Chapter 3

MORE ON THE FOREGOING SUBJECT. ELUCIDATIONS FROM HENRY MORE AND DR. WATTS. AN INCIDENTAL OPINION UPON HORACE WALPOLE. THE STREAM OF THOUGHT “FLOWETH AT ITS OWN SWEET WILL.” PICTURES AND BOOKS. A SAYING OF MR PITT'S CONCERNING WILBERFORCE. THE AUTHOR EXPLAINS IN WHAT SENSE IT MIGHT BE SAID THAT HE SOMETIMES SHOOTS WITH A LONG BOW.

Vorrei, disse il Signor Gasparo Pallavicino, che voi ragionassi un poco piu minutamente di questo, che non fate; che in vero vi tenete molto al generale, et quasi ci mostrate le cose per transito.

ILCORTEGIANO.

Henry More, in the Preface General to the collection of his philosophical writings, says to the reader, “if thy curiosity be forward to enquire what I have done in these new editions of my books, I am ready to inform thee that I have taken the same liberty in this Intellectual Garden of my own planting, that men usually take in their natural ones; which is, to set or pluck up, to transplant and inoculate, where and what they please. And therefore if I have rased out some things, (which yet are but very few) and transposed others, and interserted others, I hope I shall seem injurious to no man in ordering and cultivating this Philosophical Plantation of mine according to mine own humour and liking.”

Except as to the rasing out, what our great Platonist has thus said for himself, may here be said for me. “Many things,” as the happy old lutanist, Thomas Mace, says, “are good, yea, very good; but yet upon after-consideration we have met with the comparative, which is better; yea, and after that, with the superlative, (best of all), by adding to, or altering a little, the same good things.”

During the years that this Opus has been in hand, (and in head and heart also) nothing was expunged as if it had become obsolete because the persons therein alluded to had departed like shadows, or the subjects there touched on had grown out of date; but much was introduced from time to time where it fitted best. Allusions occur in relation to facts which are many years younger than the body of the chapter in which they have been grafted, thus rendering it impossible for any critic, however acute, to determine the date of any one chapter by its contents.

What Watts has said of his own Treatise upon the Improvement of the Mind may therefore with strict fidelity be applied to this book, which I trust, O gentle Reader, thou wilt regard as specially conducive to the improvement of thine. “The work was composed at different times, and by slow degrees. Now and then indeed it spread itself into branches and leaves, like a plant in April, and advanced seven or eight pages in a week; and sometimes it lay by without growth, like a vegetable in the winter, and did not increase half so much in the revolution of a year. As thoughts occurred to me in reading or meditation, or in my notices of the various appearances of things among mankind, they were thrown under appropriate heads, and were, by degrees, reduced to such a method as the subject would admit. The language and dress of these sentiments is such as the present temper of mind dictated, whether it were grave or pleasant, severe or smiling. And a book which has been twenty years in writing may be indulged in some variety of style and manner, though I hope there will not be found any great difference of sentiment.” With little transposition Watts' words have been made to suit my purpose; and when he afterwards speaks of “so many lines altered, so many things interlined, and so many paragraphs and pages here and there inserted,” the circumstances which he mentions as having deceived him in computing the extent of his work, set forth the embarrassment which the commentators will find in settling the chronology of mine.

The difficulty would not be obviated were I, like Horace Walpole, (though Heaven knows for no such motives as influenced that posthumous libeller,—) to leave a box containing the holograph manuscript of this Opus in safe custody, with an injunction that the seals should not be broken till the year of our Lord, 2000. Nothing more than what has been here stated would appear in that inestimable manuscript. Whether I shall leave it as an heir-loom in my family, or have it deposited either in the public library of my Alma Mater, or that of my own College, or bequeath it as a last mark of affection to the town of Doncaster, concerns not the present reader. Nor does it concern him to know whether the till-then-undiscoverable name of the author will be disclosed at the opening of the seals. An adequate motive for placing the manuscript in safe custody is, that a standard would thus be secured for posterity whereby the always accumulating errors of the press might be corrected. For modern printers make more and greater blunders than the copyists of old.

