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WORDSWORTH COLLECTION
MADE BY
CYNTHIA MORGAN ST.JOHN
ITHACA, N. Y.
THE GIFT OF
VICTOR EMANUEL
CLASS OF 1919
1925
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AND



MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS
OF
T. NOON TALFOURD,
AUTHOR OF “ION.”
Spirit American (Jtbition.
WITH
ADDITIONAL ARTICLES NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED
IN THIS COUNTRY.
BOSTON:
PHILLIPS, SAMPSON, AND COMPANY.
NEW YORK: JAMES C. DERBY.
1854.\
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CONTENTS.
Page
On British Novels and Romances, Introductory to a Series of
Criticisms on the Living Novelists................................. 5
New Monthly Magazine.
Mackenzie............................................................. 8
New Monthly Magazine.
The Author of Waverley................................................11
New Monthly Magazine.
Godwin................................................................15
New Monthly Magazine.
Maturin...............................................................18
New Monthly Magazine.
Rymer on Tragedy .....................................................21
Retrospective Review.
Colley Cibber’s Apology for his Life..................................28
Retrospective Review.
John Dennis’s Works...................................................35
Retrospective Review.
Modern Periodical Literature..........................................43
New Monthly Magazine.
On the Genius and Writings of Wordsworth..............................47
New Monthly Magazine.
North’s Life of Lord Guilford.........................................59
Retrospective Review.
Hazlitt’s Lectures on the Drama.......................................68
Edinburgh Review.
Wallace’s Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence .	.	73
Retrospective Review.
On Pulpit Oratory.....................................................83
London Magazine.
Recollections of Lisbon...............................................87
New Monthly Magazine.
Lloyd’s Poems.........................................................94
London Magazine.
Mr. Oldaker on Modern Improvements .	.	 98
New Monthly Magazine.
mIv	CONTENTS.
Page
A Chapter on “ Time”........................................ 101
New Monthly Magazine.
On the Profession of the Bar...................................104
London Magazine.
The Wine Cellar...................................................H3
New Monthly Magazine.
Destruction of the Brunswick Theatre by Fire...................H®
New Monthly Magazine.
First Appearance of Miss Fanny Kemble............................117
New Monthly Magazine.
The Melo-Dramas against Gambling.................................119
New Monthly Magazine.
On the Intellectual Character of the late William Hazlitt 121
The Examiner.
The late Dowager Lady Holland....................................131
Morning Chronicle.
Address at the Anniversary of the Manchester Athenaeum .	132
Manchester Guardian, October 25, 1845.
Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell......................................137
Quarterly Review.
Speech for the Defendant in the Prosecution of the Queen v.
Moxon, for the Publication of Shelley’s Works.....................148
Delivered in the Court of Queen’s Bench, June 23, 1841.
Speech on the Motion for leave to bring in a Bill to amend the
Law of Copyright..................................................159
Delivered in the House of Commons, Thursday, May 18, 1837.
Speech on the Motion for the Second Reading of the Bill to
amend the Law of Copyright.....................................165
Delivered in the House of Commons, Wednesday, April 25, 1838.
Speech on Moving the Second Reading of a Bill to amend the
Law of Copyright...............................................171
Delivered in the House of Commons, Thursday, February 28, 1839.
The Westminster Play”............................................176
December 1845.TALEOURD’S MISCELLANIES.
ON BRITISH NOVELS AND ROMANCES, INTRODUCTORY TO A
SERIES OF CRITICISMS ON THE LIVING NOVELISTS.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
We regard the authors of the best novels
and romances as among the truest benefactors
of their species. Their works have often con-
veyed, in the most attractive form, lessons of
the most genial wisdom. But we do not prize
them so much in reference to their immediate
aim, or any individual traits of nobleness with
which they may inform the thoughts, as for
their general tendency to break up that cold
and debasing selfishness with which the souls
of so large a portion of mankind are encrusted.
They give to a vast class, who by no means
would be carried beyond the most contracted
range of emotion, an interest in things out of
themselves, and a perception of grandeur and
of beauty, of which otherwise they might ever
have lived unconscious. Pity for fictitious suf-
ferings is, indeed, very inferior to that sympa-
thy with the universal heart of man which
inspires real self-sacrifice ; but it is better even
to be moved by its tenderness, than wholly to be
ignorant of the joy of natural tears. How
many are there for whom poesy has no charm,
and who have derived only from romances
those glimpses of disinterested heroism and
ideal beauty, which alone “ make them less for-
lorn,in their busy career! The good house-
wife, who is employed all her life in the seve-
rest drudgery, has yet some glimmerings of a
state and dignity above her station and age,
and some dim vision of meek, angelic suffer-
ing, when she thinks of the well-thumbed vo-
lume of Clarissa Harlowe, which she found,
when a girl, in some old recess, and read, with
breathless eagerness, at stolen times and mo-
ments of hasty joy. The careworn lawyer or
politician, encircled with all kinds of petty
anxieties, thinks of the Arabian Nights Enter-
tainments, which he devoured in his joyful
school-days, and is once more young, and in-
nocent, and happy. If the sternest puritan were
acquainted with Parson Adams, or with Dr.
Primrose, he could not hate the clergy. If
novels are not the deepest teachers of hu-
manity, they have, at least, the widest range.
They lend to genius “lighter wings to fly.”
They are read where Milton and Shakspeare
are only talked of, and where even their names
are never heard. They nestle gently beneath
the covers of unconscious sofas, are read by
fair and glistening eyes in moments snatched
from repose, and beneath counters and shop-
boards minister delights “ secret, sweet, and
precious.” It is possible that, in particular
instances,their effects maybe baneful; but,on
the whole, we are persuaded they are good.
The world is not in danger of becoming too
romantic. The golden threads of poesy are not
too thickly or too closely interwoven with the
ordinary web of existence. Sympathy is the
first great lesson which man should learn. It
will be ill for him if he proceeds no farther; if
his emotions are but excited to roll back on his
heart, and to be fostered in luxurious quiet.
But unless he learns to feel for things in which
he has no personal interest, he can achieve
nothing generous or noble. This lesson is in
reality the universal moral of all excellent ro-
mances. How mistaken are those miserable
reasoners who object to them as giving “ false
pictures of life—of purity too glossy and ethe-
real—of friendship too deep and confiding—of
love which does not shrink at the approach of
ill, but looks on tempests and is never shaken,”
because with these the world too rarely blos-
soms ! Were these things visionary and un-
real, who would break the spell, and bid the de-
licious, enchantment vanish I The soul will
not be the worse for thinking too well of its
kind, or believing that the highest excellence
is within the reach of its exertions. But these
things are not unreal; they are shadows, in-
deed, in themselves ; but they are shadows cast
from objects stately and eternal. Man can
never imagine that which has no foundation in
his nature. The virtues he conceives are not
the mere pageantry of his thought. We feel
their truth—not their historic or individual
truth—but their universal truth, as reflexes of
human energy and power. It would be enough
for us to prove that the imaginative glories
which are shed around our being, are far
brighter than “ the light of common day,” which
mere vulgar experience in the course of the
world diffuses. But, in truth, that radiance is
not merely of the fancy, nor are its influences
lost when it ceases immediately to shine on
| our path. It is holy and prophetic. The best
I joys of childhood—its boundless aspirations
and gorgeous dreams, are the sure indications
a 2 ’	56
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
of the nobleness of its final heritage. All the
softenings of evil to the moral vision by the
gentleness of fancy, are proofs that evil itself
shall perish. Our yearnings after ideal beauty
show that the home of the soul which feels
them, is in a lovelier world. And when man
describes high virtues, and instances of no-
bleness, which rarely light on earth; so sub-
lime that they expand our imaginations beyond
their former compass, yet so human that they
make our hearts gush with delight; he disco-
vers feelings in his own breast, and awakens
sympathies in ours, which shall assuredly one
day have real and stable objects to rest on !
The early times of England—unlike those of
Spain—were not rich in chivalrous romances.
The imagination seems to have been chilled
by the manners of the Norman conquerors.
The domestic contests for the disputed throne,
with their intrigues, battles, and executions,
have none of that rich, poetical interest, which
attended the struggles for the Holy Sepulchre.
Nor, in the golden age of English genius, were
there any very remarkable works of pure fic-
tion. Since that period to the present day,
however, there has been a rich succession of
novels and romances, each increasing the
stores of innocent delight, and shedding on hu-
man life some new tint of tender colouring.
The novels of Richardson are at once
among the grandest and the most singular crea-
tions of human genius. They combine an ac-
curate acquaintance with the freest libertinism,
and the sternest professions of virtue—a sport-
ing with vicious casuistry, and the deepest
horror of free-thinking—the most stately ideas
of paternal authority, and the most elaborate
display of its abuses. Prim and stiff, almost
without parallel, the author perpetually treads
on the very borders of indecorum, but with a
solemn and assured step, as if certain that he
could never fall. “The precise, strait-laced
Richardson,” says Mr. Lamb in one of the pro-
found and beautiful notes to his specimens,
“has strengthened vice from the mouth of
Lovelace, with entangling sophistries, and ab-
struse pleas against her adversary virtue,
which Sedley, Yilliers, and Rochester wanted
depth of libertinism sufficient to have invent-
ed.’' He had, in fact, the power of making any
set of notions, however fantastical, appear as
“truths of holy writ,” to his readers. This he
did by the authority with which he disposed of
all things, and by the infinite minuteness of his
details. His gradations are so gentle, that we
do not at any one point hesitate to follow him,
and should descend with him to any depth
before we perceived that our path had been
unequal. By the means of this strange magic,
wre become anxious for the marriage of Pa-
mela with her base master ; because the author
has so imperceptibly wrought on us the belief
of an awful distance between the rights of an
esquire and his servant, that our imaginations
regard it in the place of all moral distinctions.
After all, the general impression made on us
by his works is virtuous. Clementina is to
the soul a new and majestic image, inspired by
virtue and by love, which raises and refines its
conceptions. She has all the depth and in-
tensity of the Italian character, with all the
purity of an angel. She is at the same time
one of the grandest of tragic heroines, and the
divinest of religious enthusiasts. Clarissa
alone is above her. Clementina steps statelily
in her very madness, amidst “the pride,pomp,
and circumstance” of Italian nobility; Clarissa
is triumphant, though violated, deserted, and
encompassed by vice and infamy. Never can
we forget that amazing scene, in which, on the
effort of her mean seducer to renew his out-
rages, she appears in all the radiance of men-
tal purity, among the wretches assembled to
witness his triumph, where she startles them by
her first appearance, as by a vision from
above ; and holding the penknife to her breast,
with her eyes lifted to heaven, prepares to die,
if her craven destroyer advances, striking the
vilest with deep awe of goodness, and walk-
ing placidly, at last, from the circle of her foes,
none of them daring to harm her! How pa-
thetic, above all other pathos in the world, are
those snatches of meditation which she com-
mits to the paper, in the first delirium of her
wo ! How delicately imagined are her prepa-
rations for that grave in which alone she can
find repose ! Cold must be the hearts of those
who can conceive them as too elaborate, or
who can venture to criticise them. In this
novel all appears most real; we feel enve-
loped, like Don Quixote, by a thousand
threads ; and like him, would we rather re-
main so for ever, than break one of their silken
fibres. Clarissa Harlowe is one of the books
which leave us different beings from those
which they find us. “ Sadder and wiser” do
we arise from its perusal.
Yet when we read Fielding’s novels after
those of Richardson, we feel as if a stupen-
dous pressure were removed from our souls.
We seem suddenly to have left a palace of
enchantment, where we have past through
long galleries filled with the most gorgeous
images, and illumined by a light not quite
human nor yet quite divine, into the fresh air,
and the common ways of this “bright and
breathing world.” We travel on the high
road of humanity, yet meet in it pleasanter
companions, and catch more delicious snatches
of refreshment, than ever we can hope else-
where to enjoy. The mock heroic of Field-
ing, when he condescends to that ambiguous
style, is scarcely less pleasing than its stately
prototype. It is a sort of spirited defiance to
fiction, on the behalf of reality, by one who
knew full well all the strongholds of that
nature which he was defending. There is not
in Fielding much of that which can properly
be called ideal—if we except the character of
Parson Adams; but his works represent life
as more delightful than it seems to common
experience, by disclosing those of its dear im-
munities, which we little think of, even when
Ave enjoy them. How delicious are all his re-
freshments at all his inns ! How vivid are
the transient joys of his heroes, in their
checkered course—how full and overflowing
are their final raptures! His Tom Jones is
quite unrivalled in plot, and is to be ri\ralled
only in his own works for felicitous deline-
ation of character. The little which we have
told us of Allworthy, especially that which re-ON BRITISH NOVELS AND ROMANCES.
7
lates to his feelings respecting his deceased
wife, makes us feel for him, as for one of the
best and most revered friends of our child-
hood. Was ever the ‘‘soul of goodness in
things evil” better disclosed, than in the
scruples and the dishonesty of Black George,
that tenderest of gamekeepers, and truest of
thieves 1 Did ever health, good-humour, frank-
heartedness, and animal spirits hold out so
freshly against vice and fortune as in the
hero 1 Was ever so plausible a hypocrite as
Blifil, who buys a Bible of Tom Jones so de-
lightfully, and who, by his admirable imitation
of virtue, leaves it almost in doubt, whether,
by a counterfeit so dexterous, he did not merit
some share of her rewards 1 Who shall gain-
say the cherry lips of Sophia Western 1 The
story of Lady Bellaston we confess to be a
blemish. But if there be any vice left in the
work, the fresh atmosphere diffused over all
its scenes, will render it innoxious. Joseph
Andrews has far less merit as a story—but it
depicts Parson Adams, whom it does the heart
good to think on. He who drew this cha-
racter, if he had done nothing else, would not
have lived in vain. We fancy we can see
him with his torn cassock, (in honour of his
high profession,) his volumes of sermons,
which we really wish had been printed, and
his iEschylus, the best of all the editions of
that sublime tragedian! Whether he longs
after his own sermons against vanity—or is
absorbed in the romantic tale of the fair Leo-
nora—or uses his ox-like fists in defence of
the fairer Fanny, he equally imbodies in his
person, “the homely beauty of the good old
cause,” of high thoughts, pure imaginations,
and manners unspotted by the world.
Smollet seems to have had more touch of
romance than Fielding, but not so profound
and intuitive a knowledge of humanity’s hid-
den treasures. There is nothing in his works
comparable to Parson Adams; but then, on
the other hand, Fielding has not any thing of
the kind equal to Strap. Partridge is dry, and
hard, compared with this poor barber-boy,
with his generous overflowings of affection.
Roderick Random, indeed, with its varied de-
lineation of life, is almost a romance. Its
hero is worthy of his name. He is the sport
of fortune rolled about through the “many
ways of wretchedness,” almost without re-
sistance, but ever catching those tastes of joy
which are everywhere to be relished by those
who are willing to receive them. We seem
to roll on with him, and get delectably giddy
in his company.
The humanity of the Vicar of Wakefield is
less deep than that of Roderick Random, but
sweeter tinges of fancy are cast over it. The
sphere in which Goldsmith’s powers moved
vas never very extensive, but within it he
discovered all that was good, and shed on it
the tenderest lights of his sympathizing ge-
nius. No one ever excelled so much as he in
depicting amiable follies and endearing weak-
nesses. His satire makes us at once smile at
anl love all that he so tenderly ridicules.
The good Vicar’s trust in Monogamy, his
sol’s purchase of the spectacles, his own sale
of his horse to his solemn admirer at the
fair; the blameless vanities of his daughters,
and his resignation under his accumulated
sorrows, are among the best treasures of me-
mory. The pastoral scenes in this exquisite
tale are the sweetest in the world. The scents
of the hay-field, and of the blossoming hedge-
rows, seem to come freshly to our senses.
The whole romance is a tenderly-coloured
picture, in little, of human nature’s most
geniah qualities.
De Foe is one of the most extraordinary of
English authors. His Robinson Crusoe is
deservedly one of the most popular of novels.
It is usually the first read, and always among
the last forgotten. The interest of its scenes
in the uninhabited island is altogether pe-
culiar; since there is nothing to develope the
character but deep solitude. Man, there, is
alone in the world, and can hold communion
only with nature, and nature’s God. There is
nearly the same situation in Philoctetes, that
sweetest of the Greek tragedies; but there we
only see the poor exile as he is about to leave
his sad abode, to which he has become at-
tached, even with a child-like cleaving. In
Robinson Crusoe, life is stripped of all its
social joys, yet we feel how worthy of cherish-
ing it is, with nothing but silent nature to
cheer it. Thus are nature and the soul, left
with no other solace, represented in their
native grandeur and intense communion.
With how fond an interest do we dwell on
all the exertions of our fellow-man, cut off
from his kind; watch his growing plantations
as they rise, and seem to water them with our
tears ! The exceeding vividness of all the
descriptions are more delightful when com-
bined with the loneliness and distance of the
scene “placed far amid the melancholy main”
in which we become dwellers. We have
grown so familiar with the solitude, that the
print of man’s foot seen in the sand seems to
appal us as an awful thing !—The Family In-
structor of this author, in which he inculcates
weightily his own notions of puritanical de-
meanour and parental authority, is very
curious. It is a strange mixture of narrative
and dialogue, fanaticism and nature ; but all
done with such earnestness that the sense of
its reality never quits us. Nothing, however,
can be more harsh and unpleasing than the
impression which it leaves. It does injustice
both to religion and the world. It represents
the innocent pleasures of the latter as deadly
sins, and the former as most gloomy, austere,
and exclusive. One lady resolves on poison-
ing her husband, and another determines to
go to the play, and the author treats both
offences with a severity nearly equal!
Far different from this ascetic novel is that
best of religious romances, the Fool of Quality.
The piety there is at once most deep and most
benign. There is much, indeed, of eloquent
mysticism, but all evidently most heartfelt
and sincere. The yearnings of the soul after
universal good and intimate communion with
the divine nature were never more nobly
shown. The author is most prodigal of his
intellectual wealth—“his bounty is as bound-
less as the sea, his love as deep.” He gives
to his chief characters riches endless as the8
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
spiritual stores of his own heart. It is, indeed,
only the last which gives value to the first in
his writings. It is easy to endow men with
millions on paper, and to make them willing
to. scatter them among the wretched ; but it is
the corresponding bounty and exuberance of
the author’s soul, which here makes the mo-
ney sterling, and the charity divine. The
hero of this romance always appears to our
imagination like a radiant vision encircled
with celestial glories. The stories introduced
in it are delightful exceptions to the usual rule
by which such incidental tales are properly
regarded as impertinent intrusions. That of
David Doubtful is of the most romantic in-
terest, and at the same time steeped in feeling
the most profound. But that of Clement and
his wife is perhaps the finest. The scene in
which they are discovered, having placidly
lain down to die of hunger together, in gentle
submission to Heaven, depicts a quiescence
the most sublime, yet the most affecting. No-
thing can be more delightful than the sweeten-
ing ingredients in their cup of sorrow. The
heroic act of the lady to free herself from her
ravisher’s grasp, her trial and her triumphant
acquittal, have a grandeur above that of
lraged}\ The genial spirit of the author’s
faith leads him to exult especially in the re-
pentance of the wicked. No human writer
seems ever to have hailed the contrite with so
cordial a welcome. His scenes appear over-
spread with a rich atmosphere of tenderness,
which softens and consecrates all things.
We would not pass over, without a tribute
of gratitude, Mrs. Radcliffe’s wild and won-
drous tales. When we read them, the world
seems shut out, and we breathe only in an en-
chanted region, where lover’s lutes tremble
over placid waters, mouldering castles rise
conscious of deeds of blood, and the sad voices
of the past echo through deep vaults and lonely
galleries. There is always majesty in her ter-
rors. She produces more effect by whispers
and slender hints than ever was attained by
the most vivid display of horrors. Her con-
clusions are tame and impotent almost without
example. But while her spells actually ope-
rate, her power is truly magical. Who can
ever forget the scene in the Romance of the
Forest, where the marquis, who has long
sought to make the heroine the victim of licen-
tious love, after working on her protector, over
whom he has a mysterious influence, to steal
at night into her chamber, and when his trem-
bling listener expects only a requisition for
delivering her into his hands, replies to the
question of “ then—to-night, my Lord!” “ Ade-
laide c/ics”—or the allusions to the dark veil in
the Mysteries of Udolpho—or the stupendous
scenes in Spalatro’s cottage 1 Of all romance
writers Mrs. Radcliffe is the most romantic.
The present age has produced a singular
number of authors of delightful prose fiction,
on whom we intend to give a series of criti-
cisms. We shall begin with Mackenzie,
whom we shall endeavour to compare with
Sterne, and for this reason we have passed
over the works of the latter in our present cur-
sory view of the novelists of other days.
MACKENZIE.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
Although our veneration for Mackenzie has
induced us to commence this series of articles
with an attempt to express our sense of his
genius, we scarcely know how to criticise its
exquisite creations. The feelings which they
have awakened within us are too old and too
sacred almost for expression. We scarcely
dare to scrutinize with a critic’s ear, the blend-
ing nc^tes of that sad and soft music of human-
ity which they breathe. We feel as if there
were a kind of privacy in our sympathies with
them—as though they were a part of ourselves,
which strangers knew not—and as if in pub-
licly expressing them, we were violating the
sanctities of our own souls. We must recol-
lect, however, that our readers know them as
well as we do, and then to dwell with them
Jenderly on their merits will seem like dis-
coursing of the long-cherished memories of
friends we had in common, and of sorrows
participated in childhood.
The purely sentimental style in wrhich the
tales of Mackenzie are written, though deeply
felt by the people, has seldom met with due
appreciation from the critics. It has its own
genuine and peculiar beauties, which we love
the more the longer we feel them. Its conse-
crations are altogether drawn from the soul.
The gentle tinges wThich it casts on human life
are shed, not from the imagination or the fancy,
but from the affections. It represents, indeed,
humanity as more tender, its sorrows as more
gentle, its joys as more abundant than they
appear to common observers. But this is not
effected by those influences of the imagination
which consecrate whatever they touch, which
detect the secret analogies of beauty, and brinj
kindred graces from all parts of nature t)
heighten the images which they reveal, ft
affects us rather by casting off from the sonl
those impurities and littlenesses which it con-
tracts in the world, than by foreign aids. It
appeals to those simple emotions which are
not the high prerogatives of genius, but which
are common to all who are “made of one
blood,” and partake in one primal sympathy.
The holiest feelings, after all, are those which
would be the most common if gross selishMACKENZIE.
9
ness and low ambition froze not “the genial
current of the soul.’’ The meanest and most
ungifted have their gentle remembrances of
early days. Love has tinged the life of the
artisan and the cottager with something of the
romantic. The course of none has been along
so beaten a road that they remember not fondly
some resting-places in their journeys; some
turns of their path in which lovely prospects
broke in upon them; some soft plats of green
refreshing to their weary feet. Confiding love,
generous friendship, disinterested humanity,
require no recondite learning, no high imagi-
nation, to enable an honest heart to appreciate
and feel them. Too often, indeed, are the sim-
plicities of nature and the native tendernesses
of the soul nipped and chilled by those anxie-
ties which lie on them “ like an untimely frost.”
“ The world is too much with us.” We be-
come lawyers, politicians, merchants, and for-
get that we are men, and sink in our transitory
vocations that character which is to last for
ever. A tale of sentiment—such as those of
that honoured veteran whose works we would
now particularly remember—awakens all these
pulses of sympathy with our kind, of whose
beatings we had become almost unconscious.
It does honour to humanity by stripping off its
artificial disguises. Its magic is not like that
by which Arabian enchanters raised up glit-
tering spires, domes, and palaces by a few ca-
balistic words ; but resembles their power to
disclose veins of precious ore where all seemed
sterile and blasted. It gently puts aside the
brambles which overcast the stream of life,
and lays it open to the reflections of those deli-
cate clouds which lie above it in the heavens.
It shows to us the soft undercourses of feeling,
which neither time nor circumstances can
wholly stop; and the depth of affection in the
soul, which nothing but sentiment itself can
fathom. It disposes us to pensive thought—
expands the sympathies—and makes all the
half-forgotten delights of youth “come back
upon our hearts again,” to soften and to
cheer us.
Too often has the sentiment of which we
have spoken been confounded with sickly af-
fectations in a common censure. But no things
can be more opposite than the paradoxes of
the inferior order of German sentimentalists
and the works of a writer like Mackenzie.
Real sentiment is the truest, the most genuine,
and the most lasting thing on earth. It is more
ancient as well as more certain in its opera-
tions than the reasoning faculties. We know
and feel before we think; we perceive before
we compare; we enjoy before we believe. As
the evidence of sense is stronger than that of
testimony, so the light of our inward eye more
truly shows to us the secrets of the heart than
the most elaborate process of reason. Riches,
honours, power, are transitory — the things
which appear, pass away—the shadows of life
alone are stable and unchanging. Of the re-
collections of infancy nothing can deprive us.
Love endures, even if its object perishes, and
nurtures the soul of the mourner. Sentiment
has a kind of divine alchymy, rendering grief
itself the source of tenderest thoughts and far-
reaching desires, which the sufferer cherishes '
2
as sacred treasures. The sorrows over which
it sheds its influence are “ ill-bartered for the
garishness of joy;” for they win us softly from
life, and fit ns to die smiling. It endures, not
only while fortune changes, but while opinions
vary, which the young enthusiast fondly hoped
would never forsake him. It remains when
the unsubstantial pageants of goodliest hope
vanish. It binds the veteran to the child by
ties which no fluctuations even of belief can
alter. It preserves the only identity, save that
of consciousness, which man with certainty
retains—connecting our past with our present
being by delicate ties, so subtle that they vi-
brate to every breeze of feeling; y&t so strong
that the tempests of life have not power to
break them. It assures us that what we have
been we shall be, and that our human hearts
shall vibrate with their first sympathies while
the species shall endure.
We think that, on the whole, Mackenzie is
the first master of this delicious style. Sterne,
doubtless, has deeper touches of humanity in
some of his works. But there is no sustained
feeling—no continuity of emotion—no extend-
ed range of thought, over which the mind can
brood in his ingenious and fantastical writings.
His spirit is far too mercurial and airy to suffer
him tenderly to linger over those images of
sweet humanity which he discloses. His cle-
verness breaks the charm which his feeling
spreads, as by magic, around us. His exqui-
site sensibility is ever counteracted by his per-
ceptions of the ludicrous, and his ambition
after the strange. No harmonious feeling
breathes from any of his pieces. He sweeps
“ that curious instrument, the human heart,”
with hurried fingers, calling forth in rapid
succession its deepest and its liveliest tones,
and making only marvellous discord. His
pathos is, indeed, most genuine while it lasts;
but the soul is not suffered to cherish the feel-
ing which it awakens. He does not shed, like
Mackenzie, one mild light on the path of life;
but scatters on it wild coruscations of ever-
shifting brightness, which, while they some-
times disclose spots of inimitable beauty,
often do but fantastically play over objects
dreary and revolting. All in Mackenzie is
calm, gentle, harmonious. No play of mis-
timed wit, no flourish of rhetoric, no train of
philosophical speculation, for a moment di-
verts our sympathy. Each of his best works
is like one deep thought, and the impression
which it leaves, soft, sweet, and undivided as
the summer evening’s holiest and latest sigh.
The only exception which we can make to
this character, is the Man of the World. Here
the attempt to obtain intricacy of plot disturbs
the emotion which, in the other works of the
author, is so harmoniously excited. A tale of
sentiment should be most simple. Its whole
effect depends on its keeping the tenor of its
predominant feeling unbroken. Another de-
fect in this story is, the length of time over
which it spreads its narrative. Sindall, alone,
connects the two generations which it em-
braces, and he is too mean and uninteresting
thus to appear both as the hero and the chorus.
When a story is thus continued from a mother
to a daughter, it seems to have no legitimate10
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
boundary. The painful remembrances of the
former interferes with our interest for the
latter, and the present difficulties of the last
deprive us of those emotions of fond retro-
spection, which the fate of the first would
otherwise awaken. Still there are in this tale
scenes of pathos delicious as any which even
the author himself has drawn. The tender
pleasure which the Man of Feeling excites is
wholly without alloy. Its hero is the most
beautiful personification of gentleness, pa-
tience, and meek suffierings, which the heart
can conceive. Julia de Roubigne, however, is,
on the whole, the most delightful of the au-
thor’s works. There is, in this tale, enough of
plot to keep alive curiosity, and sharpen the
interest which the sentiment awakens, without
any of those strange turns and perplexing
incidents which break the current of sympa-
thy. The diction is in perfect harmony with
the subject—“most musical, most melan-
choly”—with “golden cadences” responsive
to the thoughts. There is a plaintive charm
in the image presented to us of the heroine,
too fair almost to dwell on. How exquisite is
the description given of her by her maid, in a
letter to her friend, relating to her fatal mar-
riage :—“She was dressed in a white muslin
night-gown, with striped lilac and white
ribands; her hair was kept in the loose way
you used to make me dress it for her at Bel-
ville, with two waving curls down one side
of her neck, and a braid of little pearls. And
to be sure, with her dark, brown locks resting
upon it, her bosom looked as pure white as
the driven snow. And then her eyes, when
she gave her hand to the count! they were
cast down, and you might see her eyelashes,
like strokes of a pencil, over the white of her
skin—the modest gentleness, with a sort of
sadness too, as it were, and a gentle heave of
her bosom at the same time.” And yet, such
is the feeling communicated to us by the
whole work, that we are ready to believe even
this artless picture an inadequate representa-
tion of that beauty which we never cease to
feel. How natural and tear-moving is the
letter of Savillon to his friend, describing the
scenes of his early love, and recalling, with
intense vividness, all the little circumstances
which aided its progress! What an idea, in
a single expression, does Julia give of the
depth and the tenderness of her affection,
when describing herself as taking lessons in
drawing from her lover, sne says that she felt
something from the touch of his hand “not
the less delightful from carrying a sort of fear
along with that delight: it was like a pulse in
the soul!” The last scenes of this novel are
matchless in their kind. Never was so much
of the terrific alleviated by so much of the
pitiful. The incidents are most tragic; yet
over them is diffused a breath of sweetness,
which softens away half their anguish, and
reconciles us to that which remains. Our
minds are prepared, long before, for the early
nipping of that delicate blossom, for which
this world was too bleak. Julia’s last inter-
view with Savillon mitigates her doom, partly
by the joy her heart has tasted, and which
nothing afterwards in life could equal, and
partly by the certainty that she must either
become guilty or continue wretched. Nothing
can be at once sweeter and more affecting
than her ecstatic dream after she has taken
the fatal mixture, her seraphical playing on
the organ, to which the waiting angels seem
to listen, and her tranquil recalling the scenes
of peaceful happiness with her friend, as she
imagines her arms about her neck, and fancies
that her Maria’s tears are falling on her bo-
som. Then comes Montaubon’s description
of her as she drank the poison:—“She took
it from me smiling, and her look seemed to
lose its confusion. She drank my health!
She was dressed in her white silk bed-gown,
ornamented with pale, pink ribands. Her
cheek was gently flushed from their reflection;
her blue eyes were turned upwards as she
drank, and a dark-brown ringlet lay on her
shoulder.” We do not think even the fate of
“ the gentle lady married to the Moor” calls
forth tears so sweet as those which fall for the
Julia of Mackenzie!
We rejoice to know and feel that these
delicious tales cannot perish. Since they
were written, indeed, the national imagination
has been, in a great degree, perverted by
strong excitements, and “ fed on poisons till
they have become a kind of nutriment.” But
the quiet and unpresuming beauties of these
works depend not on the fashion of the world.
They cannot be out of date till the dreams of
young imagination shall vanish, and the
deepest sympathies of love and hope shall be
chilled for ever. While other works are ex-
tolled, admired, and reviewed, these will be
loved and wept over. Their author, in the
evening of his days, may truly feel that he
has not lived in vain. Gentle hearts shall
ever blend their thought of him among their
remembrances of the benefactors of their
youth. And when the fever of the world
“ shall hang upon the beatings of their hearts,”
how often will their spirits turn to him, who,
as he cast a soft seriousness over the morning
of life, shall assist in tranquillizing its noon
tide sorrows!THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY.
II
*
“THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY.”
Here are we in a bright and breathing world.— Wordsworth.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
We esteem the productions which the great
novelist of Scotland has poured forth with
startling speed from his rich treasury, not
only as multiplying the sources of delight to
thousands, but as shedding the most genial
influences on the taste and feeling of the peo-
ple. These, with their fresh spirit of health,
have counteracted the workings of that blast-
ing spell by which the genius of Lord Byron
once threatened strangely to fascinate and de-
base the vast multitude of English readers.
Men, seduced by their noble poet, had begun
to pay homage to mere energy, to regard vir-
tue as low and mean compared with lofty
crime, and to think that high passion carried
in itself a justification for its most fearful ex-
cesses. He inspired them with a feeling of
diseased curiosity to know the secrets of dark
bosoms, while he opened his own perturbed
spirit to their gaze. His works, and those im-
ported from Germany, tended to give to our
imagination an introspective cast, to perplex
it with metaphysical subtleties, and to render
our poetry “ sicklied o’er with the pale cast of
thought.” The genius of our country was
thus in danger of being perverted from its
purest uses to become the minister of vain
philosophy, and the anatomist of polluted
natures.
“The author of Waverley” (as he delights
to be styled) has weaned it from its idols, and
restored to it its warm, youthful blood, and
human affections. Nothing can be more op-
posed to the gloom, the inward revolving*,
and morbid speculations, which the world
once seemed inclined to esteem as the sole
prerogatives of the bard, than his exquisite
creations. His persons are no shadowy ab-
stractions—no personifications of a dogma—
no portraits of the author varied in costume,
but similar in features. With all their rich
varieties of character, whether their heroical
spirit touches on the godlike, or their wild
eccentricities border on the farcical, they are
men fashioned of human earth, and warm
with human sympathies. He does not seek
for the sublime in the mere intensity of burn-
ing passion, or for sources of enjoyment in
those feverish gratifications which some would
teach us to believe the only felicities worthy
of high and impassioned souls. He writes
everywhere with a keen and healthful relish
for all the good things of life—constantly re-
freshes us where we least expected it, with a
sense of that pleasure which is spread through
the earth “ to be caught in stray gifts by who-
ever will find,” and brightens all things with
the spirit of gladness. There is little of a medi-
tative or retrospective cast in his works.
Whatever age he chooses for his story, lives
before us: we become contemporaries of all
his persons, and sharers in all their fortunes.
Of all men who have ever written, excepting
Shakspeare, he has perhaps the least of ex-
clusiveness, the least of those feelings which
keep men apart from their kind. He has his
own predilections—and we love him the better
for them, even when they are not ours—but
they never prevent him from grasping with
cordial spirit all that is human. His tolerance
is the most complete, for it extends to adverse
bigotries; his love of enjoyment does not
exclude the ascetic from his respect, nor does
his fondness for hereditary rights and time-
honoured institutions prevent his admiration
of the fiery zeal of a sectary. His genius
shines with an equal light on all—illuminating
the vast hills of purple heath, the calm breast
of the quiet water, and the rich masses of the
grove—now gleaming with a sacred light on
the distant towers of some old monastery,
now softening the green-wood shade, now
piercing the gloom of the rude cave where
the old Covenanter lies—free and universal,
and bounteous as the sun—and pouring its
radiance with a like impartiality “upon a liv-
ing and rejoicing world.”
We shall not attempt, in this slight sketch,
to follow our author regularly through all his
rich and varied creations; but shall rather
consider his powers in general of natural de-
scription—of skill in the delineation of cha-
racter—and of exciting high and poetical in-
terest, by the gleams of his fancy, the tragic
elevation of his scenes, and the fearful touches
which he delights to borrow from the world of
spirits.
In the vivid description of natural scenery
our author is wholly without a rival, unless
Sir Walter Scott will dispute the pre-eminence
with him ; and, even then, we think the novel
ist would be found to surpass the bard. The
free grace of nature has, of late, contributed
little to the charm of our highest poetry. Lord
Byron has always, in his reference to the ma-
jestic scenes of the universe, dealt rather in
grand generalities than minute pictures, has
used the turbulence of the elements as sym-
bols of inward tempests, and sought the vast
solitudes and deep tranquillity of nature, but
to assuage the fevers of the soul. Wordsworth
—who, amidst the contempt of the ignorani
and of the worldly wise, has been gradually
and silently moulding all the leading spirit*12
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
of the age—has sought communion with na-
ture, for other purposes than to describe her
external forms. He has shed on all creation a
sweet and consecrating radiance, far other than
“ the light of common day.” In his poetry the
hills and streams appear, not as they are seen
by vulgar eyes, but as the poet himself, in the
holiness of his imagination, has arrayed them.
They are peopled not with the shapes of old
superstition, but with the shadows of the poet’s
thought, the dreams of a glory that shall be.
They are resonant—not with the voice of birds,
or the soft whisperings of the breeze, but with
echoes from beyond the tomb. Their lowliest
objects—a dwarf bush, an old stone, a daisy,
or a small celandine—affect us with thoughts
as deep, and inspire meditations as profound*,
as the loveliest scene of reposing beauty, or
the wildest region of the mountains—because
the heart of the poet is all in all—and the visi-
ble objects of his love are not dear to us for
their own colours or forms, but for the senti-
ment which he has linked to them, and which
they bring back upon our souls. We would
not have this otherwise for all the romances in
the world. But it gladdens us to see the in-
trinsic claims of nature on our hearts asserted,
and to feel that she is, for her own sake, worthy
of deep love. It is not as the richest index
of divine philosophy alone that she has a right
to our affections; and, therefore, we rejoice
that in our author she has found a votary to
whom her works are in themselves “ an appe-
tite, a feeling, and a love,” and who finds, in
their contemplation, “no need of a remoter
charm, by thought supplied, or any interest
unborrowed from the eye.” Every gentle
swelling of the ground—every gleam of the
water—every curve and rock of the shore—all
varieties of the earth, from the vastest crag to
the soft grass of the woodland walk, and all
changes of the heaven from “morn to noon,
from noon to latest eve,”—are placed before us,
in his works, with a distinctness beyond that
which the painter’s art can attain, while we
seem to breathe the mountain air, or drink in
the freshness of the valleys. We perceive the
change in the landscape at every step of the
delightful journey through which he guides
us. Our recollection never confounds any one
scene with another, although so many are laid
in the same region, and are alike in general
character. The lake among the hills, on which
the cave of Donald Bean bordered—that near
which the clan of the M‘Gregors combated, and
which closed in blue calmness over the body
of Maurice—and that which encircled the
castle of Julian Avenel—are distinct from
each other in the imagination, as the loveliest
scenes which we have corporally visited.
