CHAPTER XIV.

Anápa, that manufactory of arms for the robbers of the mountains, that

bazar where are sold the tears, the blood, the sweat of Christian

slaves, that torch of rebellion to the Caucasus--Anápa, I say, was, in

1808, invested by the Russian armies, on the sea and on the mountain

side. The gun-boats, the bomb-vessels, and all the ships that could

approach the shore, were thundering against the fortifications. The land

army had passed the river which falls into the Black Sea, under the

northern wall of Anápa, and was posted in swampy ground around the whole

city. Then they constructed wooden trenches, hewing down, for that

purpose, the surrounding forest. Every night new works arose nearer and

nearer to the walls of the town. The interior of the houses flamed from

the effects of the shells; the outer walls fell under the cannon-balls.

But the Turkish garrison, reinforced by the mountaineers, fought

desperately, made fierce sorties, and replied to all proposals for

surrender by the shots of their artillery. Meanwhile the besiegers were

incessantly harassed by the Kabardinétz skirmishers, and the

foot-archers of Abazékhs, Shamsóukhs, Natoukháitzes, and other wild

mountaineers of the shores of the Black Sea, assembled, like the

jackals, in hope of plunder and blood. Against them it was necessary to

erect redans; and this double work, performed under the fire of cannon

from the fortress and from the forest, on irregular and boggy ground,

delayed long the capture of the town.

At length, on the eve of the taking of Anápa, the Russians opened a

breaching-battery in a ravine on the south-east side of the town: its

effect was tremendous. At the fifth volley the battlements and parapets

were overthrown, the guns laid bare and beaten down. The balls, striking

against the stone facing, flashed like lightning; and then, in a black

cloud of dust, flew up fragments of shattered stone. The wall crumbled

and fell to pieces; but the fortress, by the thickness of its walls,

resisted long the shattering force of the iron; and the precipitous

steepness of the ruins offered no opportunity for storming. For the

heated guns, and for the weary artillerymen, worn out by incessant

firing, repose was absolutely necessary. By degrees the firing from the

batteries by land and sea began to slacken; thick clouds of smoke,

floating from the shore, expanded over the waves, sometimes concealing,

sometimes discovering, the flotilla. From time to time a ball of smoke

flew up from the guns of the fortress, and after the rolling of the

cannon-thunder, far echoing among the hills, a ball would whistle by at

random. And now all was silent--all was still both in the interior of

Anápa and in the trenches. Not one turban was seen between the

battlements, not one carabineer's bayonet in the intrenchment. Only the

Turkish banners on the towers, and the Russian ensign on board the

ships, waved proudly in the air, now undimmed by a single stream of

smoke--only the harmonious voices of the muezzins resounded from afar,

calling the Mussulmans to their mid-day prayer. At this moment, from the

breach opposite the battery on the plain, descended, or rather rolled

down, supported by ropes, a horseman on a white horse, who immediately

leaped over the half-filled ditch, dashed to the left between the

batteries, flew over the intrenchments, over the soldiers dozing behind

them, who neither expected nor guessed any thing like this, and,

followed by their hasty shouts, plunged into the woods. None of the

cavalry had time to glance at, much less to pursue him: all remained

thunderstruck with astonishment and vexation; and soon forgot all about

the brave cavalier, in the alarm of the renewed firing from the

fortress, which was recommenced in order to give the bold messenger time

to escape to the mountains. Towards evening the breaching battery, which

had thundered almost incessantly, had accomplished its work of

demolition. The prostrate wall formed a kind of bridge for the

besiegers, who, with the impatience of bravery, prepared for the

assault; when suddenly an unexpected attack of the Tcherkéss, who had

driven in the Russian scouts and outposts, compelled the besiegers to

direct the fire of the redans against the furious mountaineers. A

thundering Allah-il-Allah, from the walls of Anápa, greeted their

encounter: the volleys of cannon and musketry arose with redoubled

violence from the walls, but the Russian grape tore asunder and arrested

the crowds of horsemen and infantry of the Tcherkéss, as they were

preparing to throw themselves upon the batteries with their sabres; and

they, with furious cries of "Giaour, giaourla!" turned back, leaving

behind them the dead and wounded. In a moment the whole field was strewn

with their corpses and their disabled, who, staggering to their feet,

fell back, struck by the balls and grape-shot; whilst the cannon-shot

shattered the wood, and the grenades, bursting, completed the

destruction. But from the beginning of the action, till the moment when

not one of the enemy remained in sight, the Russians saw before them a

well-built Tcherkéss on a white horse, who rode, at a slow pace, up and

down before their redans. All recognized in him the same horseman who

had leaped over the trenches at mid-day, probably in order to induce the

Tcherkéss to fall upon the Russians from the rear, at the moment when

the now unsuccessful sortie was to be made from the gate. Crashing and

thundering danced the grape-shot around him. His horse strained at the

bridle; but he, looking calmly at the batteries, rode along them as if

they were raining flowers upon him. The artillerymen ground their teeth

with vexation at the unpunished daring of the cavalier: shot after shot

tore up the earth, but he remained unhurt as if enchanted. "Give him a

cannon-ball!" shouted a young officer of artillery, but lately released

from the military college, who was above all enraged at their want of

success: "I would load the gun with my head, so glad would I be to kill

that bragger: it is not worth while to waste grape upon one

man--grape--look out! a cannon-ball will reach the guilty!" So saying,

he screwed up the quoin and levelled the gun, looking through the sight;

and having exactly calculated the moment when the horseman would ride

through the line of aim, he stepped aside and ordered the fatal fire.

For some moments the smoke enveloped the battery in darkness: when it

floated away the frightened horse was dragging the blood-stained corpse

of his rider, with the foot entangled in the stirrup. "Hit--killed!" was

shouted from all the trenches; and the young artillery officer, taking

off his cap, piously crossed himself, and with a joyous face jumped down

from the battery to seize the prey which he had earned. He soon

succeeded in catching by the reins the horse of the slain Tcherkéss, for

he was dragging the body sideways on the ground. The unfortunate man had

his arm torn off close to the shoulder; but he still breathed, groaned,

and struggled. Pity touched the good-natured youth: he called some

soldiers, and ordered them to carry the wounded man carefully into the

trench, sent for the surgeon, and had the operation performed before his

eyes. At night, when all was quiet, the artilleryman sat by the side of

his dying prisoner, and watched him with interest by the dim light of

the lantern. The serpent-marks of sorrow, graven on his cheek by tears,

the wrinkles on his forehead, dug, not by years but passions, and bloody

scratches, disfigured his handsome face; and in it was painted something

more torturing than pain, more terrible than death. The artilleryman

could not restrain an involuntary shudder. The prisoner sighed heavily,

and having, with difficulty, raised his hand to his forehead, opened his

heavy eyelids, muttering to himself in unintelligible sounds,

unconnected words.... "Blood," he cried, examining his hand ... "always

blood! why have they put _his_ bloody shirt upon me? Already, without

that, I swim in blood.... Why do I not drown in it?... How cold the

blood is to-day!... Once it used to scald me, and this is no better! In

the world it is stifling, in the gave so cold.... 'Tis dreadful to be a

corpse. Fool that I am, I sought death. O, let me live but for one

little day--one little hour, to live!..."

"What? Why have I hidden another in the grave, _whisperest thou_? Learn

thyself what it is to die!..." A convulsive paroxysm interrupted his

raving, an unspeakably dreadful groan burst from the sufferer, and he

fell into a painful lethargy, in which the soul lives only to suffer.

The artilleryman, touched to the very bottom of his heart, raised the

head of the miserable being, sprinkled his face with cold water, and

rubbed his temples with spirits of wine, in order to bring him to

himself. Slowly he opened his eyes, shook his head several times, as if

to shake the mist from his eyelashes, and steadfastly directed his gaze

on the face of the artilleryman, which was faintly lighted up by the

feeble gleam of the candle. Suddenly, with a piercing cry, he lifted

himself on his bed, as if by some superhuman force: his hair stood

upright, his whole body shook with a fevered trembling, his hand seemed

endeavouring to push something from him, an ineffable horror was

expressed on his countenance.... "Your name!" he cried at length,

addressing the artilleryman. "Who are thou, stranger from the grave?"

"I am Verkhóffsky?" ... answered the young artilleryman. This was a shot

that went straight to the heart of the prisoner. The ligature on the

principal artery gave way from a rush of blood, which poured through the

bandages. Yet a few struggles, yet the throat-rattle, and the leaden

hand of death choked the wounded man's last sigh, imprinted on his brow

the seal of the last grief; gathering whole years of repentance into one

rapid moment, in which the soul, tearing itself from the body, fears

equally the tortures of life and of nothingness, feels at once all the

gnawing of the past and all the agony of the future. Terrible was it to

look on the convulsed face of the dead. "He surely must have been a

great sinner," said Verkhóffsky, in a low voice to the general's

interpreter, who stood near him, and he shuddered involuntarily.

"A great villain," rejoined the interpreter: "it appears to me he was a

Russian deserter. I never met with a mountaineer who spoke Russian so

correctly as this prisoner. Let me look at his arms. We may, perhaps,

find some marks on them." With these words he unsheathed, with a look of

curiosity, the dagger which had been taken from the dead man, and

bringing it to the lantern, deciphered and translated the following

inscription:--

"Be slow to offend--swift to revenge!"

"Quite a robber's rule," said Verkhóffsky; "my poor brother Evstafli!

you fell a victim to such a fanatic principle as this!"

The eyes of the good youth filled with tears.... "Is there not something

else?" he asked.

"This is apparently the slain man's name," replied the interpreter.

"It is: Ammalát Bek!"

* * * * *

MR BAILEY'S REPLY TO AN ARTICLE IN BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

We have just been favoured with a pamphlet from Mr Bailey, entitled "A

Letter to a Philosopher, in Reply to some Recent Attempts to Vindicate

Berkeley's Theory of Vision, and in further Elucidation of its

Unsoundness." Our article on Mr Bailey's review of Berkeley's theory,

which appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ of June 1842, was one of these

attempts. Had the author merely attacked or controverted our

animadversions on his book, we should probably have left the question to

its fate, and not have reverted to a subject, the discussion of which,

even in the first instance, may have been deemed out of place in a

journal not expressly philosophical. There is, in general, little to be

gained by protracting such controversies. But, as Mr Bailey accuses us,

in the present instance, of having misrepresented his views, we must be

allowed to exculpate ourselves from the charge of having dealt, even

with unintentional unfairness, towards one whose opinions, however much

we may dissent from them, are certainly entitled to high respect and a

candid examination, as the convictions of an able and zealous enquirer

after truth.

