"Had you seen but these roads before they were made,You'd lift up your hands and bless Marshal Wade."
"Had you seen but these roads before they were made,You'd lift up your hands and bless Marshal Wade."
The pleasant bull here committed conceals a most melancholy truth, and one of large extent. Innumerable are the services to truth, to justice, or society, which nevercanbe adequately valued by those who reap their benefits, simply because the transition from the early and bad state to the final or improved state cannot be retraced or kept alive before the eyes. The record perishes. The last point gained is seen; but the starting point, the pointfromwhich it was gained, is forgotten. And the traveller nevercanknow the true amount of his obligations to Marshal Wade, because, though seeing the roads which the Marshal has created, he can only guess at those which he superseded. Now, returning to this impenetrable passage of Kant, I will briefly inform the reader that he may read it into sense by connecting it with a part of Kant's system from which it is in his own delivery entirely dislocated. Going forwards some thirty or forty pages, he will find Kant's development of his own categories. And, by placing in juxtaposition with thatdevelopment this blind sentence, he will find a reciprocal light arising. All philosophers, worthy of that name, have found it necessary to allow of some great cardinal ideas that transcended all the Lockian origination—ideas that were larger in their compass than any possible notices of sense or any reflex notices of the understanding; and those who have denied such ideas will be found invariably to have supported their denial by avitium subreptionis, and to have deduced their pretended genealogies of such ideas by means of apetitio principii—silently and stealthily puttingintosome step of theirleger-de-mainprocess everything that they would pretend to have extractedfromit. But, previously to Kant, it is certain that all philosophers had left the origin of these higher or transcendent ideas unexplained. Whence came they? In the systems to which Locke replies they had been calledinnateorconnate.These were the Cartesian systems. Cudworth, again, who maintained certain "immutable ideas" of morality, had said nothing about their origin; and Plato had supposed them to be reminiscences from some higher mode of existence. Kant first attempted to assign them an origin within the mind itself, though not in any Lockian fashion of reflection upon sensible impressions. And this is doubtless what he means by saying that he first had investigated the mind—that is, he first for such a purpose.
Where, then, is it, in what act or function of the mind, that Kant finds the matrix of these transcendent ideas? Simply in the logical forms of the understanding. Every power exerts its agency under somelaws—that is, in the language of Kant, by certainforms. We leap by certain laws—viz., of equilibrium, of muscular motion, of gravitation. We dance by certain laws. So also we reason by certain laws. These laws, orformalprinciples, under a particular condition, become the categories.
Here, then, is a short derivation, in a very few words, of those ideas transcending sense which all philosophy, the earliest, has been unable to dispense with, and yet none could account for. Thus, for example, every act of reasoning must, in the first place, express itself in distinct propositions; that is, in such as contain a subject (or that concerningwhich you affirm or deny something), a predicate (that which you affirm or deny), and a copula, which connects them. These propositions must have what is technically called, in logic, a certainquantity, or compass (viz., must be universal, particular, or singular); and again they must have what is calledquality(that is, must be affirmative, or negative, or infinite): and thus arises a ground for certain corresponding ideas, which are Kant's categories of quantity and quality.
But, to take an illustration more appropriately from the very idea which first aroused Kant to the sense of a vast hiatus in the received philosophies—the idea ofcause, which had been thrown as an apple of discord amongst the schools by Hume. How did Kant deduce this? Simply thus: it is a doctrine of universal logic that there are three varieties of syllogism—viz., 1st, Categoric, or directly declarative [A is B]; 2d, Hypothetic, or conditionally declarative [If C is D, then A is B]; 3d, Disjunctive, or declarative by means of a choice which exhausts the possible cases [A is either B, or C, or D; but not C or D, ergo B]. Now, the idea ofcausation,or, in Kant's language, the category of Cause and Effect, is deduced immediately, and most naturally, as the reader will acknowledge on examination, from the 2d or hypothetic form of syllogism, when the relation of dependency is the same as in the idea of causation, and thenecessaryconnexion a direct type of that which takes place between a cause and its effect.
Thus, then, without going one step further, the reader will find grounds enough for reflection, and for reverence towards Kant, in these two great results: 1st, That an order of ideas has been established which all deep philosophy has demanded, even when it could not make good its claim. This postulate is fulfilled. 2dly, The postulate is fulfilled without mysticism or Platonic reveries. Ideas, however indispensable to human needs, and even to the connexion of our thoughts, which came to us from nobody knew whence must for ever have been suspicious; and, as in the memorable instance cited from Hume, must have been liable for ever to a question of validity. But, deduced as they now are from a matrix within our own minds, they cannot reasonably fear any assaults of scepticism.
