THE PIRATE

Now republished for the first time on the strength of the internal evidence of Hazlitt’s authorship.

Now republished for the first time, as it appeared in the first copies ofThe London Magazinefor February 1823. Before fifty copies had been sold, the second and third paragraphs,—from ‘There were two things that we used to admire,’ etc. to ‘Might not such a man have written the Scotch Novels?’ (see post, p. 538)—were suppressed. Shortly afterwards a writer inBlackwood’s Magazine, having obtained possession of one of the original copies, published this passage together with indignant comments. SeeBlackwood’s Magazine, August 1824,XVI.180–1. The editor ofThe London Magazinereplied to this attack in the number for October 1824, and stated that the review was by ‘a celebrated critic,’ and that the passage had been withdrawn out of respect, not fear. See Mr. Bertram Dobell’sSidelights on Charles Lamb(pp. 205et seq.). The suppressed passage is here reprinted fromBlackwood’s Magazine.

These were first republished by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in Bohn’s Standard Library (1871) in the volume containingThe Round Table, etc. They originally appeared inThe Literary Examineron the following dates in 1823, viz.: Nos.I.–XVIII., September 6; Nos.XIX.–XLV., September 13; Nos.XLVI.–LIII., October 11; Nos.LIV.–LIX., October 25; Nos.LX.–LXI., November 8; Nos.LXII.–LXXIII., November 15; Nos.LXXIV.–LXXV., November 22; Nos.LXXVI.–LXXXII., November 29; Nos.LXXXIII.–LXXXVII., December 13.

Printed by T. andA. Constable, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press

1. Those essays which are now republished for the first time are indicated by an asterisk.

2. These two essays were published together inWinterslowas ‘Mind and Motive.’

3. Published inWinterslowas ‘Matter and Manner.’

4. This paper did not appear inThe Edinburgh (New Scots) Magazine. Seepost, note to p. 459.

5. The passage in Locke is as follows:‘If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand, consists quickness of parts, in this of having them unconfused and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists in a great measure the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be observed in one man above another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common observation that men who have a great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment, or deepest reason. For wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy; judgment on the contrary lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude and by affinity to take one thing for another.’—Locke’s Essay, vol. i. p. 143.

5. The passage in Locke is as follows:

‘If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand, consists quickness of parts, in this of having them unconfused and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists in a great measure the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be observed in one man above another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common observation that men who have a great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment, or deepest reason. For wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy; judgment on the contrary lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude and by affinity to take one thing for another.’—Locke’s Essay, vol. i. p. 143.

6. This relates to what Mr. Locke says of unity, whom all succeeding writers have made a point of bringing forward on all occasions, merely for the purpose of differing from him. They set him up as the standard, orne plus ultraof profound wisdom, and yet they always contrive to go beyond him. I will just add, by the bye, on this argument about number, that the fair way of putting it is by asking whether one combination of ideas is not different from another, or whether one foot or one inch is the same with thirty-six feet, or thirty-six inches, not whether one foot is the same as thirty-six inches. Otherwise there will remain a real distinction of number, both in idea and in fact.

7. The two men of the greatest ability in modern times as metaphysicians, that is, with the greatest power of seeing things in the abstract, and of pursuing a principle into all its consequences, are in my opinion Hobbes and Berkeley: after them come Hume and Hartley. Compared with these Locke was a mere common practical man: of the four, I think Hobbes was at the head, as the others only worked out the materials with which he furnished them.

8. This, if the translation is correct, is proving a great deal more than Leibnitz’s restriction of Locke’s doctrine requires, and is, as it appears to me, the great stumbling block in Kant’s Philosophy. It is quite enough to shew, not that there are certain notionsà priorior independent of sensation, but certain faculties independent of the senses or sensible objects, which are the intellect itself, and necessary, after the objects are given, to formideasof them. That is to say, ideas are the result of the action of objects on such and such faculties of the mind. Kant’s notionsà priori, seem little better than the innate ideas of the schools, or the Platonic ideas or forms, which are to me the forms ofnothing. The sole and simple question is, whether there are not certain intellectual faculties distinct from the senses, which exist before any ideas can be formed, as it is not denied by any one, that there are certain sensitive faculties which must exist before any sensations can be received. The one supposition no more implies innate ideas, than the other implies innate sensations.

