the throne!

It is not to be wondered, if, amidst the tumult of events crowded into

this period, our literature has partaken of the disorder of the time; if

our prose has run mad, and our poetry grown childish. Among those few

persons who ‘have kept the even tenor of their way,’ the author of

Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, holds a distinguished place. Mrs.

Radcliffe’s ‘enchantments drear’ and mouldering castles, derived a part

of their interest, we suppose, from the supposed tottering state of all

old structures at the time; and Mrs. Inchbald’s ‘Nature and Art’ would

not have had the same popularity, but that it fell in (in its two main

characters) with the prevailing prejudice of the moment, that judges and

bishops were not pure abstractions of justice and piety. Miss

Edgeworth’s tales, again, are a kind of essence of common sense, which

seemed to be called for by the prevailing epidemics of audacious paradox

and insane philosophy. The author of the present novel is, however,

quite of the old school, a mere common observer of manners,—and also a

very woman. It is this last circumstance which forms the peculiarity of

her writings, and distinguishes them from those masterpieces which we

have before mentioned. She is unquestionably a quick, lively, and

accurate observer of persons and things; but she always looks at them

with a consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which it

is the particular business and interest of women to observe them. We

thus get a kind of supplement and gloss to our original text, which we

could not otherwise have obtained. There is little in her works of

passion or character, or even manners, in the most extended sense of the

word, as implying the sum-total of our habits and pursuits; her _forte_

is in describing the absurdities and affectations of external behaviour,

or _the manners of people in company_. Her characters, which are all

caricatures, are no doubt distinctly marked, and perfectly kept up; but

they are somewhat superficial, and exceedingly uniform. Her heroes and

heroines, almost all of them, depend on the stock of a single phrase or

sentiment; or at least have certain mottoes or devices by which they may

always be known. They are such characters as people might be supposed to

assume for a night at a masquerade. She presents not the whole length

figure, nor even the face, but some prominent feature. In the present

novel, for example, a lady appears regularly every ten pages, to get a

lesson in music for nothing. She never appears for any other purpose;

this is all you know of her; and in this the whole wit and humour of the

character consists. Meadows is the same, who has always the same cue of

being tired, without any other idea, etc. It has been said of

Shakespeare, that you may always assign his speeches to the proper

characters:—and you may infallibly do the same thing with Madame

D’Arblay’s; for they always say the same thing. The Branghtons are the

best. Mr. Smith is an exquisite city portrait.—Evelina is also her best

novel, because it is shortest; that is, it has all the liveliness in the

sketches of character, and exquisiteness of comic dialogue and repartee,

without the tediousness of the story, and endless affectation of the

sentiments.

Women, in general, have a quicker perception of any oddity or

singularity of character than men, and are more alive to every absurdity

which arises from a violation of the rules of society, or a deviation

from established custom. This partly arises from the restraints on their

own behaviour, which turn their attention constantly on the subject, and

partly from other causes. The surface of their minds, like that of their

bodies, seems of a finer texture than ours; more soft, and susceptible

of immediate impression. They have less muscular power,—less power of

continued voluntary attention,—of reason—passion and imagination: But

they are more easily impressed with whatever appeals to their senses or

habitual prejudices. The intuitive perception of their minds is less

disturbed by any general reasonings on causes or consequences. They

learn the idiom of character and manner, as they acquire that of

language, by rote merely, without troubling themselves about the

principles. Their observation is not the less accurate on that account,

as far as it goes; for it has been well said, that ‘there is nothing so

true as habit.’

There is little other power in Miss Burney’s novels, than that of

immediate observation: her characters, whether of refinement or

vulgarity, are equally superficial and confined. The whole is a question

of form, whether that form is adhered to, or violated. It is this

circumstance which takes away dignity and interest from her story and

sentiments, and makes the one so teazing and tedious, and the other so

insipid. The difficulties in which she involves her heroines are indeed

‘Female Difficulties;’—they are difficulties created out of nothing. The

author appears to have no other idea of refinement than that it is the

reverse of vulgarity; but the reverse of vulgarity is fastidiousness and

affectation. There is a true, and a false delicacy. Because a vulgar

country Miss would answer ‘yes’ to a proposal of marriage in the first

page, Mad. d’Arblay makes it a proof of an excess of refinement, and an

indispensable point of etiquette in her young ladies, to postpone the

answer to the end of five volumes, without the smallest reason for their

doing so, and with every reason to the contrary. The reader is led every

moment to expect a denouement, and is as constantly disappointed on some

trifling pretext. The whole artifice of her fable consists in coming to

no conclusion. Her ladies stand so upon the order of their going, that

they do not go at all. They will not abate an ace of their punctilio in

any circumstances, or on any emergency. They would consider it as quite

indecorous to run down stairs though the house were in flames, or to

move off the pavement though a scaffolding was falling. She has formed

to herself an abstract idea of perfection in common behaviour, which is

quite as romantic and impracticable as any other idea of the sort: and

the consequence has naturally been, that she makes her heroines commit

the greatest improprieties and absurdities in order to avoid the

smallest. In contradiction to a maxim in philosophy, they constantly act

from the weakest motive, or rather from pure affectation.

Thus L. S.—otherwise _Ellis_, in the present novel, actually gives

herself up to the power of a man who has just offered violence to her

person, rather than return to the asylum of a farm-house, at which she

has left some friends, because, as she is turning her steps that way,

‘she hears the sounds of rustic festivity and vulgar merriment proceed

from it.’ That is, in order that her exquisite sensibility may not be

shocked by the behaviour of a number of honest country-people making

merry at a dance, this model of female delicacy exposes herself to every

species of insult and outrage from a man whom she hates. In like manner,

she runs from her honourable lover into the power of a ruffian and an

assassin, who claims a right over her person by a forced marriage. The

whole tissue of the fable is, in short, more wild and chimerical than

any thing in Don Quixote, without having any thing of poetical truth or

elevation. Madame D’Arblay has woven a web of difficulties for her

heroine, something like the green silken threads in which the

shepherdess entangled the steed of Cervantes’s hero, who swore, in his

fine enthusiastic way, that he would sooner cut his passage to another

world than disturb the least of those beautiful meshes. The Wanderer

raises obstacles, lighter than ‘the gossamer that idles in the wanton

summer air,’ into insurmountable barriers; and trifles with those that

arise out of common sense, reason, and necessity. Her conduct never

arises directly out of the circumstances in which she is placed, but out

of some factitious and misplaced refinement on them. It is a perpetual

game at cross-purposes. There being a plain and strong motive why she

should pursue any course of action, is a sufficient reason for her to

avoid it; and the perversity of her conduct is in proportion to its

levity—as the lightness of the feather baffles the force of the impulse

that is given to it, and the slightest breath of air turns it back on

the hand from which it is launched. We can hardly consider this as an

accurate description of the perfection of the female character!

We are sorry to be compelled to speak so disadvantageously of the work

of an excellent and favourite writer; and the more so, as we perceive no

decay of talent, but a perversion of it. There is the same admirable

spirit in the dialogues, and particularly in the characters of Mrs.

Ireton, Sir Jasper Herrington, and Mr. Giles Arbe, as in her former

novels. But these do not fill a hundred pages of the work; and there is

nothing else good in it. In the story, which here occupies the attention

of the reader almost exclusively, Madame D’Arblay never excelled.

SISMONDI’S LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH

VOL. XXV.] [_June 1815._

This is another great work from the pen of the celebrated historian of

the Italian Republics: though we think it written, on the whole, with

less force and spirit than that admirable history. The excellent author

has visibly less enthusiasm as a critic than as a politician; and

therefore he interests us less in that character, and at the same time

inspires us rather with less than greater confidence in the accuracy of

his opinions; for there can be no real love of liberty, or admiration of

genius, where there is no enthusiasm—and no one who does not love them,

will ever submit to the labour of a full and fair investigation of their

history and concerns. A cold, calculating indifference in matters of

taste, is generally the effect of want of feeling; as affected

moderation in politics is (nine times out of ten) a cloak for want of

principle. Notwithstanding the very great pleasure we have received from

the work before us, we should have been still more gratified, therefore,

if the author had himself appeared more delighted with his task, and

consequently imparted to it a more decided and original character. In

his Republics, he describes events and characters in the history of

modern Italy with the genuine feelings of an enlightened reasoner,

indignant at the wrongs, the vices, and the degradation of the country

of his ancestors: In judging of its literature, he too often borrows

French rules and German systems of criticism. His practical taste and

speculative principles do not, therefore, always coincide; and,

regarding this work on Literature as an appendage to his History, it is

impossible not to observe, that he is glad, upon all occasions, to slide

into his old and favourite subject; to pass from the professor’s chair

into the rostrum; and to connect, in glowing terms, the rise or fall of

letters with the political independence or debasement of the states in

which they flourished or decayed.

If we were to hazard any other preliminary remark of a general

character, it should be, that the author appears to have a more intimate

acquaintance with, and a great predilection for, the more modern and

immediately popular writers of Italy, than for those who appear to us

objects of greater curiosity and admiration. Thus, he dismisses Dante,

Petrarca and Boccacio, in fewer pages than he devotes to Metastasio

alone—an author whose chief merit he himself defines to be, the happy

adaptation of his pieces to the musical recitative of the opera, and

which, therefore, in a literary point of view, must be comparatively

uninteresting. Again, Ariosto makes, in his hands, a very slender

appearance by the side of Tasso—an appearance by no means proportioned

to the size of the men, or to the interest which is felt in them, or to

the scope for criticism in their different works. The account of the two

modern Italian dramatists, Alfieri and Goldoni, though given much at

length, is not certainly liable to the same kind of objection, as the

information with respect to them is valuable from its novelty.

The present volumes contain a general view of the literature of the

South of Modern Europe,—of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Provençal.

The author proposes, in another work, to examine that of the North,

particularly of England and Germany. The publication now before us was

(we are informed in the preface) originally composed to be delivered to

a class of young persons at Geneva: and this circumstance, while it has

added to its value and comprehensiveness as a book of reference, has

made it less entertaining to the general reader. A body of criticism,

like a body of divinity, must contain a great deal of matter less

pleasant than profitable in the perusal. In our account of it, we shall

direct the reader’s attention to what most forcibly arrested our

own—premising merely, that among the writers to whom M. Sismondi is

forward to acknowledge his obligations, are, Professor Boutterwek on

modern literature in general, Millot’s history of the Troubadours,

Tiraboschi and M. Guiguené on the Italian literature, Velasquez on the

Spanish and Portuguese, and William Schlegel for the dramatic literature

of all these nations. It is to this last author that he seems to be

indebted for a great part of his theoretical reasoning and conjectural

criticism on the general principles of taste and the progress of human

genius.

The first volume commences with an account of the Provençal poetry,

which is by no means the least interesting or curious part of this

extensive and elaborate work. We shall endeavour to give some general

idea of it to our readers. The language which prevailed in all the South

of Europe, after the destruction of the Roman empire, was a barbarous

mixture of Latin with the different languages of the Northern invaders.

It was in the south of France that this language first took a consistent

form, and became the vehicle of a gay and original poetry. The causes

which contributed to invest it with this distinction, were, according to

M. Sismondi, 1. The comparative exemption of the Francs from perpetual

successive inroads of barbarous conquerors; and, 2. The collateral

influence of the Moorish or Arabian literature, through the connection

between the kingdoms of Spain and Provence. The description given by the

author of the Arabian literature, which ‘rose like an exhalation,’ and

disappeared almost as soon, is splendid in the extreme. In a hundred and

fifty years, human genius is said to have produced more prodigies in

that prolific region, than it has done in the history of ages in all the

world besides. Arts and sciences had their birth, maturity and

perfection;—almost all the great modern discoveries (as they have been

considered) were anticipated, and again forgotten,—paper, printing, the

mariner’s compass, glass, gunpowder, &c. In the exercise of fancy and

invention, they infinitely surpassed all former or succeeding ages. As

an instance of the prodigious scale on which these matters were

conducted in the East, and of the colossal size to which their

literature had swelled in all its branches, it is stated that the

Thousand and One Stories forming the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment,

constitute only a six-and-thirtieth part of the original collection. We

suspect that there is some exaggeration in all this; though the

brilliant theories of our author have, no doubt, very considerable

foundation in fact. We hope there is none for the eloquent, but

melancholy, reflections he makes on the sudden disappearance of so much

intellectual magnificence from the face of the earth.

‘Such,’ he says, ‘was the lustre with which literature and sciences

shone forth from the ninth to the fourteenth century of our era, in the

vast regions which were subjected to Mahometism. The most melancholy

reflections are attached to the long enumeration of names unknown to us,

and which were nevertheless illustrious,—of works buried in manuscript

in some dusty repositories—which yet for a time had a powerful influence

on the culture of the human mind. What remains then of so much glory?

Five or six persons only can visit the treasures of Arabian manuscripts

shut up in the library of the Escurial; and some few hundreds besides,

scattered over all Europe, have qualified themselves, by obstinate

labour, to dig in the mines of the East—but these persons can only

obtain, with the utmost difficulty, some rare and obscure manuscripts,

and cannot raise themselves high enough to form a judgment on the whole

of a literature of which they never attain but a part. Meantime, the

extended regions where Mahometism reigned, and still reigns, are dead to

all the sciences. Those rich plains of Fez and Morocco, illumined five

centuries ago by so many academies, so many universities, and so many

libraries, are now nothing but deserts of burning sand, for which

tyrants dispute with tigers. All the gay and fertile shore of

Mauritania, where commerce, the arts, and agriculture had been raised to

the highest prosperity, are now the nests of pirates, who spread terror

on the seas, and who relax from their labour in shameful debaucheries,

till the plague, which returns yearly, comes to mark out its victims,

and to avenge offended humanity. Egypt is nearly swallowed in the sands,

which it once fertilized—Syria and Palestine are desolated by wandering

Bedouins, less formidable, however, than the Pasha who oppresses them.

Bagdad, formerly the abode of luxury, of power, and of knowledge, is

ruined; the once celebrated universities of Cufa and Bassora are

shut,—those of Samarcande and of Balch are also destroyed. In this

immense extent of country, twice or three times as large as our

Europe—nothing is found but ignorance, slavery, terror and death. Few of

the inhabitants can read any of the writings of their illustrious

forefathers;—few could comprehend them—none could procure them. The

immense literary riches of the Arabs, of which we have given some

glimpses, exist no more in any of the countries which the Arabs and

Mussulmen rule.—It is not there that we must now seek either the renown

of their great men or their writings. What has been saved of them, is

entirely in the hands of their enemies—in the convents of the monks, or

in the libraries of the Kings of Europe. And yet these countries have

not been conquered. It is not the foreigner who has despoiled them of

their wealth, wasted their population, destroyed their laws, their

morals, and their national spirit. The poison was within them—it

developed itself, and has annihilated all things.

‘Who knows if, some centuries hence, this same Europe, where the reign

of literature and sciences is now transported—which shines with such

lustre—which judges so well of times past—which compares so well the

successive influence of antient literature and morals, may not be

deserted, and wild as the hills of Mauritania, the sands of Egypt, and

the vallies of Anatolia? Who knows whether, in a country entirely new,

perhaps in the high lands where the Oronoko and the Amazon collect their

streams, perhaps in the now impenetrable enclosure of the mountains of

New Holland, there may not be formed nations with other morals, other

languages, other thoughts, other religions,—nations who shall again

renew the human kind, who shall study like ourselves the times past, and

who, seeing with surprise that we have been, and have known what they

shall know—that we have believed like them in durability and glory,

shall pity our impotent efforts, and shall recal the names of Newton, of

Racine, of Tasso, as examples of the vain struggles of man to attain an

immortality of renown which fate denies him?’

The more immediate causes which gave birth to the poetry of the

Provençals, and by consequence to all our modern literature, are

afterwards detailed in the following passage, which is interesting both

in point of fact, and as matter of speculation.

‘In Italy, at the time of the renovation of its language, each province,

each small district, had a particular dialect. This great number of

different _patois_, was owing to two causes; the great number of

barbarous tribes with whom the Romans had successively been confounded

by the frequent invasions of their country, and the great number of

independent sovereignties which had been kept up there. Neither of those

causes operated on the Gauls in the formation of the Romanesque. Three

hordes established themselves there nearly at the same time,—the

Visigoths, the Burgundians, and the Franks; and after the conquest of

these last, no northern barbarians could again form a fixed

establishment there, except the Normans, in a single province; no

mixture of Germans, much less of the Sclavonians and Scythians, came

again to produce a change in language and morals. The Gauls had then

been employed in consolidating themselves into one nation, with one

language, for four ages: during which Italy had been successively the

prey of the Lombards, the Francs, the Hungarians, the Saracens, and the

Germans. The birth of the Romanesque in Gaul, came thus to precede that

of the Italian language. It was divided into two principal dialects:—the

Provençal Romanesque, spoken in all the provinces to the south of the

Loire, which had been originally conquered by the Visigoths and the

Burgundians; and the Walloon Romanesque, in the provinces to the north

of the Loire, where the Franks had the ascendant. The political

divisions remained conformable to this first division of nations and

languages. In spite of the independence of the great feudatories,

northern France always formed one political body; the inhabitants of the

different provinces met in the same national assemblies, and in the same

armies. Southern France, on its side, after having been the inheritance

of some of the successors of Charlemagne, had been raised, in 879, to

the rank of an independent kingdom, by Bozon, who was crowned at Nantes,

under the title of King of Arles or of Provence; and who subjected to

his domination Provence, Dauphiny, Savoy, the Lyonese, and some counties

of Burgundy. The title of kingdom gave place, in 943, to that of

earldom, under Bozon II., without the dismemberment of Provence, or its

separation from the House of Burgundy, of which Bozon I. had been the

founder. This house was extinguished in 1092, in the person of

Gillibert, who left two daughters only, between whom he divided his

states. One, Faydide, married Alphonso, Count of Toulouse; and the

other, Douce, married Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona. The union of

Provence during two hundred and thirty years, under a line of princes

who played no very brilliant part beyond their own territory, and who

are almost forgotten by history, but who suffered no invasion; who, by a

paternal administration, augmented the riches, and extended the

population of the state, and favoured commerce, to which their maritime

situation invited them, sufficed to consolidate the laws, the manners,

and the language of the Provençals. It was at this epoch, but in a deep

obscurity, that in the kingdom of Arles, the Provençal Romanesque took

completely the place of the Latin. The latter was still made use of in

the public acts; but the former, which was spoken universally, began

also to be made use of in literature.

‘The succession of the Count of Barcelona, Raymond Berenger, to the

sovereignty of Provence, gave a new turn to the national spirit, by the

mixture of the Catalonians with the Provençals. Of the three Romanesque

languages, which the Christian inhabitants of Spain then spoke, the

Catalonian, the Castillian, and the Gallician, or Portuguese, the first

was almost absolutely like the Provençal; and though it has since been

much removed from it, especially in the kingdom of Valencia, it has

always been called after the name of a French province. The people of

the country call it _Llemosin_ or Limousin. The Catalans, therefore,

could make themselves well understood by the Provençals; and their

intercourse at the same court served to polish the one language by means

of the other. The first of these nations had already been much advanced,

either by their wars and their intercourse with the Moors of Spain, or

by the great activity of the commerce of Barcelona. This city enjoyed

the most ample privileges: the citizens felt their freedom, and made

their princes respect it,—at the same time that the wealth which they

had acquired rendered the taxes more productive, and permitted the court

of the Counts to display a magnificence unknown to other sovereigns.

Raymond Berenger, and his successor, brought into Provence at once the

spirit of liberty and chivalry, the taste of elegance and the arts, and

the sciences of the Arabs. From this union of noble sentiments, arose

the poetry which shone at the same time in Provence, and all the south

of Europe, as if an electric spark had, in the midst of the thickest

darkness, kindled at once in all quarters its brilliant radiance.

‘Chivalry arose with the Provençal poetry; it was in some sort the soul

of every modern literature: and this character, so different from all

that antiquity had known,—that invention, so rich in poetical effects,

is the first subject for observation, which modern literary history

presents us. We must not, however, confound _feudalism_ with _chivalry_.

Feudalism is the real world at this epoch—with its advantages and

disadvantages, its virtues and its vices; chivalry is this world

idealized, such as it has existed only in the invention of the

romancers: its essential character is a devotion to woman, and an

inviolable regard to honour; but the ideas which the poets manifested

then, as to what constituted the perfection of a knight or a lady, were

not entirely of their invention. They existed in the people, without

perhaps being followed by them; and when they had acquired more

consistence in their heroic songs, they reacted in their turn upon the

people, among whom they originated, and thus approximated the real

feudal system to the ideal notions of chivalry.

‘Without doubt, there can be few finer things than the bold and active

kind of life which characterized the feudal times; than the independent

existence of each nobleman in his castle; than the persuasion which he

felt, that God alone was his judge and master; than that confidence in

his own power which made him brave all opposition, and offer an

inviolable asylum to the weak and unfortunate,—which made him share with

his friends the only possessions which they valued, arms and horses,—and

rely on himself alone for his liberty, his honour, and his life. But, at

the same time, the vices of the human character had acquired a

development proportioned to the vigour of men’s minds. Among the

nobility, whom alone the laws seemed to protect, absolute power had

produced its habitual effect,—an intoxication approaching to madness,

and a ferocity of which later times afford no example. The tyranny of a

baron, it is true, extended only a few leagues round his chateau, or the

town which belonged to him: If any one could pass this boundary, he was

safe; but, within these limits, in which he kept his vassals like herds

of deer in a park, he gave himself up, in the plenitude of his power, to

the wildest caprices; and subjected those who displeased him to the most

frightful punishments. His vassals, who trembled before him, were

degraded below the human species; and, in the whole of this class, there

is hardly an instance of any individual displaying, in the course of

ages, a single trait of greatness or virtue. Frankness and good faith,

which are essentially the virtues of chivalry, are indeed, in general,

the consequence of strength and courage; but, in order to render an

adherence to them general, it is indispensable that punishment or shame

should be attached to their violation. But the seignoral lords were

placed in their chateaus above all fear; and opinion had no force in

restraining men who did not feel the relations of social life.

Accordingly, the history of the middle ages furnishes a greater number

of scandalous perfidies than any other period. Lastly, the passion of

love had, it is true, taken a new character, which was much the same in

reality and in the poetry of the time. It was not more passionate or

more tender than among the Greeks and Romans, but it was more

respectful; something mysterious was joined to the sentiment. Some

traces of that religious respect were preserved towards women, which the

Germans felt towards their prophetesses. They were considered as a sort

of angelic beings, rather than as dependants, submitted to the will of

their masters: It was a point of honour to serve and to defend them, as

if they were the organs of the divinity on earth; and at the same time

there was joined to this deference, a warmth of sentiment, a turbulence

of passions and desires, which the Germans had known little of, but

which is characteristic of the people of the South, and of which they

borrowed the expression from the Arabians. In our ideas of chivalry,

love always retains this religious purity of character; but in the

actual feudal system, the disorder was extreme; and the corruption of

manners has left behind it traces more scandalous than in any other

period of society. Neither the _sirventes_ nor the _canzos_ of the

troubadours, nor the fables of the trouveres, nor the romances of

chivalry, can be read without blushing: the gross licentiousness of the

language is equalled only by the profound corruption of the characters,

and the profligacy of the moral. In the South of France, in particular,

peace, riches, and the example of courts, had introduced among the

nobility an extreme dissipation: they might be said to live only for

gallantry. The ladies, who did not appear in the world till after they

were married, prided themselves in the homage which their lovers paid to

their charms: they delighted in being celebrated by their _troubadour_:

they answered in their turn, and expressed their sentiments in the most

tender and passionate verses. They even instituted Courts of Love, where

questions of gallantry were gravely debated, and decided by their

suffrages. In short, they had given to the whole of the South of France

the movement of a carnival, which contrasts singularly with the ideas of

restraint, of virtue, and of modesty, which we connect with the good old

times. The more we study history, the more we shall be convinced that

chivalry is an almost purely poetical invention. We never can arrive by

any authentic documents at the scene where it flourished: it is always

represented at a distance, both in time and place. And while

contemporary historians give us a distinct, detailed, complete idea of

the vices of courts and of the great, of the ferocity or licentiousness

of the nobles, and the degradation of the people; one is astonished to

see, after a lapse of time, the same ages animated by the poets with

fictitious and splendid accounts of virtue, beauty, and loyalty. The

romancers of the twelfth century placed the age of chivalry in the reign

of Charlemagne; Francis I. placed it in their time: We at present

believe we see it flourishing in the persons of Du Guesclin and of

Bayard, at the courts of Charles V. and Francis the I. But when we come

to examine any of these periods, though we find some heroic characters

in all of them, we are soon forced to confess that it is necessary to

remove the age of chivalry three or four centuries before any kind of

reality.’ p. 91.

This, we cannot help thinking, is a little hard on the _good old times_:

though the specimens of their poetry, which are subjoined, go far to

justify this severity. They certainly indicate neither refinement of

sentiment, nor elevation of fancy. They are merely war or love-songs,

relating to the personal feelings or situation of the individual who

composed them. The Provençal poetry, indeed, is in a great measure

lyrical; at least it is certain, that it is neither epic nor dramatic.

The _tensons_ were, indeed, a sort of eclogues, or disputes in verse, in

which two or three persons maintained their favourite opinions on any

given subject; and they appear to have been for the most part

extemporaneous effusions. The following example will give some idea of

the state of manners and literature at this period.

‘Several ladies who assisted at the Courts of Love, as they were called,

used to reply themselves to the verses which their beauty inspired.

There is left but a small portion of their compositions, but they have

almost always the advantage over the troubadours. Poetry did not then

aspire either to creative power, or to sublimity of thought, or to

variety of imagery. Those powerful efforts of genius, which have given

birth at a later period to dramatic and epic poetry, were then unknown;

and in the simple expression of feeling, an inspiration, more tender and

more delicate, would give to the poetry of women a more natural

expression. One of the most pleasing of these compositions is by Clara

d’Anduse: it is left unfinished: but, as far as a prose translation can

convey the impression, which depends so much on the harmony of the

metre, it is as follows.

‘“In what cruel trouble, in what profound sadness, jealous calumniators

have plunged my heart! With what malice these perfidious destroyers of

all pleasure have persecuted me! They have forced you to banish yourself

from me, you whom I love more than life! They have robbed me of the

happiness of seeing you, and of seeing you without ceasing! Ah, I shall

die of grief and rage!

‘“But let calumny arm itself against me: the love with which you inspire

me braves all its shafts: they will never be able to reach my heart:

nothing can increase its tenderness, or give new force to the desires

with which it is inflamed. There is no one, though it were my enemy, who

would not become dear to me, by speaking well of you: but my best friend

would cease to be so, from the moment he dared to reproach you.

‘“No, my sweet friend, no: do not believe that I have a heart

treacherous to you: do not fear that I should ever abandon you for

another, though I should be solicited by all the ladies of the land.

Love, who holds me in his chains, has said, that my heart should be

devoted to you alone; and I swear that it shall always be so. Ah, if I

was as much mistress of my hand, he who now possesses, should never have

obtained it.

‘“Beloved! such is the grief which I feel at being separated from you,

such my despair, that when I wish to sing, I only sigh and weep. I

cannot finish this couplet. Alas! my songs cannot obtain for my heart

what it desires.”’

The poets of this period were almost all of them chevaliers; and it is

in their war-songs, that, according to M. Sismondi, we find most of the

enthusiasm of poetry. Guillaume de St. Gregory, thus chants his love for

war, and seems to be inspired by the very sight of the field of battle.

‘How I love the gay season of the approach of spring, which covers our

fields with leaves and flowers! How I love the sweet warbling of the

birds, which make the woods resound with their songs! But how much more

delightful still it is to see the tents and pavillions pitched in the

meadows! How I feel my courage swell, when I see the armed chevaliers on

their horses, marching in long array!

‘I love to see the cavaliers put to flight,—the common people, who

strive to carry away their most precious effects: I love to see the

thick battalions of soldiers, who advance in pursuit of the fugitives;

and my joy redoubles when I observe the siege laid to the strongest

castles, and hear their battered walls fall with a dreadful crash!’...

‘Yes, I repeat it again, the pleasures of the table, or of love, are not

to be compared, in my mind, with those of the furious fight ... when I

hear the horses neighing on the green meadows, and the cry repeated on

all sides, “To arms, to arms!” when the great and the vulgar load the

earth with their bodies, or roll, dying, into the ditches; and when

large wounds from the blows of the lance mark the victims of honour.’

This poetic rhapsody of the eleventh or twelfth century is not

altogether unworthy of the spirit of the nineteenth; so we shall not

stop to moralize upon it. One of the most heroic and magnanimous

personages of the same period was Bertrand de Born, Vicompte Hautefort.

He was a great maker of war and verses. ‘The most violent,’ says M.

Sismondi, ‘the most impetuous of the French chevaliers, breathing

nothing but war; exciting, inflaming the passions of his neighbours and

his superiors, in order to engage them in hostilities, he troubled the

provinces of Guienne by his arms and his intrigues, during all the

second half of the twelfth century; and the reigns of the Kings of

England, Henry II. and Richard Cœur de Lion. He first stripped his

brother Constantine of his personal inheritance, and made war upon

Richard who protected him. He then attached himself to Henry, the

brother of Richard Cœur de Lion, and afterwards made war upon him, after

having engaged him in a conspiracy against his father. For this last

offence he is put by Dante into his hell. In all his enterprizes, he

encouraged himself by composing _sirventes_, that is, songs in which he

sounded the war-whoop, in the manner of some writers nearer our own

times. Let the reader judge for himself.

‘“What signify to me happy or miserable days? What are weeks or years to

me? At all times my only wish is, to destroy whoever dares to offend me!

Let others, if they please, embellish their houses; let them idly

procure the conveniences of life: but, for myself, to collect lances,

helmets, swords and implements of destruction, shall be the only object

of my life! I am fatigued with advice, and swear never to attend to

it!”’

The historical notice of Richard Cœur de Lion gives a striking and more

favourable picture of the manners of the time. Every one is acquainted

with the story of his deliverance from prison by the fidelity of his

servant Blondel, and of his rescue from the Saracens by the gallant

device of Guillaume de Preaux, who attracted the fury of the assailants

to his own person, by crying out, ‘Spare me; for I am the King of

England!’ M. Sismondi gives the following as the words of the celebrated

song (a little modernized) composed by Richard during the captivity to

which he was treacherously subjected by Leopold of Austria, after his

return from the Holy Land.

Si prisonnier ne dit point sa raison

Sans un grand trouble, et douloureux soupçon,

Pour son consort qu’il fasse une chanson

J’ai prou d’amis, mais bien pauvre est leur don;

Honte ils auront, si faute de rançon,

Je suis deux hivers pris.

Qu’ils sachent bien, mes hommes, mes barons,

Anglais, Normands, Poitevins et Gascons,

Que je n’ai point si pauvres compagnons

Que pour argent n’ouvrisse leurs prisons.

Point ne les veux taxer de trahison,

Mais suis deux hivers pris.

Pour un captif plus d’ami, de parent!

Plus que ses jours ils epargnent l’argent;

Las! que je sens me douloir ce tourment!

Et si je meurs dans mon confinement,

Qui sauvera le renom de ma gent,

Car suis deux hivers pris?

Point au chagrin ne vaudrais succomber!

Le roi françois peut mes terres brûler,

Fausser la paix qu’il jura de garder;

Pourtant mon cœur je sens se rassurer,

Si je l’en crois, mes fers vont se briser,

Mais suis deux hivers pris.

Fiers ennemis, dont le cœur est si vain,

Pour guerrayer, attendez donc la fin

De mes ennemis; me trouverez enfin,

Dites-le leur, Chail et Pensavin,

Chers troubadours, qui me plaignez en vain

Car suis deux hivers pris.

Among the most distinguished troubadours, we find the names of Arnaud de

Marveil, and of Arnaud Daniel, celebrated by Petrarch and Dante, Rambaud

de Vaqueiras, and Pierre Vidal, both warriors and poets, and Pierre

Cardinal, the satirist of Provence. The Provençal literature does not

however appear to have produced any one great genius or lasting work.

Their poetry, indeed, did not aim at immortality; but appears to have

been considered chiefly as an ornamental appendage of courts, as the

indolent amusement of great lords and ladies. It consists, therefore,

entirely of occasional and fugitive pieces. The ambition of the poet

seems never to have reached higher than to express certain habitual

sentiments, or record passing events in agreeable verse, so as to

gratify himself or his immediate employers; and his genius never appears

to have received that high and powerful impulse, which makes the

unrestrained development of its own powers its ruling passion, and which

looks to future ages for its reward.

The Provençal poetry belongs, in its essence as well as form, to the

same class as the Eastern or Asiatic; that is, it has the same

constitutional warmth and natural gaiety, but without the same degree of

magnificence and force. During its most flourishing period, it made no

perceptible progress; and it has left few traces of its influence

behind. The civil wars of the Albigeois, the crusades which made the

Italian known to all the rest of Europe, and the establishment of the

court of Charles of Anjou, the new sovereign of Provence, at Naples,

were fatal to the cultivation of a literature which owed its

encouragement to political and local circumstances, and to the favour of

the great. M. Sismondi compares the effects of the Provençal poetry to

the northern lights, which illumine the darkness of the sky, and spread

their colours almost from pole to pole; but suddenly vanish, and leave

neither light nor heat behind them. After the literature of the

troubadours had disappeared from the country which gave it birth, it

lingered for a while in the kingdoms of Arragon and Catalonia, where it

was cultivated with success by Don Henri of Arragon, Marquis of Villera;

by Ausias, who has been called the Petrarch; and by Jean Martorell, the

Boccacio of the Provençal tongue, and the well-known author of the

history of Tirante the White, which is preserved by Cervantes with such

marks of respect, when Don Quixote’s library is condemned to the flames.

Our author next enters at great length, and with much acuteness, into

the literature of the North of France, or the _Roman Wallon_, which

succeeded the Provençal. The great glory of the writers of this

language, was the invention of the romances of chivalry. M. Sismondi

divides these romances into three classes or periods, and supposes them

all to be of Norman origin, in contradiction to the very general theory

which traces them to the Arabs or Moors. The first class relates to the

exploits of King Arthur, the son of Pendragon, and the last British king

who defended England against the Anglo-Saxons. It is at the court of

this king, and of his wife Geneura, that we meet with the enchanter

Merlin, and the institution of the Round Table, and all the Preux

chevaliers, Tristram de Leonois, Launcelot of the Lake, and many others.

The romance of Launcelot of the Lake was begun by Chretien de Troyes,

and continued, after his death, by Godfrey de Ligny: that of Tristram,

the son of King Meliadus of Leonois, the first that was written in

prose, and which is the most frequently cited by the old authors, was

composed in 1190 by one of the _trouveres_ or Northern troubadours,

whose name is unknown. The second class of chivalrous romances, is that

which commences with Amadis of Gaul, the hero of lovers, of which the

events are more fabulous, and the origin more uncertain. There are

numerous imitations of this work, Amadis of Greece, Florismarte of

Hircania, Galaor, Florestan, Esplandian, which are considered as of

Spanish origin, and which were in their greatest vogue at the time of

the appearance of Don Quixote. The third class considered by our author,

as undoubtedly of French origin, relates to the court of Charlemagne and

his peers. The most antient monument of the marvellous history of

Charlemagne, is the chronicle of Turpin, or Tilpin, Archbishop of

Rheims. Both the name of the author and the date are, however, doubtful.

It relates to the last expedition of Charlemagne into Spain, to which he

had been miraculously invited by St. Jacques of Galicia, and to the wars

of the Christians against the Moors. M. Sismondi is inclined to refer

this composition to the period when Alphonso VI. king of Castile and

Leon, achieved, in the year 1085, the conquest of New Castile and

Toledo.

‘He was followed,’ it is said, ‘in this triumphant expedition, by a

great number of French chevaliers, who passed the Pyrenees to combat the

infidels by the side of a great king, and to see the Cid, the hero of

his age. The war against the Moors in Spain was then undertaken from a

spirit of religious zeal, very different from that which, twelve years

later, kindled the first crusade. Its object professedly was, to carry

succour to neighbours, to brothers who adored the same God, and who

revenged common injuries, of which the romancer seemed to wish to recal

the remembrance: whereas the end of the first crusade was to deliver the

Holy Sepulchre, to recover the inheritance of our Lord, and to bring

assistance to God rather than man, as one of the troubadours expressed

it. This zeal for the Holy Sepulchre, this devotion pointing towards the

East, appears nowhere in the Chronicle of Archbishop Turpin; which,

nevertheless, is animated by a burning fanaticism, and full of all sorts

of miracles. This chronicle, however fabulous, cannot itself be

considered as a romance. It consists alternately of incredible feats of

arms, and of miracles, of monkish superstition and monkish credulity. We

find there several instances of enchantment: the formidable sword of

Roland, Durandal, with every stroke opens a wound: Ferragus is all over

enchanted and invulnerable: the dreadful horn of Roland, which he sounds

at Roncesvalles to call for succour, is heard as far as St. Jean Pied de

Port, where Charlemagne was with his army; but the traitor Ganeton

prevents the monarch from giving assistance to his nephew. Roland,

losing all hope, is himself desirous to break his sword, that it may not

fall into the hands of the infidels, and thus hereafter bathe itself in

the blood of Christians: he strikes it against tall trees, against

rocks—but nothing can resist the enchanted blade, guided by an arm so

powerful; the oaks are overturned, the rocks are shattered in pieces,

and Durandal remains entire. Roland at last thrusts it up to the hilt in

a hard rock, and twisting it with violence, breaks it between his hands.

Then he again sounds his horn, not to demand succour from the

Christians, but to announce to them his last hour; and he blows it with

such violence, that his veins burst, and he dies covered with his own

blood. All this is sufficiently poetical, and indicates a brilliant

imagination; but in order to its being a romance of chivalry, it was

necessary that love and women should be introduced—and there is no

allusion made to one or the other.’ p. 289.

This, we think, is rather an arbitrary decision of our author, and

certainly does not prove that the work is not a romance of any kind. He

concludes this chapter in the following manner.

‘But all these extraordinary facts, which in the Chronicle of Turpin

passed for history, were consigned soon after to the regions of romance,

when the crusades were finished, and had made us acquainted with the

East, at the end of the thirteenth century, and during the reign of

Philip the Hardy. The king at arms of this monarch, Adenez, wrote in

verse the romance of _Berthe-au-grandpied_; the mother of Charlemagne,

that of Ogier the Dane, and Cleomadis. Huon de Villeneuve wrote the

history of Renaud de Montauban. The four sons of Aymon, Huon de

Bourdeaux, Doolin de Mayence, Morgante the giant, Maugis the christian

magician, and several other heroes of this illustrious court, were

celebrated then or afterwards by romancers, who have placed in broad day

all the characters, and all the events of this period of glory, of which

the divine poem of Ariosto has consecrated the mythology.—The creation

of this brilliant romantic chivalry, was completed at the end of the

thirteenth century; all that essentially characterizes it, is to be

found in the romances of Adenez. His chevaliers no longer wandered, like

those of the Round Table, through gloomy forests in a country half

civilized, and which seemed always covered with storms and snow: the

entire universe was expanded before their eyes, The Holy Land was the

grand object of their pilgrimage: but by it they entered into

communication with the fine and rich countries of the East. Their

geography was as confused as all their other knowledge. Their voyages

from Spain to Cathay, from Denmark to Tunis, were made, it is true, with

a facility, a rapidity more astonishing than the enchantments of Maugis

or Morgana: but these fanciful voyages afforded the romance writers the

means of embellishing their recitals with the most brilliant colours.

All the softness and the perfumes of the countries, the most favoured by

nature, were at their disposal: All the pomp and magnificence of

Damascus, of Bagdad, and Constantinople, might be made use of to adorn

the triumph of their heroes; and an acquisition more precious still, was

the imagination itself of the people of the East and South; that

imagination, so brilliant, so various, which was employed to give life

to the sombre mythology of the North. The fairies were no longer hideous

sorceresses, the objects of the fear and hatred of the people, but the

rivals or the friends of those enchanters, who disposed in the east of

Solomon’s ring, and of the genii who were attached to it. To the art of

prolonging life, they had joined that of augmenting its enjoyments: they

were in some sort the priestesses of nature and of its pleasures. At

their voice, magnificent palaces arose in the deserts; enchanted

gardens, groves, perfumed with orange-trees and myrtles, appeared in the

midst of burning sands, or on barren rocks in the middle of the sea.

Gold, diamonds, pearls, covered their garments, or the inside of their

palaces: and their love, far from being reputed sacrilegious, was often

the sweetest recompense of the toils of the warrior. It was thus that

Ogier the Dane, the valiant paladin of Charlemagne, was received by the

fairy Morgana in her castle of Avalon. She placed on his head the fatal

crown of gold, covered with precious stones, and leaves of laurel,

myrtle, and roses, to which was attached the gift of immortal youth,

and, at the same time, the oblivion of every other sentiment than the

love of Morgana. From this moment the hero no longer remembered the

court of Charlemagne; nor the glory which he had acquired in France; nor

the crowns of Denmark, of England, Acre, Babylon, and Jerusalem, which

he had worn in succession; nor all the battles he had fought, nor the

number of giants he had vanquished. He passed two hundred years with

Morgana in the intoxication of love, without being sensible of the

flight of time; and when, by chance, his crown fell off into a fountain,

and his memory was restored, he thought Charlemagne still living, and

demanded with impatience, tidings of the brave paladins, his companions

in arms. In reading this elegant fiction, we easily discover, that it

was written after the Crusades had opened a communication between the

people of the East and those of the West, and had enriched the French

with all the treasures of the Arabian imagination!’

M. Sismondi also justly ascribes the invention of the Mysteries, the

first modern efforts of the dramatic art, to the French; but the

inference which he draws from it, that this was owing to the great

dramatic genius of that people, must excite a smile in many of his

readers. For, certainly, if there ever was a nation utterly and

universally incapable of forming a conception of any other manners or

characters than those which exist among themselves, it is the French.

The learned author is right, however, in saying that the Mystery of the

Passions, and the moralities performed by the French company of players,

laid the foundation of the drama in various parts of Europe, and also

suggested the first probable hint of the plan of the _Divine Comedy_ of

Dante; but it is not right to say that the merit of this last work

consists at all in the design. The design is clumsy, mechanical, and

monotonous; the invention is in the style.

We have hitherto followed M. Sismondi in his account of the progress of

modern literature, before the Italian language had been made the vehicle

of poetical composition, and before the revival of letters. The details

which he gives on the last subject, and the extraordinary picture he

presents of the pains and labour undergone by the scholars of that day

in recovering antient manuscripts, and the remains of antient art, are

highly interesting. It is from this important event, and also from the

work of Dante, the first lasting monument of modern genius, that we

should strictly date the origin of modern literature; and, indeed, it

would not be difficult to show, that it is still the emulation of the

antients, working, indeed, on very different materials, from different

principles, and with very different results, that has been the great

moving spring of the grandest efforts of human genius in our own times.

Our author next follows the progress of the Italian language,

particularly at the court of the Sicilian Monarchs, to the period of

which we are speaking. He thus introduces his account of the first great

name in modern literature.

‘Nevertheless, no poet had as yet powerfully affected the mind, no

philosopher had penetrated the depths of thought and sentiment, when the

greatest of the Italians, the father of their poetry, Dante, appeared,

and showed to the world how a powerful genius is able to arrange the

gross materials prepared for him, in such a manner as to rear from them

an edifice, magnificent as the universe, of which it was the image.

Instead of love songs, addressed to an imaginary mistress,—instead of

madrigals, full of cold conceits,—of sonnets painfully harmonious,—or

allegories false and forced, the only models which Dante had before his

eyes in any modern tongue, he conceived in his mind an image of the

whole invisible world, and unveiled it to the eyes of his astonished

readers. In the country, indeed, of Dante, that is, at Florence, on the

1st of May, 1304,’ (our author says), ‘all the sufferings of hell were

placed before the eyes of the people, at a horrible representation

appointed for a festival day; the first idea of which was no doubt taken

from the Inferno. The bed of the river Arno was to represent the gulf of

hell; and all the variety of torments which the imagination of monks or

of the poet had invented, streams of boiling pitch, flames, ice,

serpents, were inflicted on real persons, whose cries and groans

rendered the illusion complete to the spectators.