Here I shall stop. A reader new to these inquiries may think all this a trifle. But he who reflects a little will see that, even thus far, and going no step beyond this point, the Kantian doctrine of the Categories answers a standing question hanging aloft as a challenge to human philosophy, fills up alacunapointed out from the era of Plato. It solves a problem which has startled and perplexed every age: viz. this—that man is in possession, nay, in the hourly exercise, of ideas larger than he can show any title to. And, in another way, the reader may measure the extent of this doctrine, by reflecting that, even so far as now stated, it is precisely coextensive with the famous scheme of Locke. For what is the capital thesis of that scheme? Simply this—that all necessity for supposing immediate impressions made upon our understandings by God, or other supernatural, or antenatal, or connatal, agencies, is idle and romantic; for that, upon examining the furniture of our minds, nothing will be found there which cannot adequately be explained out of our daily experience; and, until we find something that cannot be solved by this explanation, it is childish to go in quest of higher causes. Thus says Locke: and his whole work, upon its first plan, is no more than a continual pleading of this single thesis, pursuing it through all the plausible objections. Being, therefore, as large in its extent as Locke, the reader must not complain of the transcendental scheme as too narrow, even in that limited section of it here brought under his notice.
For the purpose of repelling it, he must do one of two things: either he must shew that these categories or transcendent notions are not susceptible of the derivation and genesis here assigned to them—that is, from the forms of thelogosor formal understanding; or, if content to abide by that derivation, he must allege that there are other categories besides those enumerated, and unprovided with any similar parentage.
Thus much in reply to him who complains of the doctrine here stated as, 1st, Too narrow, or, 2d, As insufficiently established. But, 3d, in reply to him who wishes to see it further pursued or applied, I say that the possible applications are perhaps infinite. With respect to those made by Kant himself, they are chiefly contained in his main andelementary work, theCritik der reinen Vernunft; and they are of a nature to make any man melancholy. Indeed, let a man consider merely this one notion ofcausation; let him reflect on its origin; let him remember that, agreeably to this origin, it follows that we have no right to view anythingin rerum naturâas objectively, or in itself, a cause; that, when, upon the fullest philosophic proof, we call A the cause of B, we do in fact only subsume A under the notion of a cause—we invest it with that function under that relation; that the whole proceeding is merely with respect to ahumanunderstanding, and by way of indispensablenexusto the several parts of our experience; finally, that there is the greatest reason to doubt whether the idea ofcausationis at all applicable to any other world than this, or any other than a human experience. Let a man meditate but a little on this or other aspects of this transcendental philosophy, and he will find the steadfast earth itself rocking as it were beneath his feet; a world about him which is in some sense a world of deception; and a world before him which seems to promise a world of confusion, or "a world not realised." All this he might deduce for himself without further aid from Kant. However, the particular purposes to which Kant applies his philosophy, from the difficulties which beset them, are unfitted for anything below a regular treatise. Suffice it to say here, that, difficult as these speculations are from one or two embarrassing doctrines on the Transcendental Consciousness, and depressing as they are from their general tendency, they are yet painfully irritating to the curiosity, and especially so from a sort ofexperimentum cruciswhich they yield in the progress of their development on behalf of the entire doctrine of Kant—a test which, up to this hour, has offered defiance to any hostile hand. The test or defiance which I speak of takes the shape of certainantinomies(so they are termed), severe adamantine arguments, affirmative and negative, on two or three celebrated problems, with no appeal to any possible decision, but one which involves the Kantian doctrines. Aquæstio vexatais proposed—for instance, theinfinite divisibility of matter; each side of this question,thesisandantithesis, is argued; the logic is irresistible,the links are perfect, and for each side alternately there is a verdict, thus terminating in the most triumphantreductio ad absurdum,—viz. that A, at one and the same time and in the same sense, is and is not B,—from which no escape is available but through a Kantian solution. On any other philosophy, it is demonstrated that this opprobrium of the human understanding, this scandal of logic, cannot be removed. This celebrated chapter ofantinomieshas been of great service to the mere polemics of the transcendental philosophy: it is a glove or gage of defiance, constantly lying on the ground, challenging the rights of victory and supremacy so long as it isnottaken up by any antagonist, and bringing matters to a short decision when itis.