9. Now Kant, by thus classing, as he apparently does, the representations of space and time as forms of the sensitive faculty, throws up the whole argument: for if these very complex (not to say distracted) ideas, can be referred to mere sensation, I do not see why all the rest may not. Time is obviously an idea of succession or memory, and cannot be the result of an immediate sensible impression. The only power of the sensitive faculty is to receive blind, unconscious, unconnected impressions; the only category of the understanding is to perceive therelations between these impressions, so as to connect them consciously together, or to form ideas. To this category of relation, all the other general categories of quantity, totality, cause and effect, etc. as well as the ideas of space and time, are necessarily consequent and subordinate.

10. See to the same purpose Hobbes’s Human Nature, p. 25, and Leviathan, p. 14. Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 15 and 24. Hume’s Treatise, p. 46. Helvetius on the Mind, p. 10, and Condillac’s Logic, p. 54.

11. ‘Lastly, that there is some one principle or substance, absolutely simple in its nature, and distinct from every composition of matter, which is the seat of thought, the soul of man, and the bond of our existence, will appear evident to any one who considers the nature of judgment and comparison: where both terms of the one, and both branches of the other must be apprehended together, in order to determine between them. Let one man be ever so well acquainted with St. Peter’s at Rome, and another with St. Paul’s in London, they can never tell which is the larger, the handsomer, or make any other comparison between the two buildings by virtue of this knowledge. But you will say, the one may communicate his knowledge to the other: but then that other has the idea of both before him in his imagination, and it is from this that he forms his judgment. Nor is the case different with respect to the parts of a percipient being: let the idea of an elephant be impressed upon particlea, and that of a mouse upon particleb, they can never know either jointly or separately which is the larger creature: nor can a judgement be formed till the ideas of both coincide in one and the same individual. This is the common sense of mankind. For when we make use of the pronouns, I, He, You, &c. and say,I heard such a sound;I saw such a sight; or felt such a sensation; are not these different impressions all referred by implication to the same simple individual? Or were I to say, that in looking at a chess-board for instance, one part of me saw the yellow king, another the black, another the queen, another the bishop, and so on, should I not be laughed at by every body as not knowing what I was talking about?’—Tucker’s Light of Nature pursued, chapter on the Independent Existence of Mind. See also Rousseau’s reasoning in Answer to Helvetius, Emile, tom. 3. And Bentley’s Sermons at the Boyle Lecture.

12. So little has this principle of the unity of thought and consciousness been understood, that even Professor Stewart, the great champion of the intellectual philosophy, utterly rejects it, and supposes that the idea which the mind forms of any visible figure is nothing but a rapid succession of the ideas of the several parts. See his reasoning on this subject most ably confuted in a work lately published, entitled ‘An Essay on Consciousness, by John Fearn.’—This Essay, in spite of the disadvantage of the mechanical hypothesis with which it is encumbered, and the technical obscurity of the style, contains, I think, more close and original observation on the individual processes of the human mind, than any work published in this country in the last fifty years.

13. The faces of N. Poussin want expression, as his figures want grace; but the landscape part of his historical compositions was never surpassed. In his plague of Athens the buildings seem stiff with horror. His Giants seated on the tops of their fabled mountains, and playing on their Pan’s pipes are as natural and familiar as ‘silly shepherds sitting in a row.’ The finest of his landscapes is his picture of the Deluge. The sun is just seen wan and drooping in his course, the sky is bowed down with a weight of waters, and heaven and earth seem commingling.

