"I solicit your best attention to the fate which seems hastening
upon the _Edinburgh Review_. The having always been free from the
least control of booksellers is one of its principal distinctions,
and long was peculiarly so--perhaps it still has it _nearly_ to
itself. But if it shall become a _Treasury_ journal, I hardly see
any great advantage in one kind of independence without the
rest. Nay, I doubt if its _literary_ freedom, any more than its
political, will long survive. Books will be treated according as
the Treasury, or their under-strappers, regard the authors....
But, is it after all possible that the Review should be suffered
to sink into such a state of subserviency that it dares not insert
any discussion upon a general question of politics because it
might give umbrage to the Government of the day? I pass over the
undeniable fact that it is _underlings_ only whom you are scared
by, and that the Ministers themselves have no such inordinate
pretension as to dream of interfering. I say nothing of those
underlings generally, except this, that I well know the race, and
a more despicable, above all, in point of judgment, exists not.
Never mind their threats, they _can_ do no harm. Even if any of
them are contributors, be assured they never will withdraw because
you choose to keep your course free and independent."
Mr. Napier, who seems to have been one of the most considerate and
high-minded of men, was moved to energetic remonstrance on this
occasion. Lord Brougham explained his strong language away, but he
was incapable of really controlling himself, and the strain was never
lessened until 1843, when the correspondence ceases, and we learn
that there had been a quarrel between him and his too long-suffering
correspondent. Yet John Allen,--that able scholar and conspicuous
figure in the annals of Holland House--wrote of Brougham to Mr.
Napier:--"He is not a malignant or bad-hearted man, but he is an
unscrupulous one, and where his passions are concerned or his vanity
irritated, there is no excess of which he is not capable." Of
Brougham's strong and manly sense, when passion or vanity did not
cloud it, and even of a sort of careful justice, these letters give
more than one instance. The _Quarterly Review_, for instance, had an
article on Romilly's Memoirs, which to Romilly's friends seemed to do
him less than justice. Brougham took a more sensible view.
"Surely we had no right whatever to expect that they whom Romilly
had all his life so stoutly opposed, and who were treated by him
with great harshness, should treat him as his friends would do,
and at the very moment when a most injudicious act of his family
was bringing out all his secret thoughts against them. Only place
yourself in the same position, and suppose that Canning's private
journals had been published,--the journals he may have kept while
the bitterest enemy of the Whigs, and in every page of which there
must have been some passage offensive to the feelings of the
living and of the friends of the dead. Would any mercy have been
shown to Canning's character and memory by any of the Whig party,
either in society or in Reviews? Would the line have been drawn of
only attacking Canning's executors, who published the papers, and
leaving Canning himself untouched? Clearly and certainly not,
and yet I am putting a very much weaker case, for we had joined
Canning, and all political enmity was at an end: whereas the
Tories and Romilly never had for an hour laid aside their mutual
hostility."
And if he was capable of equity, Brougham was also capable of hearty
admiration, even of an old friend who had on later occasions gone into
a line which he intensely disliked. It is a relief in the pages of
blusterous anger and raging censure to come upon what he says of
Jeffrey.
"I can truly say that there never in all my life crossed my mind
one single unkind feeling respecting him, or indeed any feeling
but that of the warmest affection and the most unmingled
admiration of his character, believing and knowing him to be as
excellent and amiable as he is great in the ordinary, and, as I
think, the far less important sense of the word."
Of the value of Brougham's contributions we cannot now judge. They
will not, in spite of their energy and force, bear re-reading to-day,
and perhaps the same may be said of three-fourths of Jeffrey's once
famous essays. Brougham's self-confidence is heroic. He believed that
he could make a speech for Bolingbroke, but by-and-by he had sense
enough to see that, in order to attempt this, he ought to read
Bolingbroke for a year, and then practise for another year. In 1838 he
thought nothing of undertaking, amid all the demands of active life,
such a bagatelle as a History of the French Revolution. "I have some
little knack of narrative," he says, "the most difficult by far of all
styles, and never yet attained in perfection but by Hume and Livy;
and I bring as much oratory and science to the task as most of my
predecessors." But what sort of science? And what has oratory to do
with it? And how could he deceive himself into thinking that he could
retire to write a history? Nobody that ever lived would have more
speedily found out the truth of Voltaire's saying, "_Le repos est
une bonne chose, mais l'ennui est son frère_." The truth is that one
learns, after a certain observation of the world, to divide one's
amazement pretty equally between the literary voluptuary or
over-fastidious collegian, on the one hand, who is so impressed by the
size of his subject that he never does more than collect material and
make notes, and the presumptuous politician, on the other hand, who
thinks that he can write a history or settle the issues of philosophy
and theology in odd half-hours. The one is so enfeebled in will and
literary energy after his _viginti annorum lucubrationes_; the other
is so accustomed to be content with the hurry, the unfinishedness,
the rough-and-ready methods of practical affairs, and they both in
different ways measure the worth and seriousness of literature so
wrongly in relation to the rest of human interests.
