‘It has sometimes occurred to me whether Mr. Malthus did not catch the first hint of his geometrical ratio from a curious passage of Judge Blackstone, on consanguinity, which is as follows:—
‘The doctrine of lineal consanguinity is sufficiently plain and obvious; but it is at the first view astonishing to consider the number of lineal ancestors which every man has within no very great number of degrees; and so many different bloods is a man said to contain in his veins, as he hath lineal ancestors. Of these he hath two in the first ascending degree, his own parents; he hath four in the second, the parents of his father and the parents of his mother; he hath eight in the third, the parents of his two grandfathers and two grand-mothers;and by the same rule of progression, he hath an hundred and twenty-eight in the seventh; a thousand and twenty-four in the tenth; and at the twentieth degree, or the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above a million of ancestors, as common arithmetic will demonstrate.
‘This will seem surprising to those who are unacquainted with the increasing power of progressive numbers; but is palpably evident from the following table of a geometrical progression, in which the first term is 2, and the denominator also 2; or, to speak more intelligibly, it is evident, for that each of us has two ancestors in the first degree; the number of which is doubled at every remove, because each of our ancestors had also two ancestors of his own.
‘This argument, however,’ (proceeds Mr. Godwin) ‘from Judge Blackstone of a geometrical progression would much more naturally apply to Montesquieu’s hypothesis of the depopulation of the world, and prove that the human species is hastening fast to extinction, than to the purpose for which Mr. Malthus has employed it. An ingenious sophism might be raised upon it, to show that the race of mankind will ultimately terminate in unity. Mr. Malthus, indeed, should have reflected, that it is much more certain that every man has had ancestors than that he will have posterity, and that it is still more doubtful, whether he will have posterity to twenty or to an indefinite number of generations.’—Enquiry concerning Population, p. 100.
Mr. Malthus’s style is correct and elegant; his tone of controversy mild and gentlemanly; and the care with which he has brought his facts and documents together, deserves the highest praise. He has lately quitted his favourite subject of population, and broke a lance with Mr. Ricardo on the question of rent and value. The partisans of Mr. Ricardo, who are also the admirers of Mr. Malthus, say that the usual sagacity of the latter has here failed him, and that he has shown himself to be a very illogical writer. To have said this of him formerly on another ground, was accounted a heresy and a piece of presumption not easily to be forgiven. Indeed Mr. Malthus has always been a sort of ‘darling in the public eye,’ whom it was unsafe to meddle with. He has contrived to make himself as many friends by his attacks on the schemes ofHuman Perfectibilityand on thePoor-Laws, as Mandeville formerly procured enemies by his attacks onHuman Perfectionsand onCharity-Schools; and among other instances that we might mention,PlugPulteney, the celebrated miser, of whom Mr. Burke said on his having a large estate left him, ‘that now it was to be hoped he wouldset up a pocket-handkerchief,’ was so enamoured with the saving schemes and humane economy of the Essay, that he desired a friend to find out the author and offer him a church living! This liberal intention was (by design or accident) unhappily frustrated.
Mr. Gifford was originally bred to some handicraft: he afterwards contrived to learn Latin, and was for some time an usher in a school, till he became a tutor in a nobleman’s family. The low-bred, self-taught man, the pedant, and the dependant on the great contribute to form the Editor of theQuarterly Review. He is admirably qualified for this situation, which he has held for some years, by a happy combination of defects, natural and acquired; and in the event of his death, it will be difficult to provide him a suitable successor.
Mr. Gifford has no pretensions to be thought a man of genius, of taste, or even of general knowledge. He merely understands the mechanical and instrumental part of learning. He is a critic of the last age, when the different editions of an author, or the dates of his several performances were all that occupied the inquiries of a profound scholar, and the spirit of the writer or the beauties of his style were left to shift for themselves, or exercise the fancy of the light and superficial reader. In studying an old author, hehas no notion of any thing beyond adjusting a point, proposing a different reading, or correcting, by the collation of various copies, an error of the press. In appreciating a modern one, if it is an enemy, the first thing he thinks of is to charge him with bad grammar—he scans his sentences instead of weighing his sense; or, if it is a friend, the highest compliment he conceives it possible to pay him is, that his thoughts and expressions are moulded on some hackneyed model. His standard ofidealperfection is what he himself now is, a person ofmediocreliterary attainments: his utmost contempt is shown by reducing any one to what he himself once was, a person without the ordinary advantages of education and learning. It is accordingly assumed, with much complacency in his critical pages, that Tory writers are classical and courtly as a matter of course; as it is a standing jest and evident truism, that Whigs and Reformers must be persons of low birth and breeding—imputations from one of which he himself has narrowly escaped, and both of which he holds in suitable abhorrence. He stands over a contemporary performance with all the self-conceit and self-importance of a country schoolmaster, tries it by technical rules, affects not to understand the meaning, examines the hand-writing, the spelling, shrugs up his shoulders and chuckles over a slip of the pen, and keeps a sharp look-out for a false concord and—a flogging. There is nothing liberal, nothing humane in his style of judging: it is altogether petty, captious, and literal. The Editor’s political subserviency adds the last finishing to his ridiculous pedantry and vanity. He has all his life been a follower in the train of wealth and power—strives to back his pretensions on Parnassus by a place at court, and to gild his reputation as a man of letters by the smile of greatness. He thinks his works are stamped with additional value by having his name in theRed-Book. He looks up to the distinctions of rank and station as he does to those of learning, with the gross and over-weening adulation of his early origin. All his notions are low, upstart, servile. He thinks it the highest honour to a poet to be patronised by a peer or by some dowager of quality. He is prouder of a court-livery than of a laurel-wreath; and is only sure of having established his claims to respectability by having sacrificed those of independence. He is a retainer to the Muses; a door-keeper to learning; a lacquey in the state. He believes that modern literature should wear the fetters of classical antiquity; that truth is to be weighed in the scales of opinion and prejudice; that power is equivalent to right; that genius is dependent on rules; that taste and refinement of language consist inword-catching. Many persons suppose that Mr. Gifford knows better than he pretends; and thathe is shrewd, artful, and designing. But perhaps it may be nearer the mark to suppose that his dulness is guarantee for his sincerity; or that before he is the tool of the profligacy of others, he is the dupe of his own jaundiced feelings, and narrow, hood-winked perceptions.
‘Destroy his fib or sophistry: in vain—The creature’s at his dirty work again!’
‘Destroy his fib or sophistry: in vain—The creature’s at his dirty work again!’
‘Destroy his fib or sophistry: in vain—The creature’s at his dirty work again!’
‘Destroy his fib or sophistry: in vain—
The creature’s at his dirty work again!’
But this is less from choice or perversity, than because he cannot help it and can do nothing else. He damns a beautiful expression less out of spite than because he really does not understand it: any novelty of thought or sentiment gives him a shock from which he cannot recover for some time, and he naturally takes his revenge for the alarm and uneasiness occasioned him, without referring to venal or party motives. He garbles an author’s meaning, not so much wilfully, as because it is a pain to him to enlarge his microscopic view to take in the context, when a particular sentence or passage has struck him as quaint and out of the way: he fly-blows an author’s style, and picks out detached words and phrases for cynical reprobation, simply because he feels himself at home, or takes a pride and pleasure in this sort of petty warfare. He is tetchy and impatient of contradiction; sore with wounded pride; angry at obvious faults, more angry at unforeseen beauties. He has thechalk-stonesin his understanding, and from being used to long confinement, cannot bear the slightest jostling or irregularity of motion. He may call out with the fellow in theTempest—‘I am not Stephano, but a cramp!’ He would go back to the standard of opinions, style, the faded ornaments, and insipid formalities that came into fashion about forty years ago. Flashes of thought, flights of fancy, idiomatic expressions, he sets down among the signs of the times—the extraordinary occurrences of the age we live in. They are marks of a restless and revolutionary spirit: they disturb his composure of mind, and threaten (by implication) the safety of the state. His slow, snail-paced, bed-rid habits of reasoning, cannot keep up with the whirling, eccentric motion, the rapid, perhaps extravagant combinations of modern literature. He has long been stationary himself, and is determined that others shall remain so. The hazarding a paradox is like letting off a pistol close to his ear: he is alarmed and offended. The using an elliptical mode of expression (such as he did not use to find in Guides to the English Tongue) jars him like coming suddenly to a step in a flight of stairs that you were not aware of. Hepishesandpshawsat all this, exercises a sort of interjectional criticism on what excites his spleen, his envy, or hiswonder, and hurls his meagre anathemasex cathedrâat all those writers who are indifferent alike to his precepts and his example!
