HOMELY EXPOSITIONS,

or domestic readings in Scripture for daily use in family worship, with

an easy, sensible, useful sort of commentary; a book calculated

expressly for the understandings, wants, vices, temptations, and

peculiarities of household servants, and quite opposed to the usual

plans of injuriously raising doubts to lay them, of insisting upon

obsolete Judaisms, of strict theological controversy, of enlarging to

satiety on the meaning of passages too obvious to require explanation,

and ingeniously slurring over those which really need it; indeed, of

pursuing the courses generally adopted by the mass of commentators.

A further notion extended to

LAY SERMONS,

whereof are many written: their principal peculiarities consist in being

each of a quarter-hour length, as little as possible regarding Jews and

their didactic histories, and, as much as might be, crowding ideas, and

images, and out-of-the-way knowledge of all sorts, into the good service

of illustrating Gospel truths.

Another religious essay has been relinquished, although to a great

degree effected, from the apprehension that it may suggest matter

fanciful or false: also, in part, from the material being perhaps of too

slender a character to insist upon. Its name stood thus,

SCRIPTURAL PHYSICS;

being an attempt to vindicate the wisdom of Holy Writ in matters of

natural science; for example, cosmogony, geology, the probable centre of

the earth, the vitality and circulation of the blood, hints of magnetism

and electricity, a solar system, a plurality of worlds, the earth's

shape, inclined axis, situation in space, and connection with other

spheres, the separate existence of disembodied life, the laws of optics,

much of recondite natural history:--all these can be easily proved to be

alluded to in detached, or ingeniously compared, passages of the Hebrew

Scriptures. It is very likely, however, that Huntington has anticipated

some of this, although I have never met with his writings; and a great

deal more of it is mentioned in notes and sermons which many have read

or heard. Until, therefore, I become surer of neither invading the

provinces of others, nor of detracting from their wisdom, let those

ill-written fancies still lie dormant in my desk.

A fifth tractate on things theological, still in the egg state, was to

have been indued with the rather startling appellation of

AN APOLOGY FOR HEATHENISM;

especially as contrasted with practical atheism, which, truth to tell,

is the contradictory sort of religion most universally professed among

the moderns: working out the idea, that any-how it is better to have

many objects of veneration than none, and that, although idol-worship is

a dreadful sin, still it is not so utterly hopeless as actual

ungodliness. That, among the heathens, temporal judgment ever vindicated

the true Divinity; whereas the consummation of the more modern

unworshiping world will be an eternal one: so, by the difference in

punishments comparing that of their criminalities. Showing also that,

however corrupted afterwards by impure rites and fatuous iniquities,

heathenism was, in its most ancient form, little more than the

hieroglyphic dress of truth: this exemplified by Moses and the brazen

serpent, by interpretations of Grecian mythology, shown, after the

manner of perhaps too ingenious Lord Bacon, to be consistent with

philosophy and religion; by the way, in which Egyptian priests satisfied

so good and shrewd, though credulous, a mind as that of Herodotus; by

Hesiod's '_Theogony_;' by the practical testimony of the whole educated

world in earliest times to the deep meaning involved in idolatrous

rites; by the mysteries of Eleusis in particular; by the characters of

all most enlightened heathens--as Cicero, Socrates, and

Plato--(half-convinced of the Godhead's unity, and still afraid to

disavow His plurality,) contrasted with those of the school of Pyrrho,

and Lucretius, and the later Epicureans. The possibility of early

allusions to the Trinity, as "Let us make man," _etc._, having led to

the idea of more than one God; and if so, in some sort, its veniality.

All the above might be applied with some force, and, if so, with no

little value, to modern false semblances of religion, and non-religion;

to Roman Catholicism, with its images, its services in an unknown

tongue, its symbols, its adoption of heathen festivals, its actual

placing of many Gods in the throne of One; to Mammonism, as practically

a religion as if the golden calf of Babylon were standard at Cornhill;

to Voluptatism--if I may fabricate a name for pleasure-hunters,

following still, with Corybantic fury, the orgic revels of Osiris or

Astarte: in brief, to all the shades of human heresy, on this side or on

that of the golden mean, the worship of one true God, as revealed to us

in His three mysterious characters.

But, query? Has not all this, and the very title, for any thing I know,

been done already by another, by a wiser? and, if so, by whom?--Speak,

some friend: it is the misfortune of mere thinkers (and this present

amygdaloid mass, this breccia book, exemplifies it well) to stumble

frequently upon fancies too good not to have been long ago appropriated

by others like-minded. A read, or heard, hint may be the unerring clue,

and we vainly imagine some old labyrinth to be our new discovery:

education renders up the master-key, and we come to regard ancient

treasuries as wealth of our own amassing, from which we deem it our

right to filch as recklessly as he from the mint of Croesus, who so

filled his pockets--ay, his mouth--that we read he [Greek: hebebusto].

Who, in this age of literature, can be fully condemned, or heartily

acquitted of plagiarism? An age--and none so little in advance or in

arrear of it as I--of easy writing and discursive reading, of ideas

unpatented, and books that have outlived copy-right. But this has

detained us long enough: for the present, my brain is quit of its

heathenish exculpations: let us pass on; many regiments are yet to be

reviewed; their uniforms [_Hibernicè_] are various, but their flag is

one.

A last serious subject--(they grow tedious)--is a fair field for

ingenious explanation and Oriental poetry,

THE SIMILES OF SCRIPTURE:

(of course "similes" is an English word: the author of a recent '_Essay

on Magna Charta_' has been _learned_ enough to write it "similæ," for

which original piece of Latinity let him be congratulated; I safely

follow Johnson, who would have roared like a lion at "similia;" and,

though Shakspeare does write it "similies," it may stoutly be contended

that this is of mixed metal, and that Matthew Prior's "similes" is the

purer sample: all the above being a praiseworthy parenthesis.)

The similes of Scripture, then, were to have been demonstrated apt and

happy: for there is indeed both majesty, and loveliness, and propriety,

and strict resemblance in them. "As a rolling thing before the

whirlwind,"--"as when a standard-bearer fainteth"--"as the rushing of

mighty waters,"--"as gleaning grapes when the vintage is done,"--"as a

dream,"--"as the morning dew,"--"as"--but the whole book is a garden of

similitudes; they are "like the sand upon the sea-shore for multitude."

It is, however, too true, that often-times the baldness of translation

deprives poetry, Eastern especially, of its fervour, its glow, its gush,

and blush of beauty: to quote Aristotle's example, it too frequently

converts the rosy-fingered Morn into the red-fisted; and so the poetry

of dawning-day, with its dew-dropped flowers, its healthy refreshment,

its "rosy-fingers" drawing aside the star-spangled curtain of night,

falls at once into the low notion of a foggy morning, and is suggestive

only of red-fisted Abigails struggling continuously with the deposits of

a London atmosphere. In like manner, (for all this has not been an

episode beside the purpose,) many a roughly rendered similitude of

Scripture might be advantageously vindicated; local diversities and

Orientalisms might be explained in such a treatise: for example, in the

'_Canticles_,' the "beloved among the sons," is compared with an

apple-tree among the trees of the wood: now, amongst us, an apple-tree

is stunted and unsightly, and always degenerates in a wood; whereas the

Eastern apple-tree, probably one of the citron class, (to be more

correct,) may be a magnificent monarch of the forest. "Camphire," to a

Western mind, is not suggestive of the sweetest perfume, and perhaps

the word may be amended into the marginal "cypress," or cedar, or some

other: as "a bottle in the smoke," loses its propriety for an image,

until shown to be a wine-skin. "Who is this that cometh out of the

wilderness, like pillars of smoke?"--probably intending the

swiftly-rushing columns of _sand_ flying on the wings of the whirlwind.

"Thine eyes are like the fish-pools in Heshbon," might well be softened

into fountains--tearful, calm, resplendent, and rejoicing; and in

showing the poetic fitness of comparing the bride to a landscape, it

might clearly be set out how emblematic of Jewish millennial prosperity

and of Christian universality, that bride was; while comparisons of a

like un-European imagery might be taken from other Eastern poets, who

will not scruple to compare that rare beauty, a straight Grecian nose,

with a tower, and admire above all things the Cleopatra-coloured hair

which they call purple, and we auburn. Very much might be done in this

vein of literature, but it must be by a man at once an Oriental scholar

and a natural poet: the idioms of ancient and modern times should be

more considered, and something of apologetic explanation offered to an

English ear for phrases such as "the mountains skipping like rams," "the

horse swallowing the ground with fierceness," and represented as being

afraid as a grasshopper. A thousand like instances could be displayed

with little searching; let the above be taken as they are meant, for

good, and as of zeal for showing the best of books to the best

advantage: but it will appear that this essay trenches on the former one

so slenderly hinted at, as '_The Wisdom of Revision_,' therefore has

been stated too much at length already. Let it then rest on the shelf

till a better season. For this time, good reader, I, following up the

object of self-relieving, thank you for your patience, and will turn to

other themes of a more sublunary aspect.

* * * * *

One of the most natural and indigenous productions of a true author's

mind, is, by common consent, an epic poem: verily, a wearisome,

unnecessary, unfashionable bit of writing. Nevertheless, let my candour

humbly acknowledge that, for the larger canticle of two mortal days, I

was brooding over, and diligently brewing up, a right happy, capital,

and noble-minded thesis, no other than

HOME.

Alas, for the epidemy to which, few can doubt, ideas are subject! Alas,

for the conflict of prolific geniuses, wherewith the world's quiet is

disturbed! not impossibly, this very book now in progress of inditing

will come to be classed as a "Patch-work," an "Olla Podrida," a "Book

without a name," or some other such like _rechauffée_ publication;

whereas I protest its idea to be exclusively mine own, and conceived

long before its seeming congeners saw the light in definite

advertisements--at least to my beholding. And similarly went it with my

poor epic: scarcely had a general plan suggested itself to my musings,

and divers particular morsels thereof assumed "their unpremeditative

lay;" scarcely had I jotted down a staid synopsis, and a goodly array of

metrical specimens; when some intrusive newspaper displayed to me in

black and white a good-natured notice of somebody else's '_Home, an

Epic_.' So, as in the case of '_Nero_,' and haply of other subjects, had

it come to pass, that my high-mettled racer had made another false

start; that my just-discovered island, so gladly to have been

self-appropriated, was found to have, sticking on one corner of it, the

flag of another king; that the havoc of my brain, subsiding calmly into

the pendulum regularities of metre, was much ado about nothing; and all

those pretty fancies were the catalogued property of another. Such a

subject, too! intrinsically worthy of a niche in the temple of Fame,

besides Hope, Memory, and Imagination, _if_ only one could manage it

well enough to be named in the same breath with Campbell, Rogers, and

Akenside. Well, it was a mental mortification; for I am full of moral

land-marks, and would not (poetically speaking) for the world move

rooted termini into other people's grounds. Whether the field has been

well or ill preoccupied I wot not, having neither seen the poem nor

heard its maker's name: therefore shall my charity hope well of it, and

mourn over the unmerited oblivion which generally greets modern

poetry--yea, upon its very natal-day. Nevertheless, as an upright man

will never wish barefacedly to steal from others, so does he determine

at all times to claim independently his own: to be robbed, and not

resent it (I speak foolishly), is the next mean thing after pilfering

itself; and rash will be thy daring, O literary larcener! (can such

things be?) if thou art found unpermissively appropriating even such

sorry spoil as these poor seedlings of still possible volumes.

Prose and verse are allowed to have some disguising differences, at

least in termination; and as we must not--so hints the public

taste--spoil honest prose, bad as it may be, with too much intermixture

of worse verse, it will be prudent in me to be sparing of my specimens.

Yet, who will endure so _staccato_ a page of jerking sentences as a

confirmed synopsis?--"Well, any thing rather than poetry," says the

world; so, for better or worse, I will jot down prosaically a few of my

all but impromptu imaginings on Home.