One section, and that the introductory section, of the transcendental philosophy, I have purposely omitted, though in strictness not to be insulated or dislocated from the faithful exposition even of that which I have given. It is the doctrine of Space and Time. These profound themes, so confounding to the human understanding, are treated by Kant under two aspects—1st, as Anschauungen, orIntuitions—(so the German word is usually translated for want of a better);2dly, as forms,a priori, of all our other intuitions. Often have I laughed internally at the characteristic exposure of Kant's style of thinking—that he, a man of so much worldly sagacity, could think of offering, and of the German scholastic habits, that any modern nation could think of accepting such cabalistic phrases, such a true and very "Ignotium per Ignotius," in part payment of an explanatory account of Time and Space. Kant repeats these words—as a charm before which all darkness flies; and he supposes continually the case of a man denying his explanations or demanding proofs of them, never once the sole imaginable case—viz., of all men demanding an explanation of these explanations. Deny them! Combat them! How should a man deny, why should he combat, what might, for anything to the contrary appearing, contain a promissory note at two months after date for 100 guineas? No; it will cost a little preliminary work beforesuchexplanations will much avail any scheme of philosophy, either for theproor thecon. And yet I do myself really profess to understand the darkwords; and a great service it would be to sound philosophy amongst us, if this one wordanschauungwere adequately unfolded and naturalized (as naturalized it might be) in the English philosophic dictionary, by some full Grecian equivalent. Strange that no man acquainted with German philosophy should yet have been struck by the fact—or, being struck, should not have felt it important to call public attention to the fact,—of our inevitable feebleness in a branch of study for which as yet we want the indispensable words. Our feebleness is at once argued by this want, and partly caused. Meantime, as respects the Kantian way of viewing space, by much the most important innovation which it makes upon the old doctrines is—that it considers space as asubjectivenot anobjectivealiquid; that is, as having its whole available foundation lying ultimately in ourselves, not in any external or alien tenure. This one distinction, as applied to space, for ever secures (what nothing elsecansecure or explain) the cogency of geometrical evidence. Whatever is true for any determinations of a space originally included in ourselves, must be true for such determinations for ever, since they cannot become objects of consciousness to us but in and by that very mode of conceiving space, that very form of schematism which originally presented us with these determinations of space, or any whatever. In the uniformity of our own space-conceiving faculty we have a pledge of the absolute andnecessaryuniformity (or internal agreement among themselves) of all future or possible determinations of space; because they could no otherwise become to us conceivable forms of space than by adapting themselves to the known conditions of our conceiving faculty. Here we have thenecessitywhich is indispensable to all geometrical demonstration: it is a necessity founded in our human organ, which cannot admit or conceive a space, unless as preconforming to these original forms or schematisms. Whereas, on the contrary, if space were somethingobjective, and consequently, being a separate existence, independent of a human organ, then it is altogether impossible to find any intelligible source ofobligationor cogency in the evidence—such as is indispensable to the very nature of geometrical demonstration. Thus we will suppose that a regular demonstrationhas gradually, from step to step downwards, through a series of propositions—No. 8 resting upon 7, that upon 5, 5 upon 3—at length reduced you to the elementary axiom that Two straight lines cannot enclose a space. Now, if space besubjectiveoriginally—that is to say, founded (as respects us and our geometry) in ourselves—then it is impossible that two such lines can enclose a space, because the possibility of anything whatever relating to the determinations of space is exactly co-extensive with (and exactly expressed by) our power to conceive it. Being thus able to affirm its impossibility universally, we can build a demonstration upon it. But, on the other hypothesis, of space beingobjective, it is impossible to guess whence we are to draw our proof of the alleged inaptitude in two straight lines for enclosing a space. The most we could say is, that hitherto no instance has been found of an enclosed space circumscribed by two straight lines. It would not do to allege our human inability to conceive, or in imagination to draw, such a circumscription. For, besides that such a mode of argument is exactly the one supposed to have been rejected, it is liable to this unanswerable objection, so long as space is assumed to have anobjectiveexistence, viz. that the human inability to conceive such a possibility only argues (what in fact is often found in other cases) that theobjectiveexistence of space—i.e.the existence of space in itself, and in its absolute nature—is far larger than its subjective existence—i.e.than its mode of existingquoadsome particular subject. A being more limited than man might be so framed as to be unable to conceive curve lines; but this subjective inaptitude for those determinations of space would not affect the objective reality of curves, or even their subjective reality for a higher intelligence. Thus, on the hypothesis of an objective existence for space, we should be thrown upon an ocean of possibilities, without a test for saying what was—what was not possible. But, on the other hypothesis, having always in the last resort what issubjectivelypossible or impossible (i.e.what is conceivable or not by us, what can or cannot be drawn or circumscribed by a human imagination), we have the means of demonstration in our power, by having the ultimate appeals in our power to a known uniform test—viz. a known human faculty.