The relations between Lord Brougham and Mr. Napier naturally suggest
a good many reflections on the vexed question of the comparative
advantages of the old and the new theory of a periodical. The new
theory is that a periodical should not be an organ but an open pulpit,
and that each writer should sign his name. Without disrespect to ably
conducted and eminent contemporaries of long standing, it may be said
that the tide of opinion and favour is setting in this direction. Yet,
on the whole, experience perhaps leads to a doubt whether the gains of
the system of signature are so very considerable as some of us once
expected. An editor on the new system is no doubt relieved of a
certain measure of responsibility. Lord Cockburn's panegyric on the
first great editor may show what was expected from a man in such a
position as Jeffrey's. "He had to discover, and to train, authors; to
discern what truth and the public mind required; to suggest subjects;
to reject, and, more offensive still, to improve, contributions; to
keep down absurdities; to infuse spirit; to excite the timid; to
repress violence; to soothe jealousies; to quell mutinies; to watch
times; and all this in the morning of the reviewing day, before
experience had taught editors conciliatory firmness, and contributors
reasonable submission. He directed and controlled the elements he
presided over with a master's judgment. There was not one of his
associates who could have even held these elements together for a
single year.... Inferior to these excellences, but still important,
was his dexterity in revising the writings of others. Without altering
the general tone or character of the composition, he had great skill
in leaving out defective ideas or words, and in so aiding the original
by lively or graceful touches, that reasonable authors were surprised
and charmed on seeing how much better they looked than they thought
they would" (Cockburn's _Life of Jeffrey_, i. 301).
From such toils and dangers as these the editor of a Review with
signed articles is in the main happily free. He has usually
suggestions to make, for his experience has probably given him points
of view as to the effectiveness of this or that feature of an article
for its own purpose, which would not occur to a writer. The writer is
absorbed in his subject, and has been less accustomed to think of the
public. But this exercise of a claim to a general acquiescence in the
judgment and experience of a man who has the best reasons for trying
to judge rightly, is a very different thing from the duty of drilling
contributors and dressing contributions as they were dressed and
drilled by Jeffrey. As Southey said, when groaning under the
mutilations inflicted by Gifford on Iris contributions to the
_Quarterly_, "there must be a power expurgatory in the hands of
the editor; and the misfortune is that editors frequently think it
incumbent on them to use that power merely because they have it"
(Southey's Life, iv. 18). This is probably true on the anonymous
system, where the editor is answerable for every word, and for the
literary form no less than for the substantial soundness or interest
of an article. In a man of weakish literary vanity--Jeffrey was
evidently full of it--there may well be a constant itch to set his
betters right in trifles, as Gifford thought that he could mend
Southey's adjectives. To a vain editor, or a too masterful editor, the
temptation under the anonymous system is no doubt strong. M. Buloz,
it is true, the renowned conductor of the _Revue des deux Mondes_, is
said to have insisted on, and to have freely practised, the fullest
editorial prerogative over articles that were openly signed by the
most eminent names in France. But M. Buloz had no competitor, and
those who did not choose to submit to his Sultanic despotism were
shut out from the only pulpit whence they were sure of addressing the
congregation that they wanted. In England contributors are better
off; and no editor of a signed periodical would feel either bound or
permitted to take such trouble about mere wording of sentences as
Gifford and Jeffrey were in the habit of taking.