After some general propositions, it would be proper to indulge the

orthodoxy of invocation; not to Muses, however, but to the subject

itself; for now-a-days, in lieu of definite deities, our worship has

regard to theories, doctrines, and other abstract idolisms: and

thereafter should follow at length an historical retrospect of domestic

life, from the savage to the transition states of hunters and warriors;

Nimrods and New Zealanders; Actæons and Avanese, Attilas, Roderics, and

all the Ercles' vein or that of mad Cambyses, Hindoos and Fuegians,

Greece, Egypt, Etruria, and Troy, in those old days when funds and taxes

were not invented, but people had to fight for their dinner, and be

their own police: so in a due course of circumconsideration to more

modern conditions, from ourselves as central civilization, to Cochin

China, and extreme Mexico, to Archangel and Polynesia.

Divers national peculiarities of the _physique_ of homes; as, Tartars'

tents, Esquimaux snow-pits, Caffre kraals, Steppe huts, South-sea

palm-thatch, tree-villages, caves, log-cabins, and so forth. Then, a

wide view of the homes of higher society, first Continental, afterwards

British through all the different phases of comfort to be found in

heath-hovels, cottages, ornées, villas, parsonage-houses, squirealities,

seats, town mansions, and royal palaces. Thus, with a contrastive peep

or two about the feverish neighbourhood of a factory, up this musty

alley, and down that winding lane, we should have considered briefly all

the external accidents of home. The miserable condition of the homeless,

whether rich or poor; an oak with its tap-root broken, a house on

wheels, a boat without a compass, and all that sort of thing: together

with due declamation about soldiers spending twenty years in India,

shipwrecked Robinson Crusoes far from native Hull, cadets going out

hopelessly forever, emigrants, convicts, missionaries, and all other

absentees, voluntary or involuntary. Tirades upon abject poverty, wanton

affluence, poor laws, mendicancy, and Ireland; not omitting some

thrilling cases of barbaric destitution.

Now come we lawfully to descant upon matters more mental and

sentimental--the _metaphysique_ of the subject--the pleasures and pains

of Home. As thus, most cursorily: the nursery, with its dear innocent

joys; the school-boy, holiday feelings and scholastic cruelties; the

desk-abhorring clerk; the over-worked milliner; the starving family of

factory children, and of agricultural labourers, and of workers in coal

mines and iron furnaces, with earnest exhortations to the rich to pour

their horns of plenty on the poor. England, once a safer and a happier

land, under the law of charity: now fast verging into a despotic

centralized system, kept together by bayonets and constables' staves.

Home a refuge for all; for queens and princes from their cumbrous state,

as well as for clowns from their hedging and ditching. The home of love,

and its thousand blessings, founded on mutual confidence, religion,

open-heartedness, communion of interest, absence of selfishness, and so

on: the honoured father, due subordination, and results; the loving

wife, obedient children, and cheerful servants. Absolute, though most

kind, monarchy the best government for a home; with digressions about

Austria and China, and such laudable paternal rule; and _contra_, bitter

castigation of republican misrule, its evils and their results, for

which see Old Athens and New York, and certain spots half-way between

them.

The pains of home: most various indeed, caused by all sorts of opposite

harms--too much constraint or too little, open bad example or impossible

good example, omissions and commissions, duty relaxed by indulgence, and

duty tightened into tyranny; but mainly and generally attributable to

the non-assertion or other abuse of parental authority. The spoiled

child, and his progress of indulgence, unchecked passions, dissipation,

crime, and ruin. Interested interlopers, as former friends, relatives,

flatterers, and busy parasites, undermining that bond of confidence

without which home falls to pieces; the gloomy spirit of reserve,

discouraging every thing like generous open-heartedness; menial

influences lowering their subject to their own base level; discords,

religious, political, and social; the harmful consequence of

over-expenditure to ape the hobbies or grandeur of the wealthier;

foolish education beyond one's sphere, as the baker's daughter taking

lessons in Italian, and opera-stricken butcher's-boys strumming the

guitar; immoral tendencies, gambling, drinking, and other dissipations;

and the aggregate of discomforts, of every sort and kind; with cures for

all these evils; and to end finally by a grand climax of supplication,

invocation, imprecation, resignation, and beatification, in the regular

crash of a stout-expiring overture.

It's all very well, objects reader, and very easy to consider this done;

but the difficulty is--not so much to do it, answers writer, as to

escape the bother of prolixity by proving how much has been done, and

how speedily all might be even completed, had poor poesy in these

ticketing times only a fair field and no disfavour; for there is at hand

good grist, ready ground, baked and caked, and waiting for its eaters.

But in this age of prose-devouring and verse-despising, hardy indeed

should I be, if I adventured to bore the poor, much-abused,

uncomplaining public with hundreds of lines out of a dormant epic; the

very phrase is a lullaby; it's as catching as a yawn; well will it be

for me if my thread-bare domino conceals me, for whose better fame could

brook the scandal of having fathered or fostered so slumbering an

embryo?--Let then a few shreds and patches suffice--a brick or two for

the house: and verily I know they will, be they never so scanty; for

what man of education does not now entertain a just abhorrence of the

Muses, the nine antiquated maiden aunts destined for ever to be

pensioned on that money-making nice young man, Mammon's great

heir-at-law, Prose Prose, Esq.?

With humblest fear, then, and infinite apology, behold, in all sober

seriousness, what the labour of such a file as I am might betimes work

into a respectable commencement; I don't pretend it _is_ one; but

_valeat quantum_, take it as it stands, unweeded, unpruned, uncared-for,

unaltered,

Home, happy word, dear England's ancient boast,

Thou strongest castle on her sea-girt coast,

Thou full fair name for comfort, love, and rest,

Haven of refuge found and peace possest,

Oasis in the desert, star of light

Spangling the dreary dark of this world's night,

All-hallowed spot of angel-trodden ground

Where Jacob's ladder plants its lowest round,

Imperial realm amid the slavish world,

Where Freedom's banner ever floats unfurl'd,

Fair island of the blest, earth's richest wealth,

Her plague-struck body's little all of health,

Home, gentle name, I woo thee to my song,

To thee my praise, to thee my prayers belong:

Inspire me with thy beauty, bid me teem

With gracious musings worthy of my theme:

Spirit of Love, the soul of Home thou art,

Fan with divinest thoughts my kindling heart;

Spirit of Power, in pray'rs thine aid I ask,

Uphold me, bless me to my holy task;

Spirit of Truth, guide thou my wayward wing;

Love, Power, and Truth, be with me while I sing.

_V'la_: my consolation is that somewhere may be read, in hot-pressed

print, too, many worse poeticals than these, which, however, nine

readers out of ten will have had the worldly wisdom to skip; and the

tenth is soon satiated: yet a tithe is something, at least so think the

modern Levites; so, then, on second thoughts, a victim who is so good a

listener must not be let off quite so cheaply. However, to vary a little

this melancholy musing, and to gild the compulsory pill, Reserve shall

be served up sonnet-wise. (P. S. I love the sonnet, maligned as it is

both by ill-attempting friend and semi-sneering foe: of course, in our

epic, Reserve ambles not about in this uncertain rhyme, but duly stalks

abroad in the uniform dress; iambically still, though extricated from

those involutions, time out of mind the requisite of sonnets.) Stand

forth to be chastised, unpopular

RESERVE.

Thou chilling, freezing fiend, Love's mortal bane,

Lethargic poison of the moral sense,

Killing those high-soul'd children of the brain,

Warm Enterprise and noble Confidence,

Fly from the threshold, traitor--get thee hence!

Without thee, we are open, cheerful, kind;

Mistrusting none but self, injurious self,

Of and to others wishing only good;

With thee, suspicions crowd the gloomy mind,

Suggesting all the world a viperous brood

That acts a base bad part in hope of pelf:

Virtue stands shamed, Truth mute misunderstood,

Honour unhonoured, Courage lacking nerve,

Beneath thy dull domestic curse, Reserve.

Without professing much tendency to the uxorious, all may blamelessly

confess that they see exceeding beauty in a good wife; and we need never

apologize for the unexpected company of ladies: at off-hand then let

this one sit for her portrait. Enduring listener, will the following

serve our purpose in striving worthily to apostrophize

THE WIFE.

Behold, how fair of eye, and mild of mien,

Walks forth of marriage yonder gentle queen:

What chaste sobriety whene'er she speaks,

What glad content sits smiling on her cheeks,

What plans of goodness in that bosom glow,

What prudent care is throned upon her brow,

What tender truth in all she does or says,

What pleasantness and peace in all her ways!

For ever blooming on that cheerful face

Home's best affections grow divine in grace;

Her eyes are ray'd with love, serene and bright;

Charity wreathes her lips with smiles of light;

Her kindly voice hath music in its notes;

And heav'n's own atmosphere around her floats!

Thus, wife-like, for better or worse, is the above _portrait charmant_

consigned to the dingy digits of an unidistinguishing printer's-devil;

so doth Cæsar's dust come to stop a bung-hole. One morsel more, about

children, blessed children, and for this bout I shall have tilted

sufficiently in the Muses' court; or, if it must be so said, unhandsome

critic, stilted to satiety in false heroics: stay--not false; judge me,

my heart. Suppose then an imaginary parent thus to speak about his

INFANT DAUGHTERS.

Oh ye, my beauteous nest of snow-white doves,

What wealth could price for me your guileless loves?

My earthly cherubim, my precious pearls,

My pretty flock of loving little girls,

My stores of happiness with least alloy,

My treasuries of hope and trembling joy!

Yon toothless darling, nestled soft and warm

On a young yearning mother's cradling arm;

The soft angelic smiles of natural grace

Tinting with love that other little face;

And the sweet budding of this sinless mind

In winning ways, that round my heart-strings wind,

Dear winning ways--dear nameless winning ways,

That send me joyous to my God in praise.

Enough! not heartlessly, but to shame the heartlessness of YOUR

_ennui_, let me veil those holiest affections; yes, even at the risk of

leaving nominatives widowed of their faithful verbs, will I, until

required, epicise no more. Let these mauled bits be intimations of what

a little care might have made a little better. Gladly will I keep all

the remainder in a state quiescent, even to doubling Horace's wholesome

prescription of nine years: for it is impossible but that your fervent

poet, in the heat of inspiration, (credit me, lack-wits, there is such a

thing,) should blurt out many an unpalatable bit of advice, rebuke, or

virtuous indignation against homes in general, for the which sundry

conscience-stricken particulars might uncharitably arraign him. But

divers other notions are crowding into the retina of my mind's-eye: I

must leave my epic as you see it, and bid farewell, a long farewell, to

'_Home_.' Still shall my egotism have to appear for many weary pages a

most impartial and universal friend to the world of bibliopolists; I

cater multifariously for all varieties of the literary profession:

booksellers at least must own me as their friend, though the lucky purse

of Fortunatus saves me from being impaled upon the point of poor

Goldsmith's epigram, and I leave to [----] the questionable praise of

being their hack. For Bentley and Hatchard, alike with Rivington and

Frazer, for Colburn and Nisbet, as well as Knight, Tilt, Tyas, Moxon,

and Murray, I seem to be gratuitously pouring out in equal measure my

versatile meditations; at this sign all customers may be suited; only,

shop-lifters will be visited with the utmost rigour of that obnoxious

monosyllable.--Well, poor Epic, good night to you, and my benison on

those who love you.

* * * * *

To any one, much in the habit of thoughtful revery, how very

unsatisfactory those notions look in writing. He can't half unravel the

chaotic cobwebs of his mind; as he plods along penning it, a thousand

fancies flit about him too intangibly for fixed words, and his

ever-teeming hot imagination cannot away with the slow process of

concreted composition. For me, I must write impromptu, or not at all;

none of your conventional impromptus, toils of half-a-day, as little

instantaneous as sundry patent lights; no working-up of laborious

epigrams, sedulously sharpened antitheses, or scintillative trifles,

diligently filed and polished; but the positive impromptu of longing to

be an adept at shorthand-writing, by way of catching as they fly those

swift-winged thoughts; not quick enough by half; most of those bright

colours unfixed; most of those fair semi-notions unrecorded. To say

nothing of reasons of time, there being other things to do, and reasons

of space, there being other things to write. And thus, good friend,

affectionately believe the best of these crude intimations of things

intellectual, which the husbandry of good diligence, and the golden

shower of Danæ's enamoured, and the smiles of the Sun of encouragement

might heretofore have ripened into authorship; nay, more, perhaps may

still: believe, generously, that if I could coil off quietly, like

unwrapped cocoons, all these epics, tragics, theologies, pathetics,

analytics, and didactics, they would show in fairer forms, and

better-defined proportions: believe, also, truly, that I could, if I

would, and that I would, if the game were worth its candle.