In any of those works which posterity will not be “willing to let perish,” how greatly would the interest be enhanced, if the whole history of its rise and progress were known, and amid what circumstances, and with what views, and in what state of mind, certain parts were composed. Sir Walter, than whom no man ever took more accurate measure of the public taste, knew this well; and posterity will always be grateful to him for having employed his declining years in communicating so much of the history of those works which obtained a wider and more rapid celebrity than any that ever preceded them, and perhaps than any that ever may follow them.

An author of the last generation, (I cannot call to mind who,) treated such an opinion with contempt, saying in his preface that “there his work was, and that as the Public were concerned with it only as it appeared before them, he should say nothing that would recal the blandishments of its childhood:” whether the book was one of which the maturity might just as well be forgotten as the nonage, I do not remember. But he must be little versed in bibliology who has not learnt that such reminiscences are not more agreeable to an author himself, than they are to his readers, (if he obtain any,) in after times; for every trifle that relates to the history of a favourite author, and of his works, then becomes precious.

Far be it for me to despise the relic-mongers of literature, or to condemn them, except when they bring to light things which ought to have been buried with the dead; like the Dumfries craniologists, who, when the grave of Burns was opened to receive the corpse of his wife, took that opportunity ofabstractingthe poet's skull that they might make a cast from it! Had these men forgotten the malediction which Shakespeare utters from his monument? And had they never read what Wordsworth says to such men in his Poet's epitaph—

Art thou one all eyes,Philosopher! a fingering slave,One that would peep and botanizeUpon his mother's grave?Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece,O turn aside,—and take, I pray,That he below may rest in peace,Thy pin-point of a soul away!

O for an hour of Burns' for these men's sake! Were there a Witch of Endor in Scotland it would be an act of comparative piety in her to bring up his spirit; to stigmatize them in verses that would burn for ever would be a gratification for which he might think it worth while to be thus brought again upon earth.

But to the harmless relic-mongers we owe much; much to the Thomas Hearnes and John Nichols, the Isaac Reids and the Malones, the Haslewoods and Sir Egertons. Individually, I owe them much, and willingly take this opportunity of acknowledging the obligation. And let no one suppose that Sir Egerton is disparaged by being thus classed among the pioneers of literature. It is no disparagement for any man of letters, however great his endowments, and however extensive his erudition, to take part in those patient and humble labours by which honour is rendered to his predecessors, and information preserved for those who come after him.

But in every original work which lives and deserves to live there must have been some charms which no editorial diligence can preserve, no critical sagacity recover. The pictures of the old masters, suffer much when removed from the places for which, (and in which, many of them,) they were painted. It may happen that one which has been conveyed from a Spanish palace or monastery to the collection of Marshal Soult, or any other Plunder-Master-General in Napoleon's armies, and have past from thence,—honestly as regards the purchaser,—to the hands of an English owner, may be hung at the same elevation as in its proper place, and in the same light. Still it loses much. The accompaniments are all of a different character; the air and odour of the place are different. There is not here the locality that consecrated it,—no longer thereligio loci. Wealth cannot purchase these; power may violate and destroy, but it cannot transplant them. The picture in its new situation is seen with a different feeling, by those who have any true feeling for such things.

Literary works of imagination, fancy or feeling, are liable to no injury of this kind; but in common with pictures they suffer a partial deterioration in even a short lapse of time. In such works as in pictures, there are often passages which once possessed a peculiar interest, personal and local, subordinate to the general interest. The painter introduced into an historical piece the portrait of his mistress, his wife, his child, his dog, his friend, or his faithful servant. The picture is not as a work of art the worse where these persons were not known, or when they are forgotten: but there was once a time when it excited on this account in very many beholders a peculiar delight which it can never more impart.

So it is with certain books; and though there is perhaps little to regret in any thing that becomes obsolete, an author may be allowed to sigh over what he feels and knows to be evanescent.

Mr. Pitt used to say of Wilberforce that he was not so single minded in his speeches as might have been expected from the sincerity of his character, and as he would have been if he had been less dependent upon popular support. Those who knew him, and how he was connected, he said, could perceive that some things in his best speeches were intended totellin such and such quarters,—upon Benjamin Sleek in one place, Isaac Drab in another, and Nehemiah Wilyman in a third.—Well would it be if no man ever looked askant with worse motives!

