should have been my taking title; and perchance the learned treatise

might have been characteristically illustrated with steel cuts. Shaving

is a wider topic than most people think for; it is a species of insanity

that has afflicted man in all ages, deprived him of nature's best

adornment in every country under heaven. So contradictorily too; as

thus: the Spanish friar shaves all but a rim round his head, which rim

alone sundry North American aborigines determine to extirpate; John

Chinaman nourishes exclusively a long cue, just on that same inch of

crown-land which the P.P. sedulously keeps as bare as his palm: all the

Orientals shave the head, and cherish the beard; all the Occidentals

immolate the beard, and leave the honours of the head untouched. Then,

again, the strange successive fashions in this same unnatural, unneedful

depilation; look at the vagaries of young France: not to descend also to

savage men, and their clumsy shell-scrapings; and to devote but little

time to the voluminous topic of wigs, male and female, cavalier and

caxon, Marlborough and monstrous maccaroni--from the plaited

Absalom-looking periwig of a Pharaoh in the British Museum, to

Truefitt's last patent self-adjuster. Of all these follies, and their

root a razor, might we show the manifest absurdity: we might argue upon

Eastern stupidity as caused by thickness of the skull, such thickness

being the substitute for thatchy hair suggested by kind ill-used Nature

as the hot brain's best protection: we might reason upon the average

sheepishness of this peaceful West, as due to having shorn the lion of

his mane, Phoebus of his glory, man of his majestic beard. Then the

martyrdom it is to many! who stoically, day after day, persist in

scratching to the quick their irritable chins, and after all to little

better end than the diligent earning of tooth-aches, ear-aches, colds,

sore throats, and unbecoming blank faces. Habit, it is true, makes us

deem that a comfort, and our better halves (or those we would fain have

so) think that a beauty, which our forerunners of old time would have

held a plague, a disgrace, a deformity, a mortification: prisoned

paupers in the Union think it an insufferable hardship to go bearded,

and King David's ambassadors would have given their right eyes _not_ to

have been shaved; so much are we the slaves of custom: Sheffield also,

it is equally true, is a town that humane men would not wish to ruin; by

razors they of Sheffield live, and shaving is their substance. But, as

in the case of the smoother and softer sex, we are convinced that the

wand of fashion would presently convert their heterodox anti-barbal

prejudices: so, in the case of harder-ware Sheffield, while we hope to

live to see razors regarded as antiquarian rarities, (even as a

watchman's rattle, or the many-caped coats of the semi-extinct class

_Welleria coachmanensis_ are now some time become,) still we desire all

possible multiplication to the tribe of trimming scissors. Like Ireland,

we shout for long-denied justice; give us our beards. That reasonable

indulgence shall never be abused; our Catholic emancipation of moustache

and imperial, whisker and the rest, shall not be a pretence for lion's

manes, or the fringe of goats and monkeys: we would not so far follow

unsophisticated nature as to relapse into barbarous wild men; but

diligently squaring, pointing, combing, and perfuming those natural

manly decorations, after the most approved modes of Raleigh, Walsingham,

and Shakspeare, and heroical Edward the Black Prince, and venerable

apostolic Bede, we will encroach little further than to discard our

comfortless starched collars and strangling stocks, to adopt once more

in lieu thereof open necks and vandyke borders.

Of course, (here, priest-like, we take our ell,) there must follow upon

this a grand and glorious revolution in male attire. This present

close-fitting, undignified set of habiliments, which no chisel dare

imitate--this cumbersome, unbecoming garb--might, should, ought to be,

and would be, superseded by slashed gay jerkins, and picturesque nether

garments: cap and feather throwing into shade the modern hat, ugliest

of all imaginable head-dresses; and in lieu of the smock-frock

Macintosh, or coarse-featured bear-skin, Ciceronian mantles flowing from

the shoulders, or lighter capes of the elegant olden-time Venitian. By

way of distinguishing the now confused classes of society, my radical

reform in dress would go to recommend that nobles and gentry wear their

own heraldic colours and livery buttons; and humbler domesticated

creatures walk, as modest gentlefolks do now, in what sundry have

presumed to call "Mufti." To be briefer; in dress, if nothing more, let

us sensibly retrograde to the days of good Queen Bess: I will not say,

copy a Sir Piercie Shafton, who boasts of having "danced the salvage man

at the mummery of Clerkenwell, in a suit of flesh-coloured silk, trimmed

with fur;" neither, under these dingy skies, would I care to walk abroad

with Sir Philip Sidney in satin boots, or with Oliver Goldsmith in a

peach-coloured doublet: but still, for very comfort's sake, let us break

our bonds of cloth and buckram, and, in so far as adornment is

concerned, let us exchange this staid funeral monotony for the gallant

garb of our ancestors, the brave costumes of our Edwards and the bluff

King Hal.

Behold, too scornful friend, how my Tory rabies reaches to the wardrobe.

The modern dress of illuminated Europe has, in my humble opinion, gone

far to weaken the old empire of the Porte, to denationalize Egypt, to

degenerate the Jews, to mammonize once generous Greece, and carry

republican equality into the great prairies of America: it is the

undistinguishing, humiliating, unchivalrous livery of our cold

cosmopolites. But enough of this: pews and spires are to my Quixotism

not more unextinguishable foes, than coats, cravats, waistcoats, and

unnameables.

And now an honest word at parting, about such trivialities of

authorship. Why should a poor shepherd of the Landes for ever wear his

stilts? Or a tragic actor, like some mortified La Trapist, never be

allowed to laugh? Or Mr. Green be denied any other carriage than the

wicker car of his balloon? Even so, dear reader, pr'ythee suffer a

serious sort of author sometimes to take off his wig and spectacles, and

condescend to think of such minor matters as the toilet and its

still-recurring duties. And, if you _should_ find out the veritable name

of your weak confessing scribe, think not the less kindly of his graver

volumes; this one is his pastime, his holiday laugh, his purposely

truant, lawless, desultory recreance: impute not folly to the face of

cheerfulness; be charitable to such mixtures of alternate gayety and

soberness as in thine own mind, if thou searchest, thou shall find; let

me laugh with those that laugh, as well as sympathize with weepers; and

cavil not at those inconsistencies, which of a verity are man's right

attributes.

* * * * *

Ideas lie round about us, thick as daisies in a summer meadow. For my

own part, I know not what a walk, or a talk, or a peep into a book may

lead me to. Brunel hit upon the notion of a tunnel-shield, from the

casual sight of a certain water-beetle, to whom the God of Nature had

given a protecting buckler for its head. Newton found out gravitation,

by reasoning on the fall of an apple from the tree. Almost every

invention has been the suggestion of an accident. Even so, to descend

from great things to small, did a solitary stroll in most-English

Devonshire hint to me the next fair topic. It was while wandering about

the Pyrenean neighbourhood of Linton and Ly'mouth not many months ago,

that my reveries became concentrated for divers hallucinating hours on a

very pretty book, with a very pretty title. And here let me remark

episodically, that I pride myself on titles; what compositors call

"monkeyfying the title-page" is known to be a talent of itself, and one

moreover to which in these days of advertisements and superficialities

many a meagre book has owed its popular acceptance. The titles of

generations back seemed not to have been regarded honest, if they did

not exhibit on their face a true and particular table of contents;

whereas in these sad times, (with many, not with me,) mystery is a good

rule, but falsehood is a better. Again, those honest-speaking authors of

the past scrupled not to designate their writings as '_A Most Erudite

Treatise_' on so-and-so, or a '_A Right Ingenious Handling of the

Mysteries_' of such-and-such, whereas modern hypocrisy aims at

under-rating its own pet work; and more than one book has been ruined in

the market, for having been carelessly titled by the definite THE; as

if, forsooth, it were the world's arbiter of that one topic,

self-constituted pundit of, e.g., title-pages. And this word brings me

back: consider the truly English music of this one:

THE SQUIRE,

AND HIS BEAUTIFUL HOME,

a fine old country gentleman, pleasantly located, affluent,

noble-minded, wise, and patriotic. This was to have been shown forth, in

wish at least, as somewhat akin to, or congenerous with '_The Doctor_,

&c.,'--that rambling wonder of strange and multifarious reading: or

'_The Rectory of Valehead_,' or '_Vicar of Wakefield_,' or '_The Family

Robinson Crusoe_,' still unwrecked; or many another hearty, cheerful or

pathetic tale of home, sweet home: and yet as to design and execution

strictly original and unplagiaristic. The first chapters (simple healthy

writing, redolent of green pastures, and linchened rocks, and dew-dropt

mountains,) might introduce localities; the beautiful home itself, an

Elizabethan mansion, with its park, lake, hill and valley scenery; a

peep at the blue mile-off sea, brawling brooks, oak-woods,

conservatories, rookery, and all such pleasant adjuncts of that most

fortunate of pleasure-hunters, a country squire, with a princely

rent-roll. Then should be detailed, circumstantially, the lord of the

beautiful home, a picture of the hospitable virtues; the wife of the

beautiful home, a portraiture of happy domesticity, admirable also as a

mother, a nurse, a neighbour, and the poor's best friend: children must

abound, of course, or the home is a heaven uninhabited; and shrewd hints

might hereabouts be dropped as to the judicious or injudicious in

matters educational: servants, too, both old and young, with discussions

on their modern treatment, and on that better class of bygones, whom

kindness made not familiar, and the right assertion of authority

provoked not into insolence; whose interest for the dear old family was

never merged in their own, and whose honesty was as unsuspected as that

of young master himself, or sweet little mistress Alice.

After all this, might we descant upon the squire's characteristics. Take

him as a politician: liberal, that is to say, (for his frown is on me at

a phrase so doubtful,) generous, tolerant, kind, and manly; but none of

your low-bred slanderers of that noble name, so generally tyrants at

home and cowardly abroad--mean agitating fellows, the scum of disgorging

society, raised by turbulence and recklessness from the bottom to the

surface: oh no, none of these; but, for all his just liberality, an

honest, honourable, loyal, church-going, uncompromising Tory: with a

detail of his reasons, notions, and practices thereabouts, inclusive of

his conduct at elections, his wholesome influence over an otherwise

unguided or ill-guided tenantry, and as concerning other miscalled

corruptions: his open argumentation of the representative doctrine, that

it ought to stop short as soon as ever the religion, the learning, and

the wealth of a country are fairly represented; that in fact the poor

man thinks little of his vote, unless indeed in worse cases looking for

a bribe; and that the principle is pushed into ruinous absurdities when

the destitution, the crime, and the ignorance of a nation demand their

proper representatives; that, almost as a consequence of human average

depravity, the greater the franchise's extension, the worse in all ways

become those who impersonate the enfranchised; and so, after due

condemnation of Whiggery, to stultify Chartism, and that demoralizing

lie, the ballot. Then as to the squire's religion; and certain

confabulations with his parson, his household, his harvest-home

tenantry, and local preachers of dissent and schism; his creed,

practice, and favourable samples of daily life. Moreover, our squire

should have somewhat to tell of personal history and adventures; a youth

of poor dependence on a miser uncle; a storm-tost early manhood,

consequent on his high uncompromising principles; then the miser's

death, without the base injustice of that cruel will, which an

eleventh-hour penitence destroyed: the squire comes to his property,

marries his one old flame, effects reformations, attains popularity,

happiness, and other due prosperities. Anecdotes of particular passages,

as in affliction or in joy; his son lamed for life, or his house half

burnt down, his attack by highwaymen, or election for parliament. The

squire's general confidence in man, sympathy with frailties, and success

in regenerating long-lost characters. His discourse on field sports,

displaying the amiable intellectuality of a Gilbert White as opposed to

the blood-thirsty Nimrodism and Ramrodism of a mad Mytton. A marriage; a

funeral; a disputed legacy of some eccentric relative; with its

agreeable concomitants of heartless selfish strife, rebuked by the

squire's noble example: the conventicle gently put down by dint of

gradual desertions, and church-going as tenderly extended; vestry

demagogues and parochial incendiaries chastised by our squire; and

divers other adventures, conversations, situations, and conditions,

illustrative of that grand character, a fine old English gentleman, all

of the olden time.