But, sooth to say, the over-gorged public may well regard that

small-tomed author with most favourable eye, who condenses himself

within the narrowest limits; a _diable boiteux_, not the huge spirit of

the Hartz; concentrated meat-lozenges, not _soup maigre_; pocket-pistols

of literature, not lumbering parks of its artillery. Verily, there is a

mightier mass of typography than of readers; and the reading world, from

very brevity of life, must rush, at a Bedouin pace, over the illimitable

plains of newspaper publication, while the pyramids of dusty folio are

left to stand in solitary proud neglect. The cursory railroad spirit is

abroad: we abhor that old painful ploughing through axle-deep ruts: the

friend who will skate with us, is welcomer than he who holds us freezing

by the button; and the teacher, who suggestively bounds in his balloon

on the tops of a chain of arguments, is more popular in lecturing than

he of the old school, who must duteously and laboriously struggle up and

down those airy promontories.

I love an avenue, though, like Lord Ashburton's magnificent mile of

yew-trees, it may lead to nothing, and therefore have not expunged this

unnecessary preface: rather, will I bluntly come upon a next subject,

another work in my unseen circulating library,

THE SEVEN SAYINGS OF GRECIAN WISDOM,

ILLUSTRATED IN SEVEN TALES.

Cordially may this theme be commended to the more illuminating

booksellers: well would it be greeted by the picture-loving public. It

might come out from time to time as a periodical, in a classical

wrapper: might be decorated with the sages' physiognomies, copied from

antique gems, with the fancied passage in each one's life that provoked

the saying, and with specific illustrations of the exemplifying story.

There should be a brilliant preface, introducing the seven sages to each

other and the reader, after the ensample of Plutarch, and exhausting all

the antiquarianism, all the memoirism, and all the varia-lectionism of

the subject. The different tales should be of different countries and

ages of the world, to insure variety, and give an easier exit to

_ennui_. As thus: Solon's "Know thyself" might be fitted to an Eastern

favourite raised suddenly to power, or a poor and honest Glasgow weaver

all upon a day served as heir to a Scotch barony, when he forthwith

falls into fashionable vices. Chilo's "Note the end of life" might

concern the merriment of the drunkard's career, and its end--delirium

tremens, or spontaneous combustion: better, perhaps, as less vulgarian,

the grandeur and assassination of some Milanese ducal tyrant. The

"Watch your opportunity" of Pittacus could be shown in the fortunes of

some Whittington of trade, some Washington of peace, or some Napoleon of

war. Bias's uncharitable bias, believing the worst of the world, might

seem to some a truism, to others a falsehood, according as their fellows

have served them well or ill; but a brief history of some hypocrite's

life, some misanthrope's experience, or some Arabian Stylobatist's

resolve to be perched above this black earth on a column like a stork,

might help to prove that "the majority are wicked." As for Periander's

aphorism, that "to industry all things are possible," pyramid-building

old Egypt, or the Druids of Stonehenge, or Scottish proverbial

perseverance in Australian sheep rearing and Canadian timber clearing,

will carry the point by acclamation. Cleobulus, praising "moderation in

all things," would glorify a moral warning of universal application, as

to pleasures, riches, and rank; or especially perhaps as preferring true

temperance before its modern tee-total false pretences; or lauding some

Richard Cromwell's choice of a quiet country life, before the turbulent

honours of a proffered Protectorate; while Thales, with his all but old

English proverb of "more haste, less speed," would apply admirably to

Sultan Mahmoud's ruinous reforms; or to the actual injury gulled Britain

has done to the condition of negroes in general by a vastly too

precipitate abolition of the slave-trade: a vile evil, indeed, but a

cancer of too long creeping to be cured in a day, a rottenness too

deeply seated in the frame-work of the world to be extirpated by such

caustic surgery as fire and sword; or to be quacked into health by

patent gold-salve.

Seven such tales, shrewdly setting out their several aims, and

illustrative of good moral maxims which wise heathens live by, would (I

trow and trust) be somewhat better, more original--ay, and more

entertaining, too--than the common run of magazine adventures. It may

not here be fair to particularize further than in the way of avowing my

unmitigated contempt for the exploits of highwaymen, swindlers, men

about town, and ladies of the _pavé_. I protest against gilding crimes,

and palliating follies. Serve the public tables with better food, good

Pandarus. Those commentators on the Newgate calendar, those

bringers-into-fashion of the mysteries of vice, must not be quite

acquitted of the evils they have caused: brilliancy of dialogue, and

graphic power of delineation, are only weapons in a madman's hand, if

the moral be corrupting and profane. To cheerful, hearty,

care-dispelling humour, to such merry faces as Pickwick and

Co.--inimitable Pickwick--hail, all hail! but triumphs of burglary, and

escapes of murderers, aroint ye!

Why then should I throw this cargo overboard?--Friend, my ship is too

full; _if_ I could only do one thing at a time, and could finish it

within the limits of its originating fit, these things all might be less

abortive. But I doubt if my glorification of Greek aphorisms ever

reaches any higher apotheosis than the airy castles sketchily built

above.

* * * * *

Similar in idea with these last tales, but essentially more sacred as to

character, would be an illustrative elucidation of the seven last

sayings of our Blessed Lord, when dying in the crucifixion. The Romish

Church, in some of her imposing ceremonies, has caused the sayings to be

exhibited on seven banners, which are occasionally carried before the

holy cross: from this I probably derived the idea of detaching these

sentences from the frame-work of their contexts, and regarding them in

some sort as aphorisms. For a name, not to be tautologous, should be

proposed a Græco-Anglicism,

THE HEPTALOGIA;

OUR SAVIOUR'S SEVEN LAST SAYINGS.

The addition of "hagia" might be rather too Attic for English ears; and

I know not whether "the Sacred Heptalogia" would not also be too

mystical. This series of tales is capable of like illustration with the

last, except in the matter of portraits, unless indeed some eminent

fathers of the church, or some authenticated enamels, gems, or coins,

(if any,) displaying our Lord's likeness, served the purpose; and of

course the character of the stories should not be much in dissonance

with the sacredness of the text. The first might well enforce

forgiveness of enemies, especially if their hatred springs from

misapprehension. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do:"

many a true story of religious persecution, as of Inquisitorial

torture, exacted by sincere bigotry, and endured by equally sincere

conviction, would illustrate the prayer, and the scene might be laid

among Waldensian saints and the friars of Madrid. The second tale might

enlarge upon a promised Paradise, the assurance of pardon, and the

efficacy of repentance: the certainty of hope and life being

co-extensive, so that it might still be said of the seeming worst, the

brigand and the blasphemer, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;"

a story to check presumption, while it encourages the humility of

pentitent hope; the details of a prodigal's career and his return, say

a falsely philosophizing German student, or the excesses of some not

ungenerous outburst of youthful wantonness; haply, a fair and passionate

Neapolitan. The third might well regard filial piety: "Behold thy

son--behold thy mother:" illustrated perhaps by a slave scene in

Morocco, or the last adieus between a Maccabæan mother, and her noble

children rushing on duteous death; or the dangers of a son, during the

Reign of Terror, protecting his proscribed parents; or allusive to the

case of many razed and fired homes in the Irish rebellion. The fourth,

necessarily a tale of overwhelming calamity ultimately triumphant, "My

God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"--the confidence of _my_ God

still, even in His recognised judgments trusted in as merciful: the

history of many an unrecorded Job; a parent bereaved of his fair dear

children; an aged merchant beggared by the roguery of others, and his

very name blamelessly dishonoured; the extremity of a martyr's

sufferings; or some hunted soul's temptation. The fifth, "I thirst;"

which might be commented on, either morally only, as referring to a

thirst after religion, virtue, and knowledge--or physically also, in

some story of well-endured miseries at sea on a wrecking craft; or of

Christian resignation even to the horrible death of drought among the

torrid sands of Africa; or some noble act, like that of Sir Philip

Sidney on the battle-field, or David's libation of that desired draught

from the well of Bethlehem. I need not remark that all these sayings

might primarily be applied to their Good Utterer, if it seemed more

advisable to shape the publication into seven sermons: but this, it will

at once be perceived, is not the present object; the word "sermons" has

to most men a repulsive sound, and a tale, similar in disguised motive,

may win, where an orderly discourse might unhappily repel: a teacher's

best influences are the indirect: like the conquering troops at

Culloden, his charge will be oblique; his weapon will strike the

unguarded flank, and not the opposing target. The sixth, "It is

finished;" perhaps, not only as a fact on the true, the necessary value

of the Christian scheme of redemption being so completed; but, more

generally, to display the evils and dangers of leaving mental,

spiritual, or even worldly good designs unfinished: a tale of natural

procrastination conquered, difficulties overcome, prejudices broken

down, and gigantic good effected: a Russian Peter, a literary Johnson, a

missionary Neff, a Wesley, or a Henry Martyn. The seventh, descanting

upon noble patience, and agonies vanquished by faith, the death and

glorious expectance of a martyr, the end of one of Fox's heroes;

"Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Of necessity in these

Christian tales there would be more of sameness than in those heathen;

because it would be improper and impolitic, with such theses, to enter

much into the lower human passions and the common events of life. But my

intentions of further proceeding in this matter have, as at present,

very sensibly subsided; for many wise and many good might reasonably

object to making those holy last dying words mere pegs to hang moral

tales upon. The idea might please one little sect, and anger half the

world; I care not to behold it accomplished, and question my own

capabilities; only, as it has been an authorial project heretofore

conceived by me, suffer it to boast this brief existence.

* * * * *

It is scandalously reported of some folks that they are not musical, a

calumny that has been whispered of myself: and, though against my own

convictions, (who will confess he "has not music in his soul?") I partly

acquiesce; that is to say--for, of such a charge, self-defence claims to

explain a little--although I _am_ charmed with all manner of music,

still for choice I prefer a German chorus to an Italian solo, and an

English glee to a French jig. Accordingly the operatic world have every

reason to despise my taste: especially if I add that Welsh songs, and

Scotch and Irish national melodies--[where are our English

gone?]--rejoice my heart beyond Mozart and Rossini. And now this next

little notion is scarcely of substance sufficient to assume the garb of

authorship: it is little more than a passing whim, but I choose for the

very notion's sake to make it better known. Except in a very few

instances--as Haydn's '_Seasons_,' e.g.--Oratorios, from some

conventional idea of Lent, we may suppose, seem obligated to concern

matters sacred. Of course, every body is aware of the prayerful meaning

of the name; but we know also that a madrigal has long ago put off its

monkish robe of a hymn to the Virgin, and worn the more laic habit of a

love song. Now, it is a fact, that very many good men who delight in

Handel's melody, and of course cannot object to psalms and anthems,

entertain conscientious objections to hearing the Bible set to music in

a concert-room; and sure may we all be, that, unless the whole thing be

regarded as a religious service, (in a mixed gay company who think of

sound more than sense, not very easy,) the warbling of sacred phrases,

and variations on the summoning trumpet, and imitated angelic praise,

and the unfelt expressions of musical repentance, and unfearing

despondency of guilt in recitative, are any thing but congenial to a

mind properly attuned. I hope I am neither prudish, nor squeamish, nor

splenetic, but speak only what many feel, and few care to express. Now,

the cure in future for all this would be very simple: Why not have some

lay oratorios? Protestants have appropriated the madrigal, and listen,

delighted with its melody, without the needless offence of seeming to

countenance idolatry; why should they not have solemn music, new or

ancient as may be adapted, administering to their patriotism, or their

tragic interests, or historic recollections, without grating against

their feelings of religious veneration?--To be specific, let me suggest

a subject, and show, for the benefit of any Pindar of this day, its

musical capabilities: we are, or ought to be as Englishmen, all stirred

at the name of

ALFRED;

and he would minister as well to the harmonies of an oratorio as Abel,

or Jephtha, Moses, or St. Paul--nay, as the Messiah, or the last dread

Judgment. Remember, our Alfred was a proficient himself, and spied the

Danish forces in the character of a harper. What scope were here for

gentle airs, and stirring Saxon songs! He harangues his patriot band,

and a manly Phillips would personify with admirable taste the truly

royal bard: he leaves Athel-switha his wife, and a fair flock of

children in sanctuary, while he rushes to the battle-field: the

churchmen might receive their queenly charge with music: the Danes riot

in their unguarded camp with drinking-snatches, and old-country-staves:

a storm might occur, with elemental crash: the succeeding silence of

nature, and distant coming on of the patriot troops at midnight; their

war-songs and marches nearer and nearer; the invaders surprised in their

camp and in their cups; the hurlyburly of the fight--a hail-stone chorus

of arrows, a clash of thousand swords, trumpets, drums, and clattering

horse-hoofs; a silent interval, to introduce a single combat between

Alfred and Hubba the Dane, with Homeric challenges, tenor and bass; the

routed foe, in clamorous and discordant staccato; the conquerors

pressing on in steady overwhelming concord; how are the mighty

fallen--and praise to the God of battles!