Observe, Reader, that I call him simply Wilberforce, because any common prefix would seem to disparage that name, especially if used by one who regarded him with admiration; and with respect, which is better than admiration, because it can be felt for those only whose virtues entitle them to it; and with kindliness, which is better than both, because it is called forth by those kindly qualities that are worth more than any talents, and without which a man, though he may be both great and good, never can be amiable. No one was ever blest with a larger portion of those gifts and graces which make up the measure of an amiable and happy man.

It will not be thought then that I have repeated with any disrespectful intention what was said of Wilberforce by Mr. Pitt. The observation was brought to mind while I was thinking how many passages in these volumes were composed with a double intention, one for the public and for posterity, the other private and personal, written with special pleasure on my part,speciali gratiâ, for the sake of certain individuals. Some of these which are calculated for the meridian of Doncaster the commentators may possibly, if they make due research, discover; but there are others which no ingenuity can detect. Their quintessence exhales when the private, which was in these cases the primary intention has been fulfilled. Yet the consciousness of the emotions which those passages will excite, the recollections they will awaken, the surprize and the smile with which they will be received,—yea and the melancholy gratification,—even to tears,—which they will impart, has been one and not the least of the many pleasures which I have experienced while employed upon this work.

Πολλά μοι ὑπ᾽ ἀγκῶ––νος ὠκέα βέληἚνδον ἐντὶ φαρέτραςΦωνᾶντα συνετοῖσιν.1

1PINDAR.

But while thus declaring that these volumes contain much covert intention of this kind, I utterly disclaim all covert malevolence. My roving shafts are more harmless even than bird bolts, and can hurt none on whom they fall. The arrows with which I take aim carry tokens of remembrance and love, and may be likened to those by which intelligence has been conveyed into besieged places. Of such it is that I have been speaking. Others indeed I have in the quiver which are pointed and barbed.

ἐμοὶ μὲν ὧν Μοῖσα καρτερώ--τατον βέλος ἀλκᾷ τρἐφει.2

When one of these is let fly, (with sure aim and never without just cause,) it has its address written on the shaft at full length, like that which Aster directed from the walls of Methone to Philip's right eye.

2PINDAR.

Or' c'est assez s' estre esgare de son grand chemin: j'y retourne et le bats, et le trace comme devant.3

3BRANTOME.

AMATORY POETRY NOT ALWAYS OF THE WISEST KIND. AN ATTEMPT TO CONVEY SOME NOTION OF ITS QUANTITY. TRUE LOVE THOUGH NOT IN EVERY CASE THE BEST POET, THE BEST MORALIST ALWAYS.

El Amor es tan ingenioso, que en mi opinion, mas poetas ha hecho el solo, que la misma naturaleza.

PEREZ DEMONTALVAN.

I return to the loves of Leonard and Margaret.

That poet asked little from his mistress, who entreated her to bestow upon him, not a whole look, for this would have been too great a mercy for a miserable lover, but part of a look, whether it came from the white of her eye, or the black: and if even that were too much, then he besought her only to seem to look at him:

Un guardo—un guardo? no, troppo pietateE per misero Amante un guardo intero;Solo un de' vostri raggi, occhi girate,O parte del bel bianco, o del bel nero.E se troppo vi par, non mi mirate;Ma fate sol sembiante di mirarmi,Che nol potete far senza bearmi.1

This is a new thought in amatory poetry; and the difficulty of striking out a new thought in such poetry, is of all difficulties the greatest. Think of a look from the white of an eye! Even part of a look however is more than a lady will bestow upon one whom she does not favour; and more than one whom she favours will consent to part with. An Innamorato Furioso in one of Dryden's tragedies says:

I'll not one corner of a glance resign!

1CHIABRERA.