14. The reader is referred to an elegant and beautiful description of Claude, in Mr. Northcote’s Dream of a Painter.

15. The idea of the necessity of tampering with nature, or giving what is calleda flattering likeness, was universal in this country fifty years ago. This would no doubt be always easy, if the whole of the art consisted in leaving out, and not putting in, what is to be found in nature. It may not be improper to add here, that, in our opinion, Murillo is at the head of the class of painters, who have treated subjects of common life. There is something in his pictures which is not to be found at all in the productions of the Dutch school. After making the colours on the canvass feel and think, the next best thing is to make them breathe and live. But there is in Murillo’s pictures a look of real life, a cordial flow of animal spirits, to be met with no where else. We might here particularly refer to his picture of theTwo Spanish Beggar-boysin Mr. Desenfans’ collection, which cannot be forgotten by those who have ever seen it.

16. This theory will be found contained in Richardson’s Essay on Painting, and in Coypel’s Discourses to the French Academy.

17. This painter’s book of studies from nature, commonly calledLiber Veritatis, disproves the truth of Sir Joshua’s assumption, that his landscapes are mere general compositions, for the finished pictures are nearly fac-similes of the original sketches, and what is added to them in point of regularity (if this addition was any advantage) was at least the result of his own genius.

18. Sir Joshua considers it as a great disadvantage to Raphael in studying from the antique, that he had not the facilities afforded by modern prints, but was forced to seek out, and copy them one by one with great care. We should be disposed to reverse this conclusion.

19. The pictures of Rubens at Blenheim are another proof of this, and certainly finer than the Luxembourg gallery.

20. Michael Angelo took his ideas of painting from sculpture, and Sir Joshua from Michael Angelo.

21. Why fabulous or obscure?

22. The personification of the Deity is another instance of critical contradiction and conceit. Objecting to the figures of Raphael and Michael Angelo as mythological and sensible, he introduces a little golden triangle behind a cloud (triangulum in nube) as a philosophical emblem of the Trinity!

23. When the writer of this article was in France twelve years ago, a young French artist began to copy in pencil a figure of the Virgin by Leonardo da Vinci. He returned to it day after day, and week after week. He was always there. He would first retouch an eyebrow or an eyelash, then do something to one of the fingers, then mark in a bit of the drapery, and then return to the face again. All this he did, sometimes leaning over the railing before the picture, sometimes sitting on a stool, mechanically screwed on to it, sometimes standing on one leg. He also relieved the monotony of his undertaking, by retiring to a small distance to compare his copy with the original, or shewed it to some one near him, or went round to look over others who were copying, or stood at the fire for an hour together, or loitered into the sculpture room, or walked round the gallery, and generally observed at his return that Poussin was excellent ‘pour la composition,’ Raphael ‘pour l’expression,’ Titian ‘pour les beaux coloris,’ but that David and his pupils united all these qualities to the fine forms of the antique. At the end of eleven weeks, we left him perfecting his copy. For anything we know, he may be at it still.

24. It is not correct to say that the French always colour from their casts. They sometimes rouge them over with a beautiful rose-colour, or cover their lay-figures with flesh-coloured Nankin, like that which adorns the bodies of their opera dancers. We were at a loss to account for the colouring of David, till we heard of this contrivance. It is thus that these accomplished persons think to rival the hues of Titian and Correggio!

25. A radical objection to it, in point of composition, is, that it is addressing the spectator, and has its back turned to the audience.

26. The waiter drawing the cork in the Rent-day, is another exception, and quite Hogarthian.

27. Mr. Wilkie’s pictures are in general much better painted than Hogarth’s: but the Marriage a-la-mode is superior both in colour and execution to any of Wilkie’s.

28.‘And see! how dark the backward streamA little moment past how smiling!And still perhaps, with faithless gleam,Some other loiterer beguiling.’Wordsworth.

28.

‘And see! how dark the backward streamA little moment past how smiling!And still perhaps, with faithless gleam,Some other loiterer beguiling.’Wordsworth.

