_Cottage Child at Breakfast_, W. Collins, A.R.A. This is a pleasing

little picture, but inferior to Mr. Collins’s general performances. The

shadow cast on the wall is like plaster of a darker colour, nor should

we have suspected it to be meant for shadow, had it not been pointed out

to us. _Reapers_, by the same artist, is a still greater falling off.

The mixture of minute finishing and slovenliness in the execution, and

of blues and yellows in the colouring of this picture is to us very

unaccountable.

_Devotion_, J. Laschallas. We wish that we could conjure this little

picture out of its frame to have a nearer view. The drawing, expression,

tone, and composition appear to us admirable.

_A Scolding Wife; her Husband having spent all his Money at the Fair_,

L. Cossé. This is not a very pleasant subject, nor very pleasantly

treated. The little child blowing the trumpet is the pretty part of the

picture. There is one figure of a woman in a blue stuff gown, sitting by

the fire-side, in an attitude of yawning, which both for the truth of

the colouring and the action, is inimitable.

_A Country Scene_, by the same, has the hard brickdusty tone which there

is in the faces of the other picture; but the expression is natural and

good.

_A Colour-Grinder_, R. T. Bone, is a spirited and faithful imitation of

nature.

_A Study from Nature_, J. Harrison, is a well-painted head. At the same

time, there is something about it very unpleasant to us.

_Hebe_ and _Sunrise_, by H. Howard, R.A., were, we believe, in last

year’s Exhibition at Somerset-house. There is a certain grace and

elegance in both of them. The fantastic, playful lightness of the

figures in the last is perhaps carried to a degree of affectation. The

faces of the Pleiades are very pretty and very insipid.

_Conrade and Gulnare_, H. Singleton. We could neither understand this

picture nor the lines from Lord Byron’s _Corsair_, which are intended to

explain the subject of it.

_Brutus exhorting the Romans to revenge the Death of Lucretia._ Of this

composition we find we have already said quite enough.

_View of Arthur’s Seat near Edinburgh_, P. Nasmyth, is a very nicely

painted landscape. We like all this gentleman’s landscapes, except _A

View of Edinburgh_, which is just like a painting on a tea-board.

_Breaking the Ice_, by James Burnett, is a very delightful picture. It

has the effect of walking out in a fine winter’s morning. Many

incidental associations are very happily introduced; the pigeons

collected on the thatch of a shed, and the robin-redbreast perched in a

window of an out house. The pigeons are, however, too small, and the

colour on the breast of the robin is on fire. Perhaps these objections

are too minute. The pigeon-house looks suspended in the air, and the sky

and branches of the trees seen against it are painted with admirable

brilliancy. _Peasants going to Market_, by the same artist, is of equal

merit. The skirt of the drapery of the peasant girl looks as if the sun

shone directly upon it. The docks in the foreground of the picture are

very highly finished, and touched with great spirit, but we never saw

this kind of plant of the lightish green colour, which is here given to

it.

_Milking_, by John Burnett, is a very brilliant little picture. The red

dress of the girl at the milk-pail is as rich as possible. The trees at

a little distance are too much in sharp points and touches. The cattle

in the landscapes of both the painters of this name are too much in

heavy masses, and form too violent a contrast to the lightness of the

landscape about them.

_The Watering Place_, P. H. Rogers, deserves considerable praise, both

for the colouring and composition.

_Banks of the Thames_, J. Wilson, is a very clever picture. The

foreground and the distance are equally well painted; but they do not

appear in keeping. The one is quite clear, and the other covered with

haze.

_Morning_, and _View from Rydal Woods_, by C. V. Fielding, are both

masterly performances. The last, in particular, is a rich, mellow

landscape, and presents a fine, woody, and romantic scene, which in some

degree calls off our admiration from the merit of the artist to the

beauties of nature. This is a sacrifice of self-love which many of our

artists do not seem willing to make. They too often chuse their

subjects, not to exhibit the charms of nature, but to display their own

skill in making something of the most barren subjects.

We think this objection applies to Mr. Hofland’s landscapes in general.

The scene he selects is represented with great truth and felicity of

pencil, but it is, generally speaking, one we should neither wish to

look at, nor to be in. In his _Loch-Lomond_ and _Stirling Castle_, the

effect of the atmosphere is finely given; but this is all. We wish to

enter our protest against this principle of separating _the imitation_

from _the thing imitated_, particularly as it is countenanced by the

authority of the ablest landscape painter of the present day, of whose

landscapes some one said, that ‘they were pictures of nothing, and very

like!’

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

_The Champion._] [_February 19, 1815._

_Battle-piece_, B. Barker, is a spirited sketch, harmoniously coloured.

In force of drawing and expression, it is inferior to _The Standard_, by

Ab. Cooper. There is too violent an opposition of white and black in the

horses in this picture; and the eye does not immediately connect the

heads of the animals with the rest of their bodies. This picture,

however, displays great knowledge of the subject, and considerable

strength of composition. _A Study from Nature_, by the same artist, Ab.

Cooper, is a masterly little picture. _Birds_, from nature, and

_Plovers_, from nature, by M. Chantry, are both excellent in their kind.

_View of Richmond, Yorkshire_, by W. Westall, A.R.A. is deficient in

perspective and in other respects. The river below seems to be on a

level with the high foreground from which it is seen. The representing

declivities by means of aerial perspective is, we believe, one of the

difficulties of the art, and we do not remember any successful instances

of it, except in some of Wilson’s landscapes.

_A Boy lamenting the Death of his Favourite Rabbit_, W. Davison, is a

very pleasing composition in the style of Gainsborough. The landscape

has too much the blue greenish hue and slender execution of

Gainsborough’s back-grounds. The boy is well painted. There is a picture

of this kind by Murillo in the collection at Dulwich, which we would

earnestly recommend to every painter of such subjects. Or we might as

well, in other words, recommend them to look at nature.

_Forest Scene_, by J. Stark, is painted with great truth of colour and

effect.

_Stacking Hay_, P. Dewint, has great merit.

_Jacob taking charge of the Flocks and Herds of Laban_, J. Glover. We

have already spoken of this picture. The group of tall green trees in

the foreground is excellent, but there is a leaden tone spread over the

rest of the picture, which is neither gratifying to the eye, nor true to

nature.

_The Emperor Alexander, in his Droschi_, by A. Sauerweide, is like all

the other pictures, busts, &c. we have seen of him, and not at all like

the descriptions we have heard of his fine person and countenance.

_The Duke of Wellington attacking the Rear of Marshal Soult’s Army on

the Pont de Miserali over the Great fall of Salamondi, and pursuing them

through the Passes of the Sierra Morone in Portugal, 1809_, from a

sketch by Major-general Hawker, by Perry Nursey. This is not a good

picture; but it gives one a good idea of the sport which is to be found

in this sort of royal game. In looking at it we have something like

ocular demonstration of the truth of what Cowper, the poet, says—

‘War is a game, which were their subjects wise,

Kings would not play at!’

ON MR. WILKIE’S PICTURES

_The Champion._] [_March 5, 1815._

In one of Archbishop Herring’s letters, written during a tour in Wales,

is the following very picturesque description of a scene at an inn. ‘I

set out upon this adventurous journey on a Monday morning, accompanied

(as bishops usually are) by my chancellor, my chaplain, secretary, two

or three friends, and our servants. The first part of our road lay

across the foot of a long ridge of rocks, and was over a dreary morass,

with here and there a small dark cottage, a few sheep and more goats in

view, but not a bird to be seen, save, now and then, a solitary hern,

watching for frogs. At the end of four of their miles, we got to a small

village, where the view of things mended a little, and the road and the

time were beguiled by travelling for three miles along the side of a

fine lake, full of fish, and transparent as glass. That pleasure over,

our work became very arduous, for we were to mount a rock, and in many

places of the road, over natural stairs of stone. I submitted to this,

which, they told me, was but a taste of the country, and to prepare me

for worse things to come. However, worse things did not come that

morning, for we dined soon after out of our own wallets; and though our

inn stood in a place of the most frightful solitude, and the best formed

for the habitation of monks (who once possessed it) in the world, yet we

made a cheerful meal. The novelty of the thing gave me spirits, and the

air gave me appetite, much keener than the knife I ate with. We had our

music too; for there came in a harper, who soon drew about us a group of

figures, that Hogarth would give any price for. The harper was in his

true place and attitude; a man and a woman stood before him, singing to

his instrument wildly, but not disagreeably; a little dirty child was

playing with the bottom of the harp; a woman, in a sick night-cap,

hanging over the stairs; a boy with crutches, fixed in a staring

attention, and a girl carding wool in the chimney, and rocking a cradle

with her naked feet, interrupted in her business by the charms of the

music; all ragged and dirty, and all silently attentive. These figures

gave us a most entertaining picture, and would please you, or any man of

observation; and one reflection gave me particular comfort, that the

assembly before us demonstrated, that, even here, the influential sun

warmed poor mortals, and inspired them with love and music.’

The figures in this description form a very striking group, and we

should like much to see them transferred to the canvass. Those of the

girl with naked feet rocking the cradle, the little child playing with

the bottom of the harp, and the man and woman singing wildly before it

are the most beautiful. There is one observation made by the writer to

which we do not assent, that the figures are such as Hogarth would have

given any price for. We doubt whether he would have meddled with them at

all, for there was no one who understood his own powers better, or more

seldom went out of his way. His _forte_ was satire, he painted the

follies or vices of men, and we do not know that there is a single

picture of his, containing a representation of merely natural or

domestic scenery. The subject described in the passage we have given

above would have exactly suited an excellent painter of the present day,

we mean Mr. Wilkie; and would indeed form a very delightful companion to

his Blind Fiddler. With all our admiration of this last-mentioned

composition, we think the story described by the bishop clearly has the

poetry on its side.

The highest authority on art in this country, we understand, has

pronounced that Mr. Wilkie united the excellences of Hogarth to those of

Teniers. We demur to this decision, in both its branches; but in

demurring to authority, it is necessary to give our reasons. We conceive

that this excellent and deservedly admired artist has certain essential,

real, and indisputable excellences of his own; and we think it,

therefore, the less important to clothe him with any vicarious merits,

which do not belong to him.

Mr. Wilkie’s pictures, generally speaking, derive almost their whole

merit from their _reality_, or the truth of the representation. They are

works of pure imitative art, and the test of this style of composition

is to represent nature, faithfully and happily, in its simplest

combinations. It may be said of an artist, like Mr. Wilkie, that

_nothing human is indifferent to him_. His mind takes an interest in,

and it gives an interest to, the most familiar scenes and transactions

of life. He professedly gives character, thought, and passion in their

lowest degrees, and every-day forms. He selects the commonest events and

appearances of nature for his subjects; and trusts to their very

commonness for the interest and amusement he is to excite. Mr. Wilkie is

a serious, prosaic, literal narrator of facts, and his pictures may be

considered as diaries, or minutes of what is passing constantly about

us. Hogarth, on the contrary, is essentially a comic painter; his

pictures are not indifferent, unimpassioned descriptions of human

nature, but rich, exuberant satires upon it. He is carried away by a

passion for the _ridiculous_. His object is ‘to shew vice her own

feature, scorn her own image.’ He is so far from contenting himself with

still life, that he is always on the verge of caricature, though without

ever falling into it. He does not represent folly or vice in its

incipient, or dormant, or _grub_ state, but full grown, with wings,

pampered into all sorts of affectation, airy, ostentatious, and

extravagant. Folly is there seen at the height—the moon is at the

full—it is ‘the very error of the time.’ There is a perpetual collision

of eccentricities—a tilt and tournament of absurdities—the prejudices

and caprices of mankind are let loose, and set together by the ears, as

in a bear-garden. Hogarth paints nothing but comedy, or tragicomedy.