There is, however, another side to this, from an editor's point of
view. With responsibility--not merely for commas and niceties and
literary kickshaws, but in its old sense--disappears also a portion of
the interest of editorial labour. One would suppose it must be more
interesting to command a man-of-war than a trading vessel; it would be
more interesting to lead a regiment than to keep a tilting-yard. But
the times are not ripe for such enterprises. Of literary ability of
a good and serviceable kind there is a hundred or five hundred times
more in the country than there was when Jeffrey, Smith, Brougham, and
Horner devised their Review in a ninth storey in Edinburgh seventy-six
years ago. It is the cohesion of a political creed that is gone, and
the strength and fervour of a political school. The principles that
inspired that group of strong men have been worked out. After their
reforms had been achieved, the next great school was economic, and
though it produced one fine orator, its work was at no time literary.
The Manchester school with all their shortcomings had at least the
signal distinction of attaching their views on special political
questions to a general and presiding conception of the modern phase of
civilisation, as industrial and pacific. The next party of advance,
when it is formed, will certainly borrow from Cobden and Bright their
hatred of war and their hatred of imperialism. After the sagacity and
enlightenment of this school came the school of persiflage. A knot of
vigorous and brilliant men towards 1856 rallied round the late editor
of the _Saturday Review_,--and a strange chief he was for such
a group,--but their flag was that of the Red Rover. They gave
Philistinism many a shrewd blow, but perhaps at the same time helped
to some degree--with other far deeper and stronger forces--to produce
that sceptical and centrifugal state of mind, which now tends to
nullify organised liberalism and paralyse the spirit of improvement.
The Benthamites, led first by James Mill, and afterwards in a
secondary degree by John Mill, had pushed a number of political
improvements in the radical and democratic direction during the
time when the _Edinburgh_ so powerfully represented more orthodox
liberalism. They were the last important group of men who started
together from a set of common principles, accepted a common programme
of practical applications, and set to work in earnest and with due
order and distribution of parts to advocate the common cause.
At present [1878] there is no similar agreement either among the
younger men in parliament, or among a sufficiently numerous group of
writers outside of parliament. The Edinburgh Reviewers were most
of them students of the university of that city. The Westminster
Reviewers had all sat at the feet of Bentham. Each group had thus a
common doctrine and a positive doctrine. In practical politics it does
not much matter by what different roads men have travelled to a given
position. But in an organ intended to lead public opinion towards
certain changes, or to hold it steadfast against wayward gusts of
passion, its strength would be increased a hundredfold if all the
writers in it were inspired by that thorough unity of conviction which
comes from sincerely accepting a common set of principles to start
from, and reaching practical conclusions by the same route. We are
probably not very far from a time when such a group might form itself,
and its work would for some years lie in the formation of a general
body of opinion, rather than in practical realisation of this or that
measure. The success of the French Republic, the peaceful order of the
United States, perhaps some trouble within our own borders, will lead
men with open minds to such a conception of a high and stable type of
national life as will unite a sufficient number of them in a common
project for pressing with systematic iteration for a complete set of
organic changes. A country with such a land-system, such an electoral
system, such a monarchy, as ours, has a trying time before it. Those
will be doing good service who shall unite to prepare opinion for the
inevitable changes. At the present moment the only motto that can be
inscribed on the flag of a liberal Review is the general device of
Progress, each writer interpreting it in his own sense, and within
such limits as he may set for himself. For such a state of things
signature is the natural condition, and an editor, even of a signed
Review, would hardly decline to accept the account of his function
which we find Jeffrey giving to Mr. Napier:--"There are three
legitimate considerations by which you should be guided in your
conduct as editor generally, and particularly as to the admission or
rejection of important articles of a political sort. 1. The effect of
your decision on the other contributors upon whom you mainly rely; 2.
its effect on the sale and circulation, and on the just authority
of the work with the great body of its readers; and, 3. your own
deliberate opinion as to the safety or danger of the doctrines
maintained in the article under consideration, and its tendency
either to promote or retard the practical adoption of those liberal
principles to which, and _their practical advancement_, you must
always consider the journal as devoted."
