an Edinburgh shopkeeper. He died at thirty-nine; and when he died,
from all sides of the usually cold House of Commons great statesmen
and thorough gentlemen got up to deplore his loss. Tears are rarely
parliamentary: all men are arid towards young Scotchmen; yet it was one
of that inclement nation whom statesmen of the species Castlereagh, and
statesmen of the species Whitbread—with all the many kinds and species
that lie between the two—rose in succession to lament. The fortunes and
superficial aspect of the man make it more singular. He had no wealth,
was a briefless barrister, never held an office, was a conspicuous member
of the most unpopular of all oppositions—the opposition to a glorious
and successful war. He never had the means of obliging any one. He
was destitute of showy abilities: he had not the intense eloquence or
overwhelming ardour which enthral and captivate popular assemblies: his
powers of administration were little tried, and may possibly be slightly
questioned. In his youthful reading he was remarkable for laying down,
for a few months of study, enormous plans, such as many years would
scarcely complete; and not especially remarkable for doing anything
wonderful towards accomplishing those plans. Sir Walter Scott, who,
though not illiberal in his essential intellect, was a keen partisan on
superficial matters, and no lenient critic on actual Edinburgh Whigs,
used to observe, ‘I cannot admire your Horner; he always reminds me of
Obadiah’s bull, who, though he never certainly did produce a calf,
nevertheless went about his business with so much gravity, that he
commanded the respect of the whole parish.’ It is no explanation of the
universal regret, that he was a considerable political economist: no real
English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of
a political economist: he is much more likely to be sorry for his life.
There is an idea that he has something to do with statistics; or, if that
be exploded, that he is a person who writes upon ‘value:’ says that rent
is—you cannot very well make out what; talks excruciating currency; he
may be useful as drying machines are useful;[20] but the notion of crying
about him is absurd. The economical loss might be great, but it will not
explain the mourning for Francis Horner.
The fact is that Horner is a striking example of the advantage of keeping
an atmosphere. This may sound like nonsense, and yet it is true. There
is around some men a kind of circle or halo of influences, and traits,
and associations, by which they infallibly leave a distinct and uniform
impression on all their contemporaries. It is very difficult, even for
those who have the best opportunities, to analyse exactly what this
impression consists in, or why it was made—but it _is_ made. There is a
certain undefinable keeping in the traits and manner, and common speech
and characteristic actions of some men, which inevitably stamps the same
mark and image. It is like a man’s style. There are some writers who can
be known by a few words of their writing; each syllable is instinct with
a certain spirit: put it into the hands of any one chosen at random,
the same impression will be produced by the same casual and felicitous
means. Just so in character, the air and atmosphere, so to speak, which
are around a man, have a delicate and expressive power, and leave a
stamp of unity on the interpretative faculty of mankind. Death dissolves
this association, and it becomes a problem for posterity what it was
that contemporaries observed and reverenced. There is Lord Somers. Does
any one know why he had such a reputation? He was Lord Chancellor, and
decided a Bank case, and had an influence in the Cabinet; but there have
been Lord Chancellors, and Bank cases, and influential Cabinet ministers
not a few, that have never attained to a like reputation. There is
little we can connect specifically with his name. Lord Macaulay, indeed,
says that he spoke for five minutes on the Bishops’ trial; and that
when he sat down, his reputation as an orator and constitutional lawyer
was established. But this must be a trifle eloquent; hardly any orator
could be fast enough to attain such a reputation in five minutes. The
truth is, that Lord Somers had around him that inexpressible attraction
and influence of which we speak. He left a sure, and if we may trust
the historian, even a momentary impression on those who saw him. By a
species of tact they felt him to be a great man. The ethical sense—for
there is almost such a thing in simple persons—discriminated the fine
and placid oneness of his nature. It was the same on a smaller scale
with Horner. After he had left Edinburgh several years, his closest and
most confidential associate writes to him:—‘There is no circumstance
in your life, my dear Horner, so enviable as the universal confidence
which your conduct has produced among all descriptions of men. I do not
speak of your friends, who have been near and close observers; but I
have had some occasions of observing the impression which those who are
distant spectators have had, and I believe there are few instances of any
person of your age possessing the same character for independence and
integrity, qualities for which very little credit is given in general to
young men.’[21] Sydney Smith said, ‘the Ten Commandments were written
on his countenance.’ Of course he was a very ugly man, but the moral
impression in fact conveyed was equally efficacious; ‘I have often,’ said
the same most just observer, ‘told him, that there was not a crime he
might not commit with impunity, as no judge or jury who saw him would
give the smallest credit to any evidence against him. There was in his
look a calm settled love of all that was honourable and good—an air of
wisdom and of sweetness. You saw at once that he was a great man, whom
nature had intended for a leader of human beings; you ranged yourself
willingly under his banners, and cheerfully submitted to his sway.’ From
the somewhat lengthened description of what we defined as the essential
Whig character, it is evident how agreeable and suitable such a man was
to their quiet, composed, and aristocratic nature. His tone was agreeable
to English gentlemen: a firm and placid manliness, without effort or
pretension, is what they like best; and therefore it was that the House
of Commons grieved for his loss—unanimously and without distinction.