Altogether, if well managed, a book like this would be calculated to do

substantial good in these days of no principle or bad principle. A

captivating example well applied--witness the uses of biography--is

infectious among the well-inclined and well-informed. But--but--but--I

fancy there may exist, and do exist already, admirable books of just

this character. I have heard of, but not seen, '_The Portrait of a

Christian Gentleman_,' and another '_of a Churchman_:' doubtless, these,

combined with a sort of Mr. Dovedale in that clever impossible

'_Floreston_,' or an equally unnatural and charming Sir Charles

Grandison, with a dash of scenery and a sprinkle of anecdote, would

make up, far better than I could fabricate, the fair fine character that

once I thought to sketch. Moreover, to a plain gentleman, living in the

country, of perfectly identical ideas with those of the squire on all

imaginable topics, gifted too (we will not say with quite his princely

rent-roll, but at any rate) with sundry like advantages in the way of

decent affluence, pleasant scenery, an old house, a good wife, and fair

children--with plenty of similar adventures and circumstantials--and the

necessary proportion of highwaymen, radicals, rascals, and schismatics

dotted all about his neighbourhood, the idea would seem, to say the

least, somewhat egotistic. But why may not humble individualities be

generalized in grander shapes? why not glorify the picture of a cottage

with colouring of Turner's most imaginative palette? An author, like an

artist, seldom does his work well unless he has nature before him:

exalted and idealized, the Roman beggar goes forth a Jupiter, and

country wenches help a Howard to his Naiads. Nevertheless, let the

Squire and his train pass us by, indefinite as Banquo's progeny: let his

beautiful home be sublimely indistinct; even such are Martin's ætherial

cities: the thought shall rest unfructified at present--a mummied, vital

seed. The review is over, and the Squire's troop of yeomanry not

required: so let them wait till next year's muster.

* * * * *

Few novelties are more called for, in this halcyon age of authorship,

this summer season for the Sosii, this every-day-a-birth-day for some

five-and-twenty books, than the establishment of a recognised literary

tribunal, some judgment-hall of master spirits, from whose calm,

unhurried, unbiased verdict, there should be no appeal. Far, very far be

it from me to arraign modern reviewers either of partialities or

incapacity; indeed, it is probable that few men of high talent,

character, and station, have not, at some time or other, temporarily at

least contributed to swell their ranks: moreover, from one they have

treated so magnanimously, they shall not get the wages of ingratitude;

they have been kind to my dear book-children, and I--_don't be so

curious_--thank them for their courtesy with all a father's feeling

toward the liberal friends of his sons and daughters. Speaking

generally, (for, not to flatter any class of men, truly there are rogues

in all,) I am bold to call them candid, honest, clever men; quite

superior, as a body, to every thing like bribery and corruption, and,

with human limitations, little influenced by motives, either of

prejudice or favour. For indefatigable industry, unexampled patience,

and powers of mind very far above what are commonly attributed to them,

I, for my humble judgment, would give our periodical journalists their

honourable due: I am playing no Aberdeenshire game of mutual scratching;

I am too hardened now in the ways of print to be much more than

indifferent as to common praise or censure; that honey-moon is over with

me, when a laudatory article in some kindly magazine sent a thrill from

eye to heart, from heart to shoe-sole understanding: I no longer feel

rancorous with inveterate wrath against a poor editor whose faint

praise, impotent to d----, has yet abundant force to induce a hearty

return of the compliment: like some case-hardened rock, so little while

ago but soft young coral, the surges may lash me, but leave no mark; the

sun may shine, but cannot melt me. Argal, as the clown says, is my

verdict honest: and further now to prove it so, shall come the

limitations.

With all my gratitude and right good feeling to our diurnal and

hebdomadal amusers and instructors, I cannot but consider that gazette

and newspaper reviewers are insufficient and unsatisfactory judges of

literature, if not indeed sometimes erring guides to the public taste;

the main cause of this consisting in the essential rapidity of their

composition. There is not--from the multiplicity of business to be got

through, there cannot be--adequate time allowed for any thing like

justice to the claims of each author. Periodicals that appear at longer

intervals are in all reason more or less excepted from this objection;

but by the daily and weekly majority, the labours of a life-time are

cursorily glanced at, hastily judged from some isolated passage,

summarily found laudable or guilty; and this weak opinion, strongly

enough expressed as some compensation in solid superstructure for the

sandiness of its foundations, is circulated by thousands over all

corners of the habitable world. To say that the public (those so-called

reviewers of reviews, but wiser to be looked on only as perusers,)

balance all such false verdicts, might indeed be true in the long run,

but unfortunately it is not: for first, no run at all, far less a long

one, is permitted to the persecuted production; and next, it is

notorious, that people think very much as they are told to think. Now, I

have already stated at too much length that I have no personalities to

complain of, no self-interests to serve: for the past I have been well

entreated; and for the future, supposing such an unlikelihood as more

hypothetical books, I am hard, bold, sanguine, stoical; while, as for

the present, though I refuse not my gauntlet to any man, my visor shall

be raised by none. But I enter the list for others, my kinsmen in

composing. Authors, to speak it generally, are an ill-used race, because

judged hastily, often superciliously, for evil or for good. It is

impossible for the poor public, (who, besides having to earn daily

bread, have to wade through all the daily papers,) from mere lack of

hours in the day, to entertain any opinions of their own about a book or

books: the money to buy them is one objection, the time to read them

another; to say less of the capacity, the patience, and the will.

Without question, they are guided by their teachers; and the grand fault

of these is, their everlasting hurry.

At another necessary failing of reviewers I would only delicately hint.

The royal We is very imposing; for example, the king of magazines, No.

134, (need I name it?) informs us, p. 373, "We happen to have now in

wear a good long coat of imperial gray," &c.; and some fifteen lines

lower down, "We are now mending our pen with a small knife," and so

forth: now all this grandiloquence serves to conceal the individual; and

to reduce my other great objection to a single letter, let us only

recollect that this powerful, this despotic We, is, being interpreted,

nothing but an I by itself, a simple scribe, a single and plebeian

number one. A mere unit, an anonymous, irresponsible unit, dissects in a

quarter of an hour the grand result of some ten years; and this

momentary influence on one man's mind, (perhaps wearied, or piqued, or

biased, or haply unskilled in the point at issue, but at all events

inevitably in a hurry to jump at a conclusion,) this light accidental

impression is sounded forth to the ends of the earth, and leads public

opinion in a verdict of thunder. And as for yon impertinent

parenthesis--or pertinent, as some will say--give me grace thus blandly

to suggest a possibility. The mighty editorial We, upon whose

authoritative tones the world's opinion will probably be pivoted--whose

pen by casual ridicule or as casual admiration makes or mars the fortune

of some pains-taking literary labourer--whose dictum carelessly

dispenses local honour or disgrace, and has before now by sharp

sarcasms, speaking daggers though using none, even killed more than one

over-sensitive Keats--this monarchic We is but a frail mortal, liable at

least to "some of the imperfections of our common nature, gentlemen,"

as, for example, to be morose, impatient, splenetic, and the more if

over-worked. Neither should I waive in this place, in this my rostrum of

blunt, plain speech, the many censurable cases, unhappily too well

authenticated, where personal enmity has envenomed the reviewing pen

against a writer, and stabs in the dark have wounded good men's fame.

Neither, again, those other instances where reviewers, not being

omniscient, (yet is their knowledge most various and brilliant,) having

been from want of specific information incompetent to judge of the

matters in question, have striven to shroud their ignorance of the

greater topic in clamorous attacks of its minor incidents; burrowing

into a mound if they cannot force a breach through the rampart; and

mystifying things so cleverly with doubts, that we cannot see the

blessed sun himself for very fog.

Now really, good folk, all this should be amended: would that the

WE were actually plural; would that we had a well-selected

bench of literary judges; would that some higher sort of Stationers'

Hall or Athenæum were erected into an acknowledged tribunal of an

author's merits or demerits; would that, to wish the very least, the

wholesome practice of a well-considered imprimatur were revived! Let

famous men, whose reputation is firm-fixed--our Wordsworths, Hallams,

Campbells, Crolys, Wilsons, Bulwers, and the like--decide in the case of

at least all who desire such decision. I suppose, as no one in these

selfish times will take trouble without pay, that either the judges

should be numbered among state pensioners, or that each work so

calmly examined must produce its regular fee: but these are

after-considerations; and be sure no writer will grudge a guinea for

calm, unbought, unsuspected justice bestowed upon his brain-child. Let

all those members of the tribunal, deciding by ballot, (here in an

assembly where all are good, great, and honest, I shrink not from that

word of evil omen,) judge, as far as possible, together and not

separately, of all kinds of literature: I would not have poets

sentencing all the poetry, historians all the history, novelists all the

novels, and theologists all the works upon religion; for humanity is at

the best infirm, and motives little searchable; but let all judge

equally in a sort of open court. The machinery might be difficult, and I

cannot show its workings in so slight an essay; but surely it is a

strange thing in civilization, and a stranger when we consider what

literature does for us, blessing our world or banning it--it is a wonder

and a shame that books of whatever tendency are so cast forth upon the

waters to sink or swim at hazard. I acknowledge, friend, your present

muttering, Utopian! Arcadian! Formosan! to be not ill-founded: the

sketch is a hasty one; but though it may have somewhat in common with

the vagaries of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and that king in

impudence, George Psalmanazar, still I stand upon this ground, that many

an ill-used author wants protection, and that society, for its own sake

as well as his, ought to supply a court for literary reputation. Some

poor man the other day, and in a reputable journal too, had five

new-born tragedies strangled and mangled in as many lines: we need not

suppose him a Shakspeare, but he might have been one for aught of

evidence given to the contrary; at any rate, five at once, five mortal

tragedies, (so puppy-fashion born and drowned,) must, however carelessly

executed, have been the offspring of no common mind. Again, how often is

not a laborious historiographer, particularly if of contrary politics,

dismissed with immediate contempt, because, perchance, in his three full

volumes, he has admitted two false dates, or haply mistakes the

christened name of some Spanish admiral! Once more, how continually are

not critical judgments falsified by the very extracts on which they

rest! how often the pet passage of one review is the stock butt of

another! Here you will say is cure and malady together, like viper's fat

and fang: I trow not; mainly because not one man in a thousand takes the

trouble to judge for himself. But it is needless to enumerate such

instances; every man's conscience or his memory will supply examples

wholesale: therefore, maltreated authors, bear witness to your own

wrongs: jealously regarded by a struggling brotherhood, cruelly baited

by self-constituted critics, the rejected of publishers, the victimized

by booksellers, the garbled in statement, misinterpreted in meaning,

suspected of friends, persecuted by foes--"O that mine enemy would write

a book!" It is to put a neck into a noose, to lie quietly in the grove

of Dr. Guillot's humane prescription: or, if not quite so tragical as

this, it is at least to sit voluntarily in the stocks with Sir Hudibras,

and dare the world's contempt; while fashionable--or unfashionable

idiots, who are scarcely capable of a grammatical answer to a dinner

invitation, (those formidably confounded he's and him's!)--think

themselves privileged to join some inane laugh against a clever, but not

yet famous, author, because, forsooth, one character in his novel may be

an old acquaintance, or one epithet in a long poem may be weak,

indelicate, tasteless, or foolish, or one philosophical fact in an essay

is misstated, or one statistical conclusion seems to be exaggerated. It

is perfectly paltry to behold stupid fellows, whose intellects against

your most ordinary scribe vary from a rush-light to a "long four," as

compared with a roasting, roaring kitchen-fire, affecting contemptuously

to look down upon some unjustly neglected or mercilessly castigated

labourer in the brick-fields of literature, for not being--can he help

it?--a first-rate author, or because one reviewer in seven thinks he

might have done his subject better justice. Take my word for it--if

indeed I can be a fair witness--the man who has written a book, is above

the unwriting average, and, as such, should be ranked mentally above

them: no light research, and tact, and industry, and head-and-hand

labour, are sufficient for a volume; even certain stolid performances in

print do not shake my judgment; for arrant blockheads as sundry authors

undoubtedly are, the average (mark, not all men, but the average)

unwriting man is an author's intellectual inferior. All men, however

well capable, have not perchance the appetite, nor the industry, nor the

opportunity to fabricate a volume; nor, supposing these requisites, the

moral courage (for moral courage, if not physical, must form part of an

author's mind,) to publish the lucubration: but "I magnify mine office"

above the unnumbered host of unwriting, uninformed, loose, unlettered

gentry, who (as full of leisure as a cabbage, and as overflowing with

redundant impudence as any Radical mob,) mainly tend to form by their

masses the average penless animal-man, who could not hold a candle to

any the most mediocre of the Marsyas-used authors of haply this week's

journals. Spare them, victorious Apollos, spare! if libels that diminish

wealth be punishable, is there no moral guilt in those legalized libels

that do their utmost to destroy a character for wisdom, wit, learning,

industry, and invention?--Critical flayer, try thou to write a book;

learn experimentally how difficult, yet relieving; how nervous, yet

gladdening; how ungracious, yet very sweet; how worldly-foolish, yet

most wise; how conversant with scorn, yet how noble and ennobling an

attribute of man, is--authorship.

