Corinnas into courtezans. Thus a refined and permanent individual
attachment is intended to supply the place and avoid the inconveniences
of marriage; but vows of eternal constancy, without church security, are
found to be fragile. A member of the _ideal_ and perfect commonwealth of
letters lends another a hundred pounds for immediate and pressing use;
and when he applies for it again, the borrower has still more need of it
than he, and retains it for his own especial, which is tantamount to the
public good. The Exchequer of pure reason, like that of the State, never
refunds. The political as well as the religious fanatic appeals from
the over-weening opinion and claims of others to the highest and most
impartial tribunal, namely, his own breast. Two persons agree to
live together in Chambers on principles of pure equality and mutual
assistance--but when it comes to the push, one of them finds that the
other always insists on his fetching water from the pump in Hare-court,
and cleaning his shoes for him. A modest assurance was not the least
indispensable virtue in the new perfectibility code; and it was hence
discovered to be a scheme, like other schemes where there are all prizes
and no blanks, for the accommodation of the enterprizing and cunning, at
the expence of the credulous and honest. This broke up the system, and
left no good odour behind it! Reason has become a sort of bye-word, and
philosophy has "fallen first into a fasting, then into a sadness,
then into a decline, and last, into the dissolution of which we all
complain!" This is a worse error than the former: we may be said to have
"lost the immortal part of ourselves, and what remains is beastly!"
The point of view from which this matter may be fairly considered, is
two-fold, and may be stated thus:--In the first place, it by no means
follows, because reason is found not to be the only infallible or safe
rule of conduct, that it is no rule at all; or that we are to discard it
altogether with derision and ignominy. On the contrary, if not the sole,
it is the principal ground of action; it is "the guide, the stay and
anchor of our purest thoughts, and soul of all our moral being." In
proportion as we strengthen and expand this principle, and bring our
affections and subordinate, but perhaps more powerful motives of action
into harmony with it, it will not admit of a doubt that we advance to
the goal of perfection, and answer the ends of our creation, those ends
which not only morality enjoins, but which religion sanctions. If with
the utmost stretch of reason, man cannot (as some seemed inclined to
suppose) soar up to the God, and quit the ground of human frailty, yet,
stripped wholly of it, he sinks at once into the brute. If it cannot
stand alone, in its naked simplicity, but requires other props to
buttress it up, or ornaments to set it off; yet without it the moral
structure would fall flat and dishonoured to the ground. Private reason
is that which raises the individual above his mere animal instincts,
appetites and passions: public reason in its gradual progress separates
the savage from the civilized state. Without the one, men would resemble
wild beasts in their dens; without the other, they would be speedily
converted into hordes of barbarians or banditti. Sir Walter Scott, in
his zeal to restore the spirit of loyalty, of passive obedience and
non-resistance as an acknowledgment for his having been created a
Baronet by a Prince of the House of Brunswick, may think it a fine thing
to return in imagination to the good old times, "when in Auvergne
alone, there were three hundred nobles whose most ordinary actions were
robbery, rape, and murder," when the castle of each Norman baron was
a strong hold from which the lordly proprietor issued to oppress and
plunder the neighbouring districts, and when the Saxon peasantry
were treated by their gay and gallant tyrants as a herd of loathsome
swine--but for our own parts we beg to be excused; we had rather live
in the same age with the author of Waverley and Blackwood's Magazine.