This is no trifling matter, and therefore no trifling advantage on the side of Kant and his philosophy, to all who are acquainted with the disagreeable controversies of late years among French geometricians of the first rank, and sometimes among British ones, on the question of mathematical evidence. Legendre and Professor Leslie took part in one such a dispute; and the temper in which it was managed was worthy of admiration, as contrasted with the angry controversies of elder days, if, indeed, it did not err in an opposite spirit, by too elaborate and too calculating a tone of reciprocal flattery. But, think as we may of the discussion in this respect, most assuredly it was painful to witness so infirm a philosophy applied to an interest so mighty. The whole aerial superstructure—the heaven-aspiring pyramid of geometrical synthesis—all tottered under the palsying logic of evidence, to which these celebrated mathematicians appealed. And wherefore?—From the want of any philosophic account of space, to which they might have made a common appeal, and which might have so far discharged its debt to truth as at least to reconcile its theory with the great outstanding phenomena in the most absolute of sciences. Geometry is thescienceof space: therefore, in anyphilosophyof space, geometry is entitled to be peculiarly considered, and used as a court of appeal. Geometry has these two further claims to distinction—that, 1st, It is the most perfect of the sciences, so far as it has gone; and, 2dly, That it has gone the farthest. A philosophy of space which does not consider and does not reconcile to its own doctrines the facts of geometry, which, in the two points of beauty and of vast extent, is more like a work of nature than of man, is,prima facie, of no value. A philosophy of spacemightbe false which should harmonize with the facts of geometry—itmustbe false if it contradict them. Of Kant's philosophy it is a capital praise that its very opening section—that section which treats the question of space—not only quadrates with the facts of geometry, but also, by thesubjectivecharacter which it attributes to space, is the very first philosophic scheme which explains and accounts for the cogency of geometrical evidence.
These are the two primary merits of the transcendentaltheory—1st, Its harmony with mathematics, and the fact of having first, by its doctrine of space, applied philosophy to the nature of geometrical evidence;2dly, That it has filled up, by means of its doctrine of categories, the greathiatusin all schemes of the human understanding from Plato downwards. All the rest, with a reserve as to the part which concerns thepracticalreason (or will), is of more questionable value, and leads to manifold disputes. But I contend that, had transcendentalism done no other service than that of laying a foundation, sought but not found for ages, to the human understanding—namely, by showing an intelligible genesis to certain large and indispensable ideas—it would have claimed the gratitude of all profound inquirers. To a reader still disposed to undervalue Kant's service in this respect, I put one parting question—Wherefore he values Locke? What hashedone, even if value is allowed in full to his pretensions? Has the reader asked himselfthat? He gave anegativesolution at the most. He told his reader that certain disputed ideas werenotdeduced thus and thus. Kant, on the other hand, has given him at the least apositivesolution. He teaches him, in the profoundest revelation, by a discovery in the most absolute sense on record, and the most entirely a single act—without parts, or contributions, or stages, or preparations from other quarters—that these long disputed ideas could not be derived from the experience assigned by Locke, inasmuch as they are themselvesprevious conditions under which any experience at all is possible: he teaches him that these ideas are not mystically originated, but are, in fact, but another phasis of the functions or forms of his own understanding; and, finally, he gives consistency, validity, and a charter of authority, to certain modes ofnexuswithout which the sum total of human experience would be a rope of sand.
In terminating this slight account of the Kantian philosophy, I may mention that, in or about the year 1818-19, Lord Grenville, when visiting the lakes of England, observed to Professor Wilson that, after five years' study of this philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, made the same confession to another friend of my own.