Wilkie paints neither one nor the other. Hogarth never looks at any

object but to find out a moral or a ludicrous effect. Wilkie never looks

at any object but to see that it is there. Hogarth’s pictures are a

perfect jest-book from one end to the other. We do not remember a single

joke in Wilkie’s, except one very bad one of the boy in The Blind

Fiddler, scraping the gridiron, or fire-shovel, we forget which.[26] In

looking at Hogarth, you are ready to burst your sides with laughing at

the unaccountable jumble of odd things, which are brought together: you

look at Wilkie’s pictures with a mingled feeling of curiosity and

admiration at the accuracy of the representation. For instance, there is

a most admirable head of a man coughing in The Rent-Day: the action, the

keeping, the choaked sensation are inimitable: but there is nothing to

laugh at in a man coughing. What strikes the mind is the difficulty of a

man’s being painted coughing, which here certainly is a master-piece of

art. But turn to the blackguard cobler in the Election Dinner, who has

been smutting his neighbour’s face over, and who is lolling his tongue

out at the joke with a most surprising obliquity of vision, and

immediately ‘your lungs begin to crow like chanticleer.’ Again, there is

the little boy crying in The Cut Finger, who only gives you the idea of

a cross, disagreeable, obstinate child in pain: whereas the same face in

Hogarth’s Noon, from the ridiculous perplexity it is in, and its

extravagant, noisy, unfelt distress at the accident of having let fall

the pye-dish, is quite irresistible. Mr. Wilkie in his picture of the

Ale-house door, we believe, painted Mr. Liston as one of the figures,

without any great effect. Hogarth would have given any price for such a

subject, and would have made it worth any money. We have never seen any

thing, in the expression of comic humour, equal to Hogarth’s pictures,

but Liston’s face!

We have already remarked that we did not think Hogarth a fit person to

paint a romantic scene in Wales. In fact, we know no one who had a less

pastoral imagination. Mr. Wilkie paints interiors: but still you always

connect them with the country. Hogarth, even when he paints people in

the open air, represents them either as coming from London, as in the

polling for votes at Brentford, or as returning to it, as the dyer and

his wife at Bagnigge Wells. In this last picture he has contrived to

convert a common rural image into a type and emblem of city cuckoldom.

He delights in the thick of St. Giles’s or St. James’s. His pictures

breathe a certain close greasy tavern air. The fare he serves up to us

consists of high-seasoned dishes, ragouts and olla podridas, like the

supper in Gil Blas, which it requires a strong stomach to digest. Mr.

Wilkie presents us with a sort of lenten fare, very good and wholesome,

but rather insipid than overpowering.[27]

As an artist, Mr. Wilkie is not at all equal to Teniers. Neither in

truth and brilliant clearness of colouring, nor in facility of

execution, is there any comparison. Teniers was a perfect master in both

these respects, and our own countryman is positively defective,

notwithstanding the very laudable care with which he finishes every part

of his pictures. There is an evident smear and dragging of the paint,

which is also of a bad purple, or puttyish tone, and which never appear

in the pictures of the Flemish artist, any more than in a looking-glass.

Teniers, probably from his facility of execution, succeeded in giving a

more local and momentary expression to his figures. They seem each going

on with his particular amusement or occupation; while Wilkie’s have in

general more a look of sitting for their pictures. Their compositions

are very different also: and in this respect, perhaps, Mr. Wilkie has

the advantage. Teniers’s boors are usually amusing themselves at

skittles, or dancing, or drinking, or smoking, or doing what they like

in a careless desultory way; and so the composition is loose and

irregular. Wilkie’s figures are all drawn up in a regular order, and

engaged in one principal action, with occasional episodes. The story of

the Blind Fiddler is the most interesting, and the best told. The two

children before the musician are delightful. The Card-players is the

best coloured of his pictures, if we are not mistaken. The Politicians,

though excellent as to character and composition, is inferior as a

picture to those which Mr. Wilkie has since painted. His latest

pictures, however, do not appear to us to be his best. There is

something of manner and affectation in the grouping of the figures, and

a pink and rosy colour spread over them, which is out of place. The hues

of Rubens and Sir Joshua do not agree with Mr. Wilkie’s subjects. The

picture which he has just finished of Distraining for Rent is very

highly spoken of by those who have seen it. We must here conclude this

very general account; for to point out the particular beauties of any

one of our artist’s pictures, would require a long article by itself.

ON ROCHEFOUCAULT’S MAXIMS.

_The Examiner._] [_October 23, 1814._

The celebrated maxims of Rochefoucault contain a good deal of truth

mixed up with more falsehood. They might in general be easily reversed.

The whole artifice of the author consists in availing himself of the

_mixed_ nature of motives, so as to detect some indirect or sinister

bias even in the best, and he then proceeds to argue as if they were

_simple_, that is, had but one principle, and that principle the worst.

By the same extreme mode of reasoning which he adopts, that is, by

taking the exception for the rule, it might be shewn that there is no

such thing as selfishness, pride, vanity, revenge, envy, &c. in our

nature, with quite as much plausibility as he has attempted to shew that

there is no such thing as love, friendship, gratitude, generosity, or

true benevolence. If the slightest associated circumstance, or latent

impulse connected with our actions, is to be magnified into the whole

motive, merely by the microscopic acuteness which discovered it, why not

complete the paradox, by resolving our vices into some pretence to

virtue, which almost always accompanies and qualifies them? Or is it to

be taken for granted that our vices are sincere, and our virtues only

hypocrisy and affectation? Shakespeare has given a much simpler and

better account of the matter, when he says, ‘The web of our life is of a

mingled yarn: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them

not; and our vices would despair, if they were not cherished by our

virtues.’ The most favourable representations of human nature are not

certainly the most popular. The character of _Sir Charles Grandison_ is

insipid compared with that of _Lovelace_, as _Satan_ is the hero of

_Paradise Lost_; and Mandeville’s _Fable of the Bees_ is read with more

interest and avidity than the _Practice of Piety_ or Grove’s _Ethics_.

Whatever deviates from the plain path of duty, or contradicts received

opinions, seems to imply a strength of will, or a strength of

understanding, which seizes forcibly on the attention. Whether it is

fortitude or cowardice, or both, there is a strong propensity in the

human mind, if its suspicions are once raised, _to know the worst_. It

is the same in speculation as in practice. When once the fairy dream in

which we have lulled our senses or imagination is disturbed, we only

feel ourselves secure from the delusions of self-love by distrusting

appearances altogether, and revenge ourselves for the cheat which we

think has been put upon us, by laughing at the credulity of those who

are still its dupes.[28] Even the very love of virtue makes the mind

proportionably impatient of every thing like doubt respecting it, and

prompts us to escape from tormenting suspense in total indifference, as

jealousy cures itself by destroying its object. The _Fable of the Bees_,

the _Maxims of Rochefoucault_, the _Treatise on the Falsity of Human

Virtues_, and the book _De l’Esprit_ have owed much of their popularity

to the consolation they afforded to disappointed hope. However this may

be, a collection of amiable paradoxes on the other side of the question,

would have but few readers. There would be less point and satire, though

there would not be less truth nor, as far as the analytical process is

concerned, less ingenuity, in exalting our bad qualities into virtues,

than in debasing our good ones into vices. I will give an example or two

of what I mean.

Thus, it might be argued that there is no such thing as envy: or that

what is called by that name, does not (if strictly examined) arise from

a hatred of real excellence, but from a suspicion that the excellence is

not real, or not so great as it is supposed to be, and consequently that

the preference given to others is an act of injustice done to ourselves.

For whenever all doubt is removed of the reality of the excellence,

either from our own convictions, or from the concurrent opinion of

mankind in general, envy ceases. This is the reason why the reputation

of the dead never excites this passion, because it has been fully

established by the most unequivocal testimony, it has received a

sanction which fills the imagination and gains the assent at once, and

the fame of the great men of past times is placed beyond the reach of

envy, because it is placed beyond the reach of doubt. We feel no

misgivings as to the solidity of their pretensions, nor any apprehension

that our admiration or praise will be thrown away on what does not

deserve it. No one envies Shakespeare or Rubens, because no one

entertains the least doubt of their genius. We are as prodigal of our

admiration of universally acknowledged excellence, making a sort of

religious idolatry of it, as we are niggardly and cautious in fixing the

stamp of our approbation on that which may turn out to be only

counterfeit. It is not because we are competitors with the living and

not with the dead: but because the claims of the one are fully

established, and of the other not. Why else indeed are we competitors

with the one and not with the other? Accordingly, where living merit is

so clear as to bring immediate and entire conviction to the mind, we are

no longer disposed to stint or withhold our applause, any more than to

dispute the light of the sun. For instance, who ever felt the least

difficulty in acknowledging the merits of Wilkie or Turner, merely

because these artists are now living? If immediate celebrity has not

always been the reward of extraordinary genius, this has been owing to

the incapacity of the public to judge of the highest works of art. There

is no want of instances where the popular opinion has outstripped the

claims of justice, whenever the merits of the artist were on a level

with the common understanding, and of an obvious character. Sir Joshua

Reynolds had his full share of popularity in his lifetime. Raphael Mengs

was cried up by his countrymen and contemporaries as equal to Raphael;

and Mr. West at present stands as high in the estimation of the public

as he does in his own. On the other hand, and in opposition to what was

said above (though the exception still confirms the rule), the French

hate Shakespeare and Rubens, for no other reason than because there is

nothing in their minds which really enables them to understand or relish

either. The admiration which they hear others express of this great

painter and greater poet, appears to them a delusion, an instance of

false taste, and a bigoted preference of that which is full of faults to

that—_which is without beauties_. The disputes and jealousies of

different nations respecting each other’s productions, arise chiefly

from this source. We despise French painting, French poetry, and French

philosophy, not because they are French, but because they appear to us

to want the essential requisites of genius, feeling, and common sense.

We do not feel any reluctance to admire Titian or Rembrandt, or Phidias

or Homer, or Boccace or Cervantes, merely because they were not English.

They speak the universal language of truth and nature. Our national and

local prejudices for the most part operate only as a barrier against

national and local absurdities. To the same purpose, I might mention

some modern poets and critics who are actuated by nearly as intolerant

feelings towards Pope and Dryden, as if they had been their

contemporaries.[29] They are not their cotemporaries, but the

explanation is obvious. From the want of congeniality of mind, and a

taste for their peculiar excellencies, the space which those writers

occupy in the eyes of the world seems comparatively disproportionate to

their merits; and hence the irritation and gall which follows. The

highest reputation and the highest excellence almost always destroy

envy; whereas, on the common supposition, we ought to feel the greatest

envy, where there is the greatest superiority, and the greatest

admiration of it in others. If we never become entirely free from it in

modern works, it is because with respect to them we can never ‘make

assurance double sure,’ by having our own feelings confirmed by the

united voices of ages and nations. True genius and true fame seize our

admiration, and our admiration, when once excited, becomes a passion,

and we take a delight in exaggerating the excellences of our idol as if

they were our own. On the contrary, we all envy that reputation which is

acquired by trick or cunning, or by mere shewy accomplishments, as when

with moderate talents, dexterously applied, or an appeal to ignorant

credulity, a man ‘gets the start of the majestic world,’ and obtains the

highest character for qualities which he does not possess. It becomes an

imposture and an insult, which we resent as such.