Reason is the meter and alnager in civil intercourse, by which each
person's upstart and contradictory pretensions are weighed and approved
or found wanting, and without which it could not subsist, any more than
traffic or the exchange of commodities could be carried on without
weights and measures. It is the medium of knowledge, and the polisher of
manners, by creating common interests and ideas. Or in the words of a
contemporary writer, "Reason is the queen of the moral world, the soul
of the universe, the lamp of human life, the pillar of society, the
foundation of law, the beacon of nations, the golden chain let down from
heaven, which links all accountable and all intelligent natures in one
common system--and in the vain strife between fanatic innovation and
fanatic prejudice, we are exhorted to dethrone this queen of the world,
to blot out this light of the mind, to deface this fair column, to break
in pieces this golden chain! We are to discard and throw from us with
loud taunts and bitter execrations that reason, which has been the lofty
theme of the philosopher, the poet, the moralist, and the divine, whose
name was not first named to be abused by the enthusiasts of the French
Revolution, or to be blasphemed by the madder enthusiasts, the advocates
of Divine Right, but which is coeval with, and inseparable from the
nature and faculties of man--is the image of his Maker stamped upon him
at his birth, the understanding breathed into him with the breath of
life, and in the participation and improvement of which alone he is
raised above the brute creation and his own physical nature!"--The
overstrained and ridiculous pretensions of monks and ascetics were never
thought to justify a return to unbridled licence of manners, or the
throwing aside of all decency. The hypocrisy, cruelty, and fanaticism,
often attendant on peculiar professions of sanctity, have not banished
the name of religion from the world. Neither can "the unreasonableness
of the reason" of some modern sciolists "so unreason our reason," as to
debar us of the benefit of this principle in future, or to disfranchise
us of the highest privilege of our nature. In the second place, if it is
admitted that Reason alone is not the sole and self-sufficient ground of
morals, it is to Mr. Godwin that we are indebted for having settled the
point. No one denied or distrusted this principle (before his time) as
the absolute judge and interpreter in all questions of difficulty;
and if this is no longer the case, it is because he has taken this
principle, and followed it into its remotest consequences with more
keenness of eye and steadiness of hand than any other expounder of
ethics. His grand work is (at least) an _experimentum crucis_ to shew
the weak sides and imperfections of human reason as the sole law of
human action. By overshooting the mark, or by "flying an eagle flight,
forth and right on," he has pointed out the limit or line of separation,
between what is practicable and what is barely conceivable--by imposing
impossible tasks on the naked strength of the will, he has discovered
how far it is or is not in our power to dispense with the illusions of
sense, to resist the calls of affection, to emancipate ourselves from
the force of habit; and thus, though he has not said it himself, has
enabled others to say to the towering aspirations after good, and to the
over-bearing pride of human intellect--"Thus far shalt thou come, and no
farther!" Captain Parry would be thought to have rendered a service
to navigation and his country, no less by proving that there is no
North-West Passage, than if he had ascertained that there is one: so Mr.
Godwin has rendered an essential service to moral science, by attempting
(in vain) to pass the Arctic Circle and Frozen Regions, where the
understanding is no longer warmed by the affections, nor fanned by the
breeze of fancy! This is the effect of all bold, original, and powerful
thinking, that it either discovers the truth, or detects where error
lies; and the only crime with which Mr. Godwin can be charged as a
political and moral reasoner is, that he has displayed a more ardent
spirit, and a more independent activity of thought than others, in
establishing the fallacy (if fallacy it be) of an old popular prejudice
that _the Just and True were one_, by "championing it to the Outrance,"
and in the final result placing the Gothic structure of human virtue
on an humbler, but a wider and safer foundation than it had hitherto
occupied in the volumes and systems of the learned. Mr. Godwin is an
inventor in the regions of romance, as well as a skilful and hardy
explorer of those of moral truth. _Caleb Williams_ and _St. Leon_ are
two of the most splendid and impressive works of the imagination that
have appeared in our times. It is not merely that these novels are very
well for a philosopher to have produced--they are admirable and complete
in themselves, and would not lead you to suppose that the author, who is
so entirely at home in human character and dramatic situation, had ever
dabbled in logic or metaphysics. The first of these, particularly, is
a master-piece, both as to invention and execution. The romantic and
chivalrous principle of the love of personal fame is embodied in the
finest possible manner in the character of Falkland;[B] as in Caleb
Williams (who is not the first, but the second character in the piece)
we see the very demon of curiosity personified. Perhaps the art with
which these two characters are contrived to relieve and set off each
other, has never been surpassed in any work of fiction, with the
exception of the immortal satire of Cervantes. The restless and
inquisitive spirit of Caleb Williams, in search and in possession of
his patron's fatal secret, haunts the latter like a second conscience,
plants stings in his tortured mind, fans the flame of his jealous
ambition, struggling with agonized remorse; and the hapless but
noble-minded Falkland at length falls a martyr to the persecution of
that morbid and overpowering interest, of which his mingled virtues and
vices have rendered him the object. We conceive no one ever began Caleb
Williams that did not read it through: no one that ever read it could
possibly forget it, or speak of it after any length of time, but with an
impression as if the events and feelings had been personal to himself.
This is the case also with the story of St. Leon, which, with less
dramatic interest and intensity of purpose, is set off by a more
gorgeous and flowing eloquence, and by a crown of preternatural imagery,
that waves over it like a palm-tree! It is the beauty and the charm of
Mr. Godwin's descriptions that the reader identifies himself with the
author; and the secret of this is, that the author has identified
himself with his personages. Indeed, he has created them. They are the
proper issue of his brain, lawfully begot, not foundlings, nor the
"bastards of his art." He is not an indifferent, callous spectator of
the scenes which he himself pourtrays, but without seeming to feel them.