Mr. Gifford, in short, is possessed of that sort of learning which is likely to result from an over-anxious desire to supply the want of the first rudiments of education; that sort of wit, which is the offspring of ill-humour or bodily pain; that sort of sense, which arises from a spirit of contradiction and a disposition to cavil at and dispute the opinions of others; and that sort of reputation, which is the consequence of bowing to established authority and ministerial influence. He dedicates to some great man, and receives his compliments in return. He appeals to some great name, and the Under-graduates of the two Universities look up to him as an oracle of wisdom. He throws the weight of his verbal criticism and puny discoveries inblack-letterreading into the gap, that is supposed to be making in the Constitution by Whigs and Radicals, whom he qualifies without mercy as dunces and miscreants; and so entitles himself to the protection of Church and State. The character of his mind is an utter want of independence and magnanimity in all that he attempts. He cannot go alone, he must have crutches, a go-cart and trammels, or he is timid, fretful, and helpless as a child. He cannot conceive of any thing different from what he finds it, and hates those who pretend to a greater reach of intellect or boldness of spirit than himself. He inclines, by a natural and deliberate bias, to the traditional in laws and government; to the orthodox in religion; to the safe in opinion; to the trite in imagination; to the technical in style; to whatever implies a surrender of individual judgment into the hands of authority, and a subjection of individual feeling to mechanic rules. If he finds any one flying in the face of these, or straggling from the beaten path, he thinks he has them at a notable disadvantage, and falls foul of them without loss of time, partly to soothe his own sense of mortified self-consequence, and as an edifying spectacle to his legitimate friends. He takes none but unfair advantages. Hetwitshis adversaries (that is, those who are not in the leading-strings of his school or party) with some personal or accidental defect. If a writer has been punished for a political libel, he is sure to hear of it in a literary criticism. If a lady goes on crutches and is out of favour at court, she is reminded of it in Mr. Gifford’s manly satire. He sneers at people of low birth or who have not had a college education, partly to hide his own want of certain advantages, partly as well-timed flattery to those who possess them. He has a right to laugh at poor, unfriended, untitled genius from wearing the livery of rank and letters, as footmen behind a coronet-coach laugh at the rabble. He keeps goodcompany, and forgets himself. He stands at the door of Mr. Murray’s shop, and will not let any body pass but the well-dressed mob, or some followers of the court. To edge into theQuarterlyTemple of Fame the candidate must have a diploma from the Universities, a passport from the Treasury. Otherwise, it is a breach of etiquette to let him pass, an insult to the better sort who aspire to the love of letters—and may chance to drop in to theFeast of the Poets. Or, if he cannot manage it thus, or get rid of the claim on the bare ground of poverty or want of school-learning, hetrumpsup an excuse for the occasion, such as that ‘a man was confined in Newgate a short time before’—it is not alieon the part of the critic, it is only an amiable subserviency to the will of his betters, like that of a menial who is ordered to deny his master, a sense of propriety, a knowledge of the world, a poetical and moral license. Such fellows (such is his cue from his employers) should at any rate be kept out of privileged places: persons who have been convicted of prose-libels ought not to be suffered to write poetry—if the fact was not exactly as it was stated, it was something of the kind, or itoughtto have been so, the assertion was a pious fraud,—the public, the court, the prince himself might read the work, but for this mark of opprobrium set upon it—it was not to be endured that an insolent plebeian should aspire to elegance, taste, fancy—it was throwing down the barriers which ought to separate the higher and the lower classes, the loyal and the disloyal—the paraphrase of the story of Dante was therefore to perform quarantine, it was to seem not yet recovered from the gaol infection, there was to be a taint upon it, as there was none in it—and all this was performed by a single slip of Mr. Gifford’s pen! We would willingly believe (if we could) that in this case there was as much weakness and prejudice as there was malice and cunning.—Again, we do not think it possible that under any circumstances the writer of theVerses to Annacould enter into the spirit or delicacy of Mr. Keats’s poetry. The fate of the latter somewhat resembled that of
‘a bud bit by an envious worm,Ere it could spread its sweet leaves to the air,Or dedicate its beauty to the sun.’
‘a bud bit by an envious worm,Ere it could spread its sweet leaves to the air,Or dedicate its beauty to the sun.’
‘a bud bit by an envious worm,Ere it could spread its sweet leaves to the air,Or dedicate its beauty to the sun.’
‘a bud bit by an envious worm,
Ere it could spread its sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate its beauty to the sun.’
Mr. Keats’s ostensible crime was that he had been praised in theExaminer Newspaper: a greater and more unpardonable offence probably was, that he was a true poet, with all the errors and beauties of youthful genius to answer for. Mr. Gifford was as insensible to the one as he was inexorable to the other. Let the reader judgefrom the two subjoined specimens how far the one writer could ever, without a presumption equalled only by a want of self-knowledge, set himself in judgment on the other.
‘Out went the taper as she hurried in;Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died:She closed the door, she panted, all akinTo spirits of the air and visions wide:No utter’d syllable, or woe betide!But to her heart, her heart was voluble,Paining with eloquence her balmy side;As though a tongueless nightingale should swellHer heart in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.‘A casement high and triple-arch’d there was,All garlanded with carven imag’riesOf fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,And diamonded with panes of quaint device,Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;And in the midst, ’mong thousand heraldries,And twilight saints and dim emblazonings,A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.‘Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,As down she knelt for Heaven’s grace and boon;Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,And on her silver cross soft amethyst,And on her hair a glory, like a saint:She seem’d a splendid angel, newly drest,Save wings, for heaven:—Porphyro grew faint:She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.‘Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degreesHer rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.‘Soon trembling in her soft and chilly nest,In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay,Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress’dHer soothed limbs, and soul fatigued awayFlown, like a thought, until the morrow-day:Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain;Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray;Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.’Eve of St. Agnes.
‘Out went the taper as she hurried in;Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died:She closed the door, she panted, all akinTo spirits of the air and visions wide:No utter’d syllable, or woe betide!But to her heart, her heart was voluble,Paining with eloquence her balmy side;As though a tongueless nightingale should swellHer heart in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.‘A casement high and triple-arch’d there was,All garlanded with carven imag’riesOf fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,And diamonded with panes of quaint device,Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;And in the midst, ’mong thousand heraldries,And twilight saints and dim emblazonings,A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.‘Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,As down she knelt for Heaven’s grace and boon;Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,And on her silver cross soft amethyst,And on her hair a glory, like a saint:She seem’d a splendid angel, newly drest,Save wings, for heaven:—Porphyro grew faint:She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.‘Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degreesHer rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.‘Soon trembling in her soft and chilly nest,In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay,Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress’dHer soothed limbs, and soul fatigued awayFlown, like a thought, until the morrow-day:Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain;Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray;Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.’Eve of St. Agnes.
‘Out went the taper as she hurried in;Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died:She closed the door, she panted, all akinTo spirits of the air and visions wide:No utter’d syllable, or woe betide!But to her heart, her heart was voluble,Paining with eloquence her balmy side;As though a tongueless nightingale should swellHer heart in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.
