(_Edinburgh Review_, July 1830.)
We {214}did not expect a good book from Mr. Sadler: and it is well
that we did not; for he has given us a very bad one. The matter of his
treatise is extraordinary; the manner more extraordinary still. His
arrangement is confused, his repetitions endless, his style everything
which it ought not to be. Instead of saying what he has to say with the
perspicuity, the precision, and the simplicity in which consists the
eloquence proper to scientific writing, he indulges without measure in
vague, bombastic declamation, made up of those fine things which boys of
fifteen admire, and which everybody, who is not destined to be a boy
all his life, weeds vigorously out of his compositions after
five-and-twenty. That portion of his two thick volumes which is not
made up of statistical tables, consists principally of ejaculations,
apostrophes, metaphors, similes,--all the worst of their respective
kinds. His thoughts are dressed up in this shabby finery with so much
profusion and so little discrimination, that they remind us of a company
of wretched strolling players, who have huddled on suits of ragged and
faded tinsel, taken from a common wardrobe, and fitting neither their
persons
(1) _The Law of Population: a Treatise in Six Books, in
Disproof of the Perfecundity of Human Beings, and
developing the real Principle of their Increase_. By Michael
Thomas Sadlek, M. P. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1830.
{215}nor their parts; and who then exhibit themselves to the laughing
and pitying spectators, in a state of strutting, ranting, painted,
gilded beggary. “Oh, rare Daniels!”
“Political economist, go and do thou likewise!”
“Hear, ye political economists and anti-populationists!” “Population, if
not proscribed and worried down by the Cerberean dogs of this wretched
and cruel system, really does press against the level of the means of
subsistence, and still elevating that level, it continues thus to
urge society through advancing stages, till at length the strong
and resistless hand of necessity presses the secret spring of human
prosperity, and the portals of Providence fly open, and disclose to the
enraptured gaze the promised land of contented and rewarded labour.”
These are specimens, taken at random, of Mr. Sadler’s eloquence. We
could easily multiply them; but our readers, we fear, are already
inclined to cry for mercy.
Much blank verse and much rhyme is also scattered through these volumes,
sometimes rightly quoted, sometimes wrongly,--sometimes good, sometimes
insufferable,--sometimes taken from Shakspeare, and sometimes, for aught
we know, Mr. Sadler’s own. “Let man,” cries the philosopher, “take heed
how he rashly violates his trust;” and thereupon he breaks forth into
singing as follows:
“What myriads wait in destiny’s dark womb,
Doubtful of life or an eternal tomb!
’Tis his to blot them from the book of fate,
Or, like a second Deity, create;
To dry the stream of being in its source,
Or bid it, widening, win its restless course;