The jealousy and uneasiness produced in the mind by a pedantic or

dazzling display of useless accomplishments may be traced to a similar

source. Hence the old objection, _materiam superabat opus_. True warmth

and vigour communicate warmth and vigour: and we are no longer inclined

to dispute the inspiration of the oracle, when we feel the ‘presens

Divus’ in our own bosoms. But when without gaining any new light or

heat, we only find our ideas thrown into confusion and perplexity by an

art that we cannot comprehend, this is a kind of superiority which must

always be painful, and can never be cordially admitted. It is for this

reason that the extraordinary talents of the late Mr. Pitt were always

viewed, except by those of his own party, with a sort of jealousy, and

grudgingly acknowledged: while those of his more popular rivals were

admitted by all parties in the most unreserved manner, and carried by

acclamation. Mr. Burke was scouted only by the common herd of

politicians, who did not understand him. So on the stage, we imagine

Mrs. Siddons could hardly have excited envy or jealousy in the breast of

any person, not totally devoid of common sensibility: because her

talents bore down all opposition, and filled the mind at once with

delight and awe. Mr. Kean has a strong and most absurd party against

him: but we will venture to say that if his figure, or his voice, or his

judgment, were better, that is, if he had fewer defects, he would have

fewer detractors from his excellencies. Any peculiar defects excite

ridicule and enmity by bringing the whole claim to our applause into

question. A perfect actor would not be an object of envy even to some

newspaper critics. Perfect beauty excites this feeling less among women

than half pretensions to it. In the same manner, upstart wealth or newly

acquired honours produce contempt rather than respect, from not being

accompanied with any strong or permanent associations of pleasure or

power. There is nothing more apt to occasion the feeling of envy than

the sudden and unexpected rise of persons we have long known under

different circumstances, not from the immediate comparison with

ourselves (the extravagant admiration of each other’s talents among

friends is an answer to this supposition) so much as from the disbelief

of the reality of their pretensions, and our inability to overcome our

previous prejudice against them. It is the same where striking mental

inequalities exist, or where the moral properties render us averse to

acknowledge merit of a different kind, or where the countenance or

manner does not denote genius. Every such incongruity increases the

difficulty of connecting hearty admiration with ideas so opposite to it.

I have known artists whose physiognomy was so much against them, that no

one would ever think highly of them, though they were to paint like

Raphael; and I once heard a very sensible man say, that if Sir Isaac

Newton had lisped, he could not have fancied him to be a great man. I

myself have felt a jealousy of pretensions which I thought inferior to

my own, but I never knew what envy of great talents was. I do not indeed

like to be put down by persons I despise, or to seem to myself less than

nothing. In a word, we feel the same jealousy and irritation at seeing

others surpassed, whom we have been accustomed to admire; and what is

more, grow jealous of our own approximation to an equality with them.

Every ingenuous mind shrinks from a comparison of itself, with what it

looks up to, and is ashamed of any advantage it may gain over those whom

it regards as having higher powers and pretensions. The idea of fame is

too pure and sacred to be mingled with our own. Our admiration of others

is stronger than our vanity. Poor indeed is that mind which has no other

idol but self. It is the want of all real imagination and enthusiasm, or

that little glittering halo of personal conceit which surrounds every

Frenchman, and does not suffer him to see or feel any thing beyond it,

that makes the French perhaps the most contemptible people in the world.

ON THE PREDOMINANT PRINCIPLES AND EXCITEMENTS IN THE HUMAN MIND

‘The web of our lives is of a mingled yarn.’

_The Examiner._] [_February 26, 1815._

‘Anthony Codrus Urceus, a most learned and unfortunate Italian, born

1446, was a striking instance’ (says his biographer) ‘of the miseries

men bring upon themselves by setting their affections unreasonably on

trifles. This learned man lived at Forli, and had an apartment in the

palace. His room was so very dark, that he was forced to use a candle in

the day time; and one day, going abroad without putting it out, his

library was set on fire, and some papers which he had prepared for the

press were burned. The instant he was informed of this ill news, he was

affected even to madness. He ran furiously to the palace, and, stopping

at the door of his apartment, he cried aloud, “Christ Jesus! what mighty

crime have I committed? whom of your followers have I ever injured, that

you thus rage with inexpiable hatred against me?” Then turning himself

to an image of the Virgin Mary near at hand, “Virgin” (says he) “hear

what I have to say, for I speak in earnest, and with a composed spirit.

If I shall happen to address you in my dying moments, I humbly entreat

you not to hear me, nor receive me into heaven, for I am determined to

spend all eternity in hell.” Those who heard these blasphemous

expressions endeavoured to comfort him, but all to no purpose; for, the

society of mankind being no longer supportable to him, he left the city,

and retired, like a savage, to the deep solitude of a wood. Some say he

was murdered there by ruffians; others that he died at Bologna, in 1500,

after much contrition and penitence.’

Almost every one may here read the history of his own life. There is

scarcely a moment in which we are not in some degree guilty of the same

kind of absurdity, which was here carried to such a singular excess. We

waste our regrets on what cannot be recalled, or fix our desires on what

we know cannot be attained. Every hour is the slave of the last; and we

are seldom masters either of our thoughts or of our actions. We are the

creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or

even of self-interest. Rousseau, in his Emilius, proposed to educate a

perfectly reasonable man, who was to have passions and affections like

other men, but with an absolute control over them. He was to love and to

be wise. This is a contradiction in terms. Even in the common

transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim,

caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a tea-cup puts us out of

temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a

gown may end only with our lives.

‘Friends now fast sworn,

On a dissension of a doit, break out

To bitterest enmity. So fellest foes,

Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep,

To take the one the other, by some chance

Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends,

And interjoin their issues.’

We are little better than humoured children to the last, and play a

mischievous game at cross-purposes with our own happiness and that of

others.

We have given the above story as a striking contradiction to the

prevailing doctrine of modern systems of morals and metaphysics, that

man is purely a sensual and selfish animal, governed solely by a regard

either to his immediate gratification or future interest. This doctrine

we mean to oppose with all our might, whenever we meet with it. We are,

however, less disposed to quarrel with it, as it is opposed to reason

and philosophy, than as it interferes with common sense and observation.

If the absurdity in question had been confined to the schools, we should

not have gone out of our way to meddle with it: but it has got abroad in

the world, has crept into ladies’ toilettes, is entered in the

common-place of beaux, is in the mouth of the learned and ignorant, and

forms a part of popular opinion. It is perpetually applied as a false

measure to the characters and conduct of men in the common affairs of

the world, and it is therefore our business to rectify it if we can. In

fact, whoever sets out on the idea of reducing all our motives and

actions to a simple principle, must either take a very narrow and

superficial view of human nature, or make a very perverse use of his

understanding in reasoning on what he sees. The frame of our minds, like

that of our bodies, is exceedingly complicated. Besides mere sensibility

to pleasure and pain, there are other original independent principles,

necessarily interwoven with the nature of man as an active and

intelligent being, and which, blended together in different proportions,

give their form and colour to our lives. Without some other essential

faculties, such as will, imagination, &c., to give effect and direction

to our physical sensibility, this faculty could be of no possible use or

influence; and with those other faculties joined to it, this pretended

instinct of self-love will be subject to be everlastingly modified and

controlled by those faculties, both in what regards our own good and

that of others; that is, must itself become in a great measure dependent

on the very instruments it uses. The two most predominant principles in

the mind, besides sensibility and self-interest, are imagination and

self-will, or (in general) the love of strong excitement, both in

thought and action. To these sources may be traced the various passions,

pursuits, habits, affections, follies and caprices, virtues and vices of

mankind. We shall confine ourselves in the present article, to give some

account of the influence exercised by the imagination over the feelings.

To an intellectual being, it cannot be altogether arbitrary what ideas

it shall have, whether pleasurable or painful. Our ideas do not

originate in our love of pleasure, and they cannot therefore depend

absolutely upon it. They have another principle. If the imagination were

‘the servile slave’ of our self-love, if our ideas were emanations of

our sensitive nature, encouraged if agreeable, and excluded the instant

they became otherwise, or encroached on the former principle, then there

might be a tolerable pretence for the Epicurean philosophy which is here

spoken of. But for any such entire and mechanical subserviency of the

operations of the one principle to the dictates of the other, there is

not the slightest foundation in reality. The attention which the mind

gives to its ideas is not always owing to the gratification derived from

them, but to the strength and truth of the impressions themselves,

_i.e._ to their involuntary power over the mind. This observation will

account for a very general principle in the mind, which cannot, we

conceive, be satisfactorily explained in any other way, we mean _the

power of fascination_. Every one has heard the story of the girl who

being left alone by her companions, in order to frighten her, in a room

with a dead body, at first attempted to get out, and shrieked violently

for assistance, but finding herself shut in, ran and embraced the

corpse, and was found senseless in its arms.

It is said that in such cases there is a desperate effort made to get

rid of the dread by converting it into the reality. There may be some

truth in this account, but we do not think it contains the whole truth.

The event produced in the present instance does not bear out the

conclusion. The progress of the passion does not seem to have been that

of diminishing or removing the terror by coming in contact with the

object, but of carrying this terror to its height from an intense and

irresistible impulse, overcoming every other feeling.

It is a well-known fact that few persons can stand safely on the edge of

a precipice, or walk along the parapet wall of a house, without being in

danger of throwing themselves down; not we presume from a principle of

self-preservation; but in consequence of a strong idea having taken

possession of the mind, from which it cannot well escape, which absorbs

every other consideration, and confounds and overrules all self-regards.

The impulse cannot in this case be resolved into a desire to remove the

uneasiness of fear, for the only danger arises from the fear. We have

been told by a person, not at all given to exaggeration, that he once

felt a strong propensity to throw himself into a cauldron of boiling

lead, into which he was looking. These are what Shakespear calls ‘the

toys of desperation.’ People sometimes marry, and even fall in love on

this principle—that is, through mere apprehension, or what is called a

fatality. In like manner, we find instances of persons who are as it

were naturally delighted with whatever is disagreeable,—who catch all

sorts of unbecoming tones and gestures,—who always say what they should

not, and what they do not mean to say,—in whom intemperance of

imagination and incontinence of tongue are a disease, and who are

governed by an almost infallible instinct of absurdity.

The love of imitation has the same general source. We dispute for ever

about Hogarth, and the question can never be decided according to the

common ideas on the subject of taste. His pictures appeal to the love of

truth, not to the sense of beauty; but the one is as much an essential

principle of our nature as the other. They fill up the void of the mind;

they present an everlasting succession and variety of ideas. There is a

fine observation somewhere made by Aristotle, that the mind has a

natural appetite of curiosity or desire to know; and ‘most of that

knowledge which comes in by the eye, for this presents us with the

greatest variety of differences.’ Hogarth is relished only by persons of

a certain strength of mind and penetration into character; for the

subjects in themselves are not pleasing, and this objection is only

redeemed by the exercise and activity which they give to the

understanding. The great difference between what is meant by a severe

and an effeminate taste or style, depends on the distinction here made.