Poor Robert Greene, whose repentance has not been disregarded by just posterity, asked his mistress in his licentious days, to look upon him with one eye, (no doubt he meant a sheep's eye;) this also was a new thought; and he gave the reason for his request in this sonnet—

On women nature did bestow two eyes,Like heaven's bright lamps, in matchless beauty shining,Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise,And wary heads, made rare by art's refining.But why did nature, in her choice combining,Plant two fair eyes within a beauteous face?That they might favour two with equal grace.Venus did soothe up Vulcan with one eye,With the other granted Mars his wished glee.If she did so whom Hymen did defy,Think love no sin, but grant an eye to me!In vain else nature gave two stars to thee.If then two eyes may well two friends maintain,Allow of two, and prove not nature vain.

Love, they say, invented the art of tracing likenesses, and thereby led the way to portrait painting. Some painters it has certainly made; whether it ever made a poet may be doubted: but there can be no doubt that under its inspiration more bad poetry has been produced than by any, or all other causes.

Hæc via jam cunctis nota est, hæc trita poetisMateria, hanc omnis tractat ubique liber.2

As the most forward budIs eaten by the canker ere it blow,Even so by Love the young and tender witIs turn'd to folly.3

Vanity, presumption, ambition, adulation, malice and folly, flatulent emptiness and ill digested fulness, misdirected talent and misapplied devotion, wantonness and want, good motives, bad motives, and mixed motives have given birth to verses in such numberless numbers, that the great lake of Oblivion in which they have sunk, must long ago have been filled up, if there had been any bottom to it. But had it been so filled up, and a foundation thus laid, the quantity of love poems which have gone to the same place, would have made a pile there that would have been the eighth wonder of the world. It would have dwarfed the Pyramids. Pelion upon Ossa would have seemed but a type of it; and the Tower of Babel would not, even when that Tower was at its highest elevation, have overtopt it, though the old rhyme says that

Seven mile sank, and seven mile fell,And seven mile still stand and ever shall.Ce n'est que feu de leurs froids chaleurs,Ce n'est qu' horreur de leurs feintes douleurs,Ce n'est encor de leurs souspirs et pleurs,Que vents, pluye, et orages:Et bref, ce n'est à ouir leurs chansons,De leurs amours, que flammes et glaçons,Fleches, liens, et mille autres façonsDe semblables outrages.De voz beautez, ce n'est que tout fin or,Perles, crystal, marbre, et ivoyre encor,Et tout l'honneur de l'Indique thresor,Fleurs, lis, œillets, et roses:De voz doulceurs ce n'est que succre et miel,De voz rigueures n'est qu' aloës, et fiel,De voz esprits c'est tous ce que le cielTient de graces encloses.* * * * *Il n'y a roc, qui n'entende leurs voix,Leurs piteux cris ont faict cent mille foisPleurer les monts, les plaines, et les bois,Les antres et fonteines.Bref, il n'y a ny solitaires lieux,N'y lieux hantez, voyre mesmes les cieux,Qui ça et là ne montrent à leurs yeuxL'image de leurs peines.Cestuy-la porte en son cueur fluctueuxDe l'Ocean les flots tumultueux,Cestuy l'horreur des vents impetueuxSortans de leur caverne:L'un d'un Caucase, et Mongibel se plaingt,L'autre en veillant plus de songes se peingt,Qu'il n'en fut onq' en cest orme, qu'on feinctEn la fosse d'Averne.Qui contrefaict ce Tantale mourantBruslé de soif au milieu d'un torrent,Qui repaissant un aigle devorant,S'accoustre en Promethee:Et qui encor, par un plus chaste vœu,En se bruslant, veult Hercule estre veu,Mais qui se mue en eau, air, terre, et feu,Comme un second Protee.L'un meurt de froid, et l'autre meurt de chauld;L'un vole bas, et l'autre vole hault,L'un est chetif, l'autre a ce qui luy fault;L'un sur l'esprit se fonde,L'autre s'arreste à la beauté du corps;On ne vid onq' si horribles discordsEn ce cahos, qui troubloit les accordsDont fut basty le monde.4

