It may be remembered, that somewhat more than two years ago, Mr
Willmott's _Journal of Summer-time in the Country_ was noticed in
these pages. Those who, through that or any other introduction, have
since become acquainted with that exquisite little volume, will be
glad to meet the author again, in the not less charming work which he
has recently put forth, on the _Pleasures, Objects, and Advantages of
Literature_.[4] The theme itself must be naturally attractive to all
book-loving people; and we are prepared to say, that it is treated
with felicity and discrimination. We do not aver that we always concur
in the writer's judgments, or hold precisely his views of criticism;
but we are, upon the whole, very decidedly impressed with the general
force and truth of his Discourse, with the gracefulness of his
allusions and illustrations, his elegant and pointed style, and the
bland and genial temper in which he writes. The work consists of a
series of short chapters on books, authors, the circumstances in which
they wrote, the moods in which they should be read to be appreciated,
the nature and specific qualities of taste, poetry, fiction, the
drama, history, and philosophy. The author's turn of mind is chiefly
retrospective: he writes more in the spirit of the last age than of
the present. Indeed, he seems too much inclined to ignore the value of
our later literature; almost the only modern authors whom he quotes
are Hallam, Charles Lamb, and Southey; and it is evident, both from
the style and matter of the work, that the range of his reading has
been most extensive in what he terms the 'classical criticism and
biography of the eighteenth century.' This, however, we note only in
passing, and not at all in the way of condemnation; further than as it
may indicate the limitations to be expected in his tone of thought and
sentiment.
Mr Willmott, indeed, speaks disparagingly of some of the severer
studies--especially of logic and mathematics; declaring that they 'can
only be useful to a full mind,' and that, 'if they find it empty, they
leave it in the same state.' Of course, he may be allowed to have his
opinion on such a matter; but we presume it will not be very generally
adopted. We agree with him that, 'in moral impression they are
powerless;' yet we are bound to bear in mind that their _aim_ is not a
moral one; and we, furthermore, believe that, within their own scope
and province, they _may_ at least be serviceable in training and
developing the understanding. Not to dwell longer on this little
eccentricity of opinion, which is simply one of idiosyncrasy, let us
follow the author into some of the more congenial sections of his
dissertation. The following passage, on 'The three essential qualities
of an author,' seems not unsuitable for quotation:--
'Sir Philip Sidney said, that the most flying wits must have three
wings--art, meditation, exercise. Genius is in the instinct of flight.
A boy came to Mozart, wishing to compose something, and inquiring the
way to begin. Mozart told him to wait. "You composed much earlier?"
"But asked nothing about it," replied the musician. Cowper expressed
the same sentiment to a friend: "Nature gives men a bias to their
respective pursuits, and that strong propensity, I suppose, is what we
mean by genius." M. Angelo is hindered in his childish studies of art;
Raffaelle grows up with pencil and colours for playthings: one
neglects school to copy drawings, which he dared not bring home; the
father of the other takes a journey to find his son a worthier
teacher. M. Angelo forces his way; Raffaelle is guided into it. But
each looks for it with longing eyes. In some way or other, the man is
tracked in the little footsteps of the child. Dryden marks the three
steps of progress:--
"What the child admired,
The youth _endeavoured_, and the man ACQUIRED."
'Dryden was an example of his own theory. He read Polybius, with a
notion of his historic exactness, before he was ten years old.
Witnesses rise over the whole field of learning. Pope, at twelve,
feasted his eyes in the picture-galleries of Spenser. Murillo filled
the margin of his school-books with drawings. Le Brun, in the
beginning of childhood, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of
the house. The young Ariosto quietly watched the fierce gestures of
his father, forgetting his displeasure in the joy of copying from
life, into a comedy he was writing, the manner and speech of an old
man enraged with his son.