Our teasing ourselves to recollect the names of places or persons we

have forgotten, the love of riddles and of abstruse philosophy, are all

illustrations of the same general principle of curiosity, or the love of

intellectual excitement. Again, our impatience to be delivered of a

secret that we know; the necessity which lovers have for confidants,

auricular confession, and the declarations so commonly made by criminals

of their guilt, are effects of the involuntary power exerted by the

imagination over the feelings. Nothing can be more untrue, than that the

whole course of our ideas, passions, and pursuits, is regulated by a

regard to self-interest. Our attachment to certain objects is much

oftener in proportion to the strength of the impression they make on us,

to their power of rivetting and fixing the attention, than to the

gratification we derive from them. We are perhaps more apt to dwell upon

circumstances that excite disgust and shock our feelings, than on those

of an agreeable nature. This, at least, is the case where this

disposition is particularly strong, as in people of nervous feelings and

morbid habits of thinking. Thus the mind is often haunted with painful

images and recollections, from the hold they have taken of the

imagination. We cannot shake them off, though we strive to do it: nay,

we even court their company; we will not part with them out of our

presence; we strain our aching sight after them; we anxiously recal

every feature, and contemplate them in all their aggravated colours.

There are a thousand passions and fancies that thwart our purposes and

disturb our repose. Grief and fear are almost as welcome inmates of the

breast as hope or joy, and more obstinately cherished. We return to the

objects which have excited them, we brood over them, they become almost

inseparable from the mind, necessary to it; they assimilate all objects

to the gloom of our own thoughts, and make the will a party against

itself. This is one chief source of most of the passions that prey like

vultures on the heart, and embitter human life. We hear moralists and

divines perpetually exclaiming, with mingled indignation and surprise,

at the folly of mankind in obstinately persisting in these tormenting

and violent passions, such as envy, revenge, sullenness, despair, &c.

This is to them a mystery; and it will always remain an inexplicable

one, while the love of happiness is considered as the only spring of

human conduct and desires.

We shall resume this subject in a future paper.[30]

THE LOVE OF POWER OR ACTION AS MAIN A PRINCIPLE IN THE HUMAN MIND AS

SENSIBILITY TO PLEASURE OR PAIN

_The Examiner._] [_April 9, 1815._

The love of power or action is another independent principle of the

human mind, in the different degrees in which it exists, and which are

not by any means in exact proportion to its physical sensibility. It

seems evidently absurd to suppose that sensibility to pleasure or pain

is the only principle of action. It is almost too obvious to remark,

that sensibility alone, without an active principle in the mind, could

never produce action. The soul might lie dissolved in pleasure, or be

agonised with woe; but the impulses of feeling, in order to excite

passion, desire, or will, must be first communicated to some other

faculty. There must be a principle, a fund of activity somewhere, by and

through which our sensibility operates; and that this active principle

owes all its force, its precise degree and direction, to the sensitive

faculty, is neither self-evident nor true. Strength of will is not

always nor generally in proportion to strength of feeling. There are

different degrees of activity as of sensibility in the mind; and our

passions, characters, and pursuits, often depend no less upon the one

than on the other. We continually make a distinction in common discourse

between sensibility and irritability, between passion and feeling,

between the nerves and muscles; and we find that the most voluptuous

people are in general the most indolent. Every one who has looked

closely into human nature must have observed persons who are naturally

and habitually restless in the extreme, but without any extraordinary

susceptibility to pleasure or pain, always making or finding excuses to

do something,—whose actions constantly outrun the occasion, and who are

eager in the pursuit of the greatest trifles,—whose impatience of the

smallest repose keeps them always employed about nothing,—and whose

whole lives are a continued work of supererogation. There are others

again who seem born to act from a spirit of contradiction only, that is,

who are ready to act not only without a reason, but against it,—who are

ever at cross-purposes with themselves and others,—who are not satisfied

unless they are doing two opposite things at a time,—who contradict what

you say, and if you assent to them, contradict what they have said,—who

regularly leave the pursuit in which they are successful to engage in

some other in which they have no chance of success,—who make a point of

encountering difficulties and aiming at impossibilities, that there may

be no end of their exhaustless task: while there is a third class whose

_vis inertiæ_ scarcely any motives can overcome,—who are devoured by

their feelings, and the slaves of their passions, but who can take no

pains and use no means to gratify them,—who, if roused to action by any

unforeseen accident, require a continued stimulus to urge them on,—who

fluctuate between desire and want of resolution,—whose brightest

projects burst like a bubble as soon as formed,—who yield to every

obstacle,—who almost sink under the weight of the atmosphere,—who cannot

brush aside a cobweb in their path, and are stopped by an insect’s wing.

Indolence is want of will—the absence or defect of the active

principle—a repugnance to motion; and whoever has been much tormented

with this passion, must, we are sure, have felt that the inclination to

indulge it is something very distinct from the love of pleasure or

actual enjoyment. Ambition is the reverse of indolence, and is the love

of power or action in great things. Avarice, also, as it relates to the

acquisition of riches, is, in a great measure, an active and

enterprising feeling; nor does the hoarding of wealth, after it is

acquired, seem to have much connection with the love of pleasure. What

is called niggardliness, very often, we are convinced from particular

instances that we have known, arises less from a selfish principle than

from a love of contrivance, from the study of economy as an art, for

want of a better, from a pride in making the most of a little, and in

not exceeding a certain expense previously determined upon; all which is

wilfulness, and is perfectly consistent, as it is frequently found

united, with the most lavish expenditure and the utmost disregard for

money on other occasions. A miser may in general be looked upon as a

particular species of _virtuoso_. The constant desire in the rich to

leave wealth in large masses, by aggrandising some branch of their

families, or sometimes in such a manner as to accumulate for centuries,

shews that the imagination has a considerable share in this passion.

Intemperance, debauchery, gluttony, and other vices of that kind, may be

attributed to an excess of sensuality or gross sensibility; though even

here, we think it evident that habits of intoxication are produced quite

as much by the strength as by the agreeableness of the excitement; and

with respect to some other vicious habits, curiosity makes many more

votaries than inclination. The love of truth, when it predominates,

produces inquisitive characters, the whole tribe of gossips,

tale-bearers, harmless busy bodies, your blunt honest creatures, who

never conceal what they think, and who are the more sure to tell it you

the less you want to hear it,—and now and then a philosopher.

Our passions in general are to be traced more immediately to the active

part of our nature, to the love of power, or to strength of will. Such

are all those which arise out of the difficulty of accomplishment, which

become more intense from the efforts made to attain the object, and

which derive their strength from opposition. Mr. Hobbes says well on

this subject:

‘But for an utmost end, in which the ancient philosophers placed

felicity, and disputed much concerning the way thereto, there is no such

thing in this world nor way to it, than to Utopia; for while we live, we

have desires, and desire presupposeth a further end. Seeing all delight

is appetite, and desire of something further, there can be no

contentment but in proceeding, and therefore we are not to marvel, when

we see that as men attain to more riches, honour, or other power, so

their appetite continually groweth more and more; and when they are come

to the utmost degree of some kind of power, they pursue some other, as

long as in any kind they think themselves behind any other. Of those

therefore that have attained the highest degree of honour and riches,

some have affected mastery in some art, as Nero in music and poetry,

Commodus in the art of a gladiator; and such as affect not some such

thing, must find diversion and recreation of their thoughts in the

contention either of play or business, and men justly complain as of a

great grief that they know not what to do. Felicity, therefore, by which

we mean continual delight, consists not in having prospered, but in

prospering.’

This account of human nature, true as it is, would be a mere romance, if

physical sensibility were the only faculty essential to man, that is, if

we were the slaves of voluptuous indolence. But our desires are kindled

by their own heat, the will is urged on by a restless impulse, and,

without action, enjoyment becomes insipid. The passions of men are not

in proportion only to their sensibility, or to the desirableness of the

object, but to the violence and irritability of their tempers, and the

obstacles to their success. Thus an object, to which we were almost

indifferent while we thought it in our power, often excites the most

ardent pursuit or the most painful regret, as soon as it is placed out

of our reach. How eloquently is the contradiction between our desires

and our success described in Don Quixote where it is said of the lover,

that ‘he courted a statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert!’

The necessity of action to the mind, and the keen edge it gives to our

desires, is shewn in the different value we set on past and future

objects. It is commonly and we might almost say universally supposed,

that there is an essential difference in the two cases. In this

instance, however, the strength of our passions has converted an evident

absurdity into one of the most inveterate prejudices of the human mind.

That the future is really or in itself of more consequence than the

past, is what we can neither assent to nor even conceive. It is true,

the past has ceased to be and is no longer any thing, except to the

mind; but the future is still to come, and has an existence in the mind

only. The one is at an end, the other has not even had a beginning; both

are purely ideal: so that this argument would prove that the present

only is of any real value, and that both past and future objects are

equally indifferent, alike nothing. Indeed, the future is, if possible,

more imaginary than the past; for the past may in some sense be said to

exist in its consequences; it acts still; it is present to us in its

effects; the mouldering ruins and broken fragments still remain; but of

the future there is no trace. What a blank does the history of the world

for the next six thousand years, present to the mind, compared with that

of the last! All that strikes the imagination, or excites any interest

in the mighty scene, is _what has been_. Neither in reality, then, nor

as a subject of general contemplation, has the future any advantage over

the past; but with respect to our own passions and pursuits it has. We

regret the pleasures we have enjoyed, and eagerly anticipate those which

are to come; we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which we have

escaped, and dread future pain. The good that is past is like money that

is spent, which is of no use, and about which we give ourselves no

farther concern. The good we expect is like a store yet untouched, in

the enjoyment of which we promise ourselves infinite gratification. What

has happened to us we think of no consequence,—what is to happen to us,

of the greatest. Why so? Because the one is in our power, and the other

not; because the efforts of the will to bring an object to pass or to

avert it strengthen our attachment to or our aversion from that object;

because the habitual pursuit of any purpose redoubles the ardour of our

pursuit, and converts the speculative and indolent interest we should

otherwise take in it into real passion. Our regrets, anxiety, and

wishes, are thrown away upon the past, but we encourage our disposition

to exaggerate the importance of the future, as of the utmost use in

aiding our resolutions and stimulating our exertions.

It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more or less

importance to past and future events, according as they are more or less

engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortune

to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, are regardless of the

past, for it does not contribute to their views: those who have nothing

to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past as in the

future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real as of the

other. The season of hope comes to an end, but the remembrance of it is

left. The past still lives in the memory of those who have leisure to

look back upon the way that they have trod, and can from it ‘catch

glimpses that may make them less forlorn.’ The turbulence of action and

uneasiness of desire _must_ dwell upon the future; it is only amidst the

innocence of shepherds, in the simplicity of the pastoral ages, that a

tomb was found with this inscription—‘I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN!’