What in softest beauty can exceed the descrip-
tion of the ruins of St. Ruth ; in the lovelily
romantic, the approach to the pass of Aberfoil;
in varied lustre, the winding shores of Ellan-
gowan bay; in rude and dreary majesty, the
Highland scenes, where Ronald of the Mist
lay hidden ; and in terrific sublimity, the rising
of the sea on Fairport Sands, and the perils
of Sir Arthur Wardour and his daughter ? Our
author’s scenes of comparative barrenness are
enchanting by the vividness of his details, and
the fond delight with which he dwells on their
redeeming features. We seem to know every
little plot of green, every thicket of copse-wood,
and every turn and cascade of the stream in
the vale of Glendearg, and to remember each
low bush in the barren scene of her skirmish
between the Covenanters and Claverhouse, as
though we had been familiar with it in child-
hood. The descriptions of this author are
manifestly rendered more vivid by the intense
love which he bears to his country—not only
to her luxuriant and sublime scenery, but “ her
bare earth, and mountains bare, and grass in the
green field.” He will scarcely leave a brook, a
mountain ash, or a lichen on the rocks of her
shore, without due honour. He may fitly be re-
garded as the genius of Scotland, who has given
her a poetical interest, a vast place in the ima-
gination, which may almost compensate for the
loss of that political independence, the last
strugglinglove for which he so nobly celebrates.
“ The author of Waverley” is, however, chief-
ly distinguished by the number, the spirit, and
the individuality of his characters. We know
not, indeed, where to begin or to end with the
vast crowd of their genial and noble shapes
which come thronging on our memory. His
ludicrous characters are dear to us, because
they are seldom merely quaint or strange, the
dry oddities of fancy, but have as genuine a
kindred with humanity as the most gifted and
enthusiastic of their fellows. The laughter
which they excite is full of social sympathy,
and we love them and our nature the better
w'hile we indulge it. Whose heart does not
claim kindred with Baillie Nichol Jarvie,
while the Glasgow weaver, without losing one
of his nice peculiarities, kindles into honest
warmth with his ledger in hand, and in spite
of broad-cloth grows almost romantic] In
whom does a perception of the ludicrous for a
moment injure the veneration which the brave*
stout-hearted and chivalrous Baron of Brad*
wardine inspires! Who shares not in the
fond enthusiasm of Oldbuck for black letter, in
his eager and tremulous joy at grasping rare
books at low prices, and in his discoveries of
Roman camps and monuments which we can
hardly forgive Edie Ochiltree for disproving?
Compared with these genial persons, the por-
traits of mere singularity—however inimitably
finished—are harsh and cold ; of these, indeed,
the works of our author afford scarcely more
than one signal example—Captain Dalgetty—
who is a mere piece of ingenious mechanism,
like the automaton chess-player, and with all his
cleverness, gives us little pleasure, for he excites
as little sympathy. Almost all the persons of
these novels, diversified as they are, are really
endowed with some deep and elevating enthu
siasm, which, whether breaking through ec-
centricities of manner, perverted by error, or
mingled with crime, ever asserts the majesty
of our nature, its deep affections, and undying
powers. This is true, not only of the divine
enthusiasm of Flora Mac Ivor—of the sweet
heroism of Jeannie Deans—of the angelic
tenderness and fortitude of Rebecca, but of the
puritanic severities and awful zeal of Balfour
of Burley, and the yet more frightful energy
of Macbriar, equally ready to sacrifice a blame*THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY.
13
less youth, and to bear without shrinking the
keenest of mortal agonies. In the fierce and
hunted child of the mist—in the daring and
reckless libertine Staunton—in the fearful
Elspeth—in the vengeful wife of M‘Gregor—
are traits of wild and irregular greatness, frag-
ments of might and grandeur, which show
how noble and sacred a thing the heart of man
is, in spite of its strangest debasements and
perversions. How does the inimitable portrait
of Claverhouse at first excite our hatred for
that carelessness of human misery, that con-
tempt for the life of his fellows, that cold hau-
teur and finished indifference which are so
vividly depicted;—and yet how does his mere
soldierly enthusiasm redeem him at last, and
almost persuade us that the honour and fame
of such a man were cheaply purchased by a
thousand lives! We can scarcely class Rob
Roy among these mingled characters. He has
nothing but the name and the fortune of an
outlaw and a robber. He is, in truth, one of
the noblest of heroes—a Prince of the hether
and the rock—whose very thirst for vengeance
is tempered and harmonized by his fondness
for the wild and lovely scenes of his home.
Indeed the influences of majestic scenery are
to be perceived tinging the rudest minds which
the author has made to expatiate amidst its
solitudes. The passions even of Burley and of
Macbriar borrow a grace from the steep crags,
the deep masses of shade, and the silent caves,
among which they were nurtured, as the most
rapid and perturbed stream which rushes
through a wild and romantic region bears
some reflection of noble imagery on its im-
petuous surface. To some of his less stern
but unlettered personages, nature seems to
have been a kindly instructor, nurturing high
thoughts within them, and well supplying to
them all the lack of vvritten wisdom. The wild
sublimity of Meg Merrilies is derived from
her long converse with the glories of creation ;
the floating clouds have lent to her something
of their grace ; she has contemplated the rocks
till her soul is firm as they, and gazed intently
on the face of nature until she has become
half acquainted with its mysteries. The old
king’s beadman has not journeyed for years
in vain among the hills and woods; their
beauty has sunk into his soul; and his days
seem bound each to each by “natural piety,”
which he has learned among them.
That we think there is much of true poeti-
cal genius—much of that which softens, re-
fines, and elevates humanity in the works of
this author—may be inferred from our remarks
on his power of imbodying human character.
The gleams of a soft and delicate fancy are
tenderly cast over many of their scenes—
heightening that which is already lovely, re-
lieving the gloomy, and making even the thin
blades of barren regions shine refreshingly on
the eyes. We occasionally meet with a pure
and pensive beauty, as in Pattieson’s descrip-
tion of his sensations in his evening walks
after the feverish drudgery of his school—
with wild yet graceful fantasies, as in the
songs of Davie Gellatly—or with visionary
and aerial shapes, like the spirit of the House
of Avenel. But the poetry of this author is, for
the most part, of a far deeper cast;—flowing
from his intense consciousness of the mysteries
of our nature, and constantly impressing on
our minds the high sanctities and the mortal
destiny of our being. No one has ever made
so impressive a use of the solemnities of life
and death—of the awfulness which rests over
the dying, and renders all their words and ac-
tions sacred—or of the fond retrospection, and
the intense present enjoyment, snatched fear-
fully as if to secure it from fate, which are the
peculiar blessings of a short and uncertain ex-
istence. Was ever the robustness of life—the
mantling of the strong current of joyous blood
—the high animation of health,'spirits, and a
stout heart, more vividly brought before the
mind than in the description of Frank Ken-
nedy’s demeanour as he rides lustily forth,
never to return ?—or the fearful change from
this hearty enjoyment of life to the chill ness
of mortality, more deeply impressed on the
imagination than in all the minute examina-
tions of the scene of his murder, the traces of
the deadly contest, the last marks of the strug-
gling footsteps, and the description of the
corpse at the foot of the crag I Can a scene
of mortality be conceived more fearful than
that where Bertram, in the glen of Dernclugh,
witnesses the last agonies of one over whom
Meg Merrilies is chanting her wild ditties to
soothe the passage of the spirit? What a stu-
pendous scene is that of the young fisher’s
funeral—the wretched father writhing in the
contortions of agony—the mother silent in ten-
der sorrow—the motley crowd assembled to par-
take of strange festivity—and the old grand-
mother fearfully linking the living to the dead,
now turning her wheel in apathy and uncon-
sciousness, now drinking with frightful mirth
to many “such merry meetings,” now, to the
astonishment of the beholders, rising to comfort
her son, and intimating with horrid solemnity
that there was more reason to mourn for her
than for the departed ! Equal in terrific power,
is the view given us of the last confession and
death of that “awful woman”—her intense
perception of her long past guilt, with her
deadness to all else—her yet quenchless hate
to the object of her youthful vengeance, ani-
mating her frame with unearthly fire—her
dying fancies that she is about to follow her
mistress, and the broken images of old gran-
deur which flit before her as she perishes.
These things are conceived in the highest
spirit of tragedy, which makes life and death
meet together, which exhibits humanity strip-
ped of its accidents in all its depth and height,
which impresses us at once with the victory
of death, and of the eternity of those energies
which it appears to subdue. There are also
in these works, situations of human interest
as strong as ever were invented—attended too
with all that high apparel of the imagination,
which renders the images of fear and anguish
majestical. Such is that scene in the lone
house after the defeat of the Covenanters,
where Morton finds himself in the midst of a
band of zealots, who regard him as given by
God into their hands as a victim—where he is
placed before the clock to gaze on the advances
of the hand to the hour when he is to be slain,
JB14
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
amidst the horrible devotion of his foes. The
whole scene is, we think, without an equal in
the conceptions which dramatic power has
been able to imbody. Its startling unexpected-
ness, yet its perfect probability to the imagina-
tion—the high tone and wild enthusiasm of
character in the murderers—the sacrificial
cast of their intended deed in their own raised
and perverted thoughts—the fearful view given
to the bodily senses of their prisoner of his re-
maining moments by the segment of the circle
yet to be traversed by the finger of the clock
before him, enable us to participate in the
workings of his own dizzy soul, as he stands
“awaiting till the sword destined to slay him
crept out of its scabbard gradually, and, as it
were by straw-breadths,” and condemned to
drink the bitterness of death “drop by drop,”
while his destined executioners seem “to alter
their forms and features like the spectres in a
feverish dream ; their features become larger
and their faces more disturbed;” until the
beings around him appear actually demons,
the walls seem to drop with blood, and “ the
light tick of the clock thrills on his ear with
such loud, painful distinctness, as if each
sound were the prick of a bodkin inflicted on
the naked nerve of the organ.” The effect is
even retrospectively heightened by the heroic
deaths of the Covenanters immediately suc-
ceeding, which give a dignity and a consecra-
tion to their late terrific design. The trial and
execution of Fergus Mac Ivor are also, in the
most exalted sense of the term, tragical. They
are not only of breathless interest from the ex-
ternal circumstances, nor of moral grandeur
from the heroism of Fergus and his follower,
but of poetic dignity from that power of ima-
gination which renders for a time the rules of
law sublime as well as fearful, and gives to
all the formalities of a trial more than a judi-
cial majesty. It is seldom, indeed, that the
terrors of our author offend or shock us, be-
cause they are accompanied by that reconcil-
ing power which softens without breaking the
current of our sympathies. But there are some
few instances of unrelieved horror—or of an-
guish, which overmasters fantasy—as the
strangling of Glossin by Dirk Haiteraich, the
administering of the torture to Macbriar, and
the bloody bridal of Lammermuir. If we com-
pare these with the terrors of Burley in his
cave—where with his naked sword in one
hand and his Bible in the other, he wrestles
with his own remorse, believing it, in the
spirit of his faith, a fiend of Satan—and with
the sinking of Ravenswood in the sands; we
shall feel how the grandeur of religious thought
in the first instance, and the stately scenery of
nature and the air of the supernatural in the
last, ennoble agony, and render horrors grate-
ful to the soul.
We must not pass over, without due ac-
knowledgment, the power of our author in the
description of battles, as exhibited in his pic-
tures of the engagement at Preston Pans, of
the first skirmish with the Covenanters, in
which they overcome Claverhouse, and of the
battle in which they were, in turn, defeated.
The art by which he contrives at once to give
*he mortal contest in all its breadth and vast-
ness—to present it to us in the noblest masses,
yet to make us spectators of each individual
circumstance of interest in the field, may ex-
cite the envy of a painter. We know of no-
thing resembling those delineations in history
or romance, except the descriptions given by
Thucydides of the blockade of Plataea, of the
Corcyrrean massacres, of the attempt to retake
Epipoloe in the nighty of the great naval action
before Syracuse, of all the romantic events of
the Sicilian war, and the varied miseries of
the Athenian army in their retreat under Ni-
cias. In the life and spirit, and minuteness of
the details—in the intermingling of allusions
to the scenery of the contests—and in the ge-
neral fervour breathed over the whole, there is
a remarkable resemblance between these pas-
sages of the Greek historian, and the narra-
tives of Scottish contests by the author of
Waverley. There is, too, the same patriotic zeal
in both ; though the feeling in the former is of
a more awful and melancholy cast, and that
of the latter more light and cheerful. The
Scottish novelist may, like the noblest histo-
rians, boast that he has given to his country
“ Kte; cuu”—a possession for ever !
It remains that we should say a word on
the use made of the supernatural in these ro-
mances. There is, in the mode of its employ-
ment, more of gusto—more that approaches to
an actual belief in its wonders, than in the
works of any other author of these incredulous
times. Even Shakspeare himself, in his re-
mote age, does not appear to have drank in
so deeply the spirit of superstition as our
novelist of the nineteenth century. He treats,
indeed, all the fantasies of his countrymen
with that spirit of allowance and fond regard
with which he always touches on human
emotions. But he does not seem to have
heartily partaken in them as awful realities.
His witches have power to excite wonder, but
little to chill men’s bloods. Ariel, the visions
of Prospero’s enchanted isle, the “quaint
fairies and the dapper elves” of the Midsum-
mer Night’s Dream glitter on the fancy, in a
thousand shapes of dainty loveliness, but
never affect us otherwise than as creations of
the poet’s brain. Even the ghost in Hamlet
does not appal us half so fearfully as many a
homely tale which has nothing to recommend
it but the earnest belief of its tremulous re-
citer. There is little magic in the web of life,
notwithstanding all the variety of its shades,
as Shakspeare has drawn it. Not so is it
with our author; his spells have manifest
hold on himself, and, therefore, they are very
potent with the spirits of his readers. No
prophetic intimation in his works is ever
suffered to fail. The spirit which appears to
Fergus—the astronomical predictions of Guy
Mannering—the eloquent curses, and more
eloquent blessings, of Meg Merrilies—the dying
denunciation of Mucklewrath—the old pro
phecy in the Bride of Lammermuir—all are
fulfilled to the very letter. The high and
joyous spirits of Kennedy are observed by one
of the bystanders as intimations of his speedy
fate. We are far from disapproving of these
touches of the super-human, for they are
made to blend harmoniously with the freshestGODWIN.
15
hues of life, and without destroying its native
colouring, give to it a more solemn tinge.
But we cannot extend our indulgence to the
seer in the Legend of Montrose, or the Lady
of Avenel, in the Monastery; where the spirits
of another world do not cast their shadowings
on this, but stalk forth in open light, and “ in
form as palpable” as any of the mortal cha-
racters. In works of passion, fairies and
ghosts can scarcely be “ simple products of
the common day,” without destroying all har-
mony in our perceptions, and bringing the
whole into discredit with the imagination as
well as the feelings. Fairy tales are among
the most exquisite things in the world, and so
are delineations of humanity like those of our
author; but they can never be blended with-
out debasing the former into chill substances,
or refining the latter into airy nothings.
We shall avoid the fruitless task of dwell-
ing on the defects of this author, or the ge-
neral insipidity of his lovers, on the want of
skill in the development of his plots, on the
clumsiness of his prefatory introductions, or
the impotence of many of his conclusions.
He has done his country and his nature no
ordinary service. He has brought romance
almost into our own times, and made the
nobleness of humanity familiar to our daily
thoughts. He has enriched history to us by
opening such varied and delicious vistas to
our gaze, beneath the range of its loftier events
and more public characters. May his intel
lectual treasury prove exhaustless as the purse
of Fortunatus, and may he dip into it unspar-
ingly for the delight and the benefit of his
species!
GODWIN.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
Mr. Godwin is the most original—not only
of living novelists—but of living writers in
prose. There are, indeed very few authors of
any age who are so clearly entitled to the
praise of having produced works, the first
perusal of which is a signal event in man’s
internal history. His genius is by far the
most extraordinary, which the great shaking
of nations and of principles—the French revo-
lution—impelled and directed in its progress.
English literature, at the period of that mar-
vellous change, had become sterile ; the rich
luxuriance which once overspread its surface,
had gradually declined into thin and scattered
productions of feeble growth and transient
duration. The fearful convulsion which
agitated the world of politics and of morals,
tore up this shallow and exhausted surface—
disclosed vast treasures which had been con-
cealed for centuries—burst open the secret
springs of imagination and of thought—and
left, instead of the smooth and weary plain, a
region of deep valleys and of shapeless hills,
of new cataracts and of awful abysses, of
spots blasted into everlasting barrenness, and
regions of deepest and richest soil. Our
author partook in the first enthusiasms of the
spirit-stirring season—in “its pleasant exer-
cise of hope and joy”—in much of its specu-
lative extravagance, but in none of its practi-
cal excesses. He was roused not into action
but into thought; and the high and undying
energies of his soul, unwasted on vain efforts
for the actual regeneration of man, gathered
strength in those pure fields of meditation to
which they were limited. The power which
might have ruled the disturbed nations with
the wildest, directed only to the creation of
high theories and of marvellous tales, im-
parled to its works a stern reality, and a
moveless grandeur which never could spring
from mere fantasy. His works are not like
those which a man, who is endued with a
deep sense of beauty, or a rare faculty of ob-
servation, or a sportive wit, or a breathing
eloquence, may fabricate as the “ idle busi-
ness” of his life, as the means of profit or of
fame. They have more in them of acts than
of writings. They are the living and the im-
mortal deeds of a man who must have been a
great political adventurer had he not been an
author. There is in “ Caleb Williams” alone
the material—the real burning energy—which
might have animated a hundred schemes for
the weal or wo of the species.
No writer of fictions has ever succeeded so
strikingly as Mr. Godwin, with so little ad-
ventitious aid. His works are neither gay
creatures of the element, nor pictures of ex-
ternal life—they derive not their charm from
the delusions of fancy, or the familiarities of
daily habitude—and are as destitute of the
fascinations of light satire and felicitous de-
lineation of society, as they are of the magic
of the Arabian Tales. His style has “ no
figures and no fantasies,” but is simple and
austere. Yet his novels have a power which
so enthralls us, that we half doubt, when we
read them in youth, whether ail our experi-
ence is not a dream, and these the only reali-
ties. He lays bare to us the innate might and
majesty of man. He takes the simplest and
most ordinary emotions of our nature, and
makes us feel the springs of delight or of
agony which they contain, the stupendous force
which lies hid within them, and the sublime
mysteries with which they are connected. He
exhibits the naked wrestle of the passions in
a vast solitude, where no object of material
beauty disturbs our attention from the august16
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
spectacle, and where the least beating of the
heart is audible in the depth of the stillness.
His works endow the abstractions of life with
more of real presence, and make us more in-
tensely conscious of existence than any others
with which we are acquainted. They give us
a new feeling of the capacity of our nature for
action or for suffering, make the currents of
our blood mantle within us, and our bosoms
heave with indistinct desires for the keenest
excitements and the strangest perils. We feel
as though we could live years in moments of
energetic life, while we sympathize with his
breathing characters. In things which before
appeared indifferent, we discern sources of
the fullest delight or of the most intense
anguish. The healthful breathings of the
common air seem instinct with an unspeaka-
ble rapture. The most ordinary habits which
link one season of life to another become the
awakeners of thoughts and of remembrances
“ which do often lie too deep for tears.” The
nicest disturbances of the imagination make
the inmost fibres of the being quiver with ago-
nies. Passions which have not usually been
thought worthy to agitate the soul, now first
seem to have their own ardent beatings, and
their tumultuous joys. We seem capable of
a more vivid life than we have ever before felt
or dreamed of, and scarcely wonder that he
who could thus give us a new sense of our
own vitality, should have imagined that mind
might become omnipotent over matter, and
that he was able, by an effort of the will, to
become corporeally immortal!
The intensity of passion which is manifested
in the novels of Godwin is of a very different
kind from that which burns in the poems of a
noble bard, whom he has been sometimes er-
roneously supposed to resemble. The former
sets before us mightiest realities in clear vi-
sion ; the latter imbodies the phantoms of a
feverish dream. The strength of Godwin is
the pure energy of unsophisticated nature ; that
of Lord Byron is the fury of disease. The
grandeur of the last is derived from its transi-
toriness ; that of the first from its eternal es-
sence. The emotion in the poet receives no
inconsiderable part of its force from its rebound
from the dark rocks and giant barriers which
seem to confine its rage within narrow bound-
aries; the feeling of the novelist is in its own
natural current deep and resistless. The per-
sons of the bard feel intensely, because they
soon shall feel no more ; those of the novelist
glow, and kindle, and agonize, because they
shall never perish. In the works of both, guilt
is often associated with sublime energy; but
how dissimilar are the impressions which they
leave on the spirit! Lord Byron strangely
blends the moral degradation with the intellec-
tual majesty: so that goodness appears tame,
and crime only is honoured and exalted. God-
win, on the other hand, only teaches us bitterly
to mourn the evil which has been cast on a
noble nature, and to regard the energy of the
character not as inseparably linked with vice,
but as destined ultimately to subdue it. He
makes us everywhere feel that crime is not
the native heritage, but the accident, of the
species, of which we are members. He im-
presses us with the immortality of virtue; and
while he leaves us painfully to regret the stains
which the most gifted and energetic charac-
ters contract amidst the pollutions of time, he
inspires us with hope that these shall pass
away for ever. We drink in unshaken confi-
dence the good and the true, which is ever of
more value than hatred or contempt for the
evil!
“ Caleb Williams,” the earliest, is also the
most popular of our author’s romances, not
because his latter works have been less rich in
sentiment and passion, but because they are,
for the most part, confined to the development
of single characters ; while in this there is the
opposition and death grapple of two beings,
each endowed with poignant sensibilities and
quenchless energy. There is no work of fic-
tion which more rivets the attention—no tra-
gedy which exhibits a struggle more sublime,
or sufferings more intense, than this ; yet to
produce the effect, no complicated machinery
is employed, but the springs of action are few
and simple. The motives are at once common
and elevated, and are purely intellectual, with-
out appearing for an instant inadequate to
their mighty issues. Curiosity, for instance,
which generally seems a low and ignoble mo-
tive for scrutinizing the secrets of a man’s life,
here seizes with strange fascination on a gen-
tle and ingenuous spirit, and supplies it with
excitement as fervid, and snatches of delight
as precious and as fearful, as those feelings
create which we are accustomed to regard as
alone worthy to enrapture or to agitate. The
involuntary recurrence by Williams to the
string of phrensy in the soul of one whom he
would die to serve—the workings of his tor-
tures on the heart of Falkland till they wring
confidence from him—and the net thenceforth
spread over the path of the youth like an invi-
sible spell by his agonized master, surprising as
they are, arise from causes so natural and so ade-
quate, that the imagination at once owns them
as authentic. The mild beauty of Falkland’s
natural character, contrasted with the guilt he
has incurred, and his severe purpose to lead a
long life of agony and crime, that his fame
may be preserved spotless, is aftecting almost
without example. There is a rude grandeur
even in the gigantic oppressor Tyrel, which all
his disgusting enormities cannot destroy. In-
dependently of the master-spring of interest,
there are in this novel individual passages
which can never be forgotten. Such are the
fearful flight of Emily with her ravisher—the
escape of Caleb Williams from prison, and his
enthusiastic sensations on the recovery of his
freedom, though wounded and almost dying
without help—and the scenes of his peril
among the robbers. Perhaps this work is the
grandest ever constructed out of the simple ele-
ments of humanity, without any extrinsic aid
from imagination, wit, or memory.
In “ St. Leon,” Mr. Godwin has sought the
stores of the supernatural;—but the “ metaphy-
sical aid” which he has condescended to ac-
cept is not adapted to carry him farther from
nature, but to ensure a more intimate and wide
communion with its mysteries. His hero does
not acquire the philosopher’s stone and theGODWIN.
IT
elixir of immortality to furnish out for himself
a dainty solitude, where he may dwell, soothed
with the music of his own undying thoughts,
and rejoicing in his severance from his frail
and transitory fellows. Apart from those
among whom he moves, his yearnings for
sympathy become more intense as it eludes
him, and his perceptions of the mortal lot of
his species become more vivid and more fond,
as he looks on it from an intellectual eminence
which is alike unassailable to death and to joy.
Even in this work, where the author has to
conduct a perpetual miracle, his exceeding
earnestness makes it difficult to believe him a
fabulist. Listen to his hero, as he expatiates
in the first consciousness of his high preroga-
tives :
“ I surveyed my limbs, all the joints and ar-
ticulations of my frame, with curiosity and
astonishment. What! exclaimed I, these
limbs, this complicated but brittle frame shall
last for ever! No disease shall attack it; no
pain shall seize it; %leath shall withhold from
it for ever his abhorred grasp! Perpetual
vigour, perpetual activity, perpetual youth,
shall take up their abode with me ! Time shall
generate in me no decay, shall not add a wrin-
kle to my brow, or convert a hair of my head
to gray! This body was formed to die; this
edifice to crumble into dust; the principles of
corruption and mortality are mixed up in every
atom of my frame. But for me the laws of
nature are suspended, the eternal wheels of the
universe roll backward ; I am destined to be
triumphant over Fate and Time! Months,
years, cycles, centuries ! To me these are but
as indivisible moments. I shall never become
old ; I shall always be, as it were, in the porch
and infancy of existence; no lapse of years
shall subtract any thing from my future dura-
tion. I was born under Louis the Twelfth;
the life of Francis the First now threatens a
speedy termination; he will be gathered to his
fathers, and Henry, his son, will succeed him.
But what are princes, and kings, and genera-
tions of men to me ! I shall become familiar
with the rise and fall of empires ; in a little
while the very name of France, my country,
will perish from off the face of the earth, and
men will dispute about the situation of Paris,
as they dispute about the site of ancient Nine-
veh, and Babylon, and Troy. Yet I shall still
be young. I shall take my most distant poste-
rity by the hand; I shall accompany them in
their career; and, when they are worn out and
exhausted, shall shut up the tomb over them,
and set forward.”
This is a strange tale, but it tells like a true
one! When we first read it, it seemed as
though it had itself the power of alchemy to
steal into our veins, and render us capable of
resisting death and age. For a short—too
short! a space, all time seemed open to our
personal view—we felt no longer as of yes-
terday; but the grandest parts of our know-
ledge of the past seemed mightiest recollec-
tions of a far-off childhood.
il The wars we too remembered of King Nine,
And old Assaracus, and lbycus divine.”
This was the happy extravagance of an
3
hour; but it is ever the peculiar power of Mr
Godwin to make us feel that there is something
within us which cannot perish !
“ Fleetwood” has less of our author’s cha-
racteristic energy than any other of his works.
The earlier parts of it, indeed, where the forma-
tion of the hero’s character, in free rovings
amidst the wildest of nature’s scenery, is
traced, have a deep beauty which reminds us
of some of the holiest imaginations of Words-
worth. But when the author would follow him
into the world—through the frolics of college,
the dissipations of Paris, and the petty dis-
quietudes of matrimonial life—we feel that he
has condescended too far. He is no graceful
trifler; he cannot work in these frail and low
materials. There is, however, one scene in
this novel most wild and fearful. This is
where Fleetwood, who has long brooded in
anguish over the idea of his wife’s falsehood,
keeps strange festival on his wedding-day—
when, having procured a waxen image of her
whom he believes perfidious, and dressed a
frightful figure in a uniform to represent her
imagined paramour, he locks himself in an
apartment with these horrid counterfeits, a
supper of cold meats, and a barrel-organ, on
which he plays the tunes' often heard from the
pair he believes guilty, till his silent agony
gives place to delirium, he gazes around with
glassy eyes, sees strange sights and dallies
with frightful mockeries, and at last tears the
dreadful spectacle to atoms, and is seized with
furious madness. We do not remember, even
in the works of our old dramatists, any thing
of its kind comparable to this voluptuous fan-
tasy of despair.
“ Mandeville” has all the power of its au-
thor’s earliest writings ; but its main subject—
the development of an engrossing and madden-
ing hatred—is not one which can excite
human sympathy. There is, however, a bright
relief to the gloom of the picture, in the angelic
disposition of Clifford, and the sparkling love-
liness of Henrietta, who appears “full of life,
and splendour, and joy.” All Mr. Godwin’s
female heroines have a certain airiness and
radiance—a visionary grace, peculiar to them,
which may at first surprise by their contrast
to the robustness of his masculine creations.
But it will perhaps be found that the more deeply
i&an is conversant with the energies of his own
heart, the more will he seek for opposite qua-
lities in woman.
Of all Mr. Godwin’s writings the choicest in
point of style is a little essay “ on Sepulchres.”
Here his philosophic thought, subdued and
sweetened by the contemplation of mortality,
is breathed forth in the gentlest tone. His
“ Political Justice,” with all the extravagance
of its first edition, or with all the inconsisten-
cies of its last, is a noble work, replete with
lofty principle and thought, and often leading
to the most striking results by a process of the
severest reasoning. Man, indeed, cannot and
ought not to act universally on its leading doc-
trine—that we should in all things seek only
the greatest amount of good without favour or
affection ; but it is at least better than the low
selfishness of the world. It breathes also a
mild and cheerful faith in the progressive ad-
J3 218
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
vances and the final perfection of the species.
It was this good hope for humanity which ex-
cited Mr. Malthus to affirm, that there is in the
constitution of maids nature a perpetual barrier
to any extensive improvement in his earthly
condition. After a long interval, Mr. Godwin
has announced a reply to this popular system—
a system which reduces man to an animal,
governed by blind instinct, and destitute of rea-
son, sentiment, imagination, and hope, whose
most mysterious instincts are matter of calcu-
lation to be estimated by rules of geometrical
series !—Most earnestly do we desire to wit-
ness his success. To our minds, indeed, he
sufficiently proves the falsehood of his adver-
sary’s doctrines by his own intellectual charac-
ter. His works are, in themselves, evidences
that there is power and energy in man which
have never yet been fully brought into action,
and which were not given to the species in
vain. He has lived himself in the soft and
mild light of those peaceful years, which he
believes shall hereafter bless the world, when
force and selfishness shall disappear, and love
and joy shall be the unerring lights of the
species.
MAT U LIN.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
The author of Montorio and of Bertram is
unquestionably a person gifted with no ordi-
nary powers. He has a quick sensibility—a
penetrating and intuitive acuteness—and an
unrivalled vigour and felicity of language,
which enable him at one time to attain the
happiest condensation of thought, and at
others to pour forth a stream of eloquence, rich,
flowing, and deep, checkered with images of
delicate loveliness, or darkened by broad sha-
dows cast from objects of stern and adaman-
tine majesty. Yet, in common with many
other potent spirits of the present time, he fails
to excite within us any pure and lasting sym-
pathy. We do not, on reading his works, feel
that we have entered on a precious and im-
perishable treasure. They dazzle, they delight,
they surprise, and they weary us—we lay them
down with a vague admiration for the author,
and try to shake off their influence as we do
the impressions of a feverish dream. It is not
thus that we receive the productions of genu-
ine and holy bards—of Shakspeare, of Milton,
of Spenser, or of Wordsworth—whose far-
reaching imaginations come home to our
hearts, who become the companions of our
sweetest moods, and v/ith whom we long to
“ set up our everlasting rest.” Their creations
are often nearest to our hearts when they are
farthest removed from the actual experience
of our lives. We travel on the bright tracks
which their genius reveals to us as safely and
with as sure and fond a tread as along the
broad highway of the world. When the re-
gions which they set before us are the most
distant from our ordinary perceptions, we yet
seem at home in them, their wonders are
strangely familiar to us, and the scene, over-
spread with a consecrating and lovely lustre,
breaks on us, not as a wild fantastic novelty,
but as a revived recollection of some holier
life, which the soul rejoices thus delightfully to
recognise.
Not thus do the works of Mr. Maturin—ori-
ginal and surprising as they often are—affect
us. They have no fibres in them which en-
twine with the heart-strings, and which keep
their hold until the golden chords of our sensi-
bility and imagination themselves are broken.
They pass by us sometimes like gorgeous
phantoms, sometimes like “horrible shadows
and unreal mockeries,” which seem to elude
us because they are not of us. When we fol-
low him closest, he introduces us into a region
where all is unsatisfactory and unreal—the
chaos of principles, fancies, and passions—
where mightiest elements are yet floating with-
out order, where appearances between sub-
stance and shadow perpetually harass us,
where visionary forms beckon us through
painful avenues, and, on approach, sink into
despicable realities ; and pillars which looked
ponderous and immovable at a distance, melt
at the touch into air, and are found to be only
masses of vapour and of cloud. He neither
raises us to the skies, nor “brings his angels
down,” but astonishes by a phantasmagoria of
strange appearances, sometimes scarcely dis-
tinguishable in member, joint, or limb, but
which, when most clearly defined, come not
near us, nor claim kindred by a warm and
living touch. This chill remoteness from hu-
manity is attended by a general want of har-
mony and proportion in the whole—by a wild
excursiveness of sensibility and thought—
which add to its ungenial influence, and may
be traced to the same causes.
If we were disposed to refer these defects to
one general source, we should attribute them
to the want of an imagination proportionate to
sensibility and to mastery of language in the
writer’s mind, or to his comparative neglect of
that most divine of human faculties. It is edi-
fying to observe how completely the nature of
this power is mistaken by many who profess
to decide on matters of taste. They regard it
as something wild and irregular, the reverse
of truth, nature, and reason, which is divided
from insanity only by “a thin partition,”
and which, uncontrolled by sterner powers,
! forms the essence of madness. They think it
! abounds in speeches crowded with tawdry andMATURIN.
19
superfluous epithets—in the discourses of Dr.
Chalmers, because they deal so largely in in-
finite obscurities that there is no room for a
single image—and in the poems of Lord Byron,
because his characters are so unlike all beings
which have ever existed. Far otherwise thought
Spencer when he represented the laurel as the
meed—not of poets insane—but “of poets
sage.” True imagination is, indeed, the deep
eye of the profoundest wisdom. It is opposed
to reason, not in its results, but in its process ;
it does not demonstrate truth only because it
sees it. There are vast and eternal realities
in our nature, which reason proves to exist—
which sensibility “feels after and finds”—and
which imagination beholds in clear and solemn
vision, and pictures with a force and vividness
which assures their existence even to ungifted
mortals. Its subjects are the true, the univer-
sal, and the lasting. Its distinguishing pro-
perty has no relation to dimness, or indistinct-
ness, or dazzling radiance, or turbulent con-
fusedness, but is the power of setting all things
in the clearest light, and bringing them into
perfect harmony. Like the telescope it does
not only magnify celestial objects, but brings
them nearer to us. Of all. the faculties it is
the severest and the most unerring. Reason
may beguile with splendid sophistry; sensibi-
lity may fatally misguide; but if imagination
exists at all, it must exhibit only the real. A
mirror can no more reflect an object which is
not before it, than the imagination can show
the false and the baseless. By revealing tons
its results in the language of imagery, it gives
to them almost the evidence of the senses. If
the analogy between an idea and its physical
exponent is not complete, there is no effort
of imagination—if it is, the truth is seen, and
felt, and enjoyed, like the colours and forms
of the material universe. And this effect is
produced not only with the greatest possible
certainty, but in the fewest possible words.
Yet even when this is done—when the illus-
tration is not only the most enchanting, but
the most convincing of proofs—the writer is
too often contemptuously depreciated as flowery,
by the advocates of mere reason. Strange
chance ! that he who has imbodied truth in a
living image, and thus rendered it visible to
the intellectual perceptions, should be con-
founded with those who conceal all sense and
meaning beneath mere verbiage and fragments
of disjointed metaphor!
Thus the products of genuine imagination
are “ all compact.” It is, indeed, only the
compactness and harmony of its pictures
which give to it its name or its value. To
discover that there are mighty elements in
humanity—to observe that there are bright
hues and graceful forms in the external world
—and to know the fitting names of these—is
all which is required to furnish out a rich stock
of spurious imagination to one who aspires to
the claim of a wild and irregular genius. For
him a dictionary is a sufficient guide to Par-
nassus. It is only by representing those in-
tellectual elements in their finest harmony—by
combining those hues and forms in the fairest
pictures—or by making the glorious combina-
tions of external things the symbols of truth
and moral beauty—that imagination really puts
forth its divine energies. We do not charge
on Mr. Maturin that he is destitute of power
to do this, or that he does not sometimes direct
it to its purest uses. But his sensibility is so
much more quick and subtle than his authority
over his impressions is complete ; the flow of
his words so much more copious and facile
than the throng of images on his mind; that
he too often confounds us with unnumbered
snatches and imperfect gleams of beauty, or
astonishes us by an outpouring of eloquent
bombast, instead of enriching our souls with
distinct and vivid conceptions. Like many
other writers of the present, time—especially
of his own country—he does not wait until
the stream which young enthusiasm sets loose
shall work itself clear, and calmly reflect the
highest heavens. His creations bear any
stamp but that of truth and soberness. He
sees the glories of the external world, and the
mightier wonders of man’s moral and intel-
lectual nature, with a quick sense, and feels
them with an exquisite sympathy—but he
gazes on them in “ very drunkenness of heart,”
and becomes giddy with his own indistinct
emotions, till all things seem confounded in a
gay bacchanalian dance, and assume strange
fantastic combinations ; which, when trans-
ferred to his works, startle for a moment, but
do not produce that “ sober certainty of waking
bliss” which real imagination assures. There
are two qualities necessary to form a truly
imaginative writer—a quicker and an intenser
feeling than ordinary men possess for the beau-
tiful and the sublime, and the calm and medi-
tative power of regulating, combining, and ar-
ranging its own impressions, and of distinctly
bodying forth the final results of this harmo-
nizing process. Where the first of these pro-
perties exists, the last is, perhaps, attainable
by that deep and careful study which is more
necessary to a poet than to any artist who
works in mere earthly materials. But this
study many of the most gifted of modern
writers unhappily disdain; and if mere sale
and popularity are their objects, they are right;
for, in the multitude, the wild, the disjointed, the
incoherent, and the paradoxical, which are but
for a moment, necessarily awaken more imme-
diate sensation than the pure and harmonious,
which are destined to last while nature and
the soul shall endure.
It is easy to perceive how it is that the im-
perfect creations of men of sensibility and of
eloquence strike and dazzle more at the first,
than the completest works of truly imaginative
poets. A perfect statue—a temple fashioned
with exactest art—appear less, at a mere
glance, from the nicet}' of their proportions.
The vast majority of readers, in an age like
ours, have neither leisure nor taste to seek and
ponder over the effusions of holiest genius.