But on the other hand if love, simple love, is the worst of poets, that same simple love, is beyond comparison the best of letter writers. In love poems conceits are distilled from the head; in love letters feelings flow from the heart; and feelings are never so feelingly uttered, affection never so affectionately expressed, truth never so truly spoken, as in such a correspondence. Oh if the disposition which exists at such times, were sustained through life, marriage would then be indeed the perfect union, the “excellent mystery” which our Father requires from those who enter into it, that it should be made; and which it might always be, under His blessing, were it not for the misconduct of one or the other party, or of both. If such a disposition were maintained,—“if the love of husbands and wives were grounded (as it then would be) in virtue and religion, it would make their lives a kind of heaven on earth; it would prevent all those contentions and brawlings which are the great plagues of families, and the lesser hell in passage to the greater.” Let no reader think the worse of that sentence because it is taken from that good homely old book, the better for being homely, entitled the Whole Duty of Man.

2SCAURANUS.

3SHAKESPEARE.

4JOACHIMDUBELLAY.

I once met with a book in which a servant girl had written on a blank leaf, “not much love after marriage, but a good deal before!” In her station of life this is but too true; and in high stations also, and in all those intermediate grades where either the follies of the world, or its cares, exercise over us an unwholesome influence. But it is not so with well constituted minds in those favorable circumstances wherein the heart is neither corrupted by wealth, nor hardened by neediness. So far as the tendency of modern usages is to diminish the number of persons who are thus circumstanced, in that same proportion must the sum of happiness be diminished, and of those virtues which are the only safeguard of a nation. And that modern policy and modern manners have this tendency, must be apparent to every one who observes the course both of public and private life.

This girl had picked up a sad maxim from the experience of others; I hope it did not as a consequence, make her bestow too much love before marriage herself, and meet with too little after it. I have said much of worthless verses upon this subject; take now, readers, some that may truly be called worthy of it. They are by the Manchester Poet, Charles Swain.

1.Love?—I will tell thee what it is to love!It is to build with human thoughts a shrine,Where Hope sits brooding like a beauteous dove;Where Time seems young, and Life a thing divine.All tastes, all pleasures, all desires combineTo consecrate this sanctuary of bliss.Above, the stars in shroudless beauty shine;Around, the streams their flowery margins kiss;And if there's heaven on earth, that heaven is surely this!2.Yes, this is Love, the stedfast and the true,The immortal glory which hath never set;The best, the brightest boon the heart e'er knew:Of all life's sweets the very sweetest yet!Oh! who but can recall the eve they metTo breathe, in some green walk, their first young vow,While summer flowers with moonlight dews were wet,And winds sigh'd soft around the mountain's brow,And all was rapture then which is but memory now!

The dream of life indeed can last with none of us,—

As if the thing beloved were all a Saint,And every place she entered were a shrine:5

but it must be our own fault, when it has past away, if the realities disappoint us: they are not “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,” unless we ourselves render them so. The preservation of the species is not the sole end for which love was implanted in the human heart; that end the Almighty might as easily have effected by other means: not so the developement of our moral nature, which is its higher purpose. The comic poet asserts that

Verum illud verbum est vulgo quod dici solet,Omnes sibi esse melius malle, quam alteri:6

but this is not true in love. The lover never says

Heus proximus sum egomet mihi;6

He knows and understands the falsehood of the Greek adage,

φιλεῖ δ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ πλεῖον οὐδείς οὐδένα.

and not lovers alone, but husbands and wives, and parents feel that there are others who are dearer to them than themselves. Little do they know of human nature who speak of marriage as doubling our pleasures and dividing our griefs: it doubles, or more than doubles both.

5GONDIBERT.

6TERENCE.

AN EARLY BEREAVEMENT. TRUE LOVE ITS OWN COMFORTER. A LONELY FATHER AND AN ONLY CHILD.

Read ye that run the aweful truth,With which I charge my page;A worm is in the bud of youth,And at the root of age.COWPER.

Leonard was not more than eight and twenty when he obtained a living, a few miles from Doncaster. He took his bride with him to the vicarage. The house was as humble as the benefice, which was worth less than £50. a year; but it was soon made the neatest cottage in the country round, and upon a happier dwelling the sun never shone. A few acres of good glebe were attached to it; and the garden was large enough to afford healthful and pleasurable employment to its owners. The course of true love never ran more smoothly; but its course was short.