‘And see! how dark the backward stream

A little moment past how smiling!

And still perhaps, with faithless gleam,

Some other loiterer beguiling.’

Wordsworth.

29. Mr. Southey is, it is hoped, politically reconciled to Mr. Dryden, since his succession to the Laureatship. Which of these two writers is the better poet, it would be presumptuous in us to determine. We could sooner determine which was the honester man. Mr. Dryden, we believe, never wrote Regicide Sonnets, Jacobin Odes, or Revolutionary Epic Poems. How the Prince must laugh, if he can laugh at any thing. He might as well have made his chaplain his historical painter!

30. As a contrast to the story at the beginning of this article, it will be not amiss to mention that of Sir Isaac Newton, on a somewhat similar occasion. He had prepared some papers for the press with great care and study, but happening to leave a lighted candle on the table with them, his dog Diamond overturned the candle, and the labour of several years was destroyed. This great man, on seeing what was done, only shook his head, and said with a smile, ‘Ah, Diamond, you don’t know what mischief you have done!’

31. We have an instance in our own times of a man, equally devoid of understanding and principle, but who manages the House of Commons by hismanneralone.

32. Sheer impudence answers almost the same purpose. ‘Those impenetrable whiskers have confronted flames.’ Many persons, by looking big and talking loud, make their way through the world without any one good quality. We have here said nothing of mere personal qualifications, which are another set-off against sterling merit. Fielding was of opinion that ‘the more solid pretensions of virtue and understanding vanish before perfect beauty.’ ‘A certain lady of a manor’ (saysDon Quixotein defence of his attachment toDulcinea, which however was quite of the Platonic kind), ‘had cast the eyes of affection on a certain squat, brawny lay brother of a neighbouring monastery, to whom she was lavish of her favours. The head of the order remonstrated with her on this preference shown to one whom he represented as a very low, ignorant fellow, and set forth the superior pretensions of himself, and his more learned brethren. The lady having heard him to an end, made answer: All that you have said may be very true; but know, that in those points which I admire, Brother Chrysostom is as great a philosopher, nay greater than Aristotle himself!’ So theWife of Bath:‘To church was mine husband borne on the morrowWith neighbours that for him maden sorrow,And Jenkin our clerk was one of tho:As help me God, when that I saw him goAfter the bier, methought he had a pairOf legs and feet, so clean and fair,That all my heart I gave unto his hold.’‘All which, though we most potently believe, yet we hold it not honesty to have it thus set down.’

‘To church was mine husband borne on the morrowWith neighbours that for him maden sorrow,And Jenkin our clerk was one of tho:As help me God, when that I saw him goAfter the bier, methought he had a pairOf legs and feet, so clean and fair,That all my heart I gave unto his hold.’

‘To church was mine husband borne on the morrow

With neighbours that for him maden sorrow,

And Jenkin our clerk was one of tho:

As help me God, when that I saw him go

After the bier, methought he had a pair

Of legs and feet, so clean and fair,

That all my heart I gave unto his hold.’

‘All which, though we most potently believe, yet we hold it not honesty to have it thus set down.’

33. At Salisbury, which is a cathedral and county town, you cannot get a copy of Congreve or Wycherley at any of the shops.

34. The knack of off-hand, unprincipled, idle fabrication is not assisted, but the contrary, by general knowledge or regular education. Women, for this reason, have the better of their husbands in trumping up sudden excuses and contrivances that have no foundation in fact or reason; and their servant maids, who are more uneducated still, beat them hollow at the same paltry game of cross-purposes.

35. It is observed and perhaps justly that the members of the Established Church are the pleasantest sort of people to deal with. Dissenters are more soured by the leaven of religion. The others do not trouble themselves enough about it to come to a conclusion of their own, or to quarrel with other people who do. They are religious merely out of conformity to the practice of the age and country in which they live, and follow that which has authority and numbers on its side.