All this rhetoric, impatient friend--and be a friend still, whether

writer, reviewer, or unauthorial--serves at my most expeditious pace,

opposing notions considered, to introduce what is (till to-morrow, or

perhaps the next coming minute, but at any rate for this flitting

instant of time,) my last notion of possible, but not probable,

authorship: a rhodomontade oration, rather than an essay, after my own

desultory and yet determinate fashion, to have been entituled--so is it

spelled by act of parliament, and therefore let us in charity hope

rightly--to have been entituled then,

THE AUTHOR'S TRIBUNAL;

A COURT OF APPEAL AGAINST AMATEUR AND CONNOISSEUR CRITICISMS:

and (the present being the next minute whereof I spake above) there has

just hopped into my mind another taking title, which I generously

present to any smarting scribe who may meditate a prose version of

'_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_'--_videlicet_,

ZOILOMASTRIX.

At length then have I liberty to yawn--a freedom whereof doubtless my

readers have long been liverymen: I have written myself and my inkstand

dry as Rosamond's pond; my brain is relieved, recreated, emptied; I go

no longer heavily, as one that mourneth; and with gleeful face can I

assure you that your author's mind is once again as light as his heart:

but when crowding fancies come thick upon it, they bow it, and break it,

and weary it, as clouds of pigeons settling gregariously on a

trans-Atlantic forest; and when those thronging thoughts are comfortably

fixed on paper, one feels, as an apple-tree may be supposed to feel, all

the difference between the heavy down-dragging crop of autumn and the

winged aërial blossom of sweet spring-tide. An involuntary author, just

eased for the time of ever-exacting and accumulating notions, can

sympathize with holiday-making Atlas, chuckling over a chance so lucky

as the transfer of his pack to Hercules; and can comprehend the relief

it must have been to that foolish sage in Rasselas, when assured that he

no longer was afflicted with the care of governing a galaxy of worlds.

Some people are born to talk, with an incessant tongue illustrating

perpetuity of motion in the much-abused mouth; some to indite solid

continuous prose, with a labour-loving pen ever tenanting the hand; but

I clearly was born a zoölogical anomaly, _with a pen in my mouth_, a

sort of serpent-tongue. Heaven give it wisdom, and put away its poison!

Such being my character from birth, a paper-gossip, a writer from the

cradle, I ought not demurely to apologize for nature's handicraft, nor

excuse this light affliction of chattering in print.--Who asks you to

read it?--Neither let me cast reflections on your temper or your

intellect by too humble exculpation of this book of many themes; or must

I then regard you as those sullen children in the market-place, whom

piping cannot please, and sorrow cannot soften?

And now, friend, I've done. Require not, however shrewd your guess, my

acknowledgment of this brain-child; forgive all unintended harms; supply

what is lacking in my charities; politically, socially, authorially,

think that I bigotize in theoretic fun, but am incarnate Tolerance for

practical earnest. And so, giving your character fairer credit than if I

feared you as one of those captious cautious people who make a man

offender for an ill-considered word; commending to the cordial warmth of

Humanity my unhatched score and more of book-eggs, to perfect which I

need an Eccaleobion of literature; and scorning, as heartily as any

Sioux chief, to prolong palaver, when I have nothing more to say; suffer

me thus courteously to take of you my leave. And forasmuch as Lord

Chesterfield recommends an exit to be heralded by a pungent speech, let

me steal from quaint old Norris the last word wherewith I trouble you:

"These are my thoughts; I might have spun them out into a greater

length, but that I think a little plot of ground, thick-sown, is better

than a great field, which for the most part of it lieth fallow."

APPENDIX.

AN AFTER-THOUGHT.

It will be quite in keeping with your author's mind, and consistently

characteristic of his desultory indoles--(not indolence, pray you, good

Anglican, albeit thereunto akin,)--if after having thus formally taken

his _congé_ with the help of a Petronius so redoubtable as Chesterfield,

he just steps back again to induce you to have another last ramble. Now,

the wherefore of this might sentimentally be veiled, were I but little

honest, in professed attachment for my amiable reader, as though with

Romeo I cried, "Parting in such sweet sorrow, that I could say farewell

till it be morrow;" or it might be extenuated cacoethically, as though a

new crop of fancies were sprung up already, an after-math rank and wild,

before the gladdening shower of commendation has yet freshened-up my

brown hay-field: or it might be disguised falsely, as if a parcel of

precious MSS. had been lost by penny-postage, or stolen in the purlieus

of Shoe-lane; but, instead of all these unworthy subterfuges, the truth

shall be told plainly; we are yet too short by a sheet (so hints our

publishing Procrustes) of the marketable volume. Accordingly, whether or

not in this booklet your readership has already found seed sufficient

for cyclopædias, I am free to admit that the expectant butter-man at

least has not his legitimate post-octavo allowance of three hundred

pages; and to fill this aching void as cleverly and quickly as I can, is

my first object in so rapid a return. That honesty is the best policy,

deny who dare?

Still it is competent for me to confess worthier objects, (although, in

point of their arising, they were secondary,) as further illustrative of

my '_Author's Mind_' shown in other specimens; for example, a

linsey-woolsey tapestry of many colours shall be hung upon the end of

this arcade; the last few trees in this poor avenue shall bear the

flowers of poetry as well as the fruit of prose; my swan (O, dub it not

a goose!) would, like a _prima-donna_, go off this theatre of fancy,

singing. And again, suffer me, good friend, to think your charity still

willing to be pleased: many weary pages back, I offered you to part with

me in peace, if you felt small sympathies with a rambler so whimsical

and lawless; surely, having walked together kindly until now, we shall

not quarrel at the last.

Empty, however--empty, and rejoicing in its unthoughtful emptiness--have

I boasted this my head but a page or two ago; and that boast, for all

the critic's sneer, that no one will deny it, shall not be taken from me

by renewal of determined meditations; now that my house is swept and

garnished, I would not beckon back those old inhabitants. Neither let me

heed so lightly of your intellect, as to hope to satisfy its reading

with the scanty harvest of a _soil effete_; this license of writing up

to measure shall not show me sterile, any more than that emancipation

shall, by indulgence of thought, be disenchanted. And now to solve the

problem: not to think, for my mind is in a regimen of truancy; not to

fail in pleasing, if it be possible, the great world's implacable

palate, therefore to eschew dilution of good liquor; and yet to render

up in fair array the fitting tale of pages: well, if I may not

metaphysically draw upon internal resources, I can at least externally

and physically resort to yonder--desk; (drawer would have savoured of

the Punic, which Scipio and I blot out with equal hate;) for therein lie

_perdus_ divers poeticals I fain would see in print; yea, start not at

"poeticals," carp not at the threatening sound, for verily, even as

carp--so called from _carpere_, to catch if you can, and the Saxon capp,

to cavil, because when caught they don't pay for mastication--even as

carp, a muddy fish, difficult to hook, and provocate of hostile

criticism, conceals its lack of savour in the flavour of port-wine--even

so shall strong prose-sauce be served up with my poor dozen of sonnets:

and ye who would uncharitably breathe that they taste stronger of

Lethe's mud than of Helicon's sweet water, treat me to a better dish, or

carp not at my fishing.

Imagination, as I need not tell psychologists by this time, is my

tyrant; I cannot sleep, nor sit out a sermon, nor remember yesterday,

nor read in peace, (how calm in blessed quiet people seem to read!)

without the distraction of a thousand fancies: I hold this an infirmity,

not an accomplishment; a thing to be conquered, not to be coveted: and

still I love it, suffering those chains of gossamer to wind about me,

that seductive honey-jar yet again to trap me, like some poor insect;

thus then my foolish idolatry heretofore hath hailed

IMAGINATION.

My fond first love, sweet mistress of my mind,

Thy beautiful sublimity hath long

Charm'd mine affections, and entranced my song,

Thou spirit-queen, that sit'st enthroned, enshrined

Within this suppliant heart; by day and night

My brain is full of thee: ages of dreams,

Thoughts of a thousand worlds in visions bright,

Fear's dim terrific train, Guilt's midnight schemes,

Strange peeping eyes, soft smiling fairy faces,

Dark consciousness of fallen angels nigh,

Sad converse with the dead, or headlong races

Down the straight cliffs, or clinging on a shelf

Of brittle shale, or hunted thro' the sky!--

O, God of mind, I shudder at myself!

Now, friend reader, you have accustomed yourself to think that every

thing in rhyme, _i. e._, poetry, as you somewhat scornfully call it,

must be false: and I am sorry to be obliged to grant you that a leaning

towards plain matter-of-fact, is no wise characteristic of metrical

enthusiasts. But believe me for a truth-teller; that sonnet (did you

read it?) hints at some fearful verities; and that you may further

apprehend this sweet ideal mistress of your author's mind, suffer me to

introduce to your acquaintance

IMAGINATION PERSONIFIED.

Dread Monarch-maid, I see thee now before me,

Searching my soul with those mysterious eyes,

Spell-bound I stand, thy presence stealing o'er me,

While all unnerved my trembling spirit dies:

Oh, what a world of untold wonder lies

Within thy silent lips! how rare a light

Of conquer'd joys and ecstasies repress'd

Beneath thy dimpled cheek shines half-confess'd!

In what luxuriant masses, glossy bright,

Those raven locks fall shadowing thy fair breast!

And, lo! that bursting brow, with gorgeous wings,

And vague young forms of beauty coyly hiding

In thy crisp curls, like cherubs there abiding--

Charmer, to thee my heart enamour'd springs.

Such, then, and of me so well beloved, is that abstracted Platonism. But

verily the fear of imagination would far outbalance any love of it, if

crime had peopled for a man that viewless world with spectres, and the

Medusa-head of Justice were shaking her snakes in his face. And, by way

of a parergon observation, how terrible, most terrible, to the guilty

soul must be the solitary silent system now so popular among those cold

legislative schemers, who have ground the poor man to starvation, and

would hunt the criminal to madness! How false is that political

philosophy which seeks to reform character by leaving conscience caged

up in loneliness for months, to gnaw into its diseased self, rather than

surrounding it with the wholesome counsels of better living minds. It is

not often good for man to be alone: and yet in its true season,

(parsimoniously used, not prodigally abused,) solitude does fair

service, rendering also to the comparatively innocent mind precious

pleasures: religion prësupposed, and a judgment strong enough of muscle

to rein-in the coursers of Imagination's car, I judge it good advice to

prescribe for most men an occasional course of

SOLITUDE.

Therefore delight thy soul in solitude,

Feeding on peace; if solitude it be

To feel that million creatures, fair and good,

With gracious influences circle thee;

To hear the mind's own music; and to see

God's glorious world with eyes of gratitude,

Unwatch'd by vain intruders. Let me shrink

From crowds, and prying faces, and the noise

Of men and merchandise; far nobler joys

Than chill Society's false hand hath given,

Attend me when I'm left alone to think.

To think--alone?--Ah, no, not quite alone;

Save me from that--cast out from earth and heaven,

A friendless, Godless, isolated ONE!

But of these higher metaphysicals, these fancy-bred extravagations,

perhaps somewhat too much: you will dub me dreamer, if not proser--or

rather, poet, as the more modern reproach. Let us then, by way of

clearing our mind at once of these hallucinations, go forth quickly into

the fresh green fields, and expatiate with glad hearts on these

full-blown glories of

SUMMER.

Warm summer! Yes, the very word is warm;

The hum of bees is in it, and the sight

Of sunny fountains glancing silver light,

And the rejoicing world, and every charm

Of happy nature in her hour of love,

Fruits, flowers, and flies, in rainbow-glory bright:

The smile of God glows graciously above,

And genial earth is grateful; day by day

Old faces come again with blossoms gay,

Gemming in gladness meadow, garden, grove:

Haste with thy harvest, then, my softened heart,

Awake thy better hopes of better days,

Bring in thy fruits and flowers of thanks and praise,

And in creation's pæan take thy part.