‘Out went the taper as she hurried in;
Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died:
She closed the door, she panted, all akin
To spirits of the air and visions wide:
No utter’d syllable, or woe betide!
But to her heart, her heart was voluble,
Paining with eloquence her balmy side;
As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
Her heart in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.
‘A casement high and triple-arch’d there was,All garlanded with carven imag’riesOf fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,And diamonded with panes of quaint device,Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;And in the midst, ’mong thousand heraldries,And twilight saints and dim emblazonings,A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.
‘A casement high and triple-arch’d there was,
All garlanded with carven imag’ries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;
And in the midst, ’mong thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints and dim emblazonings,
A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.
‘Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,As down she knelt for Heaven’s grace and boon;Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,And on her silver cross soft amethyst,And on her hair a glory, like a saint:She seem’d a splendid angel, newly drest,Save wings, for heaven:—Porphyro grew faint:She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.
‘Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,
As down she knelt for Heaven’s grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
She seem’d a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven:—Porphyro grew faint:
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.
‘Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degreesHer rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.
‘Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.
‘Soon trembling in her soft and chilly nest,In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay,Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress’dHer soothed limbs, and soul fatigued awayFlown, like a thought, until the morrow-day:Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain;Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray;Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.’Eve of St. Agnes.
‘Soon trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay,
Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress’d
Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away
Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day:
Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain;
Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.’
Eve of St. Agnes.
With the rich beauties and the dim obscurities of lines like these, let us contrast the Verses addressedTo a Tuft of early Violetsby the fastidious author of the Baviad and Mæviad.—
‘Sweet flowers! that from your humble bedsThus prematurely dare to rise,And trust your unprotected headsTo cold Aquarius’ watery skies.‘Retire, retire!Thesetepid airsAre not the genial brood of May;Thatsun with light malignant glares,And flatters only to betray.‘Stern Winter’s reign is not yet past—Lo! while your buds prepare to blow,On icy pinions comes the blast,And nips your root, and lays you low.‘Alas, for such ungentle doom!But I will shield you; and supplyA kindlier soil on which to bloom,A nobler bed on which to die.‘Come then—‘ere yet the morning rayHas drunk the dew that gems your crest,And drawn your balmiest sweets away;O come and grace my Anna’s breast.‘Ye droop, fond flowers! But did ye knowWhat worth, what goodness there reside,Your cups with liveliest tints would glow;And spread their leaves with conscious pride.‘For there has liberal Nature joinedHer riches to the stores of Art,And added to the vigorous mindThe soft, the sympathising heart.‘Come then—‘ere yet the morning rayHas drunk the dew that gems your crest,And drawn your balmiest sweets away;O come and grace my Anna’s breast.‘O! I should think—that fragrant bedMight I but hope with you to share—[54]Years of anxiety repaidBy one short hour of transport there.‘More blest than me, thus shall ye liveYour little day; and when ye die,Sweet flowers! the grateful Muse shall giveA verse; the sorrowing maid, a sigh.‘While I alas! no distant date,Mix with the dust from whence I came,Without a friend to weep my fate,Without a stone to tell my name.’
‘Sweet flowers! that from your humble bedsThus prematurely dare to rise,And trust your unprotected headsTo cold Aquarius’ watery skies.‘Retire, retire!Thesetepid airsAre not the genial brood of May;Thatsun with light malignant glares,And flatters only to betray.‘Stern Winter’s reign is not yet past—Lo! while your buds prepare to blow,On icy pinions comes the blast,And nips your root, and lays you low.‘Alas, for such ungentle doom!But I will shield you; and supplyA kindlier soil on which to bloom,A nobler bed on which to die.‘Come then—‘ere yet the morning rayHas drunk the dew that gems your crest,And drawn your balmiest sweets away;O come and grace my Anna’s breast.‘Ye droop, fond flowers! But did ye knowWhat worth, what goodness there reside,Your cups with liveliest tints would glow;And spread their leaves with conscious pride.‘For there has liberal Nature joinedHer riches to the stores of Art,And added to the vigorous mindThe soft, the sympathising heart.‘Come then—‘ere yet the morning rayHas drunk the dew that gems your crest,And drawn your balmiest sweets away;O come and grace my Anna’s breast.‘O! I should think—that fragrant bedMight I but hope with you to share—[54]Years of anxiety repaidBy one short hour of transport there.‘More blest than me, thus shall ye liveYour little day; and when ye die,Sweet flowers! the grateful Muse shall giveA verse; the sorrowing maid, a sigh.‘While I alas! no distant date,Mix with the dust from whence I came,Without a friend to weep my fate,Without a stone to tell my name.’
‘Sweet flowers! that from your humble bedsThus prematurely dare to rise,And trust your unprotected headsTo cold Aquarius’ watery skies.
‘Sweet flowers! that from your humble beds
Thus prematurely dare to rise,
And trust your unprotected heads
To cold Aquarius’ watery skies.
‘Retire, retire!Thesetepid airsAre not the genial brood of May;Thatsun with light malignant glares,And flatters only to betray.
‘Retire, retire!Thesetepid airs
Are not the genial brood of May;
Thatsun with light malignant glares,
And flatters only to betray.
‘Stern Winter’s reign is not yet past—Lo! while your buds prepare to blow,On icy pinions comes the blast,And nips your root, and lays you low.
‘Stern Winter’s reign is not yet past—
Lo! while your buds prepare to blow,
On icy pinions comes the blast,
And nips your root, and lays you low.
‘Alas, for such ungentle doom!But I will shield you; and supplyA kindlier soil on which to bloom,A nobler bed on which to die.
‘Alas, for such ungentle doom!
But I will shield you; and supply
A kindlier soil on which to bloom,
A nobler bed on which to die.
‘Come then—‘ere yet the morning rayHas drunk the dew that gems your crest,And drawn your balmiest sweets away;O come and grace my Anna’s breast.
‘Come then—‘ere yet the morning ray
Has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
And drawn your balmiest sweets away;
O come and grace my Anna’s breast.
‘Ye droop, fond flowers! But did ye knowWhat worth, what goodness there reside,Your cups with liveliest tints would glow;And spread their leaves with conscious pride.
‘Ye droop, fond flowers! But did ye know
What worth, what goodness there reside,
Your cups with liveliest tints would glow;
And spread their leaves with conscious pride.
‘For there has liberal Nature joinedHer riches to the stores of Art,And added to the vigorous mindThe soft, the sympathising heart.
‘For there has liberal Nature joined
Her riches to the stores of Art,
And added to the vigorous mind
The soft, the sympathising heart.
‘Come then—‘ere yet the morning rayHas drunk the dew that gems your crest,And drawn your balmiest sweets away;O come and grace my Anna’s breast.
‘Come then—‘ere yet the morning ray
Has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
And drawn your balmiest sweets away;
O come and grace my Anna’s breast.
‘O! I should think—that fragrant bedMight I but hope with you to share—[54]Years of anxiety repaidBy one short hour of transport there.
‘O! I should think—that fragrant bed
Might I but hope with you to share—[54]
Years of anxiety repaid
By one short hour of transport there.
‘More blest than me, thus shall ye liveYour little day; and when ye die,Sweet flowers! the grateful Muse shall giveA verse; the sorrowing maid, a sigh.
‘More blest than me, thus shall ye live
Your little day; and when ye die,
Sweet flowers! the grateful Muse shall give
A verse; the sorrowing maid, a sigh.
‘While I alas! no distant date,Mix with the dust from whence I came,Without a friend to weep my fate,Without a stone to tell my name.’
‘While I alas! no distant date,
Mix with the dust from whence I came,
Without a friend to weep my fate,
Without a stone to tell my name.’