We feel that some apology is necessary for having thus plunged our

readers all at once into the middle of metaphysics. If it should be

asked what use such studies are of, we might answer with Hume, _perhaps

of none, except that there are certain persons who find more

entertainment in them than in any other_. An account of this matter,

with which we were amused ourselves, and which may therefore amuse

others, we met with some time ago in a metaphysical allegory, which

begins in this manner:—

‘In the depth of a forest, in the kingdom of Indostan, lived a monkey,

who, before his last step of transmigration, had occupied a human

tenement. He had been a Bramin, skilful in theology, and in all abstruse

learning. He was wont to hold in admiration the ways of Nature, and

delighted to penetrate the mysteries in which she was enrobed; but in

pursuing the footsteps of philosophy, he wandered too far from the abode

of the social Virtues. In order to pursue his studies, he had retired to

a cave on the banks of the Jumna. There he forgot society, and neglected

ablution; and therefore his soul was degraded to a condition below

humanity. So inveterate were the habits which he had contracted in his

human state, that his spirit was still influenced by his passion for

abstruse study. He sojourned in this wood from youth to age, regardless

of everything, _save cocoa-nuts and metaphysics_.’ For our own part, we

should be content to pass our time much in the same way as this learned

savage, if we could only find a substitute for his cocoa-nuts! We do not

however wish to recommend the same pursuit to others, nor to dissuade

them from it. It has its pleasures and its pains—its successes and its

disappointments. It is neither quite so sublime nor quite so

uninteresting as it is sometimes represented. The worst is, that much

thought on difficult subjects tends, after a certain time, to destroy

the natural gaiety and dancing of the spirits; it deadens the elastic

force of the mind, weighs upon the heart, and makes us insensible to the

common enjoyments and pursuits of life.

‘Sithence no fairy lights, no quick’ning ray,

Nor stir of pulse, nor objects to entice

Abroad the spirits; but the cloyster’d heart

Sits squat at home, like pagod in a niche

Obscure.’

Metaphysical reasoning is also one branch of the tree of the knowledge

of good and evil. The study of man, however, does, perhaps, less harm

than a knowledge of the world, though it must be owned that the

practical knowledge of vice and misery makes a stronger impression on

the mind, when it has imbibed a habit of abstract reasoning. Evil thus

becomes embodied in a general principle, and shews its harpy form in all

things. It is a fatal, inevitable necessity hanging over us. It follows

us wherever we go: if we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it

is there: whether we turn to the right or the left, we cannot escape

from it. This, it is true, is the disease of philosophy; but it is one

to which it is liable in minds of a certain cast, after the first order

of expectation has been disabused by experience, and the finer feelings

have received an irrecoverable shock from the jarring of the world.

Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all

things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to

whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into

whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been ‘hurt

by the archers,’ nor has the iron entered their souls. They live in the

midst of arrows and of death, unconscious of harm. The evil things come

not nigh them. The shafts of ridicule pass unheeded by, and malice loses

its sting. The example of vice does not rankle in their breasts, like

the poisoned shirt of Nessus. Evil impressions fall off from them like

drops of water. The yoke of life is to them light and supportable. The

world has no hold on them. They are in it, not of it; and a dream and a

glory is ever around them!

ESSAY ON MANNERS

_The Examiner._] [_September 3, 1815._

Nothing can frequently be more striking than the difference of style or

manner, where the _matter_ remains the same, as in paraphrases and

translations. The most remarkable example which occurs to us is in the

beginning of the _Flower and Leaf_ by Chaucer, and in the modernisation

of the same passage by Dryden. We shall give an extract from both, that

the reader may judge for himself. The original runs thus:—

‘And I that all this pleasaunt sight see,

Thought sodainly I felte so sweet an aire

Of the elgentere, that certainely

There is no herte I deme, in such dispaire,

Ne with thoughts froward and contraire

So overlaid, but it should soone have bote,

If it had ones felt this savour sote.

And as I stood and cast aside mine eie,

I was of ware the fairest medler tree,

That ever yet in all my life I see,

As full of blossomes as it might be,

Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile

Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet,

Here and there of buds and floures sweet.

And to the herber side was joyning

This faire tree of which I have you told;

And at the last the bird began to sing,

When he had eaten what he eat wold,

So passing sweetly, that by manifold

It was more pleasaunt than I could devise;

And when his song was ended in this wise,

The nightingale with so mery a note

Answered him, that all the wood rang

So sodainly, that as it were a sote,

I stood astonied, so was I with the sang

Thorow ravished, that till late and lang,

I ne wist in what place I was, ne where,

And aye me thought she sang even by mine ear.

Wherefore I waited about busily

On every side, if I her might see,

And at the last I gan full well espie

Where she sat in a fresh green laurer tree,

On the further side even right by me,

That gave so passing a delicious smell,

According to the eglentere full well.

Whereof I had so inly great pleasure;

That as me thought I surely ravished was

Into Paradise, where my desire

Was for to be and no further to passe,

As for that day, and on the sote grasse

I sat me downe, for as for mine intent,

The birdes song was more convenient,

And more pleasaunt to me by manifold,

Than meat or drinke, or any other thing,

Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold,

The wholesome savours eke so comforting,

That as I deemed, sith the beginning

Of the world was never seene or then

So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man.

And as I sat, the birdes harkening thus,

Me thought that I heard voices sodainly,

The most sweetest and most delicious

That ever any wight I trow truly

Heard in their life; for the harmony

And sweet accord was in so good musike,

That the voices to angels most was like.’

In this passage the poet has let loose the very soul of pleasure. There

is a spirit of enjoyment in it, of which there seems no end. It is the

intense delight which accompanies the description of every object, the

fund of natural sensibility it displays, which constitutes its whole

essence and beauty. Now this is shewn chiefly in the manner in which the

different objects are anticipated, and the eager welcome which is given

to them; in his repeating and varying the circumstances with a restless

delight; in his quitting the subject for a moment, and then returning to

it again, as if he could never have his fill of enjoyment. There is

little of this in Dryden’s paraphrase. The same ideas are introduced,

but not in the same manner, nor with the same spirit. The imagination of

the poet is not borne along with the tide of pleasure—the verse is not

poured out, like the natural strains it describes, from pure delight,

but according to rule and measure. Instead of being absorbed in his

subject, he is dissatisfied with it, tries to give an air of dignity to

it by factitious ornaments, to amuse the reader by ingenious allusions,

and divert his attention from the progress of the story by the artifices

of the style.

‘The painted birds, companions of the spring,

Hopping from spray to spray, were heard to sing;

Both eyes and ears received a like delight,

Enchanting music, and a charming sight:

On Philomel I fixed my whole desire,

And listen’d for the queen of all the quire:

Fain would I hear her heavenly voice to sing,

And wanted yet an omen to the spring.

Thus as I mus’d, I cast aside my eye

And saw a medlar tree was planted nigh:

The spreading branches made a goodly show,

And full of opening blooms was every bough:

A goldfinch there I saw with gaudy pride

Of painted plumes, that hopp’d from side to side,

Still pecking as she pass’d; and still she drew

The sweets from every flow’r, and suck’d the dew;

Suffic’d at length, she warbled in her throat,

And tun’d her voice to many a merry note,

But indistinct, and neither sweet nor clear,

Yet such as sooth’d my soul, and pleas’d my ear.

Her short performance was no sooner tried,

When she I sought, the nightingale, replied:

So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung,

That the grove echo’d, and the vallies rung:

And I so ravish’d with her heavenly note,

I stood entranc’d, and had no room for thought;

But all o’erpower’d with ecstasy of bliss,

Was in a pleasing dream of paradise:

At length I wak’d; and looking round the bower,

Search’d every tree, and pry’d on every flower,

If any where by chance I might espy

The rural poet of the melody:

For still methought she sung not far away;

At last I found her on a laurel spray.

Close by my side she sat, and fair in sight,

Full in a line, against her opposite;

Where stood with eglantine the laurel twin’d;

And both their native sweets were well conjoin’d.

On the green bank I sat, and listen’d long;

(Sitting was more convenient for the song)

Nor till her lay was ended could I move,

But wish’d to dwell for ever in the grove.

Only methought the time too swiftly pass’d,

And every note I fear’d would be the last.

My sight, and smell, and hearing were employ’d,

And all three senses in full gust enjoy’d.

And what alone did all the rest surpass

The sweet possession of the fairy place;

Single, and conscious to myself alone

Of pleasures to th’ excluded world unknown:

Pleasures which no where else were to be found,

And all Elysium in a spot of ground.

Thus while I sat intent to see and hear,

And drew perfumes of more than vital air,

All suddenly I heard the approaching sound

Of vocal music, on th’ enchanted ground:

An host of saints it seem’d, so full the quire,

As if the blest above did all conspire

To join their voices, and neglect the lyre.’

Compared with Chaucer, Dryden and the rest of that school were merely

_verbal poets_. They had a great deal of wit, sense and fancy; they only

wanted truth and depth of feeling. But we shall have to say more on this

subject, when we come to consider the old question which we have got

marked down in our list, whether Pope was a poet?

To return to the subject of our last Number, Lord Chesterfield’s

character of the Duke of Marlborough is a good illustration of his

general theory. He says:—‘Of all the men I ever knew in my life (and I

knew him extremely well) the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the

graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them; for I will

venture (contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always

assign deep causes for great events) to ascribe the better half of the

Duke of Marlborough’s greatness and riches to those graces. He was

eminently illiterate: wrote bad English, and spelt it worse. He had no

share of what is commonly called parts; that is, no brightness, nothing

shining in his genius. He had most undoubtedly an excellent good plain

understanding with sound judgment. But these alone would probably have

raised him but something higher than they found him, which was page to

King James II.’s Queen. There the graces protected and promoted him; for

while he was Ensign of the Guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, then

favourite mistress of Charles II., struck by these very graces, gave him

five thousand pounds; with which he immediately bought an annuity of

five hundred pounds a year, which was the foundation of his subsequent

fortune. His figure was beautiful, but his manner was irresistible by

either man or woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner, that he

was enabled during all his wars to connect the various and jarring

powers of the grand alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of

the war, notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies,

and wrong headedness. Whatever court he went to (and he was often

obliged to go himself to some resty and refractory ones) he as

constantly prevailed, and brought them into his measures.’[31]

Grace in woman has often more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a

certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character,

which reposes on its own sensations, and derives pleasure from all

around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is

an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, ‘in their eyes, in their

arms, and their hands, and their face,’ which robs us of ourselves, and

draws us by a secret sympathy towards them. Their minds are a shrine

where pleasure reposes. Their smile diffuses a sensation like the breath

of spring. Petrarch’s description of Laura answers exactly to this

character, which is indeed the Italian character. Titian’s pictures are

full of it: they seem sustained by sentiment, or as if the persons whom

he painted sat to music. There is one in the Louvre (or there was) which

had the most of this expression, we ever remember. It did not look

downward; ‘it looked forward, beyond this world.’ It was a look that

never passed away, but remained unalterable as the deep sentiment which

gave birth to it. It is the same constitutional character (together with

infinite activity of mind) which has enabled the greatest man in modern

history to bear his reverses of fortune with gay magnanimity, and to

submit to the loss of the empire of the world with as little

discomposure as if he had been playing a game at chess.

After all, we would not be understood to say that manner is every

thing.[32] Nor would we put Euclid or Sir Isaac Newton on a level with

the first _petit-maître_ we might happen to meet. We consider _Æsop’s

Fables_ to have been a greater work of genius than Fontaine’s

translation of them; though we are not sure that we should not prefer

Fontaine for his style only, to Gay, who has shewn a great deal of

original invention. The elegant manners of people of fashion have been

objected to us to shew the frivolity of external accomplishments, and

the facility with which they are acquired. As to the last point, we

demur. There are no class of people who lead so laborious a life, or who

take more pains to cultivate their minds as well as persons, than people

of fashion. A young lady of quality who has to devote so many hours a

day to music, so many to dancing, so many to drawing, so many to French,

Italian, &c., certainly does not pass her time in idleness; and these

accomplishments are afterwards called into action by every kind of

external or mental stimulus, by the excitements of pleasure, vanity and

interest. A Ministerial or Opposition Lord goes through more drudgery

than half a dozen literary hacks; nor does a reviewer by profession read

half the same number of publications as a modern fine lady is obliged to

labour through. We confess, however, we are not competent judges of the

degree of elegance or refinement implied in the general tone of

fashionable manners. The successful experiment made by _Peregrine

Pickle_, in introducing his strolling mistress into genteel company,

does not redound greatly to their credit. In point of elegance of

external appearance, we see no difference between women of fashion and

women of a different character, who dress in the same style.