O how this spring of love resemblethThe uncertain glory of an April day,Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,And by and by a cloud takes all away!1

Little more than five years from the time of their marriage had elapsed, before a headstone in the adjacent churchyard told where the remains of Margaret Bacon had been deposited in the 30th year of her age.

1SHAKESPEARE.

When the stupor and the agony of that bereavement had past away, the very intensity of Leonard's affection became a source of consolation. Margaret had been to him a purely ideal object during the years of his youth; death had again rendered her such. Imagination had beautified and idolized her then; faith sanctified and glorified her now. She had been to him on earth all that he had fancied, all that he had hoped, all that he had desired. She would again be so in Heaven. And this second union nothing could impede, nothing could interrupt, nothing could dissolve. He had only to keep himself worthy of it by cherishing her memory, hallowing his heart to it while he performed a parent's duty to their child; and so doing to await his own summons, which must one day come, which every day was brought nearer, and which any day might bring.

——'Tis the only discipline we are born for;All studies else are but as circular lines,And death the centre where they must all meet.2

2MASSINGER.

The same feeling which from his childhood had refined Leonard's heart, keeping it pure and undefiled, had also corroborated the natural strength of his character, and made him firm of purpose. It was a saying of Bishop Andrews that “good husbandry is good divinity;” “the truth whereof,” says Fuller, “no wise man will deny.” Frugality he had always practised as a needful virtue, and found that in an especial manner it brings with it its own reward. He now resolved upon scrupulously setting apart a fourth of his small income to make a provision for his child, in case of her surviving him, as in the natural course of things might be expected. If she should be removed before him,—for this was an event the possibility of which he always bore in mind,—he had resolved that whatever should have been accumulated with this intent, should be disposed of to some other pious purpose,—for such, within the limits to which his poor means extended, he properly considered this. And having entered on this prudential course with a calm reliance upon Providence in case his hour should come before that purpose could be accomplished, he was without any earthly hope or fear,—those alone excepted, from which no parent can be free.

The child had been christened Deborah after her maternal grandmother, for whom Leonard ever gratefully retained a most affectionate and reverential remembrance. She was a healthy, happy creature in body and in mind; at first

——one of those little prating girlsOf whom fond parents tell such tedious stories;3

afterwards, as she grew up, a favourite with the village school-mistress, and with the whole parish; docile, good-natured, lively and yet considerate, always gay as a lark and busy as a bee. One of the pensive pleasures in which Leonard indulged was to gaze on her unperceived, and trace the likeness to her mother.

Oh Christ!How that which was the life's life of our being,Can pass away, and we recall it thus!4

3DRYDEN.

4ISAACCOMNENUS.

That resemblance which was strong in childhood, lessened as the child grew up; for Margaret's countenance had acquired a cast of meek melancholy during those years in which the bread of bitterness had been her portion; and when hope came to her, it was that “hope deferred” which takes from the cheek its bloom, even when the heart instead of being made sick, is sustained by it. But no unhappy circumstances depressed the constitutional buoyancy of her daughter's spirits. Deborah brought into the world the happiest of all nature's endowments, an easy temper and a light heart. Resemblant therefore as the features were, the dissimilitude of expression was more apparent; and when Leonard contrasted in thought the sunshine of hilarity that lit up his daughter's face, with the sort of moonlight loveliness which had given a serene and saint-like character to her mother's, he wished to persuade himself that as the early translation of the one seemed to have been thus prefigured, the other might be destined to live for the happiness of others till a good old age, while length of years in their course should ripen her for heaven.

OBSERVATIONS WHICH SHEW THAT WHATEVER PRIDE MEN MAY TAKE IN THE APPELLATIONS THEY ACQUIRE IN THEIR PROGRESS THROUGH THE WORLD, THEIR DEAREST NAME DIES BEFORE THEM.

—Thus they who reachGrey hairs, die piecemeal.SOUTHEY.