36. There is a common inversion of this opinion, which isdesperation; or the becoming reckless of all consequences, poverty, disease, or death, from disappointment in some one thing that the mind is set upon, no matter what. A man who has been jilted of his first choice marries out of spite the first woman he meets. A girl, whose sweetheart goes to sea, because she will not have him, as soon as he is gone, and she is baulked of her fancy, runs a-muck at ruin and infamy—‘As men should serve a cucumber,She throws herself away!’Losing gamesters act nearly on the same infatuated principle. Harrel, inCecilia, makes a fine hair-brained mock-heroic exit. I declare I prefer it to the termination of Gray’s Bard. Gamesters and highwaymen are so far heroes that it is neck or nothing with them: they set consequences at defiance. Their actions are disinterested; but their motives are not so. A fortune-hunting General stands much in the same predicament. The abstracted, theideal, is necessary to the true heroic. But before a man can fight for an idea, he must have an idea in his head to fight for. Now there are some Generals that are not understood to possess this qualification of the heroic character.

‘As men should serve a cucumber,She throws herself away!’

‘As men should serve a cucumber,

She throws herself away!’

Losing gamesters act nearly on the same infatuated principle. Harrel, inCecilia, makes a fine hair-brained mock-heroic exit. I declare I prefer it to the termination of Gray’s Bard. Gamesters and highwaymen are so far heroes that it is neck or nothing with them: they set consequences at defiance. Their actions are disinterested; but their motives are not so. A fortune-hunting General stands much in the same predicament. The abstracted, theideal, is necessary to the true heroic. But before a man can fight for an idea, he must have an idea in his head to fight for. Now there are some Generals that are not understood to possess this qualification of the heroic character.

37. It has been suggested whether this phrase ‘insulted’ is not too modern.

38. Mr. Canning, when on a tour to the Lakes, did Mr. Wordsworth the honour of paying him a visit. The favour was duly appreciated, but quite unexpected. Really, we do not know any one so little capable of appreciating theLyrical Ballads.

39. We once heard it said, that ‘Mr. Canning had the most elegant mind since Virgil.’ But we could not assent to this remark, as we just then happened to think of Claude Lorraine.

40. We have said nothing here of the impiety of Mr. Canning’s parodies, though a great deal has been said of the impiety of Mr. Hone’s, which unfortunately happen to be on the other side of the question. It is true thatone man may steal a horse sooner than another can look over a hedge. Mr. Hone is not a Cabinet Minister, and therefore is not allowed to take liberties with the Liturgy. It is to no purpose to urge that Mr. Hone is a very good-natured man, that he is mild and inoffensive in his manners, that he is utterly void of guile, with a great deal of sincere piety, and that his greatest vice is that he is fond of a joke, and given to black-letter reading. The answer is—‘But he has written parodies’—and it is to no purpose to reply—So has Mr. Canning! He is a Cabinet Minister, and therefore incapable of any thing vulgar or profane. One would think that the triumphant question put by Mr. Hone to his Jury, ‘Whether Mr. Jekyll’s Parody on Black-eyed Susan was meant to ridicule Sir William Curtis or the Ballad of Black-eyed Susan?’ would have put an end for ever to the cant on this subject, if reason could put an end to cant on any subject. The fate of different men is curious. Mr. Canning, who has all his life been defending the most odious and mischievous men and measures, passes, on that very account, for a most amiable character and an accomplished statesman. Mr. Hone, who defended himself against a charge of blasphemy for a parody on theChurch Serviceof which Mr. Canning had furnished him with a precedent, rose from the attack by the force of good-nature, and by that noble spirit of freedom and honesty in which to be unjustly accused is to be superior to all fear, and to speak truth is to be eloquent—but that he did not suffer himself to be crushed to atoms, and made a willing sacrifice to the prejudice, talent, and authority arrayed against him, is a resistance to the opinions of the world and the insolence of power, that can never be overlooked or forgiven.‘A wit’s a feather, and a chief’s a rod:An honest man’s the noblest work of God!’