KEAN’S BAJAZET AND ‘THE COUNTRY GIRL’

_The Examiner._] [_November 12, 1815._

The lovers of the drama have had a very rich theatrical treat this week,

Mr. Kean’s first appearance in _Bajazet_, two new _Miss Peggys_ in the

_Country Girl_, and last, though not least, Miss Stephens’s reappearance

in _Polly_. Of Mr. Kean’s _Bajazet_ we have not much to say, without

repeating what we have said before. The character itself is merely

calculated for the display of physical passion and external energy. It

is violent, fierce, turbulent, noisy, and blasphemous, ‘full of sound

and fury, signifying nothing.’ Mr. Kean did justice to his author, or

went the whole length of the text. A viper does not dart with more

fierceness and rapidity on the person who has just trod upon it than he

turns upon _Tamerlane_ in the height of his fury. An unslaked thirst of

vengeance and blood has taken possession of every faculty, like the

savage rage of a hyaena, assailed by the hunters. His eyeballs glare,

his teeth gnash together, his hands are clenched. In describing his

defeat, his voice is choked with passion; he curses, and the blood

curdles in his veins. Never was the fiery soul of barbarous revenge,

stung to madness by repeated shame and disappointment, so completely

displayed. This truth of nature and passion in Mr. Kean’s acting carries

every thing before it. He was the only person on the stage who seemed

alive. The mighty _Tamerlane_ appeared no better than a stuffed figure

dressed in ermine, _Arpasia_ moaned in vain, and _Moneses_ roared out

his wrongs unregarded, like the hoarse sounds of distant thunder.

Nothing can withstand the real tide of passion once let loose; and yet

it is pretended, that the great art of the tragic actor is in damming it

up, or cutting out smooth canals and circular basons for it to flow

into, so that it may do no harm in its course. It is the giving way to

natural and strong impulses of the imagination that floats Mr. Kean down

the stream of public favour with all his faults—‘a load to sink a navy.’

The only wonder was to see this furious character suffered to go about

and take the whole range of the palace of _Tamerlane_, without the least

let or impediment. It shewed a degree of magnanimity in Mr. Pope, which

is without any parallel, even in modern times. It is understood that the

play was originally written by the whig poet Rowe, and regularly acted

on the anniversary of our whig revolution, as a compliment to King

William, and a satire on Louis XIV. For any thing we know, the

resemblance of _Tamerlane_ to King William may be sufficiently strong,

there the historian and the poet may agree tolerably well; but what

traits the Tartar Chieftain and the French Monarch had in common, it

would be difficult to find out. If any more recent allusion was intended

in its revival, it fell still wider of the mark. The play of _Tamerlane_

may be divided into two heads—cant and rant. _Tamerlane_ takes the first

part, and _Bajazet_ the second. This last hurls defiance at both gods

and men. He is utterly regardless of consequences, and rushes upon his

destruction like a wild beast into the toils. He utters but one striking

sentiment, when he defends ambition as the hunger of noble minds.

_Bajazet’s_ character is energy without greatness. He is blind to every

thing but the present moment, and insensible to every thing but the

present impulse. True greatness is the reverse of this. It shews all the

energy of courage, but none of the impatience of despair. It struggles

with difficulty, but yields to necessity. It does every thing, and

suffers nothing. It sees events with the eye of history, and makes Time

the Judge of Fortune. Courage with calmness constitutes the perfection

of the heroic character, as the effeminate and sentimental unite the

extremes of activity and irritability. We never saw Mr. Kean look

better. His costume and his colour had a very picturesque effect. The

yellow brown tinge of the Tartar becomes him much better than the tawny

brick-dust complexion of the Moor in _Othello_.

Now for our two Country Girls. We have seen both without any great

effort of our patience: to confess a truth, we had rather see the

_Country Girl_ two nights running than _Tamerlane_; as we would rather

have been Wycherley than Rowe. The comedy of the _Country Girl_ is taken

from Moliere’s _School for Wives_. It is however a perfectly free

imitation, or rather an original work, founded on the same general plot,

with additional characters, and in a style wholly different. Scarcely a

line is the same. The long, speechifying dialogues in the French comedy

are cut down into a succession of smart conversations and lively scenes:

there is indeed a certain pastoral sweetness or sentimental naivete in

the character of _Agnes_, which is lost in _Miss Peggy_, who is however

the more natural and mischievous little rustic of the two. The incident

of her running up against her guardian as she is running off with her

gallant in the park, and the contrivance of the second letter which she

imposes on her jealous fool as _Alithea’s_, are Wycherley’s. The

characters of _Alithea_, _Harcourt_, and of the fop _Sparkish_, who

appears to us so exquisite, and to others so insipid, are additional

portraits from the reign and court of Charles II. Those who object to

the scenes between this gentleman and his mistress as unnatural, can

never have read the _Memoirs of the Count de Grammont_,—an authentic

piece of English history, in which we trace the origin of so many noble

families. What an age of wit and folly, of coxcombs and coquets, when

the world of fashion led purely ornamental lives, and their only object

was to make themselves or others ridiculous. Happy age, when the utmost

stretch of a morning’s study went no further than the choice of a sword

knot, or the adjustment of a side curl; when the soul spoke out in all

the persuasive eloquence of dress; when beaux and belles, enamoured of

themselves in one another’s follies, fluttered like gilded butterflies

in giddy mazes through the walks of St. James’s Park! The perfection of

this gala out-of-door comedy is in Etherege, the gay Sir George! Then

comes Wycherley, and then Congreve, who hands them into the

drawing-room. Congreve is supposed to have been the inventor of the

epigrammatic, clenched style of comic dialogue; but there is a great

deal of this both in Wycherley and Etherege, with more of a _janty_ tone

of flippant gaiety in the latter, and more incident, character, and

situation in the former. The _Country Girl_ holds unimpaired possession

of the stage to this day, by its wit, vivacity, nature, and ingenuity.

Nothing can be worse acted, and yet it goes down, for it supplies the

imagination with all that the actors want. Mr. Bartley had some merit as

_Moody_, Mr. Fawcet none. Barrymore, at Covent Garden played _Harcourt_

well. We have seen him in better company, and he reminded us of it. He

was much of the gentleman, and as much at home on the stage (from long

practice) as if he had been in his own apartments. As to the two _Miss

Peggys_, we hardly know how to settle their pretensions. If Mrs. Mardyn

overacts her part to that degree that she seems only to want a

skipping-rope to make it complete, Mrs. Alsop is so stiff and queer that

she seems to have only just escaped from a back-board and steel monitor.

If Mrs. Alsop has the clearest voice, Mrs. Mardyn has the brightest

eyes. Mrs. Alsop has most art, Mrs. Mardyn has most nature. If Mrs.

Mardyn is too profuse of natural graces, too young and buoyant and

exuberant in all her movements, the same fault cannot be found with Mrs.

Alsop, whose smiles give no pleasure, and whose frowns give unmingled

pain. Mrs. Alsop’s _Peggy_ is a clever recitation of the character,

without being the thing; and Mrs. Mardyn’s is a very full development of

her own person, which is the thing itself. Mrs. Alsop is the best

actress, though not worth a pin, and Mrs. Mardyn is the most desirable

woman, which is always worth something. We may apply to these two ladies

what Suckling said of one of his mistresses—

‘I take her body, you her mind,—

Which has the better bargain.’

DOCTRINE OF PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY

_The Examiner._] [_December 10, 1815_

——‘For I had learnt a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,

A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.’

Perhaps, the doctrine of what has been called philosophical necessity

was never more finely expressed than in these lines of a poet, who, if

he had written only half of what he has done, would have deserved to be

immortal. There can be no doubt that all that exists, exists by

necessity; that the vast fabric of the universe is held together in one

mighty chain, reaching to the ‘threshold of Jove’s throne’; that

whatever has a beginning, must have a cause; that there is no object, no

feeling, no action, which, other things being the same, could have been

otherwise; that thought follows thought, like wave following wave; that

chance or accident has no share in any thing that comes to pass in the

moral or the physical world; that whatever is, must be; that whatever

has been, must have been; that whatever is to be will be necessarily.

I never could doubt for a moment of the truth of this general principle,

and I never could comprehend the inferences which have commonly been

drawn from it, both by friends and foes. All the moral consequences

which have been attributed to it appear to me mere idle prejudices

against it on one side, and equally gratuitous concessions on the other.

The doctrine of necessity leaves morality just where it found it. It

does not destroy goodness of disposition or energy of character, any

more than it destroys beauty or strength of person. It does not take

away the powers of the mind any more than the use of the limbs. That

every thing is by necessity, no more proves that there is no such thing

as good and evil, virtue and vice, right and wrong, in the moral world,

than it proves that there is no such thing as day or night, heat or

cold, sweet or sour, food or poison, in the physical. Merit and demerit,

that is to say, praise and blame, reward and punishment, have no place

in the physical world, but that is because they have no effect there;

and for the same reason they have a place in the moral, because they

have an effect there. All the practical conclusions which have been

ascribed to the difference between liberty and necessity, may be equally

accounted for (as they really had their rise) from the difference

between moral and physical necessity.

Man acts from a cause; and so far he resembles a stone; but he does not

act from the same cause, and herein he differs from it. There is a print

which I have seen from a picture by Ludovico Caracci, in which a female

figure, with a lion by her side, is represented striking a flame of fire

at her feet with a drawn sword. I do not very well understand the

allegory, but it appears to me to furnish a very tolerable illustration

of the difference between moral and physical necessity: for whether this

figure strikes the flame with the flat or the sharp side of the sword,

it divides and rises again equally; it is incapable of punishment for it

has no sense of pain, nor does it apprehend a repetition of the blow. Is

it the same with the human mind? No; for it has both the sense of pain

and the sense of consequences, which render it liable to punishment, by

making that punishment one effectual and necessary means of influencing

its conduct. A man differs from a stone in that he has feeling and

understanding; and it is this difference that makes him a moral and

responsible agent in the true meaning of the terms, by connecting his

present impulses with their future consequences. It may be said that

animals have feeling, and a certain degree of understanding: and so far

they are liable to correction and punishment. A dog or a horse is

terrified at the whip or the spur as well as encouraged by kindness. We

very properly, therefore, threaten them with the one and allure them

with the other, though we neither preach to them of heaven nor hell,

because they have no notion about either. As far as they have

understanding, they have free-will, for these two words mean one and the

same thing. Man is the only religious animal, because he alone (from a

greater power of imagination) extends his views of consequences into

another state of being.—The application of praise or blame, as well as

of reward and punishment, is proper, wherever it is likely to have an

effect. We do not talk to the deaf: we do not shew pictures to the

blind; we do not reason with a wild beast; we do not quarrel with a

stone. Because it would be useless. But we _do_ talk to those who can

hear; we shew pictures to those who can see; we reason with prejudice;

we quarrel with ill-nature. The human mind differs from an inanimate

substance or an automaton, inasmuch as it is actuated by sympathy as

well as by necessity. We indeed praise a flower, a statue, or a

beautiful face, because they give us pleasure: we praise a virtuous

action, as an additional incentive to virtue. ‘Praise and blame, reward

and punishment’ (says Mr. Hobbes) ‘are just and proper, because they

fashion the will to justice.’