As for discovering and training authors, the editor under the new
system has inducements that lie entirely the other way; namely,
to find as many authors as possible whom the public has already
discovered and accepted for itself. Young unknown writers certainly
have not gained anything by the new system. Neither perhaps can they
be said to have lost, for though of two articles of equal merit
an editor would naturally choose the one which should carry the
additional recommendation of a name of recognised authority, yet any
marked superiority in literary brilliance or effective argument or
originality of view would be only too eagerly welcomed in any Review
in England. So much public interest is now taken in periodical
literature, and the honourable competition in securing variety,
weight, and attractiveness is so active, that there is no risk of
a literary candle remaining long under a bushel. Miss Martineau
says:--"I have always been anxious to extend to young or struggling
authors the sort of aid which would have been so precious to me in
that winter of 1829-30, and I know that, in above twenty years, I have
never succeeded but once." One of the most distinguished editors
in London, who had charge of a periodical for many years, told the
present writer what comes to the same thing, namely, that in no single
case during all these years did a volunteer contributor of real
quality, or with any promise of eminence, present himself or herself.
So many hundreds think themselves called, so few are chosen. It used
to be argued that the writer under the anonymous system was hidden
behind a screen and robbed of his well-earned distinction. In truth,
however, it is impossible for a writer of real distinction to remain
anonymous. If a writer in a periodical interests the public, they are
sure to find out who he is.
Again, there is folly unfathomable in a periodical affecting an
eternal consistency, and giving itself the airs of continuous
individuality, and being careful not to talk sense on a given question
to-day because its founders talked nonsense upon it fifty years ago.
This is quite true. There is a monstrous charlatanry about the old
editorial We, but perhaps there are some tolerably obvious openings
for charlatanry of a different kind under our own system. The man who
writes in his own name may sometimes be tempted to say what he knows
he is expected from his position or character to say, rather than what
he would have said if his personality were not concerned. As far as
honesty goes, signature perhaps offers as many inducements to one kind
of insincerity, as anonymity offers to another kind. And on the public
it might perhaps be contended that there is an effect of a rather
similar sort. They are in some cases tempted away from serious
discussion of the matter, into frivolous curiosity and gossip about
the man. All this criticism of the principle of which the _Fortnightly
Review_ was the earliest English adherent, will not be taken as the
result in the present writer of Chamfort's _maladie des désabusés_;
that would be both extremely ungrateful and without excuse or reason.
It is merely a fragment of disinterested contribution to the study of
a remarkable change that is passing over a not unimportant department
of literature. One gain alone counterbalances all the drawbacks, and
that is a gain that could hardly have been foreseen or expected; I
mean the freedom with which the great controversies of religion and
theology have been discussed in the new Reviews. The removal of the
mask has led to an outburst of plain speaking on these subjects, which
to Mr. Napier's generation would have seemed simply incredible. The
frank avowal of unpopular beliefs or non-beliefs has raised the whole
level of the discussion, and perhaps has been even more advantageous
to the orthodox in teaching them more humility, than to the heterodox
in teaching them more courage and honesty.
Let us return to Mr. Napier's volume. We have said that it is
impossible for a great writer to be anonymous. No reader will need to
be told who among Mr. Napier's correspondents is the writer of the
following:--
"I have been thinking sometimes, likewise, of a paper on Napoleon,
a man whom, though handled to the extreme of triteness, it will be
long years before we understand. Hitherto in the English tongue,
there is next to nothing that betokens insight into him, or even
sincere belief of such, on the part of the writer. I should like
to study the man with what heartiness I could, and form to myself
some intelligible picture of him, both as a biographical and as
a historical figure, in both of which senses he is our chief
contemporary wonder, and in some sort the epitome of his age.
This, however, were a task of far more difficulty than Byron, and
perhaps not so promising at present."
And if there is any difficulty in recognising the same hand in the
next proposal, it arises only from the circumstance that it is this
writer above all others who has made Benthamism a term of reproach on
the lips of men less wise than himself:--
"A far finer essay were a faithful, loving, and yet critical, and
in part condemnatory, delineation of Jeremy Bentham, and his place
and working in this section of the world's history. Bentham will
not be put down by logic, and should not be put down, for we need
him greatly as a backwoodsman: neither can reconciliation be
effected till the one party understands and is just to the other.