‘A wit’s a feather, and a chief’s a rod:An honest man’s the noblest work of God!’

‘A wit’s a feather, and a chief’s a rod:

An honest man’s the noblest work of God!’

41. It is amusing to see an English woman in the streets of Paris looking like a dowdy, and scarcely able to put one foot before another for very awkwardness and shame, who but a week before she left home had perhaps trampled on a dress brought home to her, in a fit of uncontrollable rage, thrown a cap into the fire, and kicked her milliner down stairs for bringing her such unfashionable trumpery. One would scarcely believe that a mere change of place would make such an alteration in behaviour. When we see our country-women so unpleasantly situated, we are naturally both ashamed and sorry for them: but, as in this case, we pity many of them more than they deserve.

42. Lady Byron, when a girl, was so affected at seeing Mrs. Siddons asIsabella, in theFatal Marriage, that she was carried out fainting into the lobbies, and kept sobbing and exclaiming involuntarily ‘Oh, Byron, Byron!’ Egad, she had enough of Byron afterwards. This good-natured remark is not ours. Whose, reader, do you suppose it is? We have heard the late Mr. Curran say, that when he was a young man studying the law at the Temple, his supreme delight was to see Mrs. Siddons in her great parts, and all he wanted was a couple ofpailson each side of him to fill them with his tears! Such things have been.

43. ‘Lodging-houses for the Universe,’ and ‘Stage-coaches of the Universe.’

44. In this sort of representative Government the utility of the Press seems by no means superseded.

45. Papers on Codification. What an odd title. Mr. Bentham writes a style of his own, and in his titlepages he puts his best foot foremost.

46. Venice.

47. There is a false concord here.

48. This word is not English, nor its meaning clear.

49. Why is the wordportionhere used, as if it were a portion of Scripture?‘Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,He wales aportionwith judicious care.’Cottar’s Saturday Night.Now, Mr. Wordsworth’s poems, though not profane, yet neither are they sacred, to deserve this solemn style, though some of his admirers have gone so far as to compare them for primitive, patriarchal simplicity, to the historical parts of the Bible. Much has been said of the merits and defects of this large poem, which is ‘portion of a larger;’—perhaps Horace’s rule has been a double bar to its success—Non satis est pulchra poemata esse, dulcia sunto. The features of this author’s muse want sweetness of expression as well as regularity of outline.

49. Why is the wordportionhere used, as if it were a portion of Scripture?

‘Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,He wales aportionwith judicious care.’Cottar’s Saturday Night.

‘Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,

He wales aportionwith judicious care.’

Cottar’s Saturday Night.

Now, Mr. Wordsworth’s poems, though not profane, yet neither are they sacred, to deserve this solemn style, though some of his admirers have gone so far as to compare them for primitive, patriarchal simplicity, to the historical parts of the Bible. Much has been said of the merits and defects of this large poem, which is ‘portion of a larger;’—perhaps Horace’s rule has been a double bar to its success—Non satis est pulchra poemata esse, dulcia sunto. The features of this author’s muse want sweetness of expression as well as regularity of outline.

50. A French teacher, in reading Titus and Berenice with an English pupil, used to exclaim, in raptures, at the best passages, ‘What have you in Shakespeare equal to this?’ This showed that he had a taste for Racine, and a power of appreciating his beauties, though he might want an equal taste for Shakespeare.

51. It is a fashion among the scientific or pedantic part of the musical world to decry Miss Stephens’s singing as feeble and insipid. This it is to take things by their contraries. Her excellence does not lie in force or contrast, but in sweetness and simplicity. To give only one instance. Any person who does not feel the beauty of her singing the lines in Artaxerxes, ‘What was my pride is now my shame,’ &c., in which the notes seem to fall from her lips like languid drops from the bending flower, and her voice flutters and dies away with the expiring conflict of passion in her bosom, may console himself with the possession of other faculties, but assuredly he has no ear for music.