Some friends of Horner’s, in his own time, mildly criticised him for a
tendency to party spirit. The disease in him, if real, was by no means
virulent; but it is worth noticing as one of the defects to which the
proper Whig character is specially prone. It is evident in the quiet
agreement of the men. Their composed, unimaginative nature is inclined
to isolate itself in a single view; their placid disposition, never
prone to self-distrust, is rather susceptible of friendly influence;
their practical habit is concentrated on what should be done. They do
not wish—they do not like to go forth into various speculation; to put
themselves in the position of opponents; to weigh in a refining scale the
special weight of small objections. Their fancy is hardly vivid enough
to explain to them all the characters of those whom they oppose; their
intellect scarcely detective enough to discover a meaning for each grain
in opposing arguments. Nor is their temper, it may be, always prone to be
patient with propositions which tease, and persons who resist them. The
wish to call down fire from heaven is rarely absent in pure zeal for a
pure cause.
A good deal of praise has naturally been bestowed upon the Whigs for
adopting such a man as Horner, with Romilly and others of that time; and
much excellent eulogy has been expended on the close boroughs, which
afforded to the Whig leaders a useful mode of showing their favour.
Certainly the character of Horner was one altogether calculated to
ingratiate itself with the best and most special Whig nature. But as
for the eulogy on the proprietary seats in Parliament, it is certain
that from the position of the Whig party, the nomination system was
then most likely to show its excellences, and to conceal its defects.
Nobody but an honest man would bind himself thoroughly to the Whigs. It
was evident that the reign of Lord Eldon must be long; the heavy and
common Englishman (after all, the most steady and powerful force in
our political constitution) had been told that Lord Grey was in favour
of the ‘Papists,’ and liked Bonaparte; and the consequence was a long,
painful, arduous exile on ‘the other side of the table,’—the last place
any political adventurer would wish to arrive at. Those who have no
bribes will never charm the corrupt; those who have nothing to give will
not please those who desire that much shall be given them. There is an
observation of Niel Blane, the innkeeper, in ‘Old Mortality.’ ‘“And
what are we to eat ourselves, then, father,” asked Jenny, “when we hae
sent awa the haile meal in the ark and the girnel?” “We maun gaur wheat
flour serve us for a blink,” said Niel, with an air of resignation. “It
is not that ill food, though far frae being sae hearty and kindly to a
Scotchman’s stomach as the curney aitmeal is: the Englishers live amaist
upon it,”’ &c. It was so with the Whigs; they were obliged to put up with
honest and virtuous men, and they wanted able men to carry on a keen
opposition; and after all, they and the ‘Englishers’ like such men best.