They must be awakened into admiration by
something new and strange and surprising;
and the more remote from their daily thoughts
and habits—the more fantastical and daring—
the effort, the more will it please, because the
more it will rouse them. Thus a man who
will exhibit some impossible combination of
heroism and meanness—of virtue and of vice20
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
—of heavenly love and infernal malignity and
baseness—will receive their wonder and their
praise. They call this poweh, which is in
reality the most pitiable weakness. It is be-
cause a writer has not imagination enough to
exhibit in new forms the universal qualities
of nature and the soul, that he takes some
strange and horrible anomaly as his theme.
Incompetent to the divine task of rendering
beauty “ a simple product of the common
day,” he tries to excite emotion by disclosing
the foulest recess of the foulest heart. As he
strikes only one feeling, and that coarsely and
ungently, he appears to wield a mightier
weapon than he whose harmonious beauty
sheds its influence equably over the whole of
the sympathies. That which touches with
strange commotion, and mere violence on the
heart, but leaves no image there, seems to vul-
gar spirits more potent than the faculty which
applies to it all perfect figures, and leaves them
to sink gently into its fleshly tablets to remain
there for ever. Yet, surely, that which merely
shakes is not equal even in power to that
which impresses. The wild disjointed part
may be more amazing to a diseased perception
than the well-compacted whole; but it is the
nice balancing of properties, the soft blending
of shades, and the all-pervading and recon-
ciling light shed over the harmonious imagina-
tion, which take olf the sense of rude strength
that alone is discernible in its naked elements.
Is there more of heavenly power in seizing
from among the tumult of chaos and eternal
night, strange and fearful abortions, or in
brooding over the vast abyss, and making it
pregnant with life and glory and joy I Is it
the higher exercise of human faculties to re-
present the frightful discordances of passion,
or to show the grandeurs of humanity in that
majestic repose which is at once an anticipa-
tion and a proof of its eternal destiny? Is
transitory vice—the mere accident of the spe-
cies—and those vices too which are the rarest
and most appalling of all its accidents—or
that good which is its essence and which never
can perish, fittest for the uses of the bard I
Shall he desire to haunt the caves which lie
lowest on the banks of Acheron, or the soft
bowers watered by “ Siloa’s brook that flows
fast by the oracle of God?”
Mr. Maturin gave decisive indications of a
morbid sensibility and a passionate eloquence
out-running his imaginative faculties, in the
commencement of his literary career. His
first romance, the “ Family of Montorio,” is
one of the wildest and strangest of all “false
creations proceeding from the heat-oppressed
brain.” It is for the most part a tissue of mag-
nificent yet unappalling horrors. Its great
faults as a work of amusement, are the long
and unrelieved series of its gloomy and mar-
vellous scenes, and the unsatisfactory expla-
nation of them all, as arising from mere hu-
man agency. This last error he borrowed
from Mrs. Ratcliffe, to whom he is far inferior
in the economy of terrors, but whom he greatly
transcends in the dark majesty of his style.
As his events are far more wild and wondrous
than hers, so his development is necessarily
far more incredible and vexatious. There is,
in this story, a being whom we are long led
to believe is not of this world—who speaks
in the tones of the sepulchre, glides through
the thickest walls, haunts two distant brothers
in their most secret retirements through
their strange wanderings, leads one of his
victims to a scene which he believes infer-
nal, and there terrifies him with sights of the
wildest magic—and who after all this, and
after really vindicating to the fancy his claim
to the supernatural by the fearful cast of his
language—is discovered to be a low impostor,
who has produced all by the aid of poor tricks
and secret passages ! Where is the policy of
this? Unless, by his power, the author had
given a credibility to magic through four-fifths
of his work, it never could have excited any
feeling but that of impatience or of scorn.
And when we have surrendered ourselves
willingly to his guidance—when we have
agreed to believe impossibilities at his bidding
—why does he reward our credence with de-
rision, and tacitly reproach us for not having
detected his idle mockeries? After all, too,
the reason is no more satisfied than the fancy;
for it would be a thousand times easier to be-
lieve in the possibility of spiritual influences,
than in a long chain of mean contrivances, no
one of which could ever succeed. The first is
but one wonder, and that one to which our na-
ture has a strange leaning; the last are num-
berless, and have nothing to reconcile them to
our thoughts. In submitting to the former,
we contented^ lay aside our reasoning facul-
ties ; in approaching the latter our reason
itself is appealed to at the moment when it is
insulted. Great talent is, however, unques-
tionably exhibited in this singular story. A
stern justice breathes solemnly through all
the scenes in the devoted castle. “Fate sits
on its dark battlements, and frowns.” There
is a spirit of deep philosophy in the tracing
of the gradual influence of patricidal thoughts
on the hearts of the brothers, which would
finally exhibit the danger of dallying with evil
fancies, if the subject were not removed so far
from all ordinary temptations. Some of the
scenes of horror, if they were not accumulated
until they wear out their impression, would
produce an elfect inferior to none in the works
of Ratcliffe or of Lewis. The scene in which
Flippo escapes from the assassins, deserves to
be ranked with the robber-scenes in the Monk
and Count Fathom. The diction of the whole
is rich and energetic—not, indeed, flowing in
a calm beauty which may glide on for ever—
but impetuous as a mountain torrent, which,
though it speedily passes awray, leaves behind
it no common spoils—
“Depositing upon the silent shore
Of memory, images and gentle thoughts
Which cannot die, and will not be destroyed.1’
“The Wild Irish Boy” is, on the whole, in-
ferior to Montorio, though it served to give a
farther glimpse into the vast extent of the
author’s resources. “The Milesian” is, per-
haps, the most extraordinary of his romances.
There is a bleak and misty grandeur about it,
which, in spite of its glaring defects, sustains
for it an abiding-place in the soul. Yet never,
perh ap s, was the re a more u n e qua 1 p roduetion—RYMER ON TRAGEDY.
21
alternately exhibiting the grossest plagiarism
and the wildest originality—now swelling into
offensive bombast, and anon disclosing the
simplest majesty of nature, fluctuating with
inconstant ebb between the sublime and the
ridiculous, the delicate and the revolting.
“Women, or Pour et Contre,” is less unequal,
but we think, on the whole, less interesting
than the author’s earlier productions. He
should not venture, as in this work he has
done, into the ordinary paths of existence.
His persons, if not cast in a high and heroic
mould, have no stamp of reality upon them.
The reader of this work, though often dazzled
and delighted, has a painful feeling that the
characters are shadowy and unreal, like that
which is experienced in dreams. They are
unpleasant and tantalizing likenesses, ap-
proaching sufficiently near to the true to make
us feel what they would be and lament what
they are. Eva, Zaira, the manaic mother, and
the group of Calvinists,have all a resemblance
to nature—and sometimes to nature at its most
passionate or its sweetest—but they look as at
a distance from us, as though between us and
them there were some veil, or discolouring
medium, to baffle and perplex us. Still the
novel is a splendid work; and gives the feel-
ing that its author has “ riches fineless” in
store, which might delight as well as astonish
the world, if he would cease to be their slave,
and become their master.
In the narrow boundaries of the Drama the
redundancies of Mr. Maturin have been neces-
sarily corrected. In this walk, indeed, there
seems reason to believe that his genius would
have grown purer, as it assumed a severer
attitude; and that he would have sought to
attain high and true passion, and lofty imagi-
nation, had he not been seduced by the admi-
ration unhappily lavished on Lord Byron’s
writings. The feverish strength, the singular
blending of good and evil, and the spirit of
moral paradox, displayed in these works, were
congenial with his tastes, and aroused in him
the desire to imitate. “Bertram,” his first and
most successful tragedy, is a fine piece of
writing, wrought out of a nauseous tale, and
rendered popular, not by its poetical beauties,
but by the violence with which it jars on the
sensibilities, and awakens the sluggish heart
from its lethargy. “ Manuel,” its successor,
feebler, though in the same style, excited little
attention, and less sympathy. In “ Fredolpho,”
the author, as though he had resolved to sting
the public into a sense of his power, crowded
together characters of such matchless depra-
vity, sentiments of such a demoniac cast, and
events of such gratuitous horror, that the
moral taste of the audience, injured as it had
been by the success of similar works, felt the
insult, and rose up indignantly against it. Yet
in this piece were passages of a soft and
mournful beauty, breathing a tender air of
romance, which led us bitterly to regret that
the poet chose to “ embower the spirit of a
fiend, in mortal paradise of such sweet” song.
We do not, however despair even yet of the
regeneration of our author’s taste. There has
always been something of humanity to redeem
those works in which his genius has been
most perverted. There is no deliberate sueer-
ing at the disinterested and the pure—no cold
derision of human hopes—no deadness to the
lonely and the loving, in his writings. His
error is that of a hasty trusting to feverish im-
pulses, not of a malignant design. There is
far more of the soul of goodness in his evil
things, than in those of the noble bard whose
example has assisted to mislead him. He does
not, indeed, know so well how to place his un-
natural characters in imposing attitudes—to
work up his morbid sensibilities for sale—or
to “build the lofty rhyme” on shattered prin-
ciples, and the melancholy fragments of hope.
But his diction is more rich, his fancy is more
fruitful, and his compass of thought and feel-
ing more extensive. Happy shall we be to see
him doing justice at last to his powers—
studying not to excite the wonder of a few
barren readers or spectators, but to live in the
hearts of the good of future times—and, to this
high end, leaving discord for harmony, the
startling for the true, and the evil which, how-
ever potent, is but for a season, for the pure
and the holy which endure for everf
REVIEW OF RYMER’S WORKS ON TRAGEDY.
[Retrospective Review.]
These are very curious and edifying works.
The author (who was the compiler of the Fee-
dera) appears to have been a man of considera-
ble acuteness, maddened by a furious zeal for
the honour of tragedy. He lays down the most
fantastical rules for the composition which he
chiefly reverses, and argues on them as “ truths
of holy writ.” He criticises Shakspeare as
one invested with authority to sit in judgment
on his powers, and passes on him as decisive
a sentence of condemnation, as ever was
awarded against a friendless poet by a Re-
viewer. We will select a few passages from
his work, which ma}^ be consolatory to modern
authors and useful to modern critics.
The chief weight of Mr. Rymer’s critical
vengeance is wreaked on Othello. After a slight
sketch of the plot, he proceeds at once to speak
of the moral, which he seems to regard as of
the first importance in tragedy.
“Whatever rubs or difficulty may stick on
the bark, the moral use of this fable is very in-
structive. First, this may be a caution to all
maidens of quality, how, without their parents’22
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
consent, they run away with blackamoors.
Secondly, this may be a warning to all good
wives, that they look well to their linen.
Thirdly, this maybe a lesson to husbands, that
before their jealousy be tragical, the proofs may
be mathematical.”
Our author then proceeds happily to satirize
Othello’s colour. He observes, that “Shaks-
peare was accountable both to the eyes and
to the ears.” On this point we think his ob-
jection is not without reason. We agree with
an excellent modern critic in the opinion, that
though a reader may sink Othello’s colour in
his mind, a spectator can scarcely avoid losing
the mind in the colour. But Mr. Rymer pro-
ceeds thus to characterize Othello’s noble ac-
count to the Senate of his whole course of
love.
“This was the charm, this was the philtre,
the love-powder that took the daughter of this
noble Venetian. This was sufficient to make
the Blackamoor white, and reconcile all, though
there had been a cloven foot into the bargain.
A meaner woman might as soon be taken by
Aqua Tetrachymagogon.”
The idea of Othello’s elevation to the rank
of a general, stings Mr. Rymer almost to mad-
ness. He regards the poet’s offence as a kind
of misprision of treason.
“ The character of the state (of Venice) is
to employ strangers in their wars ; but shall a
poet thence fancy that they will set a negro to
be their general; or trust a Moor to defend
them against the Turk! With us, a Blacka-
moor might rise to be a trumpeter, but Shaks-
peare would not have him less than a lieute-
nant-general. With us, a Moor might marry
some little drab or small-coal wench ; Shaks-
peare would provide him the daughter and heir
of some great lord, or privy-counsellor; and
all the town should reckon it a very suitable
match : yet the English are not bred up with
that hatred and aversion to the Moors as the
Venetians, who suffer by a perpetual hostility
from them,
‘Littora littoribus contraria.’ ”
Our author is as severe on Othello’s cha-
racter, as on his exaltation and colour.
“Othello is made a Venetian general. We
see nothing done by him, nor related concern-
ing him, that comports with the condition of a
general, or, indeed, of a man, unless the killing
himself to avoid a death the law was about to
inflict upon him. When his jealousy had
wrought him up to a resolution of his taking
revenge for the supposed injury, he sets lago
to the fighting part to kill Cassio, and chooses
himself to murder the silly woman, his wife,
that was like to make no resistance.”
Mr. Rymer next undertakes to resent the
affront put on the army by the making lago a
soldier.
“But what is most intolerable is lago. He
is no Blackamoor soldier, so we may be sure
he should be like other soldiers of our acquaint-
ance; yet never in tragedy, nor in comedy, nor
in nature, was a soldier with his character ;—
take it in the author’s own words :
----------------some eternal villain,
Some busy and insinuating rogue,
Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office.
“ Horace describes a soldier otherwise,—
Tmpyger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer.
“Shakspeare knew his character of lago
was inconsistent. In this very play he pro-
nounces,
‘If thou deliver more or less than truth,
Thou art no soldier.’-
“ This he knew, but to entertain the audience
with something new and surprising against
common sense and nature, he would pass upon
us a close, dissembling, false, insinuating ras-
cal, instead of an open-hearted, frank, plain-
dealing soldier, a character constantly worn by
them for some thousands of years in the world.”
Against “ the gentle lady married to the
Moor,” Mr. Rymer cherishes a most exemplary
hatred. He seems to labour for terms strong
enough to express the antipathy and scorn he
bears her. The following are some of the
daintiest :
“ There is nothing in the noble Desdemona,
that is not below any country kitchen-maid
with us.”—“No woman bred out of a pig-stye
could talk so meanly.”
Yet is Mr. Rymer no less enraged at her
death than at her life.
“Here (he exclaims in an agony of passion)
a noble Venetian lady is to be murdered by
our poet, in sober sadness, purely for being
a fool. No pagan poet but would have found
some machine for her deliverance. Pegasus
would have strained hard to have brought old
Perseus on his back, time enough to rescue
this Andromeda from so foul a monster. Has
our Christian poetry no generosity, no bowels'!
Pla, ha, Sir Launcelot! Ha, Sir George ! Will
no ghost leave the shades for us in extremity,
to save a distressed damselV1
On the “ expression,” that is, we presume, the
poetry of the work, Mr. Rymer does not think
it necessary to dwell; though he admits that
“ the verses rumbling in our ears, are of good
use to help off the action.” On those of Shaks-
peare he passes this summary judgment: “In
the neighing of a horse, or in the growling ot
a mastiff, there is a meaning, there is as lively
expression, and may I say more humanity,
than many times in the tragical flights of
Shakspeare. Having settled this trivial point,
he invites the reader “ to step among the scenes,
to observe the conduct on this tragedy.”
In examining the first scene of Othello, our
critic weightily reprehends the sudden and
startling manner in which lago and Roderigo
inform Brabantio of his daughter’s elopement
with the Moor. He regards their abruptness
as an unpardonable violation of decorum, and,
by way of contrast to its rudeness, informs us,
that
“In formerdays there wont to be kept at the
courts of princes somebody in a fool’s coat,
that in pure simplicity might let slip something,
which made way for the ill news, and blunted
the shock, which otherwise might have come
too violent on the party.”
Mr. Rymer shows the council of Venice no
quarter. He thus daringly scrutinizes their
proceedings.
“By their conduct and manner of talk, a
body must strain hard to fancy the scene at
Venice, and not rather at some of our CinqueRYMER ON TRAGEDY.
23
ports, where the baily and his fishermen are
knocking their heads together on account of
some whale; or some terrible broil on the
coast. But to show them true Venetians, the
maritime affairs stick not on their hand; the
public may sink or swim. They will sit up
all night to hear a Doctors’ Commons matri-
monial cause; and have the merits of the
cause laid open to ’em, that they may decide
it before they stir. What can be pleaded to
keep awake their attention so wonderfully 1”
Here the critic enters into a fitting abuse of
Othello’s defence to the senate; expresses his
disgust at the “eloquence which kept them up
all night,” and his amaze at their apathy, not-
withstanding the strangeness of the marriage.
He complains, that
“Instead of starting at the prodigy, every
one is familiar with Desdemona, as if he were
her own natural father; they rejoice in her
good fortune, and wish their own daughters as
hopefully married. Should the poet (he con-
tinues) have provided such a husband for an
only daughter of any peer in England, the
Blackamoor must have changed his skin to
look our House of Lords in the face.”
Our critic next complains, that, in the second
act, the poet shows the action (he “knows not
how many leagues off”) in the island of Cy-
prus, without “our Bayes” (as he pleasantly
denominates Shakspeare) having made any
provision of transport ships for the audience.
The first scene in Cyprus is then “cut up” in
a way which might make the most skilful of
modern reviewers turn pale with envy. After
noticing the preliminary dialogue, Mr. Rymer
observes, “now follows a long rabble of Jack
Pudden farce between Iago and Desdemona,
that runs on with all the little plays, jingle,
and trash, below the patience of any country
kitchen maid with her sweetheart. The Ve-
netian Donna is hard put to it for pastime;
and this is all when they are newly got on
shore from a dismal tempest, and when every
moment she might expect to hear her Lord,
(as she calls him,) that she runs so mad after,
is arrived or lost.” Our author, therefore,
accuses Shakspeare of “ unhallowing the
theatre, profaning the name of tragedy, and
instead of representing men and manners,
turning all morality, good-sense, and hu-
manity, into mockery and derision.”
Mr. Rymer contends, that Desdemona’s
solicitations for Cassio were in themselves
more than enough to rouse Othello’s jealousy.
“Iago can now (he observes) only actum
agere, and vex the audience with a nauseous
repetition.” This remark introduces the fol-
lowing criticism on the celebrated scene in
the third act, between Othello and Iago, which
is curious, not only as an instance of perverted
reasoning, but as it shows that, in the perform-
ance, some great histrionic power must have
been formerly exerted, not unlike the energy
of which we, in witnessing this tragedy, have
been spectators.
“ Whence comes it, then, that this is the lop
scene; the scene that raises Othello above all
other tragedies at our theatres'! it is purely
from the action; from the mops and the mows,
Vhe grimace, the grins, and gesticulation. Such
scenes as this have made all the world run
after Harlequin and Scaramoucio.
“The several degrees of action were amongst
the ancients distinguished by the cothurnus,
the soccus, and the planipes. Had this scene
been represented at Old Rome, Othello and
Iago must have quitted their buskins: they
must have played barefoot; for the spectators
would not have been content without seeing
their podometry, and the jealousy work out
at the very toes of them. Words, be they
Spanish or Polish, or any inarticulate sound,
have the same effect: they can only serve to
distinguish, and, as it were, beat time to the
action. But here we see a known language
does wofully encumber and clog the operation;
as either forced, or heavy, or trifling, or in-
coherent, or improper, or most improbable.
When no words interpose to spoil the conceit,
every one interprets, as he likes best; so in
that memorable dispute between Panurge and
our English philosopher in Rabelais, performed
without a word speaking, the theologians,
physicians, and surgeons, made one inference;
the lawyers, civilians, and canonists, drew
another conclusion more to their mind.”
Mr. Rymer thus objects to the superlative
villany of Iago, on his advising Desdemona’s
murder.
“Iago had some pretence to be discontent
with Othello and Cassio, and what passed
hitherto was the operation of revenge. Des-
demona had never done him any harm; al-
ways kind to him, and to his wife; was his
countrywoman, a dame of quality. For him
to abet her murder, shows nothing of a soldier,
nothing of a man, nothing of nature in it.
The ordinary of Newgate never had the like
monster to pass under his examination. Can
it be any diversion to see a rogue beyond what
the devil ever finished 1 or would it be any in-
struction to an audience] Iago could desire
no better than to set Cassio and Othello, his
two enemies, by the ears together, so that he
might have been revenged on them both at
once; and choosing for his own share the
murder of Desdemona, he had the opportunity
to play booty, and save the poor harmless
wretch. But the poet must do ever}7- thing by
contraries; to surprise the audience still with
something horrible and prodigious, beyond
any human imagination. At this rate, he
must outdo the devil, to be a poet in the rank
with Shakspeare.”
Mr. Rymer is decorously enraged, to think
that the tragedy should turn on a handkerchief.
“ Why,” he asks in virtuous indignation, “was
not this called the tragedy of the handkerchief]
what can be more absurd than (as Quintilian
expresses it) in parvibus (sic) litibus has tragedias
movere? We have heard of Fortunatus, his
purse, and of the invisible cloak long ago
worn thread-bare, and stowed up in the ward-
robe of obsolete romances; one might think
that were a fitter place for this handkerchief
than that it, at this time of day, be worn on the
stage, to raise everywhere all this clutter and
turmoil.” And again, “ the handkerchief is so
remote a trifle, no booby on this side Mauritania
could make any consequence from it.”
Our author suggests a felicitous alteration24
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
of the catastrophe of Othello. He proposes,
that the handkerchief, when lost, should have
been folded in the bridal couch; and when
Othello was stifling Desdemona,
“The fairy napkin might have started up to
disarm his fury, and stop his ungracious
mouth. Then might she (in a trance for fear)
have lain as dead. Then might he, (believing
her dead.) touched with remorse, have honestly
cut his own throat, by the good leave, and with
the applause, of all the spectators ; who might
thereupon have gone home with a quiet mind,
admiring the beauty of providence, fairly and
truly represented on the theatre.’’
The following is the summing up and catas-
trophe of this marvellous criticism:
“ What can remain with the audience to
carry home with them from this sort of poetry,
for their use and edification'! How can it
work, unless (instead of settling the mind and
purging our passions) to delude our senses,
disorder our thoughts, addle our brain, pervert
our affections, hair our imaginations, corrupt
our appetite—and fill our head with vanity,
confusion, tintamarra, and jingle-jangle, be-
yond what all the parish clerks of London,
with their Old Testament farces and interludes,
in Richard the Second’s time, could ever pre-
tend to 1 Our only hopes, for the good of their
souls, can be that these people go to the play-
house as they do to church—to sit still, look
on one another, make no reflection, nor mind
the play more than they would a sermon.
“There is in this play some burlesque, some
humour, and ramble of comical wit, some
show, and some mimicry to divert the specta-
tors; but the tragical part is clearly none
other than a bloody farce, without salt or
savor.”
Our author’s criticism on Julius Ccesar is very
scantjq compared with that of Othello, but it is
not less decisive. Indeed, his classical zeal
here sharpens his critical rage; and he is in-
censed against Shakspeare, not only as offend-
ing the dignity of the tragic muse, but the
memory of the noblest Romans. “ He might,”
exclaims the indignant critic, “ be familiar with
Othello and Iago, as his own natural acquaint-
ance, but Caesar and Brutus were above his
conversation; to put them in fools’ coats, and
make them Jack Puddens in the Shakspeare
dress, is a sacrilege beyond any thing in Spel-
man. The truth is, this author’s head was
full of villanous, unnatural images—and his-
tory has furnished .him with great names,
thereby to recommend them to the world, by
writing over them—This is Brutus, this is Cicero,
this is Ccesar.” He affirms, “that the language
Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Brutus
would not suit or be convenient, unless from
some son of the shambles, or some natural
offspring of the butchery.” He abuses the
poet for making the conspirators dispute about
day-break—seriously chides him for not allow-
ing the noble Brutus a watch-candle in his
chamber on this important night, rather than
puzzling his man, Lucius, to grope in the
dark for a flint and tinder-box to get the taper
lighted—speaks of the quarrel scene between
Brutus and Cassius, as that in which “ they
are to play a prize, a trial of skill in huffing
and swaggering like two drunken Hectors of
a two-penny reckoning.” And finally, allud-
ing to the epilogue of Laberius, forced by the
emperor to become an actor, he thus sums up
his charges:
“This may show with what indignity our
poet treats the noblest Romans. But there is
no other cloth in his wardrobe. Every one
must wear a fool’s coat that comes to be
dressed by him ; nor is he more civil to the
ladies—Portia, in good manners, might have
challenged more respect; she that shines a
glory of the first magnitude in the gallery of
heroic dames, is with our poet scarce one re-
move from a natural; she is the own cousin-
german of one piece, the very same imperti-
nent silly flesh and blood with Desdemona.
Shakspeare’s genius lay for comedy and hu-
mour. In tragedy he appears quite out of his
element; his brains are turned—he raves and
rambles without any coherence, any spark of
reason, or any rule to control him, to set
bounds to his phrensy.”
One truth, though the author did not under-
stand it, is told in this critic on Julius Ccesar;
that Shakspeare’s “senators and his orators
had their learning and education at the same
school, be they Venetians, Ottamites, or noble
Romans.” They drew, in their golden urns,
from the deep fountain of humanity, those liv-
ing waters which lose not their sweetness in
the changes of man’s external condition.
These attacks on Shakspeare are very curi-
ous, as evincing how gradual has been the in-
crease of his fame. Their whole tone shows
that the author was not advancing what he
thought the world would regard as paradoxical
or strange. He speaks as one with authority
to decide. We look now on his work amazedly;
and were it put forth by a writer of our times,
should regard it as “the very ecstasy of mad-
ness.” Such is the lot of genius. However
small the circle of cotemporary admirers, it
must “gather fame” as time rolls on. It ap-
peals to feelings which cannot alter. The minds
who once have deeply felt it, can never lose
the impression at first made upon them—they
transmit it to others, by whom it is extended
to those who are worthy to treasure it. Its
stability and duration at length awaken the at-
tention of the world, which thus acknowledges
the sanction of time, and professes an admira-
tion for the author, which it only feels for his
name. We should not, however, have thus
dwelt on the attacks of Rymer, had we re-
garded them merely as objects of wonder, or
as proofs of the partial influence of Shaks-
peare’s genius. They are far from deserving
unmingled scorn. They display, at least, an
honest, unsophisticated hatred, which is better
than the maudlin admiration of Shakspeare,
expressed by those who were deluded by Ire-
land’s forgeries. Their author has a hearti-
ness, an earnestness almost romantic, which
we cannot despise, though directed against our
idol. With a singular obtuseness to poetry,
he has a chivalric devotion to all that he re-
gards as excellent and grand. He looks on the
supposed errors of the poet as moral crimes.
He confounds fiction with fact—grows warm
in defence of shadows—feels a violation ofRYMER ON TRAGEDY.
25
poetical justice, as a wrong conviction by a
iury—moves a habeas corpus for all damsels
imprisoned in romance—and, if the bard kills
those of his characters who deserve to live,
pronounces judgment on him as in case of
felony, without benefit of clergy. He is the
Don Quixote of criticism. Like the hero of
Cervantes, he is roused to avenge fictitious
injuries, and would demolish the scenic exhi-
bition in his disinterested rage. In one sense
he does more honour to the poet than any
other writer, for he seems to regard him as an
arbiter of life and death—responsible only to
the critic for the administration of his powers.
Mr. Rymer has his own stately notions of
what is proper for tragedy. He is zealous for
poetical justice; and as he thinks that vice
cannot be punished too severely, and yet that
the poet ought to leave his victims objects of
pity, he protests against the introduction of
very wicked characters. “Therefore/’ says
he, “among the ancients we find no malefac-
tors of this kind ; a wilful murderer is, with
them, as strange and unknown as a parricide
to the old Romans. Yet need we not fancy
that they were squeamish, or unacquainted
with many of those great lumping crimes in
that age; when we remember their CEdipus,
Orestes, or Medea. But they took care to wash
the viper, to cleanse away the venom, and with
such art to prepare the morsel; they made it
all junket to the taste, and all physic in the
operation.”
Our author understands exactly the balance
of power in the affections. He would dispose
of all the poet’s characters to a hair, according
to his own rules of fitness. He would marshal
them in array as in a procession, and mark
out exactly what each ought to do or suffer.
According to him, so much of presage and no
more should be given—such a degree of sor-
row, and no more ought a character endure;
vengeance should rise precisely to a given
height, and be executed by a certain appointed
hand. He would regulate the conduct of ficti-
tious heroes as accurately as of real beings,
and often reasons well on his own poetic deca-
logue. “Amintor,” says he, (speaking of a
character in the Maid's Tragedy) “should have
beggedthe king’s pardon; should have suffered
all the racks and tortures a tyrant could inflict;
and from Perillus’s bull should have still bel-
lowed out that eternal truth, that his promise was
to be kept—that he is true to Aspatia, that he
dies for his mistress! Then would his memory
have been precious and sweet to after ages;
and the midsummer maidens would have of-
fered their garlands all at his grave.”
Mr. Rymer is an enthusiastic champion for
the poetical prerogatives of kings. No cour-
tier ever contended more strenuously for their
divine right in real life, than he for their pre-
eminence in tragedy. “We are to presume,”
observes he gravely, “the greatest virtues,
where we find the highest rewards; and though
it is not necessary that all heroes should be
kings, yet undoubtedly all crowned heads, by
poetical right, are heroes. This character is a
flower, a prerogative, so certain, go indispen-
sably annexed to the crown, as by no poet, or
parliament of poets, ever to be invaded.”
4
Thus does he lay down the rules of life and
death for his regal domain of tragedy:	“If I
mistake not, in poetry no woman is to kill a
man, except her quality gives her the advan-
tage above him; nor is a servant to kill the
master, nor a private man, much less a sub-
ject to kill a king, nor on the contrary. Poeti-
cal decency will not suffer death to be dealt to
each other, by such persons whom the laws
of duel allow not to enter the lists together.”
He admits, however, that “ there may be cir-
cumstances that alter the case: as where there
is sufficient ground of partiality in an au-
dience, either upon the account of religion (as
Rinaldo or Riccardo, in Tasso, might kill Soli-
man, or any other Turkish king or great Sul-
tan) or else in favour of our country, for then
a private English hero might overcome a king
of some rival nation.” How pleasant a mas-
ter of the ceremonies is he in the regions of
fiction—regulating the niceties of murder like
the decorums of a dance—with an amiable
preference for his own religion and country!
f* These notions, however absurd, result from
an indistinct sense of a peculiar dignity and
grandeur essential to tragedy—and surely this
feeling was not altogether deceptive. Some
there are, indeed, who trace the emotions of
strange delight which tragedy awakens, en-
tirely to the love of strong excitement, which
is gratified by spectacles of anguish. Accord-
ing to their doctrine, the more nearly the re-
presentation of sorrow approaches reality, the
more intense will he the gratification of the
spectator. Thus Burke has gravely asserted,
that if the audience at a tragedy were in-
formed of an execution about to take place in
the neighbourhood, they would leave the thea-
tre to witness it. We believe that experience
does not warrant a speculation so dishonour-
able to our nature. How few, except those of
the grossest minds, are ever attracted by the
punishment of capital offenders! Even of
those whom the dreadful infliction draws to-
gether, how many are excited merely by curi-
osity, and a desire to view the last mortal
agony, which in a form more or less terrible
all must endure ! We think that if, during
the representation of a tragedy, the au-
dience were compelled to feel vividly that a
fellow-creature was struggling in the agonies
of a violent death, many of them would retire
—but not to the scene of horror. The reality
of human suffering would come too closely
home to their hearts, to permit their enjoy-
ment of the fiction. How often, during the
scenic exhibition of intolerable agony—uncon-
secrated and unredeemed—have we been com-
pelled to relieve our hearts from a weight too
heavy for endurance, by calling to mind that
the woes are fictitious! It cannot be the high-
est triumph of an author, whose aim is to
heighten the enjoyments of life, that he forces
us, in our own defence, to escape from his
power. If the pleasure derived from tragedy
were merely occasioned by the love of excite-
ment, the pleasure would be in proportion to
the depth and the reality of the sorrow. Then
would The Gamester be more pathetic than
Othello, and Isabella call forth deeper admira-
tion than Macbeth or Lear. Then would George
C26
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.

Barnwell be the loftiest tragedy, and the New-
gate Calendar the sweetest collection of pathetic
tales. To name those instances, is sufficiently
to refute the position on which they are
founded.
Equally false is the opinion, that the plea-
sure derived from tragedy arises from a source
of individual security, while others are suffer-
ing. There are no feelings more distantly
removed from the selfish, than those which
genuine tragedy awakens. We are carried at
its representation out of ourselves, and “the
ignorant present time,,,—by earnest sympathy
with the passions and the sorrows, not of our-
selves, but of our nature. We feel our com-
munity with the general heart of man. The
encrustments of selfishness and low passion
are rent asunder, and the warm tide of human
sympathies gushes triumphantly from its
secret and divine sources.
It is not, then, in bringing sorrow home in
its dreadful realities to our bosoms, nor in
painting it so as to make us cling to our selfish
gratifications with more earnest joy, that the
tragic poet moves and enchants us. Grief is
but the means—the necessary means indeed—
by which he accomplishes his lofty purposes.
The grander ‘qualities of the soul cannot be
developed—the deepest resources of comfort
within it cannot be unveiled—the solemnities
of its destiny cannot be shadowed forth—ex-
cept in peril and in suffering. Hence peril and
suffering become instruments of the Tragic
Muse. But these are not, in themselves, those
things which we delight to contemplate. Va-
rious, indeed, yet most distinct from these, are
the sources of that deep joy that tragedy pro-
duces. Sometimes we are filled with a delight
not dissimilar to that which the Laocoon ex-
cites—an admiration of the more than mortal
beauty of the attitudes and of the finishing—
and even of the terrific sublimity of the folds
in which the links of fate involve the charac-
ters. When we look at that inimitable group,
we do not merely rejoice in a sympathy with
extreme suffering—but are enchanted with ten-
der loveliness, and feel that the sense of dis-
tress is softened by the exquisite touches of
genius. Often, in tragedy, our hearts are ele-
vated by thoughts “informed with nobleness”
—by the view of heroic greatness of soul—b}^
the contemplation of affections which death
cannot conquer. It is not the depth of anguish
which calls forth delicious tears—it is some
sweet piece of self-denial—some touch of
human gentleness, in the midst of sorrow—
some “glorious triumph of exceeding love,”
which suffuses our “ subdued eyes,” and mel-
lows our hearts. Death itself often becomes
the source of sublime consolations: seen
through the poetical medium, it often seems to
fall on the wretched “ softly and lightly, as a
passing cloud.” It is felt as the blessed means
of re-uniting faithful and ill-fated lovers—it is
the pillow on whic i the long struggling patriot
rests. Often it exhibits the noblest triumph of
the spiritual over the material part of man.
The intense ardour of a spirit that “ o’er-in-
form’d its tenement of clay”—yet more quench-
less in the last conflict, is felt to survive the
struggle, and to triumph even in the victory
which power has achieved over its earthly
frame. In short, it is the high duty of the
tragic poet to exhibit humanity sublimest
in its distresses—to dignify or to sweeten sor-
row—to exhibit eternal energies wrestling with
each other, or with the accidents of the world—
and to disclose the depth and the immortality
of the affections. He must represent humanity
as a rock, beaten, and sometimes overspread,
with the mighty waters of anguish, but still
unshaken. We look to him for hopes, princi-
ples, resting places of the soul—for emotions
which dignify our passions, and consecrate
our sorrows. A brief retrospect of tragedy
will show, that in every age when it has tri-
umphed, it has appealed not to the mere love
of excitement, but to the perceptions of beauty
in the soul—to the yearnings of the deepest
affections—to the aspirations after grandeur
and permanence, which never leave man even
in his errors and afflictions, * s
Nothing could be more dignified than the
old tragedy of the Greeks. Its characters were
demi-gods, or heroes ; its subjects were often
the destinies of those lines of the mighty,
which had their beginning among the eldest
deities. So far, in the development of their
plots, were the poets from appealing to mere
sensibility, that they scarcely deigned to
awaken an anxious throb, or draw forth a
human tear. In their works, we see the catas-
trophe from the beginning, and feel its influence
at every step, as we advance majestically along
the solemn avenue which it closes. There is
little struggle; the doom of the heroes is fixed
on high, and they pass, in sublime composure,
to fulfil their destiny. Their sorrows are awful,
their deaths religious sacrifices to the power of
Heaven. The glory that plays about their
heads is the prognostic of their fate. A con-
secration is shed over their brief and sad
career, which takes away all the ordinary
feelings of suffering. Their afflictions are
sacred, their passions inspired by the gods,
their fates prophesied in elder time, their deaths
almost festal. All things are tinged with sanc-
tity or with beauty in the Greek tragedies.
Bodily pain is made sublime; destitution and
wretchedness are rendered sacred; and the
very grove of the Furies is represented as
ever fresh and green. How grand is the suf-
fering of Prometheus, how sweet the resolution
of Antigone, how appalling, yet how magnifi-
cent the last vision of Cassandra, how recon-
ciling and tender, yet how awful, the circum-
stances attendant on the death of CEdipus!
And how rich a poetic atmosphere do the
Athenian poets breathe over all the creations
of their genius! Their exquisite groups ap-
pear in all the venerableness of hoar anti-
quity ; yet in the distinctness and in the bloom
of unfading youth. All the human figures are
seen, sublime in attitude, and exquisite in
finishing; while, in the dim background, ap-
pear the shapes of eldest gods, and the solemn
abstractions of life, fearfully imbodied —
“Death the skeleton, and time the shadow!”—
Surely there is something more in all this, than
a vivid picture of the sad realities of our
human existence.
The Romans failed in tragedy, because theirRYMER ON TRAGEDY.
27
love of mere excitement was too keen to per-
mit them to enjoy it. They had “ supped full
of horrors.’’ Familiar with the thoughts of
real slaughter, they could not endure the philo-
sophic and poetic view of distress in which it
is softened and made sacred. Their imagina-
tions were too practical for a genuine poet to
affect. Hence, in the plays which bear the
name of Seneca, horrors are heaped on hor-
rors—the most unpleasing of the Greek fictions
(as that of Medea) are re-written and made
ghastly—and every touch that might redeem is
carefully effaced by the poet. Still, the gran-
deur of old tragedy is there—still “ the gorgeous
pall comes sweeping by”—still the dignity sur-
vives, though the beauty has faded.
In the productions of Shakspeare, doubtless,
tragedy was divested of something of its external
grandeur. The mythology of the ancient world
had lost its living charm. Its heroic forms
remained, indeed, unimpaired in beauty or
grace, in the distant regions of the imagination,
but they could no longer occupy the foreground
of poetry. Men required forms of flesh and
blood, animated by human passion, and awak-
ening human sympathy. Shakspeare, there-
fore, sought for his materials nearer to common
humanity than the elder bards. He took also,
in each play, a far wider range than they had
dared to occupy. He does not, therefore, con-
vey so completely as they did one grand har-
monious feeling, by each of his works. But
who shall affirm, that the tragedy of Shaks-
peare has not an elevation of its own, or that
it produces pleasure only by exhibiting spec-
tacles of varied anguish 1 The reconciling
power of his imagination, and the genial influ-
ences of his philosophy are ever softening and
consecrating sorrow. He scatters the rainbow
hues of fancy over objects in themselves repul-
sive. He nicely developes the “ soul of good-
ness in things evil,” to console and delight us.
