Principles of the Kantesian, or transcendental philosophy. By Thomas
Wirgman.[590] London, 1824, 8vo.
Mr. Wirgman's mind was somewhat attuned to psychology; but he was cracky
and vagarious. He had been a fashionable jeweler in St. James's Street, no
doubt the son or grandson of Wirgman at "the well-known toy-shop in {259}
St. James's Street," where Sam Johnson smartened himself with silver
buckles. (Boswell, _aet._ 69). He would not have the ridiculous large ones
in fashion; and he would give no more than a guinea a pair; such, says
Boswell, in Italics, were the _principles_ of the business: and I think
this may be the first place in which the philosophical word was brought
down from heaven to mix with men. However this may be, _my_ Wirgman sold
snuff-boxes, among other things, and fifty years ago a fashionable
snuff-boxer would be under inducement, if not positively obliged, to have a
stock with very objectionable pictures. So it happened that Wirgman--by
reason of a trifle too much candor--came under the notice of the
_Suppression_ Society, and ran considerable risk. Mr. Brougham was his
counsel; and managed to get him acquitted. Years and years after this, when
Mr. Brougham was deep in the formation of the London University (now
University College), Mr. Wirgman called on him. "What now?" said Mr. B.
with his most sarcastic look--a very perfect thing of its kind--"you're in
a scrape again, I suppose!" "No! indeed!" said W., "my present object is to
ask your interest for the chair of Moral Philosophy in the new University!"
He had taken up Kant!
Mr. Wirgman, an itinerant paradoxer, called on me in 1831: he came to
convert me. "I assure you," said he, "I am nothing but an old brute of a
jeweler;" and his eye and manner were of the extreme of jocosity, as good
in their way, as the satire of his former counsel. I mention him as one of
that class who go away quite satisfied that they have wrought conviction.
"Now," said he, "I'll make it clear to you! Suppose a number of gold-fishes
in a glass bowl,--you understand? Well! I come with my cigar and go puff,
puff, puff, over the bowl, until there is a little cloud of smoke: now,
tell me, what will the gold-fishes say to that?" "I should imagine," said
I, "That they would not know what to make of it." "By Jove! you're a
Kantian;" said he, and with this and the like, he left me, vowing that
{260} it was delightful to talk to so intelligent a person. The greatest
compliment Wirgman ever received was from James Mill, who used to say he
did not _understand_ Kant. That such a man as Mill should think this worth
saying is a feather in the cap of the jocose jeweler.
Some of my readers will stare at my supposing that Boswell may have been
the first down-bringer of the word _principles_ into common life; the best
answer will be a prior instance of the word as true vernacular; it has
never happened to me to notice one. Many words have very common uses which
are not old. Take the following from Nichols (_Anecd._ ix. 263): "Lord
Thurlow presents his best respects to Mr. and Mrs. Thicknesse, and assures
them that he knows of no cause to complain of any part of Mr. Thicknesse's
carriage; least of all the circumstance of sending the head to Ormond
Street." Surely Mr. T. had lent Lord T. a satisfactory carriage with a
movable head, and the above is a polite answer to inquiries. Not a bit of
it! _carriage_ is here _conduct_, and the _head_ is a _bust_. The vehicles
of the rich, at the time, were coaches, chariots, chaises, etc., never
carriages, which were rather _carts_. Gibbon has the word for
baggage-wagons. In Jane Austen's novels the word carriage is established.