Most briefly, then, thus: there is religion enough to keep it solemn,

without being so experimental as to intrude upon personal prejudice. The

notion is too slight, and too slenderly worked out, even for admission

here, if I were not still, my shrewd and mindful reader, sedulously

endeavouring to get rid of all my brain-oppressing fancies: and this,

happening to come uppermost as I write, finds itself caught, to my

comfort. It is commended, if worth any thing, to the musical proficient:

for I might as well think of adding a note to the gamut as of trying to

compose an oratorio.

* * * * *

The authorial mind is infinitely versatile: books and book-making are

indeed its special privilege, forte, and distinguishing peculiarity; but

still its thoughts and regards are ever cast towards originality of

idea, though unwritten and unprinted, in all the multitudinous

departments of science and of art. Thus, mechanical invention, chemical

discovery, music as above, painting as elsewhere, sculpture as below,

give it exercise continually. The authorial mind never is at rest, but

always to be seen mounted and careering on one hobby-horse or other out

of its untiring stud. If the coin of some rude Parthian, or the

fragments of some old Ephesian frieze, serve not as a scope for its

present ingenuities, it will break out in a new method of grafting

raspberries on a rosebush, in the comfortable cut of a pilot-coat, or

the safest machinery for a steamer. _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_ is a rule

of moderation it repudiates; incessant energy provokes unabated

meddling, and its intuitive qualities of penetration, adaptation, and

concentration, are only hindered by the accidents of life from carrying

any one thing out to the point at least of respectable attainment. Look

at Michael Angelo; poet, painter, sculptor, architect, and author: and

if indeed we are not told of Milton having modeled, or Horace having

built up other monuments than his own imperishable fame, still nothing

but manual habit and the world's encouragement were wanting to perfect,

in the concrete, the conceptions of those plastic minds. Who will deny

that Hogarth was a novelist and play-wright, if not indeed a

heart-rending tragedian? Who will refuse to those nameless monastic

architects who planned and fashioned the fretted towers of Gloucester,

the stern solidity of Durham, the fairy steeple of Strasburg, or the

delicate pinnacles of Milan, the praise due to them of being genuine

poets of the immortal Epic? Phidas and Praxiteles, Canova and

Thorswaldsen, are in this view real authors, as undoubtedly as Homer or

Dante, Sallust or Racine; and to rise highest in this argument, the

heavens and the earth are but mighty scrolls of an Omniscient Author,

fairly written in a universal tongue of grandeur and beauty, of skill,

poetry, philosophy, and love.

But let me not seem to prove too much, and so leap over my horse instead

of vaulting into the saddle: though authorship may claim thus

extensively every master-mind, from the Adorable Former of all things

down to the humblest potter at his wheel fashioning the difficult

ellipse; still, in human parlance, must we limit it to common

acceptations, and think of little more than scribe, in the name of

author. Nevertheless, let such seeds of thought as here are carelessly

flung out, nurtured in the good soil of charity, and not unkindly forced

into foolish accusations of my own conceit, whereas their meaning is

general, (as if forsooth selfishly dibbled in with vain particularity,

and not liberally broadcast that he may run that reads,)--let such crude

considerations excuse my own weak and uninjurious invasion of the

provinces of other men. The wisdom for social purposes of infinitesimal

division of labour, may be proved good by working well; but its lowering

influences on the individual mind cannot be doubted: that an intelligent

man should for a life-time be doomed to watch a valve, or twist

pin-heads, or wind cotton, or lacquer coffin-nails, cannot be improving;

and while I grant great evil in my desultory excesses, still I may make

some use of that argument in the converse, and plead that it is good to

exercise the mind on all things. Thus, in my assumed métier of

authorship, let notions be extenuated that popularly concern it little,

and yield admittance to any thought that may lead to that Athenian

desideratum, "some new thing."

While the echoes of the name of Alfred still linger on the mind, and our

patriotism looks back with gratitude on his thousand virtues unsullied

by a fault, (at least that History, seldom so indulgent, has

recorded,)--while we reflect that in him were combined the wise king,

the victorious general, the enlightened scholar, the humble Christian,

the learned author, the excellent father, the admirable MAN in

all public and private relations, in domestic alike with social duties,

I cannot help wishing that forgetful England had raised some

architectural trophy, as a worthy testimonial of Alfred the noble and

the good. Whether Oxford, his pet child--or Westminster Hall, as mindful

of the code he gave us--or Greenwich, as the evening resting-place of

those sons of thunder whom the genius of Alfred first raised up to man

our wooden walls--should be the site of some great national memorial,

might admit of question; but there can be none that something of the

kind has been owing now near upon a thousand years, and that it will

well become us to claim boastingly for England so true, so glorious a

hero. With a view to expedite this object, and strictly to bear upon the

topic in author-fashion, it has come into my thought how much we want a

LIFE OF ALFRED:

my little reading knows of none, beyond what dictionaries have gathered

from popular history and vague tradition, rather than manuscripts of old

time, and Asser, the original biographer. Of this last work, written

originally in Saxon, and since translated into Latin, I submit that a

popular English version is imperatively called for; a translation from a

translation being never advisable, (compare Smollett's Anglo-Gallified

dilution of '_Don Quixote_,') the primary source should be again

consulted; and seeing that profound ignorance of the ancient Saxon

coupled with, as now, total indifference about its acquisition, place me

in the list of incapables, I leave the good suggestion to be used by

pundits of the Camden or Roxburghe or other book-learned society. If it

may have been already done by some neglected scribe, bring it to the

light, and let us see the bright example set to all future ages by that

early Crichton; if never yet accomplished, my zeal is over-paid should

the hint be ever acted on; and if, which is still possible, an English

version of the life of Alfred should be positively rife and common among

the reading public, your humble ignoramus has nothing for it but to pray

pardon of its author for not having known him, and to walk softly with

the world for writing so much before he reads.

But this is an accessory--an episode; I plead for a statue to King

Alfred: and--(now for another episode; is there _no_ cure for these

desperate parentheses?)--_apropos_ of statues, let me, in the simple

untaught light of nature, suggest a word or two with regard to some

recent under-takings. Notwithstanding classical precedents, whereof more

presently, it does seem ridiculous to common sense, to set a man like a

scavenger-bird at Calcutta, or a stork at Athens, or a sonorous Muezzin,

or a sun-dried Simeon Stylites, on the top of a column a hundred feet

high: sculpture imitates life, and who would not shudder at such an

unguarded elevation? sculpture imitates life, and who can recognise a

countenance so much among the clouds? Again for the precedents: I

presume that Pompey's pillar, (which, indeed, perhaps never had any

thing on its summit except some Egyptian emblem, as the cap and throne

of higher and lower Egypt, or a key of the Nile as likely as any thing,)

is the most notable, if not the first, of solitary columns: now,

Pompey, or, as some prefer, Diocletian, and others Alexander Severus,

had that fine pillar ferried over from the quarries of Lycian Xanthus;

at least, this is a good idea, seeing that near that place still lie

three or four other columns of like gigantic dimensions, unfinished, and

believed to have been intended to support the triglyph of some new

temple. Pompey's idea was to fix the pillar up as a sea-mark, for either

entering the harbour of Alexandria, or to denote shallows, anchorage, or

the like; but apart from this actual utility, and apart also from its

acknowledged ornament as a sentinel on that flat strand, I take it to be

an architectural absurdity to erect a regular-made column with little or

nothing to support: an obelisk now, or a naval trophy, or a tower

decorated with shields, or a huge stele or cippus, or a globe, or a

pyramid, or a Waltham-cross sort of edifice, (of course all these

supporting nothing on their apices,) in fact, _any thing but_ a

Corinthian or Tuscan, or other regular pillar, seems to be permissable;

but for base, shaft, and capital to have nothing to do but lift a

telescopic man from earth's maternal surface, does look not a little

unreasonable; and therefore as much out of taste, as for the marble arch

at Buckingham Palace to spend its energies in supporting a flag-staff.

The magnificent column of Trajan is exempted from this hasty bit of

criticism, (as also of course is its modern counterpart, Napoleon's,)

because it is, both from decoration and proportions, out of the

recognised orders of architecture; it partakes rather of the character

of a triumphal tower, than of one among many pillars separated chiefly

from the rest; the man is a superlative accessory, a climax to his

positive exploits; he does not stand a-top, as if dropt from a balloon,

but like a gallant climber treading on his conquests: and, as to

Phocas's column at Rome, I shall only say, that it illustrates my

meaning, except in so far as an immense base to the super-imposed

statuere deems it from the jockey imputation of carrying too light a

weight. Now, with respect to the Nelson memorial, your meddlesome scribe

had an unexhibited notion of his own. Mehemet Ali is understood to have

given certain two obelisks respectively to the French and English

nations: the Parisians appropriated theirs, and have set it up,

thorn-like, in their midst, perhaps as an emblem of what African

conquest has been in the heartside of France; but we English, less

imaginative, and therefore less antiquarian, have permitted our _petit

cadeau_ to lie among its ruins of Luxor or Karnac, unclaimed and

unconsidered.

Nelson of the Nile might have had this consecrated to his honour: and

if, as is probable, it be of insufficient elevation, I should have

proposed a high flight of steps and a base, screened all round by

shallow Egyptian entrances, with an Etruscan sarcophagus just within the

principal one, (Egypt and Etruria were cousins germane,) and an

alto-relievo of Nelson dying, but victorious, recumbent on the lid: the

globe and wings, emblems alike of Nelson's rapidity, his universal fame,

and his now-emaciated spirit, might be sculptured over each entrance; a

sphinx, or a Prudhoe lion, being allusive to England as well as Egypt,

should sit guardiant at each corner of the steps; and the three

remaining doorways would be represented closed, and carved externally

with some allegorical personations of Nelson's career, of the Nile,

Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. This, then, had it been strictly in my

métier, (a happy métier mine of literary leisure,) should have been my

limnèd outline for the Nelson testimonial: the real interesting antique

needle, rising from the midst of its solid Egyptian architecture, and

pointing to the skies; not a steeple, however, but merely the obelisk

raised upon a heavy base, only hollowed far enough to admit of an

interior alto-relievo.

It is probable that the exhibition of designs, which an _alibi_

prevented me from seeing, included several obelisks; but the

peculiarities I should have insisted on, would have been first to make

good use of the real thing, the rarely carved old Egypt's porphyry; and,

next, to have had our hero's likeness within reasonable distance of the

eye.

But to return from this other desperate digression: Alfred, the great

and wise, deserves his Saxon cross; or let him lie enshrined in a grove

of florid Gothic pinnacles, a fretted roof on clustered columns

reverently keeping off the rain; or, best of all, let him stand majestic

in his own-time costume, colossal bronze on a cube of granite, and so

put to shame the elegancies of a Windsor uniform, and the absurdity of

sticking heroes, as at St. George's, Bloomsbury, and elsewhere, on the

summit of a steeple. So, friend, let all this tirade serve to introduce

a most unlikely and chaotic treatise on

NATIONAL MEMORIALS.