There is no look of patch-work and plagiarism, the beggarly copiousness
of borrowed wealth; no tracery-work from worm-eaten manuscripts, from
forgotten chronicles, nor piecing out of vague traditions with fragments
and snatches of old ballads, so that the result resembles a gaudy,
staring transparency, in which you cannot distinguish the daubing of the
painter from the light that shines through the flimsy colours and gives
them brilliancy. Here all is clearly made out with strokes of the
pencil, by fair, not by factitious means. Our author takes a given
subject from nature or from books, and then fills it up with the ardent
workings of his own mind, with the teeming and audible pulses of his own
heart. The effect is entire and satisfactory in proportion. The work
(so to speak) and the author are one. We are not puzzled to decide upon
their respective pretensions. In reading Mr. Godwin's novels, we know
what share of merit the author has in them. In reading the _Scotch
Novels_, we are perpetually embarrassed in asking ourselves this
question; and perhaps it is not altogether a false modesty that prevents
the editor from putting his name in the title-page--he is (for any thing
we know to the contrary) only a more voluminous sort of Allen-a-Dale.
At least, we may claim this advantage for the English author, that the
chains with which he rivets our attention are forged out of his own
thoughts, link by link, blow for blow, with glowing enthusiasm: we see
the genuine ore melted in the furnace of fervid feeling, and moulded
into stately and _ideal_ forms; and this is so far better than peeping
into an old iron shop, or pilfering from a dealer in marine stores!
There is one drawback, however, attending this mode of proceeding, which
attaches generally, indeed, to all originality of composition; namely,
that it has a tendency to a certain degree of monotony. He who draws
upon his own resources, easily comes to an end of his wealth. Mr.
Godwin, in all his writings, dwells upon one idea or exclusive view of a
subject, aggrandises a sentiment, exaggerates a character, or pushes an
argument to extremes, and makes up by the force of style and continuity
of feeling for what he wants in variety of incident or ease of manner.
This necessary defect is observable in his best works, and is still more
so in Fleetwood and Mandeville; the one of which, compared with his more
admired performances, is mawkish, and the other morbid. Mr. Godwin is
also an essayist, an historian--in short, what is he not, that belongs
to the character of an indefatigable and accomplished author? His _Life
of Chaucer_ would have given celebrity to any man of letters possessed
of three thousand a year, with leisure to write quartos: as the legal
acuteness displayed in his _Remarks on Judge Eyre's Charge to the
Jury_ would have raised any briefless barrister to the height of his
profession. This temporary effusion did more--it gave a turn to the
trials for high treason in the year 1794, and possibly saved the lives
of twelve innocent individuals, marked out as political victims to the
Moloch of Legitimacy, which then skulked behind a British throne,
and had not yet dared to stalk forth (as it has done since) from its
lurking-place, in the face of day, to brave the opinion of the world. If
it had then glutted its maw with its intended prey (the sharpness of Mr.
Godwin's pen cut the legal cords with which it was attempted to bind
them), it might have done so sooner, and with more lasting effect. The
world do not know (and we are not sure but the intelligence may startle
Mr. Godwin himself), that he is the author of a volume of Sermons, and
of a Life of Chatham.[C]
Mr. Fawcett (an old friend and fellow-student of our author, and who
always spoke of his writings with admiration, tinctured with wonder)
used to mention a circumstance with respect to the last-mentioned work,
which may throw some light on the history and progress of Mr. Godwin's
mind. He was anxious to make his biographical account as complete as
he could, and applied for this purpose to many of his acquaintance to
furnish him with anecdotes or to suggest criticisms. Amongst others Mr.
Fawcett repeated to him what he thought a striking passage in a speech
on _General Warrants_ delivered by Lord Chatham, at which he (Mr.