In another point of view, too, Horner’s life was characteristic of those
times. It might seem, at first sight, odd that the English Whigs should
go to Scotland to find a literary representative. There was no place
where Toryism was so intense. The constitution of Scotland at that time
has been described as the worst constitution in Europe. The nature of
the representation made the entire country a government borough. In the
towns, the franchise belonged to a close and self-electing corporation,
who were always carefully watched: the county representation, anciently
resting on a property qualification, had become vested in a few
titular freeholders, something like lords of the manor, only that
they might have no manor; and these, even with the addition of the
borough freeholders, did not amount to three thousand. The whole were
in the hands of Lord Eldon’s party, and the entire force, influence,
and patronage of Government were spent to maintain and keep it so. By
inevitable consequence, Liberalism, even of the most moderate kind, was
thought almost a criminal offence. The mild Horner was considered a man
of ‘very violent opinions.’ Jeffrey’s father, a careful and discerning
parent, was so anxious to shield him from the intellectual taint, as to
forbid his attendance at Stewart’s lectures. This seems an odd place to
find the eruption of a liberal review. Of course the necessary effect
of a close and common-place tyranny was to engender a strong reaction
in searching and vigorous minds. The Liberals of the north, though far
fewer, may perhaps have been stronger Liberals than those of the south;
but this will hardly explain the phenomenon. The reason is an academical
one; the teaching of Scotland seems to have been designed to teach men
to write essays and articles. There are two kinds of education, into
all the details of which it is not now pleasant to go, but which may be
adequately described as the education of facts, and the education of
speculation. The system of facts is the English system. The strength of
the pedagogue and the agony of the pupil are designed to engender a good
knowledge of two languages; in the old times, a little arithmetic; now
also a knowledge, more or less, of mathematics and mathematical physics.
The positive tastes and tendencies of the English mind confine its
training to ascertained learning and definite science. In Scotland the
case has long been different. The time of a man like Horner was taken
up with speculations like these: ‘I have long been feeding my ambition
with the prospect of accomplishing, at some future period of my life, a
work similar to that which Sir Francis Bacon executed about two hundred
years ago. It will depend on the sweep and turn of my speculations,
whether they shall be thrown into the form of a discursive commentary
on the “Instauratio Magna” of that great author, or shall be entitled
to an original form, under the title of a “View of the Limits of Human
Knowledge and a System of the Principles of Philosophical Inquiry.” I
shall say nothing at present of the audacity,’ &c. &c. And this sort
of planning, which is the staple of his youthful biography, was really
accompanied by much application to metaphysics, history, political
economy, and such like studies. It is not at all to our present purpose
to compare this speculative and indeterminate kind of study with the
rigorous accurate education of England. The fault of the former is
sometimes to produce a sort of lecturer _in vacuo_, ignorant of exact
pursuits, and diffusive of vague words. The English now and then produce
a learned creature like a thistle, prickly with all facts, and incapable
of all fruit. But passing by this general question, it cannot be doubted
that, as a preparation for the writing of various articles, the system of
Edinburgh is enormously superior to that of Cambridge. The particular,
compact, exclusive learning of England is inferior in this respect to
the general, diversified, omnipresent information of the North; and
what is more, the speculative, dubious nature of metaphysical and such
like pursuits tends, in a really strong mind, to cultivate habits of
independent thought and original discussion. A bold mind so trained will
even _wish_ to advance its peculiar ideas, on its own account, in a
written and special form; that is, as we said, to write an article. Such
are the excellences in this respect of the system of which Horner is an
example. The defects tend the same way. It tends, as is said, to make a
man fancy he knows everything. ‘Well then, at least,’ it may be answered,
‘I can write an article on everything.’
The facility and boldness of the habits so produced were curiously
exemplified in Lord Jeffrey. During the first six years of the Edinburgh
Review he wrote as many as seventy-nine articles; in a like period
afterwards he wrote forty. Any one who should expect to find a pure
perfection in these miscellaneous productions, should remember their
bulk. If all his reviews were reprinted, they would be very many. And
all the while he was a busy lawyer, was editor of the Review, did the
business, corrected the proof sheets; and more than all, what one would
have thought a very strong man’s work, actually managed Henry Brougham.
You must not criticise papers like these, rapidly written in the hurry
of life, as you would the painful words of an elaborate sage, slowly and
with anxious awfulness instructing mankind. Some things, a few things,
are for eternity; some, and a good many, are for time. We do not expect
the everlastingness of the Pyramids from the vibratory grandeur of a
Tyburnian mansion.