We subjoin one more specimen of these ‘wild strains’[55]said to be ‘Written two years after the preceding.’Ecce iterum Crispinus.
‘I wish I was where Anna lies;For I am sick of lingering here,And every hour Affection cries,Go, and partake her humble bier.‘I wish I could! for when she diedI lost my all; and life has prov’dSince that sad hour a dreary void,A waste unlovely and unlov’d.‘But who, when I am turned to clay,Shall duly to her grave repair,And pluck the ragged moss away,And weeds that have “no business there?”‘And who, with pious hand, shall bringThe flowers she cherish’d, snow-drops cold,And violets that unheeded spring,To scatter o’er her hallowed mould?‘And who, while Memory loves to dwellUpon her name for ever dear,Shall feel his heart with passions swell,And pour the bitter, bitter tear?‘I did it; and would fate allow,Should visit still, should still deplore—But health and strength have left me now,But I, alas! can weep no more.‘Take then, sweet maid! this simple strain,The last I offer at thy shrine;Thy grave must then undeck’d remain,And all thy memory fade with mine.‘And can thy soft persuasive look,That voice that might with music vie,Thy air that every gazer took,Thy matchless eloquence of eye,‘Thy spirits, frolicsome as good,Thy courage, by no ills dismay’d,Thy patience, by no wrongs subdued,Thy gay good-humour—can they “fade?”‘Perhaps—but sorrow dims my eye:Cold turf, which I no more must view,Dear name, which I no more must sigh,A long, a last, a sad adieu!’
‘I wish I was where Anna lies;For I am sick of lingering here,And every hour Affection cries,Go, and partake her humble bier.‘I wish I could! for when she diedI lost my all; and life has prov’dSince that sad hour a dreary void,A waste unlovely and unlov’d.‘But who, when I am turned to clay,Shall duly to her grave repair,And pluck the ragged moss away,And weeds that have “no business there?”‘And who, with pious hand, shall bringThe flowers she cherish’d, snow-drops cold,And violets that unheeded spring,To scatter o’er her hallowed mould?‘And who, while Memory loves to dwellUpon her name for ever dear,Shall feel his heart with passions swell,And pour the bitter, bitter tear?‘I did it; and would fate allow,Should visit still, should still deplore—But health and strength have left me now,But I, alas! can weep no more.‘Take then, sweet maid! this simple strain,The last I offer at thy shrine;Thy grave must then undeck’d remain,And all thy memory fade with mine.‘And can thy soft persuasive look,That voice that might with music vie,Thy air that every gazer took,Thy matchless eloquence of eye,‘Thy spirits, frolicsome as good,Thy courage, by no ills dismay’d,Thy patience, by no wrongs subdued,Thy gay good-humour—can they “fade?”‘Perhaps—but sorrow dims my eye:Cold turf, which I no more must view,Dear name, which I no more must sigh,A long, a last, a sad adieu!’
‘I wish I was where Anna lies;For I am sick of lingering here,And every hour Affection cries,Go, and partake her humble bier.
‘I wish I was where Anna lies;
For I am sick of lingering here,
And every hour Affection cries,
Go, and partake her humble bier.
‘I wish I could! for when she diedI lost my all; and life has prov’dSince that sad hour a dreary void,A waste unlovely and unlov’d.
‘I wish I could! for when she died
I lost my all; and life has prov’d
Since that sad hour a dreary void,
A waste unlovely and unlov’d.
‘But who, when I am turned to clay,Shall duly to her grave repair,And pluck the ragged moss away,And weeds that have “no business there?”
‘But who, when I am turned to clay,
Shall duly to her grave repair,
And pluck the ragged moss away,
And weeds that have “no business there?”
‘And who, with pious hand, shall bringThe flowers she cherish’d, snow-drops cold,And violets that unheeded spring,To scatter o’er her hallowed mould?
‘And who, with pious hand, shall bring
The flowers she cherish’d, snow-drops cold,
And violets that unheeded spring,
To scatter o’er her hallowed mould?
‘And who, while Memory loves to dwellUpon her name for ever dear,Shall feel his heart with passions swell,And pour the bitter, bitter tear?
‘And who, while Memory loves to dwell
Upon her name for ever dear,
Shall feel his heart with passions swell,
And pour the bitter, bitter tear?
‘I did it; and would fate allow,Should visit still, should still deplore—But health and strength have left me now,But I, alas! can weep no more.
‘I did it; and would fate allow,
Should visit still, should still deplore—
But health and strength have left me now,
But I, alas! can weep no more.
‘Take then, sweet maid! this simple strain,The last I offer at thy shrine;Thy grave must then undeck’d remain,And all thy memory fade with mine.
‘Take then, sweet maid! this simple strain,
The last I offer at thy shrine;
Thy grave must then undeck’d remain,
And all thy memory fade with mine.
‘And can thy soft persuasive look,That voice that might with music vie,Thy air that every gazer took,Thy matchless eloquence of eye,
‘And can thy soft persuasive look,
That voice that might with music vie,
Thy air that every gazer took,
Thy matchless eloquence of eye,
‘Thy spirits, frolicsome as good,Thy courage, by no ills dismay’d,Thy patience, by no wrongs subdued,Thy gay good-humour—can they “fade?”
‘Thy spirits, frolicsome as good,
Thy courage, by no ills dismay’d,
Thy patience, by no wrongs subdued,
Thy gay good-humour—can they “fade?”
‘Perhaps—but sorrow dims my eye:Cold turf, which I no more must view,Dear name, which I no more must sigh,A long, a last, a sad adieu!’
‘Perhaps—but sorrow dims my eye:
Cold turf, which I no more must view,
Dear name, which I no more must sigh,
A long, a last, a sad adieu!’