In our strictures on Mr Bailey's work, we remarked, that he had

represented Berkeley as holding that the eye is not directly and

originally cognizant of the outness of objects in relation to each

other, or of what we would call their reciprocal outness; in other

words, we stated, that, according to Mr Bailey, Berkeley must be

regarded as denying to the eye the original intuition of space, either

in length, breadth, or solid depth. It was, however, only in reference

to one of his arguments, and to one particular division of his subject,

that we laid this representation to his charge. Throughout the other

parts of his discussion, we by no means intended to say that such was

the view he took of the Berkeleian theory. Nor are we aware of having

made any statement to that effect. If we did, we now take the

opportunity of remarking, that we restrict our allegation, as we believe

we formerly restricted it, to the single argument and distinction just

mentioned, and hereafter to be explained.

In his reply, Mr Bailey disavows the impeachment _in toto_. He declares

that he never imputed to Berkeley the doctrine, that the eye is not

directly percipient of space in the two dimensions of length and

breadth. "The perception of this kind of distance," says he, "never

formed the subject of controversy with any one ... That we see extension

in two dimensions is admitted by all."--(_Letter_, p. 10.) If it can be

shown that the doctrine which is here stated to be admitted by all

philosophers, is yet expressly controverted by the two metaphysicians

whom Mr Bailey appears to have studied most assiduously, it is, at any

rate, possible that he may have overlooked, in his own writings, the

expression of an opinion which has escaped his penetration in theirs. To

convince himself, then, how much he is mistaken in supposing that the

visual intuition of longitudinal and lateral extension is admitted by

all philosophers, he has but to turn to the works of Dr Brown and the

elder Mill. In arguing that we have no immediate perception of visible

figure, Dr Brown not only virtually, but expressly, asserts that the

sight has no perception of extension in any of its dimensions. Not to

multiply quotations, the following will, no doubt, be received as

sufficient:--"They (i.e. philosophers) have--_I think without sufficient

reason_--universally supposed that the superficial extension of _length

and breadth_ becomes known to us by sight originally."[28] Dr Brown then

proceeds to argue, with what success we are not at present considering,

that our knowledge of extension and figure is derived from another

source than the sense of sight.

[28] Brown's Lectures, Lecture xxviii.

Mr James Mill, an author whom Mr Bailey frequently quotes with

approbation, and in confirmation of his own views, is equally explicit.

He maintains, in the plainest terms, that the eye has no intuition of

space, or of the reciprocal outness of visible objects. "Philosophy,"

says he, "has ascertained that we derive nothing from the eye whatever

but sensations of colour--that the idea of extension [he means in its

three dimensions] is derived from sensations not in the eye, but in the

muscular part of our frame."[29] Thus, contrary to what Mr Bailey

affirms, these two philosophers limit the office of vision to the

perception of mere colour or difference of colour, denying to the eye

the original perception of extension in any dimension whatever. In their

estimation, the intuition of space is no more involved in our perception

of different colours than it is involved in our perception of different

smells or different sounds. Dr Brown's doctrine, in which Mr Mill seems

to concur, is, that the perception of superficial extension no more

results from a certain expanse of the optic nerve being affected by a

variety of colours than it results from a certain expanse of the

olfactory nerve being affected by a variety of odours.[30] So much for

Mr Bailey's assertion, that _all_ philosophers admit the perception of

extension in two dimensions.

[29] Mill's Analysis, vol. i. p. 73.

[30] This reasoning of Dr Brown's is founded upon an assumed

analogy between the structure of the optic nerve, and the

structure of the olfactory nerves and other sensitive nerves,

and is completely disproved by the physiological observations of

Treviranus, who has shown that no such analogy exists: that the

ends of the nervous fibres in the retina being elevated into

distinct separate _papillæ_, enable us to perceive the

extension, and discriminate the position of visible bodies,

while the nerves of the other senses being less delicately

defined, are not fitted to furnish us with any such perception,

or to aid us in making any such discrimination. See _Müller's

Physiology, translated by W. Baly, M.D._, vol. ii. pp. 1073,

1074. Although the application of Treviranus's discovery to the

refutation of Dr Brown's reasoning is our own, we may remark, in

justice to an eminent philosopher, that it was Sir William

Hamilton who first directed our attention to the _fact_ as

established by the great physiologist.

But, of course, our main business is with the expression of his own

opinion. In rebutting our charge, he maintains that "the visibility of

angular distance (that is of extension laterally) is assumed, by

implication, as part of Berkeley's doctrine, in _almost_ every chapter

of my book."--(_Letter_, p. 13.) That word _almost_ is a provident

saving clause; for we undertake to show that not only is the very

reverse assumed, by implication, as part of Berkeley's doctrine, in the

_single_ chapter to which we confined our remarks, but that, in another

part of his work, it is expressly avowed as the only alternative by

which, in the author's opinion, Berkeley's consistency can be preserved.

At the outset of his enquiry, Mr Bailey divides his discussion into two

branches: first, Whether objects are originally seen to be external, or

at _any_ distance at all from the sight; and, secondly, Supposing it

admitted that they are seen to be external, or at _some_ distance from

the sight, whether they are all seen in the same plane, or equally near.

It was to the former of these questions that we exclusively confined our

remarks;[31] and it was in reference to it, and to an important argument

evolved by Mr Bailey in the course of its discussion, that we charged

him with fathering on Berkeley the doctrine which he now disavows as his

interpretation of the bishop's opinion. He further disputes the

relevancy of the question about our perception of lateral extension, and

maintains that distance in a direction from the percipient, or what we

should call protensive distance, is the only matter in dispute; and that

it is a misconception of the scope of Berkeley's essay to imagine

otherwise. The relevancy of the question shall be disposed of

afterwards. In the mean time, the question at issue is, Can the

allegation which we have laid to Mr Bailey's charge be proved to be the

fact, or not?

[31] Mr Bailey seems disposed to carp at us for having confined

our remarks to this first question, and for not having given a

more complete review of his book. But the reason why we cut

short our critique is obvious; for if it be proved, as we

believe it can, that objects are originally seen at _no distance

whatever_ from the sight, it becomes quite superfluous to

enquire what appearance they would present if originally seen at

_some_ distance from the sight. The way in which we disposed of

the first question, however imperfect our treatment of it may

have been, necessarily prevented us from entering upon the

second; and our review, with all its deficiencies, was thus a

complete review of his book, though not a review of his complete

book.

In discussing the first of the two questions, it was quite possible for

Mr Bailey to have represented Berkeley as holding, that visible objects,

though not seen to be external to the sight, were yet seen to be out of

each other, or laterally extended within the organism or the mind. But

Mr Bailey makes no such representation of the theory, and the whole

argument which pervades the chapter in which the first question is

discussed, is founded on the negation of any such extension. All visible

extension, he tells us, must, in his opinion, be either plane or solid.

Now he will scarcely maintain that he regarded Berkeley as holding that

we perceive solid extension within the organism of the eye. Neither does

he admit that, according to Berkeley, and in reference to this first

question, plane extension is perceived within the organism of the eye.

For when he proceeds to the discussion of the _second_ of the two

questions, he remarks that "we must, _at this stage_ of the argument,

consider the theory under examination, as representing that we see all

things _originally in the same plane_,"[32] obviously implying that he

had not _as yet_ considered the theory as representing that we see

things originally in the same plane: in other words, plainly admitting

that, in his treatment of the first question, he had not regarded the

theory as representing that we see things originally under the category

of extension at all.

[32] Review of Berkeley's Theory, p 35.

But if any more direct evidence on this point were wanted, it is to be

found in the section of his work which treats of "the perception of

figure." In the chapter in which he discusses the first of the two

questions, he constantly speaks of Berkeley's theory as representing

that "our visual sensations, or what we ultimately term visible objects,

are originally mere internal feelings." The expression _mere internal

feelings_, however, is ambiguous; for, as we have said, it might still

imply that Mr Bailey viewed the theory as representing that there was an

extension, or reciprocal outness of objects within the retina. But this

doubt is entirely removed by a passage in the section alluded to, which

proves that, in Mr Bailey's estimation, these mere internal feelings not

only involve no such extension, but that there would be an inconsistency

in supposing they did. In this section he brings forward Berkeley's

assertion, "that neither solid nor plane figures are immediate objects

of sight." He then quotes a passage in which the bishop begs the reader

not to stickle too much "about this or that phrase, or manner of

expression, but candidly to collect his meaning from the whole sum and

tenour of his discourse." And then Mr Bailey goes on to say,

"endeavouring, in the spirit here recommended, to collect the author's

meaning when he affirms that the figures we see are neither plane nor

solid, it appears to me to be _a part or consequence_ of his doctrine

already examined, which asserts that visible objects are only internal

feelings."[33] We can now be at no loss to understand what Mr Bailey

means, and conceives Berkeley to mean, by the expression "mere internal

feelings." He evidently means feelings in which no kind of extension

whatever is involved: for, in the next page, he informs us that all

visual extension or extended figure, "_must_ be apprehended as either

plane or solid, and that it is impossible even to conceive it

otherwise." Consequently, if the figures we see are, as Berkeley says,

apprehended neither as plane nor as solid, Mr Bailey, entertaining the

notions he does on the subject of extension, _must_ regard him as

holding that they cannot be apprehended as extended at all--and

accordingly such is the express representation he gives of the theory in

the passage just quoted, where he says that "the doctrine of Berkeley,

which affirms that the figures we see are neither plane nor solid, (that

is, are extended in _no_ direction, according to Mr Bailey's ideas of

extension,) appears to him to be _a part_ of the doctrine which asserts

that visible objects are only internal feelings." Now if that be not

teaching, in the plainest terms, that, according to Berkeley, no species

of extension is implied in the internal feelings of vision, we know not

what language means, and any one thought may be identical with its very

opposite.

[33] Ibid. p. 136.

Here we might let the subject drop, having, as we conceive, said quite

enough to prove the truth of our allegation that, in reference to the

first question discussed, in which our original visual sensations are

represented by Berkeley to be mere internal feelings, Mr Bailey

understood and stated those feelings to signify sensations in which no

perception of extension whatever was involved. However, as Mr Bailey

further remarks that, "although Berkeley's doctrine about visible

figures being neither plane not solid, is thus consistent with his

assertion that they are internal feelings, it is in itself

contradictory,"[34] we shall contribute a few remarks to show that

while, on the one hand, the negation of extension is not required to

vindicate the consistency of Berkeley's assertion, that visible objects

are internal feelings, neither, on the other hand, is there any

contradiction in Berkeley's holding that objects are not seen either as

planes or as solids, and are yet apprehended as extended. Mr Bailey

alleges that we are "far more successful in involving ourselves in

subtle speculations of our own, than in faithfully guiding our readers

through the theories of other philosophers." Perhaps in the present case

we shall be able to thread a labyrinth where our reviewer has lost his

clue, and, in spite of the apparent contradiction by which Mr Bailey has

been gravelled, we shall, perhaps, be more successful than he in

"collecting Berkeley's meaning from the whole sum and tenour of his

discourse."