Bentham is a denyer; he denies with a loud and universally
convincing voice; his fault is that he can _affirm_ nothing,
except that money is pleasant in the purse, and food in the
stomach, and that by this simplest of all beliefs he can
reorganise society. He can shatter it in pieces--no thanks to him,
for its old fastenings are quite rotten--but he cannot reorganise
it; this is work for quite others than he. Such an essay on
Bentham, however, were a great task for any one; for me a very
great one, and perhaps rather out of my road."
Perhaps Carlyle would have agreed that Mr. Mill's famous pair of
essays on Bentham and Coleridge have served the purpose which he had
in his mind, though we may well regret the loss of such a picture of
Bentham's philosophic personality as he would surely have given us. It
is touching to think of him whom we all know as the most honoured name
among living veterans of letters,[1] passing through the vexed ordeal
of the young recruit, and battling for his own against the waywardness
of critics and the blindness of publishers. In 1831 he writes to Mr.
Napier: "All manner of perplexities have occurred in the publishing
of my poor book, which perplexities I could only cut asunder, not
unloose; so the MS. like an unhappy ghost still lingers on the wrong
side of Styx; the Charon of ---- Street durst not risk it in his
_sutilis cymba_, so it leaped ashore again." And three months later:
"I have given up the notion of hawking my little Manuscript Book about
any further; for a long time it has lain quiet in its drawer, waiting
for a better day." And yet this little book was nothing less than the
History of the French Revolution.
[Footnote 1: Carlyle died on February 5, 1881.]
It might be a lesson to small men to see the reasonableness, sense,
and patience of these greater men. Macaulay's letters show him to have
been a pattern of good sense and considerateness. Mr. Carlyle seems
indeed to have found Jeffrey's editorial vigour more than could be
endured:
"My respected friend your predecessor had some difficulty with me
in adjusting the respective prerogatives of Author and Editor, for
though not, as I hope, insensible to fair reason, I used sometimes
to rebel against what I reckoned mere authority, and this partly
perhaps as a matter of literary conscience; being wont to write
nothing without studying it if possible to the bottom, and writing
always with an almost painful feeling of scrupulosity, that light
editorial hacking and hewing to right and left was in general
nowise to my mind."
But we feel that the fault must have lain with Jeffrey; the
qualifications that Lord Cockburn admired so much were not likely to
be to the taste of a man of Mr. Carlyle's grit. That did not prevent
the most original of Mr. Napier's contributors from being one of the
most just and reasonable.
"I have, barely within my time, finished that paper
['Characteristics'], to which you are now heartily welcome, if you
have room for it. The doctrines here set forth have mostly long
been familiar convictions with me; yet it is perhaps only within
the last twelvemonth that the public utterance of some of them
could have seemed a duty. I have striven to express myself with
what guardedness was possible; and, as there will now be no time
for correcting proofs, I must leave it wholly in your editorial
hands. Nay, should it on due consideration appear to you in your
place (for I see that matter dimly, and nothing is clear but my
own mind and the general condition of the world), unadvisable to
print the paper at all, then pray understand, my dear Sir, now and
always, that I am no unreasonable man; but if dogmatic enough (as
Jeffrey used to call it) in my own beliefs, also truly desirous to
be just towards those of others. I shall, in all sincerity, beg of
you to do, without fear of offence (for in _no_ point of view will
there be any), what you yourself see good. A mighty work lies
before the writers of this time."
It is always interesting, to the man of letters at any rate if not
to his neighbours, to find what was first thought by men of admitted
competence of the beginnings of writers who are now seen to have made
a mark on the world. "When the reputation of authors is made," said
Sainte-Beuve, "it is easy to speak of them _convenablement_: we have
only to guide ourselves by the common opinion. But at the start, at
the moment when they are trying their first flight and are in part
ignorant of themselves, then to judge them with tact, with precision,
not to exaggerate their scope, to predict their flight, or divine
their limits, to put the reasonable objections in the midst of all
due respect--this is the quality of the critic who is born to be a
critic." We have been speaking of Mr. Carlyle. This is what Jeffrey
thought of him in 1832:--
"I fear Carlyle will not do, that is, if you do not take the
liberties and the pains with him that I did, by striking out
freely, and writing in occasionally. The misfortune is, that he
is very obstinate, and unluckily in a place like this, he finds
people enough to abet and applaud him, to intercept the operation
of the otherwise infallible remedy of general avoidance and
neglect. It is a great pity, for he is a man of genius and
industry, and with the capacity of being an elegant and impressive
writer"
The notion of Jeffrey occasionally writing elegantly and impressively
into Carlyle's proof-sheets is rather striking. Some of Jeffrey's
other criticisms sound very curiously in our ear in these days. It
is startling to find Mill's _Logic_ described (1843) as a "great
unreadable book, and its elaborate demonstration of axioms and
truisms." A couple of years later Jeffrey admits, in speaking of Mr.