The truth is, that Lord Jeffrey was something of a Whig critic. We have
hinted, that among the peculiarities of that character, an excessive
partiality for new, arduous, overwhelming, original excellence, was by no
means to be numbered. Their tendency inclining to the quiet footsteps of
custom, they like to trace the exact fulfilment of admitted rules, a just
accordance with the familiar features of ancient merit. But they are most
averse to mysticism. A clear, precise, discriminating intellect shrinks
at once from the symbolic, the unbounded, the indefinite. The misfortune
is that mysticism is true. There certainly are kinds of truth, borne in
as it were instinctively on the human intellect, most influential on
the character and the heart, yet hardly capable of stringent statement,
difficult to limit by an elaborate definition. Their course is shadowy;
the mind seems rather to have seen than to see them, more to feel
after than definitely apprehend them. They commonly involve an infinite
element, which of course cannot be stated precisely, or else a first
principle—an original tendency—of our intellectual constitution, which
it is impossible not to feel, and yet which it is hard to extricate in
terms and words. Of this latter kind is what has been called the religion
of nature, or more exactly, perhaps, the religion of the imagination.
This is an interpretation of the world. According to it the beauty of the
universe has a meaning, its grandeur a soul, its sublimity an expression.
As we gaze on the faces of those whom we love; as we watch the light of
life in the dawning of their eyes, and the play of their features, and
the wildness of their animation; as we trace in changing lineaments a
varying sign; as a charm and a thrill seem to run along the tone of a
voice, to haunt the mind with a mere word; as a tone seems to roam in the
ear; as a trembling fancy hears words that are unspoken; so in nature the
mystical sense finds a motion in the mountain, and a power in the waves,
and a meaning in the long white line of the shore, and a thought in the
blue of heaven, and a gushing soul in the buoyant light, an unbounded
being in the vast void air, and
‘Wakeful watchings in the pointed stars.’
There is a philosophy in this which might be explained, if explaining
were to our purpose. It might be advanced that there are original
sources of expression in the essential grandeur and sublimity of nature,
of an analogous though fainter kind, to those familiar, inexplicable
signs by which we trace in the very face and outward lineaments of
man the existence and working of the mind within. But be this as it
may, it is certain that Mr. Wordsworth preached this kind of religion,
and that Lord Jeffrey did not believe a word of it. His cool, sharp,
collected mind revolted from its mysticism; his detective intelligence
was absorbed in its apparent fallaciousness; his light humour made
sport with the sublimities of the preacher. His love of perspicuity
was vexed by its indefiniteness; the precise philosopher was amazed at
its mystic unintelligibility. Finding a little fault was doubtless not
unpleasant to him. The reviewer’s pen—φόνος ἡρώεσσιν—has seldom been
more poignantly wielded. ‘If,’ he was told, ‘you could be alarmed into
the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my
joke against you’ (Sydney Smith _loquitur_) ‘about the moon. D—n the
solar system—bad light—planets too distant—pestered with comets: feeble
contrivance; could make a better with great ease.’ Yet we do not mean
that in this great literary feud, either of the combatants had all the
right, or gained all the victory. The world has given judgment. Both
Mr. Wordsworth and Lord Jeffrey have received their reward. The one had
his own generation; the laughter of men, the applause of drawing-rooms,
the concurrence of the crowd: the other a succeeding age, the fond
enthusiasm of secret students, the lonely rapture of lonely minds. And
each has received according to his kind. If all cultivated men speak
differently because of the existence of Wordsworth and Coleridge; if
not a thoughtful English book has appeared for forty years, without
some trace for good or evil of their influence; if sermon-writers
subsist upon their thoughts; if ‘sacred poets’ thrive by translating
their weaker portion into the speech of women; if, when all this is
over, some sufficient part of their writing will ever be fitting food
for wild musing and solitary meditation, surely this is because they
possessed the inner nature—‘an intense and glowing mind,’ ‘the vision
and the faculty divine.’ But if, perchance, in their weaker moments, the
great authors of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ did ever imagine that the world
was to pause because of their verses: that Peter Bell would be popular
in drawing-rooms; that Christabel would be perused in the City; that
people of fashion would make a hand-book of the Excursion,—it was well
for them to be told at once that this was not so. Nature ingeniously
prepared a shrill artificial voice, which spoke in season and out of
season, enough and more than enough, what will ever be the idea of the
cities of the plain concerning those who live alone among the mountains;
of the frivolous concerning the grave; of the gregarious concerning the
recluse; of those who laugh concerning those who laugh not; of the common
concerning the uncommon; of those who lend on usury concerning those who
lend not; the notion of the world of those whom it will not reckon among
the righteous—it said,[22] ‘This won’t do!’ And so in all time will the
lovers of polished Liberalism speak, concerning the intense and lonely
prophet.