[34] Review of Berkeley's Theory, p. 137.

First, with regard to the contradiction charged upon the bishop. When we

open our eyes, what do we behold? We behold points--_minima

visibilia_--out of one another. Do we see these points to be in the same

plane? Certainly not. If they are in the same plane we learn this from a

very different experience from that of sight. Again, do we see these

points to be _not_ in the same plane? Certainly not. If the points are

not in the same plane we learn this, too, from a very different

experience than that of sight. All that we see is that the points are

out of one another; and this simply implies the perception of extension,

without implying the perception either of plane or of solid extension.

Thus by the observation of a very obvious fact, which, however, Mr

Bailey has overlooked, is Berkeley's assertion that visible objects are

apprehended as extended, and yet not apprehended either as planes or

solids, relieved from every appearance of contradiction.

It must, however, be admitted that Mr Bailey has much to justify him in

his opinion that extension must be apprehended either as plane or as

solid. None of Berkeley's followers, we believe, have ever dreamt of

conceiving it otherwise, and finding in their master's work the negation

of solid extension specially insisted on, they leapt to the conclusion

that the bishop admitted the original perception of plane extension. But

Berkeley makes no such admission. He places the perception of plane

extension on precisely the same footing with that of solid extension.

"We see planes," says he, "in the same way that we see solids."[35] And

the wisdom of the averment is obvious; for the affirmation of plane

extension involves the negation of solid extension, but this negation

involves the conception (visually derived) of solid extension; but the

admission of that conception, so derived, would be fatal to the

Berkeleian theory. Therefore its author wisely avoids the danger by

holding, that in vision we have merely the perception of what the

Germans would call the _Auseinanderseyn_, that is, the _asunderness_, of

things--a perception which implies no judgment as to whether the things

are secerned in plane or in protensive space.

[35] Essay, § 158.

With regard to the supposition that, in order to preserve Berkeley's

consistency, it was necessary for him to teach that our visual

sensations, (colours namely,) being internal feelings, could involve the

perception neither of plane nor of solid extension, that is to say, of

no extension at all, according to Mr Bailey's ideas, we shall merely

remark, that there appears to us to be no inconsistency in holding, as

Berkeley does, that these colours, though originally internal to the

sight, are nevertheless perceived as extended among themselves.

We shall now say a few words on the _relevancy_ of the question, for Mr

Bailey denies that this question, concerning the reciprocal outness of

visible objects, ought to form any element in the controversy. We shall

show, however, that one of his most important arguments depends entirely

on the view that may be taken of this question; and that while the

argument alluded to would be utterly fatal to Berkeley's theory, if the

perception of reciprocal outness were denied, it is perfectly harmless

if the perception in question be admitted.

Mr Bailey's fundamental and reiterated objection to Berkeley's theory

is, that it requires us to hold that conceptions or past impressions,

derived from one sense, (the touch,) are not merely recalled when

another sense (the sight) executes its functions, but are themselves

absolutely converted into the present intuitions of that other sense. In

his own words, (_Review_, p. 69,) the theory is said to require "a

transmutation of the conceptions derived from touch into the perceptions

of sight." "According to Berkeley, (says he, _Review_, p. 22,) an

internal feeling (i.e. a visual sensation) and an external sensation

(i.e. a tactual sensation) having been experienced at the same time: the

internal feeling, when it afterwards occurs, not only suggests the idea,

but, by doing so, suggests the idea, or, if I may use the figure,

infuses the perception of its own externality. Berkeley thus attributes

to suggestion an effect contrary to its nature, which, as in the case of

language, is simply to revive in our conception what has been previously

perceived by the sense."

Now, this objection would be altogether insurmountable if it were true,

or if it were a part of Berkeley's doctrine, that the sight has no

original intuition of space, or of the reciprocal outness of its

objects--in other words, of colours out of colours; for it being

admitted that the sight has ultimately such a perception, it would be

incumbent on the Berkeleian to show how conceptions derived from another

sense, or how perceptions belonging to another sense, could be converted

into that perception. We agree with Mr Bailey, in thinking that no

process of association could effect this conversion; that if we did not

originally see colours to be out of each other, and the points of the

same colour to be out of each other, we could never so see them; and

that his argument, when thus based on the negation of all original

visual extension, and on the supposition that the touch is the sole

organ of every species of externality, would remain invulnerable.

But, with the admission of the visual intuition of space, the objection

vanishes, and the argument is shorn of all its strength. This admission

relieves the theory from the necessity of maintaining, that conceptions

derived from touch are transmuted into the perceptions of sight. It

attributes to the sight all that ever truly belongs to it, namely, the

perception of colours out of one another; it provides the visual

intuitions with an externality of their own--and the theory never

demands that they should acquire any other; and it leaves to these

visual intuitions the office of merely suggesting to the mind tactual

impressions, with which they have been invariably associated in place.

We say, _in place_; and it will be found that there is no contradiction

in our saying so, when we shall have shown that it is the touch, and not

the sight, which establishes a protensive interval between the organ and

the sensations of vision.

Visible extension, then, or the perception of colours external to

colours, being admitted, Mr Bailey's argument, if he still adheres to

it, must be presented to us in this form. He must maintain that the

theory requires that the objects of touch should not only be suggested

by the visual objects with which they have been associated, but that

they should actually be _seen_. And then he must maintain that no power

of association can enable us to see an object which can only be

touched--a position which, certainly, no one will controvert. The simple

answer to all which, is, that we never do see tangible objects--that the

theory never requires we should, and that no power of association is

necessary to account for a phenomenon which never takes place.

We cannot help thinking, that not a little of the misconception on this

subject which prevails in the writings of Mr Bailey, and, we may add, of

many other philosophers, originates in the supposition that we identify

vision with the eye in the mere act of seeing, and in their taking it

for granted that sight of itself informs us that we possess such an

organ as the eye. Of course, if we suppose that we know instinctively,

or intuitively, from the mere act of seeing, that the eye is the organ

of vision, that it forms a part of the body we behold, and is located in

the head, it requires no conjurer to prove that we _must_ have an

instinctive, or intuitive, knowledge of visible things as larger than

that organ, and, consequently, as external to it. In this case, no

process of association is necessary to account for our knowledge of the

distance of objects. That knowledge must be directly given in the very

function and exercise of vision, as every one will admit, without going

to the expense of an octavo volume to have it proved.

But we hold that no truth in mental philosophy is more incontestable

than this, that the sight originally, and of itself, furnishes us with

no knowledge of the eye, as we _now_ know that organ to exist. It does

not inform us that we have an eye at all. And here we may hazard an

observation, which, simple as it is, appears to us to be new, and not

unimportant in aiding us to unravel the mysteries of sensation; which

observation is, that, in no case whatever, does any sense inform us of

the existence of its appropriate organ, or of the relation which

subsists between that organ and its objects, but that the interposition

of some other sense[36] is invariably required to give us this

information. This truth, which we believe holds good with regard to all

the senses, is most strikingly exemplified in the case of vision, as we

shall now endeavour to illustrate.

[36] It would not be difficult to show, that as, on the one

hand, _distance_ is not involved in the original intuitions of

sight, so, on the other hand, _proximity_ is not involved in the

original intuitions of touch; but that, while it is the touch

which establishes an interval between the organ and the objects

of sight, it is the sight which establishes _no_ interval

between the organ and the objects of touch. Sight thus pays back

every fraction of the debt it has incurred to its brother sense.

This is an interesting subject, but we can only glance at it

here.

Let us begin by supposing that man is a mere "power of seeing". Under

this supposition, we must hold that the periphery of vision is one and

the same with the periphery of visible space; and the two peripheries

being identical, of course whatever objects lie within the sphere of the

one must lie within the sphere of the other also. Perhaps, strictly

speaking, it is wrong to say that these objects are apprehended as

internal to the sight; for the conception of internality implies the

conception of externality, and neither of these conceptions can, as yet,

be realized. But it is obvious what the expression _internal_ means; and

it is unobjectionable, when understood to signify that the Seeing Power,

the Seeing Act, and the Seen Things, co-exist in a synthesis in which

there is no interval or discrimination. For, suppose that we know

instinctively that the seen things occupy a locality separate from the

sight. But that implies that we instinctively know that the sight

occupies a locality separate from them. But such a supposition is a

falling back upon the notion just reprobated, that the mere act of

seeing can indicate its own organ, or can localise the visual phenomena

in the eye--a position which, we presume, no philosopher will be hardy

enough to maintain, when called upon to do so, broadly and

unequivocally. The conclusion, therefore, is irresistible, that, in mere

vision, the sight and its objects cling together in a union or

synthesis, which no function of that sense, and no knowledge imparted to

us by it, (and, according to the supposition, we have, as yet, no other

knowledge,) can enable us to discriminate or dissolve. Where the seeing

is, there is the thing seen, and where the thing seen is, there is the

seeing of it.

But man is not a mere seeing animal. He has other senses besides: He

has, for example, the sense of touch, and one of the most important

offices which this sense performs, is to break up the identity or

cohesion which subsists between sight and its objects. And how? We

answer, by teaching us to associate _vision in general_, or the abstract

_condition_ regulating our visual impressions, with the presence of the

small tangible body we call the eye, and _vision in particular_, or the

individual sensations of vision, (i.e. colours,) with the presence of

immeasurably larger bodies revealed to us by touch, and tangibly

external to the tangible eye. Sight, as we have said, does not inform us

that its sensations are situated in the eye: it does not inform us that

we have an eye at all. Neither does touch inform us that our visual

sensations are located in the eye. It does not lead us to associate with

the eye any of the visual phenomena or operations _in the first

instance_. If it did, it would (_firstly_) either be impossible for it

_afterwards_ to induce us to associate them with the presence of

tangible bodies distant and different from the eye: or, (_secondly_),

such an association would merely give birth to the abstract knowledge or

conclusion, that these bodies were in one place, while the sensations

suggesting them were felt to be associated with something in another

place; colour would not be seen--as it is--incarnated with body: or,

(_thirdly_), we should be compelled to postulate for the eye, as many

philosophers have done, in our opinion, most unwarrantably, "a faculty

of projection"[37] by which it might dissolve the association between

itself and its sensations, throwing off the latter in the form of

colours over the surface of things, and reversing the old Epicurean

doctrine that perception is kept up by the transit to the sensorium of

the ghosts or _simulacra_ of things,

Quæ, quasi membranæ, summo de corpore rerum,

Direptæ, volitant ultro citroque per auras.[38]

It is difficult to say whether the hypothesis of "cast-off films" is

more absurd when we make the films come from things to us as spectral

effluxes, or go from us to them in the semblance of colours.