Mill's paper on Guizot--"Though I have long thought very highly of his
powers as a reasoner, I scarcely gave him credit for such large and
sound views of _realities_ and practical results as are displayed
in this article." Sir James Stephen--the distinguished sire of two
distinguished contributors, who may remind more than one editor of our
generation of the Horatian saying, that
"Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis,
... neque imbellera feroces
Progenerant aquilae columbam"
--this excellent writer took a more just measure of the book which
Jeffrey thought unreadable.
"My more immediate object in writing is to remind you of John
Mill's book [System of Logic], of which I have lately been reading
a considerable part, and I have done so with the conviction that
it is one of the most remarkable productions of this nineteenth
century. Exceedingly debatable indeed, but most worthy of debate,
are many of his favourite tenets, especially those of the last
two or three chapters. No man is fit to encounter him who is not
thoroughly conversant with the moral sciences which he handles;
and remembering what you told me of your own studies under Dugald
Stewart, I cannot but recommend the affair to your own personal
attention. You will find very few men fit to be trusted with it.
You ought to be aware that, although with great circumspection,
not to say timidity, Mill is an opponent of Religion in the
abstract, not of any particular form of it. That is, he evidently
maintains that superhuman influences on the mind of man are but a
dream, whence the inevitable conclusion that all acts of devotion
and prayer are but a superstition. That such is his real meaning,
however darkly conveyed, is indisputable. You are well aware that
it is in direct conflict with my own deepest and most cherished
convictions. Yet to condemn him for holding, and for calmly
publishing such views, is but to add to the difficulties of fair
and full discussion, and to render truth (or supposed truth), less
certain and valuable than if it had invited, and encountered,
and triumphed over every assault of every honest antagonist. I,
therefore, wish Mill to be treated respectfully and handsomely."
Few of Mr. Napier's correspondents seem to have been more considerate.
At one period (1844) a long time had passed without any contribution
from Sir James Stephen's pen appearing in the Review. Mr. Senior
wrote a hint on the subject to the editor, and Napier seems to have
communicated with Sir James Stephen, who replied in a model strain.
"Have you any offer of a paper or papers from my friend John
Austin? If you have, and if you are not aware what manner of man
he is, it may not be amiss that you should be apprised that in
these parts he enjoys, and deservedly, a very high and yet a
peculiar reputation. I have a great attachment to him. He is, in
the best sense of the word, a philosopher, an earnest and humble
lover of wisdom. I know not anywhere a larger minded man, and yet,
eloquent as he is in speech, there is, in his written style, an
involution and a lack of vivacity which renders his writings a
sealed book to almost every one. Whether he will be able to assume
an easier and a lighter manner, I do not know. If not, I rather
fear for him when he stands at your bar. All I ask is, that you
would convey your judgment in measured and (as far as you can
honestly) in courteous terms; for he is, for so considerable a
man, strangely sensitive. You must have an odd story to tell of
your intercourse with the knights of the Order of the Quill."
And the letter closed with what an editor values more even than
decently Christian treatment, namely the suggestion of a fine subject.
This became the admirable essay on the Clapham Sect.
The author of one of the two or three most delightful biographies
in all literature has published the letter to Mr. Napier in which
Macaulay speaks pretty plainly what he thought about Brougham and the
extent of his services to the Review. Brougham in turn hated Macaulay,
whom he calls the third or greatest bore in society that he has ever
known. He is furious--and here Brougham was certainly not wrong--over
the "most profligate political morality" of Macaulay's essay on Clive.