How different in sterner beauty was the landscape not long since! The

energies of universal life prisoned up in temporary obstruction; every

black hedge-row tufted with woolly snow, like some Egyptian mother

mourning for her children; shrubs and plants fettered up in glittering

chains, motionless as those stone-struck feasters before the head of

Gorgon; and the dark-green fir-trees swathed in heavy curtains of

iridescent whiteness. Contrast is ever pleasurable; therefore we need

scarcely apologize for an ice in the dog-days--I mean for this present

unseasonable introduction of dead

WINTER.

As some fair statue, white and hard and cold,

Smiling in marble, rigid, yet at rest,

Or like some gentle child of beauteous mould,

Whose placid face and softly swelling breast

Are fixed in death, and on them bear imprest

His magic seal of peace--so, frozen, lies

The loveliness of nature: every tree

Stands hung with lace against the clear blue skies;

The hills are giant waves of glistering snow;

Rare and northern fowl, now strangely tame to see,

With ruffling plumage cluster on the bough,

And tempt the murderous gun; mouse-like, the wren

Hides in the new-cut hedge; and all things now

Fear starving Winter more than cruel men.

Ay, "cruel men:" that truest epithet for monarch-man must be the tangent

from which my Pegasus shall strike his hoof for the next flight. Who

does not writhe while reading details of cruelty, and who would not

rejoice to find even there somewhat of

CONSOLATION?

Scholar of Reason, Grace, and Providence,

Restrain thy bursting and indignant tears;

With tenderest might unerring Wisdom steers

Through those mad seas the bark of Innocence.

Doth thy heart burn for vengeance on the deed--

Some barbarous deed wrought out by cruelty

On woman, or on famish'd childhood's need,

Yea, on these fond dumb dogs--doth thy heart bleed

For pity, child of sensibility?

Those tears are gracious, and thy wrath most right

Yet patience, patience; there is comfort still;

The Judge is just; a world of love and light

Remains to counterpoise the load of ill,

And the poor victim's cup with angel's food to fill.

For, as my Psycotherion has long ago informed you, I hope there is some

sort of heaven yet in reserve for the brute creation: if otherwise, in

respect of costermongers' donkeys, Kamskatdales' gaunt starved dogs, the

Guacho's horse, spurred deep with three-inch rowels, the angler's worm,

Strasburgh geese, and poor footsore curs harnessed to ill-balanced

trucks--for all these and many more I, for one, sadly stand in need of

consolation. Meanwhile, let us change the subject. After a dose of cruel

cogitations, and this corrupting converse with Phalaris and Domitian,

what better sweetener of thoughts than an "olive-branch" in the waters

of Marah? Spend a moment in the nursery; it is happily fashionable now,

as well as pleasurable, to sport awhile with Nature's prettiest

playthings; the praises of children are always at the tip of my--pen,

that is, tongue, you remember, and often have I told the world, in all

the pride of print, of my fond infantile predilections: then let this

little Chanson be added to the rest; we will call it

MARGARET.

A song of gratitude and cheerful prayer

Still shall go forth my pretty babes to greet,

As on life's firmament, serenely fair,

Their little stars arise, with aspects sweet

Of mild successive radiance: that small pair,

Ellen and Mary, having gone before

In this affection's welcome, the dear debt

Here shall be paid to gentle Margaret:

Be thou indeed a pearl--in pureness, more

Than beauty, praise, or price; full be thy cup,

Mantling with grace, and truth with mercy met,

With warm and generous charities flowing o'er;

And when the Great King makes his jewels up,

Shine forth, child-angel, in His coronet!

And while hovering about this fairy-land of sweet-home scenery, and

confessing thankfully to these domestic affections, your author knows

one heart at least that will be gladdened, one face that will be

brightened by the following

BIRTH-DAY PRAYER.

Mother, dear mother, no unmeaning rhyme,

No mere ingenious compliment of words,

My heart pours forth at this auspicious time:

I know a simple honest prayer affords

More music on affection's thrilling cords,

More joy, than can be measured or express'd

In song most sweet, or eloquence sublime.

Mother, I bless thee! God doth bless thee too!

In these thy children's children thou _art_ blest,

With dear old pleasures springing up anew:

And blessings wait upon thee still, my mother!

Blessings to come, this many a happy year;

For, losing thee, where could we find another

So kind, so true, so tender, and--so dear?

Is it an impertinence--I speak etymologically--to have dropped that

sonnet here?--Be it as you will, my Zoilus; let me stand convicted of

honesty and love: I ask no higher praise in this than to have pleased my

mother.

* * * * *

Penman as I am, have been, and shall be, innumerable letters have grown

beneath my goose-quill. Who cannot say the same indeed? For in these

patriotic days, for mere country's love and post-office prosperity,

every body writes to every body about every thing, or, as oftener

happens, about nothing. Nevertheless, I wish some kind pundit would

invent a corrosive ink, warranted to consume a letter within a week

after it had been read and answered: then should we have fewer of those

ephemeral documents treasured up in pigeon-holes, and docketed

correspondence for possible publication. Not Byron, nor Lamb, nor West,

nor Gray, with all their epistolary charms, avail to persuade my

prejudice that it is honest to publish a private letter: if written with

that view, the author is a hypocrite in his friendships; if not so, the

decent veil of privacy is torn from social life, confidence is rebuked,

betrayed, destroyed; and the suspicion of eaves-droppings and casual

scribblings to be posthumously printed, makes silence truly wisdom, and

grim reserve a virtue. This public appetite for secret information, and,

if possible, for hinted scandal--this unhallowed spirit of outward

curiosity trespassing upon the sacred precincts of a man's own

circle--is to the real author's mind a thing to be feared, if he is

weak--to be circumspectly watched, if he is wise. Such is the present

hunger for this kind of reading, that it would be diffidence, not

presumption, in the merest school-boy to dread the future publication of

his holiday letters; who knows--I may jump scathless from the Monument,

or in these Popish times become excommunicated by special bull, or fly

round the world in a balloon, or attain to the authorship of forty

volumes, or be half-smothered by a valet-de-place, or get indicted for

inveterate Toryism, or any how, I may--notwithstanding all present

obscurities that intervene--wake one of these fine mornings, and find

myself famous: and what then? The odds at Tattersall's would be twelve

to one that sundry busy-bodies, booksellers or otherwise, would scrape

together with malice prepense, and keep _câchet_ for future print, a

multitude of careless scrawls that should have been burnt within an hour

of the reading. Now, is not this a thing to be exclaimed against? And,

utterly improbable on the ground of any merit in themselves as I should

judge their publication (but for certain stolidities of the same sort,

that often-times have wearied me in print), I choose to let my author's

mind here enter its eternal protest against any such treachery regarding

private

LETTERS.

Tear, scatter, burn, destroy--but keep them not;

I hate, I dread those living witnesses

Of varying self, of good or ill forgot,

Of altered hopes, and withered kindnesses.

Oh! call not up those shadows of the dead,

Those visions of the past, that idly blot

The present with regret for blessings fled:

This hand that wrote, this ever-teeming head,

This flickering heart is full of chance and change;

I would not have you watch my weaknesses,

Nor how my foolish likings roam and range,

Nor how the mushroom friendships of a day

Hastened in hot-bed ripeness to decay,

Nor how to mine own self I grow so strange.

So anathema to editors, maranatha to publishers of all such hypothetical

post-obits!

* * * * *

Every one can comprehend something of an author's ease, when he sees his

manuscript in print: it is safe; no longer a treasure uninsurable, no

longer a locked-up care: it is emancipated, glorified, incapable of real

extermination; it has reached a changeless condition; the chrysalis of

illegible cacography has burst its bonds, and flies living through the

world on the wings of those true Dædali, Faust, and Gutenberg: the

transition-state is passed: henceforth for his brain-child set free from

that nervous slumber, its parent calmly can expect the oblivion of no

more than a death-like sleep, if he be not indeed buoyed up with certain

hope of immortality. "'Tis pleasant sure to see one's self in print," is

the adequate cause for ninety books out of a hundred; and, though zeal

might be the ostentatious stalking-horse, my candour shall give no

better excuse for the fourteen lines that follow; they require but this

preface: a most venerable chapel of old time, picturesque and full of

interest, is dropping to decay, within a mile of me; where it is, and

whose the fault, are askings improper to be answered: nevertheless, I

cast upon the waters this meagre morsel of

APPEAL.

Shame on thee, Christian, cold and covetous one!

The laws (I praise them not for this) declare

That ancient, loved, deserted house of prayer

As money's worth a layman landlord's own.

Then use it as thine own; thy mansion there

Beneath the shadow of this ruinous church

Stands new and decorate; thine every shed

And barn is neat and proper; I might search

Thy comfortable farms, and well despair

Of finding dangerous ruin overhead,

And damp unwholesome mildew on the walls:

Arouse thy better self: restore it; see,

Through thy neglect the holy fabric falls!

Fear, lest that crushing guilt should fall on thee.

I fear much, poor book, this finale of jingling singing will jar upon

the public ear; all men must shrink from a lengthy snake with a rattle

in its tail: and this ballast a-stern of over-ponderous poetry may

chance to swamp so frail a skiff. But I have promised a dozen sonnets in

this after-thought Appendix; yea, and I will keep that promise at all

mortal hazards, even to the superadded unit proverbial of dispensing

Fornarinas. Ten have been told off fairly, and now we come upon the gay

court-cards. After so much of villanous political ferment, society

returns at length to its every-day routine, heedful of other oratory

than harangues from the hustings, and glad of other reading than

figurative party-speeches. Yet am I bold to recur, just for a thought or

two, to my whilom patriotic hopes and fears: fears indeed came first

upon me, but hopes finally out-voted them: briefly, then, begin upon the

worst, and endure, with what patience you possess, this creaky stave of

bitter

POLITICS.

Chill'd is the patriot's hope, the poet's prayer:

Alas for England, and her tarnish'd crown,

Her sun of ancient glory going down,

Her foes triumphant in her friends' despair:

What wonder should the billows overwhelm

A bark so mann'd by Comus and his crew,

"Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm?"

Yet, no!--we will not fear; the loathing realm

At length has burst its chains; a motley few,

The pseudo-saint, the boasting infidel,

The demagogue, and courtier, hand in hand

No more besiege our Zion's citadel:

But high in hope comes on this nobler band

For God, the sovereign, and our father-land.

That last card, you may remember, must reckon as the knave; and

therefore is consistently regarding an ominous trisyllable, which rhymes

to "knavish tricks" in the national anthem; our suit now leads us in

regular succession to the queen, a topic (it were Milesian to say a

subject) whereon now, as heretofore, my loyalty shall never be found

lacking. In old Rome's better antiquity, a slave was commissioned to

whisper counsel in the ear of triumphant generals or emperors; and, in

old England's less enlightened youth, a baubled fool was privileged to

blurt out verities, which bearded wisdom dared not hint at. Now, I boast

myself free, a citizen of no mean city--my commission signed by duty--my

counsel guarantied by truth: and if, O still intruding Zoilus, the

liberality of your nature provokes you to class me truly in the family

of fools, let your antiquarian ignorance of those licensed Gothamites

blush at its abortive malice; the arrow of your sarcasm bounds from my

target blunted; pick up again the harmless reed: for, not to insist upon

the prevalence of knaves, and their moral postponement to mere

lack-wits, let me tell you that wise men, and good men, and shrewd men,

were those ancient baubled fools: therefore would I gladly be thought of

their fraternity.

But our twelfth sonnet is waiting, save the mark! Stay: there ought to

intervene a solemn pause; for your author's mind, on the spur of the

occasion, pours forth an unpremeditated song of free-spoken,

uncompromising, patriotic counsel; let its fervency atone for its

presumption

Bold in my freedom, yet with homage meek,

As duty prompts and loyalty commands,

To thee, O, queen of empires! would I speak.