‘The subject, then, which Dante chose for his immortal poem, when he

undertook to celebrate the invisible world, and the three kingdoms of

the dead, hell, purgatory, and paradise, was in that age the most

popular of all; at once the most profoundly religious, and the most

closely allied to the love of country, of glory, and of party-feelings,

inasmuch as all the illustrious dead were to appear on this

extraordinary theatre; and in short, by its immensity, the most loftily

sublime of any which the mind of man has ever conceived. The

commentaries on Dante, left us by Boccace and others, furnish a new

proof of the superiority of this great man. We are there astonished to

find his professed admirers unable to appreciate his real grandeur.

Dante himself, as well as his commentators, attaches his excellence to

purity and correctness: yet he is neither pure nor correct; but he is _a

creator_. His characters walk and breathe; his pictures are nature

itself; his language always speaks to the imagination, as well as to the

understanding; and there is scarcely a stanza in his poem, which might

not be represented with the pencil.’

M. Sismondi seems to have understood the great poet of Italy little

better than his other commentators; and indeed the _Divine Comedy_ must

completely baffle the common rules of French criticism, which always

seeks for excellence in the external image, and never in the internal

power and feeling. But Dante is nothing but power, passion, self-will.

In all that relates to the imitative part of poetry, he bears no

comparison with many other poets; but there is a gloomy abstraction in

his conceptions, which lies like a dead-weight upon the mind; a

benumbing stupor from the intensity of the impression; a terrible

obscurity like that which oppresses us in dreams; an identity of

interest which moulds every object to its own purposes, and clothes all

things with the passions and imaginations of the human soul, that make

amends for all other deficiencies. Dante is a striking instance of the

essential excellences and defects of modern genius. The immediate

objects he presents to the mind, are not much in themselves;—they

generally want grandeur, beauty, and order; but they become every thing

by the force of the character which he impresses on them. His mind lends

its own power to the objects which it contemplates, instead of borrowing

it from them. He takes advantage even of the nakedness and dreary

vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples the shades of death, and

broods over the barren vastnesses of illimitable space. In point of

diction and style, he is the severest of all writers, the most opposite

to the flowery and glittering—who relies most on his own power, and the

sense of power in the reader—who leaves most to the imagination.[2]

Dante’s only object is to interest; and he interests only by exciting

our sympathy with the emotion by which he is himself possessed. He does

not place before us the objects by which that emotion has been excited;

but he seizes on the attention, by showing us the effect they produce on

his feelings; and his poetry accordingly frequently gives us the

thrilling and overwhelming sensation which is caught by gazing on the

face of a person who has seen some object of horror. The improbability

of the events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are

excessive; but the interest never flags, from the intense earnestness of

the author’s mind. Dante, as well as Milton, appears to have been

indebted to the writers of the old Testament for the gloomy tone of his

mind, for the prophetic fury which exalts and kindles his poetry. But

there is more deep-working passion in Dante, and more imagination in

Milton. Milton, more perhaps than any other poet, elevated his subject,

by combining image with image in lofty gradation. Dante’s great power is

in combining internal feelings with familiar objects. Thus the gate of

Hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be

endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning,

not without a sense of mortal woes. The beauty to be found in Dante is

of the same severe character, or mixed with deep sentiment. The story of

Geneura, to which we have just alluded, is of this class. So is the

affecting apostrophe, addressed to Dante by one of his countrymen, whom

he meets in the other world.

‘Sweet is the dialect of Arno’s vale!

Though half consumed, I gladly turn to hear.’

And another example, even still finer, if any thing could be finer, is

his description of the poets and great men of antiquity, whom he

represents ‘serene and smiling,’ though in the shades of death,

——‘because on earth their names

In fame’s eternal records shine for aye.’

This is the finest idea ever given of the love of fame.

Dante habitually unites the absolutely local and individual with the

greatest wildness and mysticism. In the midst of the obscure and shadowy

regions of the lower world, a tomb suddenly rises up, with this

inscription, ‘I am the tomb of Pope Anastasius the Sixth’:—and half the

personages whom he has crowded into the Inferno are his own

acquaintance. All this tends to heighten the effect by the bold

intermixture of realities, and the appeal, as it were, to the individual

knowledge and experience of the reader. There are occasional striking

images in Dante—but these are exceptions; and besides, they are striking

only from the weight of consequences attached to them. The imagination

of the poet retains and associates the objects of nature, not according

to their external forms, but their inward qualities or powers; as when

Satan is compared to a cormorant. It is not true, then, that Dante’s

excellence consists in natural description or dramatic invention. His

characters are indeed ‘instinct with life’ and sentiment; but it is with

the life and sentiment of the poet. In themselves they have little or no

dramatic variety, except what arises immediately from the historical

facts mentioned; and they afford, in our opinion, very few subjects for

picture. There is indeed one gigantic one, that of Count Ugolino, of

which Michael Angelo made a bas-relief, and which Sir Joshua Reynolds

ought not to have painted. Michael Angelo was naturally an admirer of

Dante, and has left a sonnet to his memory.

The Purgatory and Paradise are justly characterised by our author as ‘a

falling off’ from the Inferno. He however points out a number of

beautiful passages in both these divisions of the poem. That in which

the poet describes his ascent into heaven, completely marks the

character of his mind. He employs no machinery, or supernatural agency,

for this purpose; but mounts aloft ‘by the sole strength of his

desires—fixing an intense regard on the orbit of the sun’! This great

poet was born at Florence in 1265, of the noble family of the

Alighieri—and died at Ravenna, September 14th, 1321. Like Milton, he was

unfortunate in his political connexions, and, what is worse, in those of

his private life. He had a few imitators after his death, but none of

any eminence.

M. Sismondi professes to have a prejudice against Petrarch. In this he

is not, as he supposes, singular; but we suspect that he is wrong. He

seems to have reasoned on a very common, but very false hypothesis, that

because there is a great deal of false wit and affectation in Petrarch’s

style, he is therefore without sentiment. The sentiment certainly does

not consist in the conceits;—but is it not there in spite of them? The

fanciful allusions, and the quaintnesses of style lie on the surface;

and it is sometimes found convenient to make these an excuse for not

seeking after that which lies deeper and is of more value.[3] It has

been well observed, by a contemporary critic, that notwithstanding the

adventitious ornaments with which their style is encumbered, there is

more truth and feeling in Cowley and Sir Philip Sidney, than in a host

of insipid and merely natural writers. It is not improbable, that if

Shakespeare had written nothing but his sonnets and smaller poems, he

would, for the same reason, have been assigned to the class of cold,

artificial writers, who had no genuine sense of nature or passion. Yet,

taking his plays for a guide to our decision, it requires no very great

sagacity or boldness to discover that his other poems contain a rich

vein of thought and sentiment. We apprehend it is the same with

Petrarch. The sentiments themselves are often of the most pure and

natural kind, even where the expression is the most laboured and

far-fetched. Nor does it follow, that this artificial and scholastic

style was the result of affectation in the author. All pedantry is not

affectation. Inveterate habit is not affectation. The technical jargon

of professional men is not affectation in them: for it is the language

with which their ideas have the strongest associations. Milton’s

Classical Pedantry was perfectly involuntary: it was the style in which

he was accustomed to think and feel; and it would have required an

effort to have expressed himself otherwise. The scholastic style is not

indeed the natural style of the passion or sentiment of love; but it is

quite false to argue, that an author did not feel this passion because

he expressed himself in the usual language in which this and all other

passions were expressed, in the particular age and country in which he

lived. On the contrary, the more true and profound the feeling itself

was, the more it might be supposed to be identified with his other

habits and pursuits—to tinge all his thoughts, and to put in requisition

every faculty of his soul—to give additional perversity to his wit,

subtlety to his understanding, and extravagance to his expressions. Like

all other strong passions, it seeks to express itself in exaggerations,

and its characteristic is less to be simple than emphatic. The language

of love was never more finely expressed than in the play of Romeo and

Juliet; and yet assuredly the force or beauty of that language does not

arise from its simplicity. It is the fine rapturous enthusiasm of

youthful sensibility, which tries all ways to express its emotions, and

finds none of them half tender or extravagant enough. The sonnet of

Petrarch lamenting the death of Laura,[4] which is quoted by M.

Sismondi, and of which he complains as having ‘too much wit,’ would be a

justification of these remarks; not to mention numberless others.

M. Sismondi wishes that the connexion between Petrarch and Laura had

been more intimate, and his passion accompanied with more interesting

circumstances. The whole is in better keeping as it is. The love of a

man like Petrarch would have been less in character, if it had been less

ideal. For the purposes of inspiration, a single interview was quite

sufficient. The smile which sank into his heart the first time he ever

beheld her, played round her lips ever after: the look with which her

eyes first met his, never passed away. The image of his mistress still

haunted his mind, and was recalled by every object in nature. Even death

could not dissolve the fine illusion: for that which exists in the

imagination is alone imperishable. As our feelings become more ideal,

the impression of the moment indeed becomes less violent; but the effect

is more general and permanent. The blow is felt only by reflection; it

is the rebound that is fatal. We are not here standing up for this kind

of Platonic attachment; but only endeavouring to explain the way in

which the passions very commonly operate in minds accustomed to draw

their strongest interests from constant contemplation.

Petrarch is at present chiefly remembered for his sonnets, and the

passion which they celebrate: he was equally distinguished in his

lifetime by his Latin poems, and as one of the great restorers of

learning. The following account of him is in many respects interesting.

‘Petrarch, the son of a Florentine who had been exiled as well as Dante,

was born at Arezzo, in the night of the 19th of July 1304, and died at

Arqua, near Padua, the 18th July 1374. He had been, during the century

of which his life occupied three-fourths, the centre of all the Italian

literature. Passionately fond of letters, history, and poetry, and an

enthusiastic admirer of antiquity, he communicated by his discourse, his

writings, and his example, to all his contemporaries, that impulse

towards research and the study of the Latin manuscripts, which so

particularly distinguished the fourteenth century; which preserved the

_chef-d’œuvres_ of the classic writers, at the moment when, perhaps,

they were about to be lost for ever; and which changed, by means of

these admirable models, the whole march of the human mind. Petrarch,

tormented by the passion which has contributed so much to his celebrity,

wishing to fly from himself, or to vary his thoughts by the distraction

of different objects, travelled during almost the whole course of his

life. He explored France, Germany, all the states of Italy: he visited

Spain: and, in a continual activity directed to the discovery of the

monuments of antiquity, he associated himself with all the learned, and

with all the poets and philosophers of his time. From one end of Europe

to the other, he made them concur in this great object; he directed

their pursuits; and his correspondence became the magic chain which for

the first time united the whole literary republic of Europe. The age in

which he lived was that of small states. No sovereign had as yet

established any of those colossal empires, the authority of which makes

itself dreaded by nations of different languages. On the contrary, each

country was divided into a great number of sovereignties; and the

monarch of a small city was without power at a distance of thirty

leagues, and unknown at the distance of a hundred. But the more

political power was circumscribed, the more the glory of letters was

extended: and Petrarch, the friend of Azzo of Correggio, prince of

Parma, of Luchin and of Galeazzi Visconti, princes of Milan, and of

Francis of Carrara, prince of Padua, was better known and more respected

by Europe at large than all these sovereigns. The universal glory which

his great knowledge had procured him, and which he directed to the

service of letters, also frequently called him into the political

career. No man of learning, or poet, has ever been charged with so great

a number of embassies to so many great potentates,—the emperor, the

Pope, the king of France, the senate of Venice, and all the princes of

Italy: and, what is remarkable, is, that Petrarch did not fulfil those

missions as belonging to the state with whose interests he was charged,

but as belonging to all Europe. He received his title from his glory;

and when he treated between different powers, it was almost as an

arbiter whose suffrage each was desirous to secure with posterity. In

fine, he gave to his age that enthusiasm for the beauties of antiquity,

that veneration for learning, which renovated its character, and

determined that of all succeeding times. It was in some sort in the name

of grateful Europe, that Petrarch was crowned in the Capitol by the

senator of Rome, the 8th of April 1341; and this triumph, the most

glorious which has ever been decreed to any one, was not disproportioned

to the influence which this great man has exerted over the ages which

succeeded him.’

Boccacio was also one of the most indefatigable and successful of the

restorers of ancient learning; and is classed by M. Sismondi as one of

the three inventors of modern letters,—having done for Italian prose

what Dante and Petrarch had done for Italian poetry. He was born at

Paris in 1313, the son of a Florentine merchant; and died at Certaldo,

in Tuscany, in the house of his forefathers, 21st December 1375, at the

age of sixty-two years. He wrote epic poems and theology: But his Tales

are his great work.

‘The Decameron,’ says our author, ‘the work to which, in the present

day, Boccacio owes his high celebrity, is a collection of a hundred

novels, which he has arranged in an ingenious manner, by supposing, that

in the dreadful plague in 1348, a society of men and women, who had

retired into the country to avoid the contagion, had imposed on

themselves an obligation, for ten days together, to recite each a novel

a day. The company consisted of ten persons; and the number of novels

is, of course, a hundred. The description of the delicious country round

Florence, where these joyous hermits took up their abode,—that of their

walks—their festivals—their repasts, has given Boccacio an opportunity

to display all the riches of a style the most flexible and graceful. The

novels themselves, which are varied with infinite art, both as to the

subject and manner, from the most touching and tender to the most

playful, and unfortunately also to the most licentious, demonstrate his

talent for recounting in every style and tone. His description of the

plague of Florence, which serves as the introduction, ranks as one of

the finest historical portraits which any age has left us. Finally, that

which constitutes the glory of Boccacio, is the perfect purity of the

language, the elegance, the grace, and above all, the _naïveté_ of the

style, which is the highest merit of this class of writing, and the

peculiar charm of the Italian language.’

All this is true; though it might be said of many other authors: But

what ought to have been said of him is, that there is in Boccacio’s

serious pieces a truth, a pathos, and an exquisite refinement of

sentiment, which is not to be met with in any other prose writer

whatever. We think M. Sismondi has missed a fine opportunity of doing

the author of the Decameron that justice which has not been done him by

the world. He has in general passed for a mere narrator of lascivious

tales or idle jests. This character probably originated in the early

popularity of his attacks on the monks, and has been kept up by the

grossness of mankind, who revenged their own want of refinement on

Boccacio, and only saw in his writings what suited the coarseness of

their own tastes. But the truth is, that he has carried sentiment of

every kind to its very highest purity and perfection. By sentiment we

would here understand the habitual workings of some one powerful

feeling, where the heart reposes almost entirely upon itself, without

the violent excitement of opposing duties or untoward circumstances. In

this way, nothing ever came up to the story of Frederigo Alberigi and

his falcon. The perseverance in attachment, the spirit of gallantry and

generosity displayed in it, has no parallel in the history of heroical

sacrifices. The feeling is so unconscious too, and involuntary, is

brought out in such small, unlooked-for, and unostentatious

circumstances, as to show it to have been woven into the very nature and

soul of the author. The story of Isabella is scarcely less fine, and is

more affecting in the circumstances and the catastrophe. Dryden has done

justice to the impassioned eloquence of the Tancred and Sigismunda; but

has not given an adequate idea of the wild preternatural interest of the

story of Honoria. Cimon and Iphigene is by no means one of the best,

notwithstanding the popularity of the subject. The proof of unalterable

affection given in the story of Jeronymo, and the simple touches of

nature and picturesque beauty in the story of the two holiday lovers,

who were poisoned by tasting of a leaf in the garden at Florence, are

perfect masterpieces. The epithet of Divine was well bestowed on this

great painter of the human heart. The invention implied in his different

tales is immense: but we are not to infer that it is all his own. He

probably availed himself of all the common traditions which were

floating in his time, and which he was the first to appropriate. Homer

appears the most original of all authors—probably for no other reason

than that we can trace the plagiarism no farther. Several of

Shakespeare’s plots are taken from Boccacio; and indeed he has furnished

subjects to numberless writers since his time, both dramatic and

narrative. The story of Griselda is borrowed from the Decameron by

Chaucer; as is the knight’s Tale (Palamon and Arcite) from his poem of

the Theseid.

M. Sismondi follows the progress of Italian literature with great

accuracy and judgment, from this period to that of their epic and

romantic writers. Pulci and Boyardo preceded Ariosto and Tasso. It has

been observed that there is a great resemblance between the style of

Pulci’s Morganti Maggiore and that of Voltaire. Thus, one of the

personages in his poem being questioned as to the articles of his faith,

says, that ‘he believes in a fat capon and a bottle of wine.’ His hero

Rolando arriving at the gate of a monastery, on which some giants

showered down fragments of rocks from the neighbouring mountain every

night and morning, is advised by the Abbot to make haste in, ‘for that

the manna is going to fall!’ This kind of levity of allusion, was

characteristic of the literature of the age. One of these giants, to

wit, Morganti, is converted by Orlando; but makes a very indifferent

Christian after all. This writer has a certain familiar sarcastic gaiety

in common with Ariosto, but none of his enthusiasm or elevation. The

Orlando Amoroso of Boyardo, who was governor of Reggio, and one of the

courtiers of Duke Hercules of Ferrara, was the foundation of Ariosto’s

poem.

‘This poem,’ says our author, ‘which is at present known only from the

more modern edition of Berni, who revised it sixty years after, is

superior to that of Pulci, in the variety and novelty of the adventures,

the richness of the colouring, and in the interest it excites. The women

here appear, what they ought to be in a romance, the soul of the work;

Angelica here shows herself in all her charms, and with all her power

over the bravest knights. All those warriors, whether Moors or

Christians, whose names have become almost historical, received from

Boyardo their existence, and the characters which they have preserved

ever since. We are told that he took the names of several, as Gradasso,

Sacripant, Agramant, Mandiscardo, from those of his vassals at his

estate of Scandiano, where these families still remain: but it seems he

wished for a still more sounding name for the most redoubtable of his

Moorish chiefs. While on a hunting party, that of Rodomont came into his

mind. On the instant he returned full gallop to his chateau, and had the

bells rung and the cannon fired in sign of a fete, to the great

astonishment of the peasants, to whom this new saint was quite unknown.

The style of Boyardo did not correspond with the vivacity of his

imagination: It is little laboured; the verse is harsh and tedious; and

it was not without reason that in the following age it was judged proper

to give a new form to his work.’

The account given of Ariosto and Tasso is in general correct as to the

classification of their different styles, and the enumeration of their

particular excellences or defects; but we should be inclined to give the

preference in the contrary way. Ariosto’s excellence is (what it is here

described) infinite grace and gaiety. He has fine animal spirits, an

heroic disposition, sensibility mixed with vivacity, an eye for nature,

great rapidity of narration and facility of style, and, above all, a

genius buoyant, and with wings like the Griffin-horse of Rogero, which

he turns and winds at pleasure. He never labours under his subject;

never pauses; but is always setting out on fresh exploits. Indeed, his

excessive desire not to overdo any thing, has led him to resort to the

unnecessary expedient of constantly breaking off in the middle of his

story, and going on to something else. His work is in this respect worse

than Tristram Shandy; for there the progress of the narrative is

interrupted by some incident, in a dramatic or humorous shape; but here

the whole fault lies with the author. The Orlando Furioso is a tissue of

these separate stories, crossing and jostling one another; and is

therefore very inferior, in the general construction of the plot, to the

Jerusalem Delivered. But the incidents in Ariosto are more lively, the

characters more real, the language purer, the colouring more natural:

even the sentiments show at least as much feeling, with less appearance

of affectation. There is less effort, less display, a less imposing use

made of the common ornaments of style and artifices of composition.

Tasso was the more accomplished writer, Ariosto the greater genius.

There is nothing in Tasso which is not to be found, in the same or a

higher degree, in others: Ariosto’s merits were his own. The perusal of

the one leaves a peculiar and very high relish behind it; there is a

vapidness in the other, which palls at the time, and goes off sooner

afterwards. Tasso indeed sets before us a dessert of melons, mingled

with roses:—but it is not the first time of its being served up:—the

flowers are rather faded, and the fruit has lost its freshness. Ariosto

writes on as it happens, from the interest of his subject, or the

impulse of his own mind. He is intent only on the adventure he has in

hand,—the circumstances which might be supposed to attend it, the

feelings which would naturally arise out of it. He attaches himself to

his characters for their own sakes; and relates their achievements for

the mere pleasure he has in telling them. This method is certainly

liable to great disadvantages; but we on the whole prefer it to the

obtrusive artifices of style shown in the Jerusalem,—where the author

seems never to introduce any character but as a foil to some

other,—makes one situation a contrast to the preceding, and his whole

poem a continued antithesis in style, action, sentiment, and imagery. A

fierce is opposed to a tender, a blasphemous to a pious character. A

lover kills his mistress in disguise, and a husband and wife are

represented defending their lives, by a pretty ambiguity of situation

and sentiment, warding off the blows which are aimed, not at their own

breasts, but at each other’s. The same love of violent effect sometimes

produces grossness of character, as in Armida, who is tricked out with

all the ostentatious trappings of a prostitute. Tasso has more of what

is usually called poetry than Ariosto—that is, more tropes and

ornaments, and a more splendid and elaborate diction. The latter is

deficient in all these:—the figures and comparisons he introduces do not

elevate or adorn that which they are brought to illustrate: they are,

for the most part, mere parallel cases; and his direct description,

simple and striking as it uniformly is, seems to us of a far higher

order of merit than the ingenious allusions of his rival. We cannot,

however, agree with M. Sismondi, that there is a want of sentiment in

Ariosto, or that he excels only as a painter of objects, or a narrator

of events. The instance which he gives from the story of Isabella, is an

exception to his general power. The episodes of Herminia, and of Tancred

and Clorinda, in Tasso, are exquisitely beautiful; but they do not come

up, in romantic interest or real passion, to the loves of Angelica and

Medoro. We might instance, to the same purpose, the character of

Bradamante;—the spirited apostrophe to knighthood, ‘Oh ancient knights

of true and noble heart;’—that to Orlando, Sacripant, and the other

lovers of Angelica—or the triumph of Medoro—the whole progress of

Orlando’s passion, and the still more impressive description of his

sudden recovery from his fatal infatuation, after the restoration of his

senses. Perhaps the finest thing in Tasso is the famous description of

Carthage, as the warriors pass by it in the enchanted bark. ‘Giace

l’alta Cartago,’ &c. This passage, however, belongs properly to the

class of lofty philosophical eloquence; it owes its impressiveness to

the grandeur of the general ideas, and not to the force of individual

feeling, or immediate passion. The speech of Satan to his companions is

said to have suggested the tone of Milton’s character of the Devil. But

we see nothing in common in the fiend of the two poets. Tasso describes

his as a mere deformed monster. Milton was the first poet who had the

magnanimity to paint the devil without horns and a tail; to give him

personal beauty and intellectual grandeur, with only moral deformity.

The life of Tasso is one of the most interesting in the world. Its last

unfortunate events are related thus by our author.—

‘Tasso, admitted into the society of the great, thought himself

sufficiently their equal, to fall in love with women of rank; and found

himself sufficiently their inferior, to suffer from the consequences of

his passion. His writings inform us, that he was attached to a lady of

the name of Leonora: but it would seem that he was alternately in love

with Leonora of Este, sister to the Duke Alphonso; with Leonora of San

Vitale, wife of Julius of Tiena; and with Lucretia Bendidio, one of the

maids of honour to the princess.... It is said, that one day being at

court with the Duke and the Princess Leonora, he was so struck with the

beauty of the lady, that, in a transport of love, he approached her

suddenly, and embraced her in the eyes of the whole assembly. The Duke,

turning coldly to his courtiers, said to them—“What a pity that so great

a man should have gone mad!” and on this pretence, had him confined in

the hospital of St. Anne, a receptacle for lunatics at Ferrara. His

confinement disordered his imagination. His body was enfeebled by the

agitation of his mind; he believed himself by turns poisoned, or

tormented by witchcraft; he fancied that he saw dreadful apparitions,

and passed whole nights in painful watchfulness. He addressed letters of

complaint to all his friends, to all the princes of Italy, to the city

of Bergamo his native place, to the emperor, to the holy office at Rome,

imploring their pity and his liberty. To add to his misfortunes, his

poem was published without his permission, from an imperfect copy. He

remained confined in the hospital seven years; during which, the

numerous writings that proceeded from his pen, could not convince

Alphonso II. that he was in his senses. The princes of Italy in vain

interposed for his release, which the Duke refused to grant, chiefly to

mortify his rivals, the Medici. At length, he was released from his

captivity at the instance of Vincent de Gonzago, Prince of Mantua, on

the occasion of the marriage of the sister of this nobleman with the

unrelenting Alphonso.’

It was during this melancholy interval, that he was seen by Montaigne in

his confinement, who, after some striking reflections on the

vicissitudes of genius, says,—‘I rather envied than pitied him, when I

saw him at Ferrara in so piteous a plight, that he survived himself;

misacknowledging both himself and his labours, which, unwitting to him,

and even to his face, have been published both uncorrected and

maimed!’—Tasso died at Rome in 1599, when he was fifty-one years old.

After the Jerusalem, the most celebrated of his works, is his pastoral

poem of Aminta, on which the Pastor Fido of Guarini is considered by M.

Sismondi as an improvement. He published both comedies and tragedies. He

composed a tragedy, called _Il Torrismondo_, while in prison, and

dedicated it to his liberator, the Prince of Mantua. The concluding

chorus of this tragedy possesses the most profound pathos; and the poet,

in writing it, had evidently an eye to his own misfortunes and his

glory, which he saw, or thought he saw, vanishing from him—‘Like the

swift Alpine torrent, like the sudden lightning in the calm night, like

the passing wind, the melting vapour, or the winged arrow, so vanishes

our fame; and all our glory is but a fading flower. What then can we

hope, or what expect more? After triumphs and palms, all that remains

for the soul, is strife and lamentation, and regret; neither love nor

friendship can avail us aught, but only tears and grief!’

We have thus gone through M. Sismondi’s account of the great Italian

poets; and should now proceed to the consideration of their more modern

brethren of the drama, and of the Spanish and Portuguese writers in

general: But we cannot go on with this splendid catalogue of foreigners,

without feeling ourselves drawn to the native glories of two of our own

writers, who were certainly indebted in a great degree to the early

poets of Italy, and must be considered as belonging to the same

school.—We mean Chaucer and Spenser—who are now, we are afraid, as

little known to the ordinary run of English readers as their tuneful

contemporaries in the South. To those among our own countrymen who agree

with M. Sismondi in considering the reign of Queen Anne as the golden

period of English poetry, it may afford some amusement at least to

accompany us for a little in these antiquarian researches.

Though Spenser was much later than Chaucer, his obligations to preceding

poets were less. He has in some measure borrowed the plan of his poem

from Ariosto; but he has engrafted upon it an exuberance of fancy, and

an endless voluptuousness of sentiment, which are not to be found in the

Italian writer.—Farther, Spenser is even more of an inventor in the

subject-matter. There is a richness and variety in his allegorical

personages and fictions, which almost vies with the splendour of the

ancient mythology. If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance,

Spenser’s poetry is all fairy-land. In Ariosto, we walk upon the ground,

in a company, gay, fantastic, and adventurous enough; in Spenser, we

wander in another world among ideal beings. The poet takes and lays us

in the lap of a lovelier nature, by the sound of softer streams, among

greener hills, and fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we find it,

but as we expected to find it; and fulfils the deluding promise of our

youth. He waves his wand of enchantment,—and at once embodies airy

beings, and throws a delicious veil over all actual objects. The two

worlds of reality and of fiction, seem poised on the wings of his

imagination. His ideas indeed seem always more distinct than his

perceptions. He is the painter of abstractions, and describes them with

dazzling minuteness. In the Mask of Cupid, the god of love ‘claps on

high his coloured winges _twain_;’ and it is said of Gluttony in the

procession of the Passions,—

‘In green vine-leaves he was right fitly clad.’

At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of beauty; as,

where he compares Prince Arthur’s crest to the appearance of the

almond-tree. The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, is the

moving principle of his mind; and his delineations are guided by no

principle but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates

equally in scenes of Eastern magnificence, or the still solitude of a

hermit’s cell—in the extremes of sensuality or refinement. With all

this, he neither makes us laugh nor weep. The only jest in his poem is

an allegory. But he has been falsely charged with a want of passion and

of strength. He has both in an immense degree. He has not indeed the

pathos of immediate action or suffering, which is the dramatic; but he

has all the pathos of sentiment and romance,—all that belongs to distant

objects of terror, and uncertain, imaginary distress. His strength, in

like manner, is not coarse and palpable,—but it assumes the character of

vastness and sublimity, seen through the same visionary medium, and

blended with all the appalling associations of preternatural agency. We

will only refer to the Cave of Mammon, and to the description of Celleno

in the Cave of Despair. The three first books of the Faery Queen are

very superior to the others. It is not fair to compare Spenser with

Shakespeare, in point of interest. A fairer comparison would be with

Comus. There is only one book of this allegorical kind which has more

interest than Spenser (with scarcely less imagination); and that is the

Pilgrim’s Progress.

It is not possible for any two writers to be more opposite than Spenser

and Chaucer. Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoyment;—Chaucer in severe

activity of mind. Spenser was, perhaps, the most visionary of all the

poets;—Chaucer the most a man of observation and of the world. He

appealed directly to the bosoms and business of men. He dealt only in

realities; and, relying throughout on facts or common tradition, could

always produce his vouchers in nature. His sentiment is not the

voluntary indulgence of the poet’s fancy, but is founded on the habitual

prejudices and passions of the very characters he introduces. His

poetry, therefore, is essentially picturesque and dramatic: In this he

chiefly differs from Boccacio, whose power was that of sentiment. The

picturesque and the dramatic in Chaucer, are in a great measure the same

thing; for he only describes external objects as connected with

character,—as the symbols of internal passion. The costume and dress of

the Canterbury pilgrims,—of the knight,—the ‘squire,—the gap-toothed

wife of Bath, speak for themselves. Again, the description of the

equipage and accoutrements of the two Kings of Thrace and Inde, in the

Knight’s Tale, are as striking and grand, as the others are lively and

natural. His descriptions of natural scenery are in the same style of

excellence;—their beauty consists in their truth and characteristic

propriety. They have a local freshness about them, which renders them

almost tangible; which gives the very feeling of the air, the coldness

or moisture of the ground. In other words, he describes inanimate

objects from the effect which they have on the mind of the spectator,

and as they have a reference to the interest of the story. One of the

finest parts of Chaucer is of this mixed kind. It is in the beginning of

the Flower and the Leaf, where he describes the delight of that young

beauty, shrouded in her bower, and listening in the morning of the year

to the singing of the nightingale, while her joy rises with the rising

song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne along with the

full tide of pleasure, and still increases, and repeats, and prolongs

itself, and knows no ebb. The coolness of the arbour,—its

retirement,—the early time of the day,—the sudden starting up of the

birds in the neighbouring bushes—the eager delight with which they

devour and rend the opening buds and flowers, are expressed with a truth

and feeling, which make the whole seem like the recollection of an

actual scene. Whoever compares this beautiful and simple passage with

Rousseau’s description of the Elisée in the New Eloise, will be able to

see the difference between good writing and fine writing, or between the

actual appearances of nature, and the progress of the feelings they

excite in us, and a parcel of words, images and sentiments thrown

together without meaning or coherence. We do not say this from any

feeling of disrespect to Rousseau, for whom we have a great affection;

but his imagination was not that of the poet or the painter. Severity

and boldness are the characteristics of the natural style: the

artificial is equally servile and ostentatious. Nature, after all, is

the soul of art:—and there is a strength in the imagination which

reposes immediately on nature, which nothing else can supply. It was

this trust in nature, and reliance on his subject, which enabled Chaucer

to describe the grief and patience of Griselda,—the faith of

Constance,—and the heroic perseverance of the little child, who, going

to school through the streets of Jewry,

‘Oh, _Alma redemptoris mater_, loudly sung,’

and who, after his death, still triumphed in his song. Chaucer has more

of this deep, internal, sustained sentiment than any other writer,

except Boccacio, to whom Chaucer owed much, though he did not owe all to

him: for he writes just as well where he did not borrow from that

quarter, as where he did; as in the characters of the Pilgrims,—the Wife

of Bath’s Prologue,—the ‘Squire’s Tale, and in innumerable others. The

poetry of Chaucer has a religious sanctity about it, connected with the

manners of the age. It has all the spirit of martyrdom!

In looking back to the _chef-d’œuvres_ of former times, we are sometimes

disposed to wonder at the little progress which has been made since in

poetry, and the arts of imitation in general. But this, perhaps, is a

foolish wonder. Nothing is more contrary to fact, than the supposition,

that in what we understand by the fine arts, as painting and poetry,

relative perfection is the result of repeated success; and that, what

has been once well done, constantly leads to something better. What is

mechanical, reducible to rule, or capable of demonstration, is indeed

progressive, and admits of gradual improvement: but that which is not

mechanical or definite, but depends on taste, genius, and feeling, very

soon becomes stationary or retrograde, after a certain period, and loses

more than it gains by transfusion. The contrary opinion is indeed a

common error, which has grown up, like many others, from transferring an

analogy of one kind to something quite different, without thinking of

the difference in the nature of the things, or attending to the

difference of the results. For most persons, finding what wonderful

advances have been made in biblical criticism, in chemistry, in

mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, &c., _i.e._ in things depending on

inquiry and experiment, or on absolute demonstration, have been led

hastily to conclude, that there was a general tendency in the efforts of

the human intellect to improve by repetition, and, in all arts and

institutions, to grow perfect and mature by time. We look back upon the

theological creed of our ancestors, and their discoveries in natural

philosophy, with a smile of pity: Science, and the arts connected with

it, have all had their infancy, their youth and manhood, and seem to

have in them no principle of limitation or decay; and, inquiring no

farther, we infer, in the intoxication of our pride, and the height of

our self-congratulation, that the same progress has been made, and will

continue to be made, in all other things which are the work of man. The

fact, however, stares us so plainly in the face, that one would think

the smallest reflection must suggest the truth, and overturn our

sanguine theories. The greatest poets, the ablest orators, the best

painters, and the finest sculptors that the world ever saw, appeared

soon after the first birth of these arts, and lived in a state of

society which was in other respects rude and barbarous. Those arts which

depend on individual genius and incommunicable power, have almost always

leaped at once from infancy to manhood—from the first rude dawn of

invention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre, and have, in

general, declined ever after. This is the peculiar distinction and

privilege of science and of art;—of the one, never to arrive at the

summit of perfection at all; and of the other, to arrive at it almost at

once. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Dante and Ariosto, (Milton

alone was of a later period, and not the worse for it),—Raphael, Titian,

Michael Angelo, Correggio, Cervantes and Boccacio—all lived near the

beginning of their arts—perfected, and all but created them. These giant

sons of genius stand indeed upon the earth; but they tower above their

fellows; and the long line of their successors does not interpose any

object to obstruct their view, or lessen their brightness. In strength

and stature, they are unrivalled; in grace and beauty, they have never

been surpassed. In after ages and more refined periods (as they are

called), great men have arisen one by one, as it were by throes and at

intervals; though, in general, the best of these cultivated and

artificial minds were of an inferior order; as Tasso and Pope among

poets, Guido and Poussin among painters. But in the earlier stages of

the arts, when the first mechanical difficulties had been got over, and

the language acquired, they rose by clusters and in constellations—never

so to rise again.

The arts of poetry and painting are conversant with the world of thought

within us, and of the world of sense without us—with what we know and

see and feel intimately. They flow from the living shrine of our own

breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp of Nature: But the pulse of

the passions assuredly beat as high—the depths and soundings of the

human heart were as well understood, three thousand or three hundred

years ago, as they are at present. The face of nature, and ‘the human

face divine,’ shone as bright then, as they have ever done since. But it

is their light, reflected by true genius on art, which marks out the

path before it, and sheds a glory round the Muses’ feet, like that which

——‘circled Una’s angel face,

And made a sunshine in the shady place.’

SCHLEGEL ON THE DRAMA

VOL. XXVI.] [_February 1816._

The work is German; and is to be received with the allowances which that

school of literature generally requires. With these, however, it will be

found a good work: and as we should be sorry to begin our account of it

with an unmeaning sneer, we will explain at once what appears to us to

be the weak side of German literature. In all that they do, it is

evident that they are much more influenced by a desire of distinction

than by any impulse of the imagination, or the consciousness of

extraordinary qualifications. They write, not because they are full of a

subject, but because they think it is a subject upon which, with due

pains and labour, something striking may be written. So they read and

meditate,—and having, at length, devised some strange and paradoxical

view of the matter, they set about establishing it with all their might

and main. The consequence is, that they have no shades of opinion, but

are always straining at a grand systematic conclusion. They have done a

great deal, no doubt, and in various departments; but their pretensions

have always much exceeded their performance. They are universal

undertakers, and complete encyclopedists, in all moral and critical

science. No question can come before them but they have a large

apparatus of logical and metaphysical principles ready to play off upon

it; and the less they know of the subject, the more formidable is the

use they make of their apparatus. In poetry, they have at one time gone

to the utmost lengths of violent effect,—and then turned round, with

equal extravagance, to the laborious production of no effect at all. The

truth is, that they are naturally a slow, heavy people; and can only be

put in motion by some violent and often repeated impulse, under the

operation of which they lose all control over themselves—and nothing can

stop them short of the last absurdity. Truth, in their view of it, is

never what is, but what, according to their system, _ought to be_.

Though they have dug deeply in the mine of knowledge, they have too

often confounded the dross and the ore, and counted their gains rather

by their weight than their quality. They are a little apt, we suspect,

literally to take the will for the deed,—and are not always capable of

distinguishing between effort and success. They are most at home,

accordingly, in matters of fact, and learned inquiries. In art they are

hard, forced, and mechanical; and, generally, they may be said to have

all that depends on strength of understanding and persevering

exertion,—but to want ease, quickness and flexibility. We should not

have made these remarks, if the work before us had formed an absolute

exception to them.

William Schlegel has long been celebrated on the Continent as a

philosophical critic, and as the admirable translator of Shakespear and

Calderon into his native tongue. Madame de Staël acknowledges her

obligations to him, for the insight which he had given her into the

discriminating features of German genius. And M. Sismondi, in his work

on Southern literature, bears the most honourable testimony to his

talents and learning. The present work contains a critical and

historical account of the ancient and modern drama,—the Greek, the

Latin, the Italian, the French, the English, the Spanish, and the

German. The view which the author has taken of the standard productions,

whether tragic or comic, in these different languages, is in general

ingenious and just; and his speculative reasonings on the principles of

taste, are often as satisfactory as they are profound. But he sometimes

carries the love of theory, and the spirit of partisanship, farther than

is at all allowable. His account of Shakespear is admirably

characteristic, and must be highly gratifying to the English reader. It

is indeed by far the best account which has been given of the plays of

that great genius by any writer, either among ourselves, or abroad. It

is only liable to one exception—he will allow Shakespear to have had no

faults. Now, we think he had a great many, and that he could afford to

have had as many more. It shows a distrust of his genius, to be

tenacious of his defects.

Our author thus explains the object of his work—

‘Before I proceed farther, I wish to say a few words respecting the

spirit of my criticism—a study to which I have devoted a great part of

my life. We see numbers of men, and even whole nations, so much fettered

by the habits of their education and modes of living, that nothing

appears natural, proper, or beautiful, which is foreign to their

language, their manners, and their social relations. In this exclusive

mode of seeing and feeling, it is no doubt possible, by means of

cultivation, to attain a great nicety of discrimination in the narrow

circle within which they are circumscribed. But no man can be a true

critic or connoisseur, who does not possess a universality of mind,—who

does not possess that flexibility which, throwing aside all personal

predilections and blind habits, enables him to transport himself into

the peculiarities of other ages and nations,—to feel them as it were

from their proper and central point,—and to recognize and respect

whatever is beautiful and grand under those external circumstances which

are necessary to their existence, and which sometimes even seem to

disguise them. There is no monopoly of poetry for certain ages and

nations; and consequently, that despotism in taste, by which it is

attempted to make those rules universal, which were at first perhaps

arbitrarily established, is a pretension which ought never to be

allowed. Poetry, taken in its widest acceptation, as the power of

creating what is beautiful, and representing it to the eye or ear, is a

universal gift of Heaven; which is even shared to a certain extent by

those whom we call barbarians and savages. Internal excellence is alone

decisive; and where this exists, we must not allow ourselves to be

repelled by external circumstances.

‘It is well known, that, three centuries and a half ago, the study of

ancient literature, by the diffusion of the Greek language (for the

Latin was never extinct) received a new life: The classical authors were

sought after with avidity, and made accessible by means of the press;

and the monuments of ancient art were carefully dug up, and preserved.

All this excited the human mind in a powerful manner, and formed a

decided epoch in the history of our cultivation: the fruits have

extended to our times, and will extend to a period beyond the power of

our calculation. But the study of the ancients was immediately carried

to a most pernicious excess. The learned, who were chiefly in possession

of this knowledge, and who were incapable of distinguishing themselves

by their own productions, yielded an unlimited deference to the

ancients,—and with great appearance of reason, as they are models in

their kind. They maintained, that nothing could be hoped for the human

mind, but in the imitation of the ancients; and they only esteemed, in

the works of the moderns, whatever resembled, or seemed to bear a

resemblance, to those of antiquity. Every thing else was rejected by

them as barbarous and unnatural. It was quite otherwise with the great

poets and artists. However strong their enthusiasm for the ancients, and

however determined their purpose of entering into competition with them,

they were compelled by the characteristic peculiarity of their minds to

proceed in a track of their own,—and to impress upon their productions

the stamp of their own genius. Such was the case with Dante among the

Italians, the father of modern poetry: he acknowledged Virgil for his

instructor; but produced a work, which of all others differs the most

from the Æneid, and _far excels it, in our opinion, in strength, truth,

depth, and comprehension_. It was the same afterwards with Ariosto, who

has been most unaccountably compared to Homer; for nothing can be more

unlike. It was the same in the fine arts with Michael Angelo and

Raphael, who were without doubt well acquainted with the antique. When

we ground our judgment of modern painters merely on their resemblance to

the ancients, we must necessarily be unjust towards them. As the poets

for the most part acquiesced in the doctrines of the learned, we may

observe a curious struggle in them between their natural inclination and

their imagined duty. When they sacrificed to the latter, they were

praised by the learned; but, by yielding to their own inclinations, they

became the favourites of the people. What preserves the heroic poems of

a Tasso or a Camoens to this day alive, in the hearts and on the lips of

their countrymen, is by no means their imperfect resemblance to Virgil

or even to Homer,—but, in Tasso, the tender feeling of chivalrous love

and honour, and in Camoens the glowing inspiration of patriotic

heroism.’

The author next proceeds to unfold that which is the _nucleus_ of the

prevailing system of German criticism, and the foundation of his whole

work, namely, the essential distinction between the peculiar spirit of

the modern or _romantic_ style of art, and the antique or _classical_.