52. There is a very striking and spirited picture of this subject by an ingenious living artist (Mr. Alston), in the present exhibition of the Royal Academy. The academic skill in it is admirable, and many of the forms are truly elegant and beautiful; but I may be permitted to add, that the scene (as he represents it) too much resembles the courtly designs of Vitruvius or Palladio, rather than ‘a temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’; and that the angels seem rather preparing to dance a minuet or grand ballet on the marble pavement which they tread, than descending the air in a dream of love, of hope, and gratitude.

53. I apprehend that natural is of more importance than acquired sensibility. Thus, any one, without having been at an opera, may judge of opera dancing, only from having seen (with judicious eyes) a stag bound across a lawn, or a tree wave its branches in the air. In all, the general principles of motion are the same.

54. In answer to a criticism by Mr. Godwin on his poem calledSympathy.

55. ‘Liberty is a custom of England,’ said a Member of Congress; who seems also to be of opinion, thatit is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.

56. I by no means wish to preclude Mr. Phillips from trying annually to naturalize his favourite mode of oratory at watering-places in this country, or in Evangelical Societies held at the Egyptian-hall, where it is not out of character. He may there assure his hearers, with great impunity, that Dr. Franklin’s orthodoxy was never called in question; and rank Moses and Mahomet together as true prophets, (by virtue of the first letter of their names) in opposition to the infidelity of Paine and Priestly, who go together for the same reason—Like Juno’s Swans, link’d and inseparable.

Like Juno’s Swans, link’d and inseparable.

57. The best speeches are the worst reported, the worst are made better than they are. They both find a convenient newspaper level.

58. His Lordship is said to speak French with as little hesitation as he does his native tongue; and once made a speech in that language to the Congress for three hours without interruption. The sentiments, we may be sure, were not English. Or was it on that occasion that Prince Tallyrand made his observation, ‘that speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts’? I cannot agree with Mr. Hobhouse in his compliment to the expression which Isabey has given to Lord Castlereagh’s face in theinsulatedfigure of him in the picture of the Congress. An old classical friend of Mr. Hobhouse’s would have supplied a better interpretation of it. But I do not think the French artist has done his Lordship justice. His features are marked, but the expression is dormant.

59. See his panegyric on the late King, his defence of the House of Commons, and his eulogy on the practical liberty of the English Constitution in his Liverpool Dinner Speech.

60. Letter to **** ****** on the Rev. W. L. Bowles’s Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope. By the Right Hon. Lord Byron. Third Edition. Murray.

61. We have ‘purest architecture’ just before; and ‘the prior fabric which preceded,’ is rather more than an inelegant pleonasm.

62. See Mr. Bowles’s Two Letters.

63. Coleridge.

64. Most people have felt theennuiof being detained under a gateway in a shower of rain. Happy is he who has an umbrella, and can escape when the first fury of the storm has abated. Turn this gateway into a broker’s shop, full of second-hand furniture—tables, chairs, bedsteads, bolsters, and all the accommodations of man’s life,—the case will not be mended. On the other hand, convert it into a wild natural cave, and we may idle away whole hours in it, marking a streak in the rock, or a flower that grows on the sides, without feeling time hang heavy on us. The reason is, that where we are surrounded with the works of man—the sympathy with the art and purposes of man, as it were, irritates our own will, and makes us impatient of whatever interferes with it: while, on the contrary, the presence of nature, of objects existing without our intervention and controul, disarms the will of its restless activity, and disposes us to submit to accidents that we cannot help, and the course of outward events, without repining. We are thrown into the hands of nature, and become converts to her power. Thus the idea of the artificial, the conventional, the voluntary, is fatal to the romantic and imaginary. To us it seems, that the free spirit of nature rushes through the soul, like a stream with a murmuring sound, the echo of which is poetry.

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