Politics are a sore temptation to any writer, and of dalliance with a

Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My

principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of

self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet

coin-climax the "8th degree of rarity;" and that those choice

principles may not be concealed from so kind an eye as yours, friend

reader, hear me profess myself honestly--if you approve, or

shamelessly--if you _will_ so think it--"a rabid Tory!" At least, by

such a nomenclature sundry veracious journals, daily leaders of the

public opinion, would call me, were such a groundling as I prominent

enough to attract their indignation; and, from all that can be gathered

from their condemnatory clauses against others like minded, I have no

little reason to be proud of the title. For, on collation of such

clauses with their causes, I find, and therefore take (under correction

always) the rabid Tory to be--a temperate lover of order, whom his

mother has taught to "fear God," his father to "honour the king," and

his pastor to "meddle not with them who are given to change." A rabid

Tory, in matters of national expenditure, remembers to have heard an old

unexploded proverb, "There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth, and

there is that withholdeth what is due, but it tendeth to poverty;" and

he is by no means sure that a certain mismanaged nation is not

immolating her prosperity to what actuaries would call economical

principles. A rabid Tory is bigoted enough to entertain a ridiculous

fear of that generation abstraction, Catholic Rome, whom further he is

sufficiently vulgar-minded to consider as a lady of easy virtue arrayed

in the colours of a cardinal: he thinks one Luther to be somewhat more

than a renegade monk; and is childish enough to venerate, when a man,

the same Liturgy which his grandmother had taught him when a boy. For

other matters, the higher born, the better bred, the more classically

educated, and the more extensively possessed of moneys and lands our

honest-spoken Tory may be, ten to one the more is he afflicted with this

rabbies: and his mad propensities become positively criminal, when, as a

magistrate or a captain of dragoons, he thinks himself bound in

honourable duty to quell the enthusiasm of some disinterested patriots,

whose innocent wishes rise no higher than to subvert the existing order

of things, to secure for themselves a reasonable share of parks,

palaces, and pocket-money, and (as the very justifiable means for so

happy an end) manfully to sacrifice in the temple of Freedom the rogues

who would object to being robbed, and the tyrants who would be bloody

enough to fight for life and liberty.

A rabid Tory--you see it is a pet name of mine--feels no little contempt

for a squeezable character; and he is well assured, from history as well

as on his own conviction, that the noble army of martyrs lived and died

upon his principles: whereas the retrograde regiment of cowards, whom

the wisdom of providing for personal safety has in battle induced to run

away, _relictis non bene parmulis_--the clamorous cohort of bullies,

whom the necessities of impending castigation have sensibly induced to

eat their words--the volunteer company of light-heeled swindlers, whom

nature instructs that they must live, and honesty has neglected to

inform how--every one, in short, whose grand maxim (_quocunque modo

rem_) is temporizing expediency, and with whom the cogent argument "you

shall" has more force than the silly conscience-whisper of "you

ought,"--contributes to swell the band which the professor of Toryism,

the abstracted follower of principles and not of men, has the honour of

beholding in the angle of his diagram, inscribed "contradictory." Not

that your true Tory believes so ill of _all_ his adversaries; there are

some few geese among the cranes; an Abdiel here and there, who has long

felt irksome in the host, but for false shame is there still; sundry

men, having ambitious or illuminated wives, and too amiable, or too

prudent, to attempt a breach of peace at home; some thronging the

opposite benches, because their fathers and grandfathers topographically

occupied those same seats--a decent reason, supposing similarity of

places and names, to insure similarity of principles and practice; and

some--I dislike them not for honesty--confessing and upholding the

republican extremes, upon a belief that all short of these are but an

unsatisfactory part of a great and glorious experiment. Now, the rabid

Tory prefers an open foe to a false friend; but your go-between, your

midway sneak, your shuttlecock, your perjured miser who will swear to

any thing for an extra per centage--all these are his detestation: and

although he will readily acknowledge some good and some wise in the

adversary's ranks, still he recognises that tri-coloured banner as the

one under which all naturally fight, who are poor in both worlds--with

neither money nor religion. Thus much of my reasonable rabies.

One may hate principles without hating men; and for this sentiment we

have the Highest Example. Things are either right or wrong; if right,

do; if wrong, forbear: nothing can be absolutely indifferent, and to do

a little actual evil in order to compass great hypothetical good, is

false morality, and, therefore bad government. Why should not honesty

and plain-dealing be as inviolable publicly as privately? Why be guilty

of such mean self-stultification as to say one thing and do another? It

is criminal in rulers to give a helping hand to the evil which they deem

unavoidable; let them, in preference, cease to rule, and imitate the

noble threat of that king for half a century whose conscience bade him

abdicate rather than do wrong.

But to come abruptly on a title-page: often-times, in reading

deleterious leading articles in wrong-sided newspapers, have I longed to

set before the world of faction

A MANUAL OF GOOD POLITICS,

which indeed has already been half-done, if decently begun be

synonymous. With this view has my author's mind heretofore thought over

many scriptural texts, characters, doctrines, and usages; yet, let me

freely confess the upshot of those efforts to be little satisfactory:

for I fear much, that though there be grounds enough to go upon for one

who is already fixed in right political principle, [orthodoxy being, as

is common among arguers, _my_ doxy,] there may not be sufficient so to

reason from as to convince the thousands, ready and willing to gainsay

them: and Locke's utter annihilation of poor ridiculous well-intentioned

Filmer, makes one wary, of taking up and defending a position so little

tenable, as, for instance, Adam's primary grant for the foundation of

absolute monarchy, or of attempting to nullify natural freedom by the

dubious succession of patriarchal power. At the same time, (competency

for so great a task being conceded--no small supposition, by the way,)

much remains to be done in this field of discourse; as, the fearful

example made of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, for conduct very analogous

with numberless instances of modern Liberalism; the rights of rulers, as

well as of the governed; of kings, as well as people; the connexion

subsisting now, as through all former ages, between church and

state--well indeed and deeply argued out already by such great minds as

Coleridge and Gladstone, but perhaps, for general usefulness, requiring

a more brief and popular discourse; the question of passive obedience;

the true though unfashionable doctrine of man's general depravity

invalidating the consignment of power to the masses; and so forth. There

are, however, if Scripture is to be held a constitutional guide, some

examples to a certain extent contrary to the argument: as, elective

monarchy in the case of Saul; non-legitimate succession in families even

where election is omitted, as in the case of Solomon; and, honestly to

say it, many other difficulties of a like nature. In fact, upon the

whole, this distinction might be drawn; that although the Bible at large

favours what we may, for shortness' sake, term Conservative politics,

still it would not be easy to deduce from its page as code of rules, so

necessarily of a social, temporary, and accidental nature: The principle

is given, but little of the practice; the seed of true and undefiled

religion produces among other good fruit what we will call Conservatism,

but we must be very microscopic to detect that fruit in the seed: of

this admission let my _Liberal_ adversary make--as indeed he will--the

most; but let him remember that truth has always been most economically

distributed. It is a material too costly to be broadcast before swine;

and in slender evidence lurks more of moral test, than in stout

arguments and open miracles. At any rate, as unfitted for the task, I

leave it. For any thing mine un-book-learned ignorance can tell, the

very title may be as old as Christianity itself; it is a good name, and

a fair field.

This manual was commenced in the form of familiar letters to a radical

acquaintance, whom I had resolved to convert triumphantly; but John

Locke disarmed me, without, however, having gained a convert: he made me

drop my weapon as Prospero with Ferdinand; but the fault lay with

Ferdinand, for want of equal power in the magic art.

* * * * *

"MEASURES, NOT MEN" is, as we have hinted already, the

ground-work of a true Tory's political creed; and measures themselves

only in so far as they expound and are consistent with principles. A man

may fail; the stoutest partisan become a renegado; and the pet measure

of a doughtiest champion may after all prove traitorous, unwise,

unworthy: but principle is eternally an unerring guide, a master to

whose words it is safe to swear, a leader whose flag is never lowered in

compromise, nor sullied by defeat. Defalcations of the generally

upright, derelictions of duty by the usually noble-minded, shake not

that man's faith which is founded on principle: for the cowardice, or

rashness, or dishonesty of some individual captain, he may feel shame,

but never for the _cause_ in which such hold commissions; he may often

find much fault with _soi-disant_ Tories, but never with the 'ism they

profess. We over-step their follies; we disclaim their corruptions; we

date above their faults; we wash our hands of their abuses. An

abstracted student in his chamber, building up his faith from the

foundations, and trying every stone of the edifice, takes little heed of

who is for him, and who against him, so Conscience is the architect, and

the Master of the house looks on approving. A man's mind is but one

whole; be it palace or hovel, feudal stronghold or Italian villa, it is

all of a piece: a duly subordinated spirit bears no superstructure of

the Radical, and the friable soil of discontented Liberalism, is too

sandy a foundation for ponderous fanes of the religious.

I rejoice in being accounted one of those unheroic, and therefore more

useful, members of society, who profess to be by no means ambitious of

reigning. A plain country gentleman, with a mind (thank Heaven!) well at

ease, and things generally, both external and internal, being in his

case consentaneous with happiness, would appear to have reached the acme

of human felicity; and no one but a fool cares, in any world, to

exemplify the dog's preference for the shadow. Unenvious, therefore, of

royalty, and fully crediting that _never-quoted_ sentiment of

Shakspeare's "Uneasy," &c., my motto, within the legitimate limits of

right reason, and in common with that of some ridiculed philosopher of

Roundhead times, is the prudent saying, "Whoever's king, I'll be

subject!"--ay, and for the masculine I place the epicene. While,

however, in sober practice of right subordination, and under existing

circumstances of just rule, we gladly would amplify the maxim, (as in

courtesy, gallantry, loyalty, and honest kind feeling strongly bound,)

still in mere speculation, and irrespectively of things as they are, our

abstract musings tended to approve the original word in its unextended

gender. Every one of Edmund Burke's school would honour the ensign of

Divine vice-regency wherever he found it; but, apart from this

uninquisitive respect, he will claim to be reasonably patriotic,

patriotically rational; habit encourages to practice one thing, but

theory may induce to think another. Now, little credence as so

unenlightened so illiberal an integer as I give to an equalization in

the rights of man, certainly on many accounts my blindness gives less to

the rights of women with man, and very far less to those rights over

man: it might be inconvenient to be specific as to reason; but the

working of an ultra-republican scheme, in which females should ballot as

well as males, would briefly illustrate my meaning. Barbarism makes

gentle woman our slave; right civilization raises her into a loving

helpmate; but what kind of wisdom exalts her into mastery?

Readily, however, shall sleep in dull suppression sundry comments on a

certain Rhenish law, whereof my author's mind had at one time studiously

cogitated a grave and wholesome homily. For our censor of the press, one

strait-laced Mr. Better Judgment, has, "with his abhorred shears,"

clipped off the more eloquent and spirited portion of a trenchant

argument concerning--the revealed doctrine of a superior sex, the social

evils of female domination, church-headships considered as to type and

antitype, improper influences, necessary hindrances, anomalous example,

feminine infirmities, and an infinitude more such various objections

springing out of this fertile subject. Thereafter might have come the

historical view, evils and perils, for the majority of instances,

following in the wake of such mastery. However, to leave these

questionable matters quiescent, the principles of passive obedience

mildly interpose, forbidding to stir the waters of commotion, although

with healing objects, for the sake of an abstract theory; there is

ill-meant change enough afloat, without any call for well-intentioned

meddlers to launch more. So, judicious after-thought resolves rather to

strengthen too-much-weakened authority, in these ungovernable times,

than attempt to prove its weaknesses inherent; to look obstinately at

the golden side only of the double-wielded shield: instead of picking

away at a soft stone in constitutional foundations, our feeble wish

magnanimously prefers to prop it and plaster it, flinging away that

injurious pick-axe. The title of this once-considered lucubration is far

too suggestive to carping minds of more than the much that it means, to

be without objection: nevertheless, I did begin, and therefore, always

under shelter of a domino, and protesting against any who would move my

mask, I confess to

WOMAN, A SUBJECT:

it was a mere speculative argument; a flock of fancies now roaming

unregarded in some cloudy limbo. Let them fly into oblivion--"black,

white, and gray, with all their trumpery."