There is in this part of the work a singular mixture of learning,

acuteness and mysticism. We have certain profound suggestions and

distant openings to the light; but, every now and then, we are suddenly

left in the dark, and obliged to grope our way by ourselves. We cannot

promise to find a clue out of the labyrinth; but we will at least

attempt it. The most obvious distinction between the two styles, the

classical and the romantic, is, that the one is conversant with objects

that are grand or beautiful in themselves, or in consequence of obvious

and universal associations; the other, with those that are interesting

only by the force of circumstances and imagination. A Grecian temple,

for instance, is a classical object: it is beautiful in itself, and

excites immediate admiration. But the ruins of a Gothic castle have no

beauty or symmetry to attract the eye; and yet they excite a more

powerful and romantic interest from the ideas with which they are

habitually associated. If, in addition to this, we are told that this is

Macbeth’s castle, the scene of the murder of Duncan, the interest will

be instantly heightened to a sort of pleasing horror. The classical idea

or form of any thing, it may also be observed, remains always the same,

and suggests nearly the same impressions; but the associations of ideas

belonging to the romantic character, may vary infinitely, and take in

the whole range of nature and accident. Antigone, in Sophocles, waiting

near the grove of the Furies—Electra, in Æschylus, offering sacrifice at

the tomb of Agamemnon—are classical subjects, because the circumstances

and the characters have a correspondent dignity, and an immediate

interest, from their mere designation. Florimel, in Spenser, where she

is described sitting on the ground in the Witch’s hut, is not classical,

though in the highest degree poetical and romantic: for the incidents

and situation are in themselves mean and disagreeable, till they are

redeemed by the genius of the poet, and converted, by the very contrast,

into a source of the utmost pathos and elevation of sentiment. Othello’s

handkerchief is not classical, though ‘there was magic in the web;’—it

is only a powerful instrument of passion and imagination. Even Lear is

not classical; for he is a poor crazy old man, who has nothing sublime

about him but his afflictions, and who dies of a broken heart.

Schlegel somewhere compares the Furies of Æschylus to the Witches of

Shakespear—we think without much reason. Perhaps Shakespear has

surrounded the Weird Sisters with associations as terrible, and even

more mysterious, strange, and fantastic than the Furies of Æschylus; but

the traditionary beings themselves are not so petrific. These are of

marble,—their look alone must blast the beholder;—those are of air,

bubbles; and though ‘so withered and so wild in their attire,’ it is

their spells alone which are fatal. They owe their power to

‘metaphysical aid’: but the others contain all that is dreadful in their

corporal figures. In this we see the distinct spirit of the classical

and the romantic mythology. The serpents that twine round the head of

the Furies are not to be trifled with, though they implied no

preternatural power: The bearded Witches in Macbeth are in themselves

grotesque and ludicrous, except as this strange deviation from nature

staggers our imagination, and leads us to expect and to believe in all

incredible things. They appal the faculties by what they say or do;—the

others are intolerable, even to sight.

Our author is right in affirming, that the true way to understand the

plays of Sophocles and Æschylus, is to study them before the groupes of

the Niobe or the Laocoon. If we can succeed in explaining this analogy,

we shall have solved nearly the whole difficulty. For it is certain,

that there are exactly the same powers of mind displayed in the poetry

of the Greeks as in their statues. Their poetry is exactly what their

sculptors might have written. Both are exquisite imitations of nature;

the one in marble, the other in words. It is evident, that the Greek

poets had the same perfect idea of the subjects they described, as the

Greek sculptors had of the objects they represented; and they give as

much of this absolute truth of imitation, as can be given by words. But,

in this direct and simple imitation of nature, as in describing the form

of a beautiful woman, the poet is greatly inferior to the sculptor; It

is in the power of illustration, in comparing it to other things, and

suggesting other ideas of beauty or love, that he has an entirely new

source of imagination opened to him; and of this power, the moderns have

made at least a bolder and more frequent use than the ancients. The

description of Helen in Homer, is a description of what might have

happened and been seen, as ‘that she moved with grace, and that the old

men rose up with reverence as she passed;’ the description of Belphœbe

in Spenser, is a description of what was only visible to the eye of the

poet.

‘Upon her eyelids many graces sat,

Under the shadow of her even brows.’

The description of the soldiers going to battle in Shakespear, ‘all

plumed like estriches, like eagles newly bathed, wanton as goats, wild

as young bulls,’ is too bold, figurative, and profuse of dazzling

images, for the mild, equable tone of classical poetry, which never

loses sight of the object in the illustration. The ideas of the ancients

were too exact and definite, too much attached to the material form or

vehicle in which they were conveyed, to admit of those rapid

combinations, those unrestrained flights of fancy, which, glancing from

heaven to earth, unite the most opposite extremes, and draw the happiest

illustrations from things the most remote. The two principles of

imitation and imagination indeed, are not only distinct, but almost

opposite. For the imagination is that power which represents objects,

not as they are, but as they are moulded according to our fancies and

feelings. Let an object be presented to the senses in a state of

agitation and fear—and the imagination will magnify the object, and

convert it into whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. It is the

same in all other cases in which poetry speaks the language of the

imagination. This language is not the less true to nature because it is

false in point of fact; but so much the more true and natural, if it

conveys the impression which the object under the influence of passion

makes on the mind. We compare a man of gigantic stature to a tower; not

that he is any thing like so large, but because the excess of his size,

beyond what we are accustomed to expect, produces a greater feeling of

magnitude and ponderous strength than an object of ten times the same

dimensions. Things, in short, are equal in the imagination, which have

the power of affecting the mind with an equal degree of terror,

admiration, delight or love. When Lear calls upon the Heavens to avenge

his cause, ‘for they are old like him,’ there is nothing extravagant or

impious in this sublime identification of his age with theirs; for there

is no other image which could do justice to the agonising sense of his

wrongs and his despair!

The great difference, then, which we find between the classical and the

romantic style, between ancient and modern poetry, is, that the one more

frequently describes things as they are interesting in themselves,—the

other for the sake of the associations of ideas connected with them;

that the one dwells more on the immediate impressions of objects on the

senses—the other on the ideas which they suggest to the imagination. The

one is the poetry of form, the other of effect. The one gives only what

is necessarily implied in the subject; the other all that can possibly

arise out of it. The one seeks to identify the imitation with an

external object,—clings to it,—is inseparable from it,—is either that or

nothing; the other seeks to identify the original impression with

whatever else, within the range of thought or feeling, can strengthen,

relieve, adorn or elevate it. Hence the severity and simplicity of the

Greek tragedy, which excluded everything foreign or unnecessary to the

subject. Hence the unities: for, in order to identify the imitation as

much as possible with the reality, and leave nothing to mere

imagination, it was necessary to give the same coherence and consistency

to the different parts of a story, as to the different limbs of a

statue. Hence the beauty and grandeur of their materials; for, deriving

their power over the mind from the truth of the imitation, it was

necessary that the subject which they made choice of, and from which

they could not depart, should be in itself grand and beautiful. Hence

the perfection of their execution; which consisted in giving the utmost

harmony, delicacy, and refinement to the details of a given subject.

Now, the characteristic excellence of the moderns is the reverse of all

this. As, according to our author, the poetry of the Greeks is the same

as their sculpture; so, he says, our own more nearly resembles

painting,—where the artist can relieve and throw back his figures at

pleasure,—use a greater variety of contrasts,—and where light and shade,

like the colours of fancy, are reflected on the different objects. The

Muse of classical poetry should be represented as a beautiful naked

figure: the Muse of modern poetry should be represented clothed, and

with wings. The first has the advantage in point of form; the last in

colour and motion.

Perhaps we may trace this difference to something analogous in physical

organization, situation, religion and manners. First, the natural

organization of the Greeks seems to have been more perfect, more

susceptible of external impressions, and more in harmony with external

nature than ours, who have not the same advantages of climate and

constitution. Born of a beautiful and vigorous race, with quick senses

and a clear understanding, and placed under a mild heaven, they gave the

fullest development to their external faculties: and where all is

perceived easily, every thing is perceived in harmony and proportion. It

is the stern genius of the North which drives men back upon their own

resources, which makes them slow to perceive, and averse to feel, and

which, by rendering them insensible to the single, successive

impressions of things, requires their collective and combined force to

rouse the imagination violently and unequally. It should be remarked,

however, that the early poetry of some of the Eastern nations has even

more of that irregularity, wild enthusiasm, and disproportioned

grandeur, which has been considered as the distinguishing character of

the Northern nations.

Again, a good deal may be attributed to the state of manners and

political institutions. The ancient Greeks were warlike tribes encamped

in cities. They had no other country than that which was enclosed within

the walls of the town in which they lived. Each individual belonged, in

the first instance, to the State; and his relations to it were so close,

as to take away, in a great measure, all personal independence and

free-will. Every one was mortised to his place in society, and had his

station assigned him as part of the political machine, which could only

subsist by strict subordination and regularity. Every man was as it were

perpetually on duty, and his faculties kept constant watch and ward.

Energy of purpose, and intensity of observation, became the necessary

characteristics of such a state of society; and the general principle

communicated itself from this ruling concern for the public, to morals,

to art, to language, to every thing.—The tragic poets of Greece were

among her best soldiers; and it is no wonder that they were as severe in

their poetry as in their discipline. Their swords and their styles

carved out their way with equal sharpness. This state of things was

afterwards continued under the Roman empire. In the ages of chivalry and

romance, which, after a considerable interval, succeeded its

dissolution, and which have stamped their character on modern genius and

literature, all was reversed. Society was again resolved into its

component parts; and the world was, in a manner, to begin anew. The ties

which bound the citizen and the soldier to the State being loosened,

each person was thrown back, as it were, into the circle of the domestic

affections, or left to pursue his doubtful way to fame and fortune

alone. This interval of time might be accordingly supposed to give birth

to all that was constant in attachment, adventurous in action, strange,

wild and extravagant in invention. Human life took the shape of a busy,

voluptuous dream, where the imagination was now lost amidst ‘antres vast

and deserts idle;’ or, suddenly transported to stately palaces, echoing

with dance and song. In this uncertainty of events, this fluctuation of

hopes and fears, all objects became dim, confused and vague. Magicians,

dwarfs, giants, followed in the train of romance; and Orlando’s

enchanted sword, the horn which he carried with him, and which he blew

thrice at Roncesvalles, and Rogero’s winged horse, were not sufficient

to protect them in their unheard-of encounters, or deliver them from

their inextricable difficulties. It was a return to the period of the

early heroic ages; but tempered by the difference of domestic manners,

and the spirit of religion. The marked difference in the relation of the

sexes, arose from the freedom of choice in women, which, from being the

slaves of the will and passions of men, converted them into the arbiters

of their fate, which introduced the modern system of gallantry, and

first made love a feeling of the heart, founded on mutual affection and

esteem. The leading virtues of the Christian religion, self-denial and

generosity, assisted in producing the same effect.—Hence the spirit of

chivalry, of romantic love, and honour!

The mythology of the romantic poetry differed from the received

religion: both differed essentially from the classical. The religion, or

mythology of the Greeks, was nearly allied to their poetry: it was

material and definite. The Pagan system reduced the Gods to the human

form, and elevated the powers of inanimate nature to the same standard.

Statues carved out of the finest marble, represented the objects of

their religious worship in airy porticos, in solemn temples and

consecrated groves. Mercury was seen ‘new-lighted on some heaven-kissing

hill;’ and the Naiad or Dryad came gracefully forth as the personified

genius of the stream or wood. All was subjected to the senses. The

Christian religion, on the contrary, is essentially spiritual and

abstract; it is ‘the evidence of things unseen.’ In the Heathen

mythology, form is everywhere predominant; in the Christian, we find

only unlimited, undefined power. The imagination alone ‘broods over the

immense abyss, and makes it pregnant.’ There is, in the habitual belief

of an universal, invisible Principle of all things, a vastness and

obscurity which confounds our perceptions, while it exalts our piety. A

mysterious awe surrounds the doctrines of the Christian faith: the

Infinite is everywhere before us, whether we turn to reflect on what is

revealed to us of the Divine nature or our own.

History, as well as religion, has contributed to enlarge the bounds of

imagination; and both together, by showing past and future objects at an

interminable distance, have accustomed the mind to contemplate and take

an interest in the obscure and shadowy. The ancients were more

circumscribed within ‘the ignorant present time,’—spoke only their own

language,—were conversant only with their own customs,—were acquainted

only with the events of their own history. The mere lapse of time then,

aided by the art of printing, has served to accumulate for us an endless

mass of mixed and contradictory materials; and, by extending our

knowledge to a greater number of things, has made our particular ideas

less perfect and distinct. The constant reference to a former state of

manners and literature, is a marked feature in modern poetry. We are

always talking of the Greeks and Romans;—_they_ never said any thing of

us. This circumstance has tended to give a certain abstract elevation,

and etherial refinement to the mind, without strengthening it. We are

lost in wonder at what has been done, and dare not think of emulating

it. The earliest modern poets, accordingly, may be conceived to hail the

glories of the antique world, dawning through the dark abyss of time;

while revelation, on the other hand, opened its path to the skies: As

Dante represents himself as conducted by Virgil to the shades below;

while Beatrice welcomes him to the abodes of the blest.

We must now return, however, to our author, whose sketch of the rise and

progress of the Drama, will be interesting to our readers.

‘The invention of the dramatic art, and of a theatre, seem to lie very

near one another. Man has a great disposition to mimicry. When he enters

vividly into the situation, sentiments and passions of others, he even

involuntarily puts on a resemblance to them in his gestures. Children

are perpetually going out of themselves: it is one of their chief

amusements to represent those grown people whom they have had an

opportunity of observing, or whatever comes in their way: And with the

happy flexibility of their imagination, they can exhibit all the

characteristics of assumed dignity in a father, a schoolmaster, or a

king. The sole step which is requisite for the invention of a drama,

namely, the separating and extracting the mimetic elements and fragments

from social life, and representing them collected together into one

mass, has not, however, been taken in many nations. In the very minute

description of ancient Egypt in Herodotus and other writers, I do not

recollect observing the smallest trace of it. The Etrurians, again, who

in many respects resembled the Egyptians, had their theatrical

representations; and, what is singular enough, the Etruscan name for an

actor, _histrio_, is preserved in living languages down to the present

day. The Arabians and Persians, though possessed of a rich poetical

literature, are unacquainted with any sort of drama. It was the same

with Europe in the middle ages. On the introduction of Christianity, the

plays handed down among the Greeks and Romans were abolished, partly

from their reference to Heathen ideas, and partly because they had

degenerated into the most impudent and indecent immorality; and they

were not again revived till after the lapse of nearly a thousand years.

Even in the fourteenth century, we do not find in Boccacio, who,

however, gives us a most accurate picture of the whole constitution of

social life, the smallest trace of plays. In place of them, they had

then only story-tellers, minstrels, and jugglers. On the other hand, we

are by no means entitled to assume, that the invention of the drama has

only once taken place in the world, or that it has always been borrowed

by one people from another. The English navigators mention, that among

the islanders of the South Seas, who, in every mental acquirement, are

in such a low scale of civilization, they yet observed a rude drama, in

which a common event in life was imitated for the sake of diversion. And

to go to the other extreme:—Among the Indians, the people from whom,

perhaps, all the cultivation of the human race has been derived, plays

were known long before they could have experienced any foreign

influence. It has lately been made known to Europe, that they have a

rich dramatic literature, which ascends back for more than two thousand

years. The only specimen of their plays (_nataks_) hitherto known to us,

is the delightful sakontala, which, notwithstanding the colouring of a

foreign climate, bears, in its general structure, such a striking

resemblance to our romantic drama, that we might be inclined to suspect

we owe this resemblance to the predilection for Shakespear entertained

by Jones the English translator, if his fidelity were not confirmed by

other learned Orientalists. In the golden times of India, the

representation of this _natak_ served to delight the splendid imperial

court of Delhi; but it would appear that, from the misery of numberless

oppressions, the dramatic art in that country is now entirely at an end.

The Chinese, again, have their standing national theatre, stationary

perhaps in every sense of the word; and I do not doubt that, in the

establishment of arbitrary rules, and the delicate observance of

insignificant points of decorum, they leave the most correct Europeans

very far behind them. When the new European stage, in the fifteenth

century, had its origin in the allegorical and spiritual pieces called

Moralities and Mysteries, this origin was not owing to the influence of

the ancient dramatists, who did not come into circulation till some time

afterwards. In those rude beginnings lay the germ of the romantic drama

as a peculiar invention.’ p. 28.

The fault of this book is to have too much of every thing, but

especially of Greece; and we cannot help feeling, that the bold and

independent judgment which the author has applied to all other nations,

is somewhat suborned or overawed by his excessive veneration for those

ancient classics. There is a glow and a force, however, in all that he

says upon the subject, that almost persuades us that he is in the

right,—and that there was something incomparably more lofty in the

conceptions of those early times, than the present undignified and

degenerate age can imagine. This imposing and enthusiastic tone

discloses itself in his introductory remarks on the Grecian theatre.

‘When we hear the word theatre,’ he says, ‘we naturally think of what

with us bears the same name; and yet nothing can be more different from

our theatre than the Grecian, in every part of its construction. If, in

reading the Greek pieces, we associate our own stage with them, the

light in which we shall view them must be false in every respect.—The

theatres of the Greeks were quite open above, and their dramas were

always acted in open day, and beneath the canopy of heaven. The Romans,

at an after period, endeavoured by a covering to shelter the audience

from the rays of the sun; but this degree of luxury was hardly ever

enjoyed by the Greeks. Such a state of things appears very inconvenient

to us: But the Greeks had nothing of effeminacy about them; and we must

not forget, too, the beauty of their climate. When they were overtaken

by a storm or a shower, the play was of course interrupted; and they

would much rather expose themselves to an accidental inconvenience,

than, by shutting themselves up in a close and crowded house, entirely

destroy the serenity of a religious solemnity, which their plays

certainly were. To have covered in the scene itself, and imprisoned gods

and heroes in dark and gloomy apartments, imperfectly lighted up, would

have appeared still more ridiculous to them. An action which so nobly

served to establish the belief of the relation with heaven, could only

be exhibited under an unobstructed sky, and under the very eyes of the

gods, as it were, for whom, according to Seneca, the sight of a brave

man struggling with adversity is an attractive spectacle. The theatres

of the ancients were, in comparison with the small scale of ours, of a

colossal magnitude, partly for the sake of containing the whole of the

people, with the concourse of strangers who flocked to the festivals,

and partly to correspond with the majesty of the dramas represented in

them, which required to be seen at a respectful distance.’

One of the most elaborate and interesting parts of this work, is the

account of the Greek tragedians, which is given in the fourth Lecture.

Our extracts from it will be copious, both on account of the importance

of the subject, and the ability with which it is treated.

‘Of the inexhaustible stores possessed by the Greeks in the department

of tragedy, which the public competition at the Athenian festivals

called into being, as the rival poets always contended for a prize, very

little indeed has come down to us. We only possess works of three of

their numerous tragedians, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and these

in no proportion to the number of their compositions. The three authors

in question were selected by the Alexandrian critics as the foundation

for the study of ancient Greek literature, not because they alone were

deserving of estimation, but because they afforded the best illustration

of the various styles of tragedy. Of each of the two oldest poets, we

have seven remaining pieces; in these, however, we have, according to

the testimony of the ancients, several of their most distinguished

productions. Of Euripides, we have a much greater number, and we might

well exchange many of them for other works which are now lost; for

example, the Satirical Dramas of Actæus, Æschylus and Sophocles; several

pieces of Phrynichus, for the sake of comparison with Æschylus; or of

Agathon, whom Plato describes as effeminate, but sweet and affecting,

and who was a contemporary of Euripides, though somewhat younger.

‘The tragic style of Æschylus is grand, severe, and not unfrequently

hard. In the style of Sophocles, we observe the most complete proportion

and harmonious sweetness. The style of Euripides is soft and luxuriant:

Extravagant in his easy fulness, he sacrifices the general effect to

brilliant passages.

‘Æschylus is to be considered as the creator of Tragedy, which sprung

from him completely armed, like Pallas from the head of Jupiter. He

clothed it in a state of suitable dignity, and gave it an appropriate

place of exhibition. He was the inventor of scenic pomp; and not only

instructed the chorus in singing and dancing, but appeared himself in

the character of a player. He was the first who gave development to the

dialogue, and limits to the lyrical part of the tragedy, which still

however occupies too much space in his pieces. He draws his characters

with a few bold and strongly marked features. The plans are simple in

the extreme. He did not understand the art of enriching and varying an

action, and dividing its development and catastrophe into parts, bearing

a due proportion to each other. Hence his action often stands still; and

this circumstance becomes still more apparent, from the undue extension

of his choral songs. But all his poetry betrays a sublime and serious

mind. Terror is his element, and not the softer affections: he holds up

the head of Medusa to his astonished spectators. His manner of treating

Fate is austere in the extreme; he suspends it over the heads of mortals

in all its gloomy majesty. The Cothurnus of Æschylus has, as it were, an

iron weight; gigantic figures alone stalk before our eyes. It seems as

if it required an effort in him to condescend to paint mere men to us:

he abounds most in the representation of gods, and seems to dwell with

particular delight in exhibiting the Titans, those ancient gods who

typify the dark powers of primitive nature, and who had long been driven

into Tartarus, beneath a better regulated world. He endeavours to swell

out his language to a gigantic sublimity, corresponding with the

standard of his characters. Hence he abounds in harsh combinations and

overstrained epithets; and the lyrical parts of his pieces are often

obscure in the extreme, from the involved nature of the construction. He

resembles Dante and Shakespeare in the very singular cast of his images

and expressions. These images are nowise deficient in the terrible

graces, which almost all the writers of antiquity celebrate in Æschylus.

He flourished in the very first vigour of the Grecian freedom; was an

eyewitness of the overthrow and annihilation of the Persian hosts under

Darius and Xerxes; and, in one of his pieces—the Persians—describes in

the most vivid and glowing colours the battle of Salamis.’ p. 94.

Such is the general account of Æschylus given by our author. He then

proceeds to give a distinct sketch of each of his tragedies. This, we

will acknowledge, appears to us considerably too rapturous and too

long;—but we must give our readers a specimen of what is perhaps the

most elaborate, if not the most impressive part of the whole

publication. We shall select his account of the Eumenides or Furies, the

most terrible of all this poet’s compositions.

‘The fable of the Eumenides is the justification and absolution of

Orestes from his bloody crime, the murder of Clytemnestra his mother. It

is a trial, but a trial where the gods are accusers and defenders and

judges; and the manner in which the subject is treated, corresponds with

its majesty and importance. The scene itself brought before the eyes of

the Greeks the highest objects of veneration which were known to them.

It opens before the celebrated temple at Delphi, which occupies the

back-ground. The aged Pythia enters in sacerdotal pomp, addresses her

prayers to the gods who preside over the oracle, harangues the assembled

people, and goes into the temple to seat herself on the tripod. She

returns full of consternation, and describes what she has seen in the

temple; a man stained with blood, supplicating protection, surrounded by

sleeping women with serpent hair. She then makes her exit by the same

entrance. Apollo now appears with Orestes in his traveller’s garb, and a

sword and olive branch in his hands. He promises him his farther

protection, commands him to fly to Athens, and recommends him to the

care of the present but invisible Mercury, to whom travellers, and

especially those who were under the necessity of concealing their

journey, were usually consigned. Orestes goes off at the side allotted

to strangers; Apollo re-enters the temple, which remains open, and the

Furies are seen in the interior sleeping on their seats. Clytemnestra

now ascends through the orchestra, and appears on the stage. We are not

to suppose her a haggard skeleton, but a figure with the appearance of

life, though paler, still bearing her wounds in her breast, and shrouded

in ethereal-coloured vestments. She calls repeatedly to the Furies in

the language of vehement reproach; and then disappears. The Furies

awake; and when they no longer find Orestes, they dance in wild

commotion round the stage during the choral song. Apollo returns from

the temple, and expels them from his sanctuary as profanatory beings.

_We may here suppose him appearing with the sublime displeasure of the

Apollo of the Vatican, with bow and quiver, or clothed in his sacred

tunic and chlamys._ The scene now changes; but the back-ground probably

remained unchanged, and had now to represent the temple of Minerva on

the hill of Mars; and the lateral decorations would be converted into

Athens and the surrounding landscape. Orestes comes as from another

land, and embraces as a suppliant the statue of Pallas placed before the

temple. The chorus (who were clothed in black, with purple girdles, and

serpents in their hair), follow him on foot to this place, but remain

throughout the rest of the piece beneath in the orchestra. The Furies

had at first exhibited the rage of beasts of prey at the escape of their

victim; but they now sing with tranquil dignity their high and terrible

office among mortals, claim the head of Orestes as forfeited to them,

and consecrate it with mysterious charms of endless pain. Pallas, the

warlike virgin, appears in a chariot and four at the intercession of the

suppliant. She listens with calm dignity to the mutual complaints of

Orestes and his adversaries, and finally undertakes the office of umpire

at the solicitation of the two parties. The assembled judges take their

seats on the steps of the temple; the herald commands silence among the

people by sound of trumpet, as at an actual tribunal. Apollo advances to

advocate the cause of the youth; the Furies in vain oppose his

interference; and the arguments for and against the deed are gone

through in short speeches. The judges throw their calculi into the urn;

Pallas throws in a white one; all are wrought up to the highest pitch of

expectation; Orestes calls out, full of anguish, to his protector: “_O

Phœbus Apollo, how is the cause decided?_”—The Furies on the other hand,

exclaim—“_O Black Night, mother of all things, dost thou behold this?_”

In the enumeration of the black and white pebbles, they are found equal

in number, and the accused is therefore declared by Pallas acquitted of

the charge. He breaks out into joyful expressions of thanks, while the

Furies declaim against the arrogance of the younger gods, who take such

liberties with the race of Titan. Pallas bears their rage with

equanimity; addresses them in the language of kindness, and even of

veneration; and these beings, so untractable in their general

disposition, are unable to withstand the power of her mild and

convincing eloquence. They promise to bless the land over which she has

dominion; while Pallas assigns them a sanctuary in the Attic territory,

where they are to be called the Eumenides, that is, the Benevolent. The

whole ends with a solemn procession round the theatre, with songs of

invocation; while bands of children, women, and old men, in purple robes

and with torches in their hands, accompany the Furies in their exit.’ p.

104.

The situation of Orestes at the opening of this tragedy, with the Furies

lying asleep on the floor, like aged women, with serpent hair, is

perhaps the most terrible that can be conceived. But yet, in this

situation, dreadful as it is—the sense of power; the representation of

preternatural forms; the sacredness of the place; the momentary suspense

of the action; the death like stillness; the expectation of what is to

come, subdue the spirit to a tone of awful tranquillity, and, from the

depth of despair, produce a lofty grandeur and collectedness of mind.

If this extraordinary play be the most terrible of Æschylus’s works, the

Chained Prometheus is the grandest. It is less a tragedy than an ode. It

does not describe a series of actions, but a succession of visions.

Prometheus, chained to a rock on the verge of the world, holds parley

with the original powers and oldest forms of Nature, with Strength and

Violence, and Oceanus and the race of the Titans. Compared with the

personages introduced in this poem, Jupiter and Mercury, and the rest of

that class, appear mere modern deities; we are thrown back into the

first rude chaos of Nature, where the universe itself seems to rock like

the sea, and the empire of heaven was not yet fixed.

‘Prometheus,’ says our author, ‘is an image of human nature itself;

endowed with a miserable foresight, and bound down to a narrow

existence, without an ally, and with nothing to oppose to the combined

and inexorable powers of Nature, but an unshaken will, and the

consciousness of elevated claims. The other poems of the Greek

tragedians are single tragedies; but this may be called tragedy itself;

its purest spirit is revealed with all the overpowering influence of its

first unmitigated austerity.’

We agree with M. Schlegel, when he says, that ‘there is little external

action in this piece: Prometheus merely suffers and resolves from the

beginning to the end.’ But we cannot assent to his assertion, that ‘the

poet has contrived, in a masterly manner, to introduce variety into that

which was in itself determinate.’ All that is fine in it, is the

abstract conception of the characters: The story is as uninteresting, as

it is inartificial and improbable.

The Seven before Thebes has also a very imperfect dramatic form. It is

for the most part only a narrative or descriptive dialogue passing

between two persons, the King and the Messenger. ‘The description of the

attack with which the city is threatened,’ says our critic, ‘and of the

seven leaders who have sworn its destruction, and who display their

arrogance in the symbols borne on their shields, is an epic subject,

clothed in the pomp of tragedy.’ The Agamemnon and Electra are the two

tragedies of Æschylus, which approach the nearest to the perfection of

the dramatic form, and which will bear an immediate comparison with

those of Sophocles on the same subjects. M. Schlegel has drawn a

detailed and very admirable parallel between the two poets. Sophocles,

he observes, is the more elegant painter of outward forms and manners;

but Æschylus catches most of the enthusiasm of the passion he describes,

and communicates to the reader the lofty impulses of his own mind. In

giving a poetical colouring to objects from the suggestions of his own

genius—in describing not so much things themselves, as the impression

which they make on the imagination in a state of strong excitement, he

more nearly resembles some of the modern poets, than any of his

countrymen. The magnificent opening of the Agamemnon, in which the

watchman describes the appearance of the fires for which he had watched

ten long years, as the signal of the destruction of Troy, might be cited

as an instance of that rich and varied style, which gives something over

the bare description of the subject, and luxuriates in the display of

its own powers. The Ajax of Sophocles comes the nearest to the general

style of Æschylus, both in the nakedness of the subject, and the

poetical interest given to the character.

The account of Sophocles, which is next in order, is one of the most

finished and interesting parts of this work: though it is disfigured by

one extraordinary piece of rhodomontade, too characteristic to be

omitted. After observing that Sophocles lived to be upwards of ninety

years of age, our philosophical German breaks out into the following

mystic strain.

‘It would seem as if the Gods, in return for his dedicating himself at

an early age to Bacchus as the giver of all joy, and the author of the

cultivation of the human race, by the representation of tragical dramas

for his festivals, had wished to confer immortality on him, so long did

they delay the hour of his death; but, as this was impossible, they

extinguished his life at least as gently as possible, that he might

imperceptibly change one immortality for another—the long duration of

his earthly existence for an imperishable name.’ p. 117.

We cannot afford to enter into the detailed critique which M. Schlegel

has here offered upon the several plays of this celebrated author. The

following passage exhibits a more summary view of them. After mentioning

the native sweetness for which he was so celebrated among his

contemporaries, he observes—

‘Whoever is thoroughly imbued with the feeling of this property, may

flatter himself that a sense for ancient art has arisen within him: for

the lovers of the affected sentimentality of the present day would, both

in the representation of bodily sufferings, and in the language and

economy of the tragedies of Sophocles, find much of an insupportable

austerity. When we consider the great fertility of Sophocles, for,

according to some, he wrote a hundred and thirty pieces, and eighty

according to the most moderate account, we cannot help wondering that

seven only should have come down to us. Chance, however, has so far

favoured us, that, in these seven pieces, we find several which were

held by the ancients as his greatest works, Antigone, for example,

Electra, and the two Œdipuses; and these have also come down to us

tolerably free from mutilation and corruption in the text. The first

Œdipus and Philoctetes have been generally, without any good reason,

preferred to all the others by the modern critics: the first, on account

of the artifice of the plot, in which the dreadful catastrophe,

powerfully calculated to excite our curiosity (a rare case in the Greek

tragedies), is brought about inevitably, by a succession of causes, all

dependent on one another: the latter, on account of the masterly display

of character, the beautiful contrast observable in the three leading

individuals, and the simple structure of the piece, in which, with so

few persons, every thing proceeds from the truest motives. But the whole

of the tragedies of Sophocles are conspicuous for their separate

excellences. In Antigone we have the purest display of female heroism;

in Ajax the manly feeling of honour in its whole force; in the

Trachiniæ, the female levity of Dejanira is beautifully atoned for by

her death; and the sufferings of Hercules are pourtrayed with suitable

dignity. Electra is distinguished for energy and pathos; in Œdipus

Coloneus there prevails the mildest emotion, and over the whole piece

there is diffused the utmost sweetness. I will not undertake to weigh

the respective merits of these pieces against each other; but I am free

to confess that I entertain a singular predilection for the last of

them, as it appears to me the most expressive of the personal feelings

of the poet himself. As this piece was written for the very purpose of

throwing a lustre upon Athens, and the spot of his birth more

particularly, he appears to have laboured it with a remarkable degree of

fondness.’ p. 123.

In describing the Œdipus Coloneus, M. Schlegel has strikingly, and, we

think, beautifully, exemplified the distinct genius of Sophocles and

Æschylus, in the use these two poets make of the Furies.

‘In Æschylus,’ he says, ‘before the victim of persecution can be saved,

the hellish horror of the Furies must congeal the blood of the

spectator, and make his hair stand on end; and the whole rancour of

these goddesses of rage must be exhausted. The transition to their

peaceful retreat is therefore the more astonishing: It seems as if the

whole human race were redeemed from their power. In Sophocles, however,

they do not even once make their appearance, but are altogether kept in

the back-ground; and they are not called by their proper name, but made

known to us by descriptions, in which they are a good deal spared. But

even this obscurity and distance, so suitable to these daughters of

Night, is calculated to excite in us a still dread, in which the bodily

senses have no part. The clothing the grove of the Furies with all the

charms of a southern spring, completes the sweetness of the poem: and

were I to select an emblem of the poetry of Sophocles from his

tragedies, I should describe it as a sacred grove of the dark goddesses

of Fate, in which the laurel, the olive, and the vine, display their

luxuriant vegetation, and the song of the nightingale is for ever

heard.’ p. 128.

After all, however, the tragedies of Sophocles, which are the perfection

of the classical style, are hardly tragedies in our sense of the word.

They do not exhibit the extremity of human passion and suffering. The

object of modern tragedy is to represent the soul utterly subdued as it

were, or at least convulsed and overthrown by passion or misfortune.

That of the ancients was to show how the greatest crimes could be

perpetrated with the least remorse, and the greatest calamities borne

with the least emotion. Firmness of purpose, and calmness of sentiment,

are their leading characteristics. Their heroes and heroines act and

suffer as if they were always in the presence of a higher power, or as

if human life itself were a religious ceremony, performed in honour of

the Gods and of the State. The mind is not shaken to its centre; the

whole being is not crushed or broken down. Contradictory motives are not

accumulated; the utmost force of imagination and passion is not

exhausted to overcome the repugnance of the will to crime; the contrast

and combination of outward accidents are not called in to overwhelm the

mind with the whole weight of unexpected calamity. The dire conflict of

the feelings, the desperate struggle with fortune, are seldom there. All

is conducted with a fatal composure. All is prepared and submitted to

with inflexible constancy, as if Nature were only an instrument in the

hands of Fate.

It is for deviating from this ideal standard, and for a nearer

approximation to the frailty of human passion, that our author falls

foul of Euripides without mercy. There is a great deal of affectation

and mysticism in what he says on this subject. Allowing that the

excellences of Euripides are not the same as those of Æschylus and

Sophocles, or even that they are excellences of an inferior order, yet

it does not follow that they are defects. The luxuriance and effeminacy

with which he reproaches the style of Euripides might have been defects

in those writers; but they are essential parts of his system. In fact,

as Æschylus differs from Sophocles in giving greater scope to the

impulses of the imagination, so Euripides differs from him in giving

greater indulgence to the feelings of the heart. The heart is the seat

of pure affection,—of involuntary emotion,—of feelings brooding over and

nourished by themselves. In the dramas of Sophocles, there is no want of

these feelings; but they are suppressed or suspended by the constant

operation of the senses and the will. Beneath the rigid muscles by which

the heart is there braced, there is no room left for those bursts of

uncontrollable feeling, which dissolve it in tenderness, or plunge it

into the deepest woe. In the heroic tragedy, no one dies of a broken

heart,—scarcely a sigh is heaved, or a tear shed. Euripides has relaxed

considerably from this extreme self-possession; and it is on that

account that our critic cannot forgive him. The death of Alcestis alone

might have disarmed his severity.

This play, which is the most beautiful of them all,—the Iphigenia, which

is the next to it,—the Phædra and Medea, which are more objectionable,

both from the nature of the subject, and the inferiority of the

execution, are instances of the occasional use which Euripides made of

the conflict of different passions. Though Antigone, in Sophocles, is in

love with Hæmon, and though there was here an evident opportunity, and

almost a necessity, for introducing a struggle between this passion,

which was an additional motive to attach her to life, and her affection

to the memory of her brother, which led her to sacrifice it, the poet

has carefully avoided taking any advantage of the circumstance. Such is

the spirit of the heroic tragedy, which suffers no other motives to

interfere with the calm determination of the will, and which admits of

nothing complicated in the development, either of the passions or the

story! M. Schlegel decidedly prefers the Hippolytus of Euripides to the

Phædra of Racine. His reasons he gives in another work, which we have

not seen; but we are not at a loss to guess at them. His taste for

poetry is just the reverse of the popular: He has a horror of whatever

obtrudes itself violently on the notice, or tells at first sight; and is

only disposed to admire those retired and recondite beauties which hide

themselves from all but the eye of deep discernment. He relishes most

those qualities in an author which require the greatest sagacity in the

critic to find them out,—as none but connoisseurs are fond of the taste

of olives. We shall say nothing here of the choice of the subject; but

such as it is, Racine has met it more fully and directly: Euripides

exhibits it, for the most part, in the back-ground. The Hippolytus is a

dramatic fragment in which the principal events are given in a narrative

form. The additions which Racine has chiefly borrowed from Seneca to

fill up the outline, are, we think, unquestionable improvements. The

declaration of love, to which our author particularly objects, is,

however, much more gross and unqualified in Racine than in Seneca. The

modern additions to the Iphigenia in Aulis, by Racine, as the love

between Achilles and Iphigenia, and the jealousy of Eriphile, certainly

destroy the propriety of costume, as M. Schlegel has observed, without

heightening the tragic interest. In other respects, the French play is

little more than an elegant, flowing, and somewhat diffuse paraphrase of

the Greek. The most striking example of pathos in it is the ‘_Tu y

seras, ma fille_,’ addressed by Agamemnon to his daughter, in answer to

her wish to be present at the sacrifice, of which she is herself the

destined victim.

Euripides was the model of Racine among the French, as he was of Seneca

among the Romans. The remarks which Schlegel makes on this

last-mentioned author are exceedingly harsh, dogmatical, and intolerant.

They are as bad, and worse, than the sentence pronounced by Cowley on

——‘The dry chips of short-lung’d Seneca.’

Hear what he says of him.

‘But whatever period may have given birth to the tragedies of Seneca,

they are beyond description bombastical and frigid, unnatural in

character and action—revolting, from their violation of every

propriety—and so destitute of every thing like theatrical effect—that I

am inclined to believe they were never destined to leave the rhetorical

schools for the stage. Every tragical common-place is spun out to the

very last; all is phrase; and even the most common remark is delivered

in stilted language. The most complete poverty of sentiment is dressed

out with wit and acuteness. There is even a display of fancy in them,

_or at least a phantom of it_; for they contain an example of the

misapplication of every mental faculty. The author or authors have found

out the secret of being diffuse, even to wearisomeness; and at the same

time so epigrammatically laconic, as to be often obscure and

unintelligible. Their characters are neither ideal nor actual beings,

but gigantic puppets, who are at one time put in motion by the string of

an unnatural heroism, and, at another, by that of passions equally

unnatural, which no guilt nor enormity can appal.’—‘Yet not merely

learned men, without a feeling for art, have judged favourably of them,

nay preferred them to the Greek tragedies, but even poets have accounted

them deserving of their study and imitation. The influence of Seneca on

Corneille’s idea of tragedy cannot be mistaken: Racine, too, in his

Phædra, has condescended to borrow a good deal from him; and, among

other things, nearly the whole of the declaration of love, of all which

we have an enumeration in Brumoy.’

The distaste of our learned critic to Euripides is sanctioned, no doubt,

by the ridicule of Aristophanes, from whom he gives a whole scene, in

which a buffoon comes to the tragic poet, to beg his rags, his

alms-basket, and his water-pitcher, in allusion to the homeliness of

costume, and the outward signs of distress which are sometimes exhibited

in his tragedies. Aristophanes, of course, is an immense favourite with

Schlegel—though it requires all his ingenuity to gloss over and

allegorize his extravagance and indecency.

‘The plays of Peace, the Acharnæ and Lysistrata, will be found to

recommend peace. In the Clouds, he laughs at the metaphysics of the

sophists; in the Wasps, at the rage of the Athenians for hearing and

determining lawsuits. The subject of the Frogs is the decline of the

tragic art; and Plutus is an allegory on the unjust distribution of

wealth. The Birds are, of all his pieces, the one _of which the aim is

the least apparent; and it is on that very account one of the most

diverting_.’ p. 213.

The comedies of Aristophanes, we confess, put the archaism of our taste,

and the soundness of our classic faith to a most severe test. The great

difficulty is not so much to understand their meaning, as to comprehend

their species—to know to what possible class to assign them—of what

nondescript productions of nature or art they are to be considered as

anomalies. According to Schlegel, who might be styled the Œdipus of

criticism, they are the perfection of _the old comedy_. There is much

virtue, we are aware, in that appellation: But to us, we confess, they

appear to be neither comedies, nor farces, nor satires—but monstrous

allegorical pantomimes—enormous practical jokes—far-fetched puns,

represented by ponderous machinery, which staggers the imagination at

its first appearance, and breaks down before it has answered its

purpose. They show, in a more striking point of view than any thing

else, the extreme subtlety of understanding of the ancients, and their

appetite for the gross, the material, and the sensible. Compared with

Aristophanes, Rabelais himself is plain and literal. For example—

‘Peace begins in the most spirited and lively manner. The

tranquilly-disposed Trygæus rides on a dunghill beetle to heaven, in the

manner of Bellerophon: War, a desolating giant, with Tumult his

companion, in place of all the other gods, inhabits Olympus, and pounds

the cities in a great mortar, making use of the celebrated generals as

pestles; Peace lies bound in a deep well, and is dragged up by a rope,

through the united efforts of all the Greek states,’ &c.

Again—

‘It is said of a man addicted to unintelligible reveries, that he is up

in the clouds:—accordingly Socrates, in the play of the _Clouds_, is

actually let down in a basket at his first appearance.’

The comic machinery in Aristophanes, is, for the most part, a parody on

the Greek mythology, and his wit a travestie on Euripides. Whatever we

may think of his talent in this way, the art itself of making sense into

nonsense, and of letting down the sublime into the ludicrous, in general

is rather a cheap one, and implies much more a want of feeling than an

excess of wit.

The account which is given of the _old_, the _middle_, and the _new

comedy_, is very learned and dogmatical. The different styles and

authors rise in value with the critic, in proportion as he knows nothing

of them. He likes that, which some old commentator has praised, better

than what he has read himself; and that still better, which neither he

himself, nor any one else, has read. Diphilus, Philemon, Apollodorus,

Menander, Sophron, and the Sicilian Epicharmus, whose works are lost,

are prodigiously great men; and the author, ‘tries conclusions infinite’

respecting their different possible merits. On the contrary, Terence is

only half a Menander, and Plautus a coarse buffoon. In spite, however,

of this fastidiousness, he cannot deny the elegant humanity of the one,

nor the strong native humour of the other. The style of these writers,

particularly that of Terence, is admirable for a certain conversational

ease, and correct simplicity, exactly in the mid-way between

carelessness and affectation. But M. Schlegel has a mode of doing away

this merit, by observing, that

‘Plautus and Terence were among the most ancient Roman writers, and

belonged to a time when the language of books was hardly yet in

existence, and when every thing was drawn fresh from life. This _naïve_

simplicity had its charms in the eyes of those Romans, who belonged to

the period of learned cultivation; but it was much more a natural gift,

than the fruit of poetical art.’

We shall conclude this part of the subject, with his observations on the

nature and range of the characters introduced into the ancient Comedy.

‘Athens, where the fictitious, as well as the actual scenes, were

generally placed, was the centre of a small territory; and in nowise to

be compared with our great cities, either in extent or population. The

republican equality admitted no marked distinction of ranks: There were

no proper nobility; all were alike citizens, richer or poorer; and, for

the most part, had no other occupation, than that of managing their

properties. Hence the Attic comedy could not well admit of the contrasts

arising from diversity of tone and conversation; it generally continues

in a sort of middle state, and has something citizen-like; nay, if I may

so say, something of the manners of a small town about it, which we do

not see in those comedies, in which the manners of a court, and the

refinement or corruption of monarchial capitals, are pourtrayed.