He blends all the most glorious imagery of na-
ture with the passionate expressions of afflic-
tion. He sometimes, in a single image, ex-
presses an intense sentiment in all its depth,
yet identifies it with the widest and the grandest
objects of creation. Thus he makes Timon,
in the bitterness of his soul, set up his tomb
on the beached shore, that the wave of the
ocean may once a day cover him with its em-
bossed foam—expanding an individual feel-
ing into the extent of the vast and eternal sea;
yet making us feel it as more intense, from the
very sublimity of the image. The mind can
always rest without anguish on his catastro-
phies, however mournful. Sad as the story of
Romeo and Juliet is, it does not lacerate or
tear the heart, but relieves it of its weight by
awakening sweet tears. We shrink not at
their tomb, which we feel has set a seal on
their loves and virtues, but almost long with
them there “to set up our everlasting rest.”
We do not feel unmingled agony at the death
of Lear; when his aged heart, which has been
beaten so fearfully, is at rest—and his withered
frame, late o’er-informed with terrific energy,
reposes with his pious child. We are not
shocked and harrowed even when Hamlet falls;
for we feel that he is unfit for the bustle of this
world, and his own gentle contemplations on
death have deprived it of its terrors. In Shaks-
peare, the passionate is always steeped in the
beautiful. Sometimes he diverts sorrow with
tender conceits, which, like little fantastic
rocks, break its streams into sparkling cas-
cades and circling eddies. And when it must
flow on, deep and still, he bends over it
branching foliage and graceful flowers—whose
leaves are seen in its dark bosom, all of one
sober and harmonious hue—but in their clearest
form and most delicate proportions.
The other dramatists of Shakspeare’s age,
deprived, like him, of classical resources, and
far inferior to him in imagination and wisdom,
strove to excite a deep interest by the wildness
of their plots, and the strangeness of the inci-
dents with which their scenes were crowded.
Their bloody tragedies are, however, often
relieved by passages of exquisite sweetness.
Their terrors, not humanized like those of
Shakspeare, are yet far removed from the
vulgar or disgusting. Sometimes, amidst the
gloom of continued crimes, which often follow
each other in stern and awful succession, are
fair pictures of more than earthly virtue, tinted
with the dews of heaven, and encircled with
celestial glories. The scene in The Broken
Heart, where Calantha, amidst the festal crowd,
receives the news of the successive deaths of
those dearest to her in the world, yet dances
on—and that in which she composedly settles
all the affairs of her empire, and then dies
smiling by the body of her contracted lord -
are in the loftiest spirit of tragedy. They
combine the dignity and majestic suffering of
the ancient drama, with the intenseness of the
modern. The last scene unites beauty, tender-
ness, and grandeur, in one harmonious and
stately picture—as sublime as any siilgle scene
in the tragedies of iEschylus or Shakspeare.
Of the succeeding tragedians of England,
the frigid imitators of the French Drama, it is
necessary to say but little. The elevation of
their plays is only on the stilts of declamatory
language. The proportions and symmetry of
their plots are but an accordance with arbitrary
rules. Yet was there no reason to fear that
the sensibilities of their audience should be
too strongly excited, without the alleviations of
fancy or of grandeur, because their sorrows
are unreal, turgid, and fantastic. Cato is a
classical petrifaction. Its tenderest expression
is, “Be sure you place his urn near mine,”
which comes over us like a sentiment frozen
in the utterance. Congreve’s Mourning Bride
has a greater air of magnificence than most
tragedies of his or of the succeeding time;
but its declamations fatigue, and its labyrinthine
plot perplexes. Venice Preserved is cast in the
mould of dignity and of grandeur; but the
characters want nobleness, the poetry coher-
ence, and the sentiments truth.
The plays of Hill, Hughes, Philips, Murphy,
and Rowe, are dialogues, sometimes ill and
sometimes well written—occasionally stately
in numbers, but never touching the soul. It
would be unjust to mention Young and Thom
son as the writers of tragedies.
The old English feeling of tender beauty has
at last begun to revive. Lamb’s John WoodviL
despised by the critics, and for a while neg28
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
.ected by the people, awakened those gentle
pulses of deep joy which had long forgotten to
beat. Here first, after a long interval, instead
of the pompous swelling of inane declamation,
the music of humanity was heard in its sweet-
est tones. The air of freshness breathed over
its forest scenes, the delicate grace of its images,
its nice disclosure of consolations and venera-
blenesses in the nature of man, and the exqui-
site beauty of its catastrophe, where the stony
remorse of the hero is melted into child-like
tears, as he kneels on the little hassock where
he had often kneeled in infancy, are truly
Shakspearean. Yet this piece, with all its
delicacies in the reading, wants that striking
scenic effect; without which a tragedy cannot
succeed on the stage. The Remorse of Cole-
ridge is a noble poem; but its metaphysical
clouds, though fringed with golden imagina-
tions, brood too heavily over it. In the detached
scenes of Barry Cornwall, passages of the
daintiest beauty abound—the passion is every
where breathed tenderly forth, in strains which
are “ silver sweet”—and the sorrow is relieved
by tenderness the most endearing. Here may
be enjoyed “a perpetual feast of nectared
sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.”—In
these—and in the works of Shiel, and even of
Maturin—are the elements whence a tragedy
more noble and complete might be moulded,
than any which has astonished the world since
Macbeth and Lear. We long to see a stately sub-
ject for tragedy chosen by some living aspirant—
the sublime struggle of high passionsfor the mas-
tery displayed—the sufferings relieved by glori-
ous imaginations, yet brought home to our souls,
and the whole conveying one grand and harmo-
nious impression to the general heart. Let us
hope that this triumph will not long be wanting,
to complete the intellectual glories of our age.
REVIEW OE CIBBER’S APOLOGY EOR HIS LIFE.
[Retrospective
There are, perhaps, few individuals, of in-
tense personal conciseness, whose lives, writ-
ten by themselves, would be destitute of interest
or of value. Works of this description enlarge
the number of our intimacies without inconve-
nience ; f awaken, with a peculiar vividness,
pleasant recollections of our own past career;
and excite that sympathy with the little sor-
rows, cares, hopes, and enjoyments of others,
which infuses new tenderness into all the
pulses of individual joy. The qualification
which is most indispensable to the writer of
such auto-biographies, is vanity. If he does
not dwell with gusto on his own theme, he will
communicate no gratification to his reader. He
must not, indeed, fancy himself too outrage-
ously what he is not, but should have the
highest sense of what he is, the happiest relish
for his own peculiarities, and the most confi-
dent assurance that they are matters of great
interest to the world. He who feels thus, will
not chill us by cold generalities, but trace with
an exquisite minuteness all the felicities of his
life, all the well remembered moments of grati-
fied vanity, from the first beatings of hope and
first taste of delight, to the time when age is
gladdened by the reflected tints of young enter-
prise and victory. Thus it was with Colley
Cibber ; and, therefore, his Apology for his own
life is one of the most amusing books that
have ever been written. He was not, indeed,
a very wise or lofty character—nor did he affect
great virtue or wisdom—but openly derided
gravity, bade defiance to the serious pursuits
of life, and honestly preferred his own lightness
of heart and of head, to knowledge the most
extensive or thought the most profound. He
was vain even of his vanity. At the very
commencement of his work, he avows his
Review, No. 2.]
determination not to repress it, because it is
part of himself, and therefore will only increase
the resemblance of the picture. Rousseau did
not more clearly lay open to the world the
depths and inmost recesses of his soul, than
Cibber his little foibles and minikin weak-
nesses. The philosopher dwelt not more in-
tensely on the lone enthusiasm of his spirit,
on the alleviations of his throbbing soul, on
the long draughts of rapture which he eagerly
drank in from the loveliness of the universe,
than the player on his early aspirings for scenic
applause, and all the petty triumphs and mor-
tifications of his passion for the favour of the
town. How real and speaking is the descrip-
tion which he gives of his fond desires for the
bright course of an actor—of his light-hearted
pleasure, when, in the little part of the Chap-
lain, in The Orphan, he received his first ap-
plause—and of his highest transport, when,
the next day, Goodman, a retired actor of note,
clapping him on the shoulder at a rehearsal,
exclaimed, with an oath, that he must make a
good actor, which almost took away his breath,
and fairly drew tears into his eyes ! The spirit
of gladness, which gave such exquisite keen-
ness to his youthful appetite for praise, sus-
tained him through all the changes of his for-
tune, enabling him to make a jest of penury,
assisting him to gather fresh courage from
every slight, adding zest to every success, until
he arrived at the high dignity of “Patentee of
the Theatre Royal.” When “he no revenue
had but his good spirits to feed and clothe
him,” these were ample. His vanity was to
him a kingdom. The airiest of town butter-
flies, he sipped of the sweets of pleasure wher-
ever its stray gifts were found; sometimes in
the tavern among the wits, but chiefly in theCOLLEY CIBBER’S APOLOGY FOR HIS LIFE.
29
golden sphere of the theatre,—that magic circle
whose majesties do not perish with the chances
of the world. In reading his life, we become
possessed of his own feathery lightness, and
seem to follow the course of the gayest and
the emptiest of all the bubbles, that, in his age
of happy trifling, floated along the shallow but
glittering stream of existence.
The Life of Cibber is peculiarly a favourite
with us, not only by reason of the superlative
coxcombry which it exhibits, but of the due
veneration which it yields to an art too fre-
quently under-rated, even among those to whose
gratification it ministers. If the degree of en-
joyment and of benefit produced by an art be
any test of its excellence, there are few, indeed,
which will yield to that of the actor. His ex-
ertions do not, indeed, often excite emotions so
deep or so pure as those which the noblest
poetry inspires, but their genial influences are
far more widely extended. The beauties of
the most gifted of bards, find in the bosoms of
a very small number an answering sympathy.
Even of those who talk familiarly of Spenser
and Milton, there are few who have fairly read,
and still fewer who truly feel, their divinest
effusions. It is only in the theatre, that any
image of the real grandeur of humanity—any
picture of generous heroism and noble self-
sacrifice—is poured on the imaginations, and
sent warm to the hearts of the vast body of
the people. There, are eyes, familiar through
months and years only with mechanic toil,
suffused with natural tears. There, are the
deep fountains of hearts, long encrusted by
narrow cares, burst open, and a holy light is
sent in on the long sunken forms of the imagi-
nation, which shone fair and goodly in boy-
hood by their own light, but have since been
sealed and forgotten in their “ sunless treasu-
ries.” There, do the lowest and most ignorant
catch their only glimpse of that poetic radiance
which sheds its glory around our being. While
they gaze, they forget the petty concerns of
their own individual lot, and recognise and
rejoice in their kindred with a nature capable
of high emprise, of meek suffering, and of de-
fiance to the powers of agony and the grave.
They are elevated and softened into men.
They are carried beyond the ignorant present
time ; feel the past and the future on the instant,
and kindle as they gaze on the massive reali-
ties of human virtue, or on those fairy visions
which are the gleaming foreshadows of golden
years, which hereafter shall bless the world.
Their horizon is suddenly extended from the
narrow circle of low anxieties and selfish joys,
to the farthest boundaries of our moral horizon ;
and they perceive, in clear vision, the rocks of
defence for their nature, which their fellow
men have been privileged to raise. While
they feel that “ which gives an awe of things
above them,” their souls are expanded in the
heartiest sympathy with the vast body of their
fellows. A thousand hearts are swayed at
once by the same emotion, as the high grass of
the meadow yields, as a single blade, to the
breeze which sweeps over it. Distinctions of
fortune, rank, talent, age, all give way to the
warm tide of emotion, and every class feel
only as partakers in one primal sympathy,
“ made of one blood,” and equal in the sancti-
ties of their being. Surely the art that produces
an effect like this—which separates, as by a
divine alchemy, the artificial from the real in
humanity—which supplies to the artisan in
the capital, the place of those woods and free
airs, and mountain streams, which insensibly
harmonize the peasant’s character—which
gives the poorest to feel the old grandeur of
tragedy, sweeping by with sceptred pall—which
makes the heart of the child leap with strange
joy, and enables the old man to fancy himself
again a child—is worthy of no mean place
among the arts which refine our manners, by
exalting our conceptions !
It has sometimes been objected to the thea-
trical artist, that he merely repeats the lan-
guage and imbodies the conceptions of the
poet. But the allegation, though specious, is
unfounded. It has been completely established,
by a great and genial critic of our own time,
that the deeper beauties of poetry cannot be
shaped forth by the actor,* and it is equally
true, that the poet has little share in the high-
est triumphs of the performer. It may, at first,
appear a paradox, but is, nevertheless, proved
by experience, that the fanciful cast of the lan-
guage has very little to do with the effect of
an acted tragedy. Mrs. Siddons would not
have been less than she is, though Shakspeare
had never written. She displayed genius as
exalted in the characters drawn by Moore,
Southern, Otway, and Rowe, as in those of the
first of human bards. Certain great situations
are all the performer needs, and the grandest
emotions of the soul all that he can imbody.
He can derive little aid from the noblest imagi-
nations or the richest fantasies of the author.
He may, indeed, by his own genius, like the
matchless artist to whom we have just alluded,
consecrate sorrow, dignify emotion, and kindle
the imagination as well as awaken the sympa-
thies. But this will be accomplished, not by
the texture of the words spoken, but by the
living magic of the eye, of the tone, of the
action; by all those means which belong ex-
clusively to the actor. When Mrs. Siddons
cast that unforgotten gaze of blank horror on
the corpse of Beverley, was she indebted to the
playwright for the conception I When, as
Arpasia, in Tamerlane, she gave that look of
inexpressible anguish, in which the breaking
of the heart might be seen, and the cold and
rapid advances of death traced—and fell with-
out a word, as if struck by the sudden blow of
destiny—in that moment of unearthly power,
when she astonished and terrified even her
oldest admirers, and after which, she lay her-
self really senseless from the intensity of her
own emotion—where was the marvellous stage
direction, the pregnant hint in the frigid decla-
matory text, from which she wrought this
amazing picture, too perilous to be often re-
peated! Do the words “I’m satisfied,” in
Cato, convey the slightest image of that high
struggle—that contest between nature long re-
* See Mr. Lamb’s Essay on the Tragedies of Shaks-
peare, as adapted to representation on the stage—a piece,
which combines more of profound thought, with mere ct
deep feeling and exquisite beauty, than any criticism
with which we are acquainted.
c 230
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
pressed and stoic pride—which Mr. Kemble in
an instant imbodied to the senses, and impressed
on the soul for ever I Or, to descend into the
present time and the lowlier drama, does the
perusal of The School of Reform convey any
vestige of that rough sublimity which breathes
in the Tyke of Emery? Are Mr. Liston’s
looks out of book, gotten by heart, invented
for him by writers of farces ? Is there any
fancy of invention in its happiest mood—any
tracings of mortal hand in books—like to the
marvellous creations which Munden multiplies
at will ? These are not to be “ constrained by
mastery” of the pen, and defy not only the
power of an author to conceive, but to describe
them. The best actors, indeed, in their hap-
piest efforts, are little more indebted to the
poet, than he is to the graces of nature which
he seizes, than the sculptor to living forms, or
the grandest painters to history.
Still less weight is there in the objection, that
part of the qualities of an actor, as his form
and voice, are the gifts of nature, which imply
no merit in their possessor. They are no more
independent of will, than the sensibility and
imagination of the bard. Our admiration is
not determined by merit, but by beauty; we
contemplate angelic purity of soul with as
tender a love as virtue, which has been reared
with intense labour among clouds and storms,
and follow with as delighted a wonder the
quick glances of intuition as the longest and
most difficult researches. The actor exhibits
as high a perception of natural grace, as fine
an acquaintance with the picturesque in atti-
tude, as the sculptor. If the forms of his
imagination do not stand for ages in marble,
they live and breathe before us while they last—
change, with all the variations of passion—and
“ discourse most eloquent music.” They some-
times, as in the case of Mr. Kemble’s Roman
characters, supply the noblest illustrations of
history. The story of Coriolanus is to us no
dead letter; the nobleness of Cato is an ab-
stract idea no longer. We seem to behold
even now the calm approaches of the mighty
stoic to his end—to look on him, maintaining
the forms of Roman liberty to the last, as
though he would grasp its trembling relics in
his dying hands—and to listen to those solemn
tones, now the expiring accents of liberty^ pass-
ing away, and anon the tremulous breathings
of uncertain hope for the future. The reality
with which these things have been presented
to our youthful eyes is a possession for ever—
quickening our sympathy with the most august
instances of human virtue, and enriching our
souls with palpable images of the majesty of
old.
It may be said, that if a great actor carries
us into times that are past, he rears up no
monument which will last in those which are
to come. But there are many circumstances
to counterbalance and alleviate the shortness
of his fame. The anxiety for posthumous re-
nown, though there is something noble in it as
abstracted from mere personal desires, is
scarce1/1' the loftiest of human emotions. The
Homeric poets, who breathed forth their strains
to untutored ears, and left no visible traces of
their genius, could scarcely anticipate the du-
ration of their works. Shakspeare seems to
have thought little in his lifetime of those
honours which through all ages will accumu-
late on his memory. The best benefactors of
their race have left the world nothing but their
names, and their remembrances in grateful
souls. The true poet, perhaps, feels most ho-
lily when he thinks only of sharing in the im-
mortality of nature, and “owes no allegiance
but the elements.” Some feeling not unallied
to this, may solace the actor for the short-lived
remembrance of his exertions. The images
which he vivifies are not traced in paper, nor
diffused through the press, nor extant in mar-
ble; but are engraven on the fleshly tables of
the heart, and last till “life’s idle business”
ceases. To thousands of the young has he
given their “first mild touch of sympathy and
thought,” their first sense of communion with
their kind. As time advances, and the ranks
of his living admirers grow thin, the old tell
of his feats with a tenderer rapture, and give
such vivid hints of his excellence as enable
their hearers richly to fancy forth some image
of grandeur or delight, which, in their minds
at least, is like him. The sweet lustre of his
memory thus grows more sacred as it ap-
proaches its close, and tenderly vanishes. His
name lives still—ever pronounced with hap-
piest feelings and in the happiest hours—and
excites us to stretch our thoughts backward
into the gladnesses of another age. The grave-
maker’s work, according to the clown, in Ham-
let, outlasts all others, even “ till doomsday,”
and the actor’s fades away before most others,
because it is the very reverse of his gloomy
and durable creations. The theatrical picture
does not endure because it is the warmest, the
most living of the works of art; it is short as
human life, because it is as genial. Those are
the intensest enjoyments which soonest wither.
The fairest graces of nature—those touches
of the ethereal scattered over the universe—
pass awTay while they ravish us. Could we
succeed in giving permanence to the rainbow,
to the delicate shadow, or to the moonbeam on
the waters, their light and unearthly charm
would be lost for ever. The tender hues of
youth would ill exchange their evanescent
bloom for an enamel which ages would not
destro}r. And if “ these our actors” must
“melt into air, thin air,” leaving but soft
tracings in the hearts of living admirers—if
their images of beauty must fade into the
atmosphere of town gayety, until they only lend
some delicate graces to those airy clouds
which gleam in its distance, and which are not
recognised as theirs, they can scarcely com-
plain of the transitoriness which is necessarily
connected with the living grace which belongs
to no other order of artists.
The work before us, however, may afford
better consolation than we can render to actors;
for it redeems not the names, but the vivid
images of some of the greatest artists of a cen-
tury ago, from oblivion. Here they are not
embalmed, but kept alive—and breathe, in all
the glory of their meridian powers, before us.
Here Betterton’s tones seem yet to melt on the
entranced hearer—Nokes yet convulses the
full house with laughter on his first appearCOLLEY CIBBER’S APOLOGY FOR HIS LIFE.
31
ance—and Mrs. Monfort sinks with her dainty,
diving body to the ground, beneath the con-
scious load of her own attractions. The
theatrical portraits in this work are drawn
with the highest gusto, and set forth with the
richest colouring. The author has not sought,
like some admirable critics of this age of criti-
cism, to say as many witty or eloquent things
on each artist as possible, but simply to form
the most exact likeness, and to give to the
drapery the most vivid and appropriate hues.
We seem to listen to the prompter’s bell—to
see the curtain rise—and behold on the scene
the goodly shapes of the actors and actresses
of another age, in their antique costume, and
with all the stately airs and high graces which
the town knows no longer.
Betterton is the chief object of our author’s
admiration ; but the account of his various ex-
cellencies is too long to extract entire, and
perhaps, on account of the spirit of boundless
eulogy in which it is written, has less of that
nicety of touch which gives so complete an
individuality to his pictures of other per-
formers.
The following are perhaps the most interest-
ing parts of the description:
“You have seen a Hamlet perhaps, who, on
the first appearance of his father’s spirit, has
thrown himself into all the straining vocifera-
tion requisite to express rage and fury, and
the house has thundered with applause ;
though the misguided actor was all the while
(as Shakspeare terms it) tearing a passion
into rags.—I am the more bold to offer you this
particular instance, because the late Mr.
Addison, while I sat by him, to see this scene
acted, made the same observation, asking me
with some surprise, if I thought Hamlet should
be in so violent a passion with the Ghost,
which though it might have astonished, it had
not provoked him'! for you may observe that
in this beautiful speech, the passion never
rises beyond an almost breathless astonish-
ment, or an impatience, limited by filial reve-
rence, to inquire into the suspected wrongs
that may have raised him from his peaceful
tomb! and a desire to know what a spirit, so
seemingly distressed, might wish or enjoin a
sorrowful son to execute towards his future
quiet in the gravel This was the light into
which Betterton threw this scene; which he
opened with a pause of mute amazement!
then rising slowly, to solemn, trembling voice,
he made the Ghost equally terrible to the spec-
tator as to himself! and in the descriptive
part of the natural emotions which the ghastly
vision gave him, the boldness of his expostu-
lation was still governed by decency, manly,
but not braving; his voice never rising into
that seeming outrage, or wild defiance of what
he naturally revered. But alas! to preserve
this medium, between mouthing, and meaning
too little, to keep the attention more pleasingly
awake, by a tempered spirit, than by mere
vehemence of voice, is, of all the master-strokes
of an actor, the most difficult to reach. In
this none yet have equalled Betterton.
“A farther excellence in Betterton, was, that
he could vary his spirit to the different charac-
ters he acted. Those wild impatient starts,
that fierce and flashing fire, which he threw
into Hotspur, never came from the unruffled
temper of his Brutus; (for I have, more than
once, seen a Brutus .as warm as Hotspur;)
when the Betterton Brutus was provoked, in
his dispute with Cassius, his spirit flew only
to his eye; his steady look alone supplied that
terror, which he disdained an intemperance in
his voice should rise to. Thus, with a settled
dignity of contempt, like an unheeding rock,
he repelled upon himself the foam of Cassius.
Perhaps the very words of Shakspeare will
better let you into my meaning:
Must T give way, and room, to your rash choler?
Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?
And a little after;
There is no terror, Cassius, in your looks! &c.
Not but in some parts of this scene, where he
reproaches Cassius, his temper is not under
his suppression, but opens into that warmth
which becomes a man of virtue; yet this is
that hasty spark of anger, which Brutus him-
self endeavours to excuse.”
The account of Kynaston, who, in his youth,
before the performance of women on the stage,
used to appear in female characters, is very
amusing. He was particularly successful in
Evadne, in The Maid's Tragedy, and always re-
tained “ something of a formal gravity in his
mien, which was attributed to the stately step
he had been so early confined to” in his fe-
male attire; the ladies of quality, we are told,
used to pride themselves in taking him with
them in their coaches to Hyde Park, in his
theatrical habit, after the play, which then
used to begin at the early hour of four. There
was nothing, however, effeminate in his usual
style of acting. We are told, that
“He had a piercing eye, and in characters
of heroic life, a quick imperious vivacity in
his tone of voice, that painted the tyrant truly
terrible. There were two plays of Dryden in
which he shone, with uncommon lustre; in
Aurenge-Zebe, he played Morat, and in Don
Sebastian, Muley Moloch ; in both these parts,
he had a fierce lion-like majesty in his port
and utterance, that gave the spectator a kind
of trembling admiration.”
The following account of this actor’s per-
formance in the now neglected character of
Henry the Fourth, gives us the most vivid idea
of the grave yet gentle majesty, and kingly
pathos, which the part requires:
“But above this tyrannical, tumid superiority
of character, there is a grave and rational ma-
jesty in Shakspeare’s Harry the Fourth, which
though not so glaring to the vulgar eye, re-
quires thrice the skill and grace to become
and support. Of this real majesty, Kynaston
was entirely master; here every sentiment
came from him, as if it had been his own, as
if he had himself, that instant, conceived it, as
if he had lost the player, and were the rial
king he personated! a perfection so rarely
found, that very often, in actors of good repute,
a certain vacancy of look, inanity of voice, or
superfluous gesture, shall unmask the man to
the judicious spectator; who from the least of
those errors plainly sees the whole but a les
son given him, to be got by heart, from som*32
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
great author, whose sense is deeper than the
repeater’s understanding. This true majesty
Kynaston had so entire a command of, that
when he whispered the following plain line to
Hotspur,
Send us your prisoners, or you’ll hear of it!
he conveyed a more terrible menace in it, than
the loudest intemperance of voice could swell
to. But let the bold imitator beware, for with-
out the look, and just elocution that waited on
it, an attempt of the same nature may fall to
nothing.
“But the dignity of this character appeared
in Kynaston still more shining, in the private
scene between the King, and Prince his son :
there you saw majesty, in that sort of grief,
which only majesty could feel! there the pa-
ternal concern, for the errors of the son, made
the monarch more revered and dreaded: his
reproaches, so just, yet so unmixed with anger,
(and therefore the more piercing,) opening as
it were the arms of nature, with a secret wish,
that filial duty, and penitence awaked, might
fall into them with grace and honour. In this
affecting scene, I thought Kynaston showed
his most masterly strokes of nature; express-
ing all the various motions of the heart, with
the same force, dignity^, and feeling, they are
written; adding to the whole, that peculiar
and becoming grace, which the best writer
cannot inspire into any actor that is not born
with it.”
How inimitably is the varied excellence of
Monfort depicted in the following speaking
picture :
“ Monfort, a younger man by twenty years,
and at this time in his highest reputation, was
an actor of a very different style: of person he
was tall, well made, fair, and of an agreeable
aspect: his voice clear, full, and melodious:
in tragedy he was the most affecting lover
within my memory. His addresses had a re-
sistless recommendation from the very tone
of his voice, wThich gave his words such a
softness, that, as Dryden says,
-----Like flakes of feather’d snow,
They melted as they fell!
All tilis he particularly verified in that scene
of Alexander, where the hero throws himself
at the feet of Statira for pardon of his past in-
fidelities. There we saw the great, the tender,
the penitent, the despairing, the transported,
and the amiable, in the highest perfection. In
comedy, he gave the truest life to what we call
the Fine Gentleman; his spirit shone the
brighter for being polished with decency: in
scenes of gayety, he never broke into the re-
gard, that was due to the presence of equal or
superior characters, though inferior actors
played them; he filled the stage, not by elbow-
ing, and crossing it before others, or discon-
certing their action, but by surpassing them,
in true and masterly touches of nature. He
never laughed at his own jest, unless the point
of his raillery upon another required it. He
had a particular talent, in giving life to bons
mots and repartees : the wit of the poet seemed
always to come from him extempore, and
sharpened into more wit from his brilliant
manner of delivering it; he had himself a good
share of it, or what is equal to it, so lively a
pleasantness of humour, that when either of
these fell into his hands upon the stage, he
wantoned with them, to the highest delight of
his auditors. The agreeable was so natural
to him, that even in that dissolute character
of the Rover he seemed to wash off the guilt
from vice, and gave it charms and merit. For
though it may be a reproach to the poet, to
draw such characters, not only unpunished,
but rewarded, the actor may still be allowed
his due praise in his excellent performance.
And this is a distinction which, when this co-
medy was acted at Whitehall, King William’s
Queen Mary was pleased to make in favour of
Monfort, notwithstanding her disapprobation
of the play.
“ He had, besides all this, a variety in his
genius which few capital actors have shown,
or perhaps have thought it any addition to
their merit to arrive at; he could entirely
change himself; could at once throw off the
man of sense, for the brisk, vain, rude, and
lively coxcomb, the false, flashy pretender to
wit, and the dupe of his own sufficiency: of
this he gave a delightful instance in the cha-
racter of Sparkish in Wycherly’s CountryWife.
In that of Sir Courtly Nice his excellence was
still greater; there, his whole man, voice,
mien, and gesture, was no longer Monfort, but
another person. There, the insipid, soft civi-
lity, the elegant and formal mien, the drawling
delicacy of voice, the stately flatness of his ad-
dress, and the empty eminence of his attitudes,
were so nicely observed and guarded by him,
that had he not been an entire master of nature,
had he not kept his judgment, as it were, a
sentinel upon himself, not to admit the least
likeness of what he used to be, to enter into
any part of his performance, he could not
possibly have so completely finished it.”
Our author is even more felicitous in his
description of the performers in low comedy
and high farce. The following critic brings
Nokes—the Liston of his age—so vividly be-
fore us, that we seem almost as well acquaint-
ed with him, as with his delicious successor.
“ Nokes was an actor of quite a different
genius from any I have ever read, heard: ot, or
seen, since or before his time ; and yet his ge-
neral excellence may be comprehended in one
article, viz., a plain and palpable simplicity of
nature, which was so utterly his own, that he
was often as unaccountably diverting in his
common speech as on the stage. I saw him
once, giving an account of some table-talk, to
another actor behind the scenes, which a man
of quality accidentally listening to, was so de-
ceived by his manner, that he asked him, if
that was a new play he was rehearsing! It
seems almost amazing, that this simplicity, so
easy to Nokes, should never be caught, by any
one of his successors. Leigh and Underhil have
been well copied, though not equalled by
others. But not all the mimical skill of Est-
court (famed as he was for it) although he
had often seen Nokes, could scarce give us an
idea of him. After this, perhaps, it will be
saying less of him, when I own, that though I
have still the sound of every line he spoke, in
my ear, (which used not to be thought a badCOLLEY CIBBER’S APOLOGY FOR HIS LIFE.
33
one,) yet I have often tried, by myself, but in
vain, to reach the least distant likeness of the
vis comica of Nokes. Though this may seem
little to his praise, it may be negatively saying
a good deal to it, because I have never st^en
any one actor, except himself, whom I could not
at least so far imitate, as to give you a more
than tolerable notion of his manner. But
Nokes was so singular a species, and was so
formed by nature for the stage, that I ques-
tion if (beyond the trouble of getting words by
heart) it ever cost him an hour’s labour to
arrive at that high reputation he had, and de-
served.
“The characters he particularly shone in
were Sir Martin Marr-all, Gomez, in the Spanish
Friar, Sir Nicolas Cully, in Love in a Tub,
Barnaby Brittle, in the Wanton Wife, Sir
Davy Dunce, in the Soldier’s Fortune, Sosia,
in Amphytrion, &c. &c. &c. To tell you how
he acted them, is beyond the reach of criticism:
but, to tell you what effect his action had upon
the spectator, is not impossible: this, then, is
all you will expect from me, and from hence I
must leave you to guess at him.
“ He scarce ever made his first entrance in
a play, but he was received with an involun-
tary applause, not of hands only, for those may
be, and have often been partially prostituted,
and bespoken; but by a general laughter,
which the very sight of him provoked, and na-
ture could not resist; yet the louder the laugh,
the graver was his look upon it; and sure, the
ridiculous solemnity of his features were
enough to have set a whole bench of bishops
into a titter, could he have been honoured (may
it be no offence to suppose it) with such grave
and right reverend auditors. In the ludicrous
distresses, which, by the laws of comedy, Folly
is often involved in ; he sunk into such a mix-
ture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consterna-
tion so ruefully ridiculous and inconsolable,
that when he had shook you, to a fatigue of
laughter, it became a moot point, whether you
ought not to have pitied him. When he de-
bated any matter by himself, he would shut up
his mouth with a dumb studious pout, and roll
his full eye into such a vacant amazement,
such a palpable ignorance of what to think of
it, that his silent perplexity (which would
sometimes hold him several minutes) gave
your imagination as full content as the most
absurd thing he could say upon it. In the cha-
racter of Sir Martin Marr-all, who is always
committing blunders to the prejudice of his
own interest, when he had brought himself to
a dilemma in his affairs, by vainly proceeding
upon his own head, and was afterwards afraid
to look his governing servant and counsellor
in the face; what a copious and distressful ha-
rangue have I seen him make with his looks
(while the house has been in one continued
roar, for several minutes) before he could pre-
vail with his courage to speak a word to him!
Then might you have, at once, read in his face
vexation, that his own measures, which he had
piqued himself upon, had failed;—envy, of his
servant’s superior wit;—distress, to retrieve the
occasion he had lost;—shame, to confess his
folly;—and yet a sullen desire, to be reconciled
and better advised for the future! What tra-
i
5
gedy ever showed us such a tumult of passions,
rising at once in one bosom 1 or what buskined
hero, standing under the load of them, could
have more effectually moved his spectators, by
the most pathetic speech, than poor miserable
Nokes did, by this silent eloquence, and pite-
ous plight of his features !
“His person was of the middle size, his
voice clear and audible; his natural counte-
nance, grave and sober; but the moment he
spoke, the settled seriousness of his features
was utterly discharged, and a dry, drolling,
or laughing levity took such full possession
of him, that I can only refer the idea of him to
your imagination. In some of his low charac-
ters, that became it, he had a shuffling sham-
ble in his gait, with so contented an ignorance
in his aspect, and an awkward absurdity in his
gesture, that had you not known him, you
could not have believed, that naturally he could
have had a grain of common sense. In a
word, I am tempted to sum up the character
of Nokes, as a comedian, in a parody of
whatShakspeare’s Mark Antony says of Brutus
as a hero:
“ His life was laughter, and the ludicrous
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world—This was an actor.’ ”
The portrait of Underhil has not less the air
of exact resemblance, though the subject is of
less richness.
“Underhil was a correct and natural come-
dian ; his particular excellence was in charac-
ters, that may be called still-life, I mean the
stiff, the heavy, and the stupid : to these he
gave the exactest and most expressive colours,
and, in some of them, looked as if it were not
in the power of human passions to alter a fea-
ture of him. In the solemn formality of Oba-
diah in the Committee, and in the boobily
heaviness of Lolpoop, in the Squire of Alsatia,
he seemed the immovable log he stood for! a
countenance of wood could not be more fixed
than his, when the blockhead of a charac-
ter required it; his face was full and long;
from his crown to the end of his nose was the
shorter half of it, so that the disproportion
of his lower features, when soberly com-
posed, with an unwandering eye hanging
over them, threw him into the most lump-
ish, moping mortal, that ever made be-
holders merry! not but, at other times, he
could be awakened into spirit equally ridicu-
lous. In the coarse, rustic humour of Justice
Clodpate, in Epsome Wells, he was a delight-
ful brute! and in the blunt vivacity of Sir
Sampson, in Love for Love, he showed all that
true perverse spirit, that is commonly seen in
much wit and ill-nature. This character is
one of those few so well written, with so much
wit and humour, that an actor must be the
grossest dunce that does not appear with an
unusual life in it: but it will still show as great
a proportion of skill, to come near Underhil in
the acting it, which (not to undervalue those
who came soon after him) I have not yet seen.
He was particularly admired too, for the Grave-
digger, in Hamlet. The author of the Tatler
recommends him to the favour of the town,
upon that play’s being acted for his benefit34
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
wherein, after his age had some years obliged
taim to leave the stage, he came on again, for
that day, to perform his old part; but, alas!
so worn and disabled, as if himself was to
have lain in the grave he was digging: when
he could no more excite laughter, his infirmities
were dismissed with pity: he died soon after
a superannuated pensioner, in the list of those
who were supported by the joint sharers,
under the first patent granted to Sir Richard
Steele.”
We pass reluctantly over the account of
Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Betterton, and others of less
note, to insert the following exquisite picture
of one who seems to have been the most ex-
quisite of actresses :
“ Mrs. Monfort, whose second marriage gave
her the name of Verbruggen, was mistress of
more variety of humour than I ever knew in any
one actress. This variety, too, was attended with
an equal vivacity, which made her excellent in
characters extremely different. As she was na-
turally a pleasant mimic, she had the skill to
make that talent useful on the stage, a talent
which may be surprising in a conversation, and
yet be lost when brought to the theatre, which
was the case of Estcourt already mentioned :
but where the elocution is round, distinct, vo-
luble, and various, as Mrs. Monfort’s was, the
mimic, there, is a great assistant to the actor.
Nothing, though ever so barren, if within the
bounds of nature, could be flat in her hands.
She gave many heightening touches to charac-
ters but coldly written, and often made an au-
thor vain of his work, that in itself had but
little merit. She was so fond of humour, in
what low part soever to be found, that she
would make no scruple of defacing her fair
form, to come heartily into it; for when she
was eminent in several desirable characters
of wit and humour, in higher life, she would
be in as much fancy, when descending into the
antiquated Abigail, or Fletcher, as when tri-
umphing in all the airs and vain graces of a
fine lady; a merit, that few actresses care for.
In a play of D’Urfey’s, now forgotten, called
The Western Lass, which part she acted, she
transformed her whole being, body, shape,
voice, language, look, and features, into almost
another animal ; with a strong Devonshire
dialect, a broad laughing voice, a poking head,
round shoulders, an unconceiving eye, and the
most bedizening, dowdy dress, that ever co-
vered the untrained limbs of a Joan Trot. To
have seen her here, you would have thought it
impossible the same creature could ever have
been recovered, to what was as easy to her, the
gay, the lively, and the desirable. Nor was
her humour limited to her sex; for, while
her shape permitted, she was a more adroit
pretty fellow than is usually seen upon the
stage : her easy air, action, mien, and ges-
ture, quite changed from the quoif to the
cocked hat, and cavalier in fashion. Peo-
ple were so fond of seeing her a man, that
when the part of Bays, in the Rehearsal, had,
for some time, lain dormant, she was desired
to take it up, which I have seen her act with
all the true, coxcombly spirit and humour that
the sufficiency of the character required.