It is not usual for men to meet with their capital disappointments in early life, at least not in youth. For, as to disappointments in love, which are doubtless the most bitter and incapable of comfort, though otherwise likely to arise in youth, they are in this way made impossible at a very early age, that no man can be in love to the whole extent of his capacity until he is in full possession of all his faculties, and with the sense of dignified maturity. A perfect love, such as is necessary to the anguish of a perfect disappointment, presumes also for its object not a mere girl, but woman, mature both in person and character, and womanly dignity. This sort of disappointment, in a degree which could carry its impression through life, I cannot therefore suppose occurring earlier than at twenty-five or twenty-seven. My disappointment—the profound shock with which I was repelled from German philosophy, and which thenceforwards tinged with cynical disgust towards man in certain aspects a temper which originally I will presume to consider the most benign that can ever have been created—occurred when I was yet in my twentieth year. In a poem under the title ofSaul, written many years ago by Mr. Sotheby, and perhaps now forgotten, having never been popular, there occurs a passage of some pathos, in which Saul is described as keeping amongst the splendid equipments of a royal wardrobe that particular pastoral habit which he had worn in his days of earliest manhood, whilst yet humble and undistinguished by honour, but also yet innocent and happy. There, also, with the same care, he preserved his shepherd's crook, which, in hands of youthful vigour, had been connected with remembrances of heroic prowess. These memorials, in after times of trouble or perplexity, when the burthen of royalty, its cares, or its feverish temptations, pointed his thoughts backwards, for a moment's relief, to scenes of pastoral gaiety and peace, the heart-wearied prince would sometimes draw from their repository, and in solitude would apostrophise them separately, or commune with the bitter-sweet remembrances which they recalled. In something of the same spirit—but with a hatred to the German philosopher such as men are represented as feeling towards the gloomy enchanter, Zamiel or whomsoever, by whose hateful seductions they have beenplaced within a circle of malign influences—did I at times revert to Kant: though for me his power had been of the very opposite kind; not an enchanter's, but the power of a disenchanter—and a disenchanter the most profound. As often as I looked into his works, I exclaimed in my heart, with the widowed queen of Carthage, using her words in an altered application—
"Quæsivit lucem—ingemuitque repertâ."
"Quæsivit lucem—ingemuitque repertâ."
Had the transcendental philosophy corresponded to my expectations, and had it left important openings for further pursuit, my purpose then was to have retired, after a few years spent in Oxford, to the woods of Lower Canada. I had even marked out the situation for a cottage and a considerable library, about seventeen miles from Quebec. I planned nothing so ambitious as a scheme ofPantisocracy. My object was simply profound solitude, such as cannot now be had in any part of Great Britain—with two accessary advantages, also peculiar to countries situated in the circumstances and under the climate of Canada: viz. the exalting presence in an under-consciousness of forests endless and silent, the everlasting sense of living amongst forms so ennobling and impressive, together with the pleasure attached to natural agencies, such as frost, more powerfully manifested than in English latitudes, and for a much longer period. I hope there is nothing fanciful in all this. It is certain that in England, and in all moderate climates, we are too slightly reminded of nature or the forces of nature. Great heats, or great colds (and in Canada there are both), or great hurricanes, as in the West Indian latitudes, recall us continually to the sense of a powerful presence, investing our paths on every side; whereas in England it is possible to forget that we live amongst greater agencies than those of men and human institutions. Man, in fact, "too much man," as Timon complained most reasonably in Athens, was then, and is now, our greatest grievance in England. Man is a weed everywhere too rank. A strange place must that be with us from which the sight of a hundred men is not before us, or the sound of a thousand about us.
Nevertheless, being in this hotbed of man inevitably for some years, no sooner had I dismissed my German philosophythan I relaxed a little that spirit of German abstraction which it had prompted; and, though never mixing freely with society, I began to look a little abroad. It may interest the reader, more than anything else which I can record of this period, to recall what I saw within the ten first years of the century that was at all noticeable or worthy of remembrance amongst the literati, the philosophers, or the poets of the time. For, though I am now in my academic period from 1804 to 1808, my knowledge of literary men—or men distinguished in some way or other, either by their opinions, their accomplishments, or their position and the accidents of their lives—began from the first year of the century, or, more accurately, from the year 1800; which, with some difficulty and demurs, and with some arguments from the Laureate Pye, the world was at length persuaded to consider the last year of the eighteenth century.[20]
It was in the year 1801, whilst yet at school, that I made my first literary acquaintance. This was with a gentleman now dead, and little, at any time, known in the literary world; indeed, not at all; for his authorship was confined to a department of religious literature as obscure and as narrow in its influence as any that can be named—viz. Swedenborgianism.