‘From what has been premised, we may at once see nearly the whole circle

of characters; nay, those which perpetually occur, are so few, that they

may almost all of them be here enumerated. The austere and frugal, or

the mild and yielding father, the latter not unfrequently under the

dominion of his wife, and making common cause with his son; the

housewife, either loving and sensible, or obstinate and domineering, and

proud of the accession brought by her to the family-property; the giddy

and extravagant, but open and amiable, young man, who, even in a

passion, sensual at its very commencement, is capable of true

attachment; the vivacious girl, who is either thoroughly depraved, vain,

cunning and selfish—or well-disposed, and susceptible of higher

emotions; the simple and boorish, or the cunning slave, who assists his

young master to deceive his old father, and obtain money for the

gratification of his passions by all manner of tricks; the flatterer, or

accommodating parasite, who, for the sake of a good meal, is ready to

say or do any thing that may be required of him; the sycophant, a man

whose business it was to set quietly-disposed people by the ears, and

stir up lawsuits, for which he offered his services; the braggart

soldier, who returns from foreign service, generally cowardly and

simple, but who assumes airs from the fame of the deeds performed by him

abroad; and, lastly, a servant, or pretended mother, who preaches up a

bad system of morals to the young girl entrusted to her guidance; and

the slave-dealer, who speculates on the extravagant passions of young

people, and knows no other object than the furtherance of his own

selfish views. The two last characters are to our feelings a blemish in

the new Grecian comedy; but it was impossible, from the manner in which

it was constituted, to dispense with them.’ p. 263.

We must now pass on to modern literature.—Of the Italian drama, which is

the least prolific part of their literature, we shall shortly have to

speak with reference to another work; and shall at present proceed to

our author’s account of the French Theatre, which forms a class by

itself, and which is here most ably analyzed.

‘With respect to the earlier tragical attempts of the French in the last

half of the sixteenth, and the first part of the seventeenth century, we

refer to Fontenelle, La Harpe, the _Melanges Litteraires_ of Suard and

Andre. Our chief object is an examination of the system of tragic art,

practically followed by their later poets; and by them partly, but by

the French critics universally, considered as alone entitled to any

authority, and every deviation from it viewed as a sin against good

taste. If the system is in itself the best, we shall be compelled to

allow that its execution is masterly, perhaps not to be surpassed. But

the great question here is, how far the French tragedy is, in spirit and

inward essence, related to the Greek, and whether it deserves to be

considered as an improvement upon it.

‘Of their first attempts, it is only necessary to observe, that the

endeavour to imitate the ancients displayed itself at a very early

period in France; and that they conceived that the surest method of

succeeding in this endeavour, was to observe the strictest outward

regularity of form, of which they derived their ideas more from

Aristotle, and especially from Seneca, than from an intimate

acquaintance with the Greek models themselves. In the first tragedies

which were represented, the Cleopatra and Dido of Jodelle, a prologue

and chorus were introduced; Jean de la Peruse translated the Medea of

Seneca; Garnier’s pieces are all taken from the Greek tragedies, or from

Seneca; but, in the execution, they bear a much closer examination to

the latter. The writers of that day employed themselves also diligently

on the Sophonisba of Trissino, from a regard for its classic appearance.

Whoever is acquainted with the mode of proceeding of real genius, which

is impelled by the almost unconscious and immediate contemplation of

great and important truths, will be extremely suspicious of all activity

in art, which originates in an abstract theory. But Corneille did not,

like an antiquary, execute his dramas as so many learned school

exercises, on the model of the ancients. Seneca, it is true, led him

astray; but he knew and loved the Spanish theatre; and it had a great

influence on his mind. The first of his pieces with which it is

generally allowed that the classical epoch of French tragedy begins, and

which is certainly one of his best, the _Cid_, is well known to have

been borrowed from the Spanish. It violates, considerably, the unity of

place, if not also that of time, and it is animated throughout by the

spirit of chivalrous love and honour. But the opinion of his

contemporaries, that a tragedy must be framed accurately according to

the rules of Aristotle, was so universally prevalent, that it bore down

all opposition. Corneille, almost at the close of his dramatic career,

began to entertain scruples of conscience; and endeavoured, in a

separate treatise, to prove, that his pieces, in the composition of

which he had never even thought of Aristotle, were, however, all

accurately written according to his rules.

‘It is quite otherwise with Racine: of all the French poets he was,

without doubt, the best acquainted with the ancients, and he did not

merely study them as a scholar; he felt them as a poet. He found,

however, the practice of the theatre already firmly established, and he

did not undertake to deviate from it for the sake of approaching these

models. He only therefore appropriated the separate beauties of the

Greek poets; but, whether from respect for the taste of his age, or from

inclination, he remained faithful to the prevailing gallantry, so

foreign to the Greek tragedy, and for the most part made it the

foundation of the intrigues of his pieces.

‘Such was nearly the state of the French theatre till Voltaire made his

appearance. He possessed but a moderate knowledge of the Greeks, of

whom, however, he now and then spoke with enthusiasm, that on other

occasions he might rank them below the more modern masters of his own

nation, including himself; but yet he always considered himself bound to

preach up the grand severity and simplicity of the Greeks as essential

to tragedy. He censured the deviations of his predecessors as errors,

and insisted on purifying and at the same time enlarging the stage, as,

in his opinion, from the constraint of court manners, it had been almost

straitened to the dimensions of an antichamber. He at first spoke of the

bursts of genius in Shakespear, and borrowed many things from this poet,

at that time altogether unknown to his countrymen; he insisted too on

greater depth in the delineation of passion, on a more powerful

theatrical effect; he demanded a scene ornamented in a more majestic

manner; and lastly, he not unfrequently endeavoured to give to his

pieces a political or philosophical interest altogether foreign to

poetry. His labours have unquestionably been of utility to the French

stage, although it is now the fashion to attack this idol of the last

age, on every point, with the most unrelenting hostility’ p. 323.

M. Schlegel very ably exposes the incongruities which have arisen from

engrafting modern style and sentiments on mythological and classical

subjects in the French writers.

‘In Phædra,’ he says, ‘this princess is to be declared regent for her

son till he comes of age, after the supposed death of Theseus. How could

this be compatible with the relations of the Grecian women of that

day?—It brings us down to the times of a Cleopatra.—When the way of

thinking of two nations is so totally opposite, why will they torment

themselves with attempts to fashion a subject, formed on the manners of

the one to suit the manners of the other?—How unlike the Achilles in

Racine’s Iphigenia to the Achilles of Homer! The gallantry ascribed to

him is not merely a sin against Homer, but it renders the whole story

improbable. Are human sacrifices conceivable among a people, whose

chiefs and heroes are so susceptible of the most tender feelings?’

‘Corneille was in the best way in the world when he brought his Cid on

the stage; a story of the middle ages, which belonged to a kindred

people; a story characterized by chivalrous love and honour, and in

which the principal characters are not even of princely rank. Had this

example been followed, a number of prejudices respecting tragical

ceremony would of themselves have disappeared; tragedy, from its greater

truth, from deriving its motives from a way of thinking still current

and intelligible, would have been less foreign to the heart; the quality

of the objects would of themselves have turned them from the stiff

observation of the rules of the ancients, which they did not understand;

in one word, the French tragedy would have become national and truly

romantic. But I know not what unfortunate star had the ascendant.

Notwithstanding the extraordinary success of his Cid, Corneille did not

go one step farther; and the attempt which he made had no imitators. In

the time of Louis XIV. it was considered as beyond dispute, that the

French, and in general the modern European history was not adapted for

tragedy. They had recourse therefore to the ancient universal history.

Besides the Greeks and Romans, they frequently hunted about among the

Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Egyptians, for events, which,

however obscure they might often be, they could dress out for the tragic

stage. Racine made, according to his own confession, a hazardous attempt

with the Turks: It was successful; and since that time, the necessary

tragical dignity has been allowed to this barbarous people. But it was

merely the modern, and more particularly the French names, which could

not be tolerated as untragical and unpoetical; for the heroes of

antiquity are, with them, Frenchmen in every thing but the name; and

antiquity was merely used as a thin veil under which the modern French

character could be distinctly recognized. Racine’s Alexander is

certainly not the Alexander of history: but if, under this name, we

imagine to ourselves the great Condé, the whole will appear tolerably

natural.—And who does not suppose Louis XIV. and the Dutchess de la

Valiere represented under Titus and Berenice? Voltaire expresses himself

somewhat strongly, when he says, that, in the tragedies which succeeded

those of Racine, we imagine we are reading the romances of Mademoiselle

Scuderi, which paint citizens of Paris under the names of heroes of

antiquity. He alluded here more particularly to Crebillon. However much

Corneille and Racine were tainted with the way of thinking of their own

nation, they were still at times penetrated with the spirit of true

_objective_ exhibition. Corneille gives us a masterly picture of the

Spaniards in the Cid; and this is conceivable—for he drew his materials

from them. With the exception of the original sin of gallantry, he

succeeded also pretty well with the Romans: Of one part of their

character at least, he had a tolerable conception, their predominating

patriotism, and unyielding pride of liberty, and the magnanimity of

their political sentiments. All this, it is true, is nearly the same as

we find it in Lucan, varnished over with a certain inflation and

self-conscious pomp. The simple republican austerity, the humility of

religion, he could not attain. Racine (in Britannicus) has admirably

painted the corrupt manners of the Romans under the Emperors, and the

timid and dastardly manner in which the tyranny of Nero first began to

display itself. He had Tacitus indeed for a model, as he himself

gratefully acknowledges; but still it is a great merit to translate

history in such an able manner into poetry. He has also shown a just

conception of the general spirit of Hebrew history. He was less

successful with the Turks: Bajazet makes love wholly in the European

manner: The blood-thirsty policy of Eastern despotism is very well

pourtrayed in the Vizier; but the whole resembles Turkey turned upside

down, where the women, instead of being slaves, have contrived to get

possession of the government; and the result is so very revolting, that

we might be inclined to infer, from it, the Turks are really not so much

to blame in keeping their women under lock and key. Neither has

Voltaire, in my opinion, succeeded much better in his Mahomet and Zaire:

the glowing colours of an Oriental fancy are no where to be found.

Voltaire has, however, this great merit, that he insisted on treating

subjects with more historical truth; and further, that he again elevated

to the dignity of the tragical stage the chivalrous and Christian

characters of modern Europe, which, since the time of the Cid, had been

altogether excluded from it. His Lusignan and Nerestan are among his

most true, affecting, and noble creations; his Tancred, although the

invention as a whole is defective in strength, will always gain upon

every heart, like his namesake in Tasso.’ p. 369.

Our author prefers Racine to Corneille, and even seems to think Voltaire

more natural: but he has exhausted all that can be said of French

tragedy in his account of Corneille; and all that he adds upon Racine

and Voltaire, is only a modification of the same general principles. He

has been able to give no general character of either, as distinct from

the original founder of the French dramatic school; Corneille had more

pomp, Racine more tenderness; Voltaire aimed at a stronger effect: But

the essential qualities are the same in all of them; the style is always

French, as much as the language in which they write.

‘It has been often remarked, that, in French tragedy, the poet is always

too easily seen through the discourses of the different personages; that

he communicates to them his own presence of mind; his cool reflection on

their situation; and his desire to shine upon all occasions. When we

accurately examine the most of their tragical speeches, we shall find

that they are seldom such as would be delivered by persons, speaking or

acting by themselves without any restraint; we shall generally discover

in them something which betrays a reference, more or less perceptible,

to the spectator. Rhetoric, and rhetoric in a court dress, prevails but

too much in many French tragedies, especially in those of Corneille,

instead of the suggestions of a noble, but simple and artless nature:

Racine and Voltaire have approximated much nearer to the true conception

of a mind carried away by its sufferings. Whenever the tragic hero is

able to express his pain in antitheses and ingenious allusions, we may

safely dispense with our pity. This sort of conventional dignity is, as

it were, a coat of mail, to prevent the blow from reaching the inward

parts. On account of their retaining this festal pomp, in situations

where the most complete self-forgetfulness would be natural, Schiller

has wittily enough compared the heroes in French tragedy to the kings in

old copperplates, who are seen lying in bed with their mantle, crown,

and sceptre.’ p. 373, &c.

Racine is deservedly the favourite of the French nation; for, besides

the perfection of his style, and a complete mastery over his art,

according to the rules prescribed by the national taste, there is a

certain tenderness of sentiment, a movement of the heart, under all the

artificial pomp by which it is disguised, which cannot fail to interest

the reader. His _Athalie_ is perhaps the most perfect of all his pieces.

Some of the lyrical descriptions are equally delightful, from the beauty

of the rhythm and the imagery. We might mention the chorus in which the

infant Joaz is compared to a young lily on the side of a stream. Poetry

is the union of imagery with sentiment; and yet nothing can be more rare

than this union in French tragedy. Another passage in Racine, which

might be quoted as an exception to their general style, is the speech of

Phædra describing her descent into the other world, which is, however, a

good deal made up from Seneca; and indeed it is the fault of this

author, that he leans too constantly for support on others, and is

rather the accomplished imitator than the original inventor. There is

but one thing wanting to his plays—that they should have been his own.

He can no more be considered as the author of the Iphigenia, for

instance, than La Fontaine can be considered as the inventor of Æsop’s

fables. Voltaire is more original in the choice of his subjects. But the

means by which he seeks to give an interest to them, are of the most

harsh and violent kind; and, even in the variety of his materials, he

shows the monotony of his invention. Four of his principal tragedies

turn entirely on the question of religious apostasy, or on the conflict

between the attachment of supposed orphans to their newly discovered

parents, and their obligations to their old benefactors. As a relief,

however, the scene of these four tragedies is laid in the four opposite

quarters of the globe.

M. Schlegel speaks highly of Racine’s comedy, ‘_Les Plaideurs_‘; and

thinks that if he had cultivated his talents for comedy, he would have

proved a formidable rival of Moliere. He might very probably have

succeeded in imitating the long speeches which Moliere too often

imitated from Racine; but nothing can (we think) be more unlike, than

the real genius of the two writers. In fact, Moliere is almost as much

an English as a French author,—quite a _barbare_, in all in which he

particularly excels. He was unquestionably one of the greatest comic

geniuses that ever lived; a man of infinite wit, gaiety, and

invention,—full of life, laughter, and observation. But it cannot be

denied that his plays are in general mere farces, without nature,

refinement of character, or common probability. Several of them could

not be carried on for a moment without a perfect collusion between the

parties to wink at impossibilities, and act in defiance of all common

sense. For instance, take the _Medecin malgre lui_, in which a common

wood-cutter takes upon himself, and is made to support, through a whole

play, the character of a learned physician, without exciting the least

suspicion; and yet, notwithstanding the absurdity of the plot, it is one

of the most laughable, and truly comic productions, that can well be

imagined. The rest of his lighter pieces, the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_,

_Monsieur Pourceaugnac_, &c. are of the same description,—gratuitous

fictions, and fanciful caricatures of nature. He indulges in the utmost

license of burlesque exaggeration; and gives a loose to the intoxication

of his animal spirits. With respect to his two most laboured comedies,

the Tartuffe and Misanthrope, we confess that we find them rather hard

to get through. They have the improbability and extravagance of the

rest, united with the endless common-place prosing of French

declamation. What can exceed the absurdity of the Misanthrope, who

leaves his mistress, after every proof of her attachment and constancy,

for no other reason than that she will not submit to the _technical

formality_ of going to live with him in a desert? The characters which

Celimene gives of her friends, near the opening of the play, are

admirable satires, (as good as Pope’s characters of women), but not

comedy. The same remarks apply in a greater degree to the Tartuffe. The

long speeches and reasonings in this play may be very good logic, or

rhetoric, or philosophy, or any thing but comedy. If each of the parties

had retained a special pleader to speak his sentiments, they could not

have appeared more tiresome or intricate. The improbability of the

character of Orgon is wonderful. The _Ecole des Femmes_, from which

Wycherley has borrowed the Country Wife, with the true spirit of

original genius, is, in our judgment, the masterpiece of Moliere. The

set speeches in the original play would not be borne on the English

stage, nor indeed on the French, but that they are carried off by the

verse. The _Critique de L’Ecole des Femmes_, the dialogue of which is

prose, is written in a very different style.

Our author attributes the ambitious loquacity of the French drama to

their characteristic vanity, and the general desire of this nation to

shine on all occasions. But this principle seems itself to require a

prior cause, namely, a facility of shining on all occasions, and a

disposition to admire every thing. It has been remarked, as a general

rule, that the theatrical amusements of a people, which are intended as

a relaxation from their ordinary pursuits and habits, are by no means a

test of the national character; and it is a confirmation of this

opinion, that the French, who are naturally a lively and impatient

people, should be able to sit and hear with such delight their own

dramatic pieces, which abound, for the most part, in sententious maxims

and solemn declamation, and would appear quite insupportable to an

English audience, though the latter are considered as a dull, phlegmatic

people, much more likely to be tolerant of formal descriptions and grave

reflections.

_Extremes meet._ This is the only way of accounting for that enigma, the

French character. It has often been remarked, indeed, that this

ingenious nation exhibits more striking contradictions in its general

deportment than any other that ever existed. They are the gayest of the

gay, and the gravest of the grave. Their very faces pass at once from an

expression of the most lively animation, when they are in conversation

or action, to a melancholy blank. They are one moment the slaves of the

most contemptible prejudices, and the next launch out into all the

extravagance of the most dangerous speculations. In matters of taste

they are as inexorable as they are lax in questions of morality: they

judge of the one by rules, of the other by their inclinations. It seems

at times as if nothing could shock them, and yet they are offended at

the merest trifles. The smallest things make the greatest impression on

them. From the facility with which they can accommodate themselves to

circumstances, they have no fixed principles or real character. They are

always that which gives them least pain, or costs them least trouble.

They can easily disentangle their thoughts from whatever gives them the

slightest uneasiness, and direct their sensibility to flow in any

channels they think proper. Their whole existence is more theatrical

than real—their sentiments put on or off like the dress of an actor.

Words are with them equivalent to things. They say what is agreeable,

and believe what they say. Virtue and vice, good and evil, liberty or

slavery, are matters almost of indifference. They are the only people

who were ever vain of being cuckolded, or being conquered. Their natural

self-complacency stands them instead of all other advantages!

The same almost inexplicable contradictions appear in their writings as

in their characters. They excel in all that depends on lightness and

grace of style, on familiar gaiety, on delicate irony, on quickness of

observation, on nicety of tact—in all those things which are done best

with the least effort. Their sallies, their points, their traits, turns

of expression, their tales, their letters, are unrivalled. Witness the

writings of Voltaire, Fontaine, Le Sage. Whence then the long speeches,

the pompous verbosity, the systematic arrangement of their dramatic

productions? It would seem as if they took refuge in this excessive

formality, as a defence against their natural lightness and frivolity:

and that they admitted of no mixed style in poetry, because the least

interruption of their assumed gravity would destroy the whole effect.

The impression has no natural hold of their minds. It is only by

repeated efforts that they work themselves up to the tragic tone, and

their feelings let go their hold with the first opportunity. They

conform, in the most rigid manner, to established rules, because they

have no steadiness to go alone, nor confidence to trust to the strength

of their immediate impulses. The French have no style of their own in

serious art, because they have no real force of character. Their

tragedies are imitations of the Greek dramas, and their historical

pictures a still more servile and misapplied imitation of the Greek

statues. For the same reason, the expression which their artists give to

their faces is affected and mechanical; and the description which their

poets give of the passions, the most laboured, overt and explicit

possible. Nothing is left to be _understood_. Nothing obscure, distant,

imperfect—nothing that is not distinctly made out—nothing that does not

stand, as it were, in the foreground, is admitted in their works of art.

The dark and doubtful views of things, the irregular flights of fancy,

the silent workings of the heart—all these require some effort to enter

into them: They are therefore excluded from French poetry, the language

of which must, above all things, be clear and defined, and not only

intelligible, but intelligible by its previous application. It is

therefore essentially conventional and common-place. It rejects every

thing that is not cast in a given mould—that is not stamped by

custom—that is not sanctioned by authority;—every thing that is not

French. The French, indeed, can conceive of nothing that is not French.

There is something that prevents them from entering into any views which

do not perfectly fall in with their habitual prejudices. In a word, they

are not a people of imagination. They receive their impressions without

trouble or effort, and retain no more of them than they can help. They

are the creatures either of sensation or abstraction. The images of

things, when the objects are no longer present, throw off all their

complexity and distinctions, and are lost in the general class, or name;

so that the words _charming_, _delicious_, _superb_, &c. convey just the

same meaning, and excite just the same emotion in the mind of a

Frenchman, as the most vivid description of real objects and feelings

could do. Hence their poetry is the poetry of abstraction. Yet poetry is

properly the embodying general ideas in individual forms and

circumstances. But the French style excludes all individuality. The true

poet identifies the reader with the characters he represents; the French

poet only identifies him with himself. There is scarcely a single page

of their tragedy which fairly throws nature open to you. It is tragedy

in masquerade. We never get beyond conjecture and reasoning—beyond the

general impression of the situation of the persons—beyond general

reflections on their passions—beyond general descriptions of objects. We

never get at that something more, which is what we are in search of,

namely, what we ourselves should feel in the same situations. The true

poet transports you to the scene—you see and hear what is passing—you

catch, from the lips of the persons concerned, what lies nearest to

their hearts;—the French poet takes you into his closet, and reads you a

lecture upon it. The _chef-d’œuvres_ of their stage, then, are, after

all, only ingenious paraphrases of nature. The dialogue is a tissue of

common-places, of laboured declamations on human life, of learned

casuistry on the passions, on virtue and vice, which any one else might

make just as well as the person speaking; and yet, what the persons

themselves would say, is all we want to know, and all for which the poet

puts them into those situations. It is what constitutes the difference

between the dramatic and the didactic.

All this is differently managed in Shakespear: And accordingly, the

French translations of that author uniformly leave out all the poetry,

or what we consider as such. They generalize the passion, the character,

the thoughts, the images, every thing;—they reduce it to a common topic.

It is then perfect—for it is French. It would be in vain to look, in

these unmeaning paraphrases, where all is made unobjectionable, and

smooth as the palm of one’s hand, for the ‘Not a jot, not a jot,’ in

Othello,—for the ‘Light thickens,’ of Macbeth,—or the picture which the

exclamation of the witches gives us of him, ‘Why stands Macbeth thus

amazedly?’ When Othello kills himself, after that noble characteristic

speech at the end, in which he makes us feel all that passes in his

soul, and runs over the objects and events of his whole life, the blow

strikes not only at him but at us: When Orosman in Zaire, after a speech

which Voltaire has copied from the English poet, does the same thing, he

falls—like a common-place personified. We do not here insist on the

preference to be given to one or other of these two styles; we only say

they are quite different. The French critics contend, we think without

reason, that their own is exclusively good, and all others barbarous.

Not so our author. If Shakespear never found a thorough partisan before,

he has found one now. We have not room for half of his praise. He

defends him at all points. His puns, his conceits, his anachronisms, his

broad allusions, all go, not indeed for nothing, but for so many

beauties. They are not something to be excused by the age, or atoned for

by other qualities; but they are worthy of all acceptation in

themselves. This we do not think it necessary to say. It is no part of

our poetical creed, that genius can do no wrong. As the French show

their allegiance to their kings by crying _Quand meme!_—so we think to

show our respect for Shakespear by loving him in spite of his faults.

Take the whole of these faults, throw them into one scale, heap them up

double, and then double that, and we will throw into the opposite scale

single excellences, single characters, or even single passages, that

shall outweigh them all! All his faults have not prevented him from

showing as much knowledge of human nature, in all possible shapes, as is

to be found in all other poets put together; and that, we conceive, is

quite enough for one writer. Compared with this magical power, his

faults are of just as much consequence as his bad spelling, and to be

accounted for in the same way. In speaking of Shakespear, we do not mean

to make any general comparison between the French and English stage.

There is no other acknowledged English school of tragedy,—or it is

merely a bad imitation of the French. We give them up Addison; but we

must keep Shakespear to ourselves. He had even the advantage of the

Greek tragedians in this respect, that, with all their genius, they seem

to have described only Greek manners and sentiments: whereas he

describes all the people that ever lived. That which distinguishes his

dramatic productions from all others, is this wonderful variety and

perfect individuality. Each of his characters is as much itself, and as

absolutely independent of the rest, as if they were living persons, not

fictions of the mind. The poet appears, for the time, to identify

himself with the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one

to the other, like the same soul successively animating different

bodies. By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his

imagination out of himself, and makes every word appear to proceed from

the mouth of the person in whose name it is spoken. His plays alone are

expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them. His characters

are real beings of flesh and blood: they speak like men, not like

authors. One might suppose that he had stood by at the time, and

overheard all that passed. As, in our dreams, we hold conversations with

ourselves, make remarks or communicate intelligence, and have no idea of

the answer which we shall receive, and which we ourselves are to make,

till we hear it; so, the dialogues in Shakespear are carried on without

any consciousness of what is to follow, without any appearance of

preparation or premeditation. The gusts of passion come and go like

sounds of music borne on the wind. Nothing is made out by inference and

analogy, by climax and antithesis; all comes immediately from nature.

Each object and circumstance seems to exist in his mind, as it existed

in nature; each several train of thought and feeling goes on of itself

without confusion or effort: In the world of his imagination, every

thing has a life, a place, and being of its own![5]

‘The distinguishing property,’ says our author, ‘of the dramatic poet,

is the capability of transporting himself so completely into every

situation, even the most unusual, that he is enabled, as plenipotentiary

of the whole human race, without particular instructions for each

separate case, to act and speak in the name of every individual. It is

the power of endowing the creatures of his imagination with such

self-existent energy, that they afterwards act in each conjuncture

according to general laws of nature: the poet institutes, as it were,

experiments, which are received with as much authority as if they had

been made on real objects. Never, perhaps, was there so comprehensive a

talent for the delineation of character as Shakespear’s. It not only

grasps the diversities of rank, sex, and age, down to the dawnings of

infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the

pickpocket, the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truth; not

only does he transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and

portray in the most accurate manner, with only a few apparent violations

of costume, the spirit of the ancient Romans, of the French in their

wars with the English, of the English themselves during a great part of

their history, of the Southern Europeans (in the serious part of many

comedies), the cultivated society of that time, and the former rude and

barbarous state of the North; his human characters have not only such

depth and precision that they cannot be arranged under classes, and are

inexhaustible, even in conception:—no—This Prometheus not merely forms

men, he opens the gates of the magical world of spirits; calls up the

midnight ghost; exhibits before us his witches amidst their unhallowed

mysteries; peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs:—and, these

beings existing only in imagination, possess such truth and consistency,

that, even when deformed monsters like Caliban, he extorts the

conviction, that if there should be such beings, they would so conduct

themselves. In a word, as he carries with him the most fruitful and

daring fancy into the kingdom of nature,—on the other hand, he carries

nature into the regions of fancy, lying beyond the confines of reality.

We are lost in astonishment at seeing the extraordinary, the wonderful,

and the unheard of, in such intimate nearness.

‘If Shakespear deserves our admiration for his characters, he is equally

deserving it for his exhibition of passion, taking this word in its

widest signification, as including every mental condition, every tone

from indifference or familiar mirth to the wildest rage and despair. He

gives us the history of minds; he lays open to us, in a single word, a

whole series of preceding conditions. His passions do not at first stand

displayed to us in all their height, as is the case with so many tragic

poets, who, in the language of Lessing, are thorough masters of the

legal style of love. He paints in a most inimitable manner, the gradual

progress from the first origin. “He gives,” as Lessing says, “a living

picture of all the most minute and secret artifices by which a feeling

steals into our souls; of all the imperceptible advantages which it

there gains; of all the stratagems by which every other passion is made

subservient to it, till it becomes the sole tyrant of our desires and

our aversions.” Of all poets, perhaps, he alone has portrayed the mental

diseases, melancholy, delirium, lunacy, with such inexpressible, and, in

every respect, definite truth, that the physician may enrich his

observations from them in the same manner as from real cases.

‘And yet Johnson has objected to Shakespear, that his pathos is not

always natural and free from affectation. There are, it is true,

passages, though, comparatively speaking, very few, where his poetry

exceeds the bounds of true dialogue, where a too soaring imagination, a

too luxuriant wit, rendered the complete dramatic forgetfulness of

himself impossible. With this exception, the censure originates only in

a fanciless way of thinking, to which every thing appears unnatural that

does not suit its own tame insipidity. Hence, an idea has been formed of

simple and natural pathos, which consists in exclamations destitute of

imagery, and nowise elevated above every-day life. But energetical

passions electrify the whole of the mental powers, and will,

consequently, in highly favoured natures, express themselves in an

ingenious and figurative manner. It has been often remarked, that

indignation gives wit; and, as despair occasionally breaks out into

laughter, it may sometimes also give vent to itself in antithetical

comparisons.

‘Besides, the rights of the poetical form have not been duly weighed.

Shakespear, who was always sure of his object, to move in a sufficiently

powerful manner when he wished to do so, has occasionally, by indulging

in a freer play, purposely moderated the impressions when too painful,

and immediately introduced a musical alleviation of our sympathy. He had

not those rude ideas of his art which many moderns seem to have, as if

the poet, like the clown in the proverb, must strike twice on the same

place. An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution against dwelling too

long on the excitation of pity; for nothing, he said, dries so soon as

tears; and Shakespear acted conformably to this ingenious maxim, without

knowing it.

‘The objection, that Shakespear wounds our feelings by the open display

of the most disgusting moral odiousness, harrows up the mind

unmercifully, and tortures even our minds by the exhibition of the most

insupportable and hateful spectacles, is one of much greater importance.

He has never, in fact, varnished over wild and blood-thirsty passions

with a pleasing exterior,—never clothed crime and want of principle with

a false show of greatness of soul; and in that respect he is every way

deserving of praise. Twice he has portrayed downright villains; and the

masterly way in which he has contrived to elude impressions of too

painful a nature, may be seen in Iago and Richard the Third. The

constant reference to a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of

the poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakespear lived in an age extremely

susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had still enough

of the firmness inherited from a vigorous olden time, not to shrink back

with dismay from every strong and violent picture. We have lived to see

tragedies of which the catastrophe consists in the swoon of an enamoured

princess. If Shakespear falls occasionally into the opposite extreme, it

is a noble error, originating in the fulness of a gigantic strength: And

yet this tragical Titan, who storms the heavens, and threatens to tear

the world from off its hinges; who, more fruitful than Æschylus, makes

our hair stand on end, and congeals our blood with horror, possessed, at

the same time, the insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poetry. He

plays with love like a child; and his songs are breathed out like

melting sighs. He unites in his genius the utmost elevation and the

utmost depth; and the most foreign, and even apparently irreconcileable

properties, subsist in him peaceably together. The world of spirits and

nature have laid all their treasures at his feet. In strength a

demi-god, in profundity of view a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a

protecting spirit of a higher order, he lowers himself to mortals, as if

unconscious of his superiority; and is as open and unassuming as a

child.

‘Shakespear’s comic talent is equally wonderful with that which he has

shown in the pathetic and tragic: it stands on an equal elevation, and

possesses equal extent and profundity. All that I before wished was, not

to admit that the former preponderated. He is highly inventive in comic

situations and motives. It will be hardly possible to show whence he has

taken any of them; whereas in the serious part of his drama, he has

generally laid hold of something already known. His comic characters are

equally true, various and profound, with his serious. So little is he

disposed to caricature, that we may rather say many of his traits are

almost too nice and delicate for the stage, that they can only be

properly seized by a great actor, and fully understood by a very acute

audience. Not only has he delineated many kinds of folly; he has also

contrived to exhibit mere stupidity in a most diverting and entertaining

manner.’ II. 145.

The observations on Shakespear’s language and versification which

follow, are excellent. We cannot, however, agree with the author in

thinking his rhyme superior to Spenser’s: His excellence is confined to

his blank verse; and in that he is unrivalled by any dramatic writer.

Milton’s alone is equally fine in its way. The objection to Shakespear’s

mixed metaphors is not here fairly got over. They give us no pain from

long custom. They have, in fact, become idioms in the language. We take

the meaning and effect of a well known passage entire, and no more stop

to scan and spell out the particular words and phrases than the

syllables of which they are composed. If our critic’s general

observations on Shakespear are excellent, he has shown still greater

acuteness and knowledge of his author in those which he makes on the

particular plays. They ought, in future, to be annexed to every edition

of Shakespear, to correct the errors of preceding critics. In his

analysis of the historical plays,—of those founded on the Roman

history,—of the romantic comedies, and the fanciful productions of

Shakespear, such as, the Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Tempest, &c., he

has shown the most thorough insight into the spirit of the poet. His

contrast between Ariel and Caliban; the one made up of all that is gross

and earthly, the other of all that is airy and refined, ‘ethereal mould,

sky-tinctured,’—is equally happy and profound. He does not, however,

confound Caliban with the coarseness of common low life. He says of him

with perfect truth—‘Caliban is malicious, cowardly, false and base in

his inclinations; and yet he is essentially different from the vulgar

knaves of a civilized world, as they are occasionally portrayed by

Shakespear. He is rude, but not vulgar. He never falls into the

prosaical and low familiarity of his drunken associates, for he is a

poetical being in his way; he always, too, speaks in verse. But he has

picked up every thing dissonant and thorny in language, of which he has

composed his vocabulary.’

In his account of Cymbeline and other plays, he has done justice to the

sweetness of Shakespear’s female characters, and refuted the idle

assertion made by a critic, who was also a poet and a man of genius,

that

—‘stronger Shakespear felt for man alone.’

Who, indeed, in recalling the names of Imogen, of Miranda, of Juliet, of

Desdemona, of Ophelia and Perdita, does not feel that Shakespear has

expressed the very perfection of the feminine character, existing only

for others, and leaning for support on the strength of its affections?

The only objection to his female characters is, that he has not made

them masculine. They are indeed the very reverse of ordinary

tragedy-queens. In speaking of Romeo and Juliet, he says, ‘It was

reserved for Shakespear to unite purity of heart, and the glow of

imagination, sweetness and dignity of manners, and passionate violence,

in one ideal picture.’ The character of Juliet was not to be mistaken by

our author. It is one of perfect unconsciousness. It has nothing

forward, nothing coy, nothing affected, nothing coquettish about it:—It

is a pure effusion of nature.

‘Whatever,’ says our critic, ‘is most intoxicating in the odour of a

southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or

voluptuous on the first opening of the rose, is breathed in this poem.

But, even more rapidly than the earliest blossoms of youth and beauty

decay, it hurries on from the first timid declaration of love and modest

return, to the most unlimited passion—to an irrevocable union; then,

amidst alternating storms of rapture and despair, to the death of the

two lovers, who still appear enviable as their love survives them, and

as, by their death, they have obtained a triumph over every separating

power. The sweetest and the bitterest; love and hatred; festivity and

dark forebodings; tender embraces and sepulchres; the fulness of life

and self-annihilation—are all here brought close to each other: And all

these contrasts are so blended in the harmonious and wonderful work into

a unity of impression, that the echo which the whole leaves behind in

the mind resembles a single but endless sigh.’

In treating of the four principal tragedies, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet

and Lear, he goes deeper into the poetry and philosophy of those plays

than any of the commentators. But we dare not now encroach on the

patience of our readers with any farther citations.

The remarks on the doubtful pieces of Shakespear are most liable to

objection. We cannot agree, for instance, that Titus Andronicus is in

the spirit of Lear, because in his dotage he mistakes a fly which he has

killed for his black enemy the Moor. Thomas Lord Cromwell, and Sir John

Oldcastle, which he praises highly, are very indifferent. Pericles,

prince of Tyre, is not much to our taste. There is one fine scene in it,

where Marina rouses the prince from his lethargy, by the proofs of her

being his daughter. Yet this is not like Shakespear. The Yorkshire

Tragedy is very good; but decidedly in the manner of Heywood. The

account given by Schlegel, of the contemporaries and immediate

successors of Shakespear is good, though it might have been better. That

of Ben Jonson is particularly happy. He says, that he described not

characters, but ‘humours,’ that is, particular modes of expression,

dress and behaviour in fashion at the time, which have since become

obsolete, and the imitation of them dry and unintelligible. The finest

thing in Ben Jonson (not that it is by any means the only one), is the

scene between Surly and Sir Epicure Mammon, where the latter proves his

possession of the philosopher’s stone, by a pompous display of the

riches, luxuries and pleasures he is to derive from it; and, by a happy

perversion of logic, satisfies himself, though not his hearer, of the

existence of the cause, by a strong imagination of the effects which are

to follow from it. He is also very successful in his character of the

plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. They describe the passions at their

height, not in their progress—the extremes, not the gradations of

feeling. Their plays, however, have great power and great beauty. The

Faithful Shepherdess is the origin of Milton’s Comus. ‘Rule a Wife and

Have a Wife’ is one of the very best comedies that ever was written; and

holds, to this day, undisputed possession of the stage. Yet, as our

critic observes, there is in the general tone of their writings a

certain crudeness and precocity, a heat, a violence of fermentation, a

disposition to carry every thing to excess, which is not pleasant. Their

plays are very much what young noblemen of genius might be supposed to

write in the heyday of youthful blood, the sunshine of fortune, and all

the petulance of self-opinion. They have completely anticipated the

German paradoxes. Schlegel has no mercy on the writers of the age of

Charles II. He compares Dryden himself to ‘a man walking upon stilts in

a morass.’ He justly prefers Otway to Rowe; but we think he is wrong in

supposing, that if Otway had lived longer he would have done better. His

plays are only the ebullitions of a fine, enthusiastic, sanguine

temperament: and his genius would no more have improved with age, than

the beauty of his person. Of our comic writers, Congreve, Wycherley,

Vanburgh, &c., M. Schlegel speaks very contemptuously and superficially.

It is plain that he knows nothing about them, or he would not prefer

Farquhar to all the rest. If, after our earlier dramatists, we have any

class of writers who are excellent, it is our comic writers.

We cannot go into our author’s account of the Spanish drama. The

principal names in it are Cervantes, Calderon, and Lope de Vega. Neither

can we agree in the praises which he lavishes on the dramatic

productions of these authors. They are too flowery, lyrical, and

descriptive. They are pastorals, not tragedies. They have warmth; but

they want vigour.

Our author may be supposed to be at home in German literature; but his

doctrines appear to us to be more questionable there, than upon any

other subject. What the German dramatists really excel in, is the

production of effect: but this is the very thing which their fastidious

countryman most despises and abhors. They really excel all others in

mere effect; and there is no nation that can excel all others in more

than one thing. Werter is, in our opinion, the best of all Goethe’s

works; but because it is the most popular, our author takes an

opportunity to express his contempt for it. Count Egmont, which is here

spoken highly of, seems to us a most insipid and preposterous

composition. The effect of the pathos which is said to lie concealed in

it, is utterly lost upon us. Nathan the Wise, by Lessing, is also a

great favourite of Schlegel; because it is unintelligible except to the

wise. As the French plays are composed of a tissue of common-placs, the

German plays of this stamp are a tissue of paradoxes, which have no

foundation in nature or common opinion,—the pure offspring of the

author’s fantastic brain. For the same reason, Schiller’s Wallenstein is

here preferred to his Robbers. But we cannot so readily give up our old

attachment to the Robbers. The first reading of that play is an event in

every one’s life, which is not to be forgotten.

Madame de Staël has very happily ridiculed this pedantic’s taste in

criticism.

‘By a singular vicissitude in taste, it has happened, that the Germans

at first attacked our dramatic writers, as converting all their heroes

into Frenchmen. They have, with reason, insisted on historic truth as

necessary to contrast the colours, and give life to the poetry. But

then, all at once, they have been weary of their own success in this

way, and have produced abstract representations, in which the relations

of mankind were expressed in a general manner, and in which time, place

and circumstance, passed for nothing. In a drama of this kind by Goethe,

the author calls the different characters the Duke, the King, the

Father, the Daughter, &c., without any other designation.

‘Such a tragedy is only calculated to be acted in the palace of Odin,

where the dead still continue their different occupations on earth;

where the hunter, himself a shade, eagerly pursues the shade of a stag;

and fantastic warriors combat together in the clouds. It should appear,

that Goethe at one period conceived an absolute disgust to all interest

in dramatic compositions. It was sometimes to be met with in bad works;

and he concluded, that it ought to be banished from good ones.

Nevertheless, a man of superior mind ought not to disdain what gives

universal pleasure; he cannot relinquish his resemblance with his kind,

if he wishes to make others feel his own value. Granting that the

tyranny of custom often introduces an artificial air into the best

French tragedies, it cannot be denied that there is the same want of

natural expression in the systematic and theoretical productions of the

German muse. If exaggerated declamation is affected, there is a certain

kind of intellectual calm which is not less so. It is a kind of

arrogated superiority over the affections of the soul, which may accord

very well with philosophy, but is totally out of character in the

dramatic art. Goethe’s works are composed according to different

principles and systems. In the Tasso and Iphigenia, he conceives of

tragedy as a lofty relic of the monuments of antiquity. These works have

all the beauty of form, the splendour and glossy smoothness of

marble;—but they are as cold and as motionless.’

We have, we trust, said enough of this work, to recommend it to the

reader: We ought to add, that the translation appears to be very

respectable.

COLERIDGE’S LAY SERMON

VOL. XXVII.] [_December 1816._

‘The privilege’ (says a certain author) ‘of talking, and even publishing

nonsense, is necessary in a free state; but the more sparingly we make

use of it, the better.’ Mr. Coleridge has here availed himself of this

privilege,—but not sparingly. On the contrary, he has given full scope

to his genius, and laid himself out in absurdity. In this his first Lay

Sermon (for two others are to follow at graceful distances), we meet

with an abundance of ‘fancies and good-nights,’ odd ends of verse, and

sayings of philosophers; with the ricketty contents of his common-place

book, piled up and balancing one another in helpless confusion; but with

not one word to the purpose, or on the subject. An attentive perusal of

this Discourse is like watching the sails of a windmill: his thoughts

and theories rise and disappear in the same manner. Clouds do not shift

their places more rapidly, dreams do not drive one another out more

unaccountably, than Mr. Coleridge’s reasonings try in vain to ‘chase his

fancy’s rolling speed.’ His intended conclusions have always the start

of his premises,—and they keep it: while he himself plods anxiously

between the two, something like a man travelling a long, tiresome road,

between two stage coaches, the one of which is gone out of sight before,

and the other never comes up with him; for Mr. Coleridge himself takes

care of this; and if he finds himself in danger of being overtaken, and

carried to his journey’s end in a common vehicle, he immediately steps

aside into some friendly covert, with the Metaphysical Muse, to prevent

so unwelcome a catastrophe. In his weary quest of truth, he reminds us

of the mendicant pilgrims that travellers meet in the Desert, with their

faces always turned towards Mecca, but who contrive never to reach the

shrine of the Prophet: and he treats his opinions, and his reasons for

them, as lawyers do their clients, and will never suffer them to come

together lest they should join issue, and so put an end to his business.

It is impossible, in short, we find, to describe this strange rhapsody,

without falling a little into the style of it;—and, to do it complete

justice, we must use its very words. ‘_Implicité_, it is without the

COPULA—it wants the possibility—of every position, to which there exists

any correspondence in reality.’

Our Lay-preacher, in order to qualify himself for the office of a guide

to the blind, has not, of course, once thought of looking about for

matters of fact, but very wisely draws a metaphysical bandage over his

eyes, sits quietly down where he was, takes his nap, and talks in his

sleep—but we really cannot say very wisely. He winks and mutters all

unintelligible, and all impertinent things. Instead of inquiring into

the distresses of the manufacturing or agricultural districts, he

ascends to the orbits of the fixed stars, or else enters into the

statistics of the garden plot under his window, and, like Falstaff,

‘babbles of green fields:’ instead of the balance of the three estates,

King, Lords, and Commons, he gives us a theory of the balance of the

powers of the human mind, the Will, the Reason, and—the Understanding:

instead of referring to the tythes or taxes, he quotes the Talmud; and

illustrates the whole question of peace and war, by observing, that ‘the

ideal republic of Plato was, if he judges rightly, to “the history of

the town of Man-Soul” what Plato was to John Bunyan:’—a most safe and

politic conclusion!