Merit, in the scholastic sense, means something self-caused, and

independent of motives. This sense of the term is flat nonsense, for

there is nothing without a cause—nothing which is not owing to some

other thing. The whole theory of merit may be said to turn upon the

capacity of any person or thing to mould itself according to the opinion

entertained of it. A stone has not this capacity; and therefore there is

no merit in a stone. If you tell a country girl that she is handsome or

well made, her answer generally will be, that ‘She is as God made her.’

This however does not prove that she is not well made. It is only meant

to shew, that as she has had no hand in her own shape, and can do

nothing to mend it, the merit is so far none of hers. But if you praise

the neatness of her dress, she has not the same evasion left, but thinks

the flattery well bestowed, for she is conscious that this depends upon

herself; that she can stay a longer or a shorter time at her glass as

she pleases; and that the pains she has taken have been with a view to

the good opinion you express of her. The difference between natural and

acquired graces is an obvious dictate of common sense; unless we adopt

the opinion of the Clown, that ‘a good favour is the effect of study,

but reading and writing come by nature.’ It is a piece of brutality and

ill-nature to point at a hump-backed man, and call him My Lord: but

there is no great harm in laughing at a person with an aukward slovenly

gait, for the ridicule may remedy the defect. A person has it in his

power to turn his toes out instead of in, whenever he chuses: he cannot

get rid of a natural deformity by any effort of will. Beauty and power

of every kind excite our love and admiration, whether in nature, in

morals, or in art; but still with a difference. St. Paul’s is a much

nobler as well as larger building than St. Dunstan’s. We accordingly

admire the one much more than the other; but we allow no more merit to

the one than the other. All the difference of merit we ascribe to the

architect, and not to the building. Why so? Because all the vanity

belongs to the architect, and not to the building.—St. Paul’s stands

where it does; it lifts its majestic dome to the skies, whether it is

seen or not, whether it is admired or not. It has (familiarly speaking)

done nothing to deserve our good opinion, for it has done nothing with a

view to it. Now for the same reason that the building has not, the

builder _has_ merited our good opinion, for he did what he has done with

that very view; was sensible to that good opinion, and stimulated to

exertion by it. It is evident that the admiration we bestow on any work

of art, as an actual object, is involuntary; it makes no difference in

the object whether we bestow it or not; we therefore do not make a point

of bestowing it: the praise we give to the artist is voluntary, and

merited in this farther sense, that we are bound to bestow it as a means

to an end: we indulge it not merely as a sentiment naturally excited by

the contemplation of excellence, but the expression of which is a reward

due to the pains taken by the artist, and to the encouragement of

genius. Disapprobation and punishment on the other hand necessarily give

pain to the person who is the object of them, but it is to produce a

remote good. However, it equally follows in either case, that our love

and hatred of what is amiable or odious in conscious agents must be

different from our feeling towards unconscious ones, from the sense of

the difference of the consequences. The lever, the screw, and the wedge,

are the great instruments of the mechanical world: opinion, sympathy,

praise and blame, reward and punishment, are the lever, the screw, and

the wedge, of the moral world. A house is built of stones; human

character depends on motives. Is there therefore no difference between

one character and another? As well might it be said that there is no

difference between one building and another. If merit means something in

character, independent of motives and of all other things, then there

can be no such thing as merit: but if by merit we mean something which

excites our approbation of one character more than another, and which

something is still farther entitled to our approbation, because it

depends upon it for its motive and encouragement, then undoubtedly this

word has a rational meaning in it. To deny praise or blame, reward or

punishment, to actions, because they are produced by motives, is to take

away the prop from a house, because it supports it.—Necessity only

supersedes merit by superseding the operation of motives. It is

pretended, that if any action is not perfectly gratuitous, if it can be

traced to any other cause, the merit must be transferred to that other

cause, and so on without end. This infinite series may be cut short by

observing, that any action is entitled to our good opinion which is

affected by it. If our opinion had no influence on the actions of

others, there would so far be no merit. If any one going up Holborn-hill

is pushed by a stronger man against a window and breaks it, who is the

responsible person? The one who pushed the other, and not the one who

broke the glass. Because punishment or correcting the moral sense will

not prevent a weak man from being pushed against a window by a strong

one, but it will prevent the strong man from pushing him against it. It

makes no difference that this person did not act at first without a

motive; the point is, that here is another motive which will counteract

the former one. The true cause of any thing in the practical and moral

sense, is that, by removing which the effect ceases. A man is a moral

agent only in so far as he can do what he will: for motives can only

operate on the will. A man in chains or held by force is not accountable

for what he does, for blame or praise him ever so much, and he will do,

not what you wish him, but what others force him to do. You may

reasonably exhort a man not to throw himself over Westminster Bridge,

but it is in vain, after he has thrown himself over, to call out to him

to stop. Morality means that we have the power to do certain things, _if

we will_, or help them, _if we please_.

Merit is moral energy. It is the sense of merit which is the great

stimulus of exertion. One thing is more difficult, requires a greater

effort than another. The sense of merit is in proportion to the sense of

difficulty. The highest praise is given to the highest exertions, the

greatest rewards are due where the greatest sacrifices have been made.

The degree of merit depends then on the degree of voluntary power

exerted: for exertion deserves every kind of encouragement and

assistance as it becomes difficult. We give a boy sixpence for going a

mile; a shilling for going two. We need not offer rewards and largesses

to vice and indolence; for all the sanctions of religion and morality

are not sufficient to correct them. The admiration with which the story

of Marvell and his leg of mutton is read has not prevented the facility

of some modern patriots in commencing courtiers; but if it should only

save us from a single birthday ode, it will be something. The phlegmatic

Dutchman, in playing at skittles, follows his bowl with his eye, writhes

his body to make it turn right, and cheers it with his voice. If the

bowl had sympathy so as to bend with his body, and to be encouraged to

go a little farther by his praising it, there would be some sense in his

doing so. Amphion is said to have raised the walls of Thebes with the

sound of his lyre: in one sense the fable might be true, for he might

have drawn together and civilized his followers by the power of song.

The words which Madame de Staël some time ago addressed to the Germans,

_Allemagne, tu es une nation, et tu pleurs_, were not without their

effect. Neither perhaps would the same words be so now, addressed to her

own country—_France, tu es une nation, et tu pleurs!_

We have been led to these remarks by receiving an epistle from an

elderly maiden lady, who complains that she has spent her whole life in

censuring and back-biting her neighbours, and that by what we let fall

some time ago, about there being no such thing as merit and demerit, we

had debarred her of the only use of her tongue and pleasure of her life.

We are sorry to have interrupted her, and hope she will now proceed. We

have a good deal left to say on the subject:—

‘But there is matter for a second rhyme,

And we to this must add another tale.’

PARALLEL PASSAGES IN VARIOUS POETS

_The Examiner._] [_December 24, 1815._

Being very busy or very indolent this week (it is no matter which), we

have had recourse to our common-place book (the first or last resource

of authors), and there find the following instances of parallel

passages, which are at the service of the critics. The conclusion of

Voltaire’s tragedy of _Zaire_ is the speech of _Orosman_, who has killed

his mistress, to her brother, _Nerestan_:—

[‘Et toi, guerrier infortuné,’ &c. to

‘Dis que je l’adorais, et que l’ai vengé.’]

This will probably remind our readers, as it did us, of _Othello’s_

farewell speech:—

[‘Soft you; a word or two before you go,’ &c.]

After transcribing the above passage, we were looking about for the

traces of the former one, which had ‘vanished into thin air,’ and were

beginning to suspect that our parallel had totally failed, till in

looking into the lucubrations of Mr. William Wade, who has tried to pick

a hole in Shakespear, we learnt that the French translator of our poet

had _bona fide_ translated the passage into legitimate French verse, and

that Voltaire had in consequence, with singular modesty, complained that

Ducis had improved upon the original and stolen the whole turn of the

passage from him. To be sure, there is a wide difference in the two

passages. There is nothing in the French poet of the ‘No more of that,’

that fine natural interruption to the gasconade which his distress had

just extorted from him; there is nothing of ‘One that loved not wisely,

but too well,’ there is nothing of Indian pearls or Arabian gums, nor is

there any allusion to Aleppo, nor description of ‘a malignant and a

turbaned Turk’; nor any thing like that fine return upon himself, and

transition from the depth of a dejected spirit to the recollection of

former acts of daring defiance, while in his despair he inflicts on

himself the blow with which he formerly chastised an insolent foe. These

circumstances are given ‘as over-measure’ in Shakespear, and would be

considered as superfluous and extravagant by the French critics; yet

they are exactly the circumstances which the Moor _Othello_ must have

been best acquainted with, and which, as some of the most striking

circumstances of his past life, would be forcibly recalled to his memory

in parting with it. Voltaire has not invented any thing of the same sort

for his dying hero; his speech (though a very good one of its kind) is,

as Susannah says to Trim, ‘as flat as the palm of one’s hand;’ it has

nothing objectionable in it; it is just such a speech as any crowned

head might make in any of the four quarters of the globe.—May we be

allowed to add (in passing), that Mr. Kean does not act this scene well?

He gnashes his teeth, and strikes the dagger into his bosom, as if he

had taken some particular enmity against his own flesh. But this is not

so in Shakespear. The feeling of _Othello_ is a lofty absence of mind,

in which he throws himself back from the present into the past; the

image he recalls furnishes not only the precedent but the consolation of

his present act; and the pang which he inflicts on himself is relieved,

and unconsciously confounded with the recollection of former acts of

grandeur, and elevation of soul. But to proceed.—

In the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus, is a very beautiful description of the

signal fires that were to announce the destruction of Troy, thus

translated by Potter:—

[‘What speed could be the herald of this news,’ &c. to

‘Giv’n by my Lord t’announce the fall of Troy.’]

In Drayton’s _Polyolbion_ (Song 30) this idea is finely varied:—

[‘Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill,’ &c. to

‘Did mightly commend old Copland for her song.’]

Again, in a poem of Mr. Wordsworth we find the following lines:—

[‘When I had gazed perhaps two minutes’ space,’ &c. to

‘That there was a loud uproar in the hills.’]

We have been urged several times to take up the subject of Mr.

Wordsworth’s Poems, in order to do them justice. In doing this, we

should satisfy neither his admirers nor his censurers. We have once

already attempted the thankless office, and it did not succeed. Indeed

we think all comment on them superseded by those lines of Withers, which

are a complete anticipation of Mr. Wordsworth’s style, where, speaking

of poetry, he says,—

‘In my former days of bliss

Her divine skill taught me this,

That from every thing I saw

I could some invention draw;

And raise pleasure to her height

Through the meanest object’s sight;—

By the murmur of a spring,

Or the least bough’s rustling,

By a daisy whose leaves spread

Shut when Titan goes to bed;

Or a shady bush or tree,

She could more infuse in me

Than all Nature’s beauties can

In some other wiser man.’