It may be said in extenuation of the low, mechanic vein of these impoverished lines, that they were written at an early age—they were the inspired production of a youthful lover! Mr. Gifford was thirty when he wrote them, Mr. Keats died when he was scarce twenty! Farther it may be said, that Mr. Gifford hazarded hisfirst poetical attempts under all the disadvantages of a neglected education: but the same circumstance, together with a few unpruned redundancies of fancy and quaintnesses of expression, was made the plea on which Mr. Keats was hooted out of the world, and his fine talents and wounded sensibilities consigned to an early grave. In short, the treatment of this heedless candidate for poetical fame might serve as a warning, and was intended to serve as a warning to all unfledged tyros, how they venture upon any such doubtful experiments, except under the auspices of some lord of the bedchamber or Government Aristarchus, and how they imprudently associate themselves with men of mere popular talent or independence of feeling!—It is the same in prose works. The Editor scorns to enter the lists of argument with any proscribed writer of the opposite party. He does not refute, but denounces him. He makes no concessions to an adversary, lest they should in some way be turned against him. He only feels himself safe in the fancied insignificance of others: he only feels himself superior to those whom he stigmatizes as the lowest of mankind. All persons are without common-sense and honesty who do not believe implicitly (with him) in the immaculateness of Ministers and the divine origin of Kings. Thus he informed the world that the author ofTable-Talkwas a person who could not write a sentence of common English and could hardly spell his own name, because he was not a friend to the restoration of the Bourbons, and had the assurance to writeCharacters of Shakespear’s Playsin a style of criticism somewhat different from Mr. Gifford’s. He charged this writer with imposing on the public by a flowery style; and when the latter ventured to refer to a work of his, calledAn Essay on the Principles of Human Action, which has not a single ornament in it, as a specimen of his original studies and the proper bias of his mind, the learned critic, with a shrug of great self-satisfaction, said, ‘It was amusing to see this person, sitting like one of Brouwer’s Dutch boors over his gin and tobacco-pipes, and fancying himself a Leibnitz!’ The question was, whether the subject of Mr. Gifford’s censure had ever written such a work or not; for if he had, he had amused himself with something besides gin and tobacco-pipes. But our Editor, by virtue of the situation he holds, is superior to facts or arguments: he is accountable neither to the public nor to authors for what he says of them, but owes it to his employers to prejudice the work and vilify the writer, if the latter is not avowedly ready to range himself on the stronger side.—TheQuarterly Review, besides the politicaltiradesand denunciations of suspected writers, intended for the guidance of the heads of families, is filled up with accounts of books of Voyages and Travels for theamusement of the younger branches. The poetical department is almost a sinecure, consisting of mere summary decisions and a list of quotations. Mr. Croker is understood to contribute the St. Helena articles and the liberality, Mr. Canning the practical good sense, Mr. D’Israeli the good-nature, Mr. Jacob the modesty, Mr. Southey the consistency, and the Editor himself the chivalrous spirit and the attacks on Lady Morgan. It is a double crime, and excites a double portion of spleen in the Editor, when female writers are not advocates of passive obedience and non-resistance. This Journal, then, is a depository for every species of political sophistry and personal calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that does not there find a jesuitical palliation or a barefaced vindication. There we meet the slime of hypocrisy, the varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the cobwebs of the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is as mischievous as the means by which it is pursued are odious. The intention is to poison the sources of public opinion and of individual fame—to pervert literature, from being the natural ally of freedom and humanity, into an engine of priestcraft and despotism, and to undermine the spirit of the English constitution and the independence of the English character. The Editor and his friends systematically explode every principle of liberty, laugh patriotism and public spirit to scorn, resent every pretence to integrity as a piece of singularity or insolence, and strike at the root of all free inquiry or discussion, by running down every writer as a vile scribbler and a bad member of society, who is not a hireling and a slave. No means are stuck at in accomplishing this laudable end. Strong in patronage, they trample on truth, justice, and decency. They claim the privilege of court-favourites. They keep as little faith with the public, as with their opponents. No statement in theQuarterly Reviewis to be trusted: there is no fact that is not misrepresented in it, no quotation that is not garbled, no character that is not slandered, if it can answer the purposes of a party to do so. The weight of power, of wealth, of rank is thrown into the scale, gives its impulse to the machine; and the whole is under the guidance of Mr. Gifford’s instinctive genius—of the inborn hatred of servility for independence, of dulness for talent, of cunning and impudence for truth and honesty. It costs him no effort to execute his disreputable task—in being the tool of a crooked policy, he but labours in his natural vocation. He patches up a rotten system as he would supply the chasms in a worm-eaten manuscript, from a grovelling incapacity to do any thing better; thinks that if a single iota in the claims of prerogative and power were lost, the whole fabric of society would fall upon his head and crush him; and calculates that his best chance for literary reputation is byblack-ballingone half of the competitors as Jacobins and levellers, and securing the suffrages of the other half in his favour as a loyal subject and trusty partisan!
Mr. Gifford, as a satirist, is violent and abrupt. He takes obvious or physical defects, and dwells upon them with much labour and harshness of invective, but with very little wit or spirit. He expresses a great deal of anger and contempt, but you cannot tell very well why—except that he seems to be sore and out of humour. His satire is mere peevishness and spleen, or something worse—personal antipathy and rancour. We are in quite as much pain for the writer, as for the object of his resentment. His address to Peter Pindar is laughable from its outrageousness. He denounces him as a wretch hateful to God and man, for some of the most harmless and amusing trifles that ever were written—and the very good-humour and pleasantry of which, we suspect, constituted their offence in the eyes of this Drawcansir.—His attacks on Mrs. Robinson were unmanly, and even those on Mr. Merry and the Della-Cruscan Schoolweremuch more ferocious than the occasion warranted. A little affectation and quaintness of style did not merit such severity of castigation.[56]As a translator, Mr. Gifford’s version of the Roman satirist is the baldest, and, in parts, the most offensive of all others. We do not know why he attempted it, unless he had got it in his head that he should thus follow in the steps of Dryden, as he had already done in those of Pope in the Baviad and Mæviad. As an editor of old authors, Mr. Gifford is entitled to considerable praise for the pains he has taken in revising the text, and for some improvements he has introduced into it. He had better have spared the notes, in which, though he has detected the blunders of previous commentators, he has exposed his own ill-temper and narrowness of feeling more. As a critic, he has thrown no light on the character and spirit of his authors. He has shown no striking power of analysis nor of original illustration, though he has chosen to exercise his pen on writers most congenial to his own turn of mind, from their dry and caustic vein; Massinger, and Ben Jonson. What he will make of Marlowe, it is difficult to guess. He has none of ‘the fiery quality’ of the poet. Mr. Gifford does not take for his motto on these occasions—Spiritus precipitandus est!—His most successful efforts in this way are barely respectable. In general, his observations are petty, ill-concocted, and discover as littletact, as they do a habit of connected reasoning. Thus, for instance, in attempting to add the name of Massinger to the list of Catholic poets, our minute critic insists on the profusion of crucifixes,glories, angelic visions, garlands of roses, and clouds of incense scattered through theVirgin-Martyr, as evidence of the theological sentiments meant to be inculcated by the play, when the least reflection might have taught him, that they proved nothing but the author’s poetical conception of the character andcostumeof his subject. A writer might, with the same sinister, short-sighted shrewdness, be accused of Heathenism for talking of Flora and Ceres in a poem on the Seasons! What are produced as the exclusive badges and occult proofs of Catholic bigotry, are nothing but the adventitious ornaments and external symbols, the gross and sensible language, in a word, thepoetryof Christianity in general. What indeed shows the frivolousness of the whole inference is that Deckar, who is asserted by our critic to have contributed some of the most passionate and fantastic of these devotional scenes, is not even suspected of a leaning to Popery. In like manner, he excuses Massinger for the grossness of one of his plots (that of theUnnatural Combat) by saying that it was supposed to take place before the Christian era; by this shallow common-place persuading himself, or fancying he could persuade others, that the crime in question (which yet on the very face of the story is made the ground of a tragic catastrophe) was first madestatutoryby the Christian religion.
The foregoing is a harsh criticism, and may be thought illiberal. But as Mr. Gifford assumes a right to say what he pleases of others—they may be allowed to speak the truth of him!
TheQuarterly Reviewarose out of theEdinburgh, not as a corollary, but in contradiction to it. An article had appeared in the latter on Don Pedro Cevallos, which stung the Tories to the quick by the free way in which it spoke of men and things, and something must be done to check theseescapadesof theEdinburgh. It was not to be endured that the truth should out in this manner, even occasionally and half in jest. A startling shock was thus given to established prejudices, the mask was taken off from grave hypocrisy, and the most serious consequences were to be apprehended. The persons who wrote in this Review seemed ‘to have their hands full of truths,’ and now and then, in a fit of spleen or gaiety, let some of them fly; and while this practice continued, it was impossible to say that the Monarchy or the Hierarchy was safe. Some of the arrows glanced, others might stick, and in the end prove fatal. It was not the principles of theEdinburgh Review, but the spirit that was looked atwith jealousy and alarm. The principles were by no means decidedly hostile to existing institutions: but the spirit was that of fair and free discussion; a field was open to argument and wit; every question was tried upon its own ostensible merits, and there was no foul play. The tone was that of a studied impartiality (which many calledtrimming) or of a sceptical indifference. This tone of impartiality and indifference, however, did not at all suit those who profited or existed by abuses, who breathed the very air of corruption. They know well enough that ‘those who are notforthem areagainstthem.’ They wanted a publication impervious alike to truth and candour; that, hood-winked itself, should lead public opinion blindfold; that should stick at nothing to serve the turn of a party; that should be the exclusive organ of prejudice, the sordid tool of power; that should go the whole length of want of principle in palliating every dishonest measure, of want of decency in defaming every honest man; that should prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be ‘ugly all over with hypocrisy,’ and present one foul blotch of servility, intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill manners. TheQuarterly Reviewwas accordingly set up.