Mr. Coleridge is not one of those whom he calls ‘alarmists by trade,’

but rather, we imagine, what Spenser calls ‘a gentle Husher, Vanity by

name.’ If he does not excite apprehension, by pointing out danger and

difficulties where they do not exist, neither does he inspire

confidence, by pointing out the means to prevent them where they do. We

never indeed saw a work that could do less good or less harm; for it

relates to no one object, that any one person can have in view. It tends

to produce a complete _interregnum_ of all opinions; an _abeyance_ of

the understanding; a suspension both of theory and practice; and is

indeed a collection of doubts and moot-points—all hindrances and no

helps. An uncharitable critic might insinuate, that there was more

quackery than folly in all this;—and it is certain, that our learned

author talks as magnificently of his _nostrums_, as any advertising

impostor of them all—and professes to be in possession of all sorts of

morals, religions, and political panaceas, which he keeps to himself,

and expects you to pay for the secret. He is always promising great

things, in short, and performs nothing. The vagaries, whimsies, and

pregnant throes of Joanna Southcote, were sober and rational, compared

with Mr. Coleridge’s qualms and crude conceptions, and promised

deliverance in this Lay Sermon. The true secret of all this, we suspect,

is, that our author has not made up his own mind on any of the subjects

of which he professes to treat, and on which he warns his readers

against coming to any conclusion, without his especial assistance; by

means of which, they may at last attain to ‘that imperative and oracular

form of the understanding,’ of which he speaks as ‘the form of reason

itself in all things purely rational and moral.’ In this state of

voluntary self-delusion, into which he has thrown himself, he mistakes

hallucinations for truths, though he still has his misgivings, and dares

not communicate them to others, except in distant hints, lest the spell

should be broken, and the vision disappear. Plain sense and plain

speaking would put an end to those ‘thick-coming fancies,’ that lull him

to repose. It is in this sort of waking dream, this giddy maze of

opinions, started, and left, and resumed—this momentary pursuit of

truths, as if they were butterflies—that Mr. Coleridge’s pleasure, and,

we believe, his chief faculty, lies. He has a thousand shadowy thoughts

that rise before him, and hold each a glass, in which they point to

others yet more dim and distant. He has a thousand self-created fancies

that glitter and burst like bubbles. In the world of shadows, in the

succession of bubbles, there is no preference but of the most shadowy,

no attachment but to the shortest-lived. Mr. Coleridge accordingly has

no principle but that of being governed entirely by his own caprice,

indolence, or vanity; no opinion that any body else holds, or even he

himself, for two moments together. His fancy is stronger than his

reason; his apprehension greater than his comprehension. He perceives

every thing, but the relations of things to one another. His ideas are

as finely shaded as the rainbow of the moon upon the clouds, as

evanescent, and as soon dissolved. The subtlety of his tact, the

quickness and airiness of his invention, make him perceive every

possible shade and view of a subject in its turn; but this readiness of

lending his imagination to every thing, prevents him from weighing the

force of any one, or retaining the most important in mind. It destroys

the balance and _momentum_ of his feelings; makes him unable to follow

up a principle into its consequences, or maintain a truth in spite of

opposition: it takes away all _will_ to adhere to what is right, and

reject what is wrong; and, with the will, the power to do it, at the

expense of any thing difficult in thought, or irksome in feeling. The

consequence is, that the general character of Mr. Coleridge’s intellect,

is a restless and yet listless dissipation, that yields to every

impulse, and is stopped by every obstacle; an indifference to the

greatest trifles, or the most important truths: or rather, a preference

of the vapid to the solid, of the possible to the actual, of the

impossible to both; of theory to practice, of contradiction to reason,

and of absurdity to common sense. Perhaps it is well that he is so

impracticable as he is; for whenever, by any accident, he comes to

practice, he is dangerous in the extreme. Though his opinions are

neutralized in the extreme levity of his understanding, we are sometimes

tempted to suspect that they may be subjected to a more ignoble bias;

for though he does not ply his oars very strenuously in following the

tide of corruption, or set up his sails to catch the tainted breeze of

popularity, he suffers his boat to drift along with the stream. We do

not pretend to understand the philosophical principles of that anomalous

production, ‘the Friend;’ but we remember that the practical measures

which he there attempted to defend, were the expedition to Copenhagen,

the expedition to Walcheren, and the assassination of Buonaparte, which,

at the time Mr. Coleridge was getting that work into circulation, was a

common topic of conversation, and a sort of _forlorn hope_ in certain

circles. A man who exercises an unlimited philosophical scepticism on

questions of abstract right or wrong, may be of service to the progress

of truth; but a writer who exercises this privilege, with a regular

leaning to the side of power, is a very questionable sort of person.

There is not much of this kind in the present Essay. It has no leaning

any way. All the sentiments advanced in it are ‘like the swan’s down

feather—

‘That stands upon the swell at full of tide,

And neither way inclines.’

We have here given a pretty strong opinion on the merits of this

performance: and we proceed to make it good by extracts from the work

itself; and it is just as well to begin with the beginning.

‘If our whole knowledge and information concerning the Bible had been

confined to the one fact, of its immediate derivation from God, we

should still presume that it contained rules and assistances for all

conditions of men, under all circumstances; and therefore for

communities no less than for individuals. The contents of every work

must correspond to the character and designs of the workmaster; and the

inference in the present case is too obvious to be overlooked, too plain

to be resisted. It requires, indeed, all the might of superstition, to

conceal from a man of common understanding, the further truth, that the

interment of such a treasure, in a dead language, must needs be contrary

to the intentions of the gracious Donor. Apostasy itself dared not

question the _premise_: and, that the practical _consequence_ did not

follow, is conceivable only under a complete _system_ of delusion,

which, from the cradle to the death-bed, ceases not to overawe the will

by obscure fears, while it preoccupies the senses by vivid imagery and

ritual pantomime. But to such a scheme, all forms of sophistry are

native. The very excellence of the Giver has been made a reason for

withholding the gift; nay, the transcendent value of the gift itself

assigned as the motive of its detention. We may be shocked at the

presumption, but need not be surprised at the fact, that a jealous

priesthood should have ventured to represent the applicability of the

Bible to all the wants and occasions of men, as a wax-like pliability to

all their fancies and prepossessions. Faithful guardians of Holy Writ!’

&c.

And after a great deal to the same effect, he proceeds—

‘The humblest and least educated of our countrymen must have wilfully

neglected the inestimable privileges secured to all alike, if he has not

himself found, if he has not from his own personal experience

discovered, the sufficiency of the Scriptures in all knowledge requisite

for a right performance of his duty as a man and a Christian. Of the

labouring classes, who in all countries form the great majority of the

inhabitants, more than this is not demanded, more than this is not

perhaps generally desirable.’—‘They are not sought for in public

counsel, nor need they be found where politic sentences are spoken. It

is enough if every one is wise in the working of his own craft: so best

will they maintain the state of the world.’ p. 7.

Now, if this is all that is necessary or desirable for the people to

know, we can see little difference between the doctrine of the Lay

Sermon, and ‘that complete system of papal imposture, which inters the

Scriptures in a dead language, and commands its vassals to take for

granted what it forbids them to ascertain.’ If a candidate is to start

for infallibility, we, for our parts, shall give our casting vote for

the successor of St. Peter, rather than for Mr. Coleridge. The Bible, we

believe, when rightly understood, contains no set of rules for making

the labouring classes mere ‘workers in brass or in stone,’—‘hewers of

wood or drawers of water,’ each wise in his own craft. Yet it is by

confining their inquiries and their knowledge to such vocations, and

excluding them from any share in politics, philosophy, and theology,

‘that the state of the world is best upheld.’ Such is the exposition of

our Lay-Divine. Such is his application of it. Why then does he blame

the Catholics for acting on this principle—for deducing the _practical

consequence_ from the acknowledged _premise_? Great as is our contempt

for the delusions of the Romish Church, it would have been still

greater, if they had opened the sacred volume to the poor and

illiterate; had told them that it contained the most useful knowledge

for all conditions and for all circumstances of life, public and

private; and had then instantly shut the book in their faces, saying, it

was enough for them to be wise in their own calling and to leave the

study and interpretation of the Scriptures to their betters—to Mr.

Coleridge and his imaginary audience. The Catholic Church might have an

excuse for what it did in the supposed difficulty of understanding the

Scriptures, their doubts and ambiguities, and ‘wax-like pliability to

all occasions and humours.’ But Mr. Coleridge has no excuse; for he

says, they are plain to all capacities, high and low together. ‘The road

of salvation,’ he says, ‘is for us a high road, and the way-farer,

though simple, need not err therein.’ And he accordingly proceeds to

draw up a provisional bill of indictment, and to utter his doubtful

denunciations against us as a nation, for the supposed neglect of the

inestimable privileges, _secured alike to all_, and for the lights held

out to all for ‘maintaining the state’ of their country in the precepts

and examples of Holy Writ; when, all of a sudden, his eye encountering

that brilliant auditory which his pen had conjured up, the Preacher

finds out, that the only use of the study of the Scriptures for the rest

of the people, is to learn that they have no occasion to study them at

all—‘so best shall they maintain the state of the world.’ If Mr.

Coleridge has no meaning in what he writes, he had better not write at

all: if he has any meaning, he contradicts himself. The truth is,

however, as it appears to us, that the whole of this Sermon is written

to sanction the principle of Catholic dictation, and to reprobate that

diffusion of free inquiry—that difference of private, and ascendancy of

public opinion, which has been the necessary consequence, and the great

benefit of the Reformation. That Mr. Coleridge himself is as squeamish

in guarding _his_ Statesman’s Manual from profanation as any Popish

priest can be in keeping the Scriptures from the knowledge of the Laity,

will be seen from the following delicate _morceau_, which occurs, p. 44.

‘When I named this Essay a Sermon, I sought to prepare the inquirers

after it _for the absence of all the usual softenings suggested by

worldly prudence, of all compromise between truth and courtesy_. But not

even as a Sermon would I have addressed the present Discourse _to a

promiscuous audience_; and for this reason I likewise announced it in

the title-page, as exclusively _ad clerum, i.e._ (in the old and wide

sense of the word) to men of _clerkly_ acquirements, of whatever

profession. I would that the greater part of our publications could be

thus _directed_, each to its appropriate class of readers.[6] But this

cannot be! For among other odd burrs and kecksies, the misgrowth of our

luxuriant activity, we have now a READING PUBLIC—as strange a phrase,

methinks, as ever forced a splenetic smile on the staid countenance of

Meditation; and yet no fiction! For our readers have, in good truth,

multiplied exceedingly, and have waxed proud. It would require the

intrepid accuracy of a Colquhoun to venture at the precise number of

that vast company only, whose heads and hearts are dieted at the two

public _ordinaries_ of Literature, the circulating libraries and the

periodical press. But what is the result? Does the inward man thrive on

this regimen? Alas! if the average health of the consumers may be judged

of by the articles of largest consumption; if the secretions may be

conjectured from the ingredients of the dishes that are found best

suited to their palates; from all that I have seen, either of the

banquet or the guests, I shall utter my _Profaccia_ with a desponding

sigh. From a popular philosophy and a philosophic populace, good sense

deliver us!’

If it were possible to be serious after a passage like this, we might

ask, what is to hinder a convert of ‘the church of superstition’ from

exclaiming in like manner, ‘From a popular theology, and a theological

populace, Good Lord deliver us! ‘Mr. Coleridge does not say—will he

say—that as many sects and differences of opinion in religion have not

risen up, in consequence of the Reformation, as in philosophy or

politics, from ‘the misgrowth of our luxuriant activity?’ Can any one

express a greater disgust, (approaching to _nausea_), at every sect and

separation from the Church of England, which he sometimes, by an

hyperbole of affectation, affects to call the Catholic Church? There is

something, then, worse than ‘luxuriant activity,’—the palsy of death;

something worse than occasional error,—systematic imposture; something

worse than the collision of differing opinions,—the suppression of all

freedom of thought and independent love of truth, under the torpid sway

of an insolent and selfish domination, which makes use of truth and

falsehood equally as tools of its own aggrandisement and the debasement

of its vassals, and always must do so, without the exercise of public

opinion, and freedom of conscience, as its control and counter-check.

For what have we been labouring for the last three hundred years? Would

Mr. Coleridge, with impious hand, turn the world ‘twice ten degrees

askance,’ and carry us back to the dark ages? Would he punish the

_reading public_ for their bad taste in reading periodical publications

which he does not like, by suppressing the freedom of the press

altogether, or destroying the art of printing? He does not know what he

means himself. Perhaps we can tell him. He, or at least those whom he

writes to please, and who look ‘with jealous leer malign’ at modern

advantages and modern pretensions, would give us back all the abuses of

former times, without any of their advantages; and impose upon us, by

force or fraud, a complete system of superstition without faith, of

despotism without loyalty, of error without enthusiasm, and all the

evils, without any of the blessings, of ignorance. The senseless jargon

which Mr. Coleridge has let fall on this subject, is the more

extraordinary, inasmuch as he declares, in an early part of his Sermon,

that ‘Religion and Reason are their own evidence;’—a position which

appears to us ‘fraught with _potential infidelity_’ quite as much as

Unitarianism, or the detestable plan for teaching reading and writing,

and a knowledge of the Scriptures, without the creed or the catechism of

the Church of England. The passage in which this sweeping clause is

introduced _en passant_, is worth quoting, both as it is very

nonsensical in itself, and as it is one of the least nonsensical in the

present pamphlet.

‘In the infancy of the world, signs and wonders were requisite, in order

to startle and break down that superstition, idolatrous in itself, and

the source of all other idolatry, which tempts the natural man to seek

the true cause and origin of public calamities in outward circumstances,

persons and incidents: in agents, therefore, that were themselves but

surges of the same tide, passive conductors of the one invisible

influence, under which the total host of billows, in the whole line of

successive impulse, swell and roll shoreward; there finally, each in its

turn, to strike, roar, and be dissipated.

‘But with each miracle worked there was a truth revealed, which

thenceforward was to act as its substitute: And if we think the Bible

less applicable to us on account of the miracles, we degrade ourselves

into mere slaves of sense and fancy; which are, indeed, the appointed

medium between earth and heaven, but for that very cause stand in a

desirable relation to spiritual truth then only, when, as a mere and

passive medium, they yield a free passage to its light. It was only to

overthrow the usurpation exercised in and through the senses, that the

senses were miraculously appealed to. Reason and Religion are their own

evidence. The natural sun is, in this respect, a symbol of the

spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his glories are still under

veil, he calls up the breeze to chase away the usurping vapours of the

night-season, and thus converts the air itself into the minister of its

own purification: not surely in proof or elucidation of the light from

heaven, but to prevent its interception.’ p. 12.

Here is a very pretty Della Cruscan image: and we really think it a

pity, that Mr. Coleridge ever quitted that school of poetry to grapple

with the simplicity of nature, or to lose himself in the depths of

philosophy. His illustration is pretty, but false. He treats the

miracles recorded in the Scriptures, with more than heretical boldness,

as mere appeals to ‘sense and fancy,’ or to ‘the natural man,’ to

counteract the impressions of sense and fancy. But, for the light of

Heaven to have been like the light of day in this respect, the Sun ought

to have called up other vapours opposite, as mirrors or pageants to

reflect its light, dimmed by the intermediate vapours, instead of

chasing the last away. We criticize the simile, because we are sure

higher authority will object to the doctrine. We might challenge Mr.

Coleridge to point out a single writer, Catholic, Protestant or

Sectarian, whose principles are not regarded as _potential infidelity_

by the rest, that does not consider the miraculous attestation of

certain revealed doctrines as proofs of their truth, independently of

their internal evidence. They are a distinct and additional authority.

Reason and Religion are no more the same in this respect, than ocular

demonstration and oral testimony are the same. Neither are they opposed

to one another, any more. We believe in credible witnesses. We believe

in the word of God, when we have reason to suppose, that we hear his

voice in the thunder of his power: but we cannot, consistently with the

principles of reason or of sound faith, suppose him to utter what is

contrary to reason, though it may be different from it. Revelation

utters a voice in the silence of reason, but does not contradict it: it

throws a light on objects too distant for the unassisted eye to behold.

But it does not pervert our natural organs of vision, with respect to

objects within their reach. Reason and religion are therefore

consistent, but not the same, nor equally self-evident. All this, we

think, is clear and plain. But Mr. Coleridge likes to darken and perplex

every question of which he treats. So, in the passage above quoted, he

affirms that Religion is its own evidence, to confound one class of

readers; and he afterwards asserts that Reason is founded on faith, to

astonish another. He proceeds indeed by the _differential method_ in all

questions; and his chief care, in which he is tolerably successful, is

not to agree with any set of men or opinions. We pass over his Jeremiad

on the French Revolution,—his discovery that the state of public opinion

has a considerable influence on the state of public affairs,

particularly in turbulent times,—his apology for imitating St. Paul by

quoting Shakespear, and many others: for if we were to collect all the

riches of absurdity in this Discourse, we should never have done. But

there is one passage, upon which he has plainly taken so much pains,

that we _must_ give it.

‘A calm and detailed examination of the facts, justifies me to my own

mind, in hazarding the bold assertion, that the fearful blunders of the

late dread Revolution, and all the calamitous mistakes of its opponents,

from its commencement even to the era of loftier principles and wiser

measures (an era, that began with, and ought to be named from, the war

of the Spanish and Portuguese insurgents), every failure, with all its

gloomy results, may be unanswerably deduced, from the neglect of some

maxim or other that had been established by clear reasoning and plain

facts, in the writings of Thucydides, Tacitus, Machiavel, Bacon, or

Harrington. These are red-letter names, even in the almanacks of worldly

wisdom: and yet I dare challenge all the critical benches of infidelity,

to point out any one important truth, any one efficient practical

direction or warning, which did not preexist, and for the most part in a

sounder, more intelligible, and more comprehensive form IN THE BIBLE.’

‘In addition to this, the Hebrew legislator, and the other inspired

poets, prophets, historians and moralists, of the Jewish church, have

two immense advantages in their favour. First, their particular rules

and prescripts flow directly and visibly from universal principles, as

from a fountain: they flow from principles and ideas that are not so

properly said to be confirmed by reason, as to be reason itself!

Principles, in act and procession, disjoined from which, and from the

emotions that inevitably accompany the actual intuition of their truth,

the widest maxims of prudence are like arms without hearts, muscles

without nerves. Secondly, from the very nature of these principles, as

taught in the Bible, they are understood, in exact proportion as they

are believed and felt. The regulator is never separated from the main

spring. For the words of the Apostle are literally and philosophically

true: _We_ (that is the human race) _live by faith_. Whatever we do or

know, that in kind is different from the brute creation, has its origin

in a determination of the reason to have faith and trust in itself.

This, its first act of faith, is scarcely less than identical with its

own being. _Implicité_, it is the copula—it contains the

_possibility_—of every position, to which there exists any

correspondence in reality. It is itself, therefore, the realizing

principle, the spiritual substratum of the whole complex body of truths.

This primal act of faith is enunciated in the word, God: a faith not

derived from experience, but its ground and source; and without which,

the fleeting _chaos of facts_ would no more form experience, than the

dust of the grave can of itself make a living man. The imperative and

oracular form of the inspired Scripture, is _the form of reason itself_,

in all things purely rational and moral.

‘If it be the word of Divine Wisdom, we might anticipate, that it would

in all things be distinguished from other books, as the Supreme Reason,

whose knowledge is creative, and antecedent to the things known, is

distinguished from the understanding, or creaturely mind of the

individual, the acts of which are posterior to the things it records and

arranges. Man alone was created in the image of God: a position

groundless and inexplicable, if _the reason_ in man do not differ from

_the understanding_. For this the inferior animals (many at least)

possess _in degree_: and assuredly the divine image or idea is not a

thing of degrees,’ &c. &c. &c.

There is one short passage, just afterwards, in which the author makes

an easy transition from cant to calumny: and, with equal credit and

safety to himself, insults and traduces the dead. ‘One confirmation of

the latter assertion you may find in the history of our country, written

by the same Scotch Philosopher, who devoted his life to the undermining

of the Christian Religion; and _expended his last breath in a

blasphemous regret, that he had not survived it_!’ This last assertion

is a gratuitous poetical fabrication, as mean as it is malignant. With

respect to Mr. Hume’s History, here spoken of with ignorant petulance,

it is beyond dispute the most judicious, profound, and acute of all

historical compositions, though the friends of liberty may admit, with

the advocate of servility, that it has its defects;—and the scepticism

into which its ingenious and most amiable author was betrayed in matters

of religion, must always be lamented by the lovers of genius and virtue.

The venom of the sting meant to be inflicted on the memory of ‘the

Scotch Philosopher,’ seems to have returned to the writer’s own bosom,

and to have exhausted itself in the following bloated passage.

‘At the annunciation of PRINCIPLES, of IDEAS, the soul of man awakes,

and starts up, as an exile in a far distant land at the unexpected

sounds of his native language, when, after long years of absence, and

almost of oblivion, he is suddenly addressed in his own mother tongue.

He weeps for joy, and embraces the speaker as his brother. _How else can

we explain the fact so honourable to Great Britain,[7] that the poorest

amongst us will contend with as much enthusiasm as the richest for the

rights of property?_ These rights are the spheres and necessary

conditions of free agency. But free agency contains the idea of the free

will; and in this he intuitively knows the sublimity, and the infinite

hopes, fears, and capabilities of his own (English) nature. On what

other ground but the _cognateness of ideas_ and principles to man as

man, does the nameless soldier rush to the combat in defence of the

liberties or _the honour_ of his country? Even men, wofully neglectful

of the principles of religion, will shed their blood for its truth.’ p.

30.

How does this passage agree with Mr. C.’s general contempt of mankind,

and that especial aversion to ‘Mob-Sycophancy’ which has marked him from

the cradle, and which formerly led him to give up the periodical paper

of the Watchman, and to break off in the middle of his ‘_Conciones ad

Populum_?’ A few plain instincts, and a little common sense, are all

that the most popular of our popular writers attribute to the people, or

rely on for their success in addressing them. But Mr. Coleridge, the

mob-hating Mr. Coleridge, here supposes them intuitively to perceive the

cabalistical visions of German metaphysics; and compliments the poorest

peasant, and the nameless soldier, not only on the cognateness of their

ideas and principles to man as man, but on their immediate and joyous

excitation at the mere annunciation of such delightful things as

‘_Principles_ and _Ideas_.’ Our mystic, in a Note, finds a confirmation

of this cognateness of the most important truths to the vulgarest of the

people, in ‘an anecdote told with much humour in one of Goldsmith’s

Essays.’ Poor Goldy! How he would have stared at this transcendental

inference from his humorous anecdote! He would have felt as awkwardly as

Gulliver did, when the monkey at the palace of Brobdignag took him an

airing on the tiles, and almost broke his neck by the honour. Mr.

Coleridge’s patronage is of the same unwieldy kind.—The Preacher next

gives his authorities for reading the Scriptures. They are—Heraclitus

and Horace.—In earnest? In good sooth, and in sad and sober earnest.

‘Or would you wish for authorities?—for great examples?—You may find

them in the writings of Thuanus, of Lord Clarendon, of Sir Thomas More,

of Raleigh; and in the life and letters of the heroic Gustavus Adolphus.

But these, though eminent statesmen, were Christians, and might lie

under the thraldom of habit and prejudice. I will refer you then to

authorities of two great men, both Pagans; but removed from each other

by many centuries, and not more distant in their ages than in their

characters and situations. The first shall be that of Heraclitus, the

sad and recluse philosopher. Πολυμαθιη νοον οὐ διδασκει· Σιβυλλα δε

μαινομενᾳ στόματι αγελαστα και ακαλλωπιστα και αμυριστα φθεγγομενη,

χιλιων ετων εξικνεται τῃ φωνῃ δια τον θεον.[8] Shall we hesitate to

apply to the prophets of God, what could be affirmed of the Sibylls by a

philosopher whom Socrates, the prince of philosophers, venerated for the

profundity of his wisdom?

‘For the other, I will refer you to the darling of the polished court of

Augustus, to the man whose works have been in all ages deemed the models

of good sense, and are still the pocket-companions of those who pride

themselves on uniting the scholar with the gentleman. This accomplished

man of the world has given an account of the subjects of conversation

between the illustrious statesmen who governed, and the brightest

luminaries who then adorned, the empire of the civilized world—

‘Sermo oritur non de villis domibusve alienis

Nec, male, nec ne lepus saltet. Sed quod magis ad nos

Pertinet, et nescire malum est, agitamus: utrumne

Divitiis homines, an sint virtute beati?

Et qua sit natura boni? summumque quid eius?’

It is not easy to conceive any thing better than this;—only the next

passage beats it hollow, and is itself surpassed by the one after it,

‘as Alps o’er Alps arise.’

So far Mr. Coleridge has indulged himself in ‘a preparatory heat,’ and

said nothing about the Bible. But now he girds himself up for his main

purpose, places himself at the helm, and undertakes to conduct the

statesman to his desired haven in Scripture prophecy and history. ‘But

do you require some one or more particular passage from the Bible, that

may at once illustrate and exemplify its applicability to the changes

and fortunes of empires? Of the numerous chapters that relate to the

Jewish tribes, their enemies and allies, before and after their division

into two kingdoms, it would be more difficult to state a single one,

from which some guiding light might _not_ be struck.’ Does Mr. Coleridge

then condescend to oblige us with any one? Nothing can be farther from

his thoughts. He is here off again at a tangent, and does not return to

the subject for the next seven pages. When he does—it is in the

following explicit manner.—‘But I refer to the demand. _Were it my

object to touch on the present state of public affairs in this kingdom,

or on the prospective measures in agitation respecting our sister

island, I would direct your most serious meditations to the latter

period of the reign of Solomon, and to the revolutions in the reign of

Rehoboam, his successor. But I should tread on glowing embers: I will

turn to the causes of the revolution, and fearful chastisement of

France._’ Let the reader turn to the first book of Kings, in which the

parallel passage to our own history at the present crisis stands,

according to our author, so alarmingly conspicuous; and he will not be

surprised that Mr. Coleridge found himself ‘treading on glowing embers.’

The insidious loyalty or covert Jacobinism of this same parallel, which

he declines drawing on account of its extreme applicability, is indeed

beyond our comprehension, and not a less ‘curious specimen of

psychology,’ than the one immediately preceding it, in which he proves

the doctrine of _divine right_ to be revealed in an especial manner in

the Hebrew Scriptures.

We should proceed to notice that part of the Sermon, where the orator

rails at the public praises of Dr. Bell, and abuses Joseph Lancaster,

_con amore_. Nothing more flat and vapid, in wit or argument, was ever

put before the public, which he treats with such contempt. Of the wit,

take the following choice sample.

‘But the phrase of the READING PUBLIC, which occasioned this note,

brings to my mind the mistake of a lethargic Dutch traveller, who

returning highly gratified from a showman’s caravan, which he had been

tempted to enter by the words, THE LEARNED PIG, gilt on the pannels, met

another caravan of a similar shape, with THE READING FLY on it, in

letters of the same size and splendour. “Why, dis is voonders above

voonders!” exclaims the Dutchman; takes his seat as first comer; and,

soon fatigued by waiting, and by the very hush and intensity of his

expectation, gives way to his constitutional somnolence, from which he

is roused by the supposed showman at Hounslow, with a—“_In what name,

Sir! was your place taken? Are you booked all the way for Reading?_”—Now

a Reading Public is (to my mind) more marvellous still, and in the third

tier of “voonders above voonders!”’

Mr. Coleridge’s wit and sentimentality do not seem to have settled

accounts together; for in the very next page after this ‘third tier of

wonders,’ he says—

‘And here my apprehensions point to two opposite errors. The first

consists in a disposition to think, that as the peace of nations has

been disturbed by the diffusion of a false light, it may be

re-established by excluding the people from all knowledge and all

prospect of amelioration. O! never, never! Reflection and stirrings of

mind, with all their restlessness, and all the errors that result from

their imperfection, from the _Too much_, because _Too little_, are come

into the world. The powers that awaken and foster the spirit of

curiosity, are to be found in every village: Books are in every hovel:

The infant’s cries are hushed with _picture_-books: and the Cottager’s

child sheds its first bitter tears over pages, which render it

impossible for the man to be treated or governed as a child. Here, as in

so many other cases, the inconveniences that have arisen from a thing’s

having become too general, are best removed by making it universal.’ p.

49.

And yet, with Mr. Coleridge, a reading public is ‘voonders above

voonders’—a strange phrase, and yet no fiction! The public is become a

reading public, down to the cottager’s child; and he thanks God for

it—for that great moral steam-engine, Dr. Bell’s original and

unsophisticated plan, which he considers as an especial gift of

Providence to the human race—thus about to be converted into one great

reading public; and yet he utters his _Profaccia_ upon it with a

desponding sigh; and proposes, as a remedy, to put this spirit which has

gone forth, under the tutelage of churchwardens, to cant against

‘liberal ideas,’ and ‘the jargon of this enlightened age;’—in other

words, to turn this vast machine against itself, and make it a go-cart

of corruption, servility, superstition and tyranny. Mr. Coleridge’s

first horror is, that there should be a reading public: his next hope is

to prevent them from reaping an atom of benefit from ‘reflection and

stirrings of mind, with all their restlessness.’

The conclusion of this discourse is even more rhapsodical than the

former part of it; and we give the pulpit or rostrum from which Mr.

Coleridge is supposed to deliver it, ‘high enthroned above all height,’

the decided preference over that throne of dulness and of nonsense which

Pope did erst erect for the doubtful merits of Colley and Sir Richard.

The notes are better, and but a little better than the text. We might

select, as specimens of laborious foolery, the passage in which the

writer defends _second sight_, to prove that he has unjustly been

accused of visionary paradox, or hints that a disbelief in ghosts and

witches is no great sign of the wisdom of the age, or that in which he

gives us to understand that Sir Isaac Newton was a great astrologer, or

Mr. Locke no conjurer. But we prefer (for our limits are straitened) the

author’s description of a green field, which he prefaces by observing,

that ‘the book of Nature has been the music of gentle and pious minds in

all ages; and that it is the poetry of all human nature to read it

likewise in a figurative sense, and to find therein correspondences and

symbols of a spiritual nature.’

MR. COLERIDGE’S DESCRIPTION OF A GREEN FIELD.

‘I have at this moment before me, in the flowery meadow on which my eye

is now reposing, one of Nature’s most soothing chapters, in which there

is no lamenting word, no one character of guilt or anguish. For never

can I look and meditate on the vegetable creation, without a feeling

similar to that with which we gaze at a beautiful infant that has fed

itself asleep at its mother’s bosom, and smiles in its strange dream of

obscure yet happy sensations. The same tender and genial pleasure takes

possession of me, and this pleasure is checked and drawn inward by the

like aching melancholy, by the same whispered remonstrance, and made

restless by a similar impulse of aspiration. It seems as if the soul

said to herself—“From this state” (from that of a flowery meadow) “hast

_thou_ fallen! Such shouldst thou still become, thyself all permeable to

a holier power! Thyself at once hidden and glorified by its own

transparency, as the accidental and dividuous in this quiet and

harmonious object is subjected to the life and light of nature which

shines in it, even as the transmitted power, love and wisdom, of God

over all fills, and shines through, Nature! But what the plant _is_, by

an act not its own, and unconsciously—_that_ must thou _make_ thyself to

_become_! must by prayer, and by a watchful and unresisting spirit,

_join_ at least with the preventive and assisting grace to _make_

thyself, in that light of conscience which inflameth not, and with that

knowledge which puffeth not up.”’

This will do. It is well observed by Hobbes, that ‘it is by means of

words only that a man becometh excellently wise or excellently foolish.’

COLERIDGE’S LITERARY LIFE

VOL. XXVIII.] [_August 1817._

There are some things readable in these volumes; and if the learned

author could only have been persuaded to make them a little more

conformable to their title, we have no doubt that they would have been

the most popular of all his productions. Unfortunately, however, this

work is not so properly an account of his Life and Opinions, as an

Apology for them. ‘It will be found,’ says our Auto-Biographer, ‘that

the least of what I have written concerns myself personally.’ What then,

it may be asked, is the work taken up with? With the announcement of an

explanation of the author’s Political and Philosophical creed, to be

contained in another work—with a prefatory introduction of 200 pages to

an Essay on the difference between Fancy and Imagination, which was

intended to form part of this, but has been suppressed, at the request

of a judicious friend, as unintelligible—with a catalogue of Mr.

Southey’s domestic virtues, and author-like qualifications—a candid

defence of the Lyrical Ballads—a critique on Mr. Wordsworth’s

poetry—quotations from the Friend—and attacks on the Edinburgh Review.

There are, in fact, only two or three passages in the work which relate

to the details of the author’s life,—such as the account of his

school-education, and of his setting up the Watchman newspaper. We shall

make sure of the first of these curious documents, before we completely

lose ourselves in the multiplicity of his speculative opinions.

‘At school, I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible,

though at the same time, a very severe master, the Rev. James Bowyer,

many years Head Master of the Grammar-School, Christ’s Hospital. He

early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of

Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again, of Virgil to Ovid. He

habituated me to compare Lucretius (in such extracts as I then read),

Terence, and, above all, the chaster poems of Catullus, not only with

the Roman poets of the so called silver and brazen ages, but with even

those of the Augustan era; and, on grounds of plain sense, and universal

logic, to see and assert the superiority of the former, in the truth and

nativeness both of their thoughts and diction. At the same time that we

were studying the Greek tragic poets, he made us read Shakespeare and

Milton as lessons: and they were the lessons, too, which required most

time and trouble to _bring up_, so as to escape his censure. I learnt

from him, that Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that

of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of

science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and

dependent on more, and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets,

he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but

for the position of every word; and I well remember, that, availing

himself of the synonimes to the Homer of Didymus, he made us attempt to

show, with regard to each, _why_ it would not have answered the same

purpose; and _wherein_ consisted the peculiar fitness of the word in the

original text.

‘I had just entered on my seventeenth year, when the Sonnets of Mr.

Bowles, twenty in number, and just then published in a quarto pamphlet,

were first made known and presented to me, by a school-fellow who had

quitted us for the University, and who, during the whole time that he

was in our first form (or, in our school language, a GRECIAN), had been

my patron and protector. I refer to Dr. Middleton, the truly learned,

and every way excellent Bishop of Calcutta—

‘Qui laudibus amplis

Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat,

Calcar agens animo validum. Non omnia terræ

Obruta! Vivit amor, vivit dolor! Ora negatur

Dulcia conspicere; at flere et meminisse relictum est.’

_Petr. Ep. Lib. 7. Ep. 1._

‘It was a double pleasure to me, and still remains a tender

recollection, that I should have received from a friend so revered, the

first knowledge of a poet, by whose works, year after year, I was so

enthusiastically delighted and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will

not have forgotten the undisciplined eagerness and impetuous zeal, with

which I laboured to make proselytes, not only of my companions, but of

all with whom I conversed, of whatever rank, and in whatever place. As

my school finances did not permit me to purchase copies, I made, within

less than a year and an half, more than forty transcriptions, as the

best presents I could offer to those who had in any way won my regard.

And, with almost equal delight, did I receive the three or four

following publications of the same author.

‘Though I have seen and known enough of mankind to be well aware that I

shall perhaps stand alone in my creed, and that it will be well, if I

subject myself to no worse charge than that of singularity; I am not

therefore deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever have regarded

the obligations of intellect among the most sacred of the claims of

gratitude. A valuable thought, or a particular train of thoughts, gives

me additional pleasure, when I can safely refer and attribute it to the

conversation or correspondence of another. My obligations to Mr. Bowles

were indeed important, and for radical good. _At a very premature age,

even before my fifteenth year, I had bewildered myself in metaphysicks,

and in theological controversy. Nothing else pleased me. History, and

particular facts, lost all interest in my mind._ Poetry (though for a

schoolboy of that age, I was above par in English versification, and had

already produced two or three compositions which, I may venture to say,

without reference to my age, were somewhat above mediocrity, and which

had gained me more credit, than the sound, good sense of my old master

was at all pleased with)—_poetry itself, yea novels and romances, became

insipid to me_. In my friendless wanderings on our _leave-days_, (for I

was an orphan, and had scarcely any connexions in London), highly was I

delighted, if any passenger, especially if he were drest in black, would

enter into conversation with me. For I soon found the means of directing

it to my favourite subjects

Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate,

Fix’d fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute,

And found no end in wandering mazes lost.

‘This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt, injurious, both to my

natural powers, and to the progress of my education. It would perhaps

have been destructive, had it been continued; but from this I was

auspiciously withdrawn, partly indeed by an accidental introduction to

an amiable family, chiefly however by the genial influence of a style of

poetry, so tender, and yet so manly, so natural and real, and yet so

dignified and harmonious, as the sonnets, &c. of Mr. Bowles! Well were

it for me, perhaps, had I never relapsed into the same mental disease;

if I had continued to pluck the flower, and reap the harvest from the

cultivated surface, instead of delving in the unwholesome quicksilver

mines of metaphysic depths. But if in after-time I have sought a refuge

from bodily pain and mismanaged sensibility, in abstruse researches,

which exercised the strength and subtlety of the understanding, without

awakening the feelings of the heart; still there was a long and blessed

interval, during which my natural faculties were allowed to expand, and

my original tendencies to develop themselves—my fancy, and the love of

nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and sounds.’ p. 17.

Mr. Coleridge seems to us, from this early association, to overrate the

merits of Bowles’s Sonnets, which he prefers to Warton’s, which last we,

in our turn, prefer to Wordsworth’s, and indeed to any Sonnets in the

language. He cannot, however, be said to overrate the extent of the

intellectual obligations which he thinks he owes to his favourite

writer. If the study of Mr. Bowles’s poems could have effected a

permanent cure of that ‘preposterous’ state of mind which he has above

described, his gratitude, we admit, should be boundless: But the

disease, we fear, was in the mind itself; and the study of poetry,

instead of counteracting, only gave force to the original propensity;

and Mr. Coleridge has ever since, from the combined forces of poetic

levity and metaphysic bathos, been trying to fly, not in the air, but

under ground—playing at hawk and buzzard between sense and

nonsense,—floating or sinking in fine Kantean categories, in a state of

suspended animation ’twixt dreaming and awake,—quitting the plain ground

of ‘history and particular facts’ for the first butterfly theory,

fancy-bred from the maggots of his brain,—going up in an air-balloon

filled with fetid gas from the writings of Jacob Behmen and the mystics,

and coming down in a parachute made of the soiled and fashionable leaves

of the Morning Post,—promising us an account of the Intellectual System

of the Universe, and putting us off with a reference to a promised

dissertation on the Logos, introductory to an intended commentary on the

entire Gospel of St. John. In the above extract, he tells us, with a

degree of _naïveté_ not usual with him, that, ‘even before his fifteenth

year, history and particular facts had lost all interest in his mind.’

Yet, so little is he himself aware of the influence which this feeling

still continues to exert over his mind, and of the way in which it has

mixed itself up in his philosophical faith, that he afterwards makes it

the test and definition of a sound understanding and true genius, that

‘the mind is affected by thoughts, rather than by things; and only then

feels the _requisite_ interest even for the most important events and

accidents, when by means of meditation they have passed into

_thoughts_.’ p. 30. We do not see, after this, what right Mr. C. has to

complain of those who say that he is neither the most literal nor

logical of mortals; and the worst that has ever been said of him is,

that he is the least so. If it is the proper business of the philosopher

to dream over theories, and to neglect or gloss over facts, to fit them

to his theories or his conscience; we confess we know of few writers,

ancient or modern, who have come nearer to the perfection of this

character than the author before us.

After a desultory and unsatisfactory attempt (Chap. II.) to account for

and disprove the common notion of the irritability of authors, Mr.

Coleridge proceeds (by what connexion we know not) to a full, true and

particular account of the personal, domestic, and literary habits of his

friend Mr. Southey,—to all which we have but one objection, namely, that

it seems quite unnecessary, as we never heard them impugned,—except

indeed by the Antijacobin writers, here quoted by Mr. Coleridge, who is

no less impartial as a friend, than candid as an enemy. The passage

altogether is not a little remarkable.

‘It is not, however,’ says our author, ‘from grateful recollections

only, that I have been impelled thus to leave these my deliberate

sentiments on record; but in some sense as a debt of justice to the man,

whose name has been so often connected with mine, for evil to which he

is a stranger. As a specimen, I subjoin part of a note from the

‘Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin,’ in which, having previously informed the

Public that I had been dishonoured at Cambridge for preaching Deism, at

a time when, for my youthful ardour in defence of Christianity, I was

decried as a bigot by the proselytes of French philosophy, the writer

concludes with these words—‘_Since this time he has left his native

country, commenced citizen of the world, left his poor children

fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex his disce his friends, Lamb and

Southey._’ ‘With severest truth,’ continues Mr. Coleridge, ‘it may be

asserted, that it would not be easy to select two men more exemplary in

their domestic affections, than those whose names were thus printed at

full length, as in the same rank of morals with a denounced infidel and

fugitive, who had left his children fatherless, and his wife destitute!

_Is it surprising that many good men remained longer than perhaps they

otherwise would have done, adverse to a party which encouraged and

openly rewarded the authors of such atrocious calumnies?_’ p. 71.

With us, we confess the wonder does not lie there:—all that surprises us

is, that the objects of these atrocious calumnies were _ever_ reconciled

to the authors of them;—for the calumniators were the party itself. The

Cannings, the Giffords, and the Freres, have never made any apology for

the abuse which they then heaped upon every nominal friend of freedom;

and yet Mr. Coleridge thinks it necessary to apologize in the name of

all good men, for having remained so long adverse to a party which

recruited upon such a bounty; and seems not obscurely to intimate that

they had such effectual means of propagating their slanders against

those good men who differed with them, that most of the latter found

there was no other way of keeping their good name but by giving up their

principles, and joining in the same venal cry against all those who did

not become apostates or converts, ministerial Editors, and

‘laurel-honouring Laureates’ like themselves!—What! at the very moment

when this writer is complaining of a foul and systematic conspiracy

against the characters of himself, and his most intimate friends, he

suddenly stops short in his half-finished burst of involuntary

indignation, and ends with a lamentable affectation of surprise at the

otherwise unaccountable slowness of good men in yielding implicit

confidence to a party, who had such powerful arts of conversion in their

hands,—who could with impunity, and triumphantly, take away by atrocious

calumnies the characters of all who disdained to be their tools, and

rewarded with honours, places, and pensions all those who were. This is

pitiful enough, we confess; but it is too painful to be dwelt on.

Passing from the Laureate’s old Antijacobin, to his present

Antiministerial persecutors—‘_Publicly_,’ exclaims Mr. Coleridge, ‘has

Mr. Southey been reviled by men, who (I would fain hope, for the honour

of human nature) hurled fire-brands against a figure of their own

imagination,—_publicly_ have his talents been depreciated, his

principles denounced.’ This is very fine and lofty, no doubt; but we

wish Mr. C. would speak a little plainer. Mr. Southey has come

voluntarily before the public; and all the world has a right to speak of

his publications. It is those only that have been either depreciated or

denounced. We are not aware, at least, of any attacks that have been

made, publicly or privately, on his private life or morality. The charge

is, that he wrote democratical nonsense in his youth; and that he has

not only taken to write against democracy in his maturer age, but has

abused and reviled those who adhere to his former opinions; and accepted

of emoluments from the party which formerly calumniated him, for those

good services. Now, what has Mr. Coleridge to oppose to this? Mr.