MR. LOCKE A GREAT PLAGIARIST

_The Examiner._] [_February 25, 1816._

Mr. Locke has at this day all over Europe the character of one of the

most profound and original thinkers that ever lived, and he is perhaps,

without any exception, the most barefaced, deliberate, and bungling

plagiarist, that ever appeared in philosophy. The reputation which he

has acquired, as the founder of the new system in philosophy, or of any

part of that system, is a pure imposition. Hobbes was the undoubted

founder of the system; and he not only laid the foundation, but he

completed the building. Every one of the principles of the modern,

material philosophy of the mind, is to be found in his works, perfect

and entire, as it is in the latest commentators of the French school. He

not only took for his basis the principle that there is no other

original faculty in the mind but sensation: he also pushed this

principle into all its consequences, with a severe, masterly, and honest

logic, of which there is scarcely any other example. By thus shewing the

full extent of his system, ‘the very head and front of his offending,’

without any disguise, he only got himself an ill name, and his system

was consigned to infamy or oblivion. Mr. Locke adopted the first

principle, with a clumsy addition to it, but so as to secure himself the

reputation of an original thinker; and at the same time, by not

following it in a bold and decided manner into any one of its necessary

consequences, he avoided giving the alarm to popular apprehension, and

made a temporary compromise with the common sense and prejudices of his

readers. The door being however opened to the introduction of this

philosophy, by the admission of the general principle, all the rest by

degrees followed as a matter of course; and it has been the business of

the ablest metaphysicians ever since to clear what has been considered

as the philosophy of Locke, from the inconsistences and imperfections

which he had suffered to creep into it: all which improvements on

Locke’s Essay are only a recurrence to the principles laid down by

Hobbes, in the most explicit and unequivocal manner. To shew how little

this last writer has been read, even by professed metaphysicians, Hume

attributes the doctrine, that there are no abstract ideas, to Berkeley

as an original discovery, though the arguments used by Berkeley are

almost word for word taken from those used by Hobbes on the same

subject. Yet Locke, in order we suppose to prevent inquiry into the

originality of his own claims, calls Hobbes ‘a justly exploded author.’

This question is curious (philosophy apart) as a branch of literary

history. It is, we know, dangerous to tamper with established

reputation; nor should we perhaps have ventured to hazard the accusation

we have here made, if we had not been supported by the authority of so

well informed, candid, and respectable a writer as Dugald Stewart, whose

testimony is of the more value, as he does not seem to be aware of the

general propensity of Mr. Locke to appropriate the ideas of others to

his own use, without disguise or acknowledgement. To any one who takes

the trouble to peruse Professor Stewart’s very elegant Dissertation just

published, on the rise and progress of modern Metaphysics, it will be

evident that every one of those original discoveries, to which the

author of the Essay on Human Understanding owes his celebrity, and on

which he particularly plumed himself, is taken in substance and almost

in words from writers of whom he does not once make mention; for

example, his proposed division of the sciences, brought forward with

great parade and formality, into Physics, Ethics, and Logic, which is

the old division of the Greek philosophy; his definition of words which

are definable or not definable, which is taken expressly from Descartes;

his account of the origin of our ideas, that of association, of the

social compact, etc. which are borrowed from Hobbes; his distinction of

the properties of matter into primary and secondary, and his theory of

consciousness or reflection as a distinct source of ideas, which belong

to Descartes; his hypothesis about animal spirits, as the medium of

association of ideas, adopted from Malbranche; his account of judgment

and wit, which is to be found in Hobbes, &c. &c. If it be asked, whether

Mr. Locke has not had the merit of combining the materials thus derived

from other sources into a complete and masterly system, the answer would

be, that his work is one of the most confused, undigested, and

contradictory, that has been published on the subject. There is no one

to whom those lines of the poet were ever more applicable.

‘Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,

Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,

But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,

And perfect witness of all-judging Jove.’

We should hope that Mr. Stewart will examine into and state his

conviction on this question fully and clearly in the account of Mr.

Locke’s Essay, which he has promised in the continuation of his work. If

he would lend the sanction of his name to shew the real foundation on

which Mr. Locke’s reputation rests, it would not be the least service he

has rendered to philosophy. ‘To trace an error to its source is often

the only way to refute it.’ The task is no doubt an invidious, but it is

a necessary one. The name of Locke is in a manner dear to every lover of

truth; but truth itself should be still dearer.

It will perhaps be amusing to the reader (though not initiated in such

studies) to see the manner in which an idea is bandied about, in these

speculations, from author to author, to no sort of purpose. ‘In one of

Mr. Locke’s most noted remarks,’ (says the learned Professor) ‘he has

been anticipated by Malbranche, on whose clear yet concise statement he

does not seem to have thrown much new light by his very diffuse and

wordy commentary.’—‘If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand,

consists quickness of parts; in this of having them unconfused, and

being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is

but the least difference, consists, in a great measure, the exactness of

judgment and clearness of reason; which is to be observed in one man

above another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common

observation, that men who have a great deal of wit and prompt memories,

have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason. For Wit, lying

most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with

quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or

congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in

the fancy: Judgment on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in

separating carefully one from another, ideas wherein can be found the

least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude and by

affinity to take one thing for another.’—_Essay_, _etc._ B. ii. c. xi. §

2.

‘Il y a donc des esprits de deux sortes. Les uns remarquent aisément les

différences des choses, et ce sont les bons esprits. Les autres

imaginent et supposent de la ressemblance entr’elles, et ce sont les

esprits superficielles.’—_Recherche de la Vérité._

‘At an earlier period, Bacon had pointed out the same cardinal

distinction in the intellectual characters of individuals.

“The greatest and as it were radical distinction of geniuses, in respect

of philosophy and science, is this; that some are more able and apt at

noting the differences of things; others at noting their similitudes.

For steady and acute minds can fix their contemplations, and remain and

dwell on every subtlety of distinction; whereas more lofty and

discursive imaginations recognize and compound even the slightest and

commonest resemblances of things.”

‘_That strain I heard was of a higher mood!_—It is evident that Bacon

has here seized, in its most general form, the very important truth

perceived by his two ingenious successors in particular cases. _Wit_,

which Locke contrasts with _Judgment_, is only one of the various

talents connected with what Bacon calls the _discursive genius_; and

indeed a talent very subordinate in dignity to most of the

others.’—_Note to the Dissertation_, p. 116.

Mr. Locke, by Wit, in the passage here referred to, evidently means

ingenuity or fancy generally speaking; for in the last hundred years,

the use of this term has undergone a great alteration. He however

borrowed his definition immediately from ‘that exploded author,’ Hobbes,

who says in the _Leviathan_, p. 32,—‘Whereas, in the succession of

thoughts, there is nothing to observe in the things we think on, but

either in what they be like one another, or in what they be

unlike;—those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as

are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a good wit, by which

is meant on this occasion a good fancy. But they that observe their

differences and dissimilitudes, which is called distinguishing and

discerning and judging between thing and thing, in case such discerning

be not easy, are said to have a good judgment; and particularly in

matters of conversation and business, wherein times, places, and

persons, are to be discerned, this virtue is called Discretion.’

What is most remarkable in this traditional definition of wit and

judgment, is, that it is altogether unfounded; for as Harris, the author

of _Hermes_, has very well observed, the finding out the equality of the

three angles of a triangle to two right ones, would, upon the principles

here stated, be a sally of wit, instead of an act of the understanding,

and Euclid’s Elements a collection of _bon mots_.

It may be said in explanation, that wit discovers false resemblances

only. But neither is this true. Wit consists in an illustration of an

idea by some lucky coincidence or contrast, which idea may be either

false or true, as it happens. But the best wit is always the truest.

When the French punsters the other day changed the title of some loyal

order from _Compagnons du Lys_ into _Compagnons d’Ulysse_, the wit lost

none of its efficacy, because there was a lurking suspicion in the mind

that the insinuation was true. When Mr. Grattan, some years ago, said,

that the only resources of Ministers were ‘the guinea or the gallows,’

the alliteration proved nothing, but neither did it disprove any thing.

When the late ingenious Professor Porson, in reply to some enthusiast of

the modern school of poetry, who was exclaiming ‘that some contemporary

bards would be admired when Homer and Virgil were forgotten,’ made

answer,—‘And not till then,’—he shewed more wit, and perhaps not less

judgment, than his antagonist. Besides, the wit here consisted in the

distinction.

We shall shortly go more into this subject in three papers, which we

propose to write, on Imagination, Wit, and Judgment, when we shall

endeavour to shew that these faculties, though not the same, nor always

found together, are not so incompatible as dullness on the one hand, and

folly on the other, would lead the world to suppose. The most sensible

man of our acquaintance is also the wittiest; and the most extravagant

blockhead the dullest matter-of-fact man. The greatest poet that ever

lived, had the most understanding of human nature and affairs. Martinus

Scriblerus contains the best commentary on the Categories; and we

shrewdly suspect that Voltaire and Moliere were two as wise men, that

is, knew as many things that were true and useful, as Malbranche and

Descartes. It would have been hard to persuade either of those laughing

philosophers that they saw all things in God, or that animals were

machines. These are ‘the laborious fooleries’ of the understanding.

Mr. Stewart has interspersed his history of the progress of opinions

with some interesting biographical sketches. Of Anthony Arnaud, the

author of the _Port Royal Logic_, we learn, that ‘he lived to the age of

eighty-three, continuing to write against Malbranche’s opinions

concerning _Nature and Grace_, to his last hour.’ He died, says his

biographer, in an obscure retreat at Brussels, in 1692, without fortune,

and even without the comfort of a servant; he, whose nephew had been a

minister of state, and who might himself have been a cardinal. The

pleasure of being able to publish his sentiments was to him a sufficient

recompense. Nicole, his friend and companion in arms, worn out at length

with these incessant disputes, expressed a wish to retire from the

field, and to enjoy repose. ‘_Repose!_’ replied Arnaud; ‘won’t you have

the whole of eternity to repose in?’—An anecdote which is told of his

infancy, when considered in connection with his subsequent life, affords

a good illustration of the force of impressions received in the first

dawn of reason. He was amusing himself one day with some childish sport,

in the library of the Cardinal du Perron, when he requested of the

Cardinal to give him a pen:—And for what purpose? said the Cardinal.—To

write books, like you, against the Huguenots. The Cardinal, it is added,

who was old and infirm, could not conceal his joy at the prospect of so

hopeful a successor: and, as he was putting the pen into his hand, said,

‘I give it to you as the dying shepherd Damaetas bequeathed his pipe to

the little Corydon.’ Of the celebrated metaphysician Descartes, it

appears that he was ‘a bold campaigner’ in his youth; that he served in

Holland under Prince Maurice of Nassau; in Germany, under Maximilian of

Bavaria, in the thirty years’ war; in Hungary, and at the siege of

Rochelle, as a volunteer against the English. He passed his life in

camps till the age of five-and-twenty, when he retired to spend the

remainder of it—in proving his own existence! What then, it may be asked

after all, is the use of such studies and pursuits? Of the same use as

pursuing gilded butterflies, or any other toy that amuses the mind. Mr.

Hume fixed his residence, while composing his Treatise of _Human

Nature_, at the village of La Flèche, where Descartes was brought up.

This is an interesting trait in the life of a philosopher, who was by no

means of the romantic cast. We do not very well understand the lenity or

rather the respect with which the memory of Mr. Hume is always treated

by our author, who is so hard upon Hobbes and others. There is also too

much notice taken of Adam Smith, who, whatever might be his merits as a

political economist, was of a very subordinate class as a philosopher—

‘The tenth transmitter of a foolish creed.’

May we add, that the distinctions of Metaphysics and Geography have

nothing in common, nor is truth of any particular country.