‘Sithence no fairy lights, no quickning ray,Nor stir of pulse, nor object to enticeAbroad the spirits; but the cloister’d heartSits squat at home, like Pagod in a nicheObscure!’
‘Sithence no fairy lights, no quickning ray,Nor stir of pulse, nor object to enticeAbroad the spirits; but the cloister’d heartSits squat at home, like Pagod in a nicheObscure!’
‘Sithence no fairy lights, no quickning ray,Nor stir of pulse, nor object to enticeAbroad the spirits; but the cloister’d heartSits squat at home, like Pagod in a nicheObscure!’
‘Sithence no fairy lights, no quickning ray,
Nor stir of pulse, nor object to entice
Abroad the spirits; but the cloister’d heart
Sits squat at home, like Pagod in a niche
Obscure!’
This event was accordingly hailed (and the omen has been fulfilled!) as a great relief to all those of his Majesty’s subjects who are firmly convinced that the only way to have things remain exactly as they are is to put a stop to all inquiries whether they are right or wrong, and that if you cannot answer a man’s arguments, you may at least try to take away his character.
We do not implicitly bow to the political opinions, nor to the critical decisions of theEdinburgh Review; but we must do justice to the talent with which they are supported, and to the tone of manly explicitness in which they are delivered.[57]They are eminently characteristic of the Spirit of the Age; as it is the express object of theQuarterly Reviewto discountenance and extinguish that spirit, both in theory and practice. TheEdinburgh Reviewstands upon the ground of opinion; it asserts the supremacy of intellect: thepre-eminence it claims is from an acknowledged superiority of talent and information and literary attainment, and it does not build one tittle of its influence on ignorance, or prejudice, or authority, or personal malevolence. It takes up a question, and argues itproandconwith great knowledge and boldness and skill; it points out an absurdity, and runs it down, fairly, and according to the evidence adduced. In the former case, its conclusions may be wrong, there may be a bias in the mind of the writer, but he states the arguments and circumstances on both sides, from which a judgment is to be formed—it is not his cue, he has neither the effrontery nor the meanness to falsify facts or to suppress objections. In the latter case, or where a vein of sarcasm or irony is resorted to, the ridicule is not barbed by some allusion (false or true) to private history; the object of it has brought the infliction on himself by some literary folly or political delinquency which is referred to as the understood and justifiable provocation, instead of being held up to scorn as a knave for not being a tool, or as a blockhead for thinking for himself. In theEdinburgh Reviewthe talents of those on the opposite side are always extolledpleno ore—in theQuarterly Reviewthey are denied altogether, and the justice that is in this way withheld from them is compensated by a proportionable supply of personal abuse. A man of genius who is a lord, and who publishes with Mr. Murray, may now and then stand as good a chance as a lord who is not a man of genius and who publishes with Messrs. Longman: but that it the utmost extent of the impartiality of theQuarterly. From its account you would take Lord Byron and Mr. Stuart Rose for two very pretty poets; but Mr. Moore’s Magdalen Muse is sent to Bridewell without mercy, to beat hemp in silk-stockings. In theQuarterlynothing is regarded but the political creed or external circumstances of a writer; in theEdinburghnothing is ever adverted to but his literary merits. Or if there is a bias of any kind, it arises from an affectation of magnanimity and candour in giving heaped measure to those on the aristocratic side in politics, and in being critically severe on others. Thus Sir Walter Scott is lauded to the skies for his romantic powers, without any allusion to his political demerits (as if this would be compromising the dignity of genius and of criticism by the introduction of party-spirit)—while Lord Byron is called to a grave moral reckoning. There is, however, little of the cant of morality in theEdinburgh Review—and it is quite free from that of religion. It keeps to its province, which is that of criticism—or to the discussion of debateable topics, and acquits itself in both with force and spirit. This is the natural consequence of the composition of the two Reviews. The oneappeals with confidence to its own intellectual resources, to the variety of its topics, to its very character and existence as a literary journal, which depend on its setting up no pretensions but those which it can make good by the talent and ingenuity it can bring to bear upon them—it therefore meets every question, whether of a lighter or a graver cast, on its own grounds; the otherblinksevery question, for it has no confidence but in thepowers that be—shuts itself up in the impregnable fastnesses of authority, or makes some paltry cowardly attack (under cover of anonymous criticism) on individuals, or dispenses its award of merit entirely according to the rank or party of the writer. The faults of theEdinburgh Reviewarise out of the very consciousness of critical and logical power. In political questions it relies too little on the broad basis of liberty and humanity, enters too much into mere dry formalities, deals too often inmoot-points, and descends too readily to a sort of special-pleading in defence ofhometruths and natural feelings: in matters of taste and criticism, its tone is sometimes apt to be supercilious andcavalierfrom its habitual faculty of analysing defects and beauties according to given principles, from its quickness in deciding, from its facility in illustrating its views. In this latter department it has been guilty of some capital oversights. The chief was in its treatment of theLyrical Balladsat their first appearance—not in its ridicule of their puerilities, but in its denial of their beauties, because they were included in no school, because they were reducible to no previous standard or theory of poetical excellence. For this, however, considerable reparation has been made by the prompt and liberal spirit that has been shown in bringing forward other examples of poetical genius. Its capital sin, in a doctrinal point of view, has been (we shrewdly suspect) in the uniform and unqualified encouragement it has bestowed on Mr. Malthus’s system. We do not mean that theEdinburgh Reviewwas to join in the generalhue and crythat was raised against this writer; but while it asserted the soundness of many of his arguments, and yielded its assent to the truths he has divulged, it need not have screened his errors. On this subject alone we think theQuarterlyhas the advantage of it. But as theQuarterly Reviewis a mere mass and tissue of prejudices on all subjects, it is the foible of theEdinburgh Reviewto affect a somewhat fastidious air of superiority over prejudices of all kinds, and a determination not to indulge in any of the amiable weaknesses of our nature, except as it can give a reason for the faith that is in it. Luckily, it is seldom reduced to this alternative: ‘reasons’ are with it ‘as plenty as blackberries!’
Mr. Jeffrey is the Editor of theEdinburgh Review, and is understoodto have contributed nearly a fourth part of the articles from its commencement. No man is better qualified for this situation; nor indeed so much so. He is certainly a person in advance of the age, and yet perfectly fitted both from knowledge and habits of mind to put a curb upon its rash and headlong spirit. He is thoroughly acquainted with the progress and pretensions of modern literature and philosophy; and to this he adds the natural acuteness and discrimination of the logician with the habitual caution and coolness of his profession. If theEdinburgh Reviewmay be considered as the organ of or at all pledged to a party, that party is at least a respectable one, and is placed in the middle between two extremes. The Editor is bound to lend a patient hearing to the most paradoxical opinions and extravagant theories which have resulted in our times from the ‘infinite agitation of wit,’ but he is disposed to qualify them by a number of practical objections, of speculative doubts, of checks and drawbacks, arising out of actual circumstances and prevailing opinions, or the frailties of human nature. He has a great range of knowledge, an incessant activity of mind; but the suspension of his judgment, the well-balanced moderation of his sentiments, is the consequence of the very discursiveness of his reason. What may be considered as acommon-placeconclusion is often the result of a comprehensive view of all the circumstances of a case. Paradox, violence, nay even originality of conception is not seldom owing to our dwelling long and pertinaciously on some one part of a subject, instead of attending to the whole. Mr. Jeffrey is neither a bigot nor an enthusiast. He is not the dupe of the prejudices of others, nor of his own. He is not wedded to any dogma, he is not long the sport of any whim; before he can settle in any fond or fantastic opinion, another starts up to match it, like beads on sparkling wine. A too restless display of talent, a too undisguised statement of all that can be said for and against a question, is perhaps the great fault that is to be attributed to him. Where there is so much power and prejudice to contend with in the opposite scale, it may be thought that the balance of truth can hardly be held with a slack or an even hand; and that the infusion of a little more visionary speculation, of a little more popular indignation into the great Whig Review would be an advantage both to itself and to the cause of freedom. Much of this effect is chargeable less on an Epicurean levity of feeling or on party-trammels, than on real sanguineness of disposition, and a certain fineness of professional tact. Our sprightly Scotchman is not of a desponding and gloomy turn of mind. He argues well for the future hopes of mankind from the smallest beginnings, watches the slow,gradual, reluctant growth of liberal views, and smiling sees the aloe of Reform blossom at the end of a hundred years; while the habitual subtlety of his mind makes him perceive decided advantages where vulgar ignorance or passion sees only doubts and difficulty; and a flaw in an adversary’s argument stands him instead of the shout of a mob, the votes of a majority, or the fate of a pitched battle. The Editor is satisfied with his own conclusions, and does not make himself uneasy about the fate of mankind. The issue, he thinks, will verify his moderate and well-founded expectations.—We believe also that late events have given a more decided turn to Mr. Jeffrey’s mind, and that he feels that as in the struggle between liberty and slavery, the views of the one party have been laid bare with their success, so the exertions on the other side should become more strenuous, and a more positive stand be made against the avowed and appalling encroachments of priestcraft and arbitrary power.