Fawcett) had been present. "Every man's house" (said this emphatic
thinker and speaker) "has been called his castle. And why is it called
his castle? Is it because it is defended by a wall, because it is
surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a straw-built
shed. It may be open to all the elements: the wind may enter in, the
rain may enter in--but the king _cannot_ enter in!" His friend thought
that the point was here palpable enough: but when he came to read the
printed volume, he found it thus _transposed_: "Every man's house is his
castle. And why is it called so? Is it because it is defended by a wall,
because it is surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a
straw-built shed. It may be exposed to all the elements: the rain may
enter into it, _all the winds of Heaven may whistle round it_, but the
king cannot, &c." This was what Fawcett called a defect of _natural
imagination_. He at the same time admitted that Mr. Godwin had improved
his native sterility in this respect; or atoned for it by incessant
activity of mind and by accumulated stores of thought and powers of
language. In fact, his _forte_ is not the spontaneous, but the voluntary
exercise of talent. He fixes his ambition on a high point of excellence,
and spares no pains or time in attaining it. He has less of the
appearance of a man of genius, than any one who has given such decided
and ample proofs of it. He is ready only on reflection: dangerous only
at the rebound. He gathers himself up, and strains every nerve and
faculty with deliberate aim to some heroic and dazzling atchievement of
intellect: but he must make a career before he flings himself, armed,
upon the enemy, or he is sure to be unhorsed. Or he resembles an
eight-day clock that must be wound up long before it can strike.
Therefore, his powers of conversation are but limited. He has neither
acuteness of remark, nor a flow of language, both which might be
expected from his writings, as these are no less distinguished by a
sustained and impassioned tone of declamation than by novelty of opinion
or brilliant tracks of invention. In company, Horne Tooke used to make
a mere child of him--or of any man! Mr. Godwin liked this treatment[D],
and indeed it is his foible to fawn on those who use him _cavalierly_,
and to be cavalier to those who express an undue or unqualified
admiration of him. He looks up with unfeigned respect to acknowledged
reputation (but then it must be very well ascertained before he admits
it)--and has a favourite hypothesis that Understanding and Virtue are
the same thing. Mr. Godwin possesses a high degree of philosophical
candour, and studiously paid the homage of his pen and person to Mr.
Malthus, Sir James Macintosh, and Dr. Parr, for their unsparing attacks
on him; but woe to any poor devil who had the hardihood to defend him
against them! In private, the author of _Political Justice_ at one
time reminded those who knew him of the metaphysician engrafted on
the Dissenting Minister. There was a dictatorial, captious, quibbling
pettiness of manner. He lost this with the first blush and awkwardness
of popularity, which surprised him in the retirement of his study;
and he has since, with the wear and tear of society, from being too
pragmatical, become somewhat too careless. He is, at present, as easy as
an old glove. Perhaps there is a little attention to effect in this,
and he wishes to appear a foil to himself. His best moments are with an
intimate acquaintance or two, when he gossips in a fine vein about old
authors, Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion_, or Burnet's _History of
his own Times_; and you perceive by your host's talk, as by the taste
of seasoned wine, that he has a _cellarage_ in his understanding! Mr.
Godwin also has a correct _acquired_ taste in poetry and the drama. He
relishes Donne and Ben Jonson, and recites a passage from either with an
agreeable mixture of pedantry and _bonhommie_. He is not one of those
who do not grow wiser with opportunity and reflection: he changes his
opinions, and changes them for the better. The alteration of his taste
in poetry, from an exclusive admiration of the age of Queen Anne to an
almost equally exclusive one of that of Elizabeth, is, we suspect, owing
to Mr. Coleridge, who some twenty years ago, threw a great stone into
the standing pool of criticism, which splashed some persons with the
mud, but which gave a motion to the surface and a reverberation to the
neighbouring echoes, which has not since subsided. In common company,
Mr. Godwin either goes to sleep himself, or sets others to sleep. He is
at present engaged in a History of the Commonwealth of England.--_Esto
perpetua!_ In size Mr. Godwin is below the common stature, nor is his
deportment graceful or animated. His face is, however, fine, with an
expression of placid temper and recondite thought. He is not unlike the
common portraits of Locke. There is a very admirable likeness of him by
Mr. Northcote, which with a more heroic and dignified air, only does
justice to the profound sagacity and benevolent aspirations of our
author's mind. Mr. Godwin has kept the best company of his time, but he
has survived most of the celebrated persons with whom he lived in habits
of intimacy. He speaks of them with enthusiasm and with discrimination;
and sometimes dwells with peculiar delight on a day passed at John
Kemble's in company with Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Curran, Mrs. Wolstonecraft
and Mrs. Inchbald, when the conversation took a most animated turn
and the subject was of Love. Of all these our author is the only one
remaining. Frail tenure, on which human life and genius are lent us for
a while to improve or to enjoy!
[Footnote A: Shaftesbury made this an objection to Christianity, which
was answered by Foster, Leland, and other eminent divines, on the
ground that Christianity had a higher object in view, namely, general
philanthropy.]
[Footnote B: Mr. Fuseli used to object to this striking delineation a
want of historical correctness, inasmuch as the animating principle of
the true chivalrous character was the sense of honour, not the mere
regard to, or saving of, appearances. This, we think, must be an
hypercriticism, from all we remember of books of chivalry and heroes of
romance.]