Southey’s private character! He evades the only charge brought against

him, by repelling one not brought against him, except by his Antijacobin

patrons—and answers for his friend, as if he was playing at

cross-purposes. Some people say, that Mr. Southey has deserted the cause

of liberty: Mr. Coleridge tells us, that he has not separated from his

wife. They say, that he has changed his opinions: Mr. Coleridge says,

that he keeps his appointments; and has even invented a new word,

_reliability_, to express his exemplariness in this particular. It is

also objected, that the worthy Laureate was as extravagant in his early

writings, as he is virulent in his present ones: Mr. Coleridge answers,

that he is an early riser, and not a late sitter up. It is further

alleged, that he is arrogant and shallow in political discussion, and

clamours for vengeance in a cowardly and intemperate tone: Mr. Coleridge

assures us, that he eats, drinks, and sleeps moderately. It is said that

he must either have been very hasty in taking up his first opinions, or

very unjustifiable in abandoning them for their contraries; and Mr.

Coleridge observes, that Mr. Southey exhibits, in his own person and

family, all the regularity and praiseworthy punctuality of an eight-day

clock. With all this we have nothing to do. Not only have we said

nothing against this gentleman’s private virtues, but we have regularly

borne testimony to his talents and attainments as an author, while we

have been compelled to take notice of his defects. Till this panegyric

of Mr. Coleridge, indeed, we do not know where there was so much praise

of him to be found as in our pages. Does Mr. Coleridge wish to get a

monopoly for criticising the works of his friends? If we had a

particular grudge against any of them, we might perhaps apply to him for

his assistance.

Of Mr. Southey’s prose writings we have had little opportunity to speak;

but we should speak moderately. He has a clear and easy style, and

brings a large share of information to most subjects he handles. But, on

practical and political matters, we cannot think him a writer of any

weight. He has too little sympathy with the common pursuits, the

follies, the vices, and even the virtues of the rest of mankind, to have

any tact or depth of insight into the actual characters or manners of

men. He is in this respect a mere bookworm, shut up in his study, and

too attentive to his literary duty to mind what is passing about him. He

has no humour. His wit is at once scholastic and vulgar. As to general

principles of any sort, we see no traces of any thing like them in any

of his writings. He shows the same contempt for abstract reasoning that

Mr. Coleridge has for ‘history and particular facts.’ Even his intimacy

with the metaphysical author of the ‘Friend,’ with whom he has chimed

in, both in poetry and politics, in verse and prose, in Jacobinism and

Antijacobinism, any time these twenty years, has never inoculated him

with the most distant admiration of Hartley, or Berkeley, or Jacob

Behmen, or Spinosa, or Kant, or Fichte, or Schelling. His essays are in

fact the contents of his common-place-book, strung together with little

thought or judgment, and rendered marketable by their petulant

adaptation to party-purposes—‘full of wise saws and modern

instances’—with assertions for proofs—conclusions that savour more of a

hasty temper than patient thinking—supported by learned authorities that

oppress the slenderness of his materials, and quarrel with one another.

But our business is not with him; and we leave him to his studies.

With chap. IV. begins the formidable ascent of that mountainous and

barren ridge of clouds piled on precipices and precipices on clouds,

from the top of which the author deludes us with a view of the Promised

Land that divides the regions of Fancy from those of the Imagination,

and extends through 200 pages with various inequalities and declensions

to the end of the volume. The object of this long-winding metaphysical

march, which resembles a patriarchal journey, is to point out and settle

the true grounds of Mr. Wordsworth’s claim to originality as a poet;

which, if we rightly understand the deduction, turns out to be, that

there is nothing peculiar about him; and that his poetry, in so far as

it is good for anything at all, is just like any other good poetry. The

learned author, indeed, judiciously observes, that Mr. Wordsworth would

never have been ‘idly and absurdly’ considered as ‘the founder of a

school in poetry,’ if he had not, by some strange mistake, announced the

fact himself in his preface to the Lyrical Ballads. This, it must be

owned, looks as if Mr. Wordsworth thought more of his _peculiar_

pretensions than Mr. Coleridge appears to do, and really furnishes some

excuse for those who took the poet at his word; for which idle and hasty

conclusion, moreover, his friend acknowledges that _there was_ some

little foundation in diverse silly and puerile passages of that

collection, equally unworthy of the poet’s great genius and classical

taste.

We shall leave it to Mr. Wordsworth, however, to settle the relative

worthlessness of these poems with his critical patron, and also to

ascertain whether his commentator has discovered, either his _real_ or

his _probable_ meaning in writing that Preface,—and should now proceed

with Mr. Coleridge up those intricate and inaccessible steeps to which

he invites our steps. ‘It has been hinted,’ says he, with characteristic

simplicity, ‘that metaphysics and psychology have long been my

hobby-horse. But to have a hobby-horse, and to be vain of it, are so

commonly found together, that they pass almost for the same.’ _We own

the soft impeachment_, as Mrs. Malaprop says, and can with difficulty

resist the temptation of accepting this invitation—especially as it is

accompanied with a sort of challenge. ‘Those at least,’ he adds, ‘who

have taken so much pains to render me ridiculous for a perversion of

taste, and have supported the charge by attributing strange notions to

me, on no other authority than their own conjectures, owe it to

themselves as well as to me, not to refuse their attention to my own

statement of the theory which I _do_ acknowledge, or shrink from the

trouble of examining the grounds on which I rest it, or the arguments

which I offer in its justification.’ But, in spite of all this, we must

not give way to temptation—and cannot help feeling, that the whole of

this discussion is so utterly unreadable in Mr. Coleridge, that it would

be most presumptuous to hope that it would become otherwise in our

hands. We shall dismiss the whole of this metaphysical investigation,

therefore, into the law of association and the nature of fancy, by

shortly observing, that we can by no means agree with Mr. C. in refusing

to Hobbes the merit of originality in promulgating that law, with its

consequences—that we agree with him, generally, in his refutation of

Hartley—and that we totally dissent from his encomium on Kant and his

followers.

With regard to the claims of the philosopher of Malmesbury as the first

discoverer of the principle of association, as it is now understood

among metaphysicians, Mr. C. thinks fit to deny it _in toto_, because

Descartes’s work, ‘De Methodo,’ in which there is an intimation of the

same doctrine, preceded Hobbes’s ‘De Natura Humana’ _by a whole

year_.—What an interval to invent and mature a whole system in!—But we

conceive that Hobbes has a strict claim to the merit of originality in

this respect, because he is the first writer who laid down this

principle as _the sole and universal law_ of connexion among our

ideas:—which principle Hartley afterwards illustrated and applied to an

infinite number of particular cases, but did not assert the general

theorem itself more broadly or explicitly. We deny that the statement of

this principle, as _the_ connecting band of our ideas, is to be found in

any of those writers before Hobbes, whom Mr. Coleridge enumerates;

Descartes or Melancthon, or those more ‘illustrious obscure,’ Ammerbach,

or Ludovicus Vives, or even Aristotle. It is not the having remarked,

that association was one source of connexion among certain ideas, that

would anticipate this discovery or the theory of Hartley; but the

asserting, that this principle was alone sufficient to account for every

operation of the human mind, and that there was no other source of

connexion among our ideas,—a proposition which Hobbes was undoubtedly

the first to assert, and by the assertion of which he did certainly

anticipate the system of Hartley; for all that the latter could do, or

has attempted to do, after this, was to prove the proposition in detail,

or to reduce all the phenomena to this one general law. That Hobbes was

in fact the original inventor of the doctrine of Association, and of the

modern system of philosophy in general, is matter of fact and history;

as to which, we are surprised that Mr. C. should profess any doubt, and

which we had gratified ourselves by illustrating by a series of

citations from his greater works,—which nothing but a sense of the

prevailing indifference to such discussions prevents us from laying

before our readers.

As for the great German oracle Kant, we must take the liberty to say,

that his system appears to us the most wilful and monstrous absurdity

that ever was invented. If the French theories of the mind were too

chemical, this is too mechanical:—if the one referred every thing to

nervous sensibility, the other refers every thing to the test of

muscular resistance, and voluntary prowess. It is an enormous heap of

dogmatical and hardened assertions, advanced in contradiction to all

former systems, and all unsystematical opinions and impressions. He has

but one method of getting over difficulties:—when he is at a loss to

account for any thing, and cannot give a reason for it, he turns short

round upon the inquirer, and says that it is self-evident. If he cannot

make good an inference upon acknowledged premises, or known methods of

reasoning, he coolly refers the whole to a new class of ideas, and the

operation of some unknown faculty, which he has invented for the

purpose, and which he assures you _must_ exist,—because there is no

other proof of it. His whole theory is machinery and scaffolding—an

elaborate account of what he has undertaken to do, because no one else

has been able to do it—and an _assumption_ that he has done it, because

he has undertaken it. If the will were to go for the deed, and to be

confident were to be wise, he would indeed be the prince of

philosophers. For example, he sets out with urging the indispensable

necessity of answering Hume’s argument on the origin of our idea of

cause and effect; and because he can find no answer to this argument, in

the experimental philosophy, he affirms, that this idea _must be_ ‘a

self-evident truth, contained in the first forms or categories of the

understanding;’ that is, the thing must be as he would have it, whether

it is so or not. Again, he argues that external objects exist because

they seem to exist; and yet he denies that we know any thing at all

about the matter, further than their appearances. He defines beauty to

be perfection, and virtue to consist in a conformity to our duty; with

other such deliberate truisms; and then represents necessity as

inconsistent with morality, and insists on the existence and certainty

of the free-will as a faculty necessary to explain the _moral sense_,

which could not exist without it. This transcendental philosopher is

also pleased to affirm, in so many words, that we have neither any

possible idea, nor any possible proof of the existence of the Soul, God,

or Immortality, by means of the ordinary faculties of sense,

understanding, or reason; and he therefore (like a man who had been

employed to construct a machine for some particular purpose), invents a

new faculty, for the admission and demonstration of these important

truths, _namely, the practical reason_; in other words, the will or

determination that these things should be infinitely true because they

are infinitely desirable to the human mind,—though he says it is

impossible for the human mind to have any idea whatever of these

objects, either as true or desirable. But we turn gladly from

absurdities that have not even the merit of being amusing; and leave Mr.

Coleridge to the undisturbed adoration of an idol who will have few

other worshippers in this country. His own speculations are, beyond all

comparison, more engaging.

In chap. IX. Mr. Coleridge, taking leave of that ‘sound

book-learnedness’ which he had opposed, in the Lay Sermon, to the

upstart pretensions of modern literature, praises the inspired

ignorance, upward flights, and inward yearnings of Jacob Behmen, George

Fox and De Thoyras, and proceeds to defend himself against the charge of

plagiarism, of which he suspects that he may be suspected by the readers

of Schlegel and Schelling, when he comes to unfold, in fulness of time,

the mysterious laws of the drama and the human mind. And thereafter, the

‘extravagant and erring’ author takes leave of the Pantheism of Spinoza,

of Proclus, and Gemistius Pletho, of the philosopher of Nola, ‘whom the

idolaters of Rome, the predecessors of that good old man, the present

Pope, burnt as an atheist in the year 1660;’ of the _Noumenon_, or Thing

in itself; of Fichte’s ORDO ORDINANS, or exoteric God; of Simon Grynæus,

Barclay’s Argenis, and Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, from whom the

author ‘cites a cluster of citations, to amuse the reader, as with a

voluntary before a sermon’—to plunge into Chap. X., entitled ‘A Chapter

of Digressions and Anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on the

Nature and Genesis of the Imagination or Plastic Power!’

As this latter chapter, by the advice of a correspondent, has been

omitted, we must make the most of what is left, and ‘wander down into a

lower world obscure and wild,’ to give the reader an account of Mr.

Coleridge’s setting up the Watchman, which is one of the first things to

which he _digresses_, in the tenth chapter of his Literary Biography.

Out of regard to Mr. C. as well as to our readers, we give our longest

extract from this narrative part of the work—which is more likely to be

popular than any other part—and is, upon the whole, more pleasingly

written. We cannot say much, indeed, either for the wit or the soundness

of judgment it displays. But it is an easy, gossipping, garrulous

account of youthful adventures—by a man sufficiently fond of talking of

himself, and sufficiently disposed to magnify small matters into ideal

importance.

‘Toward the close of the first year from the time that, in an

inauspicious hour, I left the friendly cloysters, and the happy grove of

quiet, ever-honoured, Jesus College, Cambridge, I was persuaded, by

sundry Philanthropists and Antipolemists, to set on foot a periodical

work, entitled THE WATCHMAN, that (according to the general motto of the

work) _all might know the truth, and that the truth might make us free_!

In order to exempt it from the stamp-tax, and likewise to contribute as

little as possible to the supposed guilt of a war against freedom, it

was to be published on every eighth day, thirty-two pages, large octavo,

closely printed, and price only Fourpence. Accordingly, with a flaming

prospectus, _“Knowledge is power,” &c. to try the state of the political

atmosphere_, and so forth, I set off on a tour to the North, from

Bristol to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring customers; preaching

by the way in most of the great towns, as a hireless volunteer, in a

blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon

might be seen on me. For I was at that time, and long after, though a

Trinitarian (_i.e. ad normam Platonis_) in philosophy, yet a zealous

Unitarian in religion; more accurately, I was a _psilanthropist_, one of

those who believe our Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and who

lay the main stress on the resurrection, rather than on the crucifixion.

O! never can I remember those days with either shame or regret. For I

was most sincere, most disinterested! My opinions were indeed in many

and most important points erroneous; but my heart was single. Wealth,

rank, life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests

of (what I believed to be) the truth, and the will of my Maker. I cannot

even accuse myself of having been actuated by vanity; for in the

expansion of my enthusiasm, I did not think of _myself_ at all.

‘My campaign commenced at Birmingham; and my first attack was on a rigid

Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man, in whom

length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been

borrowed for a foundery poker. O that face! a face κατέμφασιν! I have it

before me at this moment. The lank, black, twine-like hair,

_pingui-nitescent_, cut in a straight line along the black stubble of

his thin gunpowder-eyebrows, that looked like a scorched _after-math_

from a last week’s shaving. His coat-collar behind in perfect unison,

both of colour and lustre, with the coarse, yet glib cordage, that I

suppose he called his hair, and which, with a _bend_ inward at the nape

of the neck, (the only approach to flexure in his whole figure), slunk

in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance, lank, dark, very _hard_,

and with strong perpendicular furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one

looking at me through a _used_ gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron! But

he was one of the _thoroughbred_, a true lover of liberty; and (I was

informed) had proved to the satisfaction of many, that Mr. Pitt was one

of the horns of the second beast in the Revelation, _that spoke like a

dragon_. A person, to whom one of my letters of recommendation had been

addressed, was my introducer. It was a new event in my life, my first

_stroke_ in the new business I had undertaken, of an author; yea, and of

an author trading on his own account. My companion, after some imperfect

sentences, and a multitude of _hums_ and _haas_, abandoned the cause to

his client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to

Phileleutheros the tallow-chandler, varying my notes through the whole

gamut of eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and in

the latter, from the pathetic to the indignant. I argued, I described, I

promised, I prophesied; and, beginning with the captivity of nations, I

ended with the near approach of the millennium; finishing the whole with

some of my own verses, describing that glorious state, out of the

_Religious Musings_.

—‘“Such delights,

As float to earth, permitted visitants!

When in some hour of solemn jubilee

The massive gates of Paradise are thrown

Wide open: and forth come in fragments wild

Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,

And odours snatched from beds of amaranth,

And they that from the chrystal river of life

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

‘My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praiseworthy

patience, though (as I was afterwards told on complaining of certain

gales that were not altogether ambrosial) it was a _melting_ day with

him. And what, Sir! (he said, after a short pause) might the cost be?

_Only_ four-pence, (O! how I felt the anti-climax, the abysmal bathos of

that _four-pence_!) _only four-pence, Sir, each Number, to be published

on every eighth day_. That comes to a deal of money at the end of a

year. And how much did you say there was to be for the money?

_Thirty-two pages, Sir! large octavo, closely printed._ Thirty and two

pages? Bless me; why, except what I does in a family way on the Sabbath,

that’s more than I ever reads, Sir! all the year round. I am as great a

one as any man in Brummagem, Sir! for liberty, and truth, and all them

sort of things; but as to this, (no offence, I hope, Sir!) I must beg to

be excused.

‘So ended my first canvass: from causes that I shall presently mention,

I made but one other application in person. This took place at

Manchester, to a stately and opulent wholesale dealer in cottons. He

took my letter of introduction, and having perused it, measured me from

head to foot, and again from foot to head, and then asked if I had any

bill or invoice of the thing. I presented my prospectus to him; he

rapidly skimmed and hummed over the first side, and still more rapidly

the second and concluding page; crushed it within his fingers and the

palm of his hand; then most deliberately and _significantly_ rubbed and

smoothed one part against the other; and lastly, putting it into his

pocket, turned his back on me with an “_overrun_ with these articles!”

and so without another syllable retired into his counting-house—and, I

can truly say, to my unspeakable amusement.

‘This, I have said, was my second and last attempt. On returning baffled

from the first, in which I had vainly essayed to repeat the miracle of

Orpheus with the Brummagem patriot, I dined with the tradesman who had

introduced me to him. After dinner, he importuned me to smoke a pipe

with him, and two or three other illuminati of the same rank. I

objected, both because I was engaged to spend the evening with a

minister and his friends, and because I had never smoked except once or

twice in my lifetime; and then it was herb tobacco, mixed with Oronooko.

On the assurance, however, that the tobacco was equally mild, and seeing

too that it was of a yellow colour, (not forgetting the lamentable

difficulty I have always experienced in saying, No! and in abstaining

from what the people about me were doing), I took half a pipe, filling

the lower half of the bole with salt. I was soon, however, compelled to

resign it, in consequence of a giddiness and distressful feeling in my

eyes, which, as I had drank but a single glass of ale, must, I knew,

have been the effect of the tobacco. Soon after, deeming myself

recovered, I sallied forth to my engagement; but the walk and the fresh

air brought on all the symptoms again; and I had scarcely entered the

minister’s drawing-room, and opened a small packet of letters which he

had received from Bristol for me, ere I sunk back on the sofa, in a sort

of swoon rather than sleep. Fortunately I had found just time enough to

inform him of the confused state of my feelings, and of the occasion.

For here and thus I lay, my face like a wall that is white-washing,

_deathly_ pale, and with the cold drops of perspiration running down it

from my forehead, while, one after another, there dropt in the different

gentlemen, who had been invited to meet and spend the evening with me,

to the number of from fifteen to twenty. As the poison of tobacco acts

but for a short time, I at length awoke from insensibility, and looked

around on the party; my eyes dazzled by the candles which had been

lighted in the interim. By way of relieving my embarrassment, one of the

gentlemen began the conversation with “_Have you seen a paper to-day,

Mr. Coleridge?_”—“Sir! (I replied, rubbing my eyes), I am far from

convinced, that a Christian is permitted[9] to read either newspapers or

any other works of merely political and temporary interest.” This

remark, so ludicrously inapposite to, or rather incongruous with, the

purpose for which I was known to have visited Birmingham, and to assist

me in which they were all then met, produced an involuntary and general

burst of laughter; and seldom, indeed, have I passed so many delightful

hours as I enjoyed in that room, from the moment of that laugh to an

early hour the next morning. Never, perhaps, in so mixed and numerous a

party, have I since heard conversation sustained with such animation,

enriched with such variety of information, and enlivened with such a

flow of anecdote. Both then and afterwards, they all joined in

dissuading me from proceeding with my scheme; assured me, with the most

friendly, and yet most flattering expressions, that the employment was

neither fit for me, nor I fit for the employment. Yet if I had

determined on persevering in it, they promised to exert themselves to

the utmost to procure subscribers, and insisted that I should make no

more applications in person, but carry on the canvass by proxy. The same

hospitable reception, the same dissuasion, and (that failing) the same

kind exertions in my behalf, I met with at Manchester, Derby,

Nottingham, Sheffield, indeed at every place in which I took up my

sojourn. I often recall, with affectionate pleasure, the many

respectable men who interested themselves for me, a perfect stranger to

them, not a few of whom I can still name among my friends. They will

bear witness for me, how opposite, even then, my principles were to

those of Jacobinism, or even of Democracy, and can attest the strict

accuracy of the statement which I have left on record in the 10th and

11th Numbers of _The Friend_.’ p. 174.

We shall not stop at present to dispute with Mr. Coleridge, how far the

principles of the Watchman, and the _Conciones ad Populum_ were or were

not akin to those of the Jacobins. His style, in general, admits of a

convenient latitude of interpretation. But we think we are quite safe in

asserting, that they were still more opposite to those of the

Anti-Jacobins, and the party to which he admits he has gone over.

Our author next gives a somewhat extraordinary account of his having

been set upon with his friend Wordsworth, by a Government spy, in his

retreat at Nether-Stowey—the most lively thing in which is, that the

said spy, who, it seems had a great red nose, and had overheard the

friends discoursing about _Spinosa_, reported to his employers, that he

could make out very little of what they said,—only he was sure they were

aware of his vicinity, as he heard them very often talking of

_Spy-nosy_! If this is not the very highest vein of wit in the world, it

must be admitted at least to be very innocent merriment. Another

excellent joke of the same character is his remark on an Earl of Cork

not paying for his copy of the _Friend_—that he might have been an Earl

of _Bottle_ for him!—We have then some memorandums of his excursion into

Germany, and the conditions on which he agreed, on his return home in

1800, to write for the Morning Post, which was at that time not a very

ministerial paper, if we remember right.

_A propos_ of the Morning Post, Mr. C. takes occasion to eulogise the

writings of Mr. Burke, and observes, that ‘as our very sign-boards give

evidence that there has been a Titian in the world, so the essays and

leading paragraphs of our journals are so many remembrancers of Edmund

Burke.’ This is modest and natural we suppose for a newspaper editor:

But our learned author is desirous of carrying the parallel a little

further,—and assures us, that nobody can doubt of Mr. Burke’s

consistency. ‘Let the scholar,’ says our biographer, ‘who doubts this

assertion, refer only to the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke at

the commencement of the American war, and compare them with his speeches

and writings at the commencement of the French Revolution. He will find

the principles exactly the same, and the deductions the same—but the

practical inferences almost opposite in the one case from those drawn in

the other, yet in both equally legitimate and confirmed by the results.’

It is not without reluctance that we speak of the vices and infirmities

of such a mind as Burke’s: But the poison of high example has by far the

widest range of destruction; and, for the sake of public honour and

individual integrity, we think it right to say, that however it may be

defended upon other grounds, the political career of that eminent

individual has no title to the praise of consistency. Mr. Burke, the

opponent of the American war—and Mr. Burke, the opponent of the French

Revolution, are not the same person, but opposite persons—not opposite

persons only, but deadly enemies. In the latter period, he abandoned not

only all his practical conclusions, but all the principles on which they

were founded. He proscribed all his former sentiments, denounced all his

former friends, rejected and reviled all the maxims to which he had

formerly appealed as incontestable. In the American war, he constantly

spoke of the rights of the people as inherent, and inalienable: After

the French Revolution, he began by treating them with the chicanery of a

sophist, and ended by raving at them with the fury of a maniac. In the

former case, he held out the duty of resistance to oppression, as the

palladium, and only ultimate resource, of natural liberty; in the

latter, he scouted, prejudged, vilified and nicknamed, all resistance in

the abstract, as a foul and unnatural union of rebellion and sacrilege.

In the one case, to answer the purposes of faction, he made it out, that

the people are always in the right; in the other, to answer different

ends, he made it out that they are always in the wrong—lunatics in the

hands of their royal keepers, patients in the sick-wards of an hospital,

or felons in the condemned cells of a prison. In the one, he considered

that there was a constant tendency on the part of the prerogative to

encroach on the rights of the people, which ought always to be the

object of the most watchful jealousy, and of resistance, when necessary:

In the other, he pretended to regard it as the sole occupation and

ruling passion of those in power, to watch over the liberties and

happiness of their subjects. The burthen of all his speeches on the

American war was conciliation, concession, timely reform, as the only

practicable or desirable alternative of rebellion: The object of all his

writings on the French Revolution was, to deprecate and explode all

concession and all reform, as encouraging rebellion, and an

irretrievable step to revolution and anarchy. In the one, he insulted

kings personally, as among the lowest and worst of mankind; in the

other, he held them up to the imagination of his readers as sacred

abstractions. In the one case, he was a partisan of the people, to court

popularity; in the other, to gain the favour of the Court, he became the

apologist of all courtly abuses. In the one case, he took part with

those who were actually rebels against his Sovereign; in the other, he

denounced, as rebels and traitors, all those of his own countrymen who

did not yield sympathetic allegiance to a foreign Sovereign, whom we had

always been in the habit of treating as an arbitrary tyrant.

Judging from plain facts and principles, then, it is difficult to

conceive more ample proofs of inconsistency. But try it by the more

vulgar and palpable test of comparison. Even Mr. Fox’s enemies, we

think, allow _him_ the praise of consistency. _He_ asserted the rights

of the people in the American war, and continued to assert them in the

French Revolution. He remained visibly in his place; and spoke,

throughout, the same principles in the same language. When Mr. Burke

abjured these principles, he left this associate; nor did it ever enter

into the mind of a human being to impute the defection to any change in

Mr. Fox’s sentiments—any desertion by him of the maxims by which his

public life had been guided. Take another illustration, from an opposite

quarter. Nobody will accuse the principles of his present Majesty, or

the general measures of his reign, of inconsistency. If they had no

other merit, they have at least that of having been all along actuated

by one uniform and constant spirit: Yet Mr. Burke at one time vehemently

opposed, and afterwards most intemperately extolled them; and it was for

his recanting his opposition, not for his persevering in it, that he

received his pension. He does not himself mention his flaming speeches

in the American war, as among the public services which had entitled him

to this remuneration.

The truth is, that Burke was a man of fine fancy and subtle reflection;

but not of sound and practical judgment—nor of high or rigid

principles.—As to his understanding, he certainly was not a great

philosopher; for his works of mere abstract reasoning are shallow and

inefficient:—Nor a man of sense and business; for, both in counsel and

in conduct, he alarmed his friends as much at least as his

opponents:—But he was a keen and accomplished pamphleteer—an ingenious

political essayist. He applied the habit of reflection, which he had

borrowed from his metaphysical studies, but which was not competent to

the discovery of any elementary truth in that department, with great

felicity and success, to the mixed mass of human affairs. He knew more

of the political machine than a recluse philosopher; and he speculated

more profoundly on its principles and general results than a mere

politician. He saw a number of fine distinctions and changeable aspects

of things, the good mixed with the ill, the ill mixed with the good; and

with a sceptical indifference, in which the exercise of his own

ingenuity was always the governing principle, suggested various topics

to qualify or assist the judgment of others. But for this very reason he

was little calculated to become a leader or a partisan in any important

practical measure: For the habit of his mind would lead him to find out

a reason for or against any thing: And it is not on speculative

refinements, (which belong to _every_ side of a question), but on a just

estimate of the aggregate mass and extended combinations of objections

and advantages, that we ought to decide and act. Burke had the power,

almost without limit, of throwing true or false weights into the scales

of political casuistry, but not firmness of mind—or, shall we say,

honesty enough—to hold the balance. When he took a side, his vanity or

his spleen more frequently gave the casting vote than his judgment; and

the fieriness of his zeal was in exact proportion to the levity of his

understanding, and the want of conscious sincerity.

He was fitted by nature and habit for the studies and labours of the

closet; and was generally mischievous when he came out;—because the very

subtlety of his reasoning, which, left to itself, would have

counteracted its own activity, or found its level in the common sense of

mankind, became a dangerous engine in the hands of power, which is

always eager to make use of the most plausible pretexts to cover the

most fatal designs. That which, if applied as a general observation on

human affairs, is a valuable truth suggested to the mind, may, when

forced into the interested defence of a particular measure or system,

become the grossest and basest sophistry. Facts or consequences never

stood in the way of this speculative politician. He fitted them to his

preconceived theories, instead of conforming his theories to them. They

were the playthings of his style, the sport of his fancy. They were the

straws of which his imagination made a blaze, and were consumed, like

straws, in the blaze they had served to kindle. The fine things he said

about Liberty and Humanity, in his speech on the Begum’s affairs, told

equally well, whether Warren Hastings was a tyrant or not: Nor did he

care one jot who caused the famine he described, so that he described it

in a way to attract admiration. On the same principle, he represents the

French priests and nobles under the old regime as excellent moral

people, very charitable, and very religious, in the teeth of notorious

facts,—to answer to the handsome things he has to say in favour of

priesthood and nobility in general; and, with similar views, he

falsifies the records of our English Revolution, and puts an

interpretation on the word _abdication_, of which a schoolboy would be

ashamed. He constructed his whole theory of government, in short, not on

rational, but on picturesque and fanciful principles; as if the King’s

crown were a painted gewgaw, to be looked at on gala days; titles an

empty sound to please the ear; and the whole order of society a

theatrical procession. His lamentation over the age of chivalry, and his

projected crusade to restore it, is about as wise as if any one, from

reading the Beggar’s Opera, should take to picking of pockets; or, from

admiring the landscapes of Salvator Rosa, should wish to convert the

abodes of civilized life into the haunts of wild beasts and banditti. On

this principle of false refinement, there is no abuse, nor system of

abuses, that does not admit of an easy and triumphant defence; for there

is something which a merely speculative inquirer may always find out,

good as well as bad, in every possible system, the best or the worst;

and if we can once get rid of the restraints of common sense and

honesty, we may easily prove, by plausible words, that liberty and

slavery, peace and war, plenty and famine, are matters of perfect

indifference. This is the school of politics, of which Mr. Burke was at

the head; and it is perhaps to his example, in this respect, that we owe

the prevailing tone of many of those newspaper paragraphs, which Mr.

Coleridge thinks so invaluable an accession to our political philosophy.

Burke’s literary talents, were, after all, his chief excellence. His

style has all the familiarity of conversation, and all the research of

the most elaborate composition. He says what he wants to say, by any

means, nearer or more remote, within his reach. He makes use of the most

common or scientific terms, of the longest or shortest sentences, of the

plainest and most downright, or of the most figurative modes of speech.

He gives for the most part loose reins to his imagination, and follows

it as far as the language will carry him. As long as the one or the

other has any resources in store to make the reader feel and see the

thing as he has conceived it,—in its nicest shade of difference, in its

utmost degree of force and splendour,—he never disdains, and never fails

to employ them. Yet, in the extremes of his mixed style there is not

much affectation, and but little either of pedantry or of coarseness. He

everywhere gives the image he wishes to give, in its true and

appropriate colouring: and it is the very crowd and variety of these

images that have given to his language its peculiar tone of animation,

and even of passion. It is his impatience to transfer his conceptions

entire, living, in all their rapidity, strength, and glancing variety—to

the minds of others, that constantly pushes him to the verge of

extravagance, and yet supports him there in dignified security—

‘Never so sure our rapture to create,

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

He is, with the exception of Jeremy Taylor, the most poetical of prose

writers, and at the same time his prose never degenerates into the mere

glitter or tinkling of poetry; for he always aims at overpowering rather

than at pleasing; and consequently sacrifices beauty and grandeur to

force and vividness. He has invariably a task to perform, a positive

purpose to execute, an effect to produce. His only object is therefore

to strike hard, and in the right place; if he misses his mark, he

repeats his blow; and does not care how ungraceful the action, or how

clumsy the instrument, provided it brings down his antagonist.

Mr. C. enters next into a copious discussion of the merits of his friend

Mr. Wordsworth’s poetry,—which we do not think very remarkable either

for clearness or candour; but as a very great part of it is occupied

with specific inculpations of our former remarks on that ingenious

author, it would savour too much of mere controversy and recrimination,

if we were to indulge ourselves with any observations on the subject.

Where we are parties to any dispute, and consequently to be regarded as

incapable of giving an _impartial_ account of our adversary’s argument,

we shall not pretend to give any account of it at all; and therefore,

though we shall endeavour to give all due weight to Mr. C.’s reasonings,

when we have occasion to consider any new publication from the Lake

school, we must for the present decline any notice of the particular

objections he has here urged to our former judgments on their

productions; and shall pass over all this part of the work before us, by

merely remarking, that with regard to Mr. Wordsworth’s ingenious project

of confining the language of poetry to that which is chiefly in use

among the lower orders of society, and that, from horror or contempt for

the abuses of what has been called poetic diction, it is really

unnecessary to say anything—the truth and common sense of the thing

being so obvious, and, we apprehend, so generally acknowledged, that

nothing but a pitiful affectation of singularity could have raised a

controversy on the subject. There is, no doubt, a simple and familiar

language, common to almost all ranks, and intelligible through many

ages, which is the best fitted for the direct expression of strong sense

and deep passion, and which, consequently, is the language of the best

poetry as well as of the best prose. But it is not the exclusive

language of poetry. There is another language peculiar to this manner of

writing, which has been called _poetic diction_,—those flowers of

speech, which, whether natural or artificial, fresh or faded, are

strewed over the plainer ground which poetry has in common with prose: a

paste of rich and honeyed words, like the candied coat of the auricula;

a glittering tissue of quaint conceits and sparkling metaphors, crusting

over the rough stalk of homely thoughts. Such is the style of almost all

our modern poets; such is the style of Pope and Gray; such, too, very

often, is that of Shakespeare and Milton; and, notwithstanding Mr.

Coleridge’s decision to the contrary, of Spenser’s Faery Queen. Now this

style is the reverse of one made up of _slang_ phrases; for, as they are

words associated only with mean and vulgar ideas, poetic diction is such

as is connected only with the most pleasing and elegant associations;

and _both_ differ essentially from the middle or natural style, which is

a mere transparent medium of the thoughts, neither degrading nor setting

them off by any adventitious qualities of its own, but leaving them to

make their own impression, by the force of truth and nature. Upon the

whole, therefore, we should think this ornamented and coloured style,

most proper to descriptive or fanciful poetry, where the writer has to

lend a borrowed, and, in some sort, meretricious lustre to outward

objects, which he can best do by enshrining them in a language that, by

custom and long prescription, reflects the image of a poetical mind,—as

we think the common or natural style is the truly dramatic style, that

in which he can best give the impassioned, unborrowed, unaffected

thoughts of others. The pleasure derived from poetic diction is the same

as that derived from classical diction. It is in like manner made up of

words dipped in ‘the dew of Castalie,’—tinged with colours borrowed from

the rainbow,—‘sky-tinctured,’ warmed with the glow of genius, purified

by the breath of time,—that soften into distance, and expand into

magnitude, whatever is seen through their medium,—that varnish over the

trite and common-place, and lend a gorgeous robe to the forms of fancy,

but are only an incumbrance and a disguise in conveying the true touches

of nature, the intense strokes of passion. The beauty of poetic diction

is, in short, borrowed and artificial. It is a glittering veil spread

over the forms of things and the feelings of the heart; and is best laid

aside, when we wish to show either the one or the other in their naked

beauty or deformity. As the dialogues in Othello and Lear furnish the

most striking instances of plain, point-blank speaking, or of the real

language of nature and passion, so the Choruses in Samson Agonistes

abound in the fullest and finest adaptations of classic and poetic

phrases to express distant and elevated notions, born of fancy, religion

and learning.

Mr. Coleridge bewilders himself sadly in endeavouring to determine in

what the essence of poetry consists;—Milton, we think, has told it in a

single line—

——‘Thoughts that voluntary move

Harmonious numbers.’

Poetry is the music of language, expressing the music of the mind.

Whenever any object takes such a hold on the mind as to make us dwell

upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in love, or kindling it to

a sentiment of admiration;—whenever a movement of imagination or passion

is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the

emotion, to bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give the

same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, to the sounds that

express it,—this is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and

continuous; the musical in thought and feeling is the sustained and

continuous also. Whenever articulation passes naturally into intonation,

this is the beginning of poetry. There is no natural harmony in the

ordinary combinations of significant sounds: the language of prose is

not the language of music, or of _passion_: and it is to supply this

inherent defect in the mechanism of language—to make the sound an echo

to the sense, when the sense becomes a sort of echo to itself—to mingle

the tide of verse, ‘the golden cadences of poesy,’ with the tide of

feeling, flowing, and murmuring as it flows—or to take the imagination

off its feet, and spread its wings where it may indulge its own

impulses, without being stopped or perplexed by the ordinary

abruptnesses, or discordant flats and sharps of prose—that poetry was

invented.

As Mr. C. has suppressed his Disquisition on the Imagination as

unintelligible, we do not think it fair to make any remarks on the 200

pages of prefatory matter, which were printed, it seems, in the present

work, before a candid friend apprised him of this little objection to

the appearance of the Disquisition itself. We may venture, however, on

one observation, of a very plain and practical nature, which is forced

upon us by the whole tenor of the extraordinary history before

us.—Reason and imagination are both excellent things; but perhaps their

provinces ought to be kept more distinct than they have lately been.

‘Poets have such seething brains,’ that they are disposed to meddle with

everything, and mar all. Mr. C., with great talents, has, by an ambition

to be everything, become nothing. His metaphysics have been a dead

weight on the wings of his imagination—while his imagination has run

away with his reason and common sense. He might, we seriously think,

have been a very considerable poet—instead of which he has chosen to be

a bad philosopher and a worse politician. There is something, we

suspect, in these studies that does not easily amalgamate. We would not,

with Plato, absolutely banish poets from the commonwealth; but we really

think they should meddle as little with its practical administration as

may be. They live in an ideal world of their own; and it would be,

perhaps, as well if they were confined to it. Their flights and fancies

are delightful to themselves and to every body else; but they make

strange work with matter of fact; and, if they were allowed to act in

public affairs, would soon turn the world upside down. They indulge only

their own flattering dreams or superstitious prejudices, and make idols

or bugbears of what they please, caring as little for ‘history or

particular facts,’ as for general reasoning. They are dangerous leaders

and treacherous followers. Their inordinate vanity runs them into all

sorts of extravagances; and their habitual effeminacy gets them out of

them at any price. Always pampering their own appetite for excitement,

and wishing to astonish others, their whole aim is to produce a dramatic

effect, one way or other—to shock or delight their observers; and they

are as perfectly indifferent to the consequences of what they write, as

if the world were merely a stage for them to play their fantastic tricks

on.—As romantic in their servility as in their independence, and equally

importunate candidates for fame or infamy, they require only to be

distinguished, and are not scrupulous as to the means of distinction.

Jacobins or Antijacobins—outrageous advocates for anarchy and

licentiousness, or flaming apostles of persecution—always violent and

vulgar in their opinions, they oscillate, with a giddy and sickening

motion, from one absurdity to another, and expiate the follies of their

youth by the heartless vices of their advancing age. None so ready as

they to carry every paradox to its most revolting and nonsensical

excess—none so sure to caricature, in their own persons, every feature

of an audacious and insane philosophy:—In their days of innovation,

indeed, the philosophers crept at their heels like hounds, while they

darted on their distant quarry like hawks; stooping always to the lowest

game; eagerly snuffing up the most tainted and rankest scents; feeding

their vanity with the notion of the strength of their digestion of

poisons, and most ostentatiously avowing whatever would most effectually

startle the prejudices of others. Preposterously seeking for the

stimulus of novelty in truth, and the eclat of theatrical exhibition in

pure reason, it is no wonder that these persons at last became disgusted

with their own pursuits, and that, in consequence of the violence of the

change, the most inveterate prejudices and uncharitable sentiments have

rushed in to fill up the _vacuum_ produced by the previous annihilation

of common sense, wisdom, and humanity.

This is the true history of our reformed Antijacobin poets; the life of

one of whom is here recorded. The cant of Morality, like the cant of

Methodism, comes in most naturally to close the scene: and as the

regenerated sinner keeps alive his old raptures and new-acquired

horrors, by anticipating endless ecstasies or endless tortures in

another world; so, our disappointed demagogue keeps up that ‘pleasurable

poetic fervour’ which has been the cordial and the bane of his

existence, by indulging his maudlin egotism and his mawkish spleen in

fulsome eulogies of his own virtues, and nauseous abuse of his

contemporaries[10]—in making excuses for doing nothing himself, and

assigning bad motives for what others have done.—Till he can do

something better, we would rather hear no more of him.

LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE

VOL. XXXI.] [_December 1818._

Horace Walpole was by no means a venerable or lofty character:—But he

has here left us another volume of gay and graceful letters, which,

though they indicate no peculiar originality of mind, or depth of

thought, and are continually at variance with good taste and right

feeling, still give a lively and amusing view of the time in which he

lived. He was indeed a garrulous _old_ man nearly all his days; and,

luckily for his gossiping propensities, he was on familiar terms with

the gay world, and set down as a man of genius by the Princess Amelia,

George Selwyn, Mr. Chute, and all persons of the like talents and

importance. His descriptions of court dresses, court revels, and court

beauties, are in the highest style of perfection,—sprightly, fantastic

and elegant: And the zeal with which he hunts after an old portrait or a

piece of broken glass, is ten times more entertaining than if it were

lavished on a worthier object. He is indeed the very prince of

Gossips,—and it is impossible to question his supremacy, when he floats

us along in a stream of bright talk, or shoots with us the rapids of

polite conversation. He delights in the small squabbles of great

politicians and the puns of George Selwyn,—enjoys to madness the strife

of loo with half a dozen bitter old women of quality,—revels in a world

of chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, boxes, turrets, stands, old

printing, and old china,—and indeed lets us loose at once amongst all

the frippery and folly of the last two centuries, with an ease and a

courtesy equally amazing and delightful. His mind, as well as his house,

was piled up with Dresden china, and illuminated through painted glass;

and we look upon his heart to have been little better than a case full

of enamels, painted eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, vases and

rock-crystals. This may in some degree account for his odd and quaint

manner of thinking, and his utter poverty of feeling:—He could not get a

plain thought out of that cabinet of curiosities, his mind and he had no

room for feeling,—no place to plant it in, or leisure to cultivate it.

He was at all times the slave of elegant trifles; and could no more

screw himself up into a decided and solid personage, than he could

divest himself of petty jealousies and miniature animosities. In one

word, every thing about him was in little; and the smaller the object,

and the less its importance, the higher did his estimation and his

praises of it ascend. He piled up trifles to a colossal height—and made

a pyramid of nothings ‘most marvellous to see.’

His political character was a heap of confusion: but the key to it is

easy enough to find. He united an insufferable deal of aristocratical

pretension with Whig professions,—and, under an assumed carelessness and

liberality, he nourished a petty anxiety about court movements and a

degree of rancour towards those who profited by them, which we should

only look for in the most acknowledged sycophants of Government. He held

out austere and barren principles, in short, to the admiration of the

world,—but indemnified himself in practice by the indulgence of all the

opposite ones. He wore his horse-hair shirt as an _outer_ garment; and

glimpses might always be caught of a silken garment within. He was truly

‘of outward show elaborate; of inward less exact.’ But, setting his

political character—or rather the want of it—and some few private

failings, and a good many other questionable peculiarities, aside,—we

find Walpole an amusing companion, and should like to have such a

chronicler of small matters every fifty or sixty years;—or it might be

better, perhaps, if, like the aloe, they should blossom but once in a

century. With what spirit does he speak of the gay and noble visitors at

Strawberry Hill! How finely does he group, in his letters, the high-born

and celebrated beauties of the court, with whom it was his fortune and

his fancy to associate!

‘Strawberry Hill is grown a perfect Paphos; it is the land of beauties.

On Wednesday, the Dutchesses of Hamilton and Richmond, and Lady

Ailesbury, dined there; the two latter staid all night. There never was

so pretty a sight as to see them all sitting in the shell. A thousand

years hence, when I begin to grow old, if that can ever be, I shall talk

of that event, and tell young people how much handsomer the women of my

time were than they will be. Then I shall say, “Women alter now: I

remember Lady Ailesbury looking handsomer than her daughter the pretty

Dutchess of Richmond, as they were sitting in the shell on my terrace,

with the Dutchess of Richmond, one of the famous Gunnings,” &c. &c.

Yesterday, t’other famous Gunning dined there. She has made a friendship

with my charming niece, to disguise her jealousy of the new Countess’s

beauty: there were they two, their Lords, Lord Buckingham, and

Charlotte. You will think that I did not choose men for my parties so

well as women. I don’t include Lord Waldegrave in this bad election.’