[37] We observe that even Müller speaks of the "faculty of

projection" as if he sanctioned and adopted the hypothesis.--See

_Physiology_, vol. ii. p. 1167.

[38] Lucretius.

But according to the present view no such incomprehensible faculty, no

such crude and untenable hypothesis, is required. _Before_ the touch has

informed us that we have an eye, _before_ it has led us to associate any

thing visual with the eye, it has _already_ taught us to associate in

place the sensations of vision (colours) with the presence of tangible

objects which are not the eye. Therefore, when the touch discovers the

eye, and induces us to associate vision in some way with it, it cannot

be the particular sensations of vision called colours which it leads us

to associate with that organ; for these have been already associated

with something very different. If it be not colours, then what is it

that the touch compels us to associate with the eye? We answer that it

is the abstract _condition_ of impressions as the general law on which

all seeing depends, but as quite distinct from the particular visual

sensations apprehended in virtue of the observance of that law.

Nor is it at all difficult to understand how this general condition

comes to be associated with the eye, and how the particular visual

sensations come to be associated with something distant from the eye:

and further, how this association of the condition with one thing, and

of the sensations with another thing, (an association established by the

touch and not by the sight,) dissolves the primary synthesis of seeing

and colours. It is to be observed that there are two stages in the

process by which this secernment is brought about--_First_, the stage in

which the visual phenomena are associated with things different from the

organ of vision, the very existence of which is as yet unknown. Let us

suppose, then, the function of sight to be in operation. We behold a

visible object--a particular colour. Let the touch now come into play.

We feel a tangible object--say a book. Now from the mere fact of the

visible and the tangible object being seen and felt together, we could

not associate them in place; for it is quite possible that the tangible

object may admit of being withdrawn, and yet the visible object remain:

and if so, no association of the two in place can be established. But

this is a point that can only be determined by experience; and what says

that wise instructor? We withdraw the tangible object. The visible

object, too, disappears: it leaves its place. We replace the tangible

object--the visible object reappears _in statu quo_. There is no

occasion to vary the experiment. If we find that the visible object

invariably leaves its place when the tangible object leaves its, and

that the one invariably comes back when the other returns, we have

brought forward quite enough to establish an inevitable association in

place between the two. The two places are henceforth regarded, not as

two, but as one and the same.

By the aid of the touch, then, we have associated the visual phenomena

with thing which are _not_ the organ of vision; and well it is for us

that we have done so betimes, and before we were aware of the eye's

existence. Had the eye been indicated to us in the mere act of seeing;

had we become apprised of its existence _before_ we had associated our

visual sensations with the tangible objects constituting the material

universe, the probability, nay the certainty, is that we would have

associated them with this eye, and that then it would have been as

impossible for us to break up the association between colours and the

organ, as it now is for us to dissolve the union between colours and

material things. In which case we should have remained blind, or as bad

as blind; brightness would have been in the eye when it ought to have

been in the sun; greenness would have been in the retina when it ought

to have been in the grass. A most wise provision of nature it certainly

is, by which our visual sensations are disposed of in the right way

before we obtain any knowledge of the eye. And most wisely has nature

seconded her own scheme by obscuring all the sources from which that

knowledge might be derived. The light eyelids--the effortless muscular

apparatus performing its ministrations so gently as to be almost

unfelt--the tactual sensations so imperceptible when the eye is left to

its own motions, so keen when it is invaded by an exploring finger, and

so anxious to avoid all contact by which the existence of the organ

might be betrayed. All these are so many means adopted by nature to keep

back from the infant seer all knowledge of his own eye--a knowledge

which, if developed prematurely, would have perverted the functions, if

not rendered nugatory the very existence of the organ.

But, _secondly_, we have to consider the stage of the process in which

vision is in some way associated with an object which is _not_ any of

the things with which the visual sensations are connected. It is clear

that the process is not completed--that our task, which is to dissolve

the primary synthesis of vision and its phenomena, is but half executed,

unless such an object be found. For though we have associated the visual

sensations (colours) with something different from themselves, still

vision clings to them without a hair's-breadth of interval and pursues

them whithersoever they go. As far, then, as we have yet gone, it cannot

be said that our vision is felt or known to be distanced from the fixed

stars even by the diameter of a grain of sand. The synthesis of sight

and colour is not yet discriminated. How, then, is the interval

interposed? We answer, by the discovery of a tangible object in a

different place from any of the tangible objects associated with colour;

and then by associating, in some way or other, the operations of vision

with this object. Such an object is discovered in the eye. Now, as has

frequently been said, we cannot associate colours or the visual

sensations with this eye; for these have been already disposed of

otherwise. What, then, do we associate with it--and how? We find, upon

experiment, that our apprehension of the various visual sensations

depends on the presence and particular location of this small tangible

body. We find that the whole array of visual phenomena disappear when it

is tactually covered, that they reappear when it is reopened, and so

forth. Thus we come in some way to associate vision with it--not as

colour, however, not as visual sensation. We regard the organ and its

dispositions merely as a general condition regulating the apprehension

of the visual sensations, and no more.

Thus, by attending to the two associations that occur,--the association

(in place) of visual sensations with tangible bodies that _are not_ the

eye; and the association (in place) of vision with a small tangible body

that _is_ the eye--the eye regarded as the condition on which the

apprehension of these sensations depends; by attending to these, we can

understand how a protensive interval comes to be recognised between the

organ and its objects. By means of the touch, we have associated the

sensations of vision with tangible bodies in one place, and the

apprehension of these sensations with a tangible body in another place.

It is, therefore, impossible for the sight to dissolve these

associations, and bring the sensations out of the one place where they

are felt, into the other place where the _condition_ of their

apprehension resides. The sight is, therefore, compelled to leave the

sensations where they are, and the apprehension of them where it is; and

to recognize the two as sundered from each other--the sensations as

separated from the organ, which they truly are. Thus it is that we would

explain the origin of the perception of distance by the eye; believing

firmly that the sight would never have discerned this distance without

the mediation of the touch.

Rightly to understand the foregoing reasoning--indeed to advance a

single step in the true philosophy of sensation--we much divest

ourselves of the prejudice instilled into us by a false physiology, that

what we call our organism, or, in plain words, our body, is necessarily

_the seat_ of our sensations. That all our sensations come to be

associated _in some way_ with this body, and that some of them even come

to be associated with it _in place_, is undeniable; but so far is it

from being true, that they are all essentially implicated or

incorporated with it, and cannot exist at a distance from it, that we

have a direct proof to the contrary in our sensations of vision; and

until the physiologist can prove (what has never yet been proven) an _à

priori_ necessity that our sensations must be where our bodies are, and

an _à priori_ absurdity in the contrary supposition, he must excuse us

for resolutely standing by the fact as we find it.

This is a view which admits of much discussion, and we would gladly

expatiate upon the subject, did time and space permit; but we must

content ourselves with winding up the present observations with the

accompanying diagram, which we think explains our view beyond the

possibility of a mistake.

A

B_a_ _á_C

Let A be the original synthesis, or indiscrimination of vision and its

sensations--of light and colours. Let _á_ be the visual sensations

locally associated by means of the touch with the tangible bodies C

_before_ vision is in any way associated with B--before, indeed, we have

any knowledge of the existence of B. Then let _a_, the general condition

on which the sensations, _after a time_, are found to depend, and in

virtue of which they are apprehended, be locally associated with B--the

eye discovered by means of the touch--and we have before us what we

cannot help regarding as a complete _rationale_ of the whole phenomena

and mysteries of vision. Now, the great difference between this view of

the subject and the views of it that have been taken by _every_ other

philosopher, consists in this, that whereas their explanations

invariably implicated the visual sensations _á_ with B from the very

first, thereby rendering it either impossible for them to be afterwards

associated with C, or possible only in virtue of some very extravagant

hypothesis--our explanation, on the contrary, proceeding on a simple

observation of the facts, and never implicating the sensations _á_ with

B at all, but associating them with C _à primordiis_, merely leaving to

be associated with B, _a_, a certain general condition that must be

complied with, in order that the sensations _á_ may be apprehended,--in

this way, we say, our explanation contrives to steer clear both of the

impossibility and the hypothesis.

We would just add by way of postscript to this article--which, perhaps,

ought itself to have been only a postscript--that with regard to Mr

Bailey's allegation of our having plagiarised one of his arguments,

merely turning the coat of it outside in, we can assure him that he is

labouring under a mistake. In our former paper, we remarked that we

could not see things to be _out_ of the sight, because we could not see

the sight itself. Mr Bailey alleges, that this argument is borrowed from

him, being a mere reversal of his reasoning, that we cannot see things

to be _in_ the sight, because we cannot see both the sight and the

things. That our argument might very naturally have been suggested by

his, we admit. But it was not so. We had either overlooked the passage

in his book, or it was clean out of our mind when we were pondering our

own speculations. It did not suggest our argument, either nearly or

remotely. Had it done so, we should certainly have noticed it, and

should probably have handled both Mr Bailey's reasoning and our own to

better purpose, in consequence. If, notwithstanding this disclaimer, he

still thinks that appearances are against us, we cannot mend his faith,

but can merely repeat, that the fact is as we have stated it.

* * * * *

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.

WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS, BY WILLIAM MULREADY, R.A.

In a review we made last January of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village,"

illustrated by the Etching Club, we concluded our notice with

recommending to those able artists the "Vicar of Wakefield;" and

expressed a hope that Mr Maclise would lend his powerful aid, having in

our recollection some very happy illustrations of his hand in pictures

exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition.

What the Etching Club are about, we know not; but the subject has been

taken up by Mr Mulready; and we now feel it incumbent upon us to notice

this new and illustrated edition of that immortal work. Immortal it must

be; manners pass away, modes change, but the fashion of the heart of man

is unalterable. The "Vicar of Wakefield" bears the stamp of the age in

which it was written. Had it been laid aside by the author, discovered,

and now first brought out, without a notice of the author, or of the

time of its composition, received it must have been indeed with delight,

but not as belonging to the present day. It differs in its literature

and its manners. It is at once a most happy work for illustration, and

the most difficult. It is universally known. Who has not shed previous

and heart-improving tears over it? Taking up the tale now, for the

hundredth time, we are become, from somewhat morose, tender as a

lamb--propitious condition for a critic! We opened upon the scene where

Mr Burchell so cruelly tries poor Sophia, by offering her a husband in

Mr Jenkinson; we know the whole transaction perfectly, the bitter joke,

the proposal

"impares

Formas atque animas in juga ahenea

Sævo mittere cum joco."