Behold, the most high God hath giv'n to thee

Kingdoms and glories, might and majesty,

Setting thee ruler over many lands;

Him first to serve, O monarch, wisely seek:

And many people, nations, languages,

Have laid their welfare in thy sovereign hands;

Them next to bless, to prosper and to please,

Nobly forget thyself, and thine own ease:

Rebuke ill-counsel; rally round thy state

The scattered good, and true, and wise, and great:

So Heav'n upon thee shed sweet influences!

And now for my Raffaellesque disguise of a vulgar baker's twelve, the

largess muffin of Mistress Fornarina: thirteen cards to a suit, and

thirteen to the dozen, are proverbially the correct thing; but, as in

regular succession I have come upon the king card, I am free to

confess--(pen, why will you repeat again such a foolish, stale

Joe-Millerism?)--the subject a dilemma. Natheless, my good nature shall

give a royal chance to criticism most malign: whether candour

acknowledge it or not, doubtless the author's mind reigns dominant in

the author's book; and, notwithstanding the self-silence of blind

Mæonides, (a right notable exception,) it holds good as a rule that the

majority of original writings, directly or indirectly, concern a man's

own self; his whims and his crotchets, his knowledge and his ignorance,

wisdom and folly, experiences and suspicions, therein find a place

prepared for them. Scott's life naturally produced his earlier novels;

in the '_Corsair_,' the '_Childe_,' and the '_Don_,' no one can mistake

the hero-author; Southey's works, Shelley's, and Wordsworth's, are full

of adventure, feeling, and fancy, personal to the writers, at least

equally with the sonnets of Petrarch or of Shakspeare. And as with

instances illustrious as those, so with all humbler followers, the

skiffs, pinnaces, and heavy barges in the wake of those gallant ships:

an author's library, and his friends, his hobbies and amusements,

business and pleasure, fears and wishes, accidents of life, and

qualities of soul, all mingle in his writings with a harmonizing

individuality; nay, the very countenance and hand-writing, alike with

choice of subject and style and method of their treatment, illustrate,

in one word, the author's mind. These things being so, what hinders it

from occupying, as in honesty it does, the king's place in this pack of

sonnets? Nevertheless, forasmuch as by such occupancy an ill-tempered

sarcasm might charge it with conceit; know then that my humbler meaning

here is to put it lowest and last, even in the place of wooden-spoon;

for this also (being mindful of the twelve apostle-spoons from old time

antecedent) is a legitimate thirteener: and so, while in extricating my

muse from the folly of serenading a non-existent king, I have candidly

avowed the general selfishness of printing, believe that, in this

avowal, I take the lowest seat, so well befitting one of whom it may

ungraciously be asked, Where do fools buy their logic?

List, then, oh list! while generically, not individually I claim for

authorship

THE CATHEDRAL MIND.

Temple of truths most eloquently spoken,

Shrine of sweet thoughts veiled round with words of power,

The '_Author's Mind_,' in all its hallowed riches,

Stands a cathedral: full of precious things;

Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken,

Cloister, and aisle, dark crypt, and aëry tower:

Long-treasured relics in the fretted niches,

And secret stores, and heap'd-up offerings,

Art's noblest gems, with every fruit and flower,

Paintings and sculpture, choice imaginings,

Its plenitude of wealth and praise betoken:

An ever-burning lamp portrays the soul;

Deep music all around enchantment flings;

And God's great Presence consecrates the whole.

Now at length, in all verity, I have said out my say: nor publisher nor

printer shall get more copy from me: neither, indeed, would it before

have been the case, for all that Damastic argument, were it not that

many beginnings--and you remember my proverbial preliminarizing--should,

for mere antithesis' sake, be endowed with a counterpoise of many

endings. So, in this second parting, let me humbly suggest to gentle

reader these: that nothing is at once more plebeian and unphilosophical

than--censure, in a world where nothing can be perfect, and where apathy

is held to be good-breeding; _item_, (I am quoting Scott,) that "it is

much more easy to destroy than to build, to criticise than to compose;"

_item_, (Sir Walter again, _ipsissima verba_, in a letter to Miss

Seward,) that there are certain literary "gentlemen who appear to be a

sort of tinkers, who, unable to _make_ pots and pans, set up for

_menders_ of them, and often make two holes in patching one;" _item_,

that in such possible cases as "exercise" for "exorcise," "repeat" for

"repent," "depreciate" for "deprecate," and the like, an indifferent

scribe is always at the mercy of compositors; and lastly, that if it is,

by very far, easier to read a book than to write one, it is also, by at

least as much, worthier of a noble mind to give credit for good

intentions, rather than for bad, or indifferent, or none at all, even

where hyper-criticism may appear to prove that the effort itself has

been a failure.

* * * * *

PROBABILITIES;

AN AID TO FAITH.

BY

Martin Farquhar Tupper, A.M., F.R.S.

THE AUTHOR OF

"PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY

ALMOST THOU PERSUADEST ME TO BE A CHRISTIAN."

* * * * *

CONTENTS

SUBJECTS. PAGE.

An Aid to Faith 459

God and his Attributes 466

The Triunity 472

The Godhead Visible 476

The Origin of Evil 480

Cosmogony 485

Adam 488

The Fall 490

The Flood 493

Noah 495

Babel 497

Job 499

Joshua 504

The Incarnation 506

Mahometanism 509

Romanism 511

The Bible 517

Heaven and Hell 521

An Offer 525

Conclusion 526

AN AID TO FAITH.

The certainty of those things which most surely are believed among us,

is a matter quite distinct from their antecedent probability or

improbability. We know, and take for facts, that Cromwell and Napoleon

existed, and are persuaded that their characters and lives were such as

history reports them: but it is another thing, and one eminently

calculated to disturb any disbeliever of such history, if a man were

enabled to show, that, from the condition of social anarchy, there was

an antecedent likelihood for the use of military despots; that, from the

condition of a popular puritanism, or a popular infidelity, it was

previously to have been expected that such leaders should have the

several characteristics of a bigoted zeal for religion, or a craving

appetite for worldly glory; that, from the condition liable to

revolutions, it was probable to find such despots arising out of the

middle class; and that, from the condition of reaction incidental to all

human violences, there was a clear expectability that the power of such

military monarchs should not be continued to their natural heirs.

Such a line of argument, although in no measure required for the

corroboration of facts, might have considerable power to persuade _à

priori_ the man, who had not hitherto seen reason to credit such facts

from posterior evidence. It would have rolled away a great stone, which

to such a mind might otherwise have stood as a stumbling-block on the

very threshold of truth. It would have cleared off a heavy mist, which

might prevent him from discerning the real nature of the scene in which

he stood. It would have shown him that, what others know to be fact, is,

even to him who does not know it, become antecedently probable; and that

Reason is not only no enemy to Faith, but is ready and willing to

acknowledge its alliance.

Take a second illustration, by way of preliminary. A woodman, cleaving

an oak, finds an iron ball in its centre; he sees the fact, and of

course believes; some others believing on his testimony. But a certain

village-pundit, habitually sceptical of all marvels, is persuaded that

the wonder has been fabricated by our honest woodman; until the parson,

a good historian, coming round that way, proclaims it a most interesting

circumstance, because it was one naturally to have been expected; for

that, here was the spot where, two hundred years ago, a great battle had

been fought: and it was no improbability at all that a carbine-bullet

should have penetrated a sapling, nor that the tree should thereafter

have grown old with the iron at its heart. How unreasonable then would

appear the pundit's incredulity, if persisted in: how suddenly

enlightened the rational faith of the rustic: how seasonable would be

felt the useful learning of him, whose knowledge well applied can thus

unfetter truth from the bandages of ignorance.

Illustrations, if apt, are so well adapted to persuade towards a

particular line of argument, that, at the risk of diffuseness, and

because minds being various are variously touched, one by one thought

and one by another, I think fit to add yet more of a similar tendency:

in the hope that, by a natural induction, such instances may smoothe our

way.

When an eminent living geologist was prosecuting his researches at

Kirkdale cave, Yorkshire, he had calculated so nicely on the antecedent

probabilities, that his commands to the labourers were substantially

these: "Take your mattocks, and pick up that stone flooring; then take

your basket, and fill it--with the bones of hyænas and other creatures

which you will find there." We may fancy the ridicule wherewith

ignorance might have greeted science: but lo, the triumph of philosophy,

when its mandate soon assumed a bodily shape in--bushels of bones gnawed

as by wild beasts, and here and there a grinning skull that looked like

a hyæna's! Do we not see how this bears on our coming argument? Such a

deposit was very unlikely to be found there in the eyes of the

unenlightened: but very likely to the wise man's ken. The real

probabilities were in favour of a strange fact, though the seeming

probabilities were against it.

Take another. We are all now convinced of the existence of America; and

so, some three or four hundred years back, was Christopher Columbus--but

nobody else. Alone, he proved that mighty continent so probable, from

geometrical measurements, and the balance of the world, and tides, and

trade-winds, and casual floatsams driven from some land beneath the

setting sun, that he was antecedently convinced of the fact: and it

would have been a shock to his reason, as well as to his faith, had he

found himself able to sail due west from Lisbon to China, without having

struck against his huge probability. I purposely abstain from applying

every illustration, or showing its specific difference regarding our

theme. It is better to lead a mind to think for itself than to endeavour

to forestall every notion.

Another. A Kissoor merchant in Timbuctoo is told of the existence of

water hard and cold as marble. All the experience of his nation is

against it. He disbelieves. However, after no long time, the testimony

of two native princes who have been _fêted_ in England, and have seen

ice, shakes his once not unreasonable incredulity: and the additional

idea brought soon to his remembrance, that, as lead cools down from hot

fluidity to a solid lump, so, in the absence of solar heat, in all

probability would water--corroborates and makes acceptable by analogous

likelihood the doctrine simultaneously evidenced by credible witnesses.

Yet one more illustration for the last. Few things in nature appear more

unlikely to the illiterate, than that a living toad should be found

prisoned in a block of limestone; nevertheless, evidence goes to prove

that such cases are not uncommon. Now, if, instead of limestone, which

is a water-product, the creature had been found embedded in granite,

which is a fire-product; although the fact might have been from

eye-sight equally unimpeachable, how much more unlikely such a

circumstance would have appeared in the judgment of science. To the

rustic, the limestone case is as stout a puzzle as the granite one; but

_à priori_, the philosopher--taking into account the aqueous fluidity of

such a matrix at a period when reptiles were abundant, the torpid

qualities of the toad itself, and the fact that time is scarcely an

element in the absence of air--arrives at an antecedent probability,

which comforts his acceptance of the fact. The granite would have

staggered his reason, even though his own experience or the testimony of

others were sufficient, nay, imperative, to assure his faith: but in the

case of limestone, Reason even helps Faith; nay, anticipates and leads

it in, by suggesting the wonder to be previously probable. How truly,

and how strongly this bears upon our theme, let any such philosophizing

mind consider.

But enough of illustrations: although these, multipliable to any amount,

might bring, each in its own case, some specific tendency to throw light

upon the path we mean to tread: it is wiser perhaps, as implying more

confidence in the reader's intellectual powers, to leave other analogous

cases to the suggestion of his own mind; also, not to vex him in every

instance with the intrusive finger of an obvious application.

Meanwhile, it is a just opportunity to clear the way at once of some

obstructions, by disposing of a few matters personal to the writer; and

by touching upon sundry other preliminary considerations.

1. The line of thought proposed is intended to show it probable that any

thing which has been or is, might, viewed antecedently to its existence,

by an exercise of pure reason, have by possibility been guessed: and on

the hypothesis of sufficient keenness and experience, that this idea may

be carried even to the future. Any thing, meaning every thing, is a word

not used unadvisedly; for this is merely a suggestive treatise, starting

a rule capable of infinite application: and, notwithstanding that we

have here and now confined its elucidation to some matters of religious

moment only, as occupying a priority of importance, and at all times

deserving the lead; still, if knowledge availed, and time and space

permitted, I scarcely doubt that a vigorous and illuminated intellect

might so far enlarge on the idea, as to show the antecedent probability

of every event which has happened in the kingdoms of nature, providence,

and grace: nay, of directing his guess at coming matters with no

uncertain aim into the realms of the immediate future. The perception of

cause in operation enables him to calculate the consequence, even

perhaps better than the prophecy of cause could in the prior case enable

him to suspect the consequence. But, in this brief life, and under its

disturbing circumstances, there is little likelihood of accomplishing in

practice all that the swift mind sees it easy to dream in theory: and if

other and wiser pens are at all helped in the good aim to justify the

ways of God with man, and to clear the course of truth, by some of the

notions broadcast in this treatise, its errand will be well fulfilled.