'Cowley, in the history of his own mind, shews the influence of boyish
fancies upon later life. He compares them to letters cut in the bark
of a young tree, which grow and widen with it. We are not surprised to
hear from a school-fellow of the Chancellor Somers, that he was a
weakly boy, who always had a book in his hand, and never looked up at
the play of his companions; to learn from his affectionate biographer,
that Hammond at Eton sought opportunities of stealing away to say his
prayers; to read that Tournefort forsook his college class, that he
might search for plants in the neighbouring fields; or that Smeaton,
in petticoats, was discovered on the top of his father's barn, in the
act of fixing the model of a windmill which he had constructed. These
early traits of character are such as we expect to find in the
cultivated lawyer, who turned the eyes of his age upon Milton; in the
Christian, whose life was one varied strain of devout praise; in the
naturalist, who enriched science by his discoveries; and in the
engineer, who built the Eddystone Lighthouse.'
This accords very well with a notion of our own. We hold that men have
a tendency to follow what they are by nature best qualified to succeed
in; and that the fact ought to be regarded in the education of the
individual. Education should include the study and trial of aptitudes,
so that each may be directed to his appropriate vocation. It is true,
there are sometimes such things as 'false tendencies' to be
encountered; but these, as Goethe has shewn, may be readily detected,
inasmuch as they are plainly 'unproductive;' that is to say, the thing
aimed after does not come out as a recognisable success. False
tendencies are more easily perceived in others than in
ourselves--especially when ambition, interest, or vanity is involved
in the consideration; and on this account the difficulty, perhaps,
might not be insurmountable, if the charge of it could be committed to
a really judicious educator. But to say anything further on the
subject would be out of place at present; and, accordingly, we return
to what is more immediately before us.
'The instinct of flight,' continues our author, 'is combined with the
instinct of labour. Genius lights its own fire; but it is constantly
collecting materials to keep alive the flame. When a new publication
was suggested to Addison, after the completion of the _Guardian_, he
answered: "I must now take some time, _pour me délasser_, and lay in
fuel for a future work." The strongest blaze soon goes out when a man
always blows and never feeds it. Johnson declined an introduction to a
popular author with the remark, that he did not desire to converse
with a person who had written more than he had read.
'It is interesting to follow great authors or painters in their
careful training and accomplishing of the mind. The long morning of
life is spent in making the weapons and the armour which manhood and
age are to polish and prove. Usher, when nearly twenty years old,
formed the daring resolution of reading all the Greek and Latin
fathers, and with the dawn of his thirty-ninth year he completed the
task. Hammond, at Oxford, gave thirteen hours of the day to philosophy
and classical literature, wrote commentaries on all, and compiled
indexes for his own use.
'With these calls to industry in our ears, we are not to be deaf to
the deep saying of Lord Brooke, the friend of Sidney, that some men
overbuild their nature with books. The motion of our thoughts is
impeded by too heavy a burden; and the mind, like the body, is
strengthened more by the warmth of exercise than of clothes. When
Buffon and Hogarth pronounced genius to be nothing but labour and
patience, they forgot history and themselves. The instinct must be in
the mind, and the fire be ready to fall. Toil alone would not have
produced the _Paradise Lost_ or the _Principia_. The born dwarf never
grows to the middle size. Rousseau tells a story of a painter's
servant, who resolved to be the rival or the conqueror of his master.
He abandoned his livery to live by his pencil; but instead of the
Louvre, he stopped at a sign-post. Mere learning is only a compiler,
and does with the pen what the compositor does with the type: each
sets up a book with the hand. Stone-masons collected the dome of St
Paul's, but Wren hung it in air.'
There is, perhaps, nothing very profound or original in this, but it
is all very sensible and pleasant. Something of novelty, however, will
be observed in the extract which follows next, on 'The Influence of
Air and Situation on the Thoughts.' The consideration, at anyrate, is
curious, both under its physiological and metaphysical aspect.
'It has been a subject of ingenious speculation if country or weather
may be said to cherish or check intellectual growth. Jeremy Collier
considered that the understanding needs a kind climate for its health,
and that a reader of nice observation might ascertain from the book in
what latitude, season, or circumstances, it had been written. The
opponents are powerful. Reynolds ridiculed the notion of thoughts
shooting forth with greater vigour at the summer solstice or the
equinox; Johnson called it a fantastic foppery.