Yet how strangely are we moved! Had the taxman at the moment called for

the income-tax, he would have concluded we were paying the last farthing

of our principal. What art is this in a writer, that he should by one

and the same passage continue to move his readers, though they know the

trick! Readers, too, that would have turned the cold shoulder to real

tales of greater distress, and met suspicion that all was a cheat

halfway; but the acknowledged fictitious they yield to at once their

whole hearts, throwing to the winds their beggarly stint. Never was

there a writer that possessed to so great a degree as did Goldsmith this

wondrous charm; and in him it is the more delightful in the light and

pleasant _allegria_ with which he works off the feeling. The volume is

full of subjects that so move; and in this respect it is most admirable

for illustration, inviting the ablest powers. But the difficulty,

wherein does that lie? Look at all illustrations that have hitherto

appeared in print, and you cry out to all--Away with the failure!

Certain it is that but slender abilities have been hitherto employed;

and when we hear of better artists coming to the undertaking, we are

hardened against them. And then, how few come fresh to the tale. To

those who do, perhaps a new illustration may have a tenfold charm; but

to any one past five-and-twenty, it must come "with a difference." It is

very difficult to reconcile one to a new Dr Primrose, a new Mrs

Primrose. Beauty ever had the power of beauty, and takes us suddenly; we

can more readily dismiss the old idea and pitch on the new, so that the

Miss Primroses are more reconcilable and transferable creatures, than

the Vicar and his wife, or the incomparable Moses and the unyielding Mr

Burchell. We cannot pretend to tell how all these characters would have

fitted their images given by Mr Mulready, had the work now first come

into our hands. As it is, we can only say they are new to us. It

requires time to reconcile this. In the meanwhile we must take it for

granted, that they actually do represent those in Mr Mulready's vision,

and he is a clear-sighted man, and has been accustomed to look into

character well. His name as the illustrator, gave promise of success.

Well do we remember an early picture by him--entitled, we believe, the

Wolf and the Lamb. It represented two schoolboys--the bully, and the

more tender fatherless child. The history in that little picture was

quite of the manner of Goldsmith. The orphan boy's face we never can

forget, not the whole expression of his slender form, though it is many

years ago that we saw the picture. So that when the name of Mulready

appeared as illustrator, we said at once, That will do--down came the

book, and here it is before us. The pages have been turned over again

and again. We cannot, nevertheless, quite reconcile our ideas to the new

Dr and Mrs Primrose; but in attempting to do so, so many real artistical

beauties have beamed from the pages, that we determined at once to pour

out our hearts to Maga, and turn over page after page once more. The

illustrations are thirty-two in number; one to head each chapter,

though, and which we think a defect, the subject of the illustration is

not always in the chapter at the head of which it is. The first is the

choice of a wife--"and chose my wife as she did her wedding-gown." The

intended bride is a very beautiful graceful figure, with a most sweet

simplicity of countenance. This never could have resembled Mrs Deborah

Primrose; the outline is most easy and graceful, even as one of

Raffaelle's pure and lovely beings. The youth of the bride and

bridegroom, fresh in their hopes of years of happiness, is happily

contrasted with the staid age of the respectable tradesman, evidently

one of honest trade and industrious habits--the fair dealer, one of the

old race before the days of "immense sacrifices" brought goods and men

into disrepute. The little group is charming; every line assists

another, and make a perfect whole.

"The Dispute between the Vicar and Mr Wilmot."--"This, as may be

expected, produced a dispute, attended with some acrimony." Old Wilmot

is capital; there is acrimony in his face, and combativeness in his

fists--both clenching confidently his own argument, and ready for

action; the very drawing back of one leg, and protrusion of the other,

is indicative of testy impatience. The vicar is a little too loose and

slovenly, both in attitude and attire; the uniting of the figures

(artistically speaking) is with Mr Mulready's usual ability.

"The Rescue of Sophia from Drowning by Mr Burchell."--"She must have

certainly perished, had not my companion, perceiving her danger,

instantly plunged in to her relief." This is altogether a failure, yet

it is a good subject; nor has Mr Mulready been at all happy in the

female beauty. The vicar stands upon the bank too apathetic; and the

group in the vehicle, crossing the stream above, seem scarcely conscious

of the event, though they are within sight of it. Mr Mulready has here,

too, neglected his text. Sophia fell from her horse; all the party set

out on horseback; there is no carriage mentioned.

"The Vicar at Home, with Neighbour Flamborough and the Piper."--"These

harmless people had several ways of being good company; while one

played, the other would sing some soothing ballad." The happy father,

with his children climbing up his chair, and clinging to him, is a

beautiful group, and quite worthy of Mr Mulready's pencil.

"Squire Thornhill."--"At last a young gentleman, of a more genteel

appearance than the rest, came forward, and for a while regarding us,

instead of pursuing the chase, stopped short, and giving his horse to a

servant who attended, approached us with a careless, superior air." The

family are sweetly grouped--the story well told--the easy assurance of

the squire undeniable. The father holds his two boys, one on his lap,

the other between his knees; but is he "_the_ vicar?"

"Mr Burchell and Sophia"--A most charming illustration. It is the

haymaking scene. "I could not avoid, however, observing the assiduity of

Mr Burchell, in assisting my daughter Sophia in her part of the task."

Sophia is a lovely creature, just what she should be. We are not quite

sure of Mr Burchell: possibly he may look too young; he was a character,

and must have borne about him some little acquired oddity, sturdy, and

not undignified. In the illustration he is too prettily genteel; but we

do not wish to see any but Sophia--delightful, loving, lovable Sophia.

In the background, Moses lies on the ground with his book, and the vicar

has rather too suspicious a look; but we can forgive him that, and, for

Sophia's sake, forgive Mr Mulready that he has paid less attention to

her admirer--for at present he is no more. But his admiration is better,

and more to the purpose than other men's love.

"Moses defeated in Argument, or rather borne down by the arrogant,

ignorant volubility of the Squire."--"This effectually raised the laugh

against poor Moses." It is well grouped; but the only successful figure

is Moses. The squire is not the well-dressed, designing profligate. If

the story were not well told by the grouping, we might have taken the

squire for an itinerant "lecturer." The squire is so prominent a person

in the tale, that we think there should have been a well-studied

representation of the accomplished villain and fine gentleman.

No. 8.--Beyond the skill in grouping, Mr Mulready has not attempted any

great interest in this illustration. It represents the family, with

their friend Burchell, interrupted in their enjoyment by the chaplain,

or rather the chaplain's gun; for that only presents its muzzle. "So

loud a report, and so near, startled my daughters; and I could perceive

that Sophia, in the fright, had thrown herself into Mr Burchell's arms

for protection." We do not recognize the alarmed and lovely Sophia--here

she might be any miss; so that the greatest miss is Mr Mulready's, for

he has missed an opportunity of showing the beauty of the sweet sisters

in alarm. In this chapter, we have Goldsmith's delightful ballad, "Turn,

gentle hermit of the dale." Surely this was worthy an illustration or

two; and if Mr Mulready felt himself confined to the heads of chapters,

might he not, for once, have made his digression from the tale, as

Goldsmith has done, and given us that charming episode?

"The Family Group on Horseback, going to Church."--"And when I got about

halfway home, perceived the procession marching slowly forward towards

the church." "The colt that had been nine years in the family, and

Blackberry, his companion," are not the best horse-flesh. Mr Mulready

does not draw the horse like Mr Herring; so, having failed in the feet

of the colt, he has, though rather awkwardly, hidden Blackberry's behind

a convenient stone, which yet makes us fear that the "family pride" will

have a fall, and spare the Vicar's reproof. The party on Blackberry is

good; and the patient, blind face of the animal is well attempted.

"The Visit to Neighbour Flamborough's on Michaelmas Eve."--"But

previously I should have mentioned the very impolitic behaviour of Mr

Burchell, who, during this discourse, sat with his face turned to the

fire; and, at the conclusion of every sentence, would cry out, 'Fudge!'"

This is scarcely the subject of the illustration, for Mr Burchell is

quite in the background. We should like to have seen his face. Miss

Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs is good; Lady Blarney is not the

overdressed and overacting peeress. The whole is very nicely grouped.

Perhaps we are not so pleased with this illustration, remembering

Maclise's more finished picture of the subject.

Moses departing for the "Fair." Hopeful and confident are the group, and

not least so Moses himself. We fancy we recognize in Moses a similar

figure in a sweet picture exhibited last year by Mr Stonhouse, one of

the "Etching Club." We are not quite satisfied with the other

figures--they all hide their faces, as well they might, for their

simplicity in trusting to the "discreet boy" that can "buy and sell to

very good advantage"--so off go Moses and the colt that had been nine

years in the family. "We all followed him several paces from the door,

bawling after him good-luck! good-luck! till we could see him no

longer."

No. 12 exhibits simplicity upon a larger scale, and shows the head of

the family, verifying the old proverb, "like father like son"--though it

should be here like son like father. The colt was fitly turned over to

the son, grave blind Blackberry was a horse for the father's art and

wisdom. "By this time I began to have a most hearty contempt for the

poor animal myself, and was almost alarmed at the approach of every

customer." Poor Blackberry! He is quite conscious of his depreciation;

he is a wise animal, and can see that "with half an eye." Alas! we fear

he has not that half. Blackberry is good--yet will he sell for nothing;

how patiently he lets them handle his leg, and a handle it is; we can

imagine the creature thinking, "pray, sir, would you like to look at the

other poor thing of a leg?" The rascally Fair, in which Mr Mulready has

shown, according to his author, that the Vicar ought not to have been,

is well given; but we should have liked a full length portrait of Mr

Jenkinson pronouncing [Greek: Anarchon ara chai atelentaion to pan.]

The reading the letter, the well-known letter of Mr Burchell to "The

Ladies." "There seemed, indeed, something applicable to both sides in

this letter, and its censures might as well be referred to those to whom

it was written, as to us; but the malicious meaning was obvious, and we

went no further." This, as usual, is well grouped; the Vicar ponders,

and cannot tell what to make of it. We should have preferred, as a

subject, the Vicar confronting Mr Burchell, and the cool effrontery of

the philosopher turning the tables upon the Vicar, "and how came you so

basely to presume to break open this letter?" or better still, perhaps,

the encounter of art between Mr Burchell and Mrs Deborah Primrose. And

why have we not Dick's episode of the dwarf and the giant? Episodes are

excellent things, as good for the illustrations as for the book. No. 14,

the contrivance of Mrs Primrose to entrap the squire, properly belongs

to another chapter. "Then the poor woman would sometimes tell the squire

that she thought him and Olivia extremely of a size, and would bid both

stand up to see which was tallest." The passage is nicely told; there

is, however, but one figure to arrest attention, and that is quite

right, for it is Olivia's, and a sweet figure it is. Dear Olivia! We

have not seen her portrait before, and we shall love her, beyond "to the

end of the chapter," to the end of the volume, and the more so, that

hers after all was a hard fate. It is the part of the tale which leaves

a melancholy impression; Goldsmith has so determined it--and to his

judgment we bow implicitly. Had any other author so wretchedly disposed

of his heroine, in a work not professedly tragic, we should have been

pert as critics usually are. Mrs Primrose is certainly here too young.