“ But what found most employment for her
whole various excellence at once, was the part
of Melantha, in Marriage-Alamode. Melan-
tha is as finished an impertinent as ever
fluttered in a drawing-room, and seems to con-
tain the most complete system of female fop-
pery that could possibly be crowded into the
tortured form of a fine lady. Her language,
dress, motion, manners, soul, and body, are in
a continual hurry, to be something more than
is necessary or commendable. And though I
doubt it will be a vain labour, to offer you a
just likeness of Mrs. Monfort’s action, yet the
fantastic impression is still so strong in my
memory, that I cannot help saying something,
though fantastically, about it. The first ridi-
culous airs that break from her, are upon a
gallant, never seen before, who delivers her a
letter from her father, recommending him to
her good graces, as an honourable lover. Here,
now, one would think she might naturally show
a little of the sex’s decent reserve, though
never so slightly covered! No, sir: not a
title of it; modesty is the virtue of a poor-
souled country gentlewoman ; she is too much
a court lady, to be under so vulgar a confu-
sion ; she reads the letter, therefore, with a
careless, dropping lip, and an erected brow,
humming it hastily over, as if she were impa-
tient to outgo her father’s commands, by
making a complete conquest of him at once;
and that the letter might not embarrass her
attack, crack ! she crumbles it at once, into
her palm, and pours upon him her whole ar-
tillery of airs, eyes, and motion; down goes
her dainty, diving body, to the ground, as if
she were sinking under the conscious load
of her own attractions; then launches into a
flood of fine language and compliment, still
playing her chest forward in fifty falls and
risings, like a swan upon waving water; and,
to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly
fond of her own wit, that she will not give her
lover leave to praise it; silent assenting bows,
and vain endeavours to speak, are all the
share of the conversation he is admitted to,
which, at last, he is relieved from, by her en-
gagement to half a score visits, which she
swims from him to make, with a promise to
return in a twinkling.”
In this work, also, the reader may become
acquainted, on familiar terms, wfith Wilkes
and Dogget, and Booth—fall in love with Mrs.
Bracegirdle, as half the town did in days of
yore—and sit amidst applauding wrhigs and
tories on the first representation of Cato. He
may follow the actors from the gorgeous scene
of their exploits to their private enjoyments,
share in their jealousies, laugh with them at
their own ludicrous distresses, and join in
their happy social hours. Yet with all our
admiration for the theatrical artists, who yet
live in Cibber's Jlpology, we rejoice to believe
that their high and joyous art is not declining.
Kemble, indeed, and Mrs. Siddons, have for-
saken that stateliest region of tragedy which
they first opened to our gaze. But the latter
could not be regarded as belonging to any age;
her path was lonely as it was exalted, and she
appeared, not as highest of a class which exist-
ed before her, but as a being of another order,
destined “ to leave the world no copy,” but toJOHN DENNIS’S WORKS.
35
enrich its imaginations for ever. Yet have
we, in the youngest of the Kemble line, at
once an artist of antique grace in comedy, and
a tragedian of look the most chivalrous and
heroic—of “ form and .moving most express
and admirable”—of enthusiasm to give vivid
expression to the highest and the most ho-
nourable of human emotions.---Still, in Ma-
cready, can we boast of one, whose rich and
noble voice is adapted to all the most exquisite
varieties of tenderness and passion—one,
whose genius leads him to imbody characters
the most imaginative and romantic—and who
throws over his grandest pictures tints so mel-
low and so nicely blended, that, with all their
inimitable variety, they sink in perfectharmony
into the soul.-Still, in Kean, have we a per-
former of intensity never equalled—of pathos
the sweetest and most profound — whose
bursts of passion almost transport us into an-
other order of being, and whose flashes of
genius cast a new light on the darkest caverns
of the soul. If we have few names to boast
in elegant comedy, we enjoy a crowd of the
richest and most original humourists, with
Munden—that actor of a myriad unforgotten
faces—at their head. But our theme has en-
ticed us beyond our proper domain of the
past; and we must retire. Let us hope for
some Cibber, to catch the graces of our living
actors before they perish, that our successors
may fix on them their retrospective eyes un-
blamed, and enrich with a review of their
merits some number of our work, which will
appear, in due course, in the twenty-second
century!
REVIEW OF JOHN DENNIS’S WORKS.
[Retrospective Review, No. 2.]
John Dennis, the terror or the scorn of
that age, which is sometimes honoured with the
title of Augustan, has attained a lasting noto-
riety, to which the reviewers of our times can
scarcely aspire. His name is immortalized
in the Dunciad; his best essay is preserved in
Johnson’s Lives of the Poets ; and his works
yet keep their state in two substantial vo-
lumes, which are now before us. But the in-
terest of the most poignant abuse and the
severest criticism quickly perishes. We con-
template the sarcasms and the invectives
which once stung into rage the irritable ge-
neration of poets, with as cold a curiosity as
we look on the rusty javelins or stuffed reptiles
in the glass cases of the curious. The works
of Dennis will, however, assist us in forming
a judgment of the criticism of his age, as
compared with that of our own, and will afford
us an opportunity of investigating the in-
fluences of that popular art on literature and
on manners.
But we must not forget, that Mr. Dennis laid
claims to public esteem, not only as a critic,
but as a wit, a politician, and a poet. In the
first and the last of these characters, he can
receive but little praise. His attempts at
gayety and humour are weighty and awkward,
almost without example. His poetry can only
be described by negatives; it is not inharmo-
nious, nor irregular, nor often turgid—for the
author, too nice to sink into the mean, and
too timid to rise into the bombastic, dwells in
elaborate “ decencies for ever.” The climax
of his admiration for Queen Mary—“Mankind
extols the king—the king admires the queen”
—will give a fair specimen of his architectural
eulogies. He is entitled to more respect as an
honest patriot. He was, indeed, a true-hearted
Englishman—with the legititmate prejudices
of his country—warmly attached to the prin-
ciples of the revolution, detesting the French,
abominating the Italian opera, and deprecat-
ing as heartily the triumph of the Pretender,
as the success of a rival’s tragedy. His po-
litical treatises, though not very elegantly
finished, are made of sturdy materials. He
appears, from some passages in his letters, to
have cherished a genuine love of nature, and
to have turned, with eager delight, to deep and
quiet solitudes, for refreshment from the fe-
verish excitements, the vexatious defeats, and
the barren triumphs of his critical career. He
admired Shakspeare, after the fashion of his
age, as a wild, irregular genius, who would
have been inconceivably greater, had he known
and copied the ancients. The following is a
part of his general criticism on this subject,
and a fair specimen of his best style:
“Shakspeare was one of the greatest ge-
niuses that the world ever saw, for the tragic
stage. Though he lay under greater disad-
vantages than any of his successors, yet had
he greater and more genuine beauties than the
best and greatest of them. And what makes
the brightest glory of his character, those
beauties were entirely his own, and owing to
the force of his own nature; whereas, his
faults were owing to his education, and to the
age he lived in. One may say of him, as they
did of Homer, that he had none to imitate, and
is himself inimitable. His imaginations were
often as just as they were bold and strong.
He had a natural discretion which never could
have been taught him, and his judgment was
strong and penetrating. He seems to have
wanted nothing but time and leisure for
thought, to have found out those rules of which
he appears so ignorant. His characters are
always drawn justly, exactly, graphically, ex-
cept where he failed by not knowing history
or the poetical art. He had, for the most part,36
TALFOUKD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
more fairly distinguished them than any of his
successors have done, who have falsified
them, or confounded them, by making love
the predominant quality in all. He had so fine
a talent for touching the passions, and the}r are
so lively in him, and so truly in nature, that
they often touch us more, without their due
preparations, than those of other tragic poets,
who have all the beauty of design and all the
advantage of incidents. His master passion
was terror, which he has often moved so power-
fully and so wonderfully, that we may justly
conclude, that if he had had the advantage of
art and learning, he would have surpassed the
very best and strongest of the ancients. His
paintings are often so beautiful and so lively,
so graceful and so powerful, especially where
he uses them in order to move terror, that
there is nothing, perhaps, more accomplished
in our English poetry. His sentiments for the
most part, in his best tragedies, are noble, ge-
nerous, easy, and natural, and adapted to the
persons who use them. His expression is, in
many places, good and pure, after a hundred
years ; simple though elevated, graceful though
bold, easy though strong. He seems to have
been the very original of our English tragical
harmony ; that is, the harmony of blank verse,
diversified often by dissyllable and trissyllable
terminations. For that diversity distinguishes
it from heroic harmony, and, bringing it nearer
to common use, makes it more proper to gain
attention, and more fit for action and dialogue.
Such verse we make when we are writing
prose ; we make such verse in common con-
versation.
“ If Shakspeare had these great qualities by
nature, what would he not have been, if he
had joined to so happy a genius learning and
the poetical art. For want of the latter, our
author has sometimes made gross mistakes in
the characters which he has drawn from his-
tory, against the equality and conveniency of
manners of his dramatical persons. Witness
Menenius in the following tragedy, whom he
has made an arrant buffoon, which is a great
absurdity. For he might as well have ima-
gined a grave majestic Jack Pudding as a
buffoon in a Roman senator. Aufidius, the
general of the Volscians, is shown a base and
a profligate villain. He has offended against
the equality of the manners even in the hero
himself. For Coriolanus, who in the first part
of the tragedy is shown so open, so frank, so
violent, and so magnanimous, is represented
in the lattei part by Aufidius, which is contra-
dicted by no one, a flattering, fawning, cringing,
insinuating traitor.”
Mr. Dennis proceeds very generously to
apologize for Shakspeare’s faults, by observing
that he had neither friends to consult, nor time
to make corrections. He, also, attributes his
lines “utterly void of celestial fire,” and pas-
sages “ harsh and unmusical,” to the want of
leisure to wait for felicitous hours and mo-
ments of choicest inspiration. To remedy
these defects—to mend the harmony and to
put life into the dulness of Shakspeare—Mr.
Dennis has assayed, and brought his own ge-
nius to the alteration of Coriolanus for the
stage, under the lofty title of the “Invader of
his Country, or the Fatal Resentment.” In
the catastrophe, Coriolanus kills Aufidius, and
is himself afterwards slain, to satisfy the re-
quisitions of poetical justice ; which, to Mr.
Dennis’s great distress, Shakspeare so often
violates. It is quite amusing to observe, with
how perverted an ingenuity all the gaps in
Shakspeare’s verses are filled up, the irregu-
larities smoothed away, and the colloquial ex-
pressions changed for stately phrases. Thus,
for example, the noble wish of Coriolanus on
entering the forum—
“ The honoured gods
Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs of justice
Supplied with worthy men! plant love among us!
Throng our large temples with the shows of peace,
And not our streets with war”—
is thus elegantly translated into classical lan-
guage :
“The great and tutelary gods of Rome
Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs ofjustiee
Supplied with worthy men: plant love among you:
Adorn our temples with the pomp of peace,
And, from our streets drive horrid war away.”
The conclusion of the hero’s last speech on
leaving Rome—
“ Thus I turn my back : there is a world elsewhere.”
is elevated into the following heroic lines :
“ For me, thus, thus. I turn my back upon you,
And make a better world where’er I go.”
His fond expression of constancy to his
wife—
“ That kiss
I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
Hath virgined it e’er since,”—
is thus refined:
“ That kiss
I carried from my love, and my true lip
Hath ever since preserved it like a virgin.”
The icicle which was vront to “hang on
Dian’s temple,” here more gracefully “ hangs
upon the temple of Diana.” The burst of min-
gled pride, and triumph of Coriolanus, when
taunted with the word “ boy,” is here exalted
to tragic dignity. Our readers have, doubtless,
ignorantly admired the original.
Boy ! False hound !
If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there,
Thai like an eagle in a dove cote, I
“Fluttered your Volsces in Corioli.
Alone I did it—Boy.
The following is the improved version:
“This boy, that like an eagle in a dove court,
Flutter’d a thousand Volsces in Corioli,
And did it without second or acquittance,
Thus sends their mighty chief to mourn in hell!”
Who does not now appreciate the sad lot
of Shakspeare—so feelingly bewailed by Mr.
Dennis—that he had not a critic, of the age of
King William, by his side, to refine his style
and elevate his conceptions !
It is edifying to observe, how the canons of
Mr. Dennis’s criticism, which he regarded as
the imperishable laws of genius, are now
either exploded, or considered as matters of
subordinate importance, wholly unaffecting
the inward soul of poetry. No one now re-
gards the merits of an Epic poem, as decided
by the subservience of the fable and the ac-
tion to the moral—by the presence or the ab-JOHN DENNIS’S WORKS.
37
sence of an allegory—by the fortunate or un-
fortunate fate of the hero—or by any other
rules of artificial decorum, which the critics
of former times thought fit to inculcate. We
learn from their essays, whether the works
which they examine are constructed, in exter-
nals, according to certain fantastic rules ; but,
whether they are frigid or impassioned, har-
monious or prosaic, filled with glorious imagi-
nations, or replete with low common-places:
whether, in short, they are works of genius or
of mere toil—are questions entirely beneath
their concern. The critic on the tragedy of
Cato, ingenious and just as it is,omits one ma-
terial objection to that celebrated piece—that
it is good for nothing, and would be so if all
the faults selected for censure could be, in an
instant, corrected. There is a French essay
on Telemachus, framed on the same superfi-
cial principles of criticism, which, after a
minute examination of the moral, fable, cha-
racters, allegory, and other like requisites of
excellence, triumphantly proves its claim to
be ranked with, if not above, the great poems
of Homer and of Yirgil. Mr. Dennis seems,
in general, to have applied the rules of criti-
cism, extant in his day, to the compositions on
which he passed judgment; but there was
one position respecting which his contempo-
raries were not agreed, and on which he com-
bated with the spirit of a martyr. This dis-
puted point, the necessity of observing poetical
justice in works of fiction, we shall briefly ex-
amine, because we think that it involves one
of those mistakes in humanity, which it is al-
ways desirable to expose. But first we must,
in fairness, lay one of our author’s many ar-
guments, on this subject, before our readers.
“The prinpipal character of an epic poem
must be either morally good or morally vicious ;
if he is morally good, the making him end un-
fortunately will destroy all poetical justice,
and, consequently, all instruction: such a
poem can have no moral, and, consequently,
no fable, no just and regular poetical action,
but must be a vain fiction and an empty
amusement. Oh, but there is a retribution in
futurity! But I thought that the reader of an
epic poem was to owe his instruction to the
poet, and not to himself: well then, the poet
may tell him so at the latter end of his poem:
ay, would to God I could see such a latter end
of an epic poem, where the poet should tell the
reader, that he has cut an honest man’s throat,
only that he may have an opportunity to send
him to heaven : and that, though this would
be but an indifferent plea upon an indictment
for murder at the Old Bailey, yet that he hopes
the good-natured reader will have compassion
on him, as the gods have on his hero. But
raillery apart, sir, what occasion is there for
having recourse to an epic poet to tell our-
selves by the bye, and by the occasional reflec-
tion, that there will be a retribution in futurity,
when the Christian has. this in his heart con-
stantly and direct^, and the Atheist and Free-
thinker will make no such reflection 1 Tell me
truly, sir, would not such a poet appear to you
or me, not to have sufficiently considered what
a poetical moral is 1 And should not you or I,
sir, be obliged, in order to make him compre- i
hend the nature of it, to lay before him that
universal moral, which is the foundation of
all morals, both epic and dramatic, and is in-
clusive of them all, and that is, That he who
does good, and perseveres in it, shall always
be rewarded; and he who does ill, and perse-
veres in it, shall always be punished! Should
we not desire him to observe, that the foresaid
reward must always attend and crown good
actions, not sometimes only, for then it would
follow, that sometimes a perseverance in good
actions has no reward, which would take away
all poetical instruction, and, indeed, every sort
of moral instruction, resolving Providence into
chance or fate. Should we not, sir, farther
put him in mind, that since whoever perse-
veres in good actions, is sure to be rewarded
at the last, it follows, that a poet does not as-
sert by his moral, that he is always sure to be
rewarded in this world, because that would
be false, as you have very justly observed, p.
60; and, therefore, never can be the moral of
an epic poem, because what is false may
delude, but only truth can instruct. Should
we not let him know, sir, that this universal
moral only teaches us, that whoever perseveres
in good actions, shall be always sure to be re-
warded either here or hereafter; and that the
truth of this moral is proved by the poet, by
making the principal character of his poem,
like all the rest of his characters, and like the
poetical action, at the bottom, universal and
allegorical, even after distinguishing it by a
particular name, by making this principal
character, at the bottom, a mere political phan-
tom of a very short duration, through the
whole extent of which duration we can see at
once, which continues no longer than the read-
ing of the poem, and that being over, the
phantom is to us nothing, so that unless our
sense is satisfied of the reward that is given to
this poetical phantom, whose whole duration
we see through from the very beginning to the
end; instead of a wholesome moral, there
would be a pernicious instruction, viz : That
a man may persevere in good actions, and not
be rewarded for it through the whole extent of
his duration, that is, neither in this world nor
in the world to come.”
It may be sufficient to answer to all this—
and to much more of the same kind which our
author has adduced—that little good can be
attained by representations which are perpetu-
ally at variance with our ordinary perceptions.
The poet may represent humanity as mightier
and fairer than it appears to a common
observer. In the mirror which he “holds up
to nature,” the forms of might and of beauty
may look more august, more lovely, or more
harmonious, than they appear, in the “ light
of common day,” to eyes which are ungifted
with poetic vision. But if the world of imagi-
nation is directly opposed to that of reality, it
will become a cold abstraction, a baseless
dream, a splendid mockery. We shall strive
in vain to make men sympathize with beings
of a sphere purely ideal, where might shall be
always right, and virtue its own present as
well as exceeding great reward. Happily,
the exhibition is as needless for any moral
! purposes, as it wmuld be inadequate to attain38
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
them. Though the poet cannot make us wit-
nesses of the future recompense of that virtue,
which here struggles and suffers, he can cause
us to feel, in the midst of its very struggles
and sufferings, that it is eternal. He makes
the principle of immortality manifest in the
meek submission, in the deadly wrestle with
fate, and even in the mortal agonies of his
noblest characters. What, in true dignity,
does virtue lose by the pangs which its clay
tenement endures, if we are made conscious
of its high prerogatives, though we do not
actually behold the immunities which shall
ultimately be its portion 1 Hereafter it may
be rewarded; but now it is triumphant. We
require no dull epilogue to tell us, that it shall
be crowned in another and happier state of
being; for our souls gush with admiration and
sympathy with it, amidst its sorrows. We
love it, and burn to imitate it, for its own love-
liness, not for its gains. Surely it is a higher
aim of the poet to awaken this emotion—to
inspire us with the awe of goodness, amidst
its deepest external debasements, and to make
us almost desire to share in them, than to in-
vite us to partake in her rewards, and to win
us by a calculating sympathy. The hovel or
the dungeon does not, in the pictures of a
genuine poet, give the colouring to the soul
which inhabits it, but receives from its ma-
jesty a consecration beyond that of temples,
and a dignity statelier than that of palaces.
For it is his high prerogative to exhibit the
spiritual part of man triumphant over that
about him, which is mortal—to show, in his
far-reaching hope, his moveless constancy, his
deep and disinterested affections, that there is
a spirit within him, which death cannot destroy.
Low, indeed, is the morality which aspires to
affect men by nothing beyond the poor and
childish lesson, that to be virtuous is to be
happy. Virtue is no dependant on earthly ex-
pediencies for its excellence. It has a beauty
to be loved, as vice has a deformity to be
abhorred, which are unaffected by the conse-
quences experienced by their votaries. Do
we admire the triumph of vice, and scoff
at goodness, when we think on the divine
Clarissa, violated, imprisoned, heart-broken,
dying] Must Parson Adams receive a mitre,
to assure us that we should love him I Our
best feelings and highest aspirations are not
yet of so mercantile a cast as those who con-
tend for “ poetical justice’’ would imagine.
The mere result, in respect of our sympathies,
is as nothing. The only real violation of
poetical justice is in the violation of nature in
the clothing. When, for example, a wretch,
whose trade is murder, is represented as cher-
ishing the purest and the deepest love for an
innocent being—when chivalrous delicacy or
sentiment is conferred on a pirate, tainted with
a thousand crimes—the effect is immoral,
whatever doom may, at last, await him. If
the barriers of virtue and of evil are melted
down by the current of spurious sympathy,!
there is no catastrophe which can remove the
mischief; and while these are preserved in our
feelings, there is none which can truly harm us.
The critics of the age of Dennis held a mid-
dle course between their predecessors of old
time, and their living successors. The men
who first exercised the art of criticism, imbued
with personal veneration for the loftiest works
of genius, sought to deduce rules from them,
which future poets should observe. They did
not assume the right of passing individual
judgments on their contemporaries—nor did
they aim at deciding even abstract questions
of taste on their own personal authority—but
attempted, by fixing the laws of composition,
to mark out the legitimate channels in which
the stream's of thought, passion, and sentiment,
should be bounded through all ages. Their
dogmas, therefore, whether they contained
more or less of truth, carried with them no ex-
trinsic weight, were influenced by no personal
feelings, excited no personal animosities, but
simply appealed, like poetry itself, to those
minds which alone could give them sanction.
In the first critical days of England—those of
the Rymers and the Dennises—the professors
of the art began to regard themselves as
judges, not merely of the principles of poetry,
but of their application by living authors.
Then commenced the arrogance on the side
of the supervisors, and the impatience and re-
sentment on that of their subjects, which con-
temporary criticism necessarily inspires. The
worst passions of man are brought into exer-
cise in reference to those pure and ennobling
themes, which should be sacred from all low
contentions of “the ignorant present time.”
But the battle was, at least, fair and open.
The critic still appealed to principles, however
fallacious or imperfect, which all the world
might examine. His decrees had no weight,
independent of his reasons, nor was his name,
or his want of one, esteemed of magical virtue.
He attacked the poets on equal terms—some-
times, indeed, with derision and personal
slander—but always as a foe to subdue, not
as a judge to pass sentence on them. Criti- *
cism, in our own times, has first assumed the
air of “sovereign sway and masterdom” over
the regions of fantasy. Its professors enforce,
not established laws, contend no longer for
principles, attack poets no more with chival-
rous zeal, as violating the cause of poetic
morals, or sinning against the regularities of
their art. They pronounce the works, of which
they take cognisance, to be good or bad—often
without professing to give any reason for their
decision—or referring to any standard, more
fixed or definite than their own taste, partiality,
or prejudice. And the public, without any
knowledge of their fitness for their office—
without even knowing their names—receive
them as the censors of literature, the privileged
inspectors of genius! This strange su-
premacy of criticism, in our own age, gives
interest to the investigation of the claims
which the art itself possesses to the respect
and gratitude of the people. If it is, on the
whole, beneficial to the world, it must either
be essential to the awakening of genius—or
necessary to direct its exertions—or useful in
repressing abortive and mistaken efforts—or
conducive to the keeping alive and fitly
guiding admiration to the good and great. On
each of these grounds, we shall now very
briefly examine its value.JOHN DENNIS’S WORKS.
39
1. It is evident, that the art of criticism is
not requisite to the development of genius, be-
cause, in the golden ages of poetry it has had
no portion. Its professors have never even
constructed the scaffolding to aid the erection
of the cloud-capped towers and solemn tem-
ples of the bard. By his facile magic he has
called them into existence, like the palace of
Aladdin, as complete in the minutest graces
of finishing as noble in design. Long before
the art of criticism was known in Greece, her
rhapsodists had attained the highest excellen-
cies of poetry. No fear of a critic’s scorn, no
desire of a critic’s praise, influenced these
consecrated wanderers. Nature alone was
their model, their inspirer, and their guide.
From her did they drink in the feeling, not only
of permanence and of grandeur, but of aerial
grace and roseate beauty. The rocks and
hills gave them the visible images of lasting
might—the golden clouds of even, “ sailing on
the bosom of the air,” sent a feeling of eva-
nescent loveliness into their souls—and the
delicate branchings of the grove, reflected in
the calm waters, imbued them with a percep-
tion of elegance beyond the reach of art. No
pampered audiences thought themselves enti-
tled to judge them : to analyze their powers ;
to descant on their imperfections ; to lament
their failures; or to eulogize their sublimities,
as those who had authority to praise. Their
hearers dwelt on their accents with rapturous
wonder, as nature’s living oracles. They
wandered through the everywhere commu-
nicating joy, and everywhere receiving reve-
rence—exciting in youth its first tearful ecsta-
sy, and kindling fresh enthusiasm amidst the
withered affections of age. They were revered
as the inspired chroniclers of heroic deeds—
the inspirers of national glory and virtue—the
depositories of the mysteries and the philoso-
phic wisdom of times which even then were
old. They trusted not to paper or the press
for the preservation of their fame. They were
contented, that each tree beneath which they
had poured forth their effusions, should be
loved for their sake—that the forked promon-
tory should bear witness of them—and the
“brave o’erhanging firmament, fretted with
golden fire,” tell of those who had first awaken-
ed within the soul a sense of its glories. Their
works were treasured up nowhere but in the
soul—spread abroad only by the enthusiasm
of kindred reciters—and transmitted to the chil-
dren of other generations, while they listened
with serious faces to the wondrous tales of
their fathers. Yet these poems, so produced,
so received, so preserved, were not only in-
stinct with heavenly fire, but regular as the
elaborate efforts of the most polished ages. In
these products of an era of barbarism, have
future bards not only found an exhaustless
treasury of golden imaginations, but critics
have discovered all those principles of order
which they would establish as unalterable
laws. The very instances of error and haste
in their authors have been converted into
figures of rhetoric, by those men, w ho represent
nature herself as irregular and feeble, and a
minute attention to rules as essential to the
perfec tion of genius.
As criticism had no share in producing the
Homeric poems, so also did it contribute no-
thing to the perfection of the Greek tragedies.
For those works—the most complete and
highly finished, if not the most profound, of all
human creations—there was no more previous
warrant, than for the wildest dream of fantasy.
No critic fashioned the moulds in which those
exquisite groups were cast, or inspired them
with Promethean life. They were struck off
in the heat of inspiration—the offspring of
moments teeming for immortality—though the
slightest limb of each of the figures is finished
as though it had been the labour of a life.
These eternal works were complete—the spirit
which inspired their authors was extinct—
when Aristotle began to criticise. The deve-
lopment of the art of poetry, by that great
philosopher, wTholly failed to inspire any bard,
whose productions might break the descent
from the mighty relics of the preceding years.
After him, his disciples amused themselves in
refining on his laws—in cold disputations and
profitless scrutinies. The soil, late so fertile
with the stateliest productions of nature, was
overgrown with a low and creeping under-
wood, vrhich, if any delicate flower struggled
into day, oppressed and concealed it from
view beneath its briary and tangled thickets.
2. The instances already given refute not
only the notion that criticism is requisite to
prepare the way for genius, but also the opi-
nion that it is necessary to give it a right di-
rection and a perfect form. True imagination
is in itself “ all compact.” The term irregu-
lar, as absolutely applied to genius, is absurd,
and applied relatively, it means nothing but
that it is original in its career. There is
properly no such thing as irregular genius. A
man endowed with “ the vision and the faculty
divine,” may choose modes of composition
unsuited to the most appropriate display of his
powers;—his images may not be disposed in
the happiest arrangement, or may be clustered
around subjects, in themselves, dreary or
mean, but these fantasies must be in themselves
harmonious, or they vTould not be beauteous,
would not be imaginations. Genius is a law
unto itself. Its germs have, within them, not
only the principles of beauty, but the very form
which the flower in its maturity must expand.
As a wavy gleam of fire rises from the spark,
in its own exquisite shape, so does imagina-
tion send forth its glories, perfect by the felici-
tous necessity of their nature, exquisite in form
by the same impulse which gives them bright-
ness and fervour. But how can the critic, in
reality, acquire any jurisdiction over the ge-
nuine poet I Where are the lines by which he
can fathom the depths of the soul; where the
instrument by which he can take the altitude
of “ the highest heaven of invention 1” How
can he judge of thoughts "which penetrate the
mysteries of humanity, of fancies which “in
the coloursof the rainbow live, and play in the
plighted clouds,” of anticipations and foretastes
by which the bard already “ breathes in worlds,
to which the heaven of heavens is but a veil T’
Can he measure a sunbeam, or constrain a
cloud, or count the steps of the bounding stag
of the forest, to judge whether they are grace40
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
ful 1 Has he power even to define those gigantic
shadows reflected on the pure mirror of the
poet’s imagination, from the eternal things
which mortal eyes cannot discern 1 At best,
he can but reason from what has been to what
should be; and what can be more absurd than
this course in reference to poetic invention'!
A critic can understand no rules of criticism
except what existing poetry has taught him.
There was no more reason, after the production
of the Iliad, to contend that future poems should
in certain points resemble it, than there was
before the existence of that poem to lay down
rules which would prevent its being what it is.
There was antecedently no more probability
that the powers of man, harmoniously exerted,
could produce the tale of Troy divine, than
that, after it, the same powers would not pro-
duce other works equally marvellous and
equally perfect, yet wholly different in their
colouring and form. The reasons which would
prevent men from doing any thing unlike it,
would also have prevented its creation, for it
was doubtless unlike all previous inventions.
Criticism can never be prospective, until the
resources of man and nature are exhausted.
Each new world of imagination revolves on
itself, in an orbit of its own. Its beauties create
the taste which shall relish them, and the very
critics which shall extol their proportions. The
first admirers of Homer had no conception
that the Greek tragedies would start into life
and become lasting as their idol. Those who
lived after the times when these were perfected,
asserted that no dramas could be worthy of
praise, which were not fashioned according to
their models and composed of similar mate-
rials. But, after a long interval, came Shak-
speare—at first, indeed, considered by many as
barbarous and strange—who, when his real
merits are perceived, is felt to be, at the least,
equal to his Greek predecessors, though violat-
ing every rule drawn from their works. Even
in our short remembrance, we can trace the
complete abolition of popular rules of criticism,
by the new and unexpected combinations of
genius. A few years ago, it was a maxim
gravely asserted by Reviews, Treatises, and
Magazines, that no interesting fiction could
effectively be grafted on history. But “mark
how a plain tale” by the author of Waverley
“puts down” the canon for ever! In fact,
unless with more than angel’s ken a critic
could gaze on all the yet unpossessed regions
of imagination, it is impossible that he should
limit his discoveries which yet await the bard.
He may perceive, indeed, how poets of old have
by their magic divided the clouds which bound
man’s ordinary vision, and may scan the re-
gions which they have thus opened to our
gaze. But how can he thus anticipate what
future bards may reveal—direct the propor-
tions, the colours and the forms, of the realities
which they shall unveil—fix boundaries to re-
gions of beauty yet unknown ; determine the
height of their glory-stricken hills ; settle the
course of their mighty waters ; or regulate the
visionary shapes of superhuman grace, which
shall gleam in the utmost distance of their far
perspectives I
3. But it may be urged, that criticism is
useful in putting down the pretensions of those
who aspire, without just claim, to the honours
of genius. This, indeed, in so far as it is un-
favourable, is its chief object in moderri times.
The most celebrated of literary tribunals takes
as the motto of its decrees, “Judex damnatur
cum nocens absolvitur;” assuming that to
publish a dull book is a crime, which the pub-
lic good requires should be exposed, whatever
laceration of the inmost soul may be inflicted
on the offender in the process. This damna-
tory principle is still farther avowed in the
following dogma of this august body, which
deserves to be pdrticularly quoted as an ex
plicit declaration of the spirit of modern criti-
cism :
“There is nothing of which nature has been
more bountiful than poets. They swarm like
the spawn of the cod-fish, with a vicious
fecundity that invites and requires destruction
To publish verses is become a sort of evidence
that a man wants sense; which is repelled,
not by writing good verses, but by writing
excellent verses;—by doing what Lord Byron
has done ;—by displaying talents great enough
to overcome the disgust wrhich proceeds from
satiety, and showing that all things may be-
come new under the reviving touch of genius.”
—Ed. Rev., No. 43, p. 68.
It appears to us, that the crime and the evil
denounced in this pregnant sentence are en-
tirely visional and fantastic. There is no
great danger, that works without talent should
usurp the admiration of the world. Splendid
error may mislead; vice linked to a radiant
angel, by perverted genius, may seduce; and
the union of high energy with depravity of
soul may teach us to respect where we ought
to shudder. But men will not easily be dazzled
by insipidity, enchanted by discord, or awed
by weakness. The mean and base, even if
left to themselves unmolested, will scarcely
grow immortal by the neglect of the magnani-
mous and the wise. He who cautions the
public against the admiration of feeble pro-
ductions, almost equals the wisdom of a sage,
who should passionately implore a youth not
imprudently to set his heart on ugliness and
age. And surely our nerves are not grown so
finely tremulous, that we require guardians
who may providently shield us from glancing
on a work which may prove unworthy of
perusal. It is one high privilege of our earthly
lot, that the best pleasures of humanity are
not balanced by any painful sensations arising
from their contraries. We drink in joy too
deep for expression, when we penetrate the
vast solitudes of nature, and gaze on her rocky
fortresses, her eternal hills, her regions “con-
secrate to eldest time.” But we feel no an-
swering agony while we traverse level and
barren plains; especially if we can leave
them at pleasure.—Thus, while we experience
a thrilling delight, in thinking on the divinest
imaginations of the poet, we are not plunged,
by the dullest author, into the depths of sorrow.
At all events, we can throw down the book at
once; and we must surely be very fastidious
if we do not regard the benefit conferred on
printers and publishers, and the gratification
of the author’s innocent and genial vanity, asJOHN DENNIS’S WORKS.
41
amply compensating the slight labour which
we have taken in vain.
But, perhaps, it is the good of the aspirants
themselves, rather than of their readers, which
the critic professes to design. Here, also, we
think he is mistaken. The men of our gene-
ration are not too prone to leave their quest
after the substantial blessings of the world, in
order to pursue those which are aerial and
shadowy. The very error of the mind, which
takes the love for the power of poetry, is more
goodly than common wisdom. But there are
certain seasons, we believe, in life—some few
golden moments at least—in which all men
have really perceived, and felt, and enjoyed,
as poets. Who remembers not an hour of
serious ecstasy, when, perhaps, as he lay be-
neath some old tree and gazed on the setting
sun, earth seemed a visionary thing, the glo-
ries of immortality were half revealed, and
the first notes a universal harmony whispered
to his soul?—some moment, when he seemed
almost to realize the eternal, and could have
been well contented to yield up his mortal
being?—some little space, populous of high
thoughts and disinterested resolves—some
touch upon that ‘Mine of limitless desires,”
along which he shall live in a purer sphere ?
—And if that taste of joy is not to be renewed
on earth, the soul will not suffer by an attempt
to prolong its memory. It is a mistake, to
suppose that young beginners in poetry are
always prompted by a mere love of worldly
fame. The sense of beauty and the love of
the ideal, if they do not draw all the faculties
into their likeness, still impart to the soul
something of their rich and unearthly colour-
ing. Young fantasy spreads its golden films,
slender though they be, through the varied
tenour of existence. Imagination, nurtured
in the opening of life, though it be not de-
veloped in poetic excellence, will strengthen
the manly virtue, give a noble cast to the
thoughts, and a generous course to the sympa-
thies. It will assist to crush self-love in its
first risings, to mellow and soften the heart,
and prepare it for its glorious destiny. Even
if these consequences did not follow, surely
the most exquisite feelings of young hope are
not worthy of scorn. They may truly be
worth years of toil, of riches, and of honour.
Who would crush them at a venture—short
and uncertain as life is—and cold and dreary
as are often its most brilliant successes?
What, indeed, can this world offer to compare
with the earliest poetic dreams, which our
modern critics think it sport or virtue to
destroy ?
“Such views the youthful bard allure,
As, mindless of the following gloom,
He deems their colours shall endure
’Till peace go with him to the tomb.
And let him nurse his fond deceit,
And what if he must die in sorrow;—
Who would not cherish dreams so sweet,
Though care and grief should come to-morrow?”
But, supposing for a moment that it were
really desirable to put down all authors who
do not rise into excellence, at any expense of
personal feeling, we must not forget the risk
which such a process involves, of crushing
undeveloped genius. There are many causes
which may prevent minds, gifted with the
richest faculties, from exerting them at the
first with success. The very number of
images, crowding on the mirror of the soul,
may for a while darken its surface, and give
the idea of inextricable confusion. The young
poet’s holiest thoughts must often appear to
him-too sacred to be fully developed to the
world. His soul will half shrink at first from the
disclosure of its solemn immunities and strange
joys. He will thus become timid and irresolute
—tell but a slight part of that which he feels—
and this broken and disjointed communication
will appear senseless or feeble. The more
deep and original his thoughts—the more daz-
zling his glimpses into the inmost sanctuaries
of nature,—the more difficult will be the task
of imbodying these in words, so as to make
them palpable to ordinary conceptions. He
will be constantly in danger, too, in the fer-
vour of his spirit, of mistaking things which
in his mind are connected with strains of de-
licious musing, for objects, in themselves,
stately or sacred. The seeming common-
place, which we despise, may be to him the
index to pure thoughts and far-reaching de-
sires. In that which to the careless eye may
seem but a little humble spring—pure, perhaps,
and sparkling, but scarce worthy of a glance—
the more attentive observer may perceive a
depth which he cannot fathom, and discover
that the seeming fount is really the breaking
forth of a noble river, winding its consecrated
way beneath the soil, which, as it runs, wall
soon bare its bosom to the heavens, and glide
in a cool and fertilizing majesty. And is there
not some danger that souls, whose powers of
expression are inadequate to make manifest
their inward wealth, should be sealed for ever
by the hasty sentences of criticism ? The name
of Lord Byron is rather unfortunately intro-
duced by the celebrated journal which we
have quoted, into its general denunciation
against youthful poets. Surely the critics
must for the moment have forgotten, that at
the outset of the career of that bard, to whose
example they now refer, as most illustriously
opposed to the mediocrity which they condemn,
they themselves poured contempt on his en
deavours ! Do they now wish that he had
taken their counsel ? Are they willing to run
the hazard, for the sake of putting down a
thousand pretenders a few months before their
time, of crushing another power such as they
esteem his own ? Their very excuse—that, at
the time, his verses were all which they had ad-
judged them—is the very proof of the impolicy
of such censures. If the object of their scorn
has, in this instance, risen above it, how do
we know that more delicate minds have not
sunk beneath it? Besides, although Lord
Byron was not repelled, but rather excited by
their judgment, he seems to have sustained
from it scarcely less injury. If it stung him
into energy, it left its poison in his soul. It
first instigated his spleen ;—taught him that
spirit of scorn which debases the noblest fa
culties—and impelled him, in his rage, to at
tack those who had done him no wrong, to
scoff at the sanctities of humanity, and to pre-
tend to hate or deride his species!