'The atmospheric theory is as old as Homer. Its laureate is
Montesquieu. The more northerly you go, he said, the sterner the man
grows. You must scorch a Muscovite to make him feel. Gray was a
convert. One of the prose hints for his noble fragment of a didactic
poem runs thus: "It is the proper work of education and government
united, to redress the faults that arise from the soil and air."
Berkeley entertained the same feeling. Writing to Pope from Leghorn,
and alluding to some half-formed design he had heard him mention of
visiting Italy, he continues: "What might we not expect from a muse
that sings so well in the bleak climate of England, if she felt the
same warm sun, and breathed the same air with Virgil and Horace?"
'When Dyer attributes the faults of his _Fleece_ to the Lincolnshire
fens, he only awakes a smile. Keats wrote his Ode to a Nightingale--a
poem full of the sweet south--at the foot of Highgate Hill. But we
have the remark of Dryden--probably the result of his own
experience--that a cloudy day is able to alter the thoughts of a man;
and, generally, the air we breathe, and the objects we see, have a
secret influence upon our imagination. Burke was certain that Milton
composed _Il Penseroso_ in the long, resounding aisle of a mouldering
cloister, or ivied abbey. He beheld its solemn gloom in the verse. The
fine nerves of the mind are braced, and the strings of the harp are
tuned, by different kinds of temperature. "I think," Warburton
remarked to Hurd, "you have often heard me say, that my delicious
season is the autumn--the season which gives most life and vigour to
my intellectual faculties. The light mists, or, as Milton calls them,
the steams that rise from the fields in one of these mornings, give
the same relief to the views that the blue of the plum gives to the
appetite."
'Mozart composed, whenever he had the opportunity, in the soft air of
fine weather. His _Don Giovanni_ and the _Requiem_ were written in a
bowling-green and a garden. Chatterton found a full moon favourable to
poetic invention, and he often sat up all night to enjoy its solemn
shining. Winter-time was most agreeable to Crabbe. He delighted in a
heavy fall of snow; and it was during a severe storm which blocked him
within doors, that he portrayed the strange miseries of Sir Eustace
Grey.'
There may be something in this supposed influence of temperature and
seasons; but there certainly is no general law observable in the
matter. Shakspeare asks--
'Oh who can take a fire in his hand
By thinking of the frosty Caucasus?
Or wallow naked in December's snows
By bare remembrance of the summer's heat?'
He might have been answered by Moore, who shut himself up in the
wintry wilds of Derbyshire to write _Lalla Rookh_--a poem breathing of
the perfumes, and glowing in the sunlight of the golden East; and by
Scott, who, in Jermyn Street, St James's, with miles of brick houses
round him, produced his famous introductions to _Marmion_, some of
which may rank with the finest descriptions of natural scenery in the
language. But the way in which people are influenced seems utterly
capricious. We know a writer who is always unfavourably affected by a
dull, still atmosphere, and whose faculties are as invariably
exhilarated by a high wind. Cloudy weather does not influence him
disagreeably if it be stormy, but calm, leaden November glooms oppress
him with a feeling bordering upon stupor. These are altogether
unproductive days with him. If authors, however, are subject in their
moods to atmospheric and other circumstantial influences, it may be
expected that readers also are to some extent possessed of a like
tendency. Mr Willmott has, accordingly, a suitable suggestive word or
two to guide them in their reading. He says:--
'A classification of authors to suit all hours and weathers might be
amusing. Ariosto spans a wet afternoon like a rainbow. North winds and
sleet agree with Junius. The visionary tombs of Dante glimmer into
awfuller perspective by moonlight. Crabbe is never so pleasing as on
the hot shingle, when we look up from his verses at the sleepy sea,
and count the
"Crimson weeds, which spreading slow,
Or lie like pictures on the sand below:
With all those bright red pebbles, that the sun
Through the small waves so softly shines upon."
'Some books come in with lamps and curtains, and fresh logs. An
evening in late autumn, when there is no moon, and the boughs toss
like foam raking its way back down a pebbly shore, is just the time
for _Undine_. A voyage is read with deepest interest in winter, while
the hail dashes against the window. Southey speaks of this delight--
"'Tis pleasant by the cheerful hearth to hear
Of tempests and the dangers of the deep,
And pause at times and feel that we are safe;
And with an eager and suspended soul,
Woo terror to delight us."