The name of Leonard must now be dropt as we proceed. Some of the South-American tribes, among whom the Jesuits laboured with such exemplary zeal, and who take their personal appellations, (as most names were originally derived,) from beasts, birds, plants and other visible objects, abolish upon the death of every individual the name by which he was called, and invent another for the thing from which it was taken, so that their language, owing to this curiously inconvenient custom, is in a state of continual change. An abolition almost as complete with regard to the person had taken place in the present instance. The name, Leonard, was consecrated to him by all his dearest and fondest recollections. He had been known by it on his mother's knees, and in the humble cottage of that aunt who had been to him a second mother; and by the wife of his bosom, his first, last, and only love. Margaret had never spoken to him, never thought of him, by any other name. From the hour of her death no human voice ever addressed him by it again. He never heard himself so called, except in dreams. It existed only in the dead letter; he signed it mechanically in the course of business, but it had ceased to be a living name.

Men willingly prefix a handle to their names, and tack on to them any two or more honorary letters of the alphabet as a tail; they drop their surnames for a dignity, and change them for an estate or a title. They are pleased to be Doctor'd and Professor'd; to be Captain'd, Major'd, Colonel'd, General'd, or Admiral'd;—to be Sir John'd, my-Lorded, or your-Graced. “You and I,” says Cranmer in his Answer to Gardiner's book upon Transubstantiation—“you and I were delivered from our surnames when we were consecrated Bishops; sithence which time we have so commonly been used of all men to be called Bishops, you of Winchester, and I of Canterbury, that the most part of the people know not that your name is Gardiner, and mine Cranmer. And I pray God, that we being called to the name of Lords, have not forgotten our own baser estates, that once we were simple squires!” But the emotion with which the most successful suitor of Fortune hears himself first addressed by a new and honourable title, conferred upon him for his public deserts, touches his heart less, (if that heart be sound at the core,) than when after long absence, some one who is privileged so to use it, accosts him by his christian name,—that household name which he has never heard but from his nearest relations, and his old familiar friends. By this it is that we are known to all around us in childhood; it is used only by our parents and our nearest kin when that stage is past; and as they drop off, it dies as to its oral uses with them.

It is because we are remembered more naturally in our family and paternal circles by our baptismal than our hereditary names, and remember ourselves more naturally by them, that the Roman Catholic, renouncing, upon a principle of perverted piety, all natural ties when he enters a convent and voluntarily dies to the world, assumes a new one. This is one manifestation of that intense selfishness which the law of monastic life inculcates, and affects to sanctify. Alas, there need no motives of erroneous religion to wean us from the ties of blood and of affection! They are weakened and dissolved by fatal circumstances and the ways of the world, too frequently and too soon.

“Our men of rank,” said my friend one day when he was speaking upon this subject, “are not the only persons who go by different appellations in different parts of their lives. We all moult our names in the natural course of life. I was Dan in my father's house, and should still be so with my uncle William and Mr. Guy if they were still living. Upon my removal to Doncaster my master and mistress called me Daniel, and my acquaintance Dove. In Holland I was Mynheer Duif. Now I am the Doctor, and not among my patients only; friends, acquaintance and strangers address me by this appellation; even my wife calls me by no other name; and I shall never be any thing but the Doctor again,—till I am registered at my burial by the same names as at my christening.”

A QUESTION WHETHER LOVE SHOULD BE FAITHFUL TO THE DEAD. DOUBTS ADVANCED AND CASES STATED.

O even in spite of death, yet still my choice,Oft with the inward all-beholding eyeI think I see thee, and I hear thy voice!LORDSTERLINE.

In the once popular romance of Astrea the questionsi Amour peut mourir par la mort de la chose aimée?is debated in reference to the faithful shepherd, Tyrcis, who having lost his mistress Cleon (Cleon serving for a name feminine in French, as Stella has done in English,) and continuing constant to her memory, is persecuted by the pertinacious advances of Laonice. The sage shepherd, Sylvandre, before whom the point is argued, and to whom it is referred for judgement, delivers, to the great disappointment of the lady, the following sentence.Qu'une Amour perissable n'est pas vray Amour; car il doit suivre le sujet qui luy à donné naissance. C'est pourquoy ceux qui ont aimé le corps seulement, doivent enclorre toutes les amours du corps dans le mesme tombeau ou il s'enserre: mais ceux qui outre cela ont aimé l'esprit, doivent avec leur Amour voler apres cet esprit aimé jusques au plus haut ciel, sans que les distances les puissent separer.