The characteristics of Mr. Jeffrey’s general style as a writer correspond, we think, with what we have here stated as the characteristics of his mind. He is a master of the foils; he makes an exulting display of the dazzling fence of wit and argument. His strength consists in great range of knowledge, an equal familiarity with the principles and the details of a subject, and in a glancing brilliancy and rapidity of style. Indeed, we doubt whether the brilliancy of his manner does not resolve itself into the rapidity, the variety and aptness of his illustrations. His pen is never at a loss, never stands still; and would dazzle for this reason alone, like an eye that is ever in motion. Mr. Jeffrey is far from a flowery or affected writer; he has few tropes or figures, still less any odd startling thoughts or quaint innovations in expression:—but he has a constant supply of ingenious solutions and pertinent examples; he never proses, never grows dull, never wears an argument to tatters; and by the number, the liveliness and facility of his transitions, keeps up that appearance of vivacity, of novel and sparkling effect, for which others are too often indebted to singularity of combination or tinsel ornaments.
It may be discovered, by a nice observer, that Mr. Jeffrey’s style of composition is that of a person accustomed to public speaking. There is no pause, no meagreness, no inanimateness, but a flow, a redundance and volubility like that of a stream or of a rolling-stone. The language is more copious than select, and sometimes two or three words perform the office of one. This copiousness and facility is perhaps an advantage inextemporespeaking, where no stop or break is allowed in the discourse, and where any word or any number of words almost is better than coming to a dead stand; but in writtencompositions it gives an air of either too much carelessness or too much labour. Mr. Jeffrey’s excellence, as a public speaker, has betrayed him into this peculiarity. He makes fewerblotsin addressing an audience than any one we remember to have heard. There is not a hair’s-breadth space between any two of his words, nor is there a single expression either ill-chosen or out of its place. He speaks without stopping to take breath, with ease, with point, with elegance, and without ‘spinning the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.’ He may be said to weave words into any shapes he pleases for use or ornament, as the glass-blower moulds the vitreous fluid with his breath; and his sentences shine like glass from their polished smoothness, and are equally transparent. His style of eloquence, indeed, is remarkable for neatness, for correctness, and epigrammatic point; and he has applied this as a standard to his written compositions, where the very same degree of correctness and precision produces, from the contrast between writing and speaking, an agreeable diffuseness, freedom and animation. Whenever the Scotch advocate has appeared at the bar of the English House of Lords, he has been admired by those who were in the habit of attending to speeches there, as having the greatest fluency of language and the greatest subtlety of distinction of any one of the profession. The law-reporters were as little able to follow him from the extreme rapidity of his utterance as from the tenuity and evanescent nature of his reasoning.
Mr. Jeffrey’s conversation is equally lively, various, and instructive. There is no subject on which he is notau fait: no company in which he is not ready to scatter his pearls for sport. Whether it be politics, or poetry, or science, or anecdote, or wit, or raillery, he takes up his cue without effort, without preparation, and appears equally incapable of tiring himself or his hearers. His only difficulty seems to be, not to speak, but to be silent. There is a constitutional buoyancy and elasticity of mind about him that cannot subside into repose, much less sink into dulness. There may be more original talkers, persons who occasionally surprise or interest you more; few, if any, with a more uninterrupted flow of cheerfulness and animal spirits, with a greater fund of information, and with fewer specimens of thebathosin their conversation. He is never absurd, nor has he any favourite points which he is always bringing forward. It cannot be denied that there is something bordering on petulance of manner, but it is of that least offensive kind which may be accounted for from merit and from success, and implies no exclusive pretensions nor the least particle of ill-will to others. On the contrary, Mr. Jeffrey is profuse of his encomiums and admiration of others, but still with acertain reservation of a right to differ or to blame. He cannot rest on one side of a question: he is obliged by a mercurial habit and disposition to vary his point of view. If he is ever tedious, it is from an excess of liveliness: he oppresses from a sense of airy lightness. He is always setting out on a fresh scent: there are alwaysrelaysof topics; the harness is put to, and he rattles away as delightfully and as briskly as ever. New causes are called; he holds a brief in his hand for every possible question. This is a fault. Mr. Jeffrey is not obtrusive, is not impatient of opposition, is not unwilling to be interrupted; but what is said by another, seems to make no impression on him; he is bound to dispute, to answer it, as if he was in Court, or as if it were in a paltry Debating Society, where young beginners were trying their hands. This is not to maintain a character, or for want of good-nature—it is a thoughtless habit. He cannot help cross-examining a witness, or stating the adverse view of the question. He listens not to judge, but to reply. In consequence of this, you can as little tell the impression your observations make on him as what weight to assign to his. Mr. Jeffrey shines in mixed company; he is not good in atête-à-tête. You can only show your wisdom or your wit in general society: but in private your follies or your weaknesses are not the least interesting topics; and our critic has neither any of his own to confess, nor does he take delight in hearing those of others. Indeed in Scotland generally, the display of personal character, the indulging your whims and humours in the presence of a friend, is not much encouraged—every one there is looked upon in the light of a machine or a collection of topics. They turn you round like a cylinder to see what use they can make of you, and drag you into a dispute with as little ceremony as they would drag out an article from an Encyclopedia. They criticise every thing, analyse every thing, argue upon every thing, dogmatise upon every thing; and the bundle of your habits, feelings, humours, follies and pursuits is regarded by them no more than a bundle of old clothes. They stop you in a sentiment by a question or a stare, and cut you short in a narrative by the time of night. The accomplished and ingenious person of whom we speak, has been a little infected by the tone of his countrymen—he is too didactic, too pugnacious, too full of electrical shocks, too much like a voltaic battery, and reposes too little on his own excellent good sense, his own love of ease, his cordial frankness of temper and unaffected candour. He ought to have belonged to us!