2. Whether or not the leading idea, so propounded, is new, or is new in

its application as an auxiliary to Christian evidences, the writer is

unaware: to his own mind it has occurred quite spontaneously and on a

sudden; neither has he scrupled to place it before others with whatever

ill advantage of celerity, because it seemed to his own musings to shed

a flood of light upon deep truths, which may not prove unwelcome nor

unuseful to the doubting minds of many. It is true that in this, as in

most other human efforts, the realization of idea in concrete falls far

short of its abstract conception in the mind: there, all was clear,

quick, and easy; here, the necessity of words, and the constraints of an

unwilling perseverance, clog alike the wings of fancy and the feet of

sober argument: insomuch that the difference is felt to be quite

humiliating between the thoughts as they were thought, and the thoughts

as they are written. Minerva, springing from the head of Jove, is not

more unlike the heavily-treading Vulcan.

3. Necessarily, that the argument be (so to speak) complete, and on the

wise principle that no fortresses be left untaken in the rear, it must

be the writer's fate to attempt a demonstration of the anterior

probability of truths, which a child of reason can not only now never

doubt as fact, but never could have thought improbable. Instance the

first effort, showing it to have been expectable that there should, in

any conceived beginning, have existed a Something, a Great Spirit, whom

we call God. To have to argue of the mighty Maker, that HE was an

antecedent probability, would appear a most needless attempt; if it did

not occur as the first link in a chain of arguments less open to

objection by the thoughtless. With our little light to try to prove _à

priori_ the dazzling mystery of a Divine Tri-unity, might (unreasonably

viewed) be assailed as a presumptuous and harmful thing; but it is our

wise prerogative, if and when we can, to "Prove all things." Moreover,

we live in a world wherein Truth's greatest enemy is the man who shrinks

from endeavouring at least to clear away the mists and clouds that veil

her precious aspect; and at a time when it behooves the reverent

Christian to put on his panoply of faith and prayer, and meet in

argument, according to the grace and power given to him--not indeed the

blaspheming infidel, for such a foe is unreasonable and unworthy of an

answer, but--the often candid, anxious, and involuntary doubter; the

mind, which, righteously vexed with the thousand corruptions of truth,

and sorely disappointed at the conduct of its herd of false disciples,

from a generous misconception is embracing error: the mind, never enough

tenderly treated, but commonly taunted as a sceptic which yet with a

natural manliness asserts the just prerogative of thinking for itself:

fairly enough requiring, though rarely finding, evidence either to prop

the weakness of a merely educational faith, or to argue away the

objections to Christianity so rife in the clashing doctrines and unholy

lives of its pseudo-sectaries. One of our poets hath said, "He has no

hope who never had a fear:" it is quite as true (and take this saying

for thy comfort, any harassed misbelieving mind), He has no faith, who

never had a doubt. There is hope of a mind which doubts, because it

thinks; because it troubles itself to think about what the mass of

nominal Christians live threescore years and die of very mammonism,

without having had one earnest thought about one difficulty, or one

misgiving: there is hope of a man, who, not licentious nor scornful,

from simple misconception, misbelieves; there is just and reasonable

hope that (the misconception once removed) his faith will shine forth

all the warmer for a temporary state of winter. To such do I address

myself: not presumptuously imagining that I can satisfy by my poor

thoughts all the doubts, cavils and objections of minds so keen and

curious; not affecting to sail well among the shoals of metaphysics, nor

to plumb unerringly the deeper gulphs of reason; but asking them for

awhile to bear with me and hear me to the end patiently; with me,

convinced of what ([Greek: kat' exochên]) is Truth, by far surer and

stronger arguments than any of the less considerations here expounded as

auxiliary thereto; to bear with me, and prove for themselves at this

penning of my thoughts (if haply I am helped in such high enterprise),

whether indeed those doctrines and histories which the Christian world

admit, were antecedently improbable, that is, unreasonable: whether, on

the contrary, there did not exist, prior to any manifestation of such

facts and doctrines, an exceeding likelihood that they would be so and

so developed: and whether on the whole, led by reason to the threshold

of faith, it may be worth while to encounter other arguments, which have

rendered probabilities now certain.

4. It is very material to keep in memory the only scope and object of

this essay. We do not pretend to add one jot of evidence, but only to

prepare the mind to receive evidence: we do not attempt to prove facts,

but only to accelerate their admission by the removal of prejudice. If a

bed-ridden meteorologist is told that it rains, he may or he may not

receive the fact from the force of testimony; but he will certainly be

more prëdisposed to receive it, if he finds that his weatherglass is

falling rather than rising. The fact remains the same, it rains; but the

mind--precluded by circumstances from positive personal assurance of

such fact, and able only to arrive at truth from exterior evidence--is

in a fitter state for belief of the fact from being already made aware

that it was probable. Let it not then be inferred, somewhat perversely,

that because antecedent probabilities are the staple of our present

argument, the theme itself, Religion, rests upon hypotheses so slender:

it rests not at all upon such straws as probabilities, but on posterior

evidence far more firm. What we now attempt is not to prop the ark, but

favourably to prëdispose the mind of any reckless Uzzah, who might

otherwise assail it; not to strengthen the weak places of religion, but

to annul such disinclination to receive Truth, as consists in prejudice

and misconception of its likelihood. The goodly ship is built upon the

stocks, the platforms are reared, and the cradle is ready; but mistaken

prëconceptions may scatter the incline with gravel-stones rather than

with grease, and thus put a needless hindrance to the launching: whereas

a clear idea that the probabilities are in favour, rather than the

reverse, will make all smooth, lubricate, and easy. If, then, we fail in

this attempt, no disservice whatever is done to Truth itself; no breach

is made in the walls, no mine sprung, no battlement dismantled; all the

evidences remain as they were; we have taken nothing away. Even granting

matters seemed anteriorily improbable, still, if evidence proved them

true, such anterior unlikelihood would entirely be merged in the stoutly

proven facts. Moreover, if we be adjudged to have succeeded, we have

added nothing to Truth itself; no, nor to its outworks. That sacred

temple stands complete, firm and glorious from corner-stone to

top-stone. We do but sweep away the rubbish at its base; the drifting

desert sands that choke its portals. We only serve that cause (a most

high privilege), by enlisting a prëjudgment in its favour. We propose

herein an auxiliary to evidence, not evidence itself; a finger-post to

point the way to faith; a little light of reason on its path. The risk

is really nothing; but the advantage, under favour, may be much.

5. It is impossible to elude the discussion of topics, which in their

direct tendencies, or remoter inferences, may, to the author at least,

prove dangerous or disputable ground. If a "great door and effectual" is

opened to him, doubtless he will raise or meet with many adversaries.

Besides mere haters of his creed, despisers of his arguments, and

protestors, loud and fierce against his errors; he may possibly fall

foul of divers unintended heresies; he may stumble unwittingly on the

relics of exploded schisms; he may exhume controversies in metaphysical

or scholastical polemics, long and worthily extinct. If this be so, he

can only plead, _Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_. But it is

open to him also to protest against the common critical folly of making

an offender for a word: of driving analogies on all four feet, and

straining thoughts beyond their due proportions. Above all, never let a

reader stir one inch beyond, far less against, his own judgment: if

there seem to be sufficient reasons, well: if otherwise, let me walk

uncompanied. The first step especially is felt to be a very difficult

one; perhaps very debatable: for aught I know, it may be merely a vain

insect caught in the cobweb of metaphysics, soon to be destroyed, and

easily to be discussed at leisure by some Aranean logician. However, it

seemed to my midnight musings a probable mode of arriving at truth,

though somewhat unsatisfactorily told from poverty of thought and

language. Moreover, it would have been, in such _à priori_ argument,

ridiculous to have commenced by announcing a posterior conclusion: for

this cause did I do my humble best to work it out anew: and however

supererogatory it may seem at first sight to the majority of readers,

those keener minds whom I mainly address, and whose interests I wish to

serve, will recognise the attempt as at least consistent: and will be

ready to admit that if the arduous effort prove anteriorly a First Great

Cause, and His attributes, be futile (which, however, I do not admit),

it was an attempt unneeded on the score of its own merits; albeit, with

an obvious somewhat of justice, pure reason may desire to begin at the

beginning. No one, who thinks at all upon religion, however

misbelieving, can entertain any mental prejudice against the existence

of a Deity, or against the received character of His attributes. Such a

man would be merely in a savage state, irrational: whilst his own mind,

so speculating, would stand itself proof positive of an Intellectual

Father; either immediately, as in the first man's case, or mediately, as

in our own, it must have sprung out of that Being, who is emphatically

the Good One--God. But if, as is possible, a mind, capable of thinking,

and keen to think on other themes, from any cause, educational or moral,

has neglected this great track of mediation, has "forgotten God," and

"had him _not_ in all his thoughts," such an one I invite to walk with

me; and, in spite of all incompleteness and insufficiency, uncaptious of

much that may haply be fanciful or false, briefly and in outline to test

with me sundry probabilities of the Christian scheme, considered

antecedently to its elucidation.

A GOD: AND HIS ATTRIBUTES.

I will commence with a noble, and, as I believe, an inspired sentence:

than which no truth uttered by philosophers ever was more clearly or

more sublimely expressed. "In the beginning was the Word: and the Word

was with God; and the Word was God." In its due course, we will consider

especially the difference between the Word and God; likewise the seeming

contradiction, but true concord, of being simultaneously God, and with

God. At present, and previously to the true commencement of our _à

priori_ thoughts, let us, by a word or two, paraphrase that brief but

comprehensive sentence, "In the beginning was the Word." Eternity has no

beginning, as it has no end: the clock of Time is futile there: it

might as well attempt to go in vacuo. Nevertheless, in respect to

finite intelligences like ourselves, seeing that eternity is an idea

totally inconceivable, it is wise, nay it is only possible, to be

presented to the mind piecemeal. Even our deepest mathematicians do not

scruple to speak of points "infinitely remote;" as if in that phrase

there existed no contradiction of terms. So, also, we pretend in our

emptiness to talk of eternity past, time present, and eternity to come;

the fact being that, muse as a man may, he can entertain no idea of an

existence which is not measurable by time: any more than he can conceive

of a colour unconnected with the rainbow, or of a musical note beyond

the seven sounds. The plain intention of the words is this: place the

starting-post of human thought as far back into eternity as you will, be

it what man counts a thousand ages, or ten thousand times ten thousand,

or be these myriads multiplied again by millions, still, in any such

Beginning, and in the beginning of all beginnings (for so must creatures

talk)--then was God. He Was: the scholar knows full well the force of

the original term, the philological distinctions between [Greek: eimi]

and [Greek: gignomai]: well pleased, he reads as of the Divinity [Greek:

ên], He self-existed; and equally well pleased he reads of the humanity

[Greek: egennêthê], he was born. The thought and phrase [Greek: ên]

sympathizes, if it has not an identity, with the Hebrew's unutterable

Name. HE then, whose title, amongst all others likewise denoting

excellence supreme and glory underivative, is essentially "I am;" HE

who, relatively to us as to all creation else, has a new name wisely

chosen in "the Word,"--the great expression of the idea of God; this

mighty Intelligence is found in any such beginning self-existent. That

teaching is a mere fact, known posteriorly from the proof of all things

created, as well as by many wonderful signs, and the clear voice of

revelation. We do not attempt to prove it; that were easy and obvious:

but our more difficult endeavour at present is to show how antecedently

probable it was that God should be: and that so being, He should be

invested with the reasonable attributes, wherewithal we know His

glorious Nature to be clothed.

Take then our beginning where we will, there must have existed in that

"originally" either Something, or Nothing. It is a clear matter to

prove, _à posteriori_, that Something did exist; because something

exists now: every matter and every derived spirit must have had a

Father; _ex nihilo nihil fit_, is not more a truth, than that creation

must have had a Creator. However, leaving this plain path (which I only

point at by the way for obvious mental uses), let us now try to get at

the great antecedent probability that in the beginning Something should

have been, rather than Nothing.