D 242
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
And, even if genius is too deep to be sup-
pressed, or too celestial to be perverted, is it
nothing that the soul of its possessor should
be wrung with agony ] For a while, criticism
may throw back poets whom it cannot anni-
hilate, and make them pause in their course
of glory and of joy, “ confounded though im-
mortal.” Who can estimate those pangs,
which on the “purest spirits” are thus made
to prey
“as on entrails, joint, and limb,
With answerable pains but more intense ?”
The heart of a young poet is one of the most
sacred things on earth. How nicely strung
are its fibres—how keen its sensibilities—how
shrinking the timidity with which it puts forth
its gentle conceptions ! And shall such a heart
receive rude usage from a world which it only
desires to improve and to gladden 1 Shall its
nerves be stretched on the rack, or its appre-
hensions turned into the instruments of its tor-
ture'? All this, and more, has been done to-
wards men of whom “this world was not
worthy.” Cowper, who, first of modern poets,
restored to the general heart the feeling of
healthful nature—whose soul was without one
particle of malice or of guile—whose suscep-
tible and timorous spirit shrunk tremblingly
from the touch of this rough world—was
chilled, tortured, and almost maddened, by
some nameless critic’s scorn. Kirke White—
the delicate beauties of whose mind were des-
tined scarcely to unfold themselves on earth—
in the beginning of his short career, was cut
to the heart by the cold mockery of a stranger.
A few sentences, penned, perhaps, in mere
carelessness, almost nipped the young blossoms
of his genius “ like an untimely frostpalsied
for awhile all his faculties—imbittered his little
span of life—haunted him almost to the verge
of his grave, and heightened his dying agonies !
Would the annihilation of all the dulness in
the world compensate for one moment’s an-
guish inflicted on hearts like these 1
We have been all this time considering not
the possible abuses, but the necessary tenden-
cies, of contemporary criticism. All the evils
We have pointed out may arise, though no
sinister design pervert the Reviewer’s judg-
ment—though no prejudice, even unconscious-
ly, warp him—and, even, though he may decide
fairly “from the evidence before him.” But it
is impossible that this favourable supposition
should be often realized in an age like ours.
Temper, politics, religion, the interests of rival
poets, or rival publishers—a thousand influ-
ences, sometimes recognised, and sometimes
only felt—decide the sentence on imaginations
the most divine. The very trade of the critic
himself—the necessity of his being witty, or
brilliant, or sarcastic, for his own sake—is
sufficient to disqualify him as a judge. Sad
thought!—that the most sensitive, and gentle,
and profound of human beings, should be de-
pendent on casual caprice, on the passions of a
bookseller, or on the necessities of a period!
4. It may be perceived, from what we have
already written, that we do not esteem criticism
as a guide more than as a censor. The general
effect on the public mind is, we fear, to dissi-
pate and weaken. It spoils the freshest charms
even of the poetry which it praises. It destroys
all reverence for great poets, by making the
world think of them as a species of culprits,
who are to plead their genius as an excuse for
their intrusion. Time has been when the poet
himself—instead of submitting his works to
the public as his master—called around him
those whom he thought worthy to receive his
precepts, and pointed out to them the divine
lineaments, which he felt could never perish.
They regarded him, with reverence, as most
favoured of mortals. They delighted to sit in
the seat of the disciple, not in that of the
scorner. How much enjoyment have the peo-
ple lost by being exalted into judges ! The
ascent of literature has been rendered smooth
and easy, but its rewards are proportion ably
lessened in value. With how holy a zeal did
the aspirant once gird himself to tread the un-
worn path; how delectably was he refreshed
by each plant of green ; how intensely did he
enjoy every prospect, from the lone and em-
bowered resting-places of his journey ! Now,
distinctions are levelled—the zest of intellec-
tual pleasures is taken away; and no one hour,
like that of Archimedes, ever repays a life of
toil. The appetite, satiated with luxuries cheaply
acquired, requires new stimulants—even criti-
cism palls—and private slander must be
mingled with it to give the necessary relish.
Happily, these evils will, at last, work out their
own remedy. Scorn, of all human emotions,
leaves the frailest monuments behind it. That
light which now seems to play around the
weapons of periodical criticism, is only like
the electrical flame which, to the amazement
of the superstitious, wreathes the sword of the
Italian soldier on the approach of a storm,
vapourish and fleeting. Those mighty poets
of our time—who are now overcoming the
derision of the critics—will be immortal wit-
nesses of their shame. These will lift their
heads, “ like mountains when the mists are
rolled away,” imperishable memorials of the
true genius of our time, to the most distant age«MODERN PERIODICAL LITERATURE
43
MODERN PERIODICAL LITERATURE.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
Little did the authors of the Spectator,
the Tattler, and the Guardian, think, while
gratifying the simple appetites of our fathers
for our periodical literature, how great would
be the number, and how extensive the influ-
ence, of their successors in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Little did they know that they were
preparing the way for this strange era in the
world of letters, when Reviews and Magazines
supersede the necessity of research or thought
—when each month they become more spirited,
more poignant, and more exciting—and on
every appearance awaken a pleasing crowd of
turbulent sensations in authors, contributors,
and the few who belong to neither of these
classes, unknown to our laborious ancestors.
Without entering, at present, into the inquiry
whether this system be, on the whole, as bene-
ficial as it is lively, we will just lightly glance
at the chief of its productions, which have
such varied and extensive influences for good
or for evil.
The Edinburgh Review—though its power is
now on the wane—has perhaps, on the whole,
produced a deeper and more extensive impres-
sion on the public mind than any other work
of its species. It has two distinct characters—
that of a series of original essays, and a criti-
cal examination of the new works of particular
authors. The first of these constitutes its
fairest claim to honourable distinction. In this
point of view, it has one extraordinary merit,
that instead of partially illustrating only one
set of doctrines, it contains disquisitions equally
convincing on almost all sides of almost all
questions of literature or state policy. The
“ bane and antidote” are frequently to be found
in the ample compass of its volumes, and not
unlrequently from the same pen. Its Essays
on Political Economy display talents of a very
uncommon order. Their writers have con-
trived to make the dryest subjects enchanting,
and the lowest and most debasing theories
beautiful. Touched by them, the wretched
dogmas of expediency have worn the air of
venerable truths, and the degrading specula-
tions of Malthus have appeared full of benevo-
lence and of wisdom. They have exerted the
uncommon art, while working up a sophism
into every possible form, to seem as though
they had boundless store of reasons to spare—
a very exuberance of proof—which the clear-
ness of their argument rendered it unnecessary
to use. The celebrated Editor of this work,
with little imagination—little genuine wit—and
no clear view of any great and central princi-
ples of criticism, has contrived to dazzle, to
astonish, and occasionally to delight, multitudes
of readers, and, at one period, to hold the tem-
porary fate of authors at his will. His quali-
ties are all singularly adapted to his office.
Without deep feeling, which few can under-
stand, he has a quick sensibility with which
all sympathize ; without a command of images,
he has a glittering radiance of words which
the most superficial may admire; neither too
hard-hearted always to refuse his admiration,
nor too kindly to suppress a sneer, he has been
enabled to appear most witty, most wise, and
most eloquent, to those who have chosen him
for their oracle. As Reviewers, who have
exercised a fearful power over the hearts and
the destinies of young aspirants to fame, this
gentleman, and his varied coadjutors, have
done many great and irreparable wrongs.
Their very motto, “ Judex damnatur cum no-
cens absolvitur,” applied to works offending
only by their want of genius, asserted a ficti-
tious crime to be punished by a voluntary
tribunal. It implied that the author of a dull
book was a criminal, whose sensibilities justice
required to be stretched on the rack, and whose
inmost soul it was a sacred duty to lacerate!
They even carried this atrocious absurdity
farther—represented youthful poets as prima
facie guilty; “swarming with a vicious fecun-
dity, rvhich invited and required destruction;”
and spoke of the publication of verses as evi-
dence, in itself, of want of sense, to be rebutted
only by proofs of surpassing genius.* Thus
the sweetest hopes were to be rudely broken—
the loveliest visions of existence were to be
dissipated—the most ardent and most innocent
souls were to be wrung with unutterable an-
guish—and a fearful risk incurred of crushing
genius too mighty for sudden development, or
of changing its energies into poison—in order
that the public might be secured from the pos-
sibility of worthlessness becoming attractive,
or individuals shielded from the misery of
looking into a work which would not tempt
their farther perusal! But the Edinburgh Re-
view has not been contented with deriding the
pretensions of honest, but ungifted, aspirants ;
it has pursued with misrepresentation and
ridicule the loftiest and the gentlest spirits of
the age, and has prevented the world, for a
little season, from recognising and enjoying
their genius. One of their earliest numbers
contained an elaborate tissue of gross derision
on that delicate production of feeling and of
fancy—that fresh revival of the old English
drama in all its antique graces—that piece of
natural sweetness and of wood-land beauty—
the tragedy of John Woodvil. They directed
the same species of barbarous ridicule against
the tale of Cristabel, trying to excite laughter
by the cheap process of changing the names
of its heroines into Lady C. and Lady G., and
employing the easy art of transmuting its
romantic incidents into the language of frivc
lous life, to destroy the fame of its most pro-
found and imaginative author. The mode of
criticism adopted on this occasion might, it is
* See Ed. Rev., No. 43, p. 68.TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
obvious, be used with equal success, to give
to the purest and loftiest of works a ludicrous
air. But the mightiest offence of the Edin-
burgh Review is the wilful injustice which it
has done to Wordsworth, or rather to the mul-
titude whom it has debarred from the noblest
stock of intellectual delights to be found in
modern poetry, by the misrepresentation and
the scorn which it has poured on his effusions.
It would require a far longer essay than this to
expose all the arts (for arts they have been)
which the Review has employed to depreciate
this holiest of living bards. To effect this
malignant design, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and
Southey, have been constantly represented as
forming one perverse school or band of inno-
vators—though there are perhaps no poets
whose whole style and train of thought more
essentially differ. To the same end, a few
peculiar expressions—a few attempts at sim-
plicity of expression on simple themes—a few
extreme instances of naked language, which
the fashionable gaudiness of poetry had incited
—were dwelt on as exhibiting the poet’s intel-
lectual character, while passages of the purest
and most majestic beauty, of the deepest pathos,
and of the noblest music, were regarded as
unworthy even to mitigate the critic’s scorn.
To this end, Southey—who, with all his rich
and varied accomplishments, has comparative-
ly but a small portion of Wordsworth’s genius
—and whose “wild and wondrous lays” are
the very antithesis to Wordsworth’s intense
musings on humanity, and new consecrations
of familiar things—was represented as redeem-
ing the school which his mightier friend de-
graded. To this end, even Wilson—one who
had delighted to sit humbly at the feet of
Wordsworth, and who derived his choicest in-
spirations from him—was praised as shedding
unwonted lustre over the barrenness of his
master. But why multiply examples 1 Why
attempt minutely to expose critics, who in
“ thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears”
can find matter only for jesting—who speak of
the high, imaginative conclusion of the White
Doe of Rylston as a fine compliment of which
they do not know the meaning—and who begin
a long and laborious article on the noblest
philosophical poem in the world with—“ This
will 71 ever do?”
The Quarterly Review, inferior to the Edin-
burgh in its mode of treating matters of mere
reason—and destitute of that glittering elo-
quence of which Mr. Jeffrey has been so lavish
—is far superior to it in its tone of sentiment,
taste, and morals. It has often given intima-
tions of a sense that there are “ more things
in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
the philosophy” of the Northern Reviewers.
It has not regarded the wealth of nations as
every thing, and the happiness of nations as
nothing—it has not rested all the foundations
of good on the shifting expediences of time—
it has not treated human nature as a mere
problem for critics to analyze and explain.
Its articles on travels have been richly tinged
with a spirit of the romantic. Its views of
religious sectarianism—unlike the flippant im-
pieties of its rival—have been full of real
kindliness and honest sympathy Its disquisi-
tions on the state of the poor have been often
replete with thoughts “ informed by nobleness,”
and rich in examples of lowly virtue, which
have had power to make the heart glow with
a genial warmth which Reviews can rarely
inspire.
Its attack on Lady Morgan, whatever were
the merits of her work, was one of the coarsest
insults ever offered in print by man to woman.
But perhaps its worst piece of injustice was
its laborious attempt to torture and ruin Mr.
Keats, a poet, then of extreme youth, whose
work was wholly unobjectionable in its ten-
dencies, and whose sole offence was a friend-
ship for one of the objects of the Reviewer’s
hatred, and his courage to avow it. We can
form but a faint idea of what the heart of a
young poet is, when he first begins to exercise
his celestial faculties—how eager and tremu-
lous are his hopes—how strange and tumultu-
ous are his joys—how arduous is his difficulty
of imbodying his rich imaginings in mortal
language—how sensibly alive are all his feel-
ings to the touches of this rough world! Yet
we can guess enough of these to estimate, in
some degree, the enormity of a cool attack on
a soul so delicately strung—with such aspira-
tions and such fears—in the beginning of its
high career. Mr. Keats—who now happily
has attained the vantage-ground whence he
may defy criticism—was cruelly or wantonly
held up to ridicule in the Quarterly Review—
to his transitory pain, we fear, but to the lasting
disgrace of his traducer. Shelley has less
ground of complaining—for he who attacks
established institutions with a martyr’s spirit,
must not be surprised if he is visited with a
martyr’s doom. All ridicule of Keats was un-
provoked insult and injury—an attack on Shel-
ley was open and honest warfare, in which
there is nothing to censure but the mode in
which it was conducted. To deprecate his
principles—to confute his reasonings—to ex-
pose his inconsistencies—to picture forth vivid-
ly all that his critics believed respecting the
tendencies of his works—was just and lawful;
but to give currency to slanderous stories
respecting his character, and above all, darkly
to insinuate guilt which they forebore to de-
velope, was unmanly, and could only serve to
injure an honourable cause. Scarcely less
disgraceful to the Review is the late elaborate
piece of abuse against that great national work,
the new edition of Stephens’s Greek Thesaurus.
It must, however, be confessed, that several
articles in recent numbers of the Review have
displayed very profound knowledge of the sub-
jects treated, and a deep and gentle spirit of
criticism.
The British Review is, both in evil and good,
far below the two great Quarterly Journals.
It is, however, very far from wanting ability,
and as it lacks the gall of its contemporaries,
and speaks in the tone of real conviction,
though we do not subscribe to all its opinions,
we offer it our best wishes.
The Pamphleteer is a work of very meritorious
design. Its execution, depending less on the
voluntary power of its editor than that of any
other periodical work, is necessarily unequal.
On the whole, it has imbodied a great numberMODERN PERIODICAL LITERATURE.
45
of valuable essays—which give a view of
different sides of important questions, like the
articles of the Edinburgh, but without the alloy
which the inconsistency of the writers of the
last mingle with their discussions. It has, we
believe, on one or two occasions, suggested
valuable hints to the legislature—especially in
its view of the effects arising from the punish-
ment of the pillory—which, although somewhat
vicious and extravagant in its style, set the
evils of that exhibition in so clear a light, that
it was shortly after abolished, except in the
instance of perjury. As the subject had not
been investigated before, and the abolition fol-
lowed so speedily, it may reasonably be pre-
sumed that this essay had no small share in
terminating an infliction in which the people
were, at once, judges and executioners—all the
remains of virtue were too often extinguished
—and justice perpetually insulted in the execu-
tion of its own-sentences.
The Retrospective Review is a bold experiment
in these times, which well deserves to succeed,
and has already attained far more notice than
we should have expected to follow a periodical
work which relates only to the past. To unveil
with a reverent hand the treasures of other
days—to disclose ties of sympathy with old
time which else were hidden—to make us feel
that beauty and truth are not things of yester-
day—is the aim of no mean ambition, in which
success will be without alloy, and failure with-
out disgrace. There is an air of youth and
inexperience doubtless about some of the arti-
cles; but can any thing be more pleasing than
to see young enthusiasm, instead of dwelling
on the gauds of the “ignorant present/’ fondly
cherishing the venerableness of old time, and
reverently listening to the voices of ancestral
wisdom ] The future is all visionary and un-
real—the past is the truly grand, and substan-
tial and abiding. The airy visions of hope
vanish as we proceed; but nothing can deprive
us of our interest in that which has been. It
is good, therefore, to have one periodical work
exclusively devoted to “ auld lang syne.” It is
also pleasant to have one which, amidst an
age whose literature is “rank with all unkind-
ness,” is unaffected by party or prejudice, which
feeds no depraved appetite, which ministers to
no unworthy passion, but breathes one tender
and harmonions spirit of revering love for the
great departed. We shall rejoice, therefore,
to see this work “rich with the spoils of time,”
and gradually leading even the mere readers
of periodical works, to feel with the gentle
author of that divine sonnet, written in a blank
leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon :—
“Not harsh nor rugged are the winding ways
Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers.”
These, we believe, are all the larger periodi-
cal works of celebrity not devoted to merely
scientific purposes. Of the lesser Reviews,
the Monthly, as the oldest, claims the first no-
tice ; though we cannot say much in its praise.
A singular infelicity has attended many of its
censures. To most of those who have con-
duced to the revival of poetry it has opposed
its jeers and its mockeries. Covvper, who first
restored “ free nature’s grace” to our pictures
of rural scenery—whose timid and delicate
soul shrunk from the slighest encounter with
the world—whose very satire breathed gentle-
ness and good-will to all his fellows—was
agonized by its unfeeling scorn. Kirke White,
another spirit almost too g.entle for earth—
painfully struggling by his poetical efforts to
secure the scanty means of laborious study,
was crushed almost to earth by its pitiable
sentence, and his brief span of life filled with
bitter anguish. This Review seems about
twenty years behind the spirit of the times;
and this, for a periodical work, is fully equal
to a century in former ages.
Far other notice does the Eclectic Preview
require. It is, indeed, devoted to a party; and
to a party whose opinions are not very-favour-
able to genial views of humanity, or to deep
admiration of human genius. But not all the
fiery zeal of sectarianism which has sometimes
blazed through its disquisitions—nor all the
strait-laced nicety with which it is sometimes
disposed to regard earthly enjoyments—nor all
the gloom which its spirit of Calvinism sheds
on the mightiest efforts of virtue—can prevent
us from feeling the awe-striking influences of
honest principle — of hopes which are not
shaken by the fluctuations of time—of faith
which looks to “temples not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.” The Eclectic Review,
indeed, in its earliest numbers, seemed resolved
to oppose the spirit of its religion to the spirit
of intellect and humanity, and even went to
the fearful excess of heaping the vilest abuse
on Shakspeare, and of hinting that his soul
was mourning in the torments of hell, over
the evils which his works had occasioned in
the world.* But its conductors have since
* This marvellous effusion of bigotry is contained in
an article on Twiss’s Index to Shakspeare in the third
volume of the Review, p. 75. The Reviewer commences
with the following tremendous sentence :—
“ If the compiler of these volumes had been properly
sensible of the value of time, and the relation which the
employment of it bears to his eternal state, we should
not have had to present our readers with the pitiable
spectacle of a man advanced in years consuming the
embers of vitality in making a complete verbal Index to
the Plays of Shakspeare.”
After acknowledging the genius of Shakspeare, the
Reviewer observes, 44 lie has been called, and justly too,
the 4 Poet of Nature.’ A slight acquaintance with the
religion of the Bible will show that it is of human nature
in its worst shape, deformed by the basest passions, and
agitated by the most vicious propensities, thjjt the poet
became the priest; and the incense offered at the altar
of his goddess will spread its poisonous fumes over the
hearts of his countrymen, till the memory of his works is
extinct. Thousands of unhappy spirits, and thousands
yet to increase their number, will everlastingly look back
with unutterable anguish on the nights and days in which
the plays of Shakspeare ministered to their guilty de-
lights.” The Reviewer further complains of the inscrip-
tion on Garrick’s tomb (which is absurd enough, though
on far different grounds)—as 44 the absurd and impious
epitaph upon the tablet raised to one of the miserable retailers
of his impurities/”	44 We commiserate,” continues the
critic, 44 the heart of the man w'ho can read the following
lines without indignation :—
4 And till eternity, with power sublime,
Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary time,
Shakspeare and Garrick, like twin stars, shall shine,
And each irradiate with a beam divine.’
Par nobile fratrum! Your fame shall last during the em-
pire of vice and misery, in the extension of which you
have acted so great a part! We make no apology for our
sentiments, unfashionable as they are. Feeling the im
porlance of the condition of man as a moral agent, ac
countable not merely for the direct effects, but also for
the remotest influence of his actions, ivhileive exevo.tf tV.46
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
changed, or have grown wiser. Their Reviews
of poetry have been, perhaps, on the whole, in
the purest and the gentlest spirit of any which
have been written in this age of criticism.
Without resigning their doctrines, they have
softened and humanized those who profess
them, and have made their system of religion
look smilingly, while they have striven to pre-
serve it unspotted from the world. If occa-
sionally they introduce their pious feelings
where we regard them as misplaced, we may
smile, but not in scorn.* * Their zeal is better
than heartless indifference—their honest de-
nunciations are not like the sneers of envy or
the heartless jests which a mere desire of ap-
plause inspires. It is something to have real
principle in times like these—a sense of things
beyond our frail nature—even where the feeling
of the eternal is saddened by too harsh and
exclusive views of God, and of his children:
for, as observed by one of our old poets,
------“ Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man !”t
The British Critic is a highly respectable
work, which does not require our praise, or
offer any marks for our censure. It is, in a
great measure, devoted to the interests of the
church and of her ministers. It has sometimes
shown a little sourness in its controversial
discussions—but this is very different, indeed,
from using cold sneers against unopposing
authors. Its articles of criticism on poetry—
if not adorned by any singular felicity of ex-
pression—have often been, of late, at once
clear-sighted and gentle.
The Edinburgh Monthly Review is, on the
wThole, one of the ablest and fairest of the
Monthly Reviews, though somewhat dispro-
portionably filled with disquisitions on matters
of state policy.
Few literary changes within the late change-
ful years have been more remarkable than the
alteration in the style and spirit of the maga-
zines. Time was when their modest ambition
reached only to the reputation of being the
“abstracts and brief chronicles” of passing
events—when they were well pleased to afford
vent to the sighs of a poetical lover, or to give
light fluttering for a month to an epigram on a
lady’s fan—when a circumstantial account of
names, we cannot but shudder at the state of those who have
opened fountains of impurity at which fashion leads its suc-
cessive generations greedily to drink.'1''—Merciful Heaven !
* We will give an instance of this—with a view to
exhibit the peculiarities into which exclusive feelings
lead ; for observation, not for derision. In a very beau-
tiful article on Wordsworth’s Excursion, the critic
notices a stanza, among several, on the death of Fox,
where the poet—evidently not referring to the questions
of immortality and judgment, but to "the deprivations
sustained by the world in the loss of the objects of its
admiration—exclaims,
“ A power is passing from the earth
To breathless nature’s vast abyss;
But when the mighty pass away,
What is it more than this,
That man, who is from God sent forth,
Doth yet to God return ?
Such ebb and flow will ever be,
Then wherefore shall we mourn ?”
On which the Reviewer observes; “The question in j
the last two lines needs no answer: to that in the four j
preceding ones we must reply distinctly, ‘ It is appointed
to men once to die, but after this the judgment.’”—lleb.
)X. v. 27.
t Daniel.
a murder, or an authentic description of a
birth-day dress, or the nice development of a
family receipt, communicated, in their pages,
to maiden ladies of a certain age an incalcula-
ble pleasure—and when the learned decipher-
ing of an inscription on some rusty coin suf-
ficed to give them a venerableness in the eyes
of the old. If they, then, ever aspired to criti-
cism, it was in mere kindness—to give a
friendly greeting to the young adventurer, and
afford him a taste of unmingled pleasure at
the entrance of his perilous journey. Now
they are full of wit, satire, and pungent remark
—touching familiarly on the profoundest ques-
tions of philosophy as on the lightest varieties
of manners—sometimes overthrowing a system
with a joke, and destroying a reputation in the
best humour in the world. One magazine—
the Gentleman’s—almost alone retains “the
homely beauty of the good old cause,” in pris-
tine simplicity of style. This periodical work
is worthy of its title. Its very dulness is
agreeable to us. It is as destitute of sprightli-
ness and of gall as in the first of its years. Its an-
tiquarian disquisitions are very pleasant, giving
us the feeling of sentiment without seeming to
obtrude it on us, or to be designed for a dis-
play of the peculiar sensibility of their authors.
We would not on any account lose the veteran
Mr. Urban—though he will not, of course, suf-
fice as a substitute for his juvenile competitors
—but we heartily wish that he may go flourish-
ing on in his green old age and honest self-
complacency, to tell old stories, and remind us
of old times, undisturbed by his gamesome
and ambitious progeny!
Yet we must turn from his gentle work to
gaze on the bright Aurora Borealis, the new
and ever-varying Northern Light—Blackwood’s
Magazine. We remember no work of which
so much might be truly said, both in censure
and in eulogy—no work, at some times so
profound, and at others so trifling—one mo-
ment so instinct with noble indignation, the
next so pitifully falling into the errors it had
denounced—in one page breathing the deepest
and the kindliest spirit of criticism, in another
condescending to give currency to the lowest
calumnies. The air of young life—the exube-
rance both of talent and of animal spirits—
which this work indicates, will excuse much
of that wantonness which evidently arises from
the fresh spirit of hope and of joy. But there
are some of its excesses which nothing can
palliate, which can be attributed to nothing
but malignant passions, or to the baser desire
of extending its sale. Less censurable, but
scarcely less productive of unpleasant results,
is its practice of dragging the peculiarities, the
conversation, and domestic habits of distin-
guished individuals into public view, to gratify
a diseased curiosity at the expense of men
by whom its authors have been trusted. Such
a course, if largely followed, would destroy all
that is private and social in life, and leave us
nothing but our public existence. How must
the joyous intercourses of society be chilled,
and the free unbosoming of the soul be checked,
by the feeling that some one is present who
will put down every look, and word, and tone,
in a note-book, and exhibit them to the com-ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH.
47
mon gaze! If the enshading sanctities of life
are to be cut away, as in Peter’s Letters, or in
the Letters from the Lakes—its joys will
speedily perish. When they can no longer
nestle in privacy, they will wither. We can-
not, however, refuse to Blackwood’s contribu-
tors the praise of great boldness in throwing
away the external dignities of literature, and
mingling their wit and eloquence and poetry
with the familiarities of life, with an ease
which nothing but the consciousness of great
and genuine talent could inspire or justify.
Most of their jests have, we think, been carried
a little too far. The town begins to sicken of
their pugilistic articles ; to nauseate the blended
language of Olympus and St. Giles’s; to long
for inspiration from a purer spring than Bel-
sher’s tap; and to desire sight of Apollo and
the Muses in a brighter ring than that of
Moulsey-hurst. We ought not to forget the
debt which we owe to this magazine for infus-
ing something of the finest and profoundest
spirit of the German writers into our criticism,
and for its “ high and hearted” eulogies of the
greatest, though not the most popular of our
living poets.
We have thus impartially, we think, endea-
voured to perform the delicate task of charac-
terizing the principal contemporaries and rivals
of the New Monthly Magazine;—of which
our due regard to the Editor’s modesty forbids
us to speak.
ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
How charming is divine Philosophy !
Not harsh nor crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo’s lute !—Milton.
Blessings be on him and immortal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares,
The Poet who on earth hath made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!—Wordsworth.
Our readers will be disappointed if they ex-
pect to find in this article any of the usual
flippancies of criticism. Were we accustom-
ed to employ them, its subject would utterly
confound us. Strange is their infatuation
who can fancy that the merits of a great poet
are subjected to their decision, and that they
have any authority to pass judicial censures,
or confer beneficent praises, on one of the di-
vinest of intellects ! We shall attempt to set
forth the peculiar immunities and triumphs of
Wordsworth’s genius, not as critics, but as
disciples. To him our eulogy is nothing. But
we would fain induce our readers to follow us
“where we have garnered up our hearts,” and
would endeavour to remove those influences
by which malignity and prejudice have striven
to deter them from seeking some of the holiest
of those living springs of delight which poets
have opened for their species.
A minute discussion of Wordsworth’s system
will not be necessary to our design. It is
manifestly absurd to refer to it as a test of his
poetical genius. When an author has given
numerous creations to the world, he has fur-
nished positive evidence of the nature and ex-
tent of his powers, which must preclude the
necessity of deducing an opinion of them from
the truth or falsehood of his theories. One
noble imagination—one profound and affect-
ing sentiment—or one new gleam cast on the
inmost recesses of the soul, is more than a
sufficient compensation for a thousand critical
errors. False doctrines of taste can endure
only for a little season, but the productions of
genius are “for all time.” Its discoveries
cannot be lost—its images will not perish—
its most delicate influences cannot be dissi-
pated by the changes of times and of seasons.
It may be a curious and interesting question,
whether a poet laboriously builds up his fame
with purpose and judgment, or, as has most
falsely been said of Shakspeare, “grows im-
mortal in his own despite;” but it cannot af-
fect his highest claims to the gratitude and
admiration of the world. If Milton preferred
Paradise Regained to Paradise Lost, does that
strange mistake detract from our revering
lovel What would be our feeling towards
critics, who should venture to allude to it as
a proof that his works were unworthy of pe-
rusal, and decline an examination of those
works themselves on the ground that his per-
verse taste sufficiently proved his want of
genius] Yet this is the mode by which po-
pular Reviewers have attempted to depreciate
Wordsworth—they have argued from his theo-
ries to his poetry, instead of examining the
poetry itself—as if their reasoning was better
than the fact in question, or as if one eternal48
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
image set up in the stateliest region of poesy,
had not value to outweigh all the truths of
criticism, or to atone for all its errors?
Not only have Wordsworth’s merits been
improperly rested on his system, but that
system itself has been misrepresented with
no common baseness. From some of the
attacks directed against it, a reader might
infer that it recommended the choice of the
meanest subjects, and their treatment in the
meanest way ; and that it not only represented
poetry as fitly employed on things in them-
selves low and trivial, but that it forbade the
clustering and delicate fancies about them, or
the shedding on them any reconciling and
softening lustre. Multitudes, indeed, have
wondered as they read, not only that any per-
sons should be deluded by its perverse insi-
pidities, but that critics should waste their ridi-
cule on an author who resigned at once all
pretensions to the poetic art. In reality, this
calumniated system has only reference to the
diction, and to the subjects of poetry. It has
merely taught, that the diction of poetry is not
different from that of prose, and suggested
that themes hitherto little dwelt on, were not
unsuited to the bard’s divinest uses. Let us
briefly examine what ground of offence there
is in the assertion or application of these
positions.
Some have supposed that by rejecting a
diction as peculiar to poetry, Wordsworth
denied to it those qualities which are its es-
sence, and those “harmonious numbers”
which its thoughts “ voluntarily move.” Were
his language equivocal, which it is not, the
slightest glance at his works would show that
he could have no design to exclude from it the
stateliest imaginings, the most felicitous allu-
sions, or the choicest and most varied music.
He objected only to a peculiar phraseolog3r—-
a certain hacknied strain of inversion—which
had been set up as distinguishing poetry from
prose, and which, he contended, was equally
false in either. What is there of pernicious
heresy in this, unless we make the crafty
politician’s doctrine, that speech was given
to man to conceal his thoughts, the great
principle of poetry? If words are fitly com-
bined only to convey ideas to the mind, each
word having a fixed meaning in itself, no dif-
ferent mode of collocation can be requisite
vrhen the noblest sentiment is to be imbodied,
from that which is proper when the dryest
fact is to be asserted. Each term employed
by a poet has as determinate an office—as
clearly means one thing as distinguished from
all others—as a mathematician’s scientific
phrases. If a poet wishes lucidly to convey
a grand picture to the mind, there can be no
reason why he should resort to another mode
of speech than that which he 'would employ
in delivering the plainest narrative. He will,
of course, use other and probably more beau-
tiful words, because they properly belong to
his subject; but he will not use any different
order in their arrangement, because in both
cases his immediate object is the same—the
clear communication of his own idea to the
mind of his reader. And this is true not only
of the chief object of the passage, but of every
hinted allusion, or nice shade of feeling, which
may adorn it. If by “poetic diction” is in-
tended the vivid expression of poetic thoughts,
to annihilate it, is to annihilate poetry; but
if it means certain ornamental phrases and
forms of language not necessary to such ex-
pression, it is, at best, but a splendid error.
Felicity of language can never be other than
the distinct expression of felicitous thought.
The only art of diction in poetry, as in prose,
is the nice bodying forth of each delicate vi-
bration of the feelings, and each soft shade of
the images, in words which at once make us
conscious of their most transient beauty. At
all events, there was surely no offence in an
individual’s rejecting the aid of a style regard-
ed as poetic, and relying for his fame on the
naked majesty of his conceptions. The tri-
umph is more signal when the Poet uses
language as a mirror, clear, and itself invisi-
ble, to reflect his creations in their native
hues,—than when he employs it as a stained
and fallacious medium to exhibit its own va-
rieties of tint, and to show the objects which
it partially reveals in its own prismatic
colouring.
But it is said that the subjects of Words-
worth’s poetry are not in themselves so lofty
as those which his noblest predecessors have
chosen. If this be true, and he has yet suc-
ceeded in discovering within them poetical
affinities, or in shedding on them a new con-
secration, he does not surely deserve ill of his
species. He has left all our old objects of
veneration uninjured, and has enabled us to
recognise new ones in the peaceful and fa-
miliar courses of our being. The question is
not whether there are more august themes
than those which he has treated, but whether
these last have any interest, as seen in the
light which he has cast around them. If they
have, the benefits which he has conferred on
humanity are more signal, and the triumph
of his own powders is more undivided and
more pure, than if he had treated on subjects
which we have been accustomed to revere.
We are more indebted to one who opens to
us a new and secluded pathway in the regions
of fantasy with its own verdant inequalities
and delicate overshadings of foliage, than if
he had stepped majestically in the broad and
beaten highway to swell the triumphant pro-
cession of laurelled bards. Is it matter of
accusation that a poet has opened visions of
glory about the ordinary walks of life—that
he has linked holiest associations to things
which hitherto have been regarded without
emotion—that he has made beauty “a simple
product of the common day ?” Shall he be
denied the poetic faculty, who, without the at-
tractions of story—without the blandishments
of diction—without even the aid of those as-
sociations which have encrusted themselves
around the oldest themes of the poet, has for
many years excited the animosities of the
most popular critics, and mingled the love
and admiration of his genius with the life-
blood of hearts neither unreflecting nor un-
gentle ?
But most of the subjects of Mr. Wordsworth,
though not arrayed in any adventitious pomp,ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH.
49
r ^»ave a real and innate grandeur. True it is,
(^chat he moves not among the regalities, but
among the humanities of his art. True it is,
$ that his poetry does not “ make its bed and
procreant cradle” in the “jutting, frieze, cor-
nice, or architrave” of the glorious edifices of
human power. The universe, in its naked
majesty, and man in the plain dignity of his
nature, are his favourite themes. And is there
no might, no glory, no sanctity in these?
Earth has her own venerablenesses—her awful
forests, which have darkened her hills for
ages with tremendous gloom; her mysterious
springs pouring out everlasting waters from
unsearchable recesses; her wrecks of ele-
mental contests ; her jagged rocks, monumental
of an earlier world. The lowliest of her
beauties has an antiquity beyond that of the
pyramids. The evening breeze has the old
sweetness which it shed over the fields of Ca-
naan, when Isaac went out to meditate. The
Nile swells with its rich waters towards the
bulrushes of Egypt, as when the infant Moses
nestled among them, watched by the sisterly''
love of Miriam. Zion’s hill has not passed
away with its temple, nor lost its sanctity
amidst the tumultuous changes around it, nor
even by the accomplishment of that awful
religion of types and symbols which once was
enthroned on its steeps. The sun to which the
poet turns his eye is the same which shone
over Thermopylae; and the wind to which he
listens swept over Salamis, and scattered the
armaments of Xerxes. Is a poet utterly de-
prived of fitting themes, to whom ocean, earth,
and sky, are open—who has an eye for the
most evanescent of nature’s hues, and the
most ethereal of her graces—who can “ live in
the rainbow and play in the plighted clouds,”
or send into our hearts the awful loneliness of
regions “consecrate to eldest time?” Is there
nothing in man, considered abstractedly from
the distinctions of this world—nothing in a
being who is in the infancy of an immortal
life—who is lackeyed by “ a thousand liveried
angels”—who is even “ splendid in ashes and
pompous in the grave”—to awaken ideas of
permanence, solemnity, and grandeur? Are
there no themes sufficiently exalted for poetry
in the midst of death and of life—in the desires
and hopes which have their resting-place near
the throne of the Eternal—in affections, strange
and wondrous in their working, and uncon-
querable by time, or anguish, or destiny?
How little, comparatively, of allusion is there
even in Shakspeare, whose genius will not be
regarded as rigid or austere, to other venera-
blenesses than those of the creation, and to
qualities less common than the human heart!
The very luxuries which surround his lovers
—the pensive sweetnesses which steal away
the sting from his saddest catastrophies—are
drawn from man’s universal immunities, and
the eldest sympathies of the universe. The
divinity which “hedges his kings” is only
humanity’s finer essence. Even his Lear is
great only in intellectual might and in the ter-
rible strangeness of his afflictions. While in-
vested with the pomp and circumstance of his
station, he is froward, impatient, thankless—
less than a child in his liberality and in his
7
resentments; but when he is cast abroad to
seek a lodging with the owl, and to endure the
fury of the elements, and is only a poor and
despised old man, the exterior crust which a
life of prosperity had hardened over his soul
is broken up by the violence of his sorrows,
his powers expand within his worn and wasted
frame, his spirit awakens in its long-forgotten
strength, and even in the wanderings of dis-
traction gives hints of the profoundest philoso-
phy, and manifests a real kindliness of nature
—a sweet and most affecting courtesy—of
which there was no vestige in the days of his
pride. The regality of Richard lies not in
“ compliment extern”—the philosophy of Ham-
let has a princeliness above that of his rank
—and the beauties of Imogen are shed into
her soul only by the selectest influences of
creation.