We cannot keep our eyes off Olivia; and see, the scoundrel has slyly

taken her innocent hand, and the other is put up to her neck in such

modest doubt of the liberty allowed. Here, as in other instances, the

squire is not the well-dressed man of the world, whose gold lace had

attracted Dick's attention. We could linger longer over this

illustration, but must pass on--honest Burchell has been dismissed,

villany has full sway. We must leave poor Olivia to her fate, and turn

to the family picture "drawn by a limner;" capital--"limner" well

suiting the intended satire--some say a good-natured, sly cut at Sir

Joshua. We should certainly have had Mrs Primrose as Venus, and the two

little ones as Cupids, and the Vicar presenting to her his books on the

Whistonian controversy, and the squire as Alexander. Whoever wishes to

see specimens of this kind may see some ludicrous ones at Hampton

court--particularly of Queen Elizabeth, and the three goddesses abashed

by her superiority. We thought to leave poor Olivia to her fate--Mr

Mulready will not let us give her up so easily, and takes us to the

scene of her quitting her home for her betrayer; and this is the subject

of--

"Yes, she is gone off with two gentlemen in a post-chaise; and one of

them kissed her, and said he would die for her;" and there she is,

hiding her beautiful face with her hands, and poor good Dick is pulling

her back by her dress, that she may not go; but a villain's hand is

round her waist, and one foot he has upon the step of the chaise, and

the door is open. Poor Dick, you have nothing left you to do but to run

home as fast as you can; and there you will find such a scene of

innocent enjoyment, how to be marr'd! at the very moment, too, that the

good Vicar had been feeling and saying, "I think myself happier now than

the greatest monarch upon earth. He has no such fireside, nor such

pleasant faces about it. We are descended from ancestors that knew no

stain, and we shall leave a good and virtuous race of children behind

us. While we live they will be our support and our pleasure here, and

when we die they will transmit our honour untainted to posterity. Come,

my son, we wait for a song: let us have a chorus. But where is my

darling Olivia? That little cherub's voice is always sweetest in the

concert." O Dick, Dick! at such a moment as this to run in and tell him

to be miserable for ever; for that his cherub, his Olivia is gone, and

gone, as it appears, to infamy, a thousand times more grievous than

death. Was there ever so touching a scene?--Mr Mulready feared it. That

is a wonderful chapter--the happiness is so domestically heightened,

that the homefelt joy may be more instantly crushed. We know we shall

not see dear darling Olivia again for a long, long time; and feel we

want a pause and a little diversion--so we will go back to Bill the

songster for amusement, and take it if we can; and here is for the

purpose Bill's "Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog," alas! taught him, too,

by honest Mr Williams; we only hope young, sturdy farmers have strong

nerves, and don't break their hearts in love's disappointments. Here is

Dick's Elegy; and as we, too, have a Moses at home of a "miscellaneous

education," we will put on the Vicar's simplicity, and cheerful

familiarity with his own flesh and blood--and thus we address our Moses,

"Come, my boy, you are no hand at singing, so turn the Elegy another

way: let us have a little Latin, for your music is Hexameter and

Pentameter." Our Moses, "That's a hard task, sir, for one that cannot

mount to Parnass Hill without his 'Gradus ad Parnassum.'" "Well, then

get your Gradus, and put your foot in that first step of the ladder."

Our Moses, waggishly--"I must mind my feet, sir, or they will be but

lame verses, and go halting and hobbling--but I suppose you won't be

very particular as to Latinity. I have heard you tell how Farmer

Williams"--"No," said we, "not Williams, any other farmer you please;

poor Williams is not likely to have any children; yet I know what you

were going to say." "Farmer any body, then," said our Moses, "when he

took his boy to school, left him with the master; and shortly returned

to inform him, that, discoursing upon the subject at the 'public,' he

had heard that there were two sorts of Latin, and so he brought the

master a gammon of bacon, for he wished his son to have the best: now I

think, sir, one of these two sorts must be 'dog Latin,' and that must be

best fitted for the Elegy in question." Our Moses beats the Vicar's

hollow in waggery, so we are proud of him. He takes after his mother. We

condescended to be familiar enough to laugh. Now, then, Moses, to _your_

task and we to _ours_. And here we are at--

The scene of Mr Arnold and his family breaking in upon his butler

personating his master, we are rather inclined to think a failure. There

is Mr Mulready's good grouping, but somehow or other it is rather flat

for so piquant an incident; "I was struck dumb with the apprehension of

my own absurdity, when whom should I next see enter the room but my dear

Miss Arabella Wilmot." We should like to have seen, in illustration, the

political butler ordering the Vicar out of his house, or at least a more

decided portrait of Arabella Wilmot. "Beauty is," as Miss Skeggs said of

virtue, "worth any price;" and we are sorry to look about, and continue,

in her words, "but where is that to be found?" What had Mr Mulready to

do, that he would not let us have a sight of Arabella Wilmot. We,

therefore, pass on to her lover, the Vicar's eldest son George,

delivering his letter of recommendation to the nobleman's footmen, with

his fee, which brings us to--

"However, after bribing the servants with half my worldly fortune, I was

at last shown into a spacious apartment, my letter being previously sent

up for his lordship's inspection." The Vicar's son is a fine fellow in

the illustration: we are glad to see him, but rather wish Mr Mulready

had chosen a better subject. George's adventures were written with a

nice satire; for Goldsmith knew what and whom he had to describe. The

reasons why he would not do for an usher, are well put. Is it not

possible that Mr Dickens took his first hint of Do-the-boys' Hall from

reading this passage in Goldsmith? Indeed, there may be a suspicion that

Mrs Primrose gave the idea of Mrs Nickleby, though he has made her an

original. But to return to the traveller--we should like to have seen an

"illustration" of his interview with the principal of the College of

Louvain, a passage quite in the spirit of Le Sage. "The principal seemed

at first to doubt my abilities; but of these I offered to convince him,

by turning a part of any Greek author he should fix upon into Latin.

Finding me perfectly earnest in my proposals he addressed me thus, 'You

see, young man,' continued he, 'I never learned Greek, and I don't find

that I have ever missed it. I have had a doctor's cap and gown without

Greek; I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek; and, in short,'

continued he, 'as I don't know Greek, I do not believe there is any good

in it.'"

The office of Mr Crispe, who fitted becoming situations upon every body.

"There I found a number of poor creatures, all in circumstances like

myself, expecting the arrival of Mr Crispe, presenting a true epitome of

English impatience." And there is Mr Crispe himself, in the distance

indeed, but certainly the principal figure. The expectants are good

enough, but Mr Crispe, with his audacious, confident, deceitful face, is

excellent; the fellow rattling the money in both his pockets, with

fraud, successful laughing fraud filling out both his cheeks. The

audacious wretch! little cares he for the miserable expectants whom he

means to ship off to America and slavery. Preferring to see the Vicar's

son among "the harmless peasants of Flanders," we turn over the leaves.

Here is a delightful group,--a fine sturdy fellow holding his dog by a

handkerchief through his collar, and how naturally the honest brute

leans against his master, as claiming a sort of kindred--the expression

of the young woman with the child in her arms, is attention and

admiration. It is not quite certain that one of the loungers is pleased

with that admiration. This is a pleasant scene, and happily illustrated.

"I had some knowledge of music, with a tolerable voice, and now turned

what was once my amusement into a present means of subsistence." That is

a pleasant, happy scene, though the personages are the poorest. Of

another character is the next scene, and quite other personages act in

it; for we come again to poor Olivia in her distress, grossly, brutally

insulted by the wealthy profligate.

The profligate scoundrel in the very lowest baseness of his

character.--It is poor Olivia speaks. "Thus each day I grew more

pensive, and he more insolent, till at last the monster had the

assurance to offer me to a young baronet of his acquaintance." This

scene is not fit for picture; it is seemingly nothing but successful

villany, and of too gay a cast to be pathetic. The chapter from which it

is taken would have furnished a much better one--the meeting between the

Vicar and his poor Olivia. We can bear the suffering of a Cordelia,

because all in that is great though villany be successful; but there is

a littleness in mere profligacy that infects even the victim. We could

have wished that Mr Mulready had taken the "Meeting" for his

illustration. How exquisitely beautiful is the text! The first impulse

of affection is to forget, or instantly palliate the fault. "Welcome,

any way welcome, my dearest lost one, my treasure, to your poor old

father's bosom!" Then how exquisite her observance of the effect of

grief upon the parent's appearance. "Surely you have too much wisdom to

take the miseries of my guilt upon yourself." How timely has Goldsmith

thrown in this, when we are most willing to catch at a straw of excuse

for the lovely sufferer! No, we say, she never contemplated the misery

she has inflicted; and then how natural is the instantaneous remembrance

of her guilt! The taking it up and laying it down at a moment's call,

from affection, is most touchingly beautiful. "Our wisdom, young woman,"

replied I--"Ah, why so cold a name, papa?" cried she. "This is the first

time you ever called me by so cold a name." "I ask pardon, my darling,"

returned I; "but I was going to observe that wisdom makes but a slow

defence against trouble, though at last a sure one." Admitting the

subject chosen by Mr Mulready, we do not approve of his manner of

telling it; we scarcely know which is the principal figure. Nor is

Olivia's good. It has nothing of the madness the text speaks of. "My

answer to this proposal was almost madness." We are glad to quit the

scene, though our next step is into deeper misery; and--

"The return of the Vicar to his home in flames," a pitiable sight; but

here is the triumph of love over misery, and the subject is good. "Now,"

cried I, holding up my children, "now let the flames burn on, and all my

possessions perish." The scene is well told, and not the worse for a

justifiable theft from Correggio in the fainting figure--it is the

_mother_ in the Ecce Homo in the National Gallery. The failing of the

hands at the moment of action, is true to the original and to nature. We

rejoice that Mr Mulready did not take the return of Olivia as his

subject. We should not like to see Mrs Primrose in that odious light;

and though admirable in the tale, she is no favourite already. The

parent had called his child, "woman--young woman"--the coldness passed

away, and the word was changed for "darling." The word was again to be

resumed, and how applied!--to the unforgiving--That even the Vicar's

anger, we must rather say indignation, should be virtuous. "Ah, madam!"

cried her mother, "this is but a poor place you have come to after so

much finery. My daughter Sophy and I can afford but little entertainment

to persons who have kept company only with people of distinction. Yes,

Miss Livy, your poor father and I have suffered very much of late; but I

hope Heaven will forgive you." Not a word of her own forgiving, not a

word of endearment; and we suspect the word madam had, when written,

more blame in it than it now retains--and how do the words "my daughter

Sophy and I" cut off the forlorn one from the family!--and the plural

"persons" avoiding the individuality, the personality of her daughter

was another deep cut into the very flesh of the lost one's heart. Now

then comes the reproof, and the good man shines in the glory of goodness

and greatness, indignation for love's sake. "During this reception the

unhappy victim stood pale and trembling, unable to weep or to reply; but

I could not continue a silent spectator of her distress; wherefore,

assuming a degree of severity in my voice and manner, which was ever

followed with instant submission, 'I entreat, woman, that my words may

be now marked once for all: I have brought you back a poor deluded

wanderer: her return to duty demands the revival of our tenderness. The

real hardships of life are now coming fast upon us; let us not therefore

increase them by dissensions among each other." The words to the

conclusion of the chapter should be written in letters of gold, were not

the better place for them out of sight, upon the hearts of all; for none

of us have too much charity, though some may have an excess of love.