All the rest is in the same style: and lords and ladies are shuffled

about the whole work as freely as court cards in a party at Loo. Horace

Walpole, to be sure, is always Pam: but this only makes the interest

greater, and the garrulity more splendid. He is equally sprightly and

facetious, whether he describes a King’s death and funeral, or a quirk

of George Selwyn; and is nearly as amusing when he recounts the follies

and the fashions of the day, as when he affects to be patriotic, or

solemnizes into the sentimental. His style is not a bit less airy when

he deals with ‘the horrid story of Lord Ferrers’s murdering his

steward,’ than when it informs us that ‘Miss Chudleigh has called for

the council books of the subscription concert, and has struck off the

name of Mrs. Naylor.’ He is equally amusing whether he records the death

of the brave Balmerino, or informs us that ‘old Dunch is dead.’

The letters of eminent men make, to our taste, very choice and curious

reading; and, except when their publication becomes a breach of honour

or decorum, we are always rejoiced to meet with them in print. We should

except, perhaps, the letters of celebrated warriors; which, for the most

part, should only be published in the Gazette. But, setting these heroes

aside, whose wits, Pope has informed us, ‘are kept in ponderous vases,’

letters are certainly the honestest records of great minds, that we can

become acquainted with; and we like them the more, for letting us into

the follies and treacheries of high life, the secrets of the gay and the

learned world, and the mysteries of authorship. We are ushered, as it

were, behind the scenes of life; and see gay ladies and learned men, the

wise, the witty, and the ambitious, in all the nakedness, or undress at

least, of their spirits. A poet, in his private letters, seldom thinks

it necessary to keep up the farce of feeling; but casts off the trickery

of sentiment, and glides into the unaffected wit, or sobers quietly into

the honest man. By his published works, we know that an author becomes a

‘Sir John with all Europe;’ and it can only be by his letters that we

discover him to be ‘Jack with his brothers and sisters, and John with

his familiars.’ This it is that makes the private letters of a literary

person so generally entertaining. He is glad to escape from the

austerity of composition, and the orthodoxy of thought; and feels a

relief in easy speculations or ludicrous expressions. The finest,

perhaps, in our language, are eminently of this description—we mean

those of Gray to his friends or literary associates. His poetry is too

scholastic and elaborate, and is too visibly the result of laborious and

anxious study. But, in his letters, he at once becomes an easy, and

graceful, and feeling writer. The composition of familiar letters just

suited his indolence, his taste, and his humour. His remarks on poetry

are nearly as good as poetry itself;—his observations on life are full

of sagacity and fine understanding;—and his descriptions of natural

scenery, or Gothic antiquities, are worth their weight in gold. Pope’s

letters, though extremely elegant, are failures as letters. He wrote

them to the world, not to his friends; and they have therefore very much

the air of universal secrets. Swift has recorded his own sour mind in

many a bitter epistle; and his correspondence remains a stern and brief

chronicle of the time in which he lived. Cowper hath unwittingly

beguiled us of many a long hour, by his letters to Lady Hesketh; and in

them we see the fluctuations of his melancholy nature more plainly, than

in all the biographical dissertations of his affectionate editor.——But

we must not make catalogues,—nor indulge longer in this eulogy on

letter-writing. We take a particular interest, we confess, in what is

thus spoken aside, as it were, and without a consciousness of being

overheard;—and think there is a spirit and freedom in the tone of works

written for the post, which is scarcely ever to be found in those

written for the press. We are much more edified by one letter of Cowper,

than we should be by a week’s confinement and hard labour in the

metaphysical Bridewell of Mr. Coleridge; and a single letter from the

pen of Gray, is worth all the pedlar-reasoning of Mr. Wordsworth’s

Eternal Recluse, from the hour he first squats himself down in the sun

to the end of his preaching. In the first we have the light unstudied

pleasantries of a wit, and a man of feeling;—in the last we are talked

to death by an arrogant old proser, and buried in a heap of the most

perilous stuff and the most dusty philosophy.

But to come back to the work before us.—Walpole evidently formed his

style upon that of Gray, with whom he travelled; and, with his own fund

of pleasantry and sarcasm, we know of no other writer whom he could so

successfully have studied. There are some odd passages on Gray,

scattered up and down the present volume, which speak more for the poet

than for the justice or friendship of Walpole. In one letter he says,

‘The first volume of Spencer is published with prints designed by

Kent;—but the most execrable performance you ever beheld. The graving

not worse than the drawing; awkward knights, scrambling Unas, hills

tumbling down themselves, no variety of prospect, and three or four

perpetual spruce firs.—Our charming Mr. Bentley is doing Mr. Gray as

much more honour as he deserves than Spencer!’ This is indeed a lordly

criticism. We really never saw so much bad taste condensed into so small

a portion of prose. But he next shows us what ladies of the court think

of men of letters, and how lords defend them.

‘My Lady Ailesbury has been much diverted, and so will you too. Gray is

in their neighbourhood. My Lady Carlisle says _he is extremely like me

in his manner_. They went a party to dine on a cold loaf, and passed the

day. Lady A. protests he never opened his lips but once, and then only

said, “Yes, my Lady, I believe so.”

‘I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray; he is the

worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn, from living

reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses

easily. All his words are measured and chosen, and formed into

sentences. His writings are admirable. He himself is not agreeable.’

But it is not only to his particular friends that he is thus amiably

candid. Two other great names are dealt with in the same spirit in the

following short sentence.

‘Dr. Young has published a new book, on purpose, he says himself, to

have an opportunity of telling a story that he has known these forty

years. Mr. Addison sent for the young Lord Warwick, as he was dying, to

show him in what peace a Christian could die. Unluckily he died of

brandy. Nothing makes a Christian die in peace like being a maudlin! But

don’t say this in Gath, where you are.’

It is worthy of remark, indeed, that Walpole never speaks with respect

of any man of genius or talent, and, least of all, of those master

spirits who ‘have got the start of this majestic world.’ He envied all

great minds; and shrunk from encountering them, lest his own should

suffer by the comparison. He contrived indeed to quarrel with all his

better-spirited friends. Even the gentleman to whom these epistles were

addressed, a correspondent of three score years’ standing, fell at last

under his displeasure, and was dismissed his friendship. He turned out

the domestics of the heart as easily as those of the house; with little

or no notice, and with threats of giving them a bad character as a

return for their past services. He wished to have genius to wait upon

him; but was always surprised that it would not submit to be a servant

of all work. Poor Bentley, of whom we hear praises ‘high fantastical’ in

the early letters, meets with but scurvy treatment the moment he gets

out of fashion with his half-patron and half-friend. He is all spirit,

goodness and genius, till it falls to his turn to be disliked; and then

the altered patron sneers at his domestic misfortunes, depreciates his

talents, and even chuckles at the failure of a play which the artist’s

necessities required should be successful. The following is the

ill-natured passage to which we allude.

‘No, I shall never cease being a dupe, till I have been undeceived round

by every thing that calls itself a virtue. I came to town yesterday,

through clouds of dust, to see The Wishes, and went actually feeling for

Mr. Bentley, and full of the emotions he must be suffering. What do you

think, in a house crowded, was the first thing I saw? Mr. and Madame

Bentley perched up in the front boxes, and acting audience at his own

play! No, all the impudence of false patriotism never came up to it. Did

one ever hear of an author that had courage to see his own first night

in public? I don’t believe Fielding or Foote himself ever did; and this

was the modest, bashful Mr. Bentley, that died at the thought of being

known for an author even by his own acquaintance! In the stage-box was

Lady Bute, Lord Halifax, and Lord Melcombe. I must say, the two last

entertained the house as much as the play. Your King was prompter, and

called out to the actors every minute to speak louder. The other went

backwards and forwards behind the scenes, fetched the actors into the

box, and was busier than Harlequin. The _curious_ prologue was not

spoken—the whole very ill acted. It turned out just what I remembered

it: the good parts extremely good; the rest very flat and vulgar, &c.’

A poor painter of the name of Müntz is worse off even than Bentley; and

is abused in a very ungenerous way for want of gratitude, and unmerciful

extortion. There is a sad want of feeling and dignity in all this; but

the key to it is, that Walpole was a miser. He loved the arts after a

fashion; but his avarice pinched his affections. He would have had ‘that

which he esteemed the ornament of life,’ but that he ‘lived a coward in

his own esteem.’ The following haggling passage in one of his letters

would disgrace a petty merchant in Duke’s Place, in a bargain for the

reversion of an old pair of trowsers.

‘I am disposed to prefer the younger picture of Madame Grammont by Lely;

but I stumbled at the price; twelve guineas for a copy in enamel is very

dear. Mrs. Vesey tells me his originals cost sixteen, and are not so

good as his copies. I will certainly have none of his originals. His,

what is his name? I would fain resist this copy; I would more fain

excuse myself for having it. I say to myself it would be rude not to

have it, now Lady Kingsland and Mr. Montagu have had so much trouble.

Well—_I think I must have it_, as my Lady Wishfort says, _why does not

the fellow take me?_ Do try if he will take ten;—remember it is the

younger picture.’

Thus did he coquet with his own avarice. Of poor Mason, another of his

dear friends, he speaks thus spitefully—

‘Mr. Mason has published another drama, called Caractacus. There are

some incantations poetical enough, and odes so Greek as to have very

little meaning. But the whole is laboured, uninteresting, and no more

resembling the manners of Britons than of Japanese. It is introduced by

a piping elegy; for Mason, in imitation of Gray, _will cry and roar all

night_, without the least provocation.’

Mason might have endured the paltriness of this remark, if he could have

seen the following pertinent remark on the Cymbeline of Shakespeare.

‘You want news. I must make it if I send it. To change the dulness of

the scene, I went to the play, where I had not been this winter. They

are so crowded, that though I went before six, I got no better place

than a fifth row, where I heard very ill, and was pent for five hours

without a soul near me that I knew. It was Cymbeline; and appeared to me

as long as if every body in it went really to Italy in every act, and

back again. With a few pretty passages and a scene or two, it is so

absurd and tiresome, that I am persuaded Garrick****’

This precious piece of criticism is cut short; whether from the sagacity

of the editor or the prudence of the publishers, we cannot say. But it

is much to be lamented. For it must have been very edifying to have seen

Shakespeare thus pleasantly put down with a dash of the Honourable Mr.

Walpole’s pen—as if he had never written any thing better than the

Mysterious Mother.

A conversation is here recorded between Hogarth and Walpole, which seems

to us very curious and characteristic; though we cannot help smiling a

little at the conclusion, where our author humanely refrains from

erasing the line of praise which he had ‘consecrated’ to Hogarth;—as if

the painter would infallibly have been damned into oblivion by that

portentous erasure. But he is of the stuff that cannot die. With many

defects, he was a person of great and original powers—a true and a

terrific historian of the human heart: and his works will be remembered

and _read_, as long as men and women retain their old habits, passions

and vices. The following is the conversation of which we have spoken.

‘_Hogarth._—I am told you are going to entertain the town with something

in our way. _Walpole._ Not very soon, Mr. Hogarth.—_H._ I wish you would

let me have it to correct; I should be very sorry to have you expose

yourself to censure; we painters must know more of those things than

other people. _W._ Do you think nobody understands painting but

painters? _H._ Oh! so far from it, there’s Reynolds who certainly has

genius; why but t’other day he offered a hundred pounds for a picture

that I would not hang in my cellars; and indeed to say truth, I have

generally found that persons, who had studied painting least, were the

best judges of it; but what I particularly wished to say to you was

about Sir James Thornhill (you know he married Sir James’s daughter); I

would not have you say any thing against him: There was a book published

some time ago, abusing him, and it gave great offence. He was the first

that attempted history in England; and I assure you, some Germans have

said that he was a very great painter. _W._ My work will go no lower

than the year one thousand seven hundred, and I really have not

considered whether Sir J. Thornhill will come into my plan or not: If he

does, I fear you and I shall not agree upon his merits. _H._ I wish you

would let me correct it; besides I am writing something of the same kind

myself—I should be sorry we should clash. _W._ I believe it is not much

known what my work is; very few persons have seen it. _H._ Why it is a

critical history of painting is it not? _W._ No, it is an antiquarian

history of it in England. I bought Mr. Vertue’s MSS. and I believe the

work will not give much offence; besides if it does I cannot help it:

when I publish any thing I give it to the world to think as they please.

_H._ Oh! if it is an antiquarian work we shall not clash; mine is a

critical work; I don’t know whether I shall ever publish it. It is

rather an apology for painters. I think it is owing to the good sense of

the English that they have not painted better. _W._ My dear Mr. Hogarth,

I must take my leave of you; you now grow too wild—and I left him. If I

had staid, there remained nothing but for him to bite me. I give you my

honour this conversation is literal and, perhaps as long as you have

known Englishmen and painters you never met with any thing so

distracted. I had consecrated a line to his genius (I mean for wit) in

my preface; I shall not erase it; but I hope no one will ask me if he is

not mad.’

We do not think he was mad:—But the self-idolatry of fanciful persons

often exhibits similar symptoms. A man of limited genius, accustomed to

contemplate his own conceptions, has long settled his ideas as to every

thing, and every other person existing in the world. He thinks nothing

truly bright that does not reflect his own image back upon

himself;—nothing truly beautiful, that is not made so by the lustre of

his own feelings. He lives in a sort of chaste singleness; and holds

every approach of a stronger power as dangerous to his solitary purity.

He thinks nothing so important as his own thoughts—nothing so low, that

his own fancy cannot elevate into greatness. He sees only ‘himself and

the universe;’ and will ‘admit no discourse to his beauty.’ He is

himself—alone! If such a man had had a voice in the management of the

flood, he would have suffered no creeping thing to enter the ark but

himself; and would have floated about the waters for forty days in

lonely magnificence.

Passages of the kind, we have hitherto instanced, are very plentiful in

all parts of the work; and we are glad they are so numerous,—because

they will set Walpole’s higher pretensions at rest with posterity. Time

is a disinterested personage, and does his work on dull or rash men

fairly and effectually. He knows nothing of criticism but its austerity

and its sarcasm. He cannot feel poetry; and has, therefore, no right to

settle its laws, or imitate its language. His taste in painting was

affected and dogmatical. His conduct to men of genius was a piece of

insolence, which Posterity is bound to resent! The true heirs of fame

are not to be disturbed in the enjoyment of their property, by every

insolent pretender who steps in and affects a claim upon it. The world

is called on ‘to defend the right.’

To come, however, to the better side of our subject.—Walpole is, as we

have said, an inimitable gossip,—a most vivacious garrulous historian of

fair-haired women, and curious blue china. His garrulity, moreover, hath

a genius of its own—and a transparent tea-cup lets in the light of

inspiration upon it, and makes it shine with colours nigh divine. An

inlaid commode is, with him, the mind’s easy chair. We shall select a

few passages from the letters before us, which, for pleasantry, ease and

alertness, are by far the gayest _morceau_ of description we have read

of late. We may begin with a curious anecdote of Fielding, which is

almost as interesting as any thing in the book. Thus it is—

‘Take sentiments out of their pantoufles, and reduce them to the

infirmities of mortality, what a falling off there is! I could not help

laughing in myself t’other day, as I went through Holborn in a very hot

day, at the dignity of human nature. All those foul old-clothes women

panting without handkerchiefs, and mopping themselves all the way down

within their loose jumps. Rigby gave me as strong a picture of nature.

He and Peter Bathurst, t’other night, carried a servant of the latter’s,

who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding; who, to all his other

vocations, has, by the grace of Mr. Lyttleton, added that of Middlesex

Justice. He sent them word that he was at supper; that they must come

next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, where

they found him banqueting with a blind man, a w——, and three Irishmen,

on some cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the

dirtiest cloth. He never stirred, nor asked them to sit. Rigby, who had

seen him so often come to beg a guinea of Sir. C. Williams, and

Bathurst, at whose father’s he had lived for victuals, understood that

dignity as little, and pulled themselves chairs,—on which he civilized.’

It is very certain that the writings of men are coloured by their

indolence, their amusements, and their occupations; and this little peep

into Fielding’s private hours, lets us at once into his course of

studies, and is an admirable illustration of his Tom Jones, Jonathan

Wild, and other novels. We are taken into the artist’s workshop, and

shown the models from which he works; or rather, we break in upon him at

a time when he is copying from the _life_. It is a very idle piece of

morality, to lament over Fielding for this low indulgence of his

appetite for character. If he had been found quietly at his tea, he

would never have left behind him the name he has done. There is nothing

of a tea inspiration in any of his novels. They are assuredly the finest

things of the kind in the language; and we are Englishmen enough to

consider them the best in any language. They are indubitably the most

English of all the works of Englishmen.

The descriptions of Lord Ferrers’s fatal murder, and of Balmerino’s

death, are given with considerable spirit—(our author, indeed, is

extremely _piquant_ in matters of life and death); and we are puzzled

which to select for our readers. They are both strongly illustrative of

the times in which Walpole and the heroes of them lived; but we cannot

afford room for them both; and we choose the letter on Lord Ferrers,—not

because it is better written, or that the subject is more interesting,

but because the book before us is open at that part, and because we

would not idly meddle with so heroic a fall as that of the Lord

Balmerino.

‘The extraordinary history of Lord Ferrers is closed: He was executed

yesterday. Madness, that in other countries is a disorder, is here a

systematic character: It does not hinder people from forming a plan of

conduct, and from even dying agreeably to it. You remember how the last

Ratcliffe died with the utmost propriety; so did this horrid lunatic,

coolly and sensibly. His own and his wife’s relations had asserted that

he would tremble at last. No such thing; he shamed heroes. He bore the

solemnity of a pompous and tedious procession of above two hours, from

the Tower to Tyburn, with as much tranquillity as if he was only going

to his own burial, not to his own execution. He even talked of

indifferent subjects in the passage; and if the sheriff and the chaplain

had not thought that they had parts to act too, and had not consequently

engaged him in most particular conversation, he did not seem to think it

necessary to talk on the occasion. He went in his wedding clothes;

marking the only remaining impression on his mind. The ceremony he was

in a hurry to have over. He was stopped at the gallows by a vast crowd;

but got out of his coach as soon as he could, and was but seven minutes

on the scaffold; which was hung with black, and prepared by the

undertaker of his family at their expense. There was a new contrivance

for sinking the stage under him, which did not play well; and he

suffered a little by the delay, but was dead in four minutes. The mob

was decent, and admired him, and almost pitied him; so they would Lord

George, whose execution they are so angry at missing. I suppose every

highwayman will now preserve the blue handkerchief he has about his neck

when he is married, that he may die like a lord. With all his madness,

he was not mad enough to be struck with his aunt Huntingdon’s sermons.

The Methodists have nothing to brag of his conversion; though Whitfield

prayed for him, and preached about him. Even Tyburn has been above their

reach. I have not heard that Lady Fanny dabbled with his soul; but I

believe she is prudent enough to confine her missionary zeal to subjects

where the body may be her perquisite.’

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

seat of the Byrons.

‘As I returned, I saw Newsted and Althorpe; I like both. The former is

the very abbey. The great east window of the church remains, and

connects with the house; the hall entire, the refectory entire, the

cloister untouch’d, with the ancient cistern of the convent, and their

arms on; It is a private chapel, quite perfect. The park, which is still

charming, has not been so much unprofaned: The present lord has lost

large sums, and paid part in old oaks; five thousand pounds of which

have been cut near the house. In recompense, he has built two baby

forts, to pay his country in castles for damage done to the navy; and

planted a handful of Scotch firs, that look like ploughboys dress’d in

old family liveries for a public day. In the hall is a very good

collection of pictures, all animals; the refectory, now the great

drawing room, is full of Byrons; the vaulted roof remaining, but the

windows have new dresses making for them by a Venetian tailor.’

This is a careless, but happy description, of one of the noblest

mansions in England; and it will _now_ be read with a far deeper

interest than when it was written. Walpole saw the seat of the Byrons,

old, majestic, and venerable;—but he saw nothing of that magic beauty

which Fame sheds over the habitations of Genius, and which now mantles

every turret of Newsted Abbey. He saw it when Decay was doing its work

on the cloister, the refectory, and the chapel, and all its honours

seemed mouldering into oblivion. He could not know that a voice was soon

to go forth from those antique cloisters, that should be heard through

all future ages, and cry, ‘Sleep no more, to all the house.’ Whatever

may be its future fate, Newsted Abbey must henceforth be a memorable

abode. Time may shed its wild flowers on the walls, and let the fox in

upon the courtyard and the chambers. It may even pass into the hands of

unlettered pride or plebian opulence.—But it has been the mansion of a

mighty poet. Its name is associated to glories that cannot perish—and

will go down to posterity in one of the proudest pages of our annals.

Our author is not often pathetic: But there are some touches of this

sort in the account of his visit to Houghton—though the first part is

flippant enough.

‘The surprise the picture gave me is again renewed. Accustomed for many

years to see nothing but wretched daubs and varnished copies at

auctions, I look at these as enchantment. My own description of them

seems poor; but, shall I tell you truly, the majesty of Italian ideas

almost sinks before the warm nature of Flemish colouring. Alas! don’t I

grow old? My young imagination was fired with Guido’s ideas; must they

be plump and prominent as Abishag to warm me now? Does great youth feel

with poetic limbs, as well as see with poetic eyes? In one respect I am

very young; I cannot satiate myself with looking: an incident

contributed to make me feel this more strongly. A party arrived, just as

I did, to see the house; a man, and three women in riding dresses, and

they rode post through the apartments. I could not hurry before them

fast enough; they were not so long in seeing for the first time, as I

could have been in one room, to examine what I knew by heart. I remember

formerly being often diverted with this kind of _seers_; they come—ask

what such a room is called—in which Sir Robert lay—write it down—admire

a lobster or a cabbage in a market piece—dispute whether the last room

was green or purple—and then hurry to the inn for fear the fish should

be over-dressed. How different my sensations! Not a picture here but

recalls a history; not one but I remember in Downing-street or Chelsea,

where queens and crowds admired them,—though seeing them as little as

these travellers!’

There is some appearance of heart, too, in his account of Lady

Waldegrave’s sufferings on the death of her husband. She was a beautiful

woman; and Walpole seems to have been really kind to her.

‘I had not risen from table, when I received an express from Lady Betty

Waldegrave, to tell me that a sudden change had happened; that they had

given him James’s powders, but that they feared it was too late; and

that he probably would be dead before I could come to my niece, for

whose sake she begged I would return immediately. I was indeed too late!

Too late for every thing.—Late as it was given, the powder vomited him

even in the agonies. Had I had power to direct, he should never have

quitted James:—But these are vain regrets!—Vain to recollect how

particularly kind he, who was kind to everybody, was to me! I found Lady

Waldegrave at my brother’s. She weeps without ceasing; and talks of his

virtues and goodness to her in a manner that distracts one. My brother

bears this mortification with more courage than I could have expected

from his warm passions: but nothing struck me more than to see my rough

savage Swiss, Louis, in tears as he opened my chaise.—I have a bitter

scene to come. To-morrow morning I carry poor Lady Waldegrave to

Strawberry. Her fall is great, from that adoration and attention that he

paid her,—from that splendour of fortune, so much of which dies with

him,—and from that consideration which rebounded to her from the great

deference which the world had for his character. Visions, perhaps. Yet

who could expect that they would have passed away even before that

fleeting thing, her beauty!’

This lady seems to have been afflicted nearly beyond the hope of

consolation. Nevertheless, she married again. It is not a bad sign, we

believe, when a widow sets in with a good wet grief: she has the better

chance of a fine day. Philosophers assert, indeed, that it is possible

for a woman to cry a sorrow clean out:—and we must confess, we have now

and then heard of such things.

We must draw to a close now with our quotations—though we wish we had

room for more. For the author is exceedingly amusing in his attempt at

tracing his descent from Chaucer;—in his remarks on old and young

kings,—in his practical and prospective speculations on gout in the feet

and stomach,—and in his picture of himself, ‘with sweet peas stuck in

his hair!’ We should have liked, too, to extract a _bon mot_ or two of

George Selwyn, whose love of puns and executions was equally insatiable;

but they stick too fast in the looser texture of his historian, to be

disengaged with any moderate labour. The following little passage is

very pleasingly written.

‘For what are we taking Belleisle?—I rejoiced at the little loss we had

on landing: For the glory, I leave it to the Common Council. I am very

willing to leave London to them too, and do pass half the week at

Strawberry, where my two passions, lilacs and nightingales, are in full

bloom. I spent Sunday as if it were Apollo’s birth-day; Gray and Mason

were with me, and we listened to the nightingales till one o’clock in

the morning. Gray has translated two noble incantations from the Lord

knows who, a Danish Gray, who lived the Lord knows when. They are to be

enchased in a history of English Bards, which Mason and he are writing,

but of which the former has not written a word yet, and of which the

latter, if he rides Pegasus at his usual foot pace, will finish the

first page two years hence!’

We cannot understand the Editor’s drift in leaving so many names

unprinted. The respect for the living has been carried, we think, to a

most awful extent: for names are continually left blank, which would

visit their sins, if at all, upon the third or fourth generation. In

many instances, too, the allusions are as plain as if the names had been

written at full length. At p. 185, for example, we perceive a delicate

attention of this sort to the family of Northumberland,—though few

readers can be so respectfully uninformed as to be at all perplexed by

the suppression. Chevy Chase has not left the Douglas and the Percy in

such comfortable security. The mystical passage is as follows.

‘Lady R—— P—— pushed her on the birth-night against a bench. The

Dutchess of Grafton asked if it was true that Lady R—— kicked her? “Kick

me, Madam! when did you ever hear of a P——y that took a kick?” I can

tell you another anecdote of that house, that will not divert you less.

Lord March making them a visit this summer at Alnwic Castle, my Lord

received him at the gate and said, “I believe, my Lord, this is the

first time that ever a Douglas and a P——y met here in friendship.” Think

of this from a Smithson to a true Douglas.’

The beauty of the thing too, is, that Smithson (which alone could give

offence) is printed with all the letters—while Percy is delicately left

in initials and finals.

There are some verses in the book, of which, out of regard to the

author’s memory, we shall say nothing. They are very apparently ‘by a

person of quality.’ Pope, we think, has written something like them

under that signature—which rather takes from their originality.——But we

now take our final leave of this lively volume, with our usual protest

against the enormous size into which this collection has been distended.

Book-sellers now-a-days only study how to construct large paper houses

for their little families of letterpress,—and never think of the

taxation to which they thus subject their readers. These Letters might

have been comfortably accommodated in a comely little octavo, and sold

at a reasonable price: Instead of which, they are put forth in a good

stiff quarto,—and are, to use old Marall’s phrase, ‘very chargeable.’ We

hope soon to see them in a more accessible shape.

LIFE OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS

VOL. XXXIV.] [_August 1820._

This, with regard to its main object, must certainly be regarded as a

superfluous publication. Forty years after the death of Sir Joshua, Mr.

Farington has found himself called upon to put forth a thin octavo

volume, to revive the recollection of the dispute between their late

President and the Academy, and to correct an error into which Mr. Malone

had fallen, in supposing that Sir Joshua was not entirely to blame in

that business. This is a remarkable instance of the tenaciousness of

corporate bodies with respect to the immaculate purity of their conduct.

It was at first suggested that printed notes might be sufficient, with

references to the pages of Mr. Malone’s account: but it was finally

judged best to give it as a connected narrative—that the vindication of

the Academy might slip in only as a parenthesis or an episode. So we

have a full account of Sir Joshua’s birth and parentage, god-fathers and

god-mothers, with as many repetitions beside as were necessary to give a

colouring to Mr. Farington’s ultimate object. The manner in which the

plot of the publication is insinuated, is curious and characteristic:

But our business at present is with certain more general matters, on

which we have some observations to offer.

‘In the present instance,’ says Mr. F., ‘we see how a character, formed

by early habits of consideration, self-government, and persevering

industry, acquired the highest fame; and made his path through life a

course of unruffled moral enjoyment. Sir Joshua Reynolds, when young,

wrote rules of conduct for himself. One of his maxims was, “that the

great principle of being happy in this world, is, not to mind or be

affected with small things.” To this rule he strictly adhered; and the

constant habit of controlling his mind contributed greatly to that

evenness of temper which enabled him to live pleasantly with persons of

all descriptions. Placability of temper may be said to have been his

characteristic. The happiness of possessing such a disposition was

acknowledged by his friend Dr. Johnson, who said, “Reynolds was the most

invulnerable man he had ever known.”

‘The life of this distinguished artist exhibits a useful lesson to all

those who may devote themselves to the same pursuit. He was not of the

class of such as have been held up, or who have esteemed themselves, to

be heaven-born geniuses. He appeared to think little of such claims. It

will be seen, in the account of his progress to the high situation he

attained in his profession, that at no period was there in him any such

fancied inspiration; on the contrary, every youthful reader of the

Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds may feel assured, that his ultimate

success will be in proportion to the resolution with which he follows

his example.’

This, we believe, is the current morality and philosophy of the present

day; and therefore it is of more consequence to observe, that it appears

to us to be a mere tissue of sophistry and folly. And first, as to

happiness depending on ‘not being affected with small things,’ it seems

plain enough, that a continued flow of pleasurable sensations cannot

depend every moment on great objects. Children are supposed to have a

fair share of enjoyment; and yet this arises chiefly from their being

delighted with trifles—‘pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.’

The reason why we so seldom carry on the happy vivacity of early youth

into maturer age is, that we form to ourselves a higher standard of

enjoyment than we can realize; and that our passions gradually fasten on

certain favourite objects, which, in proportion to their magnitude, are

of rare occurrence, and, for the most part, out of our reach. The

example, too, which suggested these general remarks, actually exposes

their fallacy. Sir Joshua did _not_ owe his happiness to his contempt of

little things, but to his success in great ones—and it was by that

actual success, far more than by the meritorious industry and exertion

which contributed to it, that he was enabled to disregard little

vexations. Was Richardson, for example, who, it is observed afterwards,

‘had merit in his profession, but not of a high order, though he thought

so well on the subject of art, and had practised it so long,’ to feel an

equal moral enjoyment in the want of equal success? Was the idea of that

excellence, which he had so long laboured in vain to realize, to console

him for the loss of that ‘highest fame,’ which is here represented as

the invariable concomitant of persevering industry? Or was he to

disregard his failure as a trifle? Was the consciousness that he had

done his best, to stand him in stead of that ‘unruffled moral enjoyment’

which Sir Joshua owed in no small degree to the coronet-coaches that

besieged his doors, to the great names that sat at his table, to the

beauty that crowded his painting-room, and reflected its loveliness back

from the lucid mirror of his canvas? These things do indeed put a man

above minding little inconveniences, and ‘greatly contribute to that

evenness of temper which enables him to live pleasantly with persons of

all descriptions.’ But was Hudson, Sir Joshua’s master, who had grown

old and rich in the cultivation of his art, and who found himself

suddenly outdone and eclipsed by his pupil, to derive much _unruffled

enjoyment_ from this petty circumstance, or to comfort himself with one

of those maxims which young Reynolds had written out for his conduct in

life? When Sir Joshua himself lost the use of one of his eyes, in the

decline of his life, he became peevish, and did not long survive the

practice of his favourite art. Suppose the same loss to have happened to

him in the meridian of his fame, we fear that all his consciousness of

merit, and all his efforts of industry, would have been insufficient to

have supplied that unruffled felicity which we are here taught to refer

exclusively to these high sources.

The truth is, that those specious maxims, though they may seem at first

sight to minister to content, and to encourage to meritorious exertion,

lead in fact to a wrong estimate of human life, to unreasonable

anticipations of success, and to bitter repinings and regrets at what in

any reverse of fortune we think the injustice of society and the caprice

of nature. We have a very remarkable instance of this process of mental

sophistication, or the setting up a theory against experience, and then

wondering that human nature does not answer to our theory, in what our

author says on this very subject of Hudson, and his more fortunate

scholar afterwards. P. 46. ‘It might be thought that the talents of

Reynolds, to which no degree of ignorance or imbecility in the art could

be insensible, added to his extraordinary reputation, would have

extinguished every feeling of Jealousy or Rivalship in the mind of his

master Hudson; but the malady was so deeply seated as to defy the usual

remedies applied by time and reflection. _Hudson, when at the head of

his art, admired and praised by all, had seen a youth rise up and

annihilate both his Income and his Fame; and he never could divest his

mind of the feelings of mortification caused by the loss he had thus

sustained._’ This Mr. F. actually considers as something quite

extraordinary and unreasonable; and which might have been easily

prevented by a diligent study of Sir Joshua’s admirable aphorisms,

against being affected by small things. Such is our Academician’s

ethical simplicity, and enviable ignorance of the ways of the world!

One would think that the name of Hudson, which occurs frequently in

these pages, might have taught our learned author some little distrust

of that other favourite maxim, that Genius is the effect of education,

encouragement, and practice. It is the basis, however, of his whole

moral and intellectual system; and is thus distinctly announced and

enforced in a very elaborate passage.

‘With respect to his (Sir Joshua’s) early indications of talent for the

art he afterwards professed, it would be idle to dwell upon them as

manifesting any thing more than is common among boys of his age. As an

amusement he probably preferred drawing to any other to which he was

tempted. In the specimens which have been preserved, there is no sign of

premature ingenuity; his history is, in this respect, like what might be

written of very many other artists, perhaps of artists in general. His

attempts were applauded by kind and sanguine friends; and this

encouraged him to persevere till it became a fixed desire in him to make

further proficiency, and continually to request that it might be his

profession. It is said, that his purpose was determined by reading

Richardson’s Treatise on Painting. Possibly it might have been so; his

thoughts having been previously occupied with the subject. Dr. Johnson,

in his Life of Cowley, writes as follows—“In the windows of his mother’s

apartment lay Spenser’s Faery Queen, in which he very early took delight

to read, till by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he relates,

irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents which, sometimes

remembered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten, produce that peculiar

designation of mind, and propensity for some certain science or

employment, which is commonly called Genius. The true genius is a man of

large general powers accidentally determined to some particular

direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter of the present age,

had the first fondness for his art excited by the perusal of

Richardson’s Treatise.” In this definition of genius, Reynolds fully

concurred with Dr. Johnson; and he was himself an instance in proof of

its truth. He had a sound natural capacity, and, by observation and

long-continued labour, always discriminating with judgment, he obtained

universal applause, and established his claim to be ranked amongst those

to whom the highest praise is due; for his productions exhibited perfect

originality. No artist ever consulted the works of eminent predecessors

more than Sir Joshua Reynolds. He drew from every possible source

something which might improve his practice; and he resolved the whole of

what he saw in nature, and found in art, into a union, which made his

pictures a singular display of grace, truth, beauty and richness.’

From the time that Mr. Locke exploded _innate ideas_ in the commencement

of the last century, there began to be a confused apprehension in some

speculative heads, that there could be no innate faculties either; and

our half metaphysicians have been floundering about in this notion ever

since: as if, because there are no innate ideas, that is, no actual

impressions existing in the mind without objects, there could be no

peculiar capacity to receive them from objects; or as if there might not

be as great a difference in the capacity itself as in the outward

objects to be impressed upon it. We might as well deny, at once, that

there are organs or faculties to receive impressions, because there are

no innate ideas, as deny that there is an inherent difference in the

organs or faculties to receive impressions of any particular kind. If

the capacity exists (which it must do), there may, nay we should say

there _must_, be a difference in it, in different persons, and with

respect to different things. To allege that there is such a difference,

no more implies the doctrine of innate ideas, than to say that the brain

of a man is more fitted to discern external objects than a block of

marble, imports that there are innate ideas in the brain, or in the

block of marble. The impression, it is true, does not exist in the

sealing-wax till the seal has been applied to it: but there was the

previous capacity to receive the impression; and there may be, and most

probably is, a greater degree of fitness in one piece of sealing-wax

than in another. That the original capacity, the aptitude for certain

impressions or pursuits, should be necessarily the same in different

instances, with the diversity that we see in men’s organs, faculties,

and acquirements of various kinds, is a supposition not only gratuitous,

but absurd. There is the capacity of animals, the capacity of idiots,

and of half idiots and half madmen of various descriptions: there is

capacity, in short, of all sorts and degrees, from an oyster to a

Newton: Yet we are gravely told, that wherever there is a power of

sensation, the genius must be the same, and would, with proper

cultivation, produce the same effects. ‘No,’ say the French

materialists; ‘but in minds commonly well organized (_communement bien

organisés_), the results will, in the same given circumstances, be the

same.’ That is, in the same circumstances, and with the same _average_

capacity, there will be the same average degree of genius or

imbecility—which is just an identical proposition.

To make any sense at all of the doctrine, that circumstances are

everything and natural genius nothing, the result ought at least to

correspond to the aggregate of impressions, determining the mind this

way or that, like so many weights in a scale. But the advocates of this

doctrine allow that the result is not by any means according to the

known aggregate of impressions, but, on the contrary, that one of the

most insignificant, or one not at all perceived, will turn the scale

against the bias and experience of a man’s whole life. The reasoning is

here lame again. These persons wish to get rid of occult causes, to

refer every thing to distinct principles and a visible origin; and yet

they say that they know not how it is, that, in spite of all visible

circumstances, such a one should be an incorrigible blockhead and such

an other an extraordinary genius; but that, no doubt, there was a secret

influence exerted, a by-play in it, in which nature had no hand, but

accident gave a nod, and in a lucky or unlucky minute fixed the destiny

of both for life, by some slight and transient impulse! Now, this is

like the reasoning of the astrologers, who pretend that your whole

history is to be traced to the constellation under which you were born:

and when you object that two men born at the same time have the most

different character and fortune, they answer, that there was _an

imperceptible interval_ between the moment of their births, that made

the whole difference. But if this short interval, of which no one could

be aware, made the whole difference, it also makes their whole science

vain. Besides, the notion of an accidental impulse, a slight turn of the

screws giving a total revulsion to the whole frame of the mind, is only

intelligible on the supposition of an original or previous bias which

falls in with that impression, and catches at the long-wished for

opportunity of disclosing itself:—like combustible matter meeting with

the spark that kindles it into a flame. But it is little less than sheer

nonsense to maintain, while outward impressions are said to be every

thing, and the mind alike indifferent to all, that one single

unconscious impression shall decide upon a man’s whole character,

genius, and pursuits in life,—and all the rest thenceforward go for

nothing.

Again, we hear it said that the difference of understanding or character

is not very apparent at first:—though this is not uniformly true—but

neither is the difference between an oak and a briar very great in the

seed or in the shoot:—yet will any one deny that the germ is there, or

that the soil, culture, the sun and heat alone produce the difference?

So circumstances are necessary to the mind: but the mind is necessary to

circumstances. The ultimate success depends on the joint action of both.

They were fools who believed in innate ideas, or talked of ‘heaven-born

genius’ without any means of developing it. They are greater, because

more learned fools, who assert that circumstances alone can create or

develop genius, where none exists. We may distinguish a stature of the

mind as well as of the body,—a mould, a form, to which it is

predetermined irrevocably. It is true that exercise gives strength to

the faculties both of mind and body; but it is not true that it is the

only source of strength in either case. Exercise will make a weak man

strong, but it will make a strong man stronger. A dwarf will never be a

match for a giant, train him ever so. And are there not dwarfs as well

as giants in intellect? Appearances are for it, and reason is not

against it.

There are, beyond all dispute, persons who have a talent for particular

things, which according to Dr. Johnson’s definition of genius, proceeds

from ‘a greater general capacity accidentally determined to a particular

direction.’ But this, instead of solving, doubles the miracle of genius;

for it leaves entire all the former objections to inherent talent, and

supposes that one man ‘of large general capacity’ is all sorts of genius

at once. This is like admitting that one man may be naturally stronger

than another—but denying that he can be naturally stronger in the legs

or the arms only; and, deserting the ground of original equality, would

drive the theorist to maintain that the inequality which exists must

always be universal, and not particular, although all the instances we

actually meet with are particular only. Now surely we have no right to

give any man credit for genius in more things than he has shown a

particular genius in. In looking round us in the world, it is most

certain that we find men of large general capacity and no particular

talent, and others with the most exquisite turn for some particular

thing, and no general talent. Would Dr. Johnson have made Reynolds or

Goldsmith, Burke, by beginning early and continuing late? We should make

strange havoc by this arbitrary transposition of genius and industry.

Some persons cannot for their lives understand the first proposition in

Euclid. Would they ever make great mathematicians? Or does this

incapacity preclude them from ever excelling in any other art or

mystery? Swift was admitted by special grace to a Bachelor’s Degree at

Dublin College, which, however, did not prevent him from writing

Gulliver’s Travels: and Claude Lorraine was turned away by his master

from the trade of a pastry-cook to which he was apprenticed, for sheer

stupidity. People often fail most in what they set themselves most

diligently about, and discover an unaccountable _knack_ at something

else, without any effort or even consciousness that they possess it. One

great proof and beauty of works of true genius, is the ease, simplicity,

and freedom from conscious effort which pervades them. Not only in

different things is there this difference of skill and aptness

displayed; but in the same thing, to which a man’s attention is

continually directed, how narrow is the sphere of human excellence, how

distinct the line of pursuit which nature has marked out even for those

whom she has most favoured! Thus in painting, Raphael excelled in

drawing, Titian in colouring, Rembrandt in _chiaroscuro_. A small part

of nature was revealed to each by a peculiar felicity of conformation;

and they would have made sad work of it, if each had neglected his own

advantages to go in search of those of others, on the principle that

genius is a large general capacity, transferred, by will or accident, to

some particular channel.

It may be said, that in all these cases it is habit, not nature, that

produces the disqualification for different pursuits. But if the bias

given to the mind, by a particular study, totally unfits it for others,

is it probable that there is something in the nature of those studies

which requires a particular bias and structure of the faculties to excel

in them, from the very first? If genius were, as some pretend, the mere

exercise of general power on a particular subject, without any

difference of organs or subordinate faculties, a man would improve

equally in every thing, and grow wise at all points. But if, besides

mere general power, there is a constant exercise and sharpening of

different organs and faculties required for any particular pursuit, then

a natural susceptibility of those organs and faculties must greatly

assist him in his progress. To argue otherwise, is to shut one’s eyes to

the whole mass of inductive evidence; and to run headlong into a

dogmatical theory, depending wholly on presumption and conjecture. We

would sooner go the whole length of the absurdities of craniology, than

get into this flatting-machine of the original sameness and

indiscriminate tendency of men’s faculties and dispositions. A painter,

of all men, should not give into any such notion. Does he pretend to see

differences in faces, and will he allow none in minds? Or, does he make

the outline of the head the criterion of a corresponding difference of

character, and yet reject all distinction in the original conformation

of the soul? Has he never been struck with _family_ likenesses? And is

there not an inherent, indestructible, and inalienable character to be

found in the individuals of such families answering to this

physiognomical identity, even in remote branches, where there has been

no communication when young, and where the situation, pursuits,

education, and character of the individuals have been totally opposite?

Again, do we not find persons with every external advantage, without any

intellectual superiority; and the greatest prodigies emerge from the

greatest obscurity? What made Shakespeare! Not his education as a

link-boy or a deer-stealer! Have there not been thousands of

mathematicians, educated like Sir Isaac Newton, who have risen to the

rank of Senior Wranglers, and never been heard of afterwards? Did not

Hogarth live in the same age with Hayman? Who will believe that Highmore

could, by any exaggeration of circumstances, have been transformed into

Michael Angelo? That Hudson was another Vandyke _incognito_; or that

Reynolds would, as our author dreads, have learned to paint like his

master, if he had staid to serve out his apprenticeship with him? The

thing was impossible.—Hudson had every advantage, as far as Mr.