"In my eyes, his defence of Clive, and the audacious ground of
it, merit execration. It is a most serious, and, to me, a painful
subject. No--no--all the sentences a man can turn, even if he made
them in pure taste, and not in Tom's snip-snap taste of the lower
empire,--all won't avail against a rotten morality. The first and
most sacred duty of a public man, and, above all, an author, is
to keep by honest and true doctrine--never to relax--never to
countenance vice--ever to hold fast by virtue. What? Are we
gravely to be told, at this time of day, that a set-off may be
allowed for public, and, therefore, atrocious crimes, though he
admits that a common felon pleads it in vain? Gracious God, where
is this to end! What horrors will it not excuse! Tiberius's great
capacity, his first-rate wit, that which made him the charm of
society, will next, I suppose, be set up to give a splendour to
the inhabitants of Capreae. Why, Olive's address, and his skill,
and his courage are not at all more certain, nor are they
qualities of a different cast. Every great ruffian, who has filled
the world with blood and tears, will be sure of an acquittal,
because of his talents and his success. After I had, and chiefly
in the _Edinburgh Review_, been trying to restore a better, a
purer, a higher standard of morals, and to wean men from the silly
love of military glory, for which they are the first to pay, I
find the _Edinburgh Review_ preaching, not merely the old and
common heresies, but ten thousand times worse, adopting a vile
principle never yet avowed in terms, though too often and too much
taken for a guide, unknown to those who followed it, in forming
their judgments of great and successful criminals."
Of the essay on Warren Hastings he thought better, "bating some
vulgarity and Macaulay's usual want of all power of reasoning."
Lord Cockburn wrote to Mr. Napier (1844) a word or two on Macaulay.
"Delighting as I do," says Lord Cockburn, "in his thoughts, views, and
knowledge, I feel too often compelled to curse and roar at his words
and the structure of his composition. As a corrupter of style, he is
more dangerous to the young than Gibbon. His seductive powers greater,
his defects worse." All good critics now accept this as true. Jeffrey,
by the way, speaking of the same essay, thinks that Macaulay rates
Chatham too high. "I have always had an impression," he says, "(though
perhaps an ignorant and unjust one), that there was more good luck
than wisdom in his foreign policy, and very little to admire (except
his personal purity) in any part of his domestic administration."
It is interesting to find a record, in the energetic speech of
contemporary hatred, of the way in which orthodox science regarded a
once famous book of heterodox philosophy. Here is Professor Sedgwick
on the _Vestiges of Creation_:--
"I now know the Vestiges well, and I detest the book for its
shallowness, for the intense vulgarity of its philosophy, for its
gross, unblushing materialism, for its silly credulity in catering
out of every fool's dish, for its utter ignorance of what is meant
by induction, for its gross (and I dare to say, filthy) views of
physiology,--most ignorant and most false,--and for Its shameful
shuffling of the facts of geology so as to make them play a
rogue's game. I believe some woman is the author; partly from the
fair dress and agreeable exterior of the Vestiges: and partly from
the utter ignorance the book displays of all sound physical logic.
A _man_ who knew so much of the surface of Physics must, at least
on some one point or other, have taken a deeper plunge; but _all_
parts of the book are shallow.... From the bottom of my soul, I
loathe and detest the Vestiges. 'Tis a rank pill of asafoetida and
arsenic, covered with gold leaf. I do, therefore, trust that your
contributor has stamped with an iron heel upon the head of the
filthy abortion, and put an end to its crawlings. There is not one
subject the author handles bearing on life, of which he does not
take a degrading view."
Mr. Napier seems to have asked him to write on the book, and
Sedgwick's article, the first he ever wrote for a review, eventually
appeared (1845),--without, it is to be hoped, too much of the raging
contempt of the above and other letters. "I do feel contempt, and,
I hope, I shall express it. Eats hatched by the incubations of a
goose--dogs playing dominos--monkeys breeding men and women--all
distinctions between natural and moral done away--the Bible proved
all a lie, and mental philosophy one mass of folly, all of it to be
pounded down, and done over again in the cooking vessels of Gall and
Spurzheim!" This was the beginning of a long campaign, which is just
now drawing near its close. Let us at least be glad that orthodoxy,
whether scientific or religious, has mended his temper. One among
other causes of the improvement, as we have already said, is probably
to be found in the greater self-restraint which comes from the fact of
the writer appearing in his own proper person.