No. 22 is an affecting scene. The Vicar with his wounded arm is on his

bed, with his distressed family about him. Olivia has fainted on hearing

the news of her betrayer's intended marriage, and the mother is

attending her. "My compassion for my poor daughter, overpowered by this

new disaster, interrupted what I had further to observe. I bade her

mother support her, and after a short time she recovered." The

countenance of the Vicar in this scene is the best among the

illustrations--of that good man enduring affliction, that sight worthy

the gods to look at, as said the Stoic. But we that have human

sympathies, would willingly turn away from such a sight; and where shall

we find refuge? for sorrow is coming on--sorrow upon sorrow--an

accumulation of miseries no Stoic would have borne; for he, with all his

boasted indifference, would have borne them no longer, but ended them

and life together, if he might so end them, as he thought. And now,

happily, "_our_ Moses" comes to our relief, not with extracts from

chapters on stoicism, or any other false philosophy, but holding up to

us what he is pleased to call his "dogrel." So, between him and Bill the

Songster, we will have a duet. But as we have no Bill present, we will

take his part ourselves, and, like other acting substitutes, go through

the part, reading. "Now we hope," addressing our Moses, "you have not

lengthened out your Latin to four lines for the four short English in

each stanza. If you have, to the flames with them!"

_Our Moses_.--

"CARMINA ELEGIACA IN MORTEM CUJUSDAM CANIS ISLINGTONIENSIS."

(_We_.--Not in such a hurry--"An Elegy on the death of a mad dog;" and

what made you put in Islingtoniensis? Well, I suppose you call that a

Ciceronic flourish! Now, I will read the English--you the Latin.)

_We_.--Good people all, of every sort,

Give ear unto my song,

And if you find it wondrous short,

It cannot hold you long.

_Our Moses_.--Quotlibet huc, ubicunque hominum, auscultate canenti,

Si breve vos teneam;--non ego longus ero.

_We_.--In Islington there was a man

Of whom the world might say,

That still a godly race he ran

Whene'er he went to pray.

_Our Moses_.--Quidam Islingtoniensis erat, quem donec adibat

Templa pius, sacra diximus ire via.

_We_.--A kind and gentle heart he had

To comfort friends and foes;

The naked every day he clad

When he put on his clothes.

_Our Moses_.--Suavis amico, inimico, ita mitis, nudum ut amictu,

Quum se vestibat, cotidie indueret.

_We_.--And in that town a dog was found,

As many dogs there be,

Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,

And curs of low degree.

_Our Moses_.--Et canis oppido eodem erat huic, ubi plurimus, et grex

Et fæx, cum catulis plebs numerosa canum.

_We_.--This dog and man at first were friends,

But when a pique began,

The dog, to gain some private ends,

Went mad and bit the man.

_Our Moses_.--Grandis amicitia, at Canis, ut sibi gratificetur

Fit rabidus, rabido dente hominemque petit.

_We_.--Around from all the neighbouring streets

The wondering neighbours ran,

And swore the dog had lost his wits,

To bite so good a man.

_Our Moses_.--Concurrunt cives, O illum Cerberun, at aiunt,

Qualem amens rabido dense momordet herum.

_We_.--The wound it seem'd both sore and sad

To every Christian eye,

And while they swore the dog was mad,

They swore the man would die.

_Our Moses_.--O sævum vulnus, clamant lachrymosius omnes,

En rabidus canis, et mox moriturus homo.

_We_.--But soon a wonder came to light,

That show'd the rogues they lied;

The man recover'd of the bite,

The dog it was that died.

_Our Moses_.--Mendaces cives monstrat res prodigiosa,

Sanus homo subito fit--moriturque canis.

"A very good boy, Bill, upon my word," said the Vicar, "and an Elegy

that may truly be called tragical." So we present our Moses a sovereign

for his verse--"A sovereign for a verse, my boy." "I will never," quoth

he, "be averse to a sovereign. We have heard of a monarch who gave a

crown for a song." A little refreshed, let us turn to the book. Here is

No. 23.--Very well, Mr Mulready, artistically performed; but we fear we

shall not relish too many of these distressing subjects. We know, from

distress to distress, you will take us into prison. Artists and writers

of the present day delight in prison scenes; we are not of that class,

but endure it. We would on no account sit down with that

rascally-looking fellow that is driving and taking an inventory of the

Vicar's stock. It is winter too. "The consequence of my incapacity was

his driving my cattle that evening, and their being appraised and sold

the next day for less than half their value."

No. 24--Is the attempt at a rescue. The Vicar represses and reproves the

violence of his enraged parishioners. The drawing is good; but it is not

a subject we delight to look at; and we begin to fear that further on we

shall fare worse. Why did not Mr Mulready give us the interview between

the Vicar and his old acquaintance, Mr Jenkinson? Artists of skill like

to show it in grouping, and prefer that to giving character. "The

consequences might have been fatal, had I not immediately interposed,

and with some difficulty rescued the officers from the hands of the

enraged multitude."

"The Prison." We have little wish to stay there long, and look at the

odious villains that surround the good man "paying his footing." "I was

apprised of the usual perquisite required upon these occasions, and

immediately complied with the demand, though the little money I had was

nearly exhausted." The next illustration, too, takes us into equally bad

company.

The Vicar's attempt to reform the jail. The mockery, and roguery, and

Vicar's perseverance, while a practised hand is picking his pocket--are

admirably represented. "I therefore read them a portion of the service,

with a loud unaffected voice, and found my audience perfectly merry upon

the occasion."

The penitent scene. "My design succeeded, and in less than six days some

were penitent, and all attentive." We now began to say, what a happy

thing it was that Dr Primrose was sent to jail. Doubtless Goldsmith

intended to show how good comes out of evil. There are some good figures

in this illustration.

The seizure of poor Sophia--and very good it is--not that we

congratulate Mr Mulready on his Sophia here; she is rather a vulgar

dowdy figure, the others are very good, and the incident well told. "A

post-chaise and pair drove up to them, and instantly stopped. Upon which

a well-dressed man, but not Mr Thornhill, stepping out, clasped my

daughter round the waist, and, forcing her in, bid the postilion drive

on, so that they were out of sight in a moment." Now, Mr Mulready, in

the next edition, you must positively illustrate the rescue by Mr

Burchell.

"The Vicar delivering his sermon"--Charmingly grouped are the attentive

and subdued audience. Mrs Primrose is surely too young a figure. If we

could get over our early impression of the Vicar's countenance, his

figure here would probably please. "The prisoners assembled themselves

according to my directions, for they loved to hear my counsel--my son

and his mother supported me on either side."

The return of dear Sophia, with her true but singular lover and

deliverer--Perhaps the vicar takes it more coolly than the text

justifies. "Just as he delivered this news, my dearest girl entered, and

with looks almost wild with pleasure, ran to kiss me in a transport of

action." There should have been an illustration of the scene where Mr

Burchell is discovered to be Sir William Thornhill; and above all, where

he proposes Jenkinson to Sophia.

The complete detection of the squire's villainies, and his great

disappointment. "And to convince you that I speak nothing but truth,

here is the license by which you were married together." All here is

good but the figure of the Squire. In appearance we are to presume that

Squire Thornhill was a gentleman, or Miss Wilmot could not have endured

his addresses, nor indeed would Olivia have been deceived by him. In

this illustration he has neither the appearance, dress, nor attitude of

one in that condition.

The last illustration, or "All's Well that End's Well." It is, however,

near ending badly, both as to the incident and the illustration--in the

latter all is good, excepting only Arabella Wilmot; perhaps there is a

defect in the printing, which gives her an odd look--but altogether she

is not a good figure. She should have been elegance personified.

Burchell looks the sturdy runner that could overtake the chaise, and

rescue manfully his Sophia, to win and wear a favour, though he seems

here in little hurry; but that is in character. "But as I stood all this

time with my book ready, I was at last quite tired of the contest, and

shutting it, 'I perceive,' cried I, 'that none of you have a mind to be

married.'" We should like to have seen the dinner-party, and the two

Miss Flamboroughs ready to die with laughing. "One jest I particularly

remember: old Mr Wilmot drinking to Moses, whose head was turned another

way, my son replied, 'Madam, I thank you.' Upon which the old gentleman,

winking upon the rest of the company, observed that he was thinking of

his mistress; at which jest I thought the two Miss Flamboroughs would

have died with laughing." We should like to have seen their faces by Mr

Mulready's hand, because we are sure that the two Miss Flamboroughs were

thinking of themselves, in conjunction with Moses and the jest.

We have noticed every illustration. We hope there will be another

edition, and then we may have a few more plates. We have therefore, as

we have gone on, ventured to suggest some subjects--but, above all, we

would recommend Mr Mulready to supply a few portraits, heads only, such

as that of the "Schoolmaster in the Deserted Village," by the Etching

Club.

* * * * *

THE ATTORNEY'S CLERK IN THE MONK'S HOOD.

"I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy--

The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride."