* * * * *

Notwithstanding these present hostile argumentations, politics are to me

what they doubtless are to many others, subjects and disquisitions

little short of hateful; perpetual mulligatawney; curried capsicums; a

very heating, unsatisfactory, unwholesome sort of food. How many

pleasant dinner-parties have been abruptly broken up by the introduction

of this dish! How many white waistcoats unblanched by projectile

wine-glasses on account of this impetuous theme! How many little-civil

wars produced from the pips of this apple of contention! Yes, I hate it;

and for this cause, good readers, (who may chance to have been used

scurvily, some six pages back, in respect of your opinions, honest as

my own, though fixed in full hostility--and so, courteously be entreated

for your pardons,) for this cause of hate, I beseech you to regard me as

sacrificing my present inclination to my future quiet. We have heard of

women marrying men they may detest, in order to get rid of them: even

with such an object is here indited the last I ever intend to say about

politics. The shadows of notions fixed upon this page will cease to

haunt my brain; and let no one doubt but that after relief from these

pent-up humours, I shall walk forth less intolerant, less unamiable,

less indignant than as heretofore. But, meanwhile, suffer with all

brevity that I say out this small say, and deliver my patriotic

conscience; for many a head-ache has obfuscated your author's mind in

consequence of other abortive bits of political common-place. Every

successive measure of small triumphant Whiggery, every piece of what my

view of the case would designate non-government or mis-government, has

pinched, vexed, bruised, and stung my fervent country's love day by day,

session after session. Like thousands of others, I have been a greyhound

in the leash, a bolt in the bow, longing to take my turn on the arena:

eager as any Shrovetide 'prentice for a fling at negligence, peculation

and injustice, and other the long black catalogue of British injuries.

Socialism, Chartism, Ribandism; Spain, Canada, China; freed criminals,

and imprisoned poverty; penny wisdom, and pound folly; the universal

centralizing system, corrupting all generous individualities: patriotism

ridiculed, and questionable loyalty patted on the back; vice in full

patronage, and virtue out of countenance; Protestantism discouraged,

Popery taken by the hand; Dissent of _any_ kind preferred to sober

Orthodoxy; and, fitting climax, all this done under pretences of perfect

wisdom, and most exquisite devotion to the crown and the

constitution:--these things have made me too often sympathize in Colonel

Crockett's humour, tiger-like, with a dash of the alligator. Accordingly

let me not deny having once attempted a bitter diatribe, in petto,

surnamed

FALSE STEPS;

BRITAIN'S HIGHROAD TO RUIN;

a production of the pamphlet class, and, like its confraternity,

destined at longest to the life ephemeral. But, to say truth, I found

all that sort of thing done so much better, spicier, cleverer, in

numberless newspaper articles, than my lack of the particular knowledge

requisite, and my little practice in controversy, could have managed,

that I wisely drew in my horns, sheathed my toasting-iron, and decided

upon not proceeding political pamphleteer, till, on awaking some fine

morning, I find myself returned to parliament for an immaculate

constituency.

Patient reader, of whatever creed, do not hate me for my politics, nor

despise the foolish candour of confession. Henceforth, I will not

trouble you, but abjure the subject; except, indeed, my sturdy friend

"the Squire," soon to be introduced to you, insists upon his

after-dinner topic: but we will cut him short; for, in fact, nothing can

be more provoking, tedious, useless, and causative of ill-blood, than

this perpetual intermeddling of private ignoramuses, like him and me,

with matters they do not understand, nor can possibly ameliorate.

* * * * *

A poet is born a poet, as all the world is well aware; and your

thorough-paced lawyer is not less born a lawyer; while the junction of

these two most militant incompatibles clearly bears out the hackneyed

quotation as above, with the final misfit, that is, "_non fit_." Your

poetaster at the bar is that grotesque ideal, which Flaccus thought so

funny that his friends _must_ laugh; (although really, Romans, it _is_

possible to contemplate a sort of sphinx figure, "a human head to a

horse's neck," and so on, varied plumes and all, without much chance of

a guffaw;) and yonder sickly-looking clerk, perched upon his high stool,

penning "stanzas while he should engross," is the lugubrious caricature

of Apollo on his Pegassus, with Helicon for inkstand.

It may be nothing extraordinary that, jostled in so wide a theatre as

ours of the world, chance-comers should not, at once or at all,

comfortably find their proper places; but that wise-looking chaperons,

having with prospective caution duly taken a box, should by malice

prepense thrust all the big people in front, and all the little folks

behind, is rather hard upon the latter, and not a little foolish in

itself. Even so in life: who does not wish a thousand times he could

help some people to change places? Look at this long fellow, fit for

Frederick of Prussia's regiment of giants: his parents and guardians

have bent him double, broken his spirit, and spoiled his paces, by

cramming him, a giraffe in the stable, between that frigate's gun-decks

as a middy: while yonder martial little bantam, by dint of exaggerated

heels, and exalted bear-skin, peeps about among his grenadiers, much as

Brutus and Cassius did with their collossal Cæsar. So also of minds:

look at brilliant Burns, the exciseman; and quaintly versatile Lamb, the

common city clerk: Look at--had you only patience, you should have

examples by the gross; but, to make a shorter tale of it, (I presume

this shows the etymology of cur-tail,) just think over the pack of your

acquaintance, and see if you could not shuffle those kings, queens--yes,

and knaves too--more to your satisfaction, and their own advantage: at

least, so most folks imagine, silly meddlers as they are; for, after

all, what with human versatility, and the fact of a probationary state,

and the influence of habit, and the drudging example set by others,

things work so kindly as they are, that, notwithstanding misfits, the

wiser few must be of Pope's mind, "whatever is, is right;"--ay, that it

is.

A year or two ago--if your author is little better than one of the

foolish now, what in charity must he have been then?--I took it upon me

to indite an innocent, stingless satire, whereof for samples take the

following. Skip them one and all; you will, if you are wise, for they

bear the ban of rhyme, are peevish, dull, ill-reasoned; but if you are

not wise, (and, strange to say, malicious people tell me there are many

such,) you may wish to see in print a metred inconclusive grumble. Take

it, then, if you will, as I do, merely for a change; at any rate, your

manciple has furnished this buttery of yours with ample choice of

viands; and omnivoracious as man may be--gormandizing, with gusto, fat

moths in Australia, cockchafers at Florence, frogs in France, and snails

in Switzerland, equally as all less objectionable meats, drinks, fruits,

roots, composites, and simples--still, in reason, no one can be expected

or expect himself to like every thing: have charity, for what suits not

one man's taste may please the palate of another; so hear me

complacently turn

"KING'S EVIDENCE,"

and give heed to certain confessions, extorted under the _peine forte et

dure_ of a whilom state legal. Yet, when I come to consider of this,

(_mihi cogitanti_, as school themes invariably commenced,) it strikes my

memory that all confessions, short of the last dying one, are weak and

foolish impertinence; whether Jean Jacques or Mr. Adams thought so, or

caused others to think so, are separate topics beside the question: for

myself, I will spare you a satire dotted with as many I's as an Argus

pheasant; and, without exacting upon good-nature by troublesome

contributions, will hazard a few couplets concerning Blackstone's

cast-off mistress, the Law. One word more though: undoubting of thine

amiability, friend that hast walked with me hitherto in peace, I will be

tame as a purring cat, and sheathe my talons; therefore are you still

unteased by divers sly speeches and sarcastic hints, of and concerning

innumerable black sheep that crowd about a woolsack; especially of

certain "highly respectables," whom the omnipotence of parliament (no

less power presumably being competent) commands to be accounted

"gentlemen." Should then my meagre sketches seem but little spiteful,

accord me credit for tolerance at the expense of wit, (yea, in mine own

garbled satire, hear it Juvenal!) and view them kindly in the same light

as you would sundry emasculated extracts from a discreet Family

Shakspeare. Indignation ever speaks in short sharp queries; and it is

well for the printer's pocket that the self-experience hereof was

considered inadmissible, for a new fount of notes of interrogation must

have been procured: as it is, we are sailing quietly on the Didactic

Ocean, and have, I fear, been engaged some time upon topics actionable

on a charge of _scandalum magnatum_. Hereof then just a little sample:

let us call it '_A Judgment in the Rolls Court_;' or in any other; I

care not.

Precedent's slave, this mountebank decides

As great Authority, not Reason, guides.

"'Tis not for him, degenerate wight, to say

Faults can be mended at this time of day,

For Coke himself declared--no matter what--

Can Justice suffer what Lord Coke would not?

And if 1 Siderfin, p. 10, you scan,

Lord Hoax has fixed the rule, that learned man:

I cannot, dare not, if I would, be just,

My hands are tied, and follow Hoax I must;

That _very_ learned Lord could not be wrong.

Besides, in fact, it has been settled long,

For the great case of Hitchcock versus Bundy

Decided--(Cro. Eliz. per Justice Grundy),

That [black was white];--and so, what can I say?

Landmarks are things must not be moved away:

I cannot put the clock of Wisdom back,

And solemnly pronounce that black _is_ black.

Though plaintiff has the right, I grant it clear,

I must be ruled by Hoax and Hitchcock here:

Equity follows, does not mend the laws:

Therefore declare, defendant gains the cause."

Then, as virtuously bound, Indignation interrogates sundry

ejaculations; or, if you like it better, ejaculates sundry

interrogations: as thus, take a brace:

If right and reason both combine in one,

Why, in God's name, should justice not be done?

If law be not a lie, and judgments jokes,

Why not _be just_, and cut adrift Lord Hoax?

After a vast deal more in this vein of literature--for you perceive my

present purpose is dissection in part of this ancient rhyme--we arrive

at a magnanimous--

No! Right shall have his own, put off no longer

By rule of Former, or by whim of Stronger;

Nor, because Jack goes tumbling down the hill,

Shall precedent create a tumbling Jill.

Public opinion soon shall change the scene,

And wash the Law's Augæan stable clean;

Sweep out the Temple, drive the sellers thence,

And lead, in novel triumph, Common Sense.

Verily, this is of the dullest, but it is brief: endure it, and pray you

consider the deadliness of the topic, and the barbarous cruelty

wherewith courtesy has clipped the wings of my poor spite. Let us turn

to other title-pages; assuring all the world that no specific mountebank

has been here intended, and that nothing more is meant than a nerveless

blow against legal cant, quainter than Quarles's, and against that

well-known species of Equity, which must have been so titled from like

antiquated reasons with those that induced Numa and his company to call

a dark grove, lucus.