The objects which have been usually re-
garded as the most poetical, derive from the
soul itself the far larger share of their poetical
qualities. All their power to elevate, to delight,
or to awe us, which does not arise from mere
form, colour, and proportion, is manifestly
drawn from the instincts common to the spe-
cies. The affections have first consecrated all
that they revere. “Cornice, frieze, jutting, or
architrave,” are fit nestling-places for poetry,
chiefly as they are the symbols of feelings of
grandeur and duration in the hearts of the be-
holders. A poet, then, who seeks at once for
beauty and sublimity in their native home of
the human soul—who resolves “non sectari
rivulos sed petere fontcs ’—can hardly be accused
with justice of rejecting the themes most
worthy of a bard. His office is, indeed, more
arduous than if he selected those subjects
about which hallowing associations have long
clustered, and which other poets have already
rendered sacred. But if he can discover new
depths of affection in the soul—or throw new
tinges of loveliness on objects hitherto com-
mon, he ought not to be despised in proportion
to the severity of the work, and the absence
of extrinsic aid ! Wordsworth’s persons are
not invested with antique robes, nor clad in the
symbols of worldly pomp, but they are “ap-
parelled in celestial light.” By his power
“the bare earth and mountains bare” are
covered with an imaginative radiance more
holy than that which old Greek poets shed
over Olympus. The world, as consecrated by
his poetic wisdom, is an enchanted scene—
redolent with sweet humanity, and vocal with
“ echoes from beyond the grave.”
We shall now attempt to express the reasons
for our belief in Wordsworth’s genius, by first
giving a few illustrations of his chief faculties,
and then considering them in their application
to the uses of philosophical poetry.
We allude first to the descriptive faculty,
because, though not the least popular, it is the
lowest which Wordsworth possesses. He
shares it with many others, though few, we
think, enjoy it in so eminent a degree. It is
difficult, indeed, to select passages from his
works which are merely descriptive; but those
which approach nearest to portraiture, and
are least imbued with fantasy, are master-
pieces in their kind. Take, for example, the60
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS,
following picture of masses of vapour reced-
ing among the steeps and summits of the
mountains, after a storm, beneath an azure
sky; the earlier part of which seem almost
like another glimpse of Milton’s heaven; and
the conclusion of which impresses us solemnly
with the most awful visions of Hebrew pro-
phecy :
------“ A step,
A single step which freed me from the skirts
Of the blind vapour, open’d to my view
Glory beyond all glory ever seen
By waking sense or by the dreaming soul—
The appearance instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city—boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth
Far sinking into splendour—without end !
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes and silver spires ;
And blazing terrace upon terrace high
Uplifted: here serene pavilions bright
In avenues disposed ; there towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars, illumination of all gems !
O ’twas an unimaginable sight;
Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks, and emerald turf,
Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky,
Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed,
Molten together, and composing thus,
Each lost in each, that marvellous array
Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge
Fantastic pomp of structure without name,
In fleecy folds voluminous enwrapp’d.
Right in the midst, where interspace appear’d
Of open court, an object like a throne
Beneath a shining canopy of state
Stood fix’d, and fix’d resemblances were seen
To implements of ordinary use,
But vast in size, in substance glorified ;
Such as by Hebrew prophets were beheld
In vision—forms uncouth of mightiest power,
For admiration and mysterious awe !”
Excursion, B. II.
Contrast with this the delicate grace of the
following picture, which represents the White
Doe of Rylstone—that most beautiful of mys-
teries—on her Sabbath visit to the grave of her
sainted lady:—
“Soft—the dusky trees between
And down the path through the open green
Where is no living thing to be seen ;
And through yon gateway where is found,
Beneath the arch with ivy bound,
Free entrance to the church-yard ground ;
And right across the verdant sod
Towards the very house of God ;
—Comes gliding in with lovely gleam,
Comes gliding in serene and slow,
Soft and silent as a dream,
A solitary Doe!
White is she as lily in June;
And beauteous as the silver moon,
When out of sight the clouds are driven
And she is left alone in heaven;
Or like a ship some gentle day
In sunshine sailing far away,
A glittering ship, that hath the plain
Of ocean for her own domain.
* * * *
What harmonious pensive changes
Wait upon her as she ranges
Round and through this pile of state,
Overthrown and desolate!
Now a step or two her way
Is through space of open day,
Where the enamour’d sunny light
Brightens her that was so bright;
Now doth a delicate shadow fall,
Falls upon her like a breath,
From some lofty arch or wall,
As she passes underneath :
Now some gloomy nook partakes
Of the glory which she makes,—
High-ribb’d vault of stone, or cell
With perfect cunning framed, as well
Of stone and ivy, and the spread
Of the elder’s bushy head ;
Some jealous and forbidding cell,
That doth the living stars repel,.
And where no flower hath leave to dwell.
# * * *
------Her’s are eyes serenely bright,
And on she moves—with pace how light!
Nor spares to stoop her head, and taste
The dewy turf, with flowers bestrown ;
And in this way she fares, till at last
Beside the ridge of a grassy grave
In quietness she lays her down;
Gently as a weary wave
Sinks, when the summer breeze hath died,
Against an anchor’d vessel’s side ;
Even so, without distress, doth she
Lie down in peace, and lovingly.”
White Doe of Rylstone, Canto I.
What, as mere description, can be more
masterly than the following picture of the
mountain solitude, where a dog was found,
after three months’ watching by his master’s
body—though the touches which send the feel-
ing of deep loneliness into the soul, and the
bold imagination which represents the huge
recess as visited by elemental presences, are
produced by higher than descriptive powers 1—
“ It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps till June December’s snow ;
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below !
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivated land ;
From trace of human foot or hand.
There sometimes does a leaping fish
Send through the Tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven’s croak
In symphony austere;
Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud ;
And mists that spread the flying shroud,
And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,
That if it could, would hurry past,
But that enormous barrier binds it fast.”
We must abstain from farther examples of
the descriptive faculty, and allude to that far
higher gift which Wordsworth enjoys in his
profound acquaintance with the sanctities of
the soul. He does not make us feel the
strength of the passions, b}r their violent con-
tests in a transient storm, but the measureless
depth of the affections when they are stillest
and most holy. We often meet in his works
with little passages in which we seem almost
to contemplate the well-springs of pure emo-
tion and gentle pathos, and to see the old clefts
in the rock of humanity whence they arise. In
these we may not rarely perceive the true ele-
ments of tales of the purest sentiment and
most genuine tragedies. No poet has done
such justice to the depth and the fulness of
maternal love. What, for instance, can be
I more tear-moving than these exclamations ofON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH.
51
a mother, who for seven years has heard no
tidings of an only child, abandoning the false
stay of a pride which ever does unholy violence
to the sufferer 1—
“Neglect me ! no, I suffered long
From that ill thought; and, being blind,
Said, ‘ Pride shall help me in my wrong ;
Kind mother have I been, as kind
As ever breathed and that is true ;
I’ve wet my path with tears like dew,
Weeping for him when no one knew.
My son, if thou be humbled, poor,
Hopeless of honour, or of gain,
Oh ! do not dread thy mother’s door;
Think not of me with grief or pain :
I now can see with better eyes;
And worldly grandeur I despise,
And fortune with her gifts and lies.”
How grand and fearful are the following
conjectures of her agony!
“ Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan,
Maim’d, mangled by inhuman men ;
Or thou upon a desert thrown
Inheritest the lion’s den ;
Or hast been summon’d to the deep
Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep,
An incommunicable sleep.”
And how triumphant does the great instinct
appear in its vanquishing even the dread of
mortal chilliness—asking and looking for spec-
tres—and concluding that their appearance is
not possible, because they come not to its in-
tense cravings :—
“ I look for ghosts ; but none will force
Their way to me ; ’tis falsely said
That ever there was intercourse
Between the living and the dead;
For surely then I should have sight
Of him I wait for day and night,
With love and longings infinite.”
Of the same class is the poem on the death
of a noble youth, who fell in attempting to
bound over a chasm of the Wharf, and left his
mother childless.—What a volume of thought
is there in the little stanzas which follows:—
“ If for a lover the lady wept,
A solace she might borrow
From death, and from the passion of death,—
Old Wharf might heal her sorrow.
She weeps not for the wedding-day,
Which was to be to-morrow;
Her hope was a farther-looking hope,
And her’s is a mother’s sorrow !”
Here we are made to feel not only the vast-
ness of maternal affection, but its difference
from that of lovers. The last being a passion,
has a tendency to grasp and cling to objects
which may sustain it, and thus fixes even on
those things which have swallowed its hopes,
and draws them into its likeness. Death itself
thus becomes a passion to one whom it has
bereaved; or the waters which flowed over
the object of once happy love, become a solace
to the mourner, who nurses holy visions by
their side. But an instinct which has none of
that tendency to go beyond itself, when its only
object is lost, has no earthly relief, but is left
utterly desolate. The hope of a lover looks
chiefly to a single point of time as its goal;—
that of a mother is spread equally over exist
ence, and when cut down, at once the blossom
ing expectations of a whole life are withered
for ever.
Can any thing be more true or intense than
the following description of remorse, rejecting
the phantoms of superstitious horror as power-
less, and representing lovely and uncomplain-
ing forms of those whose memories the sufferer
had dishonoured by his errors, casting their
silent looks perpetually upon him :
-----“ Feebly must they have felt
Who, in old time, attired with snakes and whips
The vengeful Furies. Beautiful regards
Were turned on me—the face of her I loved ;
The wife and mother pitifully fixing
Tender reproaches, insupportable 1”
We will give but one short passage more to
show the depth of Wordsworth’s insight into
our nature—but it is a passage which we
think unequalled in its kind in the compass of
poetry. Never surely was such a glimpse of
beatific vision opened amidst mortal affliction ;
such an elevation given to seeming weakness ;
such consolation ascribed to bereaved love by
the very heightening of its own intensities.
The poet contends, that those whom we regard
as dying broken-hearted for the loss of friends,
do not really perish through despair; but have
such vivid prospects of heaven, and such a
present sense that those who have been taken
from them are waiting for them there, that
they wear themselves away in longings after
the reality, and so hasten to enjoy it:—
------“ Full oft the innocent sufferer sees
Too clearly ; feels too vividly; and longs
To realize the vision with intense
And over-constant yearning—there—there lies
The excess by which the balance is destroy’d.
Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh,
This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs,
Though inconceivably endow’d, too diin
For any passion of the soul that leads
To ecstasy ; and, all the crooked paths
Of time and change disdaining, takes its course
Along the line of limitless desires.”
But the imaginative faculty is that with
which Wordsworth is most eminently gifted.
As the term imagination is often very loosely
employed, it will be necessary for us here to
state as clearly as possible our idea of its
meaning. In our sense, it is that power by
ivhich the spiritualities of our nature and the sen-
sible images derived from the material universe are
commingled at the will of the possessor. It has
thus a twofold operation—the bodying forth
of feelings, sentiments, and ideas, in beautiful
and majestic forms, and giving to them local
habitations; and the informing the colours
and the shapes of matter with the properties
of the soul. The first of these workings of the
faculty supplies the highest excellencies of the
orator, and the philosophic bard. When
Sophocles represents the eternal laws of
morality as “produced in the pure regions of
celestial air—having the Olympian alone for
their parent—as not subject to be touched by
the decays of man’s mortal nature, or to be
shaded by oblivion—for the divinity i? mighty
\62
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
within them, and waxes not old :”* it is this
which half gives to them a majestic person-
ality, and dimly figures out their attributes.
By the same process, the imaginative faculty,
aiming at results less sublime but more definite
and complete, gave individual shape to loves,
graces, and affections, and endowed them with
the bread of life. By this process, it shades
over the sorrows winch it describes by the
beauties and the graces of nature, and tinges
with gentle colouring the very language of
affliction. In the second mode of its operation,
on the other hand, it moves over the universe
like the spirit of God on the face of the waters,
and peoples it with glorious shapes, as in the
Greek mythology, or sheds on it a consecrating
radiance, and imparts to it an intense sym-
pathy, as in the poems of these more reflective
days. Although a harmonizing faculty, it can
by the law of its essence only act on things
which have an inherent likeness. It brings
out the secret affinities of its objects; but it
cannot combine things which nature has not
prepared for union, because it does not add,
but transfuses. Hence there can be no wild
incongruity, no splendid confusion in its works.
Those which are commonly regarded as its
productions in the metaphorical speeches of
“Irish eloquence,” are their very reverse, and
may serve by contrast to explain its realities.
The highest and purest of its efforts are when
the intensest elements of the human soul are
mingled inseparably with the vastest majesties
of the universe; as where Lear identifies his
age with that of the heavens, and calls on
them to avenge his wrongs by their com-
munity of lot; and where Timon “fixes his
everlasting mansion upon the beached shore
of the salt flood,” that “once a day with its
embossed froth the turbulent surge may cover
him,” scorning human tears, but desiring the
vast ocean for his eternal mourner!
Of this transfusing and reconciling faculty—
whether its office be to “clothe upon,” or to
spiritualize—Mr. Wordsworth is, in the highest
degree, master. Of this, abundant proofs will
be found in the latter portion of this article ; at
present we will only give a few examples.
The first of these is one of the grandest in-
stances of noble daring, completely successful,
which poetry exhibits. After a magnificent
picture of a single yew-tree, and a fine allusion
to its readiness to furnish spears for old battles,
the poet proceeds:
-----“But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal four of Borrowdale,
Join’d in one solemn and capacious grove ;
Huge trunks !—and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine,
Upcoiling, and inveterately convolved,—
* This passage—one of the noblest instances of the
moral sublime—is from the Theban CEdipus, where it is
uttered by the Chorus on some of the profane scofls of
the fated Iocasta:
ISopot
'XilunnSES y’ vpaviav S’ aiGep
TcKVojdevrei, cov ’OXvpnos
Tlarrjp pouog, uSe viv Qvara
Qvms avepcov etiktev, vSe
Mryc 7tote XaOa KaraKoipaaei.
EV TUT6l$ Seos,
OvSe yijpacKEi.
Not uninformed by fantasy and look
That threaten the profane a pillar'd shade
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially—beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if fox festal purpose deck’d
By unrcjoicing berries, ghostly shapes
May meet at noon-tide—Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight—Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow—there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scatter’d o’er
With altars undisturb'd of mossy stone,
United worship ; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glamarara’s inmost caves.”
Let the reader, when that first glow of intui-
tive admiration which this passage cannot fail
to inspire is past, look back on the exquisite
gradations by which it naturally proceeds from
mere description to the sublime personification
of the most awful abstractions, and the union
of their fearful shapes in strange worship, or
in listening to the deepest of nature’s voices.
The first lines—interspersed indeed with epi-
thets drawn from the operations of mind, and
therefore giving to them an imaginative tinge
—are, for the most part, a mere picture of the
august brotherhood of trees, though their very
sound is in more august accordance with their
theme than most of the examples usually pro-
duced of “echoes to the sense.” Having com-
pletely set before us the image of the scene,
the poet begins that enchantment by which it
is to be converted into a fitting temple for the
noontide spectres of Death and Time, by the
general intimation that it is “not uninformed
by fantasy and looks that threaten the pro-
fane”—then, by the mere epithet pillared, gives
us the more particular feeling of a fane—then,
by reference to the actual circumstances of the
grassless floor of red-brown hue, preserves to
us the peculiar features of the scene which
thus he is hallowing—and at last gives to the
roof and its berries a strange air of unrejoic-
ing festivity—until we are prepared for the
introduction of the phantasms, and feel that
the scene could be fitted to no less tremendous
a conclave. The place, without losing one of
its individual features, is decked for the recep-
tion of these noon-tide shades, and we are pre-
pared to muse on them with unshrinking eyes.
How by a less adventurous but not less de-
lightful process, does the poet impart to an
evening scene on the Thames, at Richmond,
the serenity of his own heart, and tinge it with
softest and saddest hues of the fancy and the
affections ! The verses have all the richness
of Collins, to whom they allude, and breathe a
more profound and universal sentiment than
is found in his sky-tinctured poetry.
“ How richly glows the water’s breast
Before us tinged with evening hues,
While, facing thus the crimson west,
The boat her silent course pursues!
And see how dark the backward stream !
A little moment past so smiling!
And still perchance, with faithless gleam,
Some other loiterer beguiling.
“Such views the youthful bard allure;
But, heedless of the following gloom,
He deems their colours shall endure
Till peace go with him to the tombON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH.
53
And let him nurse his fond deceit,
And what if he must die in sorrow!
Who would not cherish dreams so sweet,
Though grief and pain may come to-morrow ?
“ Glide gently thus, for ever glide,
O Thames ! that other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! come to me.
O glide, fair stream ! for ever so,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow,
As thy deep waters now are flowing.
“ Vain thought!—Yet be as now thou art,
That in thy waters may be seen
The image of a poet’s heart,
How bright, how solemn, how serene !”
The following delicious sonnet, inspired by
the same scene, is one of the latest effusions
of its author. We do not here quote it on ac-
count of its allusion to one of the most de-
lightful of poets—nor of the fine unbroken
ligament by which the harmony listened to by
the later bard is connected with that which the
earlier drank in, by the lineage of the song-
sters who keep Up the old ravishment—but of
that imaginative power, by which a sacredness
is imparted to the place and to the birds, as
though they performed unresting worship in
the most glorious of cathedrals.
“Fame tells of groves from England far away*—
Groves that inspire the nightingale to trill
And modulate, with subtle reach of skill
Elsewhere unmatch’d, her ever-varying lay ;
Such bold report I venture to gainsay :
For I have heard the choir of Richmond-hill
Chanting with indefatigable bill;
While I bethought me of a distant day;
When haply under shade of that same wood,
And scarcely conscious of the dashing oars
Plied steadily between those willowy shores,
The sweet-soul’d Poet of the Seasons stood—
Listening, and listening long, in rapturous mood,
Ye heavenly birds! to your progenitors.”
The following “Thought of a Briton on the
subjugation of Switzerland,” has an elemental
grandeur imbued with the intensest sentiment,
which places it among the highest efforts of
the imaginative faculty.
“ Two voices are there ; one is one of the sea,
One of the mountains ; each a mighty voice :
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty!
There came a tyrant, and with holy glee
Thou fought’st against him ; but hast vainly striven,
Thou from thine Alpine holds at length are driven,
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee.
Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft;
Then cleave, O cleave, to that which still is left:
For, high-soul’d maid, what sorrow would it be,
That mountain-floods should thunder as before,
And ocean bellow from his rocky shore,
And neither awful voice be heard by thee !”
We have thus feebly attempted to give some
glimpse into the essence of Wordsworth’s
powers—of his skill in delineating the forms
of creation—of his insight into the spirit of
man—and of his imaginative faculty. How
he has applied these gifts to philosophical po-
etry, and what are the results of his contem-
plation, by their aid, on the external universe—
human life—individual character—the vicis-
situdes of individual fortune—society at large
—and the prospects of the species—we shall
next proceed more particularly to examine.
The spirit of contemplation influences and
directs all Wordsworth’s poetical faculties.
He does not create a variety of individual
forms to vivify them with the Promethean fire
of dramatic genius, and exhibit the living
struggle of their passions and their affections
in opposition to each other, or to destiny. “ The
moving accident is not his trade.” He looks
on humanity as from a more exalted sphere,
though he feels his kindred with it while he
gazes and yearns over it with deepest sympa-
thy. No poet of ancient or modern times has
dared so entirely to repose on the mere strength
of his own powers. Others, indeed, have
given hints of the divinest truths, even amidst
their wildest and most passionate effusions.
The tragedies of Sophocles, for example,
abound in moralities expressed with a grace
and precision which often ally the sentiment
to an image and almost define it to the senses.
In Shakspeare the wisdom is as much deeper
as the passion is intenser; the minds of the
characters, under the strongest excitements of
love, hope, or agony, grow bright as well as
warm, and in their fervid career shed abroad
sparkles of fire, which light up, for an instant,
the inmost sanctuaries of our nature. But few
have ventured to send into the world essen-
tially meditative poems, which none but the
thoughtful can truly enjo)^. Lucertius is the
only writer of antiquity who has left a great
work of this description; and he has unhap-
pily lavished the boundless riches of genius
on doctrines which are in direct opposition to
the spirit of poetry. An apostle of a more ge-
nial faith, Wordsworth, stands pre-eminently—
almost alone—a divine philosopher among the
poets. It has been his singular lot, in this late
age of the world, to draw little from those
sources of interest which incident and situ-
ation supply—and to rest his claim to the
gratitude and admiration of the people on his
majestical contemplations of man and the uni-
verse.
The philosophical poetry of Wordsworth is
not more distinct from the dramatic, or the
epic, than from the merely didactic and moral.
He has thrown into it as much of profound
affection, as much of ravishing loveliness, as
much of delicate fantasy, as adorn the most
romantic tales, or the most passionate trage*-
dies. If he sees all things “far as angel’s
ken,” he regards them with human love. His
imagination is never obscured amidst his
reasonings, but is ever active to imbody the
beautiful and the pure, and to present to us
the most august moralities in “clear dream
and solemn vision.” Instead of reaching sub-
lime conclusions by a painful and elaborate
process, he discloses them by a single touch,
he fixes them on our hearts for ever. So in-
tense are his perceptions of moral beauty,
that he feels the spirit of good however deeply
hidden, and opens to our view the secret
springs of love and of joy, where all has ap-
peared barren to the ungifted observer. He
can trace, prolong, and renew within us, those
£ 2
♦ YYallachia is the country alluded to.54
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
mysterious risings of delight in the soul which
“may make a chrysome child to smile,” and
which, when half-experienced at long intervals
in riper age, are to us the assurances of a bet-
ter life. He follows with the nice touch of un-
erring sympathy all the most subtle workings
of the spirit of good, as it makes its little
sanctuaries in hearts unconscious of its pre-
sence, and blends its influences unheeded with
ordinary thoughts, hopes, and sorrows. The
old prerogatives of humanity, which long
usage has made appear common, put on their
own air of grandeur while he teaches us to re-
vere them. When we first read his poetry,
we look on all the mysteries of our being with
a new reverence, and feel like children who,
having been brought up in some deserted
palace, learn for the first time the regality of
their home—understand a venerableness in
the faded escutcheons with which they were
accustomed to play—and feel the figures on
the stained windows, or on the decaying tapes-
try, which were only grotesque before speak-
ing to their hearts in ancestral voices.
The consecration which Wordsworth has
shed over the external world is in a great
measure peculiar to his genius. In the He-
brew poetry there was no trace of particular
description—but general images, such as of
tall cedars, of green pastures, or of still wa-
ters, were alone permitted to aid the affections
of the devout worshipper. The feeling of the
vast and indistinct prevailed; for all in reli-
gion was symbolical and mysterious, and
pointed to “temples not made with hands, eter-
nal in the heavens.” In the exquisite master-
pieces of Grecian inspiration, free nature’s
grace was almost excluded by the opposite
tendency to admire only the definite and the
palpable. Hence, the pictures of nymphs,
satyrs, and deities, were perpetually substi-
tuted for views of the magnificence of earth
and heaven. In the romantic poetry of modern
times, the open face of nature has again been
permitted to smile on us, and its freshness to
glide into our souls. Nor has there been want-
ing “craft of delicate spirits” to shed lovelier
tinges of the imagination on all its scenes—to
scatter among them classical images like Ionic
temples among the fair glades and deep woods
of some rich domain—to call dainty groups
of fairies to hold their revellings upon the vel-
vet turf—or afford glimpses of angel wings
floating at eventide in the golden perspective.
But the imagination of Wordsworth has given
to the external universe a charm which has
never else, extensively at least, been shed over
it. He has not personified the glorious objects
of Creation—nor peopled them with beautiful
and majestic shapes—but, without depriving
them of their own reality, has imparted to
them a life which makes them objects of af-
fection and reverence. He enables us at once
to enjoy the contemplation of their colours and
forms, and to love them as human friends. He
consecrates earth by the mere influences of
sentiment and thought, and renders its scenes
as enchanted as though he had filled them
with Oriental wonders. Touched by him, the
hills, the rocks, the hedge-rows, and the hum-
1 lest flowers shine in a magic lustre, “ which
never was by sea or land,” and which yetis
strangely familiar to our hearts. These are
not hallowed by him with “angel visits,” nor
by the presence of fair and immortal shapes,
but by the remembrances of early joy, by
lingering gleams of a brightness which has
passed away, and dawnings of a glory to be
revealed in the fulness of time. The lowliest
of nature’s graces have power to move and to
delight him. “The clouds are touched, and in
their silent faces does he read unutterable
love.” He listens to the voice of the cuckoo
in early spring, till he “begets again the
golden time of his childhood,” and till the
world, which is “ fit home ” for that mysteri-
ous bird, appears “an airy unsubstantial place.”
At the root of some old thorn, or beneath the
branches of some time-honoured tree, he opens
the sources of delicious musing, and suggests
the first hints which lead through a range of
human thoughts to the glories of our final des-
tiny. When we traverse with him the “bare
earth and mountains bare,” we feel that “the
place whereon we are standing is holy ground;”
the melancholy brook can touch our souls as
truly as a tragic catastrophe ; the splendours
of the western sky give intimation of “a joy
past joy;” and the meanest flowers, and scanty
blades of grass, awaken within us hopes too
rapturous for smiles, and “thoughts which do
often lie too deep for tears.”
To give all the instances of this sublime
operation of the imaginative faculty in Words-
worth, would be to quote the far larger portion
of his works. A few lines, however, from the
poem composed on the Banks of the Wye,
will give our readers a deep glimpse into the
inmost heart of his poetiy, and of his poetical
system, on the communion of the soul of man
with the spirit of the universe. In this raptur-
ous effusion—in which, with a wise prodi-
gality, he hints and intimates the profoundest
of those feelings which vivify all he has cre-
ated—he gives the following view of the pro-
gress of his sympathy with the external
world:—
------“Nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
Amt their glad animal movements, all gone by)
To me was all in all—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite : a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrow’d from the eye. That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur ; other gifts
Have follow’d, for such loss I would believe
Abundant recompense. For I have learn’d
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Not harsh, nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A spirit which disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH.
55
And the blue sky, and in the mind of mind :
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.”
There are none of the workings of our
poet’s imaginative faculty more wonderful
in themselves, or more productive of high
thoughts and intense sympathies, than those
which have for their objects the grand ab-
stractions of humanity—Life and Death, Child-
hood and Old Age. Every period of our being
is to him not only filled with its own peculiar
endearments and joys, but dignified by its own
sanctities. The common forms of life assume
a new venerableness when he touches them—
for he makes us feel them in their connection
with our immortality—even as the uncouth
vessels of the Jewish law appeared sublime to
those who felt that they were dedicated to the
immediate service of Heaven. He ever leaves
us conscious that the existence on whose be-
ginning he expatiates, will endure for ever.
He traces out those of its fibres which are
eternal in their essence. He discovers in
every part of our earthly course manifold
intimations that these our human hearts will
never die. Childhood is, to him, not only the
season of novelty, of innocence, of joyous
spirits, and of mounting hope—but of a dream-
like glory which assures to us that this world
is not our final home. Age to him, is not a
descent into a dark valley, but a “final emi-
nence,” where the wise may sit “in awful
sovereignty” as on a high peak among the
mountains in placid summer, and commune
with Heaven, undisturbed by the lesser noises
of the tumultuous world. One season of life
is bound to another by “the natural piety”
which the unchanging forms of nature pre-
serve, and death comes at last over the deep
and tranquil stream as it is about to emerge
into a lovelier sunshine, as “ a shadow thrown
softly and lightly from a passing cloud.”
The Ode in which Wordsworth particularly
developes the intimations of immortality to be
found in the recollections of early childhood,
is, to our feelings, the noblest piece of lyric
poetry in the world. It was the first poem of
its author which we read, and never shall we
forget the sensations which it excited within
us. We had heard the cold sneers attached
to his name—we had glanced over criticisms,
“lighter than vanity,” which represented him
as an object for scorn “to point its slow un-
moving finger at”—and here—in the works
of this derided poet—we found a new vein of
imaginative sentiment opened to us—sacred
recollections brought back on our hearts with
all the freshness of novelty, and all the vene-
rableness of far-off time—the most mysterious
of old sensations traced to a celestial origin—
and the shadows cast over the opening of life
from the realities of eternity renewed before
us with a sense of their supernal causes!
What a gift did we then inherit! To have
the best and most imperishable of intellectual
treasures—the mighty world of reminiscences
of the days of infancy—set before us in a new
and holier light; to find objects of deepest
veneration where we had only been accustom-
ed to love; to feel in all the touching mysteries
of our past being the symbols and assurances
of our immortal destiny ! The poet has here
spanned our mortal life as with a glorious
rainbow, terminating on one side in infancy,
and on the other in the realms of blessedness
beyond the grave, and shedding even upon
the middle of that course tints of unearthly
colouring. The following is the view he has
given of the fading glory of childhood—drawn
in part from Oriental fiction, but imbodying
the profoundest of elemental truths :—
“ Our birth is but a sleep, and a forgetting :
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath elsewhere known its setting,
And cometli from afar ;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God that is our home ;
Heaven lies about us in our infancy !
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy ;
The Youth that daily farther from the east
Must travel still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day!”
But the following is the noblest passage of
the whole ; and such an outpouring of thought
and feeling—such a piece of inspired philoso-
phy—we do not believe exists elsewhere in
human language:—
“ O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions : not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether fluttering or at rest,
With new-born hope for ever in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise ;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings ;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realiz’d,
High instincts, before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised ;
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ;
Uphold us, cherish us, and make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy !
Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.’
After this rapturous flight, the author thus
leaves to repose on the quiet lap of humanity.56
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
and soothes us with a strain of such mingled
solemnity and tenderness, as “might make
angels weep
“What though the radiance which was once so bright,
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower ;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy
Which having been, must ever be,
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering,
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And oh ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Think not of any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish’d one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they ;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality ;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
The genius of the poet, which thus dignifies
and consecrates the abstractions of our nature,
is scarcely less felfcitous in its pictures of
society at large, and in its philosophical de-
lineations of the characters and fortunes of
individual man. Seen through the holy me-
dium of his imagination, all things appear
“bright and solemn and serene”—the asperi-
ties of our earthly condition are softened away
—and the most gentle and evanescent of its
hues gleam and tremble over it. He delights
to trace out those ties of sympathy by which
the meanest of beings are connected with the
general heart. He touches the delicate strings
by which the great family of man are bound
together, and thence draws forth sounds of
choicest music. He makes ns partake of
those joys which are “ spread through the
earth to be caught in stray gifts by whoever
will find” them—discloses the hidden wealth
of the soul—finds beauty everywhere, and
“ good in every thing.” He draws character
with the softest pencil, and shades it with the
pensive tints of gentlest thought. The pas-
toral of The Brothers—the story of Michael—
and the histories in the Excursion which the
priest gives while standing among the rustic
graves of the church-yard, among the moun-
tains, are full of exquisite portraits, touched
and softened by a divine imagination which
human love inspires. He rejoices also to ex-
hibit that holy process by which the influ-
ences of creation are shed abroad in the heart,
to excite, to mould, or to soften. We select
the following stanzas from many passages of
this kind of equal beauty, because in the
fantasy of nature’s making “ a lady of her
own,” the object of the poet is necessarily
developed with more singleness than where
reference is incidentally made to the effect
of scenery on the mind:—
“ Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, a lovelier flower
On earth was never sown ;
This child I to myself will take,
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my ownl
Myself will to the darling be
Both law and impulse : and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power,
To kindle or restrain.
She shall be sportive as the fawn,
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs ;
And her’s shall be the breathing balm,
And hcr’s the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden’s form
By silent sympathy.
The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her ; and she shall lean on air
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Shall pass into her face !”
But we must break off to give a passage in
a bolder and most passionate strain, which
represents the effect of the tropical grandeur
and voluptuousness of nature on a wild and
fiery spirit—at once awakening and half-re-
deeming its irregular desires. It is from the
poem of “Ruth,”—a piece where the most
profound of human affections is disclosed
amidst the richest imagery, and incidents of
wild romance are told with a Grecian purity
of expression. The impulses of a beautiful
and daring youth are thus represented as in-
spired by Indian scenery:
“ The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food,
For him, a youth to whom wras given
So much of earth, so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.
Whatever in those climes he found
Irregular in sight or sound,
Did to his mind impart
A kindred impulse, seem’d allied
To his own powers, and justified
The workings of his heart.
Nor less to feed voluptuous thought,
The beauteous forms of Nature wrought
Fair trees and lovely flowers;
The breezes their own languor lent;
The stars had feelings which they sent
Into those gorgeous bowers.
Yet in his worst pursuits, I ween
That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent;
For passions link’d to forms as fair
And stately, needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment.”
We can do little more than enumerate those
pieces of narrative and character, which we
esteem the best in their kind of our author’s
works. The old Cumberland Beggar is oneON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH.
57
of those which linger most tenderly on our
memories. The poet here takes almost the
lowliest of his species—an aged mendicant,
one of the last of that class who made regular
circuits amidst the cottages of the north—and
after a vivid picture of his frame bent with
years, of his slow motion and decayed senses,
he asserts them not divorced from good—
traces out the links which bind him to his
fellows—and shows the benefit which even
he can diffuse in his rounds, while he serves
as a record to bind together past deeds and
offices of charity—compels to acts of love by*
“ the mild necessity of use” those whose
hearts would otherwise harden—gives to the
young “ the first mild touch of sympathy and
thought, in which they find their kindred with
a world where want and sorrow are”—and
enables even the poor to taste the joy of be-
stowing. This last blessing is thus set forth
and illustrated by a precious example of self-
denying goodness and cheerful hope, which
is at once more tear-moving and more sublime
than the finest things in Cowper:—
-----“ Man is dear to man ; the poorest poor
Long for some moments in a weary life
When they can know and feel that they have been,
Themselves, the fathers and the dealers out
Of some small blessings ; have been kind to such
As needed kindness, for this single cause,
That we have all of us one human heart.
—Such pleasure is to one kind being known,
My neighbour, when with punctual care, each week
Duly as Friday comes, though prest herself
With her own wants, she from her chest of meal
Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip
Of this old mendicant, and, from her door
Returning with invigorated heart,
Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in Heaven.”
Then, in the Excursion, there is the story of
the Ruined Cottage, with its admirable grada-
tions, more painful than the pathetic narratives
of its author usually are, yet not without re-
deeming traits of sweetness, and a reconciling
spirit which takes away its sling. There, too,
is the intense history of the Solitary’s sorrows
—there the story of the Hanoverian and the
Jacobite, who learned to snatch a sympathy
from their bitter disputings, grew old in con-
troversy and in friendship, and -were buried
side by side—there the picture of Oswald, the
gifted and generous and graceful hero of the
mountain solitude, who was cut off in the
blossom of his youth—there the record of that
pleasurable sage, whose house Death, after
forty years of forbearance, visited with throng-
ing summonses, and took off his family one
after the other, “ with intervals of peace,” till
he too, with cheerful thoughts about him, was
“overcome by unexpected sleep in one blest
moment,” and as he lay on the “warm lap of
his mother earth,” “ gathered to his fathers.”
There are those fine vestiges, and yet finer
traditions and conjectures, of the good knight
Sir Alfred Irthing, the “mild-hearted cham-
pion” who had retired in Elizabeth’s days to
a retreat among the hills, and had drawn
around him a kindred and a family. Of him
nothing remained but a gentle fame in the
hearts of the villagers, an uncouth monumental
stone grafted on the church-walls, which the
8
sagest antiquarian might muse over in vain,
and his name engraven in a wreath or posy
around three bells with which he had endowed
the spire. “So,” exclaims the poet, in strains
as touching and majestic as ever were breathed
over the transitory grandeur of earth—
“ So fails, so languishes, grows dim and dies,
All that this world is proud of. From their spheres
The stars of human glory are cast down ;
Perish the roses, and the flowers of kings,
Princes and emperors, and the crowns and palms
Of all the mighty, withered, and consumed.”
In the Excursion, too, is the exquisite tale
of poor Ellen—a seduced and forsaken girl—
from which we will give one affecting inci-
dent, scarcely to be matched, for truth and
beauty, through the many sentimental poems
and tales which have been founded on a simi-
lar wo :
“ —Beside the cottage in which Ellen dwelt
Stands a tall ash tree ; to whose topmost twig
A thrush resorts, and annually chants,
At morn and evening from that naked perch,
While all the undergrove is thick with leaves,
A time-beguiling ditty, for delight
Of his fond partner, silent in the nest.
—c Ay why,’ said Ellen, sighing to herself,
* Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge;
And nature that is kind in Woman’s breast,
And reason that in Man is wise and good,
And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,—
Why do not these prevail for human life,
To keep two hearts together, that began
Their spring-time with one love, and that have need
Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet
To grant, or be received, while that poor bird,
—O come and hear him ! Thou who hast to me
Been faithless, hear him, though a lowly creature,
One of God’s simple children that yet know not
The universal Parent, how he sings
As if he wished the firmament of Heaven
Should listen, and give back to him the voice
Of his triumphant constancy and love;
The proclamation that he makes, how far
His darkness doth transcend our fickle light P
“ Such was the tender passage, not by me
Repeated without loss of simple phrase,
Which I perused, even as the words had been
Committed by forsaken Ellen’s hand
To the blank margin of a Valentine,
Bedropped with tears.”
With these tear-moving expressions of ill-
fated love, we may contrast the following rich
picture of the affection in its early bloom, from
the tale of Vandracour and Julia, which will
show how delightedly the poet might have lin-
gered in the luxuries of amatory song, had he
not chosen rather to brood over the whole
world of sentiment and passion :—
“Arabian fiction never filled the world
With half the wonders that were wrought for him.
Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring;
Life turned the meanest of her implements
Before his eyes to price above all gold;
The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine;
Her chamber window did surpass in glory
The portal of the dawn ; all paradise
Could, by the simple opening of a door,
Let itself in upon him ; pathways, walks,
Swarmed with enchantment, till his spirit sank,
Surcharged, within him, overblest to move
Beneath a sun that walks a weary world
To its dull round of ordinary cares;
A man too happy for mortality.”58
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
Perhaps the highest instance of Words-
worth’s imaginative faculty, exerted in a tale
of human fortunes, is to be found in “The
White Doe of Rylstone.” He has here suc-
ceeded in two distinct efforts, the results of
which are yet in entire harmony. He has
shown the gentle spirit of a high-born maiden
gathering strength and purity from sorrow,
and finally, after the destruction of her family,
and amidst the ruin of her paternal domains,
consecrated by suffering. lie has also here,
by the introduction of that lovely wonder, the
favourite doe of his heroine, at once linked
the period of his narrative to that of its events,
and softened down the saddest catastrophe and
the most exquisite of mortal agonies. A gal-
lant chieftain, one of the goodliest pillars of
the olden time, falls, with eight of his sons,
in a hopeless contest for the religion to which
they were devoted—the ninth, who followed
them unarmed, is slain while he strives to
bear away, for their sake, the banner which
he had abjured—the sole survivor, a helpless
woman, is left to wander desolate about the
silent halls and tangled glades, once witnesses
of her joyous infancy—and yet all this variety
of grief is rendered mild and soothing by the
influences of the imagination of the poet. The
doe, which first with its quiet sympathy excited
relieving tears in its forsaken mistress, which
followed her, a gentle companion, through all
her mortal wanderings, and which years after
made Sabbath visits to her grave, is, like the
spirit of nature, personified to heal, to bless,
and to elevate. All who have read the poem
aright, will feel prepared for that apotheosis
which the poet has reserved for this radiant
being, and will recognise the imaginative truth
of that bold figure, by which the decaying
towers of Bolton are made to smile upon its
form, and to attest its unearthly relations :—
“ There doth the gentle creature lie
With these adversities unmoved ;
Calm spectacle, by earth and sky
In their benignity approved !