Had the "resolution and independence" which dignify the lowly, and

strengthen the unhappy, when no visible eye befriends them, been among

the rich endowments of Chatterton's wonderful mind--had he possessed and

cherished the courage that bears up against obloquy and neglect--had he

pursued the rough tenour of his way undaunted, in spite of "solitude,

pain of heart, distress, and poverty," how different must have been the

fate of the inspired boy of Bristol! He might be alive yet; he would be

ninety years old, graced with honour, love, obedience, troops of

friends, and all that should accompany old age. He might have achieved

some great epic, or some gorgeous historical dramas,--have finished the

Fairy Queen, or given us a Fairy King of his own creation.

Among the lighter honours of social distinction, we can fancy his

reception as a London "lion," by the fair and noble in proud places.

Still pleasanter is the vision of his less public hours of idleness

spent among congenial spirits. We can fancy him, the patriarch of living

poets, seated as a guest at the breakfast-table of Samuel Rogers, who is

about twelve years his junior, and those fine lads, Lisle Bowles, James

Montgomery, and William Wordsworth, and those promising children, Tom

Moore and Tom Campbell, and that braw chiel John Wilson--(_palmam qui

meruit ferat_)--the youngest of the party something, perhaps, but not

much, under seventy, except the bard of the Isle of Palms, who is no

chicken; and unless the master of the feast have summoned those pretty

babes from the Wood, the two Tennysons. But alas for Chatterton! the

vision will not hold: he disappears from his chair at the feast, like

Banquo--"and, when all's done, you look but on a stool." The ghost of

the slayer of himself, after long haunting Strawberry Hill, to rebuke

the senile complacency of the chronicler of royal and noble authors,

repaired, after the death of that prosperous man of wit and fashion, to

his native town, to prowl in Redcliff church, and about the graves of

his fathers in its churchyard, and the graves which they had

successively dug there during a century and a half. His bones were left

to moulder among those of other pauper strangers in the burial-ground of

Shoelane workhouse. We attach no credit to the story of the exhumation

of his body, and its mysterious reinterment in Redcliff. His fathers

were sextons; and he, too, was in some sort a sexton also--but

spiritually and transcendantly. He buried his genius in the visionary

grave of Rowley, "an old chest in an upper room over the chapel on the

north side of Redcliff church;" and thence, most rare young conjurer, he

evoked its spirit in the shape of fragments of law-parchment, quaintly

inscribed with spells of verse and armorial hieroglyphics, to puzzle

antiquaries and make fools of scholiasts. Puzzle them he did; and they

could not forgive a clever stripling, whom hunger had tempted to don an

ancient mask, and impose himself on their spectacled eyes as a reverend

elder. Rogue!--vagabond! Profligate impostor! The slim, sleek,

embroidered juggler of the Castle of Otranto had not a kind word for

this ragged orphan of his own craft. He, whose ambition was to shine

among writers who have given intellectual grace to their noble

lineage--among whom assuredly he does and will shine--but whose acute

consciousness of something meretricious in his metal, made him doubt if

the public would accept coinage from his mint; and so caused him to wear

tentative disguises, whether he elaborated a romance or a keen and

playful witticism--and who really did injustice to his own powers,--not

from modesty but meanness,--even he, the son of a prime minister and

heir to a peerage--a man who was himself always something of a

trickster, now mystifying a blind old woman at Paris; now sending open

letters, privately nullified, recommending the bearers to his friend the

envoy at Florence; now, with the mechanic aid of village carpenters and

bricklayers, rearing a frail edifice bristling with false points, and

persuading the world that it was all pure Gothic, perhaps chuckling at

his assurance--even this shrewd mummer gravely shook his head at

Chatterton, and frowned on him as a cheat! True; they were both cheats;

Horace Walpole from apprehensive vanity; Chatterton from proud oblique

humility. The Bristol boy knew his worth; but, doubting the equity as

well as the sagacity of his judges, he did not venture to produce it as

his own. He supposed that an obscure and penniless youth, such as he,

could have little chance of attention or fair play in the world if he

appeared in his proper character; so he painfully assumed another, of a

nature that could not long have been supported even had he been a

various linguist deeply versed in etymologies, and especially proficient

in our extinct idioms, and their several dates of usage, instead of

wanting even Latin enough to understand the easiest parts of Skinner's

Etymology of the English tongue, one of the books that he consulted and

guessed at.

Of all modern suicides this youth was the most interesting; of all

literary impostors the least unpardonable, though his ways were,

unhappily for himself, of indefensible crookedness. He neither ascribed

his fictions to a great name as Ireland did, nor did he, like

Macpherson, steal the heart out of national ballads and traditions, to

stuff a Bombastes Penseroso of his own making.

Any competent, yet moderately indulgent reader, who should for the first

time take up Chatterton's works, and beginning at the beginning, in

Tyrwhitt's first edition, for example, peruse no more than sixty or

seventy pages, would probably lay down the volume somewhat disappointed

not to have found the very extraordinary merit he had expected. The

compositions that this partial examination would take in are

three--Eclogues, Elinour and Juga, Verses to Lydgate, with Song to Ella,

Lydgate's Answer, and the Tournament.

The first Eclogue is a conversation between two fugitive shepherds, who

bewail the wretched condition to which the barons' wars have reduced

them. It contains some pleasing lines.

As the rustics discuss their grievances in a valley under cover of

"... Eve's mantle gray,

The rustling leaves do their white hearts affray.

They regret the pleasures of their forsaken home,

... the kingcup decked mees,

The spreading flocks of sheep of lily white,

The tender applings and embodied trees,

The parker's grange, far spreading to the sight,

The gentle kine, the bullocks strong in fight,

The garden whiten'd with the comfrey plant,

The flowers Saint Mary shooting with the light--

...

The far-seen groves around the hermit's cell,

The merry fiddle dinning up the dell,

The joyous dancing in the hostry court--

But now,

high song and every joy farewell,

Farewell the very shade of fair disport."

In the second Eclogue, a good son invokes blessings on his father, who

is gone with the crusaders to Palestine. He describes with much

animation the voyage, the landing in Syria, the warring Saracens, King

Richard of lion's heart, and anticipates victory and the return to

England.

"Thus Nigel said, when from the azure sea

The swollen sail did dance before his eyne.

Swift as the wish he to the beach did fly,

And found his father stepping from the brine.

Sprites of the blest, the pious Nigel said,

Pour out your pleasance on my father's head!"

The third Eclogue, if divested of certain exuberances--for Chatterton

was precocious in every thing, and many of his fancies want the Bowdler

pruning-knife--might be seasonably transferred to some of the penny

publications for the benefit of Mr Frost's disciples. A poor man and

woman, on their way to the parson's hayfield, complain to each other of

their hard lot in being obliged to earn their bread by the sweat of

their brows. "Why," asks the woman, "should I be more obligated to work

than the fine Dame Agnes? What is she more than me? The man, unable to

solve so knotty a point, says he doesn't see how he himself is not as

good as a lord's son, but he will ask Sir Roger the parson, whom he

consults accordingly.

"_Man_.--By your priestship now say unto me,

Sir Godfrey the knight, who liveth hard by,

Why should he than me

Be more great

In honour, knighthood, and estate?

"_Sir Roger_.--If thou hast ease, the shadow of content,

Believe the truth, none happier is than thee.

Thou workest well; can that a trouble be?

Sloth more would jade thee than the roughest day.

Could'st thou the secret minds of others see,

Thou would'st full soon see truth in what I say.

But let me hear thy way of life, and then

Hear thou from me the lives of richer men.

"_Man_.--I rise with the sun,

Like him to drive the wain,

And, ere my work is done,

I sing a song or twain.

I follow the plough-tail

With a bottle of ale.

On every saint's day

With the minstrel I'm seen,

All footing away

With the maids on the green.

But oh, I wish to be more great,

In honour, station, and estate!

"_Sir Roger_.--Hast thou not seen a tree upon a hill,

Whose ample boughs stretch wide around to sight?

When angry tempests do the heavens fill,

It shaketh drear, in dole and much affright:

While the small flower in lowly graces deck'd

Standeth unhurt, untroubled by the storm.

The picture such of life. The man of might

Is tempest-chafed, his woe great as his form;

Thyself, a floweret of small account,

Would harder feel the wind as higher thou didst mount."

Sir Roger's moral is trite enough, yet it seems to have escaped the

consideration of our Chartists and Socialists.

Elinour the nut-brown, and Juga the fair, are two pining maidens, who,

seated on the banks of the Redbourne, a river near St Alban's, are each

bemoaning their lovers, gone to fight in that neighbourhood for the Rose

of York. Presently, racked with suspense, they hasten nearer to the

scene of action.

"_Like twain of clouds that hold the stormy rain,

They moved gently o'er the dewy meads_

To where Saint Alban's holy shrines remain.

There did they find that both their knights were slain.

Distraught they wander'd to swoln Redbourne's side,

Yell'd there their deadly knell, sank in the waves, and died."

The verses to Lydgate consist of ten lines of no merit at all, and

supposed to be sent to him by Rowley, with the Ode to Ella, which has a

movement that recalls Collins, a lyrical artist perhaps unexcelled in

our language, and in whose manner Chatterton so obviously and frequently

composes, that the fact alone might have settled the Rowley question,

though we are not aware that it was ever particularly insisted on in the

controversy.

"Oh Thou, or what remains of Thee,

Ella! the darling of futurity,

Let this my song bold as thy courage be,

As everlasting to posterity--

"When Dacia's sons, with hair of blood-red hue,

Like kingcups glittering with the morning dew,

Arranged in drear array,

Upon the fatal day,

Spread far and wide on Watchet's shore,

Then didst thou furious stand,

And by thy valiant hand

Besprinkle all the meads with gore.

"Driven by thy broadsword fell,

Down to the depths of hell,

Thousands of Dacians went.

* * * * *

"Oh Thou, where'er, thy bones at rest,

Thy sprite to haunt delighteth best,

Whether upon the blood-embrued plain--

Or where thou ken'st from far,

The dismal cry of war,

_Or see'st some mountain made of corses slain,_

"Or see'st the war-clad steed

That prances o'er the mead,

And neighs to be among the pointed spears--

Or in black armour stalk around

Embattled Bristol, once thy ground,

Or haunt with lurid glow the castle stairs,

"Or, fiery, round the Minster glare!

Let Bristol still be made thy care;

Guard it from foeman and consuming fire;

Like Avon's stream embrace it round,

Nor let a sparkle harm the ground,

Till in one flame the total world expire."

The quatrains entitled Lydgate's answer, are amply complimentary on the

foregoing song, but otherwise as prosaic as the lines that introduce it.

* * * * *

"Among the Grecians Homer was

A poet much renown'd;

Among the Latins _Virgilius_

Was best of poets found.

"The British Merlin often had

The gift of inspiration;

And Afled to the Saxon men

Did sing with animation.