* * * * *

How many foes, in this utilitarian era, has that very unwarrantable

vice, called Poetry! All who despise love and love-making, all who

prefer billiards to meditation, all who value hard cash above mental

riches, feel privileged to hate it; while really, typographers, the

illegible diamond print in which you generally set it up, whether in

book, or newspaper, or handbill, or magazine, induces many an

indifferent peruser to skip the poem for the sake of his eye-sight. I

presume that the monosyllable, rhyme, comprehends pretty nearly all that

the world at large intends by poetry; and, in the same manner as certain

critics have sneered at Livy--no, it was Tacitus--for commencing his

work with a bad hexameter, so many a reader will now-a-days condemn a

whole book, because it is somewhere found guilty of harbouring a

distich. But poetry, friend World, means far other than rhyme; its

etymology would yield "creation," or "fabrication," of sense as well as

sound, and of melody for the eye as well as melody for the ear. So did

[_epoiese_] Milton; and so did not---- Well, I myself, if you will. Yet,

in fact, there are fifty other kinds of poetries, beside the poetry of

words: as the poetry of life--affection, honour, and hope, and

generosity; the poetry of beauty--never mind what features decorate the

Dulcinea, for this species of poetry is felt and seen almost only in

first love; the poetry of motion, as first-rates majestically sailing,

furiously scudding waves, bending corn-fields, and, briefly, all things

moveable but railway-trains; the poetry of rest, as pyramids, a tropical

calm, an arctic winter, and generally all things quiescent but a

slumbering alderman; the poetry of music, heard oftener in a country

milkmaid's evening song, than in many a concert-room; the poetry of

elegance, more natural to weeping willows, unbroken colts, flames,

swans, ivy-clad arches, greyhounds, yea, to young donkeys, than to those

_pirouette_-ing and _very_ active _danseuses_ of the opera; the poetry

of nature, as mountains, waterfalls, storms, summer evenings, and all

manner of landscapes, except Holland and Siberia; the poetry of art,

acqueducts, minarets, Raphael's colouring, and Poussin's intricate

designs; the poetry of ugliness, well seen in monkeys and Skye terriers;

and the poetry of awkwardness, whereof the brightest example is Mr.

trans-Atlantic Rice. And, verily, many other poetries there be, as of

impudence (for which consult the experience of swindlers); of prose,

(for which see Addison); of energy, of sleep, of battle and of peace:

for it is an easy-seeming artfulness, the most fascinating manner of

doing as of saying, complication simplified, and every thing effected to

its bravest advantage. Poetry wants a champion in these days, who will

save her from her friends: O, namby-pamby "lovers of the Nine!" your

innumerous dull lyrics--ay, and mine--your unnatural heroics--I too have

sinned thus--your up-hill sonnets--that labour of folly have I known as

well--in brief, your misnamed poetry, hath done grievous damage to the

cause you toil for. Yet I would avow thus much, for I believe it: as an

average, we have beaten our ancestors; seldom can we take up a paper or

a periodical which does not show us verses worthy of great names; the

age is full of highly respectable, if not superlative poetry; and truly

may we consider that the very abundance of good versification has

lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has

robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men

of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try

a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous minstrels, with whom

the greater number of the so-called old English poets could not with

advantage to the ancients justly be compared. Look at '_Johnson's

Lives_.' Who can read the book, and the specimens it glorifies, without

rejoicing in his prose, and thoroughly despising their poetry?--With a

few brilliant exceptions, of course, (for ill-used Milton, Pope--and

shall we in the same sentence put Dryden?--are there,) a more wretched

set of halfpenny-a-liners never stormed mob-trodden Parnassus. The

poetry of Queen Anne's time and thereabouts, I judge to have been at the

lowest bathos of badness; all satyrs, and swains, fulsome flattery of

titles, and foolish adoration of painted shepherdesses: poor weak

hobbling lines, eked out by 'eds and expletives, often terminated by

false rhymes, and made lamer by triplets and dreary Alexandrines;

ill-selected subjects, laboured, indelicate, or impossible similes,

passions frigid as Diana, wit's weapons dull as lead. Yet these (many

exceptions doubtless there were, and many redeeming _morceaux_ even in

the worst, charitable reader, but as of the rule we speak not falsely),

these are the poets of England, the men our great grandfathers delighted

to honour, the feared, the praised, the pensioned, and those whom we

their children still denominate--the poets! Praise, praise your stars,

ye lucky imps of Fame! who could tolerate you now-a-days?--You lived in

golden times, when Dorset, Harley, Bolingbroke, Halifax, and Company,

gave away places of a thousand a-year, as but justly due to any man who

could pen a roaring song, fabricate a fulsome sonnet, or bewail in

meagre elegiacs the still-resisting virtue of some persecuted Stella!

Happy fellows, easy conquisitors of wealth and fame, autocrats of

coffee-houses, feted and favoured by town-bred dames! In those good old

times for the fashionable Nine, an epic was sure to lead to a

Ministry-of-State, and even an epigram produced its pension: to be a

poet, or reputed so, was to be--eligible for all things; and the

fortunate possessor of a rhyming dictionary might have governed Europe

with his metrical protocols. But these halcyon times are of the

past--and so, verily, are their heroes. Farewell, a long farewell,

children of oblivion! farewell, Spratt, Smith, Duke, Hughes, King,

Pomfret, Phillips, and Blackmore: ye who, in that day of very small

things, just rose, as your Leviathan biographer so often testifies, "to

a degree of merit above mediocrity:" ye who--but (Candor and good

Charity, I thank you for the hint,) limited indeed is my knowledge of

your writings, ye long-departed poets, whom I thus am base enough to

pilfer of your bays; and therefore, if any man among you penned aught of

equal praise with "_My Mind to me a Kingdom is_," or "_No Glory I covet,

no Riches I want_," humbly do I cry that good man's pardon. Believe that

I have only seen the château of your fame, but never the rock on which

it rested; and therefore candidly consider, if I might not with reason

have accounted it a castle in the air?

Now, after this wholesale species of poetical massacre, this rifling of

old Etruscan tombs of their honourable spoil, a very pleasant ninny

would that poetaster stand forth, whose inanely conceited daring

exhibited specimens from his own mint, as medals in fit contrast with

those slandered "things of base alloy." No, as with politics, so with

poetry; in public I abjure and do renounce the minx: and although

privately my author's mind is so silly as to doat right lovingly on such

an ancient mistress, and has wasted much time and paper in her praise or

service, still that mind is sufficiently self-possessed in worldly

prudence, as to set seemingly little store on the worth of an

acquaintance so little in the fashion. Therefore I disown and disclaim

A VOLUME OF POETICS,

ill-fated offspring of a foolish father; miscellaneous collection of

occasionals and fugitives, longer or shorter, as the army of Bombastes.

Poetical as in verity I must confess to have been, (using the word

"poetical" as most men use it, and the words "have been" in the sense of

Troy's existence,) there must have lingered in me, even at that

hallucinating period, some little remnant of prosaic wisdom; for it is

now long since that I consigned to the most voracious of elements all

the more love-sick rhythmicals, and all the more hateful satiricals.

Now, I will maintain that act of incremation to be one of true heroism,

nearly equal to the judgment of Brutus; nor less is it matter of

righteous boasting to have immolated (warned by Charles Lamb's ghost)

divers albuminous preparations, which to have to do, were, Clio knows,

little pleasure, and to have done, we all know, as little praise. Such

light follies are like skeins of cotton, or adjectives, or babies, unfit

to stand alone; haply, well enough, times and things considered, but

totally unworthy to be dragged out of their contexts into the

imperishability of print; it is to take flies out of treacle, and embalm

them in clear amber. As to sonnets, what real author's mind will not,

if honest, confess to the almost daily recurrence of that symptom of his

disease? With mine, at least, they have increased, and are increasing;

yea, more--as a certain statesman suggested of Ireland's multitudinous

_pisantry_, or as tavern patriots declare of the power of the

crown--they ought to be diminished. Nevertheless, resolutely do I hope

that some of these at least are little worthy of the days of good Queen

Anne.

In matters of the sacred muse, lengthily as others have I trespassed

heretofore; the most protracted _fytte_, however, made a respectable

inroad on a new metrical version of the '_Psalms_,' attempting at any

rate closer accuracy from the Hebrew than Brady's, and juster rhymes

than Sternhold's: but this has since been better done by another bard.

On the whole budget of exploded poeticals is now legibly inscribed "to

be kept till called for," a period rather more indefinite than the

promise of a spendthrift's payment. Let them rest in peace, those

unfortunate poetics!

There are also in the bundle, if I rightly do remember me, sundry

metricals of the humorous sort, which may be considered as really

_waste-failures_ as any tainted hams that ever were yclept Westphalias.

For of all dreary and lugubrious perpetrations in print, nothing can be

more desolate than laboured witticism. A pun is a momentary spark dropt

upon the tinder-box of social intercourse; and to detach such a sentence

from its producing circumstances, is about as efficacious a method of

producing laughter, as the scintillatory flint and steel struck upon wet

grass would be of generating light. Few things are less digestible than

abortive efforts at the humorous; the stream of conversation instantly

freezes up; the disconcerted punster wears the look of his well-known

kinsman, the detected pickpocket; and a scribe, so mercilessly suicidal

as regards his better fame, deserves, when a plain blunt jury comes to

sit upon the body, to be found in mystical Latin, _felo de se_, or in

plain English "a fellow deceased."

"There shall come in the last days, scoffers;" those same last days in

which "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." It

is true that these phrases (quoted with the deepest reverence, though

found in lighter company) are forcibly taken from their context; but

still, the judgment of many wise among us will agree that they present a

remarkable coincidence: in this view of the case, and it is a most

serious one, the concurrent notoriety of humour having just arisen like

a phoenix from its ashes, of railroads and steamboats having partially

annihilated space, and of the strides which education, if not intellect,

has made upon the highroad of human improvement, assumes an importance

greater than the things themselves deserve. To a truly philosophic ken,

there is no such thing as a trifle; the ridiculous is but skin-deep,

papillæ on the surface of society; cut a little deeper, you will find

the veins and arteries of wisdom. Therefore will a sober man not deride

the notion that comic almanacs, comic Latin grammars, comic hand-books

of sciences and arts, and the great prevalence of comicality in popular

views taken of life and of death, of incident and of character, of evil

and of good, are, in reality, signs of the times. These straws, so thick

upon the wind, and so injuriously mote-like to the visual organs, are

flying forward before a storm. As symptoms of changing nationality, and

of a disposition to make fun of all things ancient and honourable, and

wise, and mighty, and religious, they serve to evidence a state of the

universal mind degenerated and diseased. Still, let us not be too

severe; and, as to individual confessions, let not me play the

hypocrite. Like every thing else, good in its good use, and evil only in

abuse of its excesses, humour is capable of filling, and has filled, no

lightly-estimable part in the comedy of temporal happiness. What a good

thing it is to raise an innocent and cheerful laugh; to inoculate

moroseness with hearty merriment; to hunt away misbelieving care, if not

with better prayers, at the lowest with a pack of yelping cachinations;

to make pain forget his head-ache by the anodyne of mirth! Truly, humour

has its laudable and kindly uses: it is the mind's play-time after

office-drudgery--an easy recreation from thought, anxiety, or study.

Only when it usurps, or foolishly attempts to usurp, the office of more

than a temporary alleviation; when it affects to set up as an atheistic

panacea; when it professes to walk as an abiding companion, lighting you

on your way with injurious gleams (as that dreadful figure in Dante, who

lanterns his path by the glaring eyes of his own truncated head); and

when it ceases to become merely the casual scintillation, the flitting

_ignus fatuus_ of a summer evening--then only is wit to be condemned.

Often, for mine own poor part in this most mirthful age, have I had

HEARTY LAUGHS,

IN PROSE AND VERSE;

but take no thought of preserving their echoes, or of shrining them in

the eternal basalt of print, like to the oft-repeated cries of Lurley's

hunted in-dweller. The humorous infection caught also me, as a thing

inevitable; but the case, I wot, proved an unfavourable one: and who

dare enter the arena of contention with these mighty men of Momus, these

acknowledged sages of laughter, (pardon me for omitting some fifty

more,) so familiar to the tickled ear, as Boz, and Sam Slick, Ingoldsby,

and Peter Plymley, Titmarsh, Hood, Hook; not to mention--(but that

artists are authors)--laughter-loving Leech, Pickwickian Phiz, and

inimitable Cruikshank? Nevertheless, let a tender conscience penitently

ask, is it quite an innocent matter to lend a hand in rendering the age

more careless than perchance, but for such ministrations, it would cease

to be? Is it quite wise in a writer, by following in that wake, to be

reputed at once to help in doing harm, and help to do harm to his own

reputation? There are professors enough in this quadrangle of the

college of amusement, popular and extant in flourishing obesity, without

so dull a volunteer as Mr. Self intruding his humours on the world: and

surely the far-echoing voices of a couple of cannons, thundering their

mirth throughout Europe from the jolly quarters of St. Paul's, may well

frighten into silence a poor solitary pop-gun, which, as the frog with

the bull, might burst in an attempt at competition, or, like Bottom's

Numidian lion, could imitate the mighty roar only as gently as your

sucking-dove.