Farington’s mechanical theory goes (for he was brought up under

Richardson), to enable him to break through the trammels of custom, and

to raise the degenerate style of art in his day. Why did he not? He had

not original force of mind either to inspire him with the conception, or

to impel him to execute it. Why did Reynolds burst through the cloud

that overhung the region of art, and shine out, like the glorious sun,

upon his native land? Because he had the genius to do it. It was nature

working in him, and forcing its way through all impediments of ignorance

and fashion, till it found its native element in undoubted excellence

and wide-spread fame. His eye was formed to drink in light, and to

absorb the splendid effects of shadowy obscurity; and it gave out what

it took in. He had a strong intrinsic perception of grace and

expression; and he could not be satisfied with the stiff, formal,

inanimate models he saw before him. There are indeed certain minds that

seem formed as conductors to truth and beauty, as the hardest metals

carry off the electric fluid, and round which all examples of

excellence, whether in art or nature, play harmless and ineffectual.

Reynolds was not one of these: but the instant he saw gorgeous truth in

natural objects, or artificial models, his mind ‘darted contagious

fire.’ It is said that he surpassed his servile predecessors by a more

diligent study, and more careful imitation of nature. But how was he

attracted to nature, but by the sympathy of real taste and genius? He

also copied the portraits of Gandy, an obscure but excellent artist of

his native county. A blockhead would have copied his master, and

despised Gandy: but Gandy’s style of painting satisfied and stimulated

his ambition, because he saw nature there. Hudson’s made no impression

on him, because it presented nothing of the kind. Why then did Reynolds

perform what he did? From the force and bias of his genius. Why did he

not do more? Because his natural bias did not urge him farther. As it is

the property of genius to find its true level, so it cannot rise above

it. He seized upon and naturalized the beauties of Rembrandt and Rubens,

because they were connate to his own turn of mind. He did not at first

instinctively admire, nor did he ever, with all his professions, make

any approach to the high qualities of Raphael or Michael Angelo, because

there was an obvious incompatibility between them. Sir Joshua did not,

after all, found a school of his own in general art, because he had not

strength of mind for it. But he introduced a better taste for art in

this country, because he had great taste himself, and sufficient genius

to transplant many of the excellences of others.

Mr. Farington takes the trouble to vindicate Sir Joshua’s title to be

the author of his own Discourses—though this is a subject on which we

have never entertained a doubt; and conceive indeed that a doubt never

could have arisen, but from estimating the talents required for painting

too low in the scale of intellect, as something mechanical and

fortuitous; and from making literature something exclusive and paramount

to all other pursuits. Johnson and Burke were equally unlikely to have

had a principal or considerable hand in the Discourses. They have none

of the pomp, the vigour, or _mannerism_ of the one, nor the boldness,

originality, or extravagance of the other. They have all the internal

evidence of being Sir Joshua’s. They are subdued, mild, unaffected,

thoughtful,—containing sensible observations on which he laid too little

stress, and vague theories which he was not able to master. There is the

same character of mind in what he wrote, as of eye in what he painted.

His style is gentle, flowing, and bland: there is an inefficient

outline, with a mellow, felicitous, and delightful filling-up. In both,

the taste predominates over the genius: the manner over the matter! The

real groundwork of Sir Joshua’s Discourses is to be found in

Richardson’s Essays.

We proceed to Mr. F.’s account of the state of art in this country, a

little more than half a century ago, which is no less accurate than it

is deplorable. It may lead us to form a better estimate of the merits of

Sir Joshua in rescuing it from this lowest point of degradation, and

perhaps assist our conjectures as to its future progress and its present

state.

‘It was the lot of Sir Joshua Reynolds to be destined to pursue the art

of painting at a period when the extraordinary effort he made came with

all the force and effect of novelty. He appeared at a time when the art

was at its lowest ebb. What might be called an English school had never

been formed. All that Englishmen had done was to copy, and endeavour to

imitate, the works of eminent men, who were drawn to England from other

countries by encouragement, which there was no inducement to bestow upon

the inferior efforts of the natives of this island. In the reign of

Queen Elizabeth, Frederigo Zucchero, an Italian, was much employed in

England, as had been Hans Holbein, a native of Basle, in a former reign.

Charles the First gave great employment to Rubens and Vandyke. They were

succeeded by Sir Peter Lely, a native of Soest in Westphalia; and Sir

Godfrey Kneller came from Lubec to be, for a while, Lely’s competitor:

and after his death, he may be said to have had the whole command of the

art in England. He was succeeded by Richardson, the first English

painter that stood at the head of portrait painting in this country.

Richardson had merit in his profession, but not of a high order: and it

was remarkable, that a man who thought so well on the subject of art,

and more especially who practised so long, should not have been able to

do more than is manifested in his works. He died in 1745, aged 80.

Jervais, the friend of Pope, was his competitor, but very inferior to

him. Sir James Thornhill, also, was contemporary with Richardson, and

painted portraits; but his reputation was founded upon his historical

and allegorical compositions. In St. Paul’s cathedral, in the Hospital

at Greenwich, and at Hampton Court, his principal works are to be seen.

As Richardson in portraits, so Thornhill in history painting was the

first native of this island, who stood preeminent in the line of art he

pursued at the period of his practice. He died in 1732, aged 56.

‘Horace Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting, observes, that “at the

accession of George the First, the arts were sunk to the lowest state in

Britain.” This was not strictly true. Mr. Walpole, who published at a

later time, should have dated the period of their utmost degradation to

have been in the middle of the last century, when the names of Hudson

and Hayman were predominant. It is true, Hogarth was then well known to

the public; but he was less so as a painter than an engraver, _though

many of his pictures representing subjects of humour and character are

excellent_; and Hayman, as a history painter, could not be compared with

Sir James Thornhill.

‘Thomas Hudson was a native of Devonshire. His name will be preserved

from his having been the artist to whom Sir Joshua Reynolds was

committed for instruction. Hudson was the scholar of Richardson, and

married his daughter; and after the death of his father-in-law,

succeeded to the chief employment in portrait painting. He was in all

respects much below his master in ability; but being esteemed the best

artist of his time, commissions flowed in upon him; and his _business_,

as it might truly be termed, was carried on like that of a manufactory.

To his ordinary heads, draperies were added by painters who chiefly

confined themselves to that line of practice. No time was lost by Hudson

in the study of character, or in the search of variety in the position

of his figures: a few formal attitudes served as models for all his

subjects; and the _display_ of arms and hands, being the more difficult

parts, was managed with great economy, _by all the contrivances of

concealment_.

‘To this scene of imbecile performance, Joshua Reynolds was sent by his

friends. He arrived in London on the 14th of October 1741, and on the

18th of that month he was introduced to his future preceptor. He was

then aged seventeen years and three months. The terms of the agreement

were, that provided Hudson approved him, he was to remain four years:

but might be discharged at pleasure. He continued in this situation two

years and a half, during which time he drew many heads upon paper; and

in his attempts in painting, succeeded so well in a portrait of Hudson’s

cook, as to excite his master’s jealousy. In this temper of mind, Hudson

availed himself of a very trifling circumstance to dismiss him. Having

one evening ordered Reynolds to take a picture to Van Haaken the drapery

painter; but as the weather proved wet he postponed carrying it till

next morning. At breakfast, Hudson demanded why he did not take the

picture the evening before? Reynolds replied, that “he delayed it on

account of the weather; but that the picture was delivered that morning

before Van Haaken rose from bed.” Hudson then said, “You have not obeyed

my orders, and shall not stay in my house.” On this peremptory

declaration, Reynolds urged that he might be allowed time to write to

his father, who might otherwise think he had committed some great crime.

Hudson, though reproached by his own servant for this unreasonable and

violent conduct, persisted in his determination: accordingly, Reynolds

went that day from Hudson’s house to an uncle who resided in the Temple,

and from thence wrote to his father, who, after consulting his neighbour

Lord Edgcumbe, directed him to come down to Devonshire.

‘Thus did our great artist commence his professional career. Two remarks

may be made upon this event. First by quitting Hudson at this early

period, he avoided the danger of having his mind and his hand habituated

to a mean practice of the art, which, when established, is most

difficult to overcome. It has often been observed in the works of

artists who thus began their practice, that though they rose to marked

distinction, there have been but few who could wholly divest themselves

of the bad effects of a long-continued exercise of the eye and the hand

in copying ordinary works. In Hudson’s school, this was fully

manifested. Mortimer and Wright of Derby were his pupils. They were both

men of superior talents; but in Portraits they never succeeded beyond

what would be called mediocre performance. In this line their

productions were tasteless and laboured: fortunately, however, they made

choice of subjects more congenial with their minds. Mortimer, charmed

with the wild spirit of Salvator Rosa, made the exploits of lawless

banditti the chief subjects of his pencil; while Wright devoted himself

to the study of objects viewed by artificial light, and to the beautiful

effects of the moon upon landscape scenery: yet, even in these, though

deserving of great praise, the effects of their early practice were but

too apparent; their pictures being uniformly executed with what artists

call a heavy hand.’ p. 19.

‘This is a humiliating retrospect for the lovers of art, and of their

country. In speculating upon its causes, we are half afraid to hint at

the probable effects of Climate,—so much is it now the fashion to decry

what was once so much overrated. Our theoretical opinions are directed

far more frequently by a spirit of petulant contradiction than of fair

inquiry. We detect errors in received systems, and then run into the

contrary extreme, to show how wise we are. Thus one folly is driven out

by another; and the history of philosophy is little more than an

alternation of blind prejudices and shallow paradoxes. Thus climate was

everything in the days of Montesquieu, and in our day it is nothing. Yet

it was but one of many cooperating causes at first—and it continues to

be one still. In all that relates to the senses, physical causes may be

allowed to operate very materially, without much violence to experience

or probability. ‘Are the _English_ a Musical people?’ is a question that

has been debated at great length, and in all the forms. But whether the

_Italians_ are a musical people, is a question not to be asked, any more

than whether they have a taste for the fine arts in general. Nor does

the subject ever admit of a question, where a faculty or genius for any

particular thing exists in the most eminent degree; for then it is sure

to show itself, and force its way to the light, in spite of all

obstacles. That which no one ever denied to any people, we may be sure

they actually possess: that which is as often denied as allowed them, we

may be sure they do not possess in a very eminent degree. That, to which

we make the angriest claim, and dispute the most about, whatever else

may be, is not our _forte_. The French are allowed by all the world to

be a dancing, talking, cooking people. If the English were to set up the

same pretensions, it would be ridiculous. But then, they say, they have

other excellences; and having these, they would have the former too.

They think it hard to be set down as a dull, plodding people: but is it

not equally hard upon others to be called vain and light? They tell us,

they are the wisest, the freest, and most moral people on the face of

the earth, without the frivolous accomplishments of their neighbours;

but they insist upon having these too, to be upon a par in every thing

with the rest of the world. We have our bards and sages (‘better none’),

our prose writers, our mathematicians, our inventors in useful and

mechanic arts, our legislators, our patriots, our statesmen, and our

fighting-men, in the field and in the ring:—In these we challenge, and

justly, all the world. We are not behind-hand with any people in all

that depends on hard thinking and deep and firm feeling, on long heads

and stout hearts:—But why must we excel also in the reverse of these,—in

what depends on lively perceptions, on quick sensibility, and on a

voluptuous effeminacy of temperament and character? An Englishman does

not ordinarily pretend to combine his own gravity, plainness and

reserve, with the levity, loquacity, grimace, and artificial politeness

(as it is called) of a Frenchman. Why then will he insist upon

engrafting the fine upon the domestic arts, as an indispensable

consummation of the national character? We may indeed cultivate them as

an experiment in natural history, and produce specimens of them, and

exhibit them as rarities in their kind, as we do hot-house plants and

shrubs; but they are not of native growth or origin. They do not spring

up in the open air, but shrink from the averted eye of Heaven, like a

Laplander into his hut. They do not sit as graceful ornaments, but as

excrescences on the English character: they are ‘like flowers in our

caps, dying or ere they sicken:’—they are exotics and aliens to the

soil. We do not import foreigners to dig our canals, or construct our

machines, or solve difficult problems in political economy, or write

Scotch novels for us—but we import our dancing-masters, our milliners,

our Opera-singers, our valets, and our travelling cooks,—as till lately

we did our painters and sculptors.

The English (we take it) are a nation with certain decided features and

predominating traits of character; and if they have any characteristics

at all, this is one of them, that their feelings are internal rather

than external, reflex rather than organic,—and that they are more

inclined to contend with pain than to indulge in pleasure. ‘The stern

genius of the North,’ says Schlegel, ‘throws men back upon

themselves.’—The progress of the Fine Arts has hitherto been slow, and

wavering and unpromising in this country, ‘like the forced pace of a

shuffling nag,’ not like the flight of Pegasus; and their encouragement

has been cold and backward in proportion. They have been wooed and

won—as far as they have been won, which is no further than to a mere

promise of marriage—‘with coy, reluctant, amorous delay.’ They have not

rushed into our embraces, nor been mingled in our daily pastimes and

pursuits. It is two hundred and fifty years since this island was

civilized to all other intellectual purposes: but, till within half a

century, it was a desert and a waste in art. Were there no _terræ filii_

in those days; no brood of giants to spring out of the ground, and

launch the mighty fragments of genius from their hands; to beautify and

enrich the public mind; to hang up the lights of the eye and of the soul

in pictured halls, in airy porticoes, and solemn temples; to illumine

the land, and weave a garland for their own heads, like ‘the crown which

Ariadne wore upon her bridal day,’ and which still shines brighter in

heaven? There were: but ‘their affections did not that way tend.’ They

were of the tribe of Isaachar, and not of Judah. There were two sisters,

Poetry and Painting: one was taken, and the other was left.

Were our ancestors insensible to the charms of nature, to the music of

thought, to deeds of virtue or heroic enterprise? No. But they saw them

in their mind’s eye: they felt them at their heart’s core, and there

only. They did not translate their perceptions into the language of

sense: they did not embody them in visible images, but in breathing

words. They were more taken up with what an object suggested to combine

with the infinite stores of fancy or trains of feeling, than with the

single object itself; more intent upon the moral inference, the tendency

and the result, than the appearances of things, however imposing or

expressive, at any given moment of time. If their first impressions were

less vivid and complete, their after-reflections were combined in a

greater variety of striking resemblances, and thus drew a dazzling veil

over their merely sensitive impressions, which deadened and neutralized

them still more. Will it be denied that there is a wide difference, as

to the actual result, between the mind of a Poet and a Painter? Why then

should not this difference be inherent and original, as it undoubtedly

is in individuals, and, to all appearance, in nations? Or why should we

be uneasy because the same country does not teem with all varieties and

with each extreme of excellence and genius?[11]

In this importunate theory of ours, we misconstrue nature, and tax

Providence amiss. In that short, but delightful season of the year, and

in that part of the country where we now write, there are wild woods and

banks covered with primroses and hyacinths for miles together, so that

you cannot put your foot between, and with a gaudy show ‘empurpling all

the ground,’ and branches loaded with nightingales whose leaves tremble

with their liquid notes: Yet the air does not resound, as in happier

climes, with shepherd’s pipe or roundelay, nor are the village-maids

adorned with wreaths of vernal flowers, ready to weave the braided

dance, or ‘returning with a choral song, when evening has gone down.’

What is the reason? ‘We also are _not_ Arcadians!’ We have not the same

animal vivacity, the same tendency to external delight and show, the

same ear for melting sounds, the same pride of the eye, or

voluptuousness of the heart. The senses and the mind are differently

constituted; and the outward influences of things, climate, mode of

life, national customs and character, have all a share in producing the

general effect. We should say that the eye in warmer climates drinks in

greater pleasure from external sights, is more open and porous to them,

as the ear is to sounds; that the sense of immediate delight is fixed

deeper in the beauty of the object; that the greater life and animation

of character gives a greater spirit and intensity of expression to the

face, making finer subjects for history and portrait; and that the

circumstances in which a people are placed in a genial atmosphere, are

more favourable to the study of nature and of the human form. Claude

could only have painted his landscapes in the open air; and the Greek

statues were little more than copies from living, every-day forms.

Such a natural aptitude and relish for the impressions of sense gives

not only more facility, but leads to greater patience, refinement, and

perfection in the execution of works of art. What our own artists do is

often up-hill work, against the grain:—not persisted in and brought to a

conclusion for the love of the thing; but, after the first dash, after

the subject is got in, and the gross general effect produced, they

grudge all the rest of their labour as a waste of time and pains. Their

object is not to look at nature, but to have their picture _exhibited_

and _sold_. The want of intimate sympathy with, and entire repose on

nature, not only leaves their productions hard, violent, and crude, but

frequently renders them impatient, wavering, and dissatisfied with their

own walk of art, and never easy till they get into a different or higher

one, where they think they can earn more money or fame with less

trouble. By beginning over again, by having the same preliminary ground

to go over, with new subjects or bungling experiments, they seldom

arrive at that nice, nervous point that trembles on perfection. This

last stage, in which art is as it were identified with nature, an

English painter shrinks from with strange repugnance and peculiar

abhorrence. The French style is the reverse of ours: it is all dry

finishing without effect. We see their faults, and, as we conceive,

their general incapacity for art: but we cannot be persuaded to see our

own.

The want of encouragement, which is sometimes set up as an

all-sufficient plea, will hardly account for this slow and irregular

progress of English art. There was no premium offered for the production

of dramatic excellence in the age of Elizabeth: there was no society for

the encouragement of works of wit and humour in the reign of Charles

II.: no committee of taste ever voted Congreve, or Steele, or Swift, a

silver vase, or a gold medal, for their comic vein: Hogarth was not

fostered in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy. In plain truth,

that is not the way in which that sort of harvest is produced. The seeds

must be sown in the mind: there is a fulness of the blood, a plethoric

habit of thought, that breaks out with the first opportunity on the

surface of society. Poetry has sprung up indigenously, spontaneously, at

all times of our history, and under all circumstances, with or without

encouragement: it is therefore a rich, natural product of the mind of

the country, unforced, unpampered, unsophisticated. It is obviously and

entirely genuine, ‘the unbought grace of life.’ If it be asked, why

Painting has all this time kept back, has not dared to show its face, or

retired ashamed of its poverty and deformity, the answer is

plain—because it did not shoot out with equal vigour and luxuriance from

the soil of English genius—because it was not the native language and

idiom of the country. Why then are we bound to suppose that it will

shoot up _now_ to an unequalled height—why are we confidently told and

required to predict to others that it is about to produce wonders, when

we see no such thing; when these very persons tell us that there has

been hitherto no such thing, but that it must and shall be revealed in

their time and persons? And though they complain that that public

patronage which they invoke, and which they pretend is alone wanting to

produce the high and palmy state of art to which they would have us look

forward, is entirely and scandalously withheld from it, and likely to be

so!

We turn from this subject to another not less melancholy or

singular,—from the imperfect and abortive attempts at art in this

country formerly, to its present state of degeneracy and decay in Italy.

Speaking of Sir Joshua’s arrival at Rome in the year 1749, Mr. Farington

indulges in the following remarks.

‘On his arrival at Rome, he found Pompeo Battoni, a native of Lucca,

possessing the highest reputation. His name was, indeed, known in every

part of Europe, and was every where spoken of as almost another Raphael;

but in that great school of art, such was the admiration he excited, or

rather such was the degradation of taste, that the students in painting

had no higher ambition than to be his imitators.

‘Battoni had some talent, but his works are dry, cold, and insipid. That

such performances should have been so extolled in the very seat and

centre of the fine arts, seems wonderful. But in this manner has public

taste been operated upon; and from the period when art was carried to

the highest point of excellence known in modern times, it has thus

gradually declined. A succession of artists followed each other, who,

being esteemed the most eminent in their own time, were praised

extravagantly by an ignorant public; and in the several schools they

established, their own productions were the only objects of study.

‘So widely spread was the fame of Battoni, that, before Reynolds left

England, his patron, Lord Edgcumbe, strongly urged the expediency of

placing himself under the tuition of so great a man. This

recommendation, however, on seeing the works of that master, he did not

choose to follow:—which showed that he was then above the level of those

whose professional views all concentrated in the productions of the

popular favourite. Indeed nothing could be more opposite to the spirited

execution, the high relish of colour, and powerful effect, which the

works of Reynolds at that time possessed, than the tame and inanimate

pictures of Pompeo Battoni. Taking a wiser course, therefore, he formed

his own plan, and studied chiefly in the Vatican, from the works of

Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto, with great diligence;

such indeed was his application, that to a severe cold, which he caught

in those apartments, he owed the deafness which continued during the

remainder of his life.’ p. 31.

This account may serve to show that Italy is no longer Italy: why it is

so, is a question of greater difficulty. The soil, the climate, the

religion, the people are the same; and the men and women in the streets

of Rome still look as if they had walked out of Raphael’s pictures; but

there is no Raphael to paint them, nor does any Leo arise to encourage

them. This seems to prove that the perfection of art is the destruction

of art: that the models of this kind, by their accumulation, block up

the path of genius; and that all attempts at distinction lead, after a

certain period, to a mere lifeless copy of what has been done before, or

a vapid, distorted, and extravagant caricature of it. This is but a poor

prospect for those who set out late in art, and who have all the

excellence of their predecessors, and all the fastidious refinements of

their own taste, the temptations of indolence, and the despair of

vanity, to distract and encumber their efforts. The artists who revel in

the luxuries of genius thus prepared by their predecessors, clog their

wings with the honeyed sweets, and get drunk with the intoxicating

nectar. They become servitors and lacqueys to Art, not devoted servants

of Nature;—the fluttering, foppish, lazy retinue of some great name. The

contemplation of unattainable excellence casts a film over their eyes,

and unnerves their hands. They look on, and do nothing. In Italy, it

costs them a month to paint a hand, a year an eye: the feeble pencil

drops from their grasp, while they wonder to see an Englishman make a

hasty copy of the Transfiguration, turn over a portfolio of Piranesi’s

drawings for their next historical design, and read Winckelman on

_virtù_! We do much the same here, in all our collections and

exhibitions of modern or ancient paintings, and of the Elgin marbles, to

boot. A picture-gallery serves very well for a place to lounge in, and

talk about; but it does not make the student go home and set heartily to

work:—he would rather come again and lounge, and talk, the next day, and

the day after that. He cannot do _all_ that he sees there; and less will

not satisfy his expansive and refined ambition. He would be all the

painters that ever were—or none. His indolence combines with his vanity,

like alternate doses of provocatives and sleeping-draughts. He copies,

however, a favourite picture (though he thinks copying bad in

general),—or makes a chalk-drawing of it—or gets some one else to do it

for him.—We might go on: but we have written what many people will call

a lampoon already!

There is another view of the subject more favourable and encouraging to

ourselves, and yet not immeasurably so, when all circumstances are

considered. All that was possible had been formerly done for art in

Italy, so that nothing more was left to be done. That is not the case

with us yet. Perfection is not the insurmountable obstacle to _our_

success: we have enough to do, if we knew how. That is some inducement

to proceed. We can hardly be retrograde in our course. But there is a

difficulty in the way,—no less than our Establishment in Church and

State. Rome was the capital of the Christian and of the civilized world.

Her mitre swayed the sceptres of the earth; and the Servant of Servants

set his foot on the neck of kings, and deposed sovereigns with the

signet of the Fisherman. She was the eye of the world, and her word was

a law. She set herself up, and said, ‘All eyes shall see me, and all

knees shall bow to me.’ She ruled in the hearts of the people by

dazzling their senses, and making them drunk with hopes and fears. She

held in her hands the keys of the other world to open or shut; and she

displayed all the pomp, the trappings, and the pride of this. Homage was

paid to the persons of her ministers; her worship was adorned and made

alluring by every appeal to the passions and imaginations of its

followers. Art was rendered tributary to the support of this grand

engine of power; and Painting was employed, as soon as its fascination

was felt, to aid the devotion, and rivet the faith of the Catholic

believer. Thus religion was made subservient to interest, and art was

called in to aid in the service of this ambitious religion. The

patron-saint of every church stood at the head of his altar: the

meekness of love, the innocence of childhood, ‘amazing brightness,

purity, and truth,’ breathed from innumerable representations of the

Virgin and Child; and the Vatican was covered with the acts and

processions of Popes and Cardinals, of Christ and the Apostles. The

churches were filled with these objects of art and of devotion: the very

walls spoke. ‘A present deity they shout around; a present deity the

walls and vaulted roofs rebound.’ This unavoidably put in requisition

all the strength of genius, and all the resources of enthusiastic

feeling in the country. The spectator sympathized with the artist’s

inspiration. No elevation of thought, no refinement of expression, could

outgo the expectation of the thronging votaries. The fancy of the

painter was but a spark kindled from the glow of public sentiment. This

was a sort of patronage worth having. The zeal and enthusiasm and

industry of native genius was stimulated to works worthy of such

encouragement, and in unison with its own feelings. But by degrees the

tide ebbed: the current was dried up or became stagnant. The churches

were all supplied with altar-pieces: the niches were full, not only with

scriptural subjects, but with the stories of every saint enrolled in the

calendar, or registered in legendary lore. No more pictures were

wanted,—and then it was found that there were no more painters to do

them! The art languished, and gradually disappeared. They could not take

down the Madona of Foligno, or new-stucco the ceiling at Parma, that

other artists might undo what Raphael and Correggio had done. Some of

them, to be sure, did follow this desperate course; and spent their

time, as in the case of Leonardo’s Last Supper at Milan, in painting

over, that is, in defacing the works of their predecessors. Afterwards,

they applied themselves to landscape and classical subjects, with great

success for a time, as we see in Claude and N. Poussin; but the original

_state_ impulse was gone.

What confirms the foregoing account, is, that at Venice, and other

places out of the more immediate superintendence of the Papal See,

though there also sacred subjects were in great request, yet the art

being patronized by rich merchants and nobles, took a more decided turn

to portraits;—magnificent indeed, and hitherto unrivalled, for the

beauty of the costume, the character of the faces, and the marked

pretensions of the persons who sat for them,—but still wildly remote

from that public and national interest that it assumed in the Roman

school. We see, in like manner, that painting in Holland and Flanders

took yet a different direction; was mostly scenic and ornamental, or

confined to local and personal subjects. Rubens’s pictures, for example,

differ from Raphael’s by a total want of religious enthusiasm and

studied refinement of expression, even where the subjects are the same;

and Rembrandt’s portraits differ from Titian’s in the grossness and want

of animation and dignity of his characters. There was an inherent

difference in the look of a Doge of Venice or one of the Medici family,

and that of a Dutch burgomaster. The climate had affected the picture,

through the character of the sitter, as it affected the genius of the

artist (if not otherwise) through the class of subjects he was

constantly called upon to paint. What turn painting has lately taken, or

is likely to take with us, now remains to be seen.

With the Memoirs of Sir Joshua Mr. Farington very properly connects the

history of the institution of the Royal Academy from which he dates the

hopes and origin of all sound art in this country. There is here at

first sight an inversion of the usual order of things. The institution

of Academies in most countries has been coeval with the decline of art:

in ours, it seems, it is the harbinger, and main prop of its success.

Mr. F. thus traces the outline of this part of his subject with the

enthusiasm of an artist, and the fidelity of an historian.

‘At this period (1760) a plan was formed by the artists of the

metropolis to draw the attention of their fellow-citizens to their

ingenious labours; with a view both to an increase of patronage, and the

cultivation of taste. Hitherto works of that kind produced in the

country were seen only by a few; the people in general knew nothing of

what was passing in the arts. Private collections were then

inaccessible, and there were no public ones; nor any casual display of

the productions of genius, except what the ordinary sales by auction

occasionally offered. Nothing, therefore, could exceed the ignorance of

a people who were in themselves learned, ingenious, and highly

cultivated in all things, excepting the arts of design.

‘In consequence of this privation, it was conceived that a Public

Exhibition of the works of the most eminent Artists could not fail to

make a powerful impression; and if occasionally repeated, might

ultimately produce the most satisfactory effects. The scheme was no

sooner proposed than adopted; and being carried into immediate

execution, the result exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the

projectors. All ranks of people crowded to see the delightful novelty;

it was the universal topic of conversation; and a passion for the arts

was excited by that first manifestation of native talent, which,

cherished by the continued operation of the same cause, has ever since

been increasing in strength, and extending its effects through every

part of the Empire.

‘The history of our Exhibitions affords itself the strongest evidence of

their impressive effect upon public taste. At their commencement, though

men of enlightened minds could distinguish and appreciate what was

excellent, the admiration of the _many_ was confined to subjects either

gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts of intellect;

whereas, at this time, the whole train of subjects most popular in the

earlier exhibitions have disappeared. The loaf and cheese, that could

provoke hunger, the cat and canary-bird, and the dead mackarel on a deal

board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and delight; while truth

of imitation now finds innumerable admirers, though combined with the

high qualities of beauty, grandeur, and taste.

‘To our Public Exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in

consequence of their introduction, this change must be chiefly

attributed. _The present generation appears to be composed of a new, and

at least, with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings._

Generally speaking, their thoughts, their feelings, and language on

these subjects differ entirely from what they were sixty years ago. No

just opinions were at that time entertained on the merits of ingenious

productions of this kind. The state of the public mind, incapable of

discriminating excellence from inferiority, proved incontrovertibly that

a right sense of art in the spectator can only be acquired by long and

frequent observation; and that, without proper opportunities to improve

the mind and the eye, a nation would continue insensible of the true

value of the fine arts.

‘The first or probationary Exhibition, which opened April 21st, 1760,

was at a large room in the Strand, belonging to the society for the

Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, which had then been

instituted five or six years. It is natural to conclude, that the first

artist in the country was not indifferent to the success of a plan which

promised to be so extensively useful. Accordingly, four of his pictures

were for the first time here placed before the public, with whom, by the

channel now opened, he continued in constant intercourse as long as he

lived.

‘Encouraged by the successful issue of the first experiment, the

_artistical body_ determined that it should be repeated the following

year. Owing, however, to some inconveniences experienced at their former

place of exhibition, and also to a desire to be perfectly independent in

their proceedings, they engaged, for their next public display, a

spacious room near the Spring Gardens’ entrance into the Park; at which

place the second Exhibition opened, May 9th, 1761. Here Reynolds sent

his fine picture of Lord Ligonier on horseback, a portrait of the Rev.

Laurence Sterne, and three others....

‘The artists had now fully proved the efficacy of their plan; and their

income exceeding their expenditure, affording a reasonable hope of a

permanent establishment, they thought they might solicit a Royal Charter

of Incorporation; and having applied to his Majesty for that purpose, he

was pleased to accede to their request. This measure, however, which was

intended to consolidate the body of artists, was of no avail: on the

contrary, it was probably the cause of its dissolution; for in less than

four years a separation took place, which led to the establishment of

the Royal Academy, and finally to the extinction of the incorporated

Society. The charter was dated January 26th, 1765; the secession took

place in October, 1768; and the Royal Academy was instituted December

10th in the same year.’ p. 53.

On this statement we must be allowed to make a few remarks. First, the

four greatest names in English art, Hogarth, Reynolds, Wilson[12] and

West, were not formed by the Academy, but were formed before it; and the

first gave it as his opinion, that it would be a death-blow to the art.

He considered an Academy as a school for servile mediocrity, a hotbed

for cabal and dirty competition, and a vehicle for the display of idle

pretensions and empty parade.

Secondly, we agree with the writer as to the deplorable state of the art

and of the public taste in general, which, at the period in question,

was as gross as it was insipid: but we do not think that it has been

improved so much since, as Mr. Farington is willing to suppose; nor that

the Academy has taken more than _half-measures_ for improving or

refining it.

‘They found it poor at first, and kept it so.’

They have attended to their own interests, and flattered their

customers, while they have neglected or cajoled the public. They may

indeed look back with triumph and pity to ‘the cat and canary-bird, the

dead mackarel and Deal board;’ but they seem to rest satisfied with this

conquest over themselves, and, ‘leaving the things that are behind, have

not pressed forward (with equal ardour) to the things that are before.’

Theirs is a very moderate, not a Radical Reform in this respect. We do

_not_ find, even in the latest Exhibitions at Somerset House,

‘innumerable examples of truth of imitation, combined with the high

qualities of beauty, grandeur, and taste.’ The mass of the pictures

exhibited there are _not_ calculated to give the English people a true

notion, not merely of high art (as it is emphatically called), but of

the genuine objects of art at all. We do not believe—to take a plain

test of the progress we have made—that nine-tenths of the persons who go

there annually, and who go through the Catalogue regularly, would know a

Guido from a daub—the finest picture from one not badly executed

perhaps, but done in the worst taste, and on the falsest principles. The

vast majority of the pictures received there, and hung up in the most

conspicuous places, are pictures painted to please the natural vanity or

fantastic ignorance of the artist’s sitters, their friends and

relations, and to lead to more commissions for half and whole lengths—or

else pictures painted purposely to be seen in the Exhibition, to strike

across the Great Room, to catch attention, and force admiration, in the

distraction and dissipation of a thousand foolish faces and new-gilt

frames, by gaudy colouring and meretricious grace. We appeal to any man

of judgment, whether this is not a brief, but true summary, of ‘the

annual show’ at the Royal Academy? And is this the way to advance the

interests of art, or to fashion the public taste? There is not one head

in ten painted as a study from nature, or with a view to bring out the

real qualities of the mind or countenance. If there is any such

improvident example of unfashionable sincerity, it is put out of

countenance by the prevailing tone of _rouged_ and smiling folly, and

affectation all around it.

The only pictures painted in any quantity as studies from nature, free

from the glosses of sordid art and the tincture of vanity, are

_portraits of places_; and it cannot be denied that there are many of

these that have a true and powerful look of nature: but then, as if this

was a matter of great indifference, and nobody’s business to see to,

they are seldom anything more than bare sketches, hastily got up for the

chance of a purchaser, and left unfinished to save time and trouble.

They are not, in general, lofty conceptions or selections of beautiful

scenery, but mere common out-of-door views, relying for their value on

their literal fidelity; and where, consequently, the exact truth and

perfect identity of the imitation is the more indispensable.—Our own

countryman, Wilkie, in scenes of domestic and familiar life, is equally

deserving of praise for the arrangement of his subjects, and care in the

execution: but we have to lament that he too is in some degree

chargeable with that fickleness and desultoriness in the pursuit of

excellence, which we have noticed above as incident to our native

artists, and which, we think, has kept him stationary, instead of being

progressive, for some years past. He appeared at one time as if he was

near touching the point of perfection in his peculiar department; and he

_may_ do it yet! But how small a part do his works form of the

Exhibition, and how unlike all the rest!

It was the panic-fear that all this daubing and varnishing would be seen

through, and the scales fall off from the eyes of the public, in

consequence of the exhibition of some of the finest specimens of the Old

Masters at the British Institution, that called into clandestine

notoriety that disgraceful production, the _Catalogue Raisonné_. The

concealed authors of that work conceived, that a discerning public would

learn more of the art from the simplicity, dignity, force and truth, of

these admired and lasting models, in a short season or two, than they

had done from the Exhibitions of the Royal Academy for the last fifty

years: that they would see that it did not consist entirely in tints and

varnishes and megilps and washes for the skin, but that all the effects

of colour, and charms of expression, might be united with purity of

tone, with articulate forms, and exquisite finishing. They saw this

conviction rapidly taking place in the public mind, and they shrunk back

from it ‘with jealous leer malign.’ They persuaded themselves, and had

the courage to try to persuade others, that to exhibit approved

specimens of art in general, selected from the works of the most famous

and accomplished masters, was to destroy the germ of native art; was

cruelly to strangle the growing taste and enthusiasm of the public for

art in its very birth; was to blight the well-earned reputation, and

strike at the honest livelihood of the liberal professors of the school

of painting in England. They therefore set to work to decry these

productions as worthless and odious in the sight of the true adept: they

smeared over, with every epithet of low abuse, works and names sacred to

fame, and to generations to come: they spared no pains to heap ridicule

and obloquy on those who had brought these works forward: they did every

thing to disgust and blind the public to their excellence, by showing in

themselves a hatred and a loathing of all high excellence, and of all

established reputation in art, in which their paltry vanity and

mercenary spite were not concerned. They proved, beyond all

contradiction, that to keep back the taste of the town, and the

knowledge of the student, to the point to which _the Academy_ had found

it practicable to conduct it by its example, was the object of a

powerful and active party of professional intriguers in this country. If

the Academy had any hand, directly or indirectly, in this unprincipled

outrage upon taste and decency, they ought to be disfranchised (like

Grampound) to-morrow, as utterly unworthy of the trust reposed in them.

The alarm indeed (in one sense) was not unfounded: for many persons who

had long been dazzled, not illumined, by the glare of the most modern

and fashionable productions, began to open their eyes to the beauties

and loveliness of painting, and to see reflected there as in a mirror

those hues, those expressions, those transient and heavenly glances of

nature, which had often charmed their own minds, but of which they could

find the traces nowhere else, and became true worshippers at the shrine

of genuine art. Whether this taste will spread beyond the immediate

gratification of the moment, or stimulate the rising generation to new

efforts, and to the adoption of a new and purer style, is another

question; with regard to which, for reasons above explained, we are not

very sanguine.

We have a great respect for _high_ art, and an anxiety for its

advancement and cultivation; but we have a greater still for the

advancement and encouragement of _true_ art. That is the first, and the

last step. The knowledge of what is contained in nature is the only

foundation of legitimate art; and the perception of beauty and power, in

whatever objects or in whatever degree they subsist, is the test of real

genius. The principle is the same in painting an archangel’s or a

butterfly’s wing; and the very finest picture in the finest collection

may be one of a very common subject. We speak and think of Rembrandt as

Rembrandt, of Raphael as Raphael, not of the one as a portrait, of the

other as a history painter. Portrait may become history, or history

portrait, as the one or the other gives the soul or the mask of the

face. ‘_That_ is true history,’ said an eminent critic, on seeing

Titian’s picture of Pope Julius II. and his two nephews. He who should

set down Claude as a mere landscape painter, must know nothing of what

Claude was in himself; and those who class Hogarth as a painter of low

life, only show their ignorance of human nature. High art does not

consist in high or epic subjects, but in the manner of treating those

subjects; and that manner among us, as far as we have proceeded, has we

think been false and exceptionable. We appeal from the common cant on

this subject to the Elgin marbles. They are high art, confessedly: But

they are also true art, in our sense of the word. They do not deviate

from truth and nature in order to arrive at a fancied superiority to

truth and nature. They do not represent a vapid abstraction, but the

entire, undoubted, concrete object they profess to imitate. They are

like casts of the finest living forms in the world, taken in momentary

action. They are nothing more: and therefore certain great critics who

had been educated in the ideal school of art, think nothing of them.

They do not conform to a vague, unmeaning standard, made out of the

fastidious likings or dislikings of the artist; they are carved out of

the living, imperishable forms of nature, as the marble of which they

are composed was hewn from its native rock. They contain the truth, the

whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We cannot say so much of the

general style of history-painting in this country, which has proceeded,

as a first principle, on the determined and deliberate dereliction of

living nature, both as means and end. Grandeur was made to depend on

leaving out the details. Ideal grace and beauty were made to consist in

neutral forms, and character and expression. The first could produce

nothing but slovenliness; the second nothing but insipidity. The Elgin

marbles have proved, by oracular demonstration, that the utmost freedom

and grandeur of style is compatible with the minutest details,—the

variety of the subordinate parts not destroying the masses in the

productions of art more than in those of nature. Grandeur without

softness and precision, is only another name for grossness. These

invaluable fragments of antiquity have also proved, beyond dispute, that

ideal beauty and historic truth do not consist in middle or _average_

forms, &c. but in harmonious outlines, in unity of action, and in the

utmost refinement of character and expression. We there see art

following close in the footsteps of nature, and exalted, raised, refined

with it to the utmost extent that either was capable of. With us, all

this has been reversed; and we have discarded nature at first, only to

flounder about, and be lost in a Limbo of Vanity. With them invention

rose from the ground of imitation: with us, the boldness of the

invention was acknowledged in proportion as no traces of imitation were

discoverable. Our greatest and most successful candidates in the epic

walk of art, have been those who founded their pretensions to be

history-painters on their not being portrait-painters. They could not

paint that which they had seen, and therefore they must be qualified to

paint that which they had not seen. There was not any one part of any

one of their pictures good for any thing; and therefore the whole was

grand, and an example of lofty art! There was not, in all probability, a

single head in an acre of canvas, that, taken by itself, was more than a

worthless daub, scarcely fit to be hung up as a sign at an alehouse

door: But a hundred of these bad portraits or wretched caricatures,

made, by numerical addition, an admirable historical picture! The faces,

hands, eyes, feet, had neither beauty nor expression, nor drawing, nor

colouring; and yet the composition and arrangement of these abortive and

crude materials, which might as well or better have been left blanks,

displayed the mind of the great master. Not one tone, one line, one look

for the eye to dwell upon with pure and intense delight, in all this

endless scope of subject and field of canvas.

We cannot say that we in general like very large pictures; for this

reason, that, like overgrown men, they are apt to be bullies and

cowards. They profess a great deal, and perform little. They are often a

contrivance not to display magnificent conceptions to the greatest

advantage, but to throw the spectator to a distance, where it is

impossible to distinguish either gross faults or real beauties.

The late Mr. West’s pictures were admirable for the composition and

grouping. In these respects they could not be better: as we see in the

print of the death of General Wolfe: but for the rest, he might as well

have set up a parcel of figures in wood, and painted them over with a

sign-post brush, and then copied what he saw, and it would have been

just as good. His skill in drawing was confined to a knowledge of

mechanical proportions and measurements, and was not guided in the line

of beauty, or employed to give force to expression. He, however,

laboured long and diligently to advance the interests of art in this his

adopted country; and if he did not do more, it was the fault of the

coldness and formality of his genius, not of the man.—Barry was another

instance of those who scorn nature, and are scorned by her. He could not

make a likeness of any one object in the universe: when he attempted it,

he was like a drunken man on horseback; his eye reeled, his hand refused

its office,—and accordingly he set up for an example of _the great

style_ in art, which, like charity, covers all other defects. It would

be unfair at the same time to deny, that some of the figures and groupes

in his pictures of the Olympic Games in the Adelphi, are beautiful

designs after the antique, as far as outline is concerned. In colour and

expression they are like wild Indians. The other pictures of his there,

are not worthy of notice; except as warnings to the misguided student

who would scale the high and abstracted steep of art, without following

the path of nature. Yet Barry was a man of genius, and an enthusiastic

lover of his art. But he unfortunately mistook his ardent aspiration

after excellence for the power to achieve it; assumed the capacity to

execute the greatest works instead of acquiring it; supposed that ‘the

bodiless creations of his brain’ were to start out from the walls of the

Adelphi like a dream or a fairy tale;—and the result has been, that all

the splendid illusions of his undigested ambition have, ‘like the

baseless fabric of a vision, left not a wreck behind.’ His name is not a

light or beacon, but a by-word and an ill omen in art. What he has left

behind him in writing on the subject, contains much real feeling and

interesting thought.—Mr. Fuseli is another distinguished artist who

complains that nature puts him out. But _his_ distortions and vagaries

are German, and not English: they lie like a night-mare on the breast of

our native art. They are too recondite, obscure, and extravagant for us:

we only want to get over the ground with large, clumsy strides, as fast

as we can; and do not go out of our way in search of absurdity. We

cannot consider his genius as naturalized among us, after the lapse of

more than half a century: and if in saying this we do not pay him a

compliment, we certainly do not intend it as a very severe censure. Mr.

Fuseli has wit and words at will; and, though he had never touched a

pencil, would be a man of extraordinary pretensions and talents.

Mr. Haydon is a young artist of great promise, and much ardour and

energy; and has lately painted a picture which has carried away

universal admiration. Without wishing to detract from that tribute of

deserved applause, we may be allowed to suggest (and with no unfriendly

voice) that he has there, in our judgment, laid in the groundwork, and

raised the scaffolding, of a noble picture; but no more. There is

spirit, conception, force, and effect: but all this is done by the first

going over of the canvas. It is the foundation, not the superstructure

of a first-rate work of art. It is a rude outline, a striking and

masterly sketch.

Milton has given us a description of the growth of a plant—

——‘So from the root

Springs lighter the green stalk; from thence the leaves

More airy; last the bright consummate flower.’

And we think this image might be transferred to the slow and perfect