[Footnote C: We had forgotten the tragedies of Antonio and Ferdinand.
Peace be with their _manes_!]
[Footnote D: To be sure, it was redeemed by a high respect, and by some
magnificent compliments. Once in particular, at his own table, after a
good deal of _badinage_ and cross-questioning about his being the author
of the Reply to Judge Eyre's Charge, on Mr. Godwin's acknowledging that
he was, Mr. Tooke said, "Come here then,"--and when his guest went round
to his chair, he took his hand, and pressed it to his lips, saying--"I
can do no less for the hand that saved my life!"]
* * * * *
MR. COLERIDGE.
The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is,
that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and
Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and doat on past atchievements.
The accumulation of knowledge has been so great, that we are lost in
wonder at the height it has reached, instead of attempting to climb
or add to it; while the variety of objects distracts and dazzles the
looker-on. What _niche_ remains unoccupied? What path untried? What is
the use of doing anything, unless we could do better than all those who
have gone before us? What hope is there of this? We are like those who
have been to see some noble monument of art, who are content to admire
without thinking of rivalling it; or like guests after a feast,
who praise the hospitality of the donor "and thank the bounteous
Pan"--perhaps carrying away some trifling fragments; or like the
spectators of a mighty battle, who still hear its sound afar off, and
the clashing of armour and the neighing of the war-horse and the shout
of victory is in their ears, like the rushing of innumerable waters!
Mr. Coleridge has "a mind reflecting ages past:" his voice is like
the echo of the congregated roar of the "dark rearward and abyss" of
thought. He who has seen a mouldering tower by the side of a chrystal
lake, hid by the mist, but glittering in the wave below, may conceive
the dim, gleaming, uncertain intelligence of his eye: he who has marked
the evening clouds uprolled (a world of vapours), has seen the picture
of his mind, unearthly, unsubstantial, with gorgeous tints and
ever-varying forms--
"That which was now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
As water is in water."
Our author's mind is (as he himself might express it) _tangential_.
There is no subject on which he has not touched, none on which he has
rested. With an understanding fertile, subtle, expansive, "quick,
forgetive, apprehensive," beyond all living precedent, few traces of it
will perhaps remain. He lends himself to all impressions alike; he gives
up his mind and liberty of thought to none. He is a general lover of art
and science, and wedded to no one in particular. He pursues knowledge as
a mistress, with outstretched hands and winged speed; but as he is
about to embrace her, his Daphne turns--alas! not to a laurel! Hardly a
speculation has been left on record from the earliest time, but it is
loosely folded up in Mr. Coleridge's memory, like a rich, but somewhat
tattered piece of tapestry; we might add (with more seeming than real
extravagance), that scarce a thought can pass through the mind of man,
but its sound has at some time or other passed over his head with
rustling pinions. On whatever question or author you speak, he is
prepared to take up the theme with advantage--from Peter Abelard down
to Thomas Moore, from the subtlest metaphysics to the politics of the
_Courier_. There is no man of genius, in whose praise he descants, but
the critic seems to stand above the author, and "what in him is weak, to
strengthen, what is low, to raise and support:" nor is there any work of
genius that does not come out of his hands like an Illuminated Missal,
sparkling even in its defects. If Mr. Coleridge had not been the most
impressive talker of his age, he would probably have been the finest
writer; but he lays down his pen to make sure of an auditor, and
mortgages the admiration of posterity for the stare of an idler. If he
had not been a poet, he would have been a powerful logician; if he had
not dipped his wing in the Unitarian controversy, he might have soared
to the very summit of fancy. But in writing verse, he is trying
to subject the Muse to _transcendental_ theories: in his abstract
reasoning, he misses his way by strewing it with flowers. All that he
has done of moment, he had done twenty years ago: since then, he may be
said to have lived on the sound of his own voice. Mr. Coleridge is too
rich in intellectual wealth, to need to task himself to any drudgery: he
has only to draw the sliders of his imagination, and a thousand subjects
expand before him, startling him with their brilliancy, or losing
themselves in endless obscurity--
"And by the force of blear illusion,
They draw him on to his confusion."
What is the little he could add to the stock, compared with the
countless stores that lie about him, that he should stoop to pick up a
name, or to polish an idle fancy? He walks abroad in the majesty of an
universal understanding, eyeing the "rich strond," or golden sky above
him, and "goes sounding on his way," in eloquent accents, uncompelled
and free!