Already, on the bare mention of that word, a presumption arises against any man, that, writing much (or writing at all) for a body of doctrines so apparently crazy as those of Mr. Swedenborg, a man must have bid adieu to all good sense and manliness of mind. Indeed, this is so much of a settled case, that even to have writtenagainstMr. Swedenborg would be generally viewed as a suspicious act, requiring explanation, and not very easily admitting of it.Mr.Swedenborg I call him, because I understand that his title to call himself "Baron" is imaginary; or rather he neverdidcall himself by any title of honour—that mistake having originated amongst his followers in this country, who have chosen to designate him as the "Honourable" and as the "Baron" Swedenborg, by way of translating, to the ear of England, some one or other of those irrepresentable distinctions,Legations-Rath,Hofrath,&c., which are tossed about with somuch profusion in the courts of continental Europe, on both sides the Baltic. For myself, I cannot think myself qualified to speak of any man's writings without a regular examination of some one or two among those which his admirers regard as his best performances. Yet, as any happened to fall in my way, I have looked into them; and the impression left upon my mind was certainly not favourable to their author. They laboured, to my feeling, with two opposite qualities of annoyance, but which I believe not uncommonly found united in lunatics—excessive dulness or matter-of-factness in the execution, with excessive extravagance in the conceptions. The result, at least, was most unhappy: for, of all writers, Swedenborg is the only one I ever heard of who has contrived to strip even the shadowy world beyond the grave of all its mystery and all its awe. From the very heaven of heavens, he has rent away the veil; no need for seraphs to "tremble while they gaze"; for the familiarity with which all objects are invested makes it impossible that even poor mortals should find any reason to tremble. Until I saw this book, I had not conceived it possible to carry an atmosphere so earthy, and steaming with the vapours of earth, into regions which, by early connexion in our infant thoughts with the sanctities of death, have a hold upon the reverential affections such as they rarely lose. In this view, I should conceive that Swedenborg, if it were at all possible for him to become a popular author, would, at the same time, become immensely mischievous. He would dereligionize men beyond all other authors whatsoever.
Little could this character of Swedenborg's writings—this, indeed, least of all—have been suspected from the temper, mind, or manners of my new friend. He was the most spiritual-looking, the most saintly in outward aspect, of all human beings whom I have known throughout life. He was rather tall, pale, and thin; the most unfleshly, the most of a sublimated spirit dwelling already more than half in some purer world, that a poet could have imagined. He was already aged when I first knew him, a clergyman of the Church of England; which may seem strange in connexion with his Swedenborgianism; but he was, however, so. He was rector of a large parish in a large town, the more active dutiesof which parish were discharged by his curate; but much of the duties within the church were still discharged by himself, and with such exemplary zeal that his parishioners, afterwards celebrating the fiftieth anniversary, orgoldenjubilee of his appointment to the living (the twenty-fifth anniversary is called in German the silver—the fiftieth, the golden jubilee), went farther than is usual in giving a public expression and a permanent shape to their sentiments of love and veneration. I am surprised, on reflection, that this venerable clergyman should have been unvexed by Episcopal censures. He might, and I dare say would, keep back the grosser parts of Swedenborg's views from a public display; but, in one point, it would not be easy for a man so conscientious to make a compromise between his ecclesiastical duty and his private belief; for I have since found, though I did not then know it, that Swedenborg held a very peculiar creed on the article of atonement. From the slight pamphlet which let me into this secret I could not accurately collect the exact distinctions of his creed; but it was very different from that of the English Church.
However, my friend continued unvexed for a good deal more than fifty years, enjoying that peace, external as well as internal, which, by so eminent a title, belonged to a spirit so evangelically meek and dovelike. I mention him chiefly for the sake of describing his interesting house and household, so different from all which belong to this troubled age, and his impressive style of living. The house seemed almost monastic; and yet it stood in the centre of one of the largest, busiest, noisiest towns in England; and the whole household seemed to have stepped out of their places in some Vandyke, or even some Titian, picture, from a forgotten century and another climate. On knocking at the door, which of itself seemed an outrage to the spirit of quietness which brooded over the place, you were received by an ancient manservant in the sober livery which belonged traditionally to Mr.—— 's[22]family; for he was of a gentleman's descent,and had had the most finished education of a gentleman. This venerable old butler put me in mind always, by his noiseless steps, of the Castle of Indolence, where the porter or usher walked about in shoes that were shod with felt, lest any rude echoes might be roused. An ancient housekeeper was equally venerable, equally gentle in her deportment, quiet in her movements, and inaudible in her tread. One or other of these upper domestics,—for the others rarely crossed my path,—ushered me always into some room expressing by its furniture, its pictures, and its coloured windows, the solemn tranquillity which, for half a century, had reigned in that mansion. Among the pictures were more than one of St. John, the beloved apostle, by Italian masters. Neither the features nor the expression were very wide of Mr. Clowes's own countenance; and, had it been possible to forget the gross character of Swedenborg's reveries, or to substitute for these fleshly dreams the awful visions of the Apocalypse, one might have imagined easily that the pure, saintly, and childlike evangelist had been once again recalled to this earth, and that this most quiet of mansions was some cell in the island of Patmos. Whence came the stained glass of the windows I know not, and whether it were stained or painted. The revolutions of that art are known from Horace Walpole's account; and, nine years after this period, I found that, in Birmingham, where the art of staining glass was chiefly practised, no trifling sum was charged even for a vulgar lacing of no great breadth round a few drawing-room windows, which one of my friends thought fit to introduce as an embellishment. These windows, however, of my clerical friend were really "storiedwindows," having Scriptural histories represented upon them. A crowning ornament to the library or principal room was a sweet-toned organ, ancient, and elaborately carved in its wood-work, at which my venerable friend readily sate down, and performed the music of anthems as often as I asked him, sometimes accompanying it with his voice, which was tremulous from old age, but neither originally unmusical, nor (as might be perceived) untrained.