The term, Nothing, is a fallacious one: it does not denote an existence,

as Something does, but the end of an existence. It is in fact a

negation, which must prësuppose a matter once in being and possible to

be denied; it is an abstraction, which cannot happen unless there be

somewhat to be taken away; the idea of vacuity must be posterior to that

of fullness; the idea of no tree is incompetent to be conceived without

the previous idea of _a_ tree; the idea of nonentity suggests, _ex vi

termini_, a pre-existent entity; the idea of Nothing, of necessity,

prësupposes Something. And a Something once having been, it would still

and for ever continue to be, unless sufficient cause be found for its

removal; that cause itself, you will observe, being a Something. The

chances are forcibly in favour of continuance, that is of perpetuity;

and the likelihoods proclaim loudly that there should be an Existence.

It was thus, then, antecedently more probable, than in any imaginable

beginning from which reason can start, Something should be found

existent, rather than Nothing. This is the first probability.

Next; of what nature and extent is this Something, this Being, likely to

be?--There will be either one such being, or many: if many, the many

either sprang from the one, or the mass are all self-existent; in the

former case, there would be a creation and a God: in the latter, there

would be many Gods. Is the latter antecedently more probable?--let us

see. First, it is evident that if many are probable, few are more

probable, and one most probable of all. The more possible gods you take

away, the more do impediments diminish; until, that is to say, you

arrive at that One Being, whom we have already proved probable.

Moreover, many must be absolutely united as one; in which case the many

is a gratuitous difficulty, because they may as well be regarded for all

purposes of worship or argument as one God: or the many must have been

in essence more or less disunited; in which case, as a state of any

thing short of pure concord carries in itself the seeds of dissolution,

needs must that one or other of the many (long before any possible

beginnings, as we count beginnings, looking down the past vista of

eternity), would have taken opportunity by such disturbing causes to

become absolute monarch: whether by peaceful persuasion, or hostile

compulsion, or other mode of absorbing disunions, would be indifferent;

if they were not all improbable, as unworthy of the God. Perpetuity of

discord is a thing impossible; every thing short of unity tends to

decomposition. Any how then, given the element of eternity to work in,

a one great Supreme Being was, in the created beginning, an _à priori_

probability. That all other assumptions than that of His true and

eternal Oneness are as false in themselves as they are derogatory to the

rational views of deity, we all now see and believe; but the direct

proofs of this are more strictly matters of revelation than of reason:

albeit reason too can discern their probabilities. Wise heathens, such

as Socrates and Cicero, who had not our light, arrived nevertheless at

some of this perception; and thus, through conscience and intelligence,

became a law unto themselves: because that, to them, as now to any one

of us who may not yet have seen the light, the anterior likelihood

existed for only one God, rather than more; a likelihood which prepares

the mind to take as a fundamental truth, "The Lord our God is one

Jehovah."

Next; Self-existence combined with unity must include the probable

attribute, or character, Ubiquity; as I now proceed to show. On the same

principle as that by which we have seen Something to be likelier than

Nothing, we conclude that the same Something is more probable to be

every where, than the same Nothing (if the phrase were not absurd), to

be any where: we may, so to speak, divide infinity into spaces, and

prove the position in each instance: moreover, as that Something is

essentially--not a unit as of many, but--unity involving all, it follows

as most probable that this Whole Being should be ubiquitous; in other

parlance, that the one God should be every where at once: also, there

being no limit to what we call Space, nor any imaginable hostile power

to place a constraint upon the One Great Being, this Whole Being must be

ubiquitous to a degree strictly infinite: "HE is in every place,

beholding the evil and the good."

Such a consideration (and it is a perfectly true one) renders necessary

the next point, to wit, that God is a Spirit. No possible substance can

be every where at once: essence may, but not substance. Corporeity in

any shape must be local; local is finite; and we have just proved the

anterior probability of a One great Existence being (notwithstanding

unity of essence) infinite. Illocal and infinite are convertible terms:

spirit is illocal; and, as God is infinite--that is, illocal--it is

clear that "God is a Spirit."

We have thus (not attempting to build up faith by such slight tools, but

only using them to cut away prejudice) arrived at the high probability

of a God invested with His natural qualities or attributes;

Self-existence, Unity, the faculty of being every where at once and that

every where Infinitude; and essentially of a Spiritual nature, not

material. His moral, or accidental attributes (so to speak), were,

antecedently to their expression, equally easy of being proved

probable. First, with respect to Power: given no disturbing cause--(we

shall soon consider the question of permitted evil, and its origin; but

this, however disturbing to creatures, will be found not only none to

God, but, as it were, only a ray of His glory suffered to be broken for

prismatic beauty's sake, a flash of the direction of His energies

suffered to be diverted for the superior triumph of good in that day

when it shall be shown that "God hath made all things for himself, yea,

even the wicked for the time of visitation")--with the _datum_ then of

no disturbing cause obstructing or opposing, an infinite being must be

able to do all things within the sphere of such infinity: in other

phrase, He must be all-powerful. Just so, an impetus in vacuity suffers

no check, but ever sails along among the fleet of worlds; and the innate

Impulse of the Deity must expand and energize throughout that

infinitude, Himself. For a like reason of ubiquity, God must know all

things: it is impossible to escape from the strong likelihood that any

intelligent being must be conversant of what is going on under his very

eye. Again; in the case both of Power and Knowledge, alike with the

coming attributes of Goodness and Wisdom--(wisdom considered as morally

distinct from mere knowledge or awaredness; it being quite possible to

conceive a cold eye seeing all things heedlessly, and a clear mind

knowing all things heartlessly)--in the case, I say, of all these

accidental attributes, there recurs for argument, one analogous to that

by which we showed the anterior probability of a self-existence. Things

positive must precede things negative. Sight must have been, before

blindness is possible; and before we can arrive at a just idea of no

sight. Power must be precursor to an abstraction from power, or

weakness. The minor-existence of ignorance is an impossibility, unless

you prëallow the major-existence of wisdom; for it amounts to a debasing

or a diminution of wisdom. Sin is well defined to be, the transgression

of law; for without law, there can be no sin. So, also, without wisdom,

there can be no ignorance; without power, there can be no weakness;

without goodness, there can be no evil.

Furthermore. An affirmative--such as wisdom, power, goodness--can exist

absolutely; it is in the nature of a Something: but a negative--such as

ignorance, weakness, evil--can only exist relatively; and it would,

indeed, be a Nothing, were it not for the previous and now simultaneous

existence of its wiser, stronger, and better origin. Abstract evil is as

demonstrably an impossibility as abstract ignorance, or abstract

weakness. If evil could have self-existed, it would in the moment of its

eternal birth have demolished itself. Virtue's intrinsic concord tends

to perpetual being: vice's innate discord struggles always with a force

towards dissolution. Goodness, wisdom, power have existences, and have

had existences from all eternity, though gulphed within the Godhead; and

that, whether evidenced in act or not: but their corruptions have had no

such original existence, but are only the same entities perverted. Love

would be love still, though there were no existent object for its

exercise: Beauty would be beauty still, though there were no created

thing to illustrate its fairness: Power would be power still, though

there be no foe to combat, no difficulty to be overcome. Hatred,

ill-favour, weakness, are only perversions or diminutions of these.

Power exists independently of muscles or swords or screws or levers;

love, independently of kind thoughts, words, and actions; beauty,

independently of colours, shapes, and adaptations. Just so is Wisdom

philosophically spoken of by a truly royal and noble author:

"I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and find out the knowledge of clever

inventions. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom; I am understanding; I

have strength. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before

his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or

ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth;

before the mountains were fixed, or the hills were made. When He

prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass upon the face

of the depth; when he established the clouds above; when he strengthened

the foundations of the deep: Then was I by him, as one brought up with

him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing

in the habitable parts of his earth; and my delights were with the sons

of men."

King Solomon well knew of Whom he wrote thus nobly. Eternal wisdom,

power, and goodness, all prospectively thus yearning upon man, and

incorporate in One, whose name, among his many names, is Wisdom. Wisdom,

as a quality, existed with God; and, constituting full pervasion of his

essence, was God.

But to return, and bind to a conclusion our ravelled thoughts. As,

originally, the self-existent being, unbounded, all-knowing, might take

up, so to speak, if He willed, these eternal affirmative excellences of

wisdom, power, and goodness; and as these, to every rational

apprehension, are highly worthy of his choice, whereas their derivative

and inferior corruptions would have been most derogatory to any

reasonable estimate of His character; how much more likely was it that

He should prefer the higher rather than the lower, should take the

affirmative before the negative, should "choose the good, and refuse the

evil,"--than endure to be endowed with such garbled, demoralizing,

finite attributes as those wherewith the heathen painted the Pantheon.

What high antecedent probability was there, that if a God should be (and

this we have proved highly probable too)--He should be One, ubiquitous,

self-existent, spiritual: that He should be all-mighty, all-wise, and

all-good?

THE TRIUNITY.

Another deep and inscrutable topic is now to engage our thoughts--the

mystery of a probable Triunity. While we touch on such high themes, the

Christian's presumption ever is, that he himself approaches them with

reverence and prayer; and that, in the case of an unbeliever, any such

mind will be courteous enough to his friendly opponent, and wise enough

respecting his own interest and safety lest these things be true, to

enter upon all such subjects with the seriousness befitting their

importance, and with the restraining thought that in fact they may be

sacred.

Let us then consider, antecedently to all experience, with what sort of

deity pure reason would have been satisfied. It has already arrived at

Unity, and the foregoing attributes. But what kind of Unity is probable?

Unity of Person, or unity of Essence? A sterile solitariness, easily

understandable, and presumably incommunicative? or an absolute oneness,

which yet relatively involves several mysterious phases of its own

expansive love? Will you think it a foregone conclusion, if I assert the

superior likelihoods of the latter, and not of the former? Let us come

then to a few of many reasons. First: it was by no means probable to be

supposed anteriorly, that the God should be clearly comprehensible: yet

he must be one: and oneness is the idea most easily apprehended of all

possible ideas. The meanest of intellectual creatures could comprehend

his Maker, and in so far top his heights, if God, being truly one in one

view, were yet only one in every view: if, that is to say, there existed

no mystery incidental to his nature: nay, if that mystery did not

amount to the difficulty of a seeming contradiction. I judge it likely,

and with confidence, that Reason would prërequire for his God, a Being,

at once infinitely easy to be apprehended by the lowest of His spiritual

children, and infinitely difficult to be comprehended by the highest of

His seraphim. Now, there can be guessed only two ways of compassing such

a prërequirement: one, a moral way; such as inventing a deity who could

be at once just and unjust, every where and no where, good and evil,

powerful and weak; this is the heathen phase of Numen's character, and

is obviously most objectionable in every point of view: the other would

be a physical way; such as requiring a God who should be at once

material and immaterial, abstraction and concretion; or, for a still

more confounding paradox to Reason (considered as antagonist to Faith,

in lieu of being strictly its ally), an arithmetical contradiction, an

algebraic mystery, such as would be included in the idea of Composite

Unity; one involving many, and many collapsed into one. Some such enigma

was probable in Reason's guess at the nature of his God. It is the

Christian way; and one entirely unobjectionable: because it is the only

insuperable difficulty as to His Nature which does not debase the notion

of Divinity. But there are also other considerations.

For, secondly. The self-existent One is endowed, as we found probable,

with abundant loving-kindness, goodness overflowing and perpetual. Is it

reasonable to conceive that such a character could for a moment be

satisfied with absolute solitariness? that infinite benevolence should,

in any possible beginning, be discovered existent in a sort of selfish

only-oneness? Such a supposition is, to the eye of even unenlightened

Reason, so clearly a _reductio ad absurdum_, that men in all countries

and ages have been driven to invent a plurality of Gods, for very

society sake: and I know not but that they are anteriorly wiser and more

rational than the man who believes in a Benevolent Existence eternally

one, and no otherwise than one. Let me not be mistaken to imply that

there was any likelihood of many cöexistent gods: that was a reasonable

improbability, as we have already seen, perhaps a spiritual

impossibility: but the anterior likelihood of which I speak goes to

show, that in One God there should be more than one cöexistence: each,

by arithmetical mystery, but not absurdity, pervading all, cöequals,

each being God, and yet not three Gods, but one God. That there should

be a rational difficulty here--or, rather, an irrational one--I have

shown to be Reason's prërequirement: and if such a one as I, or any

other creature, could now and here (ay, or any when or any where, in

the heights of highest heaven, and the far-stretching distance of

eternity) solve such intrinsic difficulty, it would demonstrably be one

not worthy of its source, the wise design of God: it would prove that

riddle read, which uncreate omniscience propounded for the baffling of

the creature mind. No. It is far more reasonable, as well as far more

reverent, to acquiesce in Mystery, as another attribute inseparable from

the nature of the Godhead; than to quibble about numerical puzzles, and

indulge unwisely in objections which it is the happy state of nobler

intelligences than man on earth is, to look into with desire, and to

exercise withal their keen and lofty minds.