The character of a constant mourner is sometimes introduced in romances of the earlier and nobler class; but it is rare in those works of fiction, and indeed it is not common in what has happily been called the romance of real life. Let me however restrict this assertion within its proper bounds. What is meant to be here asserted (and it is pertinent to this part of our story,) is, that it is not common for any one who has been left a widow, or widower, early in life, to remain so always out of pure affection to the memory of the dead, unmingled with any other consideration or cause. Such constancy can be found only where there is the union of a strong imagination and a strong heart,—which perhaps is a rare union; and if to these a strong mind be united, the effect would probably be different.

It is only in a strong imagination that the deceased object of affection can retain so firm a hold, as never to be dispossessed from it by a living one; and when the imagination is thus possessed, unless the heart be strong, the heart itself, or the intellect is likely to give way. A deep sense of religion would avert the latter alternative; but I will not say that it is any preservative against the former.

A most affecting instance of this kind is related by Dr. Uwins in his Treatise on Disorders of the Brain. A lady on the point of marriage, whose intended husband usually travelled by the stage-coach to visit her, went one day to meet him, and found instead of him an old friend who came to announce to her the tidings of his sudden death. She uttered a scream, and piteously exclaimed—“he is dead!” But then all consciousness of the affliction that had befallen her ceased. “From that fatal moment,” says the Author, “has this unfortunate female daily for fifty years, in all seasons, traversed the distance of a few miles to the spot where she expected her future husband to alight from the coach; and every day she utters in a plaintive tone, ‘He is not come yet! I will return to morrow!’”

There is a more remarkable case in which love, after it had long been apparently extinct, produced a like effect upon being accidentally revived. It is recorded in a Glasgow newspaper. An old man residing in the neighbourhood of that city found a miniature of his wife, taken in her youth. She had been dead many years, and he was a person of strictly sedate and religious habits; but the sight of this picture overcame him. From the time of its discovery till his death, which took place some months afterwards, he neglected all his ordinary duties and employments, and became in a manner imbecile, spending whole days without uttering a word, or manifesting the slightest interest in passing occurrences. The only one with whom he would hold any communication was a little grandchild, who strikingly resembled the portrait; to her he was perfectly docile; and a day or two before his death, he gave her his purse, and strictly enjoined her to lay the picture beside him in his coffin,—a request which was accordingly fulfilled.

Mr. Newton, of Olney, says, that once in the West Indies, upon not receiving letters from his wife in England, he concluded that surely she was dead, and this apprehension affected him so much that he was nearly sinking under it. “I felt,” says he, “some severe symptoms of that mixture of pride and madness which is commonly called a broken heart: and indeed, I wonder that this case is not more common than it appears to be. How often do the potsherds of the earth presume to contend with their Maker! and what a wonder of mercy is it that they are not all broken!”

This is a stern opinion; and he who delivered it held stern tenets, though in his own disposition compassionate and tender. He was one who could project his feelings, and relieve himself in the effort. No husband ever loved his wife more passionately, nor with a more imaginative affection; the long and wasting disease by which she was consumed, affected him proportionably to this deep attachment; but immediately upon her death he roused himself, after the example of David, threw off his grief, and preached her funeral sermon. He ought to have known that this kind of strength and in this degree, is given to very few of us;—that a heart may break, even though it be thoroughly resigned to the will of God, and acquiesces in it, and has a lively faith in God's mercies;—yea that this very resignation, this entire acquiescence, this sure and certain hope, may even accelerate its breaking; and a soul thus chastened, thus purified, thus ripened for immortality, may unconsciously work out the deliverance which it ardently, but piously withal, desires.

What were the Doctor's thoughts upon this subject, and others connected with it, will appear in the proper place. It is touched upon here in relation to Leonard. His love for Margaret might be said to have begun with her life, and it lasted as long as his own. No thought of a second marriage even entered his mind; though in the case of another person, his calm views of human nature and of the course of life would have led him to advise it.

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