Often, from the storms and uproars of this world, I have looked back upon this most quiet and, I believe, most innocent abode (had I said saintly I should hardly have erred), conneactingit in thought withLittle Gidding, the famous mansion (in Huntingdonshire, I believe) of the Farrers, an interesting family in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. Of the Farrers there is a long and circumstantial biographical account, and of the conventual discipline maintained at Little Gidding. For many years it was the rule at Gidding—and it was the wish of the Farrers to have transmitted that practice through succeeding centuries—that a musical or cathedral service should be going on at every hour of night and day in the chapel of the mansion. Let the traveller, at what hour he would, morning or evening, summer or winter, and in what generation or century soever, happen to knock at the gate of Little Gidding, it was the purpose of Nicholas Farrer—a sublime purpose—that always he should hear the blare of the organ, sending upwards its surging volumes of melody, God's worship for ever proceeding, anthems of praise for ever ascending, andjubilatesechoing without end or known beginning. One stream of music, in fact, never intermitting, one vestal fire of devotional praise and thanksgiving, was to connect the beginnings with the ends of generations, and to link one century into another. Allowing for the sterner asceticism of N. Farrer—partly arising out of the times, partly out of personal character, and partly, perhaps, out of his travels in Spain—my aged friend's arrangement of the day, and the training of his household, might seem to have been modelled on the plans of Mr. Farrer; whom, however, he might never have heard of. There was also, in each house, the same union of religion with some cultivation of the ornamental arts, or some expression of respect for them. In each case, a monastic severity, that might, under other circumstances, have terminated in the gloom of a La Trappe, had been softened by English sociality, and by the habits of a gentleman's education, into a devotional pomp, reconcilable with Protestant views. When, however, remembering this last fact in Mr. Clowes's case (the fact I mean of his liberal education), I have endeavoured to explain the possibility of one so much adorned by all the accomplishments of a high-bred gentleman, and one so truly pious, falling into the grossness, almost the sensuality, which appears to besiege the visions of Swedenborg, I fancy that the whole may beexplained out of the same cause which occasionally may be descried, through a distance of two complete centuries, as weighing heavily upon the Farrers—viz. the dire monotony of daily life, when visited by no irritations either of hope or fear—no hopes from ambition, no fears from poverty.
Nearly (if not quite) sixty years did my venerable friend inhabit that same parsonage house, without any incident more personally interesting to himself than a cold or a sore throat. And I suppose that he resorted to Swedenborg—reluctantly, perhaps, at the first—as to a book of fairy tales connected with his professional studies. And one thing I am bound to add in candour, which may have had its weight with him, that more than once, on casually turning over a volume of Swedenborg, I have certainly found most curious and felicitous passages of comment—passages which extracted a brilliant meaning from numbers, circumstances, or trivial accidents, apparently without significance or object, and gave to things, without a place or a habitation in the critic's regard, a value as hieroglyphics or cryptical ciphers, which struck me as elaborately ingenious. This acknowledgment I make not so much in praise of Swedenborg, whom I must still continue to think a madman, as in excuse for Mr. Clowes. It may easily be supposed that a person of Mr. Clowes's consideration and authority was not regarded with indifference by the general body of the Swedenborgians. At his motion it was, I believe, that a society was formed for procuring and encouraging a translation into English of Swedenborg's entire works, most of which are written in Latin. Several of these translations are understood to have been executed personally by Mr. Clowes; and in this obscure way, for anything I know, he may have been an extensive author. But it shows the upright character of the man that never, in one instance, did he seek to bias my opinions in this direction. Upon every other subject, he trusted me confidentially—and, notwithstanding my boyish years (15-16), as his equal. His regard for me, when thrown by accident in his way, had arisen upon his notice of my fervent simplicity, and my unusual thoughtfulness. Upon these merits, I had gained the honourable distinction of a general invitation to his house, without exception as to days and hours, when few otherscould boast of any admission at all. The common ground on which we met was literature—more especially the Greek and Roman literature; and much he exerted himself, in a spirit of the purest courtesy, to meet my animation upon these themes. But the interest on his part was too evidently a secondary interest inme, for whom he talked, and not in the subject: he spoke much from memory, as it were of things that he had once felt, and little from immediate sympathy with the author; and his animation was artificial, though his courtesy, which prompted the effort, was the truest and most unaffected possible.