Yet, if Lord Jeffrey had the natural infirmities of a Whig critic, he
certainly had also its extrinsic and political advantages. Especially
at Edinburgh the Whigs wanted a literary man. The Liberal party in
Scotland had long groaned under political exclusion; they had suffered,
with acute mortification, the heavy sway of Henry Dundas, but they had
been compensated by a literary supremacy; in the book-world they enjoyed
a domination. On a sudden this was rudely threatened. The fame of Sir
Walter Scott was echoed from the southern world, and appealed to every
national sentiment—to the inmost heart of every Scotchman. And what a
ruler! a lame Tory, a jocose Jacobite, a laugher at Liberalism, a scoffer
at metaphysics, an unbeliever in political economy! What a gothic ruler
for the modern Athens;—was this man to reign over them? It would not have
been like human nature, if a strong and intellectual party had not soon
found a clever and noticeable rival. Poets, indeed, are not made ‘to
order;’ but Byron, speaking the sentiment of his time and circle, counted
reviewers their equals. If a Tory produced ‘Marmion,’ a Whig wrote the
best article upon it; Scott might, so ran Liberal speech, be the best
living writer of fiction; Jeffrey, clearly, was the most shrewd and
accomplished of literary critics.
And though this was an absurd delusion, Lord Jeffrey was no every-day
man. He invented the trade of editorship. Before him an editor was a
bookseller’s drudge; he is now a distinguished functionary. If Jeffrey
was not a great critic, he had, what very great critics have wanted, the
art of writing what most people would think good criticism. He might not
know his subject, but he knew his readers. People like to read ideas
which they can imagine to have been their own. ‘Why does Scarlett always
persuade the jury?’ asked a rustic gentleman. ‘Because there are twelve
Scarletts in the jury-box,’ replied an envious advocate. What Scarlett
was in law, Jeffrey was in criticism; he could become that which his
readers could not avoid being. He was neither a pathetic writer nor
a profound writer; but he was a quick-eyed, bustling, black-haired,
sagacious, agreeable man of the world. He had his day, and was entitled
to his day; but a gentle oblivion must now cover his already subsiding
reputation.
Sydney Smith was an after-dinner writer. His words have a flow, a vigour,
an expression, which is not given to hungry mortals. You seem to read
of good wine, of good cheer, of beaming and buoyant enjoyment. There is
little trace of labour in his composition; it is poured forth like an
unceasing torrent, rejoicing daily to run its course. And what courage
there is in it! There is as much variety of pluck in writing across a
sheet, as in riding across a country. Cautious men have many adverbs,
‘usually,’ ‘nearly,’ ‘almost:’ safe men begin, ‘it may be advanced:’ you
never know precisely what their premises are, nor what their conclusion
is; they go tremulously like a timid rider; they turn hither and thither;
they do not go straight across a subject, like a masterly mind. A few
sentences are enough for a master of sentences. A practical topic wants
rough vigour and strong exposition. This is the writing of ‘Sydney
Smith.’ It is suited to the broader kind of important questions. For
anything requiring fine nicety of speculation, long elaborateness of
deduction, evanescent sharpness of distinction, neither his style nor
his mind was fit. He had no patience for long argument, no acuteness
for delicate precision, no fangs for recondite research. Writers, like
teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders. Sydney Smith was a
‘molar.’ He did not run a long sharp argument into the interior of a
question; he did not, in the common phrase, go deeply into it; but he
kept it steadily under the contact of a strong, capable, heavy, jaw-like
understanding,—pressing its surface, effacing its intricacies, grinding
it down. Yet as we said, this is done without toil. The play of the
‘molar’ is instinctive and placid; he could not help it; it would seem
that he had an enjoyment in it.