* * * * *

Grapho-mania, or the love of scribbling, is clearly the great

distinguishing characteristic of an author's mind; pen and ink are to

it, what bread and butter are to its lodging-house the body: observe, we

do not hazard a remark so false as that the one produces the

other--their relations are far from being mutual; but we only suggest

that the mind, as well as the body, hobbles like a three-legged

OEdipus, resting on its proper staff of life. And what can be more

provocative of scribbling than travel? How eagerly we hasten to describe

unheard-of adventures, how anxiously record exaggerated marvels! to

prove some printed hand-book _quite wrong_ in the number of steps up a

round-tower: or to crush, as a wicked vender of execrable wines, the

once fair fame of some over-charging inn-keeper! Then, again, how

pleasant to immortalize the holiday, and read in after-years the story

of that happy trip langsyne; how pleasant to gladden the kind eyes of

friends, that must stay at home, with those wonder-telling journals, and

to taste the dulcet joys of those first essays at authorship. A great

charm is there in jotting down the day's tour, and in describing the

mountains and museums, the lakes and lazzaroni, the dishes and disasters

that have made it memorable: moreover, for fixing scenery on the mental

retina, as well as for comparison of notes as to an _alibi_, for duly

remembering things heard and seen, as well as for being humbled in

having (as a matter inevitable) left unseen just the best lion of the

whole tour, journals are a most praiseworthy pastime, and usually rank

among the earliest efforts of an embryo author's mind.

It is a thing of commonest course, that, in this age of inveterate

locomotion, your present humble friend, now talking in this candid

fashion with your readership, has been every where, seen every thing,

and done his touristic devoirs like every body else about him: also, as

a like circumstance of etymological triviality, that he has severally,

and from time to time, recorded for self-amusement and the edification

of others all such matters as holiday-making school-boys and

boarding-misses, and government-clerks in their swift-speeding vacation,

and elderly gentlemen vainly striving to enjoy their first fretful

continental trip, usually think proper to descant upon. Of such

manuscripts the world is clearly full; no catacomb of mummies more

fertile of papyri; no traveller so poor but he has by him a packet of

precious notes, whereon he sets much store: every tourist thinks he can

reasonably emulate clever Basil Hall, in his eloquent fragments of

voyages and travels; and I, for my part, a truth-teller to my own

detriment, am ashamed to confess the existence of

A DECADE OF JOURNALS;

which of olden time my _cacoethes_ produced as regularly as recurred the

summer solstice. Unlike that of Livy's, I am satisfied that this poor

Decade be irrevocably lost; but, for dear recollection's sake of days

gone by, intend it at least to be spared from malicious incremation.

Records of roamings in romantic youth, witnesses of wayward way-side

wanderings, gayly with alliterative titles might your contents, _à la

Roscoe_, be set forth. But--what conceivable news can be told at this

time of day about the trampled Continent, and the crowded British isles?

Had my luck led me to Lapland or Formosa, to Mexico or Timbuctoo, to the

top of Egyptian pyramids or the bottom of Polish salt-mines, my

authorship would long since have publicly declared, in common with many

a monkey, that it had "seen the world." As things are, to Bruce,

Buckingham, Belzoni, and that glorious anomaly, the blind brave Holman,

let us leave the harvest of praise, worthy to be reaped as their own by

modern travellers.

* * * * *

More, yet more, most exemplary of listeners; and a web or webs of very

various texture. Let any man tell truths of himself, and seem to be

consistent, if he can. From grave to gay, from simple to severe, is the

line most expressive of such foolish versatility as mine; _varium et

mutabile semper_, to one thing constant never. I have heard, or read,

among the experiences of a popular preacher, that one of his most

vexatious petty temptations, was the rise of humorous notions in his

mind the moment he stepped into the pulpit; and it is well known that

many a comic actor has been afflicted with the blackest melancholy while

supporting right facetiously his best, because most ludicrous character.

Let such thoughts then as these, of the frailties incident to man, serve

to excuse the present juxtaposition of fancies in themselves

diametrically opposite.

It is proper to preamble somewhat of apology before announcing the next

presumptuous tractate; presumptuous, because affecting to advise some

thousands of men whose office alike and average character are sacred,

and just, and excellent. Why then intrude such unrequired counsel? Read

the next five pages, and take your answer. Zealously inflamed for the

cause of truth, if not also charitably wroth against sundry lukewarm

cumber-earth incumbents, and certainly more in love with the

Church-of-England prayer-book than with her no-ways-extenuated evils of

omission or commission, I wrote, not long since, [and truly, not long

since, for few things in this book can boast of higher antiquity than a

most modern existence, some things being the birth of an hour, some of a

day, a week, or a month; and not more than one or two above a twelve

month's age.--Alas, for Horace's forgotten counsels!--alas, for Pope's

and Boileau's reiterated prescription of revisal for--_morbleu et

parbleu_--nine years!] I wrote then a good cantle of an essay addressed

to the clergy on some matters of judicious amelioration, which we will

call, if you please--and if the word hints be not objectionable--

LAY HINTS.

Now, as to the unclerical authorship of this, it is wise that it be done

out of métier. Laymen are more likely to gain attention in these

matters, from the very fact of their influence being an indirect one,

speaking as they do rather from the social arm-chair, the high-stool of

the counting-house, or the benches of whilom St. Stephen's, than _ex

cathedrâ_ as of office and of duty.

It would be a fair exemplification of the stolid prowess of a Quixote

tilting against, yea, stouter foes than wind-mills, were I to have

commenced with an attack upon external church architecture: this topic

let us leave to the fraternity of builders; only asking by what rule of

taste an obelisk-like spire, is so often stuck upon the roof of a

Grecian temple, and by what rule of convenience gigantic columns so

commonly and resolutely sentinel the narrowest of exits and entrances.

Let us be more commonly contented, as well we may, with our grand,

appropriate, and impressive indigenous kind of architecture--Gothic,

Norman, and Saxon: the temple of Ephesus was not suitable to be fitted

up with galleries, nor was the Parthenon meant to be surmounted by a

steeple. But all this is useless gossip.

Similarly Quixotic would be any tirade against pews, those pet

strongholds of snug exclusive selfishness; bad in principle, as

perpetually separating within wooden walls members of the same

communion; unwholesome in practice, confining in those antre-like

parallelograms the close-pent air; unsightly in appearance, as any one

will testify, whose soul is exalted above the iron beauties of a plain

conventicle; expensive in their original formation, their fittings and

repairs; and, when finished, occupying perhaps one-fourth of the area of

a church already ten times too small for its neighbouring population.

Fixed benches, or a strong muster of chairs, or such modes of

congregational accommodation as public meeting-rooms and ordinary

lecture-rooms present, seems to me more consistent and more convenient.

But all this again is vain talking--a very empty expenditure of words;

we must be satisfied with churches as they are; and, after all, let me

readily admit that steeples are imposing in the distance, and of use as

belfries; (probably of like intent were the strange columnar towers of

Ireland;) and with regard to pews, let me confess that practice finds

perfect what theory condemns as wrong, so--let these things pass.

Nevertheless, let me begin upon the threshold with the extortionate and

abominable race of pew-women, beadles, clerks, vergers, bell-ringers,

and other fee-hungry ravens hovering around and about almost every

hallowed precinct: pray you, reform all that, and copy railroad

companies in forbidding those begrudged gratuities to mendicant and

ever-grumbling menials. Next, give more sublunary heed, we beseech you,

to the comforts or discomforts incidental to doors, windows, stoves,

paint, dust, dirt, and general ventilation; consider the cold, fevers,

lumbagos, rheums, life-long aches, and fatal pains too often caught

helplessly and needlessly by the devout worshipper in a town or country

church. Look to your organist, that he wot something of the value of

time and the mysteries of tune; or, if a country parson, drill cleverly

that insubordinate phalanx of _soi-disant_ musicians, a rustic

orchestra; and exclude from the latter, at all mortal hazards, the

huntsman's horn, the volunteer fiddle, and the shrill squeaking of the

wry-necked pipe. Much is being now done for congregational psalmody; but

when will country folks give up their murderous execution of the

fugue-full anthem, and when will London congregations understand that

the singing-psalms are not set apart exclusively for charity-children?

When shall Bishop Kenn's '_Awake my soul_,' cease to be our noonday

exhortation; and a literal invocation for sweet sleep to close our

eye-lids no longer be the ill-considered prelude to an afternoon

discourse? Take some trouble to improve and educate, or get rid of, if

possible, your generally vulgar, illiterate, ill-conditioned clerk;

insist upon his v's and h's: let him shut up his shoe-stall; and raise

in the scale of society one of the leaders of its worship: as, at

present, these stagnant, recreant, ignorant clerks are sad

stumbling-blocks; no help to the congregation, and a nuisance to its

minister. In reading--suffer this foolishness, my masters--fight against

the too frequent style of dogged, dormant, dull formality; we take you

for earnest living guides to our devotion, not mere dead organs of an

oft-repeated service; quicken us by your manner; a psalm so spoken is

better than the sermon. In more fitting places has your author long ago

delivered his mind concerning matters of a character more directly

sacred than shall here find room; as, the sacrament with its holy

mysteries, and the many things amendable in ordinary preachments; but

for these my unseasonable Wisdom shrouds itself in Silence: therefore,

to do away with details, and apply a general rule, above all things, and

in all things, strive by judicious acquiescence with human wants, and

likings, and failings too, if conscientiously you can, as well as by

spirited and true devotion, to break down the sluggish mounds of needful

uniformity, and to build up round the church a rampart of good sense:

and so, Heaven bless your labours! A word more: if it be possible, take

no fees at a baptism, and let it not be thought, by either rich or poor,

that an entrance into Christ's fold must be paid for; no, nor at a

burial; but let the service for the Christian dead be accorded freely,

without money and without price. To a wedding, the same ideas are not

perhaps so closely applicable; therefore we will generously suffer that

you keep your customs there; but on the introduction of a little one to

the bosom of the church, or restoring the body of a saint to Him who

made it of the dust, nothing can be more repulsive to right religious

feelings than to be bothered by a fee-seeking clerk, thrusting in your

face an itching palm: to the poor, these things are more than a mere

annoyance; they amount to a hardship and a hindrance; for such demands

at such seasons are often nothing less than a bitter extortion upon the

self-denial of conscientious duty.

More might be added; but enough, too much has been alluded to. Nothing

would strengthen the bulwarks of our Zion more than such easy reforms as

these: recent happy revivals in our church would thus be more

solidified; and where, as now, many have been lulled to slumber, many

grieved, many become disgusted or Dissenters, our sons and our daughters

would grow up as the polished corners of the temple, and crowds would

throng the courts of our holy and beautiful House.

Suffer thus far, clerical and lay, these crude hints: in all things have

I studied brevity, throughout this little bookful; therefore are you

spared a perusal of my reasons, and so be indulgent for their absence. I

"touch your ears" but lightly; be you for charity, as in old Rome, my

favourable witnesses.

* * * * *

My before-mentioned Censor of the press had a very considerable mind to

dock all mention of the following intended _brochure_. But I answered,

Really, Mr. Judgment, (better or worse, as occasion may register your

Agnomen,) you must not weigh trifles in gold-assaying scales; be not so

particular as to the polish of a thumb-nail; endure a little incoherent

pastime; count not the several stems of hay, straw, stubble--but suffer

them to be pitch-forked _en masse_, and unconsidered: it is their

privilege, in common with that of certain others--lightnesses that froth

upon the surface of society. Moreover, let me remind your worship's

classicality that no one of mortals is sapient at all times. Item, that

if friend Flaccus be not a calumniator, even the rigid virtue of the

antiquer Cato delighted in so stimulant a vanity as wine hot. So give

the colt his head, and let it go: remembering always that this same

colt, as straying without a responsible rider, is indeed liable to be

impounded by any who can catch him; but still, if he be found to have

done great damage to his master's character, or to a neighbour's fences,

the estray shall rather be abandoned than acknowledged. Let then this

unequal work, this ill-assorted bundle of dry book-plants, this

undirected parcel of literary stuff, be accounted much in the same

situation as that of the wanton caitiff-colt, so likely to bait a-pound,

and afterwards to be sold for payment of expenses, in true bailiff-sense

of justice. And let thus much serve as discursive prolegomena to a

notion, scarcely worth recording, but for the wonder, that no professed

writer (at least to my small knowledge) has entered on so common-sense a

field. Paris, I remember, some years ago was inundated with copies of a

treatise on the important art of tying the cravat; every shop-window

displayed the mystic diagrams, and every stiff neck proclaimed its

popularity. This was my yesterday's-conceived precedent for entertaining

the bright hope of illuminating London on the subject of shaving:

ANTI-XURION;

A CRUSADE AGAINST RAZORS,