The connexion between us must have been interesting to an observer; for, though I cannot say with Wordsworth, of old Daniel and his grandson, that there were "ninety good years of fair and foul weather" between us, there were, however, sixty, I imagine, at the least; whilst as a bond of connexion there was nothing at all that I know of beyond a common tendency to reverie, which is a bad link for asocialconnexion. The little ardour, meantime, with which he had, for many years, participated in the interests of this world, or all that it inherits, was now rapidly departing. Daily and consciously he was loosening all ties which bound him to earlier recollections; and, in particular, I remember—because the instance was connected with my last farewell visit, as it proved—that for some time he was engaged daily in renouncing with solemnity (though often enough in cheerful words) book after book of classical literature in which he had once taken particular delight. Several of these, after taking his final glance at a few passages to which a pencil reference in the margin pointed his eye, he delivered to me as memorials in time to come of himself. The last of the books given to me under these circumstances was a Greek "Odyssey," in Clarke's edition. "This," said he, "is nearly the sole book remaining to me of my classical library—which, for some years, I have been dispersing amongst my friends. Homer I retained to the last, and the 'Odyssey,' by preference to the 'Iliad,' both in compliance with my own taste, and because this very copy was my chosen companion for evening amusement during my freshman's term at Trinity College, Cambridge—whither I went early in the spring of1743. Your own favourite Grecian is Euripides; but still you must value—we must all value—Homer. I, even as old as I am, could still read him with delight; and, as long as any merely human composition ought to occupy my time, I should have made an exception in behalf of this solitary author. But I am a soldier of Christ; the enemy, the last enemy, cannot be far off;sarcinas colligereis, at my age, the watchword for every faithful sentinel, hourly to keep watch and ward, to wait and to be vigilant. This very day I have taken my farewell glance at Homer, for I must no more be found seeking my pleasure amongst the works of man; and, that I may not be tempted to break my resolution, I make over this my last book to you."
Words to this effect, uttered with his usual solemnity, accompanied his gift; and, at the same time, he added, without any separate comment, a little pocket Virgil—the one edited by Alexander Cunningham, the bitter antagonist of Bentley—with a few annotations placed at the end. The act was in itself a solemn one; something like taking the veil for a nun—a final abjuration of the world's giddy agitations. And yet to him—already and for so long a time linked so feebly to anything that could be called the world, and living in a seclusion so profound—it was but as if an anchorite should retire from his outer to his inner cell. Me, however, it impressed powerfully in after years; because this act of self-dedication to the next world, and of parting from the intellectual luxuries of this, was also, in fact, though neither of us at the time knew it to be such, the scene of his final parting with myself. Immediately after his solemn speech, on presenting me with the "Odyssey," he sat down to the organ, sang a hymn or two, then chanted part of the liturgy, and, finally, at my request, performed the anthem so well known in the English Church service—the collect for the seventh Sunday after Trinity—(Lord of all power and might, &c.) It was summer—about half after nine in the evening; the light of day was still lingering, and just strong enough to illuminate the Crucifixion, the Stoning of the Protomartyr, and other grand emblazonries of the Christian faith, which adorned the rich windows of his library. Knowing the early hours of his household, I now received his usualfervent adieus—which, without the words, had the sound and effect of a benediction—felt the warm pressure of his hand, saw dimly the outline of his venerable figure, more dimly his saintly countenance, and quitted that gracious presence, which, in this world, I was destined no more to revisit. The night was one in the first half of July 1802; in the second half of which, or very early in August, I quitted school clandestinely, and consequently the neighbourhood of Mr. Clowes. Some years after, I saw his death announced in all the public journals, as having occurred at Leamington Spa, then in the springtime of its medicinal reputation. Farewell, early friend! holiest of men whom it has been my lot to meet! Yes, I repeat, thirty-five years are past since then, and I have yet seen few men approaching to this venerable clergyman in paternal benignity—none certainly in child-like purity, apostolic holiness, or in perfect alienation of heart from the spirit of this fleshly world.
I have delineated the habits and character of Mr. Clowes at some length, chiefly because a connexion is rare and interesting between parties so widely asunder in point of age—one a schoolboy, and the other almost an octogenarian, to quote a stanza from one of the most spiritual sketches of Wordsworth—