But we have not yet done. Some further thoughts remain to be thrown out

in the third place, as to the prëconceivable fitness or propriety of

that Holy Union, which we call the trinity of Persons who constitute the

Self-existent One. If God, being one in one sense, is yet likely to

appear, humanly speaking, more than one in another sense; we have to

inquire anteriorly of the probable nature of such other intimate Being

or Beings: as also, whether such addition to essential oneness is likely

itself to be more than one or only one. As to the former of these

questions: if, according to the presumption of reason (and according

also to what we have since learned from revelation; but there may be

good policy in not dotting this book with chapter and verse)--if the

Deity thus loved to multiply Himself; then He, to whom there can exist

no beginning, must have so loved, so determined, and so done from all

eternity. Now, any conceivable creation, however originated, must have

had a beginning, place it as far back as you will. In any succession of

numbers, however infinitely they may stretch, the commencement at least

is a fixed point, one. But, this multiplication of

Deity, this complex simplicity, this intricate easiness, this obvious

paradox, this sub-division and con-addition of a One, must have taken

place, so soon as ever eternal benevolence found itself alone; that is,

in eternity, and not in any imaginable time. So then, the Being or

Beings would probably not have been creative, but of the essence of

Deity. Take also for an additional argument, that it is an idea which

detracts from every just estimate of the infinite and all-wise God to

suppose He should take creatures into his eternal counsels, or consort,

so to speak, familiarly with other than the united sub-divisions,

persons, and cöequals of Himself. It was reasonable to prëjudge that the

everlasting companions of Benevolent God, should also be God. And thus,

it appears antecedently probable that (what from the poverty of

language we must call) the multiplication of the one God should not have

been created beings; that is, should have been divine; a term, which

includes, as of right, the attribution to each such Holy Person, of all

the wondrous characteristics of the Godhead.

Again: as to the latter question; was it probable that such so-called

sub-divisions should be two, or three, or how many? I do not think it

will be wise to insist upon any such arithmetical curiosity as a perfect

number; nor on such a toy as an equilateral triangle and its properties;

nor on the peculiar aptitude for sub-division in every thing, to be

discerned in a beginning, a middle, and an end; nor in the consideration

that every fact had a cause, is a constancy, and produces a consequence:

neither, to draw any inferences from the social maxim that for counsel,

companionship, and conversation, the number three has some special

fitness. Some other similar fancies, not altogether valueless, might be

alluded to. It seems preferable, however, on so grand a theme, to

attempt a deeper dive, and a higher flight. We would then, reverently as

always, albeit equally as always with the free-born boldness of God's

intellectual children, attempt to prëjudge how many, and with what

distinctive marks, the holy beings into whom (Greek: ôst epos eipein)

God, for very Benevolence sake, pours out Essential Unity, were likely

to be.

Let us consider what principles, as in the case of a forthcoming

creation, would probably be found in action, to influence such

creation's Author.

First of all, there would be Will, a will energized by love, disposing

to create: a phase of Deity aptly and comprehensively typified to all

minds by the name of a universal Father: this would be the primary

impersonation of God. And is it not so?

Secondly: there would be (with especial reference to that idea of

creation which doubtless at most remote beginnings occupied the Good

One's contemplation), there would be next, I repeat, in remarkable

adaptation to all such benevolent views, the great idea of principle,

Obedience; conforming to a Father's righteous laws, acquiescing in his

just will, and returning love for love: such a phase could not be better

shadowed out to creatures than by an Eternal Son; the dutiful yet

supreme, the subordinate yet cöequal, the amiable yet exalted Avatar of

our God. This was probable to have been the second impersonation of

Deity. And is it not so?

Thirdly: Springing from the conjoint ideas of the Father and the Son,

and with similar prospection to such instantly creative universe, there

would occur the grand idea of Generation; the mighty cöequal, pure, and

quickening Impulse: aptly announced to men and angels as the Holy

Spirit. This was to have been the third impersonation of Divinity. And

is it not so?

Of all these--under illumination of the fore-known fact, I speak, in

their aspect of anterior probability. With respect to more possible

Persons, I at least cannot invent one. There is, to my reflection,

neither need nor fitness for a fourth, or any further Principle. If

another can, let him look well that he be not irrationally demolishing

an attribute and setting it up as a principle. Obedience is not an

attribute; nor Generation; nor Will: whilst the attribute of Love,

pervading all, sets these only possible three Principles going together

as One in a mysterious harmony. I would not be misunderstood; persons

are not principles; but principles may be illustrated and incorporative

in persons. Essential Love, working distinctively throughout the Three,

unites them instinctively as One: even as the attribute Wisdom designs,

and the attribute Power arranges all the scheme of Godhead.

And now I ask Reason, whether, prësupposing keenness, he might not have

arrived by calculation of probabilities at the likelihood of these great

doctrines: that the nature of God would be an apparent contradiction:

that such contradiction should not be moral, but physical; or rather

verging towards the metaphysical, as immaterial and more profound: that

God, being One, should yet, in his great Love, marvellously have been

companioned from eternity by Himself: and that such Holy and United

Confraternity should be so wisely contrived as to serve for the bright

unapproachable exemplar of love, obedience, and generation to all the

future universe, such Triunity Itself existing uncreated.

THE GODHEAD VISIBLE.

We have hitherto mused on the Divinity, as on Spirit invested with

attributes: and this idea of His nature was enough for all requirements

antecedently to a creation. At whatever beginning we may suppose such

creation to have commenced, whether countless ages before our present

[Greek: kosmos], or only a sufficient time to have prepared the crust of

earth; and to whatever extent we may imagine creation to have spread,

whether in those remote periods originally to our system alone and at

after eras to its accompanying stars and galaxies and firmaments; or at

one and the same moment to have poured material existence over space to

which our heavens are as nothing: whatever, and whenever, and wherever

creation took place, it would appear to be probable that some one person

of the Deity should, in a sort, become more or less concretely

manifested; that is, in a greater or a minor degree to such created

minds and senses visible. Moreover, for purposes at least of a

concentrated worship of such creatures, that He should occasionally, or

perhaps habitually, appear local. I mean, that the King of all spiritual

potentates and the subordinate Excellencies of brighter worlds than

ours, the Sovereign of those whom we call angels, should will to be

better known to and more aptly conceived by such His admiring creatures,

in some usual glorious form, and some wonted sacred place. Not that any

should see God, as purely God; but, as God relatively to them, in the

capacity of King, Creator, and the Object of all reasonable worship. It

seems anteriorly probable that one at least of the Persons in the

Godhead should for this purpose assume a visibility; and should hold His

court of adoration in some central world, such as now we call

indefinitely Heaven. That such probability did exist in the human

forecast, as concerns a heaven and the form of God, let the testimony of

all nations now be admitted to corroborate. Every shape from a cloud to

a crocodile, and every place from Æther to Tartarus, have been peopled

by man's not quite irrational device with their so-called gods. But we

must not lapse into the after-argument: previous likelihood is our

harder theme. Neither, in this section, will we attempt the

probabilities of the place of heaven: that will be found at a more

distant page. We have here to speak of the antecedent credibility that

there should be some visible phase of God; and of the shape wherein he

would be most likely, as soon as a creation was, to appear to such his

creatures. With respect, then, to the former. Creatures, being finite,

can only comprehend the infinite in his attribute of unity: the other

attributes being apprehended (or comprehended partially) in finite

phases. But, unity being a purely intellectual thought, one high and dry

beyond the moral feelings, involves none of the requisites of a

spiritual, that is an affectionate, worship; such worship as it was

likely that a beneficent Being would, for his creatures' own elevation

in happiness, command and inspire towards Himself. In order, therefore,

to such worship and such inspiration acting through reason, it would

appear fitting that the Deity should manifest Himself especially with

reference to that heavenly Exemplar, the Three Divine Persons of the

One Supreme Essence already shown to have been probable. And it seems

likeliest and discreetest to my thinking, that, with this view, the

secondary phase, loving Obedience, under the dictate of the primary

phase, a loving Will, and energized by the tertiary or conjoining phase

a loving Quickening Entity, should assume the visible type of Godhead,

and thus concentrate unto Himself the worship of all worlds. I can

conceive no scheme more simply profound, more admirably suited to its

complex purposes, than that He, in whom dwelt the fullness of the

Godhead, bodily, should take the form of God, in order that unto Him

every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and

things in regions under the earth. Was not all this reasonably to have

been looked for? and tested afterwards by Scripture, in its frequent

allusions to some visible phase of Deity, when the Lord God walked with

Adam, and Enoch, and Abraham, and Peter, and James, and John--I ask, is

it not the case?

The latter point remaining to be thus briefly touched upon, respects the

probable shape to be assumed and worn, familiarly enough to be

recognised as His, by Deity thus vouchsafing Himself visible. And here

we must look down the forward stream of Time, and search among the

creatures whom thereafter God should make, to arrive at some good reason

for, some antecedent probability of, the form which he should thus

frequently inhabit. Fire, for example, a pure and spirit-like nature,

would not have been a guess unworthy of reason: but this, besides its

humbler economic uses, would endanger an idolatry of the natural emblem.

So also would light be no irrational thought. And it is true that God

might, and probably would, invest Himself in one or both of these pure

essences, so seemingly congenial to a nature higher than ours: but then

there would be some nucleus to the brilliancy and the burning; these

would be as a veil to the Divinity; we should have need, before He were

truly visible, that the veil were laid aside: we should have to shred

away to the nucleus, which (and not the fire or light) would be the form

of God. Similar objections, in themselves or in their idolatrizing

tendencies, would lie against any such shape as a cloud, or a rainbow,

or an angel (whatever such a being may resemble), or in fact any other

conceivable creature, whether good as the angelic case or indifferent as

that of the cloud, which the Deity, though assuming often, would

nevertheless in every instance assume in conjunction with such his

ordinary creature, and could not entirely monopolize. I mean; if God had

the shape of a cloud, or of a rainbow, common clouds and rainbows would

come to be thought gods too. Reason would anticipate this objection to

such created and too-favoured shapes: more; in every case, but one, he

would be quite at a loss to look for some type, clearly apt and

probable. That one case he might discern to be this. Known unto God are

all things from the beginning to the end: and, in His fore-knowledge,

Reason might have been enlightened to prophesy (as we shall hereafter

see) that for certain wise and good ends one great family out of the

myriads who rejoice in being called God's children, would in a most

marked manner fall away from Him through disobedience; and should

thereby earn, if not the annihilation of their being, at least its

endless separation from the Blessed. Manifestly, the wisdom and

benevolence of God would be eager and swift to devise a plan for the

redemption of so lost a race. Why He should permit their fall at all

will be reverentially descanted on in its proper section; meanwhile, how

is it probable that God, first, by any theory consistently with truth

and justice, could, and next by power and contrivance actually would,

lift up again this sinful family from the pit of condemnation? Reason is

to search the question well: and after much thought, you will arrive at

the truth that there was but one way probable. Rebellion against the

Great and Self-existent Author of all things, must needfully involve

infinite punishment; if only because He is infinite, and his laws of an

eternal sanction. The problem then was, how to inflict the unbounded

punishment thus claimed by justice for a transgressional condition, and

yet at love's demand to set the prisoner free: how to be just, and

simultaneously justifier of the guilty. That was a question

magnificently solved by God alone: magnificently about to be solved, as

according to our argument seemed probable, by God Triune, in wondrous

self-involving council. The solution would be rationally this. Himself,

in his character of filial obedience, should pay the utter penalty to

Himself in his character of paternal authority, whilst Himself in the

character of quickening spirit, should restore the ransomed family from

death to life, from the power of evil unto good. Was not this a most

probable, a most reasonably probable scheme? was it not altogether wise

and philosophical, as well as entirely generous and kind to wretched

men?