The severest of critics (as he has been sometimes termed) is the best-natured of men. Whatever there may be of wavering or indecision in Mr. Jeffrey’s reasoning, or of harshness in his criticaldecisions, in his disposition there is nothing but simplicity and kindness. He is a person that no one knows without esteeming, and who both in his public connections and private friendships, shows the same manly uprightness and unbiassed independence of spirit. At a distance, in his writings, or even in his manner, there may be something to excite a little uneasiness and apprehension: in his conduct there is nothing to except against. He is a person of strict integrity himself, without pretence or affectation; and knows how to respect this quality in others, without prudery or intolerance. He can censure a friend or a stranger, and serve him effectually at the same time. He expresses his disapprobation, but not as an excuse for closing up the avenues of his liberality. He is a Scotchman without one particle of hypocrisy, of cant, of servility, or selfishness in his composition. He has not been spoiled by fortune—has not been tempted by power—is firm without violence, friendly without weakness—a critic and even-tempered, a casuist and an honest man—and amidst the toils of his profession and the distractions of the world, retains the gaiety, the unpretending carelessness and simplicity of youth. Mr. Jeffrey in his person is slight, with a countenance of much expression, and a voice of great flexibility and acuteness of tone.
There is a class of eloquence which has been described and particularly insisted on, under the style and title ofIrish Eloquence: there is another class which it is not absolutely unfair to oppose to this, and that is the Scotch. The first of these is entirely the offspring ofimpulse: the last ofmechanism. The one is as full of fancy as it is bare of facts: the other excludes all fancy, and is weighed down with facts. The one is all fire, the other all ice: the one nothing but enthusiasm, extravagance, eccentricity; the other nothing but logical deductions, and the most approved postulates. The one without scruple, nay, with reckless zeal, throws the reins loose on the neck of the imagination: the other pulls up with a curb-bridle, and starts at every casual object it meets in the way as a bugbear. The genius of Irish oratory stands forth in the naked majesty of untutored nature, its eye glancing wildly round on all objects, its tongue darting forked fire: the genius of Scottish eloquence is armed in all the panoply of the schools; its drawling, ambiguous dialect seconds its circumspect dialectics; from behind the vizor that guards its mouth and shadows its pent-up brows, it sees no visions but its own set purpose, its owndata, and its own dogmas. It ‘has no figures, nor no fantasies,’ but ‘those which busy care draws in the brains of men,’ or which set off its own superior acquirements and wisdom. It scorns to ‘tread the primrose path of dalliance’—it shrinks back from it as from a precipice, and keeps in the iron rail-way of the understanding. Irish oratory, on the contrary, is a sort of aëronaut: it is always going up in a balloon, and breaking its neck, or coming down in the parachute. It is filled full with gaseous matter, with whim and fancy, with alliteration and antithesis, with heated passion and bloated metaphors, that burst the slender silken covering of sense; and the airy pageant, that glittered in empty space and rose in all the bliss of ignorance, flutters and sinks down to its native bogs! If the Irish orator riots in a studied neglect of his subject and a natural confusion of ideas, playing with words, ranging them into all sorts of fantastic combinations, because in the unlettered void or chaos of his mind there is no obstacle to their coalescing into any shapes they please, it must be confessed that the eloquence of the Scotch is encumbered with an excess of knowledge, that it cannot get on for a crowd of difficulties, that it staggers under a load of topics, that it is so environed in the forms of logic and rhetoric as to be equally precluded from originality or absurdity, from beauty or deformity:—the plea of humanity is lost by going through the process of law, the firm and manly tone of principle is exchanged for the wavering and pitiful cant of policy, the living bursts of passion are reduced to a defunctcommon-place, and all true imagination is buried under the dust and rubbish of learned models and imposing authorities. If the one is a bodiless phantom, the other is a lifeless skeleton: if the one in its feverish and hectic extravagance resembles a sick man’s dream, the other is akin to the sleep of death—cold, stiff, unfeeling, monumental! Upon the whole, we despair less of the first than of the last, for the principle of life and motion is, after all, the primary condition of all genius. The luxuriant wildness of the one may be disciplined, and its excesses sobered down into reason; but the dry and rigid formality of the other can never burst the shell or husk of oratory. It is true that the one is disfigured by the puerilities and affectation of a Phillips; but then it is redeemed by the manly sense and fervour of a Plunket, the impassioned appeals and flashes of wit of a Curran, and by the golden tide of wisdom, eloquence, and fancy, that flowed from the lips of a Burke. In the other, we do not sink so low in the negative series; but we get no higher in the ascending scale than a Mackintosh or a Brougham.[58]It may be suggested that the late Lord Erskineenjoyed a higher reputation as an orator than either of these: but he owed it to a dashing and graceful manner, to presence of mind, and to great animation in delivering his sentiments. Stripped of these outward and personal advantages, the matter of his speeches, like that of his writings, is nothing, or perfectly inert and dead.
Mr. Brougham is from the North of England, but he was educated in Edinburgh, and represents that school of politics and political economy in the House. He differs from Sir James Mackintosh in this, that he deals less in abstract principles, and more in individual details. He makes less use of general topics, and more of immediate facts. Sir James is better acquainted with the balance of an argument in old authors; Mr. Brougham with the balance of power in Europe. If the first is better versed in the progress of history, no man excels the last in a knowledge of the course of exchange. He is apprised of the exact state of our exports and imports, and scarce a ship clears out its cargo at Liverpool or Hull, but he has notice of the bill of lading. Our colonial policy, prison-discipline, the state of the Hulks, agricultural distress, commerce and manufactures, the Bullion question, the Catholic question, the Bourbons or the Inquisition, ‘domestic treason, foreign levy,’ nothing can come amiss to him—he is at home in the crooked mazes of rotten boroughs, is not baffled by Scotch law, and can follow the meaning of one of Mr. Canning’s speeches. With so many resources, with such variety and solidity of information, Mr. Brougham is rather a powerful and alarming, than an effectual debater. In so many details (which he himself goes through with unwearied and unshrinking resolution) the spirit of the question is lost to others who have not the same voluntary power of attention or the same interest in hearing that he has in speaking; the original impulse that urged him forward is forgotten in so wide a field, in so interminable a career. If he can, otherscannotcarry all he knows in their heads at the same time; a rope of circumstantial evidence does not hold well together, nor drag the unwilling mind along with it (the willing mind hurries on before it, and grows impatient and absent)—he moves in an unmanageable procession of facts and proofs, instead of coming to the point at once—and his premises (so anxious is he to proceed on sure and ample grounds) overlay and block up his conclusion, so that you cannot arrive at it, or not till the first fury and shock of the onset is over. The ball, from the too great width of thecalibrefrom which it is sent, and from striking against such a number of hard, projecting points, is almost spent before it reaches its destination. He keeps a ledger or a debtor-and-creditor account between the Government and the Country, posts so much actual crime, corruption, and injusticeagainst so much contingent advantage or sluggish prejudice, and at the bottom of the page brings in the balance of indignation and contempt, where it is due. But people are not to becalculated intocontempt or indignation on abstract grounds; for however they may submit to this process where their own interests are concerned, in what regards the public good we believe they must see and feel instinctively, or not at all. There is (it is to be lamented) a good deal of froth as well as strength in the popular spirit, which will not admit of beingdecantedor served out in formal driblets; nor will spleen (the soul of Opposition) bear to be corked up in square patent bottles, and kept for future use! In a word, Mr. Brougham’s is ticketed and labelled eloquence, registered and in numeros (like the successive parts of a Scotch Encyclopedia)—it is clever, knowing, imposing, masterly, an extraordinary display of clearness of head, of quickness and energy of thought, of application and industry; but it is not the eloquence of the imagination or the heart, and will never save a nation or an individual from perdition.
Mr. Brougham has one considerable advantage in debate: he is overcome by no false modesty, no deference to others. But then, by a natural consequence or parity of reasoning, he has little sympathy with other people, and is liable to be mistaken in the effect his arguments will have upon them. He relies too much, among other things, on the patience of his hearers, and on his ability to turn every thing to his own advantage. He accordingly goes to the full length ofhis tether(in vulgar phrase) and often overshoots the mark.C’est dommage.He has no reserve of discretion, no retentiveness of mind or check upon himself. He needs, with so much wit,