'The sobs of the storm are musical chimes for a ghost-story, or one of
those fearful tales with which the blind fiddler in _Redgauntlet_ made
"the auld carlines shake on the settle, and the bits of bairns skirl
on their minnies out frae their beds."
'Shakspeare is always most welcome at the chimney-corner; so is
Goldsmith: who does not wish Dr Primrose to call in the evening, and
Olivia to preside at the urn? Elia affirms, that there is no such
thing as reading or writing, but by a candle; he is confident that
Milton composed the morning hymn of Eden with a clear fire burning in
the room; and in Taylor's gorgeous description of sunrise, he found
the smell of the lamp quite overpowering.... But Elia,' he says
further on, 'carried his fireside theory too far. Some people have
tried "the affectation of a book at noonday in gardens and sultry
arbours," without finding their task of love to be unlearnt. Indeed,
many books belong to sunshine, and should be read out of doors.
Clover, violets, and hedge-roses, breathe from their leaves; they are
most lovable in cool lanes, along field-paths, or upon stiles overhung
by hawthorn; while the black-bird pipes, and the nightingale bathes
its brown feathers in the twilight copse.
'The sensation is heightened when an author is read amid the scenery
or the manners which he describes--as Barrow studied the sermons of
Chrysostom in his own see of Constantinople. What daisies sprinkle the
walks of Cowper, if we take his _Task_ for a companion through the
lanes of Weston! Under the thick hedges of Horton, darkening either
bank of the field in the September moonlight, _Il Penseroso_ is still
more pensive. And whoever would feel at his heart the deep pathos of
Collins's lamentation for Thomson, must murmur it to himself, as he
glides upon the stealing wave, by the breezy lawns and elms of
Richmond.'
Our author has some judicious remarks on 'Criticism, its Curiosities
and Researches,' and is himself a critic of refined and delicate
appreciation. We certainly do not agree with him in thinking that the
literature of the last century is superior to that of the present; but
we can nevertheless admit that many of his favourite writers are
deserving of a higher and more reverent regard than is now generally
awarded them. We would quarrel with no man about his preferences;
still, we cannot hold Mr Willmott justified in such sweeping
condemnation of our current literature as he appears disposed to pass
upon it. It would seem, indeed, that in his disgust at 'the corrupted
streams of popular entertainment,' he has not cared to make himself
acquainted with the best of our modern writers. Of these he seems--if
we may judge from his total oversight of them--to have hardly a
knowledge of the names. 'He lives,' as he admits, 'among the society
of an elder age.' Here, however, he numbers 'tasteful learning with
the chiefest blessings of his home.' If he had lived in the last
century, he would probably have gone back for his idols to an earlier
one; and yet his remarks on taste and criticism are of a catholic
nature, although his just application of their canons have this
chronological boundary. We have no room, however, for his disquisition
on these elegant subjects; neither can we follow our accomplished
clergyman into his disquisitions on fiction, history, biography,
philosophy, and its pleasures, nor the 'domestic interiors' of taste
and learning. We had intended to quote some fine sentences on the
consolations of poetry, but find we have not room for them. The reader
will do well to get the book, and read them there. It is a work
altogether well worth reading. Nay, it will bear reading many times,
and even become pleasanter as one's acquaintance with it increases.
Indeed, it is not at all the kind of book to be run through rapidly,
and so disposed of; the thought and observation in it are closely
packed and methodised; and if you wish to derive any benefit, or even
pleasure from the perusal, you will need to read deliberately. We
should say the author thoroughly _enjoyed_ his work while he was
engaged in it; but the workmanship exhibits everywhere the greatest
care and patience. The same habit of mind employed in writing it will
be required in the reading. We may describe the book as being a
graceful, suggestive review of literature, considered with regard to
its enjoyments. Refined, scholarly, tolerant, and judicious in all his
tastes and sympathies, the author's influence upon other minds cannot
be otherwise than wholesome, elevating, and benignant.