And ay, methinks, this hoary pile,
Subdued by outrage and decay,
Looks down upon her with a smile,
A gracious smile, that seems to say,
‘Thou art not a Child of Time,
But daughter of the eternal Prime !’ ”
Although Wordsworth chiefly delights in
these humanities of poetry, he has shown that
he possesses feelings to appreciate and power
to grasp the noblest of classic fictions. No
one can read his Dion, his Loadamia, and the
most majestic of his sonnets, without perceiv-
ing that he has power to endow the stateliest
shapes of old mythology with new life, and to
diffuse about them a new glory. Hear him,
for example, breaking forth, with holy disdain
of the worldly spirit of the time, into this
sublime apostrophy:—
“ Great God ! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn :
So might I, standing on some pleasant lee,
Have glimpses which might make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn!”
But he has chosen rather to survey the ma-
jesties of Greece, with the eye of a philoso-
pher as well as of a poet. He reviews them
with emotions equally remote from pedantry
and from intolerance—regarding not only the
grace and the loveliness of their forms, but
their symbolical meaning—tracing them to
their elements in the human soul, and bringing
before us the eldest wisdom which was im-
bodied in their shapes, and speedily forgotten
by their worshippers. Thus, among “thepal-
pable array of sense,” does he discover hints
of immortal life—thus does he transport us
back more than twenty centuries—and enable
us to enter into the most mysterious and far-
reaching hopes of a Grecian votary:—
“------A Spirit hung,
Beautiful region! o’er thy Towns and Farms,
Statues, and Temples, and memorial Tombs;
And emanations were perceived, and acts
Of immortality, in Nature’s course,
Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt
As bonds, on grave Philosopher imposed
And armed Warrior ; and in every grove,
A gay or pensive tenderness prevail’d
When piety more awful had relaxed.
‘ Take, running River, take these locks of mine,’
Thus would the votary say,—‘ this sever’d hair,
My vow fulfilling, do I here present,
Thankful for my beloved child’s return.
Thy banks, Cephisus, he again hath trod,
Thy murmurs heard ; and drunk the crystal lymph
With which thou dost refresh the thirsty lip,
And moisten all day long these flowery fields.’
And doubtless, sometimes, when the hair was shed
Upon the flowing stream, a thought arose
Of life continuous, Being unimpair’d
That hath been, is, and where it was and is
There shall be,—seen, and heard, and felt, and known,
And recognised,—existence unexposed
To the blind walk of mortal accident;
From diminution free, and weakening age,
While man grows old, and dwindles and decays;
And countless generations of mankind
Depart: and leave no vestige where they trod.”
We must now bring this long article to a
close—and yet how small a portion of our au-
thor’s beauties have we even hinted I We
have passed over the clear majesty of the
poem of “ Hart Leap Well”—the lyrical gran-
deur of the Feast of Brougham Castle—the
masculine energy and delicate grace of the
Sonnets which, with the exception perhaps of
one or two of Warton and of Milton, far exceed
all others in our language—“ The Wagoner,”
that fine and hearty concession of a water-
drinker to the joys of wine and the light-heart-
ed folly which it inspires—and numbers of
smaller poems and ballads, which to the super-
ficial observer may seem only like woodland
springs, but in which he who ponders intently
will discern the breakings forth of an under-
current of thought and feeling which is silently
flowing beneath him. We trust, however, we
have written or rather quoted enough to induce
such of our readers as hitherto have despised
the poet on the faith of base or ignorant criti-
cism to read him for themselves, especially as
by the recent appearance of the Excursion in
octavo, and the arrangement of the minor
poems in four small volumes, the whole of his
poetical works' are placed within their reach.
If he has little popularity with the multitude,
he is rewarded by the intense veneration and
love of the finest spirits of the age. Not onlyNORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD.
59
Coleridge, Lloyd, Southey, Wilson, and Lamb |
—with whom his name has been usually con-
nected—but almost all the living poets have,
paid eloquent homage to his genius. He is
loved by Montgomery, Cornwall, and Rogers—
revered by the author of Waverley—ridiculed
and pillaged by Lord Byron! Jeffrey, if he
begins an article on his greatest work with
the pithy sentence “ this will never c?o,” glows
even while he criticises, and before he closes,
though he came like Balaam to curse, like him
“blesses altogether.” Innumerable essays,
sermons, speeches, poems—even of those who
profess to despise him—are tinged by his
fancy and adorned by his expressions. And
there are no small number of young hearts,
which have not only been enriched but renovat-
ed by his poetry—which he has expanded, puri-
fied, and exalted—and to which he has given
the means of high communion with the good
and the pure throughout the‘universe. These,
equal at least in number to the original lovers
of Shakspeare or of Milton, will transmit his
fame to kindred spirits, and whether it shall
receive or be denied the honour of fashion, it
will ever be cherished by the purest of earthly
minds, and connected with the most majestic
of nature’s scenery.
Too many of our living poets have seemed
to take pride in building their fame on the
sands. They have chosen for their subjects
the disease of the heart—the sad anomalies
of humanity—the turbulent and guilty pas-
sions which are but for a season. Their re-
nown, therefore, must necessarily decline as
the species advances. Instead of tracing out
the lineaments of the image of God indelibly
impressed on the soul, they have painted the
deformities which may obscure them for
awhile, but can never utterly destroy them.
Vice, which is the accident of our nature, has
been their ti' 2me instead of those affections
which are its groundwork and essence. “Yet
a little space, and that which men call evil is
no more !” Yet a little space, and those wild
emotions—those horrid deeds—those strange
aberrations of the soul—on which some gifted
bards have delighted to dwell, will fade away
like the phantoms of a feverish dream. Then
will poetry, like that of Wordsworth, which
even now is the harbinger of a serener day,
be felt and loved and held in undying honour.
The genius of a poet who has chosen this high
and pure career, too, will proceed in every
stage of being, seeing that “it is a thing im-
mortal as himself,” and that it was ever in-
spired by affections which cannot die. The
poet even in brighter worlds will feel, with in-
conceivable delight, the connection between
his earthly and celestial being—live along
the golden lines of sentiment and thought back
to the most delicious moments of his con-
templations here—and rejoice in the recogni-
tion of those joys of which he had tastes and
intimations on earth. Then shall he see the
inmost soul of his poetry disclosed—grasp as
assured realities the gorgeous visions of his
infancy—feel “ the burden of the mystery of
all this unimaginable world,” which were
lightened to him here, dissolved away—see
the prophetic workings of his imagination
realized—exult while “ pain and anguish and
the wormy grave,” which here were to him
“shapes of a dream,” are utterly banished
from the view—and listen to the full chorus
of that universal harmony whose first notes he
here delighted to awaken!
REVIEW OF “NORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD.”
[Retrospective Review.]
This old piece of legal biography, which has
been lately republished, is one of the most de-
lightful books in the world. Its charm does
not consist in any marvellous incidents of
Lord Guilford’s life, or any peculiar interest
attaching to his character, but in the un-
equalled naivet£ of the writer—in the singular
felicity with which he has thrown himself into
his subject—and his vivid delineations of all
the great lawyers of his time. He was a
younger brother of the Lord Keeper, to whose
affection he was largely indebted, and from
whom he appears to have been scarcely ever
divided. His work, in nice minuteness of de-
tail, and living picture of motive, almost
equals the auto-biographies of Benevento
Cellini, Rousseau, and Cibber. He seems to
be almost as intensely conscious of all his
brother’s actions, and the movements of his
mind, as they were of their own. All his
ideas of human greatness and excellence
appear taken from the man whom he cele-
brates. There never was a more liberal or
gentle prostration of the spirit. He was evi-
dently the most humane, the most kindly, and
the most single-hearted, of flatterers. There
is a beauty in his very cringing, beyond the
independence of many. It is the most gentle-
man-like submission, the most graceful resig-
nation of self of which we have ever read.
Hence, there is nothing of the vanity of au-
thorship—no attempt to display his own
powers—throughout the work. He never
comes forward in the first person, except as a
witness. Indeed, he usually speaks of him-
self as of another, as though he had half lost
his personal consciousness in the contempla-
tion of his idol’s virtues. The following pas
sage, towards the conclusion, where he re-
counts the favours of Lord Guilford to a60
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
ounger brother, and at last, in the fulness of
is heart, discloses, by a little quotation, that
he is speaking of himself—this breaking from
his usual modest narration into the only per-
sonal feeling he seems to have cherished—is
beautifully characteristic of the spirit which
he brought to his work.
“ But I ought to come nearer home, and take
an account of his benevolences to his paternal
relations. His youngest brother (the honoura-
ble Roger North) was designed, by his father,
for the civil law, as they call that professed at
Doctors’ Commons, upon a specious fancy to
have a son of each faculty or employ used in
England. But his lordship dissuaded him, and
advised rather to have him put to the common
law; for the other profession provided but for
a few, and those not wonderful well; whereas,
the common law was more certain, and, in
that way, he himself might bring him forwards,
and assist him. And so it wras determined.
His lordship procured for him a petit chamber,
which cost his father £60, and there he was
settled with a very scanty allowance ; to which
his lordship made a timely addition of his own
money : more than all this, he took him almost
constantly out with him to company and enter-
tainments, and always paid his scot; and,
when he was attorney general, let him into
partnership in one of the offices under him;
and when his lordship was treasurer, and his
brother called to the bar, a perquisite chamber,
worth £150, fell; and that he gave to his
brother for a practising chamber, and took in
lieu only that which he had used for his studies.
When his lordship was chief justice, he gave
him the countenance of practising under him,
at nisi prius; and all the while his lordship
was a house-keeper, his brother and servant
were of his family at all meals. When the
Temple was burnt, he fitted up a little room
and study in his chambers in Serjeant’s Inn,
for his brother to manage his small affairs of
law in, and lodged him in his house till the
Temple was built, and he might securely lodge
there. And his lordship was pleased with a
back door in his own study, by which he could
go in and out to his brother, to discourse of
incidents ; which way of life delighted his lord-
ship exceedingly. And, what was more extra-
ordinary, he went with his lordship in his
coach constantly, to, and from, the courts of
nisi prius, at Guildhall and Westminster. And,
after his lordship had the great seal, his bro-
ther’s practice (being then made of the king’s
counsel, and coming within the bar) increased
exceedingly, and, in about three years’ time he
acquired the better part he afterwards was
possessed of. At that time, his lordship took
his brother into his family, and a coach and
servants assigned him out of his equipages;
and all at rack and manger, requiring only
£200 a year; which was a trifle, as the world
went then. And it may truly be said, that this
brother was a shadow to him, as if they had
grown together. And, to show his lordship’s
tenderness, I add this instance of fact. Once
he seemed more than ordinarily disposed to
pensiveness, even to a degree of melancholy.
His lordship never left pumping, till he found
out the cause of it; and that was a reflection
what should become of him, if he should lose
this good brother, and be left alone to himself:
the thought of which he could scarce bear;
for he had no opinion of his own strength, to
work his way through the world with tolerable
success. Upon this his lordship, to set his
brother’s mind at ease, sold him an annuity of
£200 a year, at an easy rate, upon condition
to re-purchase it, at the same rate, when he
was worth £5000. And this was all done ac-
cordingly.
“O et presidium et dulce decus meum.”
We will now conduct our readers through
Lord Guilford’s life—introducing as many of
the nice peculiarities of his historian as our
limits will allow—and will then give them one
or two of the portraits with which the work is
enriched—and add a word on the changes
which have taken place in the legal profession,
since the time when the originals “ held the
noisy tenour of their way” through its grada-
tions.
The Hon. Francis North, afterwards Baron
Guilford, was the third son of Dudley, Lord
North, Baron of Kirtling, who deserved the
filial duty of his children, by the veneration
which he manifested towards his own father,
beyond even the strictness of those times;
for, though he was an old man before his
father died, he never sat or was covered in his
presence unbidden. He sent his son, at an
early age, to school, but was not very fortunate
in his selection, for the master was a rigid
Presbyterian, and his wife a furious Independ-
ent, who used “ to instruct her babes in the
gift of praying by the spirit, making them
kneel by a bedside and pray;” but as “this
petit spark was too small for that posture, he
was set upon the bed to kneel with his face to
the pillow.” This absurd treatment seems to
have given the child an early disgust for those
who were esteemed the fanatics, which never
left him. He finished his scholastic education
under a “ cavalier master,” with credit. After
he left school, he became a fellow-commoner
of St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he
improv ed greatly in solid learning, and acquired
a knowledge of music, which he afterwards
used as a frequent solace amidst the toils of
his profession.
He next became a member of the Middle
Temple, and occupied “ a moiety of a petit
chamber, which his father .bought for him.”
Here he “used constantly corqmons in the
hall at noons and nights,” studied closely,
and derived much benefit from the practice of
putting cases, which was followed in the old
temple cloisters by the students, and for the
convenience of which they w'ere rebuilt^ by
Sir Christopher Wren in their present form.
He, also, diligently common-placed the sub-
stance of his reading, having acquired a very
small but legible hand—“ for,” as his biogra-
pher observes, “ vffiere contracting is the main
business, it is not well to write, as the fashion
then was, uncial or semi-uncial letters to look
like pig’s ribs.” In his studies, he was wont
by turns to read the reports and institutes;
“ as, after a fulness of the reports in a morning,
about noon, to take a repast in Stamford,NORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD.
61
Crompton, or the Lord Coke’s Pleas of the
Crown, and Jurisdiction of Courts, Manwood
of the Forest Law, and Fitzherbert’s Natura
Brevium.” He, also, “ despatched the greatest
part” of the year-books, beginning with the
book termed Henry the Seventh, from whence
he regarded the common law derived “ as from
a copious fountain.” While thus engaged, he
did not altogether refuse recreation, but de-
lighted in a small supper and a temperate
glass with his friends in chambers, sometimes
fancied “ to go about town and see trade-work,
which is a very diverting and instructive en-
tertainment,” and visited every thing extraor-
dinary in town, “ as engines, shows, lectures,
and even so low as to hear Hugh Peters j
preach !” The only obstacle to his legal suc-
cess was his excessive bashfulness, which so
oppressed him, that when he dined or supped
in the hall of the Middle Temple, he would j
not walk in alone, but “ used to stand dogging j
at the skreen till other company came, behind
whom he might enter.”
At the bar, he derived great advantage from
the favour of Sir Jeofry Palmer, the attorney-
general, who gave him many opportunities of
showing his dexterity and knowledge of law,
by procuring him to perform some of his own !
public duties, when he was himself disabled
by sickness. Through the good offices of this
zealous friend, Mr. North was appointed to
argue for the king in the House of Lords, on
the writ of error in the famous case of the
King v. Hollis and others, which was brought 1
by order of the House of Commons, to reverse
a judgment obtained in the time of Charles
the First, against five of their members, who
had been prosecuted for holding down the !
speaker in his chair, and other riotous pro-;
ceedings. In consequence of the ability which
he displayed on this occasion, though the com-
mons succeeded, he was, on the recommenda-
tion of the Duke of York, appointed one of
his majesty’s counsel. Thus, having prece-
dence, the favour of the court, great assiduity,
and knowledge in law, he soon considerably
extended his practice. To this, indeed, his
great wariness and prudence, trenching on
the boundaries of meanness, did not contribute
a little. “He was exceedingly careful to keep
fair with the cocks of the circuit,” especially
Serjeant Earl, who was a miser, and with
whom he was contented to travel, when no
other would starve with him on his journeys.
If he discovered a point which his leader had
omitted, he would not excite dislike by moving
it himself, but suggest it to his senior, and
thus conciliate his regard. He was, also, to
use the words of his biographer, “ a wonderful
artist in nicking a judge’s tendency to serve
his turn, and yet never failed to pay the greatest
regard and deference to his opinion.” He
never contested a point with a judge when he
despaired to convince him, but resigned it,
even when confident in its goodness, that he
might not weaken his credit for the future. On
the other hand, when the judge was wrongly
on his side, and he knew it, he did not fail to
echo, “ay, my lord,11 to the great annoyance of
his rivals. Thus gifted by knowledge and
pliancy, he soon “from an humble beginner
rejoicing at a cause that came to him, became
cock of the circuit; and every one that had a
trial rejoiced to have him on his side.” One
piece of artifice which he used on behalf of a
relative is so curious, that we will insert it in
the words of our author.
“His lordship had a relation, one Mr. Whit-
more, of Balms, near London, an humour-
some old gentleman, but very famous for the
mere eating and drinking part of house-keep-
ing. He was owner of Waterbeach, near
Cambridge, and took a fancy that his estate
ought not to pay tithes, and ordered his tenants
expressly to pay none, with promise to defend
them. The parson had no more to do but to
go to law, and by advice brought an action
of debt, for treble damages upon the statute
against subtraction of tithes. The tenants got
the whole demand to be put in one action;
and that stood for trial at the assizes. Then he
consults his cousin North, and retains him to
defend this cause; but shows him no manner
of title to a discharge. So he could but tell
him he would be routed, and pay treble value
of the tithes, and that he must make an end.
This signified nothing to one that was aban-
doned to his own testy humour. The cause
came on, and his lordship’s utmost endeavour
was to fetch him off with the single value and
costs ; and that point he managed very artifi-
cially : for first, he considered that Archer was
the judge, and it was always agreeable to him
to stave off a long cause. After the cause was
opened, his lordship, for the defendant, stepped
forward, and told the judge that ‘ this would
be a long and intricate cause, being a title to a
discharge of tithes, which would require the
reading a long series of records and ancient
writings. That his client was no'quaker, to
deny payments of tithes were due, in which
case the treble value was by the law intended
as a sort of penalty. But this was to be a trial
of a title, wdiich his client was advised he had
to a discharge: therefore he moved, that the
single value might be settled; and if the cause
wrent for the plaintiff, he should have that and
his costs (which costs, it seems, did not go if
the treble value was recovered,) and then they
would proceed to their title.’ The other side
mutinied against this imposition of Mr. North,
but the judge was for him, and they must be
satisfied. Then did he open a long history of
matters upon record, of bulls, monasteries,
orders, greater and lesser houses, surrenders,
patents, and a great deal more, very proper, if
it had been true, while the counsel on the other
side stared at him; and, having done, they bid
him go to his evidence. He leaned back, as
speaking to the attorney, and then, My lord,
said he, we are very unhappy in this cause. The
attorney tells me, they forgot to examine their copies
with the originals at the Tower; and (so folding
up his brief) My lord, said he, they must have the
verdict, and ive must come better prepared another
time. So, notwithstanding all the mutiny the
other side could make, the judge held them to
it, and they were choused of the treble value.
This was no iniquity, because it was not to
defraud the duty, but to -shift off the penalty.
But the old gentleman told his cousin North,
he had given away his cause. His lordship
F62
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
thought he had done him service enough; and
could but just (with the help of the before
said reason) satisfy himself that he had not
done ill”
There is nothing very worthy of remark in
the private life of Mr. North, before the begin-
ning of his speculations for a settlement by
marriage. These are exceedingly curious,
not for their romance, but the want of it. In
the good old times, when our advocate flou-
rished, the language of sentiment was not in
fashion. Some doubtless there were, perhaps
not fewer than in these poetical days, in whose
souls Love held its “high and hearted seat”—
whose nice-attuned spirits trembled with every
change of the intensest, yet most delicate of
affections—whose whole existence was one
fervent hope and one unbroken sigh. Since
then, the breathings of their deep emotion—
the words and phases which imperfectly in-
dicated that which was passing within them,
as light and airy bubbles rise up from the low-
est spring to the surface of tranquil waters—
have become the current language of every
transitoiy passion, and serve to garnish out
every prudent match a£ a necessary part of
the wedding finer}^. Things were not thus
confounded by our heartier ancestors. Lan-
guage was some indication of the difference
of minds, as dress was of ranks. The choice
spirits of the time had their prerogative of
words and figures, as the ancient families had
of their coats of arms. The greater part of
mankind, who never feel love in its depth or
its purity, were contented to marry and be
given in marriage without the affectation of its
language. Men avowedly looked for good
portions, and women for suitable jointures—
they made the contract for mutual support and
domestic comfort in good faith, and did not
often break it. They had their reward. They
indulged no fairy dreams of happiness too
etherial for earth, which, when dissipated,
wrould render dreary the level path of exist-
ence. Of their open, plain-hearted course of
entering into the matrimonial state, and of
speaking about it, the Lord Keeper and his
biographer are edifying examples. His Lord-
ship, as his fortune improved, felt the neces-
sity of domestic comfort, and wisely thought
his hours of leisure would be spent most hap-
pily in a family, “ which is never well settled
without a mistress.” “He fancied,” says his
eulogist, “he might pretend to as good a for-
tune in a match as many others had found,
who had less reason to expect it; but without
some advantage that way, he was not disposed
to engage himself.” His first attempt in this
laudable pursuit was to obtain the daughter
of an old usurer, which we will give in our
author’s words :
“There came to him a recommendation of
a lady, who was an only daughter of an old
usurer of Gray’s-inn, supposed to be a good
fortune in present, for her father was rich ;
but after his death, to become worth nobody
could tell what. His lordship got a sight of
the lady, and did not dislike her; thereupon
he made the old man a visit, and a proposal
of himself to marry his daughter. There ap-
peared no symptoms of discouragement; but
only the old gentleman asked him what estate
his father intended to settle upon him for pre-
sent maintenance, jointure, and provision for
children. This was an inauspicious question;
for it was plain that the family had not estate
enough for a lordship, and none would be to
spare for him. Therefore he said to his wor-
ship only, That, when he would be pleased to declare
ivhat portion he intended to give his daughter, he
would write to his father, and make him acquainted
with his answer. And so they parted, and his
lordship was glad of his escape, and resolved to
give that affair a final discharge, and never to
come near the terrible old fellow any more.
His lordship had, at that time, a stout heart,
and could not digest the being so slighted; as
if, in his present state, a profitable profession,
and future hopes, were of no account. If he
had had a real estate to settle, he should not
have stooped so low as to match with his
daughter: and thenceforward despised his alli-
ance.”
His next enterprise was directed to the “flou-
rishing widow” of Mr. Edward Palmer, who
had been his most intimate friend. Her family
favoured his addresses—the lady did not re-
fuse him—but flirted, coquetted, and worried
him, until he was heartily tired of being “held
in a course of bo-peep play by a crafty widow.”
Her friends still urged him to persevere,
which he did to please them rather than him-
self, until she relieved him by marrying another
of her suitors. His third exploit is thus amus-
ingly related.
“ Another proposition came to his lordship,
by a city broker, from Sir John Lawrence,
who had many daughters, and those reputed
beauties; and the fortune was to be £6000.
His lordship went and dined with the aider-
man, and liked the lady, who (as the way is)
was dressed out for a muster. And coming to
treat, the portion shrank to £5000, and, upon
that, his lordship parted, and was not gone far
before Mr. Broker (following) came to him
and said, Sir John would give £500 more, at
the birth of the first child; but that would not
do, for his lordship hated such screwing. Not
long after this despatch, his lordship was made
the king’s solicitor general, and then the bro-
ker came again, with news that Sir John
would give £10,000. No ; his lordship said,
after such usage he would not proceed, if he might
have £20,000. So ended that affair; and his
lordship’s mind was once more settled in tran-
quillity.”
At last, after these repeated disappointments,
his mother “laid her eyes ” on the Lady Fran-
ces Pope, one of three co-heiresses, as a wife
for her son—and with his consent made over-
tures on his behalf. After some little difficul-
ties respecting his lordship’s fortune, this
match was happily concluded, and is cele-
brated by his biographer as “ made in heaven.”
The lady, however, died of a consumption, in
the prime of her days. On this occasion, our
author rejoices that “his lordship’s good stars”
forced him to London about a fortnight be-
fore her death, because nearness to persons
dying of consumptions is perilous—and “ when
she must expire, and probably in his arms,
he might have received great damage in hisNORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD.
63
health.” Her husband erected a monument to
her memory, on which a tremendous Latin
epitaph was engraven, commemorating her
father, husband, children and virtues. Our
author here expresses his opinion, that the eu-
logistic part should be left out, “because it is
in the power of every cobbler to do the like
but that the account of families cannot be too
far extended, because they may be useful as
evidence of pedigree. This is a curious self-
betrayal, by a man of rank and family. The
utility of monumental inscriptions, detailing
the dignities of ancestry, is, indeed urged—
but it is easy to perceive the antithesis com-
pleted in the writer’s mind—between all the
virtues which a cobbler might share, and the
immunities of which the high-born alone are
partakers.
Meanwhile, his lordship proceeded to honour
and fortune. He was made solicitor-general,
became a candidate for the borough of Lynn
Regis; and, on a visit, with his accustomed
prudence, “ regaled the corporation with a very
handsome treat, which cost him about one hun-
dred pounds.” He could not, however, be pre-
sent at the election, but sent our author, and
Mr. Matthew Johnson, “ to ride for him,” with
proper directions to economize their pecuniary
resources. They did so ;—“ took but one house,
and there allowed scope for all taps to run
and as there was no opposition, all passed well,
and“ the plenipos returned with their purchase*
the return of the election, back to London.”
His lordship, however, lost his seat by the vote
of the House—despatched “his plenipos once
more to regain it, which they did, though with
more difficulty than they first procured it; for
Sir Simon Taylor, a wealthy merchant of wine,
in that town, stood, and had procured a butt of
sherry, which butt of sherry was a potent ad-
versary.” Soon after, his lordship was made
attorney-general, and some doubts arose as
to his right to sit in parliament; which, how-
ever, he was able to remove.
In due time, Mr. North, wearied with the
perpetual labours of extensive practice, not
only in the courts of law but of equity, longed
for, and obtained, the elevated repose of the
cushion of the Court of Common Pleas. Here
he sedulously endeavoured to resist the en-
croachments of the King’s Bench, and showed
himself sufficiently versed in the arts by which
each of the courts attempted to overreach the
other, and which would have done credit to
the sagacity of a solicitor at the Old Bailey.
His biographer relates various instances of his
skill in detecting falsehood, which do not quite
entitle him to be regarded as a second Solomon
—of his management of counsel, which we
have seen excelled in no distant period—and
of his repartees, which are the worst ever
gravely told as good things by a devoted ad-
mirer. The story of “ the dumb day” is, how-
ever, worth transcribing, especially as our au-
thor, though he speaks of himself as usual, in
the third person, was the party on whose be-
half the authority of the chief justice was
exerted.
“ It hath been the usage of the King’s Bench,
at the side bar below in the hall, and of the
Common Pleas, in the chamber within the
treasury, to hear attorneys, and young counsel,
that came to move them about matters of form
and practice. His lordship had a younger
brother (Hon. Roger North) who was of the
profession of the law. He was newly called
to the bar, and had little to do in the King’s
Bench; but the attorneys of the Common
Pleas often retained him to move for them ill
the treasury, such matters as were proper
there, and what they might have moved them-
selves. But however agreeable this kind of
practice was to a novitiate, it was not worthy
the observation it had; for once or twice a
week was the utmost calculate of these mo-
tions. But the sergeants thought that method
was, or might become, prejudicial to them, who
had a monopoly of the bar, and would have no
ivciter go by their mill, and supposed it was high
time to put a stop to such beginnings, for fear
it might grow worse. But the doubt was, how
they should signify their resentment, so as to
be effectually remedial. At length they agreed,
for one day, to make no motions at all; and
opportunity would fall for showing the reason
how the court came to have no business.
W*n the court (on this dumb day, as it was
called) was sat, the chief justice gave the
usual signal to the eldest sergeant to move.
He bowed, and had nothing to move: so the
next, and the next, from end to end of the bar.
The chief, seeing this, said, Brothers, I think ive
must rise; here is no business. Then an attorney
steps forward, and called to a sergeant to make
his motion; and, after that, turned to the court
and said, that he had given the sergeant his
fee, and instructions over night, to move for
him, and desired he might do it. But pro-
found silence still. The chief looked about,
and asked, What teas the matter? An attorney,
that stood by, very modestly said, that he feared
the sergeants took it ill that motions were made in
the Treasury. Then the chief scented the whole
matter; and, Brothers, said he, I think a very
great affront is offered to us, which we ought, for the
dignity of the court, to resent. But that we may
do nothing too suddenly, but take consideration at
full leisure, and maturely, let us now rise, and to-
morrow morning give order as becomes us. And
do you attorneys come all here to-morrow, and care
shall be taken for your despatch, and, rather than
fail, we will hear you, or your clients, or the bar-
risters at law, or any persoii that thinks fit to ap-
pear in business, that the law may have its course ;
and so the court rose. This was like thunder
to the sergeants, and they fell to quarrelling,
one with another about being the cause of this
great evil they had brought upon themselves:
for none of them imagined it would have had
such a turn as this was, that shaked what was
the palladium of the coif, the sole practice
there. In the afternoon, they attended the
chief, and the other judges of the court, and, in
great humility, owned their fault, and begged
pardon, and that no farther notice might be
taken of it; and they would be careful not to
give the like offence for the future. The chief
told them, that the affront was in public, and
in the face of the court, and they must make
their recognitions there next morning, and in
such a manner as the greatness of their offenci
demanded; and then they should hear what64
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
the court would say to them. Accordingly
they did; and the chief first, and, then, the
rest, in order, gave them a formal chiding
with acrimony enough ; all which, with de-
jected countenances, they were bound to hear.
When this discipline was over, the chief
pointed to one to move; which he did, (as
they said,)more like one crying than speaking ;
and so ended the comedy, as it was acted in
Westminster-hall, called the dumb day.”
His lordship used his travels on the circuit
as the means of securing an interest in the
country gentlemen ; and with so much success,
that Dr. Mew, Bishop of Winchester, who was
called Patels, from a black plaster which he
wore to cover a wound received in the civil
war, termed him “ deliciae occidentis,” the dar-
ling of the West; and the westAm members
of parliament “did so firmly ensconce him that
his enemies could never get a clever stroke at
him.” Once, indeed, he was taken in by a
busy fanatic, who importuned the judges to sup
with him, at his house near Exeter; and,
having them fairly in his power, inflicted on
them a long extemporaneous prayer, “ after
the Presbyterian way,” which gave occasion to
much merriment at the expense of their lord-
ships, who were said to have been at a con-
venticle, and in danger of being presented
with all their retinue for that offence by the
grand jury. Pie also narrowly escaped being
made the dupe or tool of the infamous Bedloe,
who sent for him under pretence of making a
confession. Excepting in so far as an exces-
sive timidity influenced him, he appears to
have acted in his high office with exemplary
justice and wisdom. He was, indeed, a most
faint-hearted judge, which his biographer, as
in duty bound, discloses to his honour. He
dreaded the trying of a witch, because he dis-
believed the crime: and yet feared to offend the
superstitious vulgar. On this nice subject, our
author observes—
“ It is seldom that a poor old wretch is brought
to trial upon that account, but there is, at the
heels of her, a popular rage that does little less
than demand her to be put to death : and, if a
judge is so clear and open as to declare against
that impious vulgar opinion, that the devil him-
self has power to torment and kill innocent
children, or that he is pleased to divert him-
self with the good people’s cheese, butter, pigs,
and geese, and the like errors of the ignorant
and foolish rabble; the countrymen (the triers)
cry this judge hath no religion, for he doth not
believe witches ; and so, to show they have
some, hang the poor wretches. All which
tendency to mistake, requires a very prudent
and moderate carriage in a judge, whereby to
convince, rather by detecting of the fraud, than
by denying authoritatively such power to be
given to old women.”
His lordship did, indeed, whenever he could,
lay open the imposture, and procure the ac-
quittal of witches. But when Mr. Justice Ray-
mond and he went the circuit together, and his
co-judge condemned two women to death for
the crime, he appears to have contented him-
self, “ with concern, that his brother Raymond’s
passive behaviour should let them die,” with-
out himself making any effort to save them.
His opinions respecting libels were surprising-
ly liberal for a judge of the cavalier party, and
may serve to put shame to the courtly lawyers
of more enlightened days.
“ As to the business of lies and libels, which,
in those days, were an intolerable vexation to
the court, especially finding that the commu*
nity of gentle and simple strangely ran in with
them ; it was moved that there should be more
messengers of the press, and spies, who should
discover secret printing-houses, (which, then,,
were against law,) and take up the hawkers that
sold libels, and all other persons that dispersed
them, and inflict severe punishments on all
that were found guilty. But his lordship was
of a very different opinion, and said that this
prosecution would make them but the more
inquired after; and it was impossible to hinder
the promulgation of libels ; for the greediness
of every one to get them, and the high price,
would make men, of desperate fortunes, ven-
ture any thing: and, in such cases, punish-
ments never regulate the abuse ; but it must be
done, if at all, by methods undermining the en-
couragement: yet, if any were caught,he thought
it wras fit to make severe examples of them.
But an extraordinary inquisition to be setup,
and make so much noise, and the punishment
falling, as was most likely, not on the authors
and abettors, but some poor wretches that
sought to get a penny by selling them, would,
as he thought, rather incense than abate the
abuse. His notion was, that his majesty should
order nothing extraordinary, to make people
imagine he was touched to the quick; but to
set up counter writers that as every libel came
out should take it to task, and answer it. And,
so, all the diurnal lies of the town also would
be met with : for said he, either ice are in the
wrong, or in the right; if the former, we must do
as usurped powers, use fen'ce, and crush all our ene-
mies right or wrong. But there is no need of that,
for we are in the right ; for who will pretend not
to own his majesty’s authority according to law?
And nothing is done, by his majesty and his minis-
ters, but what the law will warrant, and what
should we be afraid of ? Let them lie and accuse
till they are weary, while we declare at the same time,
as may be done with demonstration, that all they
say is false and unjust; and the better sort of the
people whom truth sways, when laid before them,
■will be with us. This counsel was followed; and
some clever writers were employed, such as
were called the Observator and Heraclitus,for
a constancy, and others, with them, occasion-
ally; and then they soon wrote the libellers
out of the pit, and during that king’s life, the
trade of libels, which before had been in great
request, fell to nothing.”
Mr. North, notwithstanding the liberality of
some of his opinions, was made a privy coun-
sellor, and some time after Lord Keeper of the
Great Seal. He opposed Jeffries, the cele-
brated Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench,
with mildness and caution, and secured and
used wisely the esteem of his sovereign. He
appears to have foreseen, that the consequence
of the violent and arbitrary measures, which
he was unable to prevent, would, if continued,
work the downfall of the Stuart family. His
private life was tern Derate and regular, un-NORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD.
65
tainted with the vices of the times. His bro-
ther-in-law, actually fearing his virtue might
be visited as a libel on the court, seriously ad-
vised him to keep a mistress in his own de-
fence; “for he understood, from very great
men, that he was ill looked upon for want of
doing so; because he seemed continually to
reprehend them;” which notable advice was
concluded by an offer, “that, if his lordship
pleased, he would help him to one.” His lord-
ship’s regard to virtue, as well as his usual
caution, which told him, “there was no spy
like a female,” made him regard this proffer
with a scorn, which utterly puzzled his adviser.
He was, however, tremulously alive to ridicule.
Aware of this infirmity, Jeffries and the Earl
of Sunderland took advantage of a harmless
visit he made to see a rhinoceros, to circulate
a report that he had ridden on the animal.
This threw him into a state of rage and vexa-
tion truly surprising; he turned on his ques-
tioners with unexampled fury, was seriously
angry with Sir Dudley North for not contra-
dicting it with sufficient gravity, and sent for
him that he might add his testimony to his
own solemn denial. His biographer, who ac-
tually performs the duty of confidante, as de-
scribed in The Critic, to laugh, weep, or go mad
with the principal, is also in a towering pas-
sion at the charge. He calls it, “ an impudent
buffoon lie, which Satan himself would not
have owned for his legitimate issue;” and is
provoked beyond measure, that “ the noble
Earl, with Jeffries, and others of that crew,
made merry, and never blushed at the lie of
their own making; but valued themselves
upon it, as a very good jest.” He was afflicted
by no other “ great calumny,” notwithstanding
the watchfulness of his foes. One of his last
public acts was to stop the bloody proceedings
of Jeffries in the West, which he did by his
influence with the king. He did not long sur-
vive the profligate prince, whom he sometimes
was able to guide and to soften. He walked
in the coronation of James the Second, when
imperfectly recovered from a fever; and, after
a gradual decline of some months, expired at
his house at Wroxton, really hurried to the
grave by the political broils and vexations at-
tendant on the Great Seal. “That pestiferous
lump of metal,” as our author terms it, was
given to Jeffries, whom it did not save from an
end more disastrous and fearful.
The work before us, as we have already in-
timated, is rendered more interesting by the
admirable characters which it contains of the
old lawyers. These are all drawn, not only
with great and most felicitous distinctness, but
are touched in a mild, gentlemanly, and hu-
mane spirit, which it is refreshing to recog-
nise in these days of acrimony and slander.
Even those who were most opposed in interest
and in prejudice to the author, receive ample
justice from his hands. Hale, whose dislike
to the court rendered him obnoxious to the
author, or, which is the same thing, to his bro-
ther, is drawn at full length in all his austere
majesty. Even Serjeant Maynard, the ac-
knowledged “ anti-restoration lawyer,” whose
praise was in all the conventicles, and who
was a hard rival of “ his lordship,” receives
9
due acknowledgment of his learning, and tha^
he was, to his last breath, true as steel to the
principles of the times when he began his
career. Sir William Scraggs, the fierce vo-
luptuary and outrageous politician, is softened
to us by the single engaging touch, that “in
his house every day was a holyday.” And
Jeffries himself, as exhibited here, seems to
have had something of real human warmth
within him, which redeems him from utter
hatred. The following is a summary of his
character.
“ His friendship and conversation lay much
among the good fellows and humourists; and
his delights were, accordingly, drinking, laugh-
ing, singing, kissing, and all the extravagancies
of the bottle. He had a set of banterers, for
the most part, near him ; as, in old time, great
men kept fools to make them merry. And
these fellows, abusing one another and their
betters, were a regale to him. And no friend-
ship or dearness could be so great, in private,
which he would not use ill, and to an extrava-
gant degree, in public. No one, that had any
expectations from him, was safe from his
public contempt and derision, which some of
his minions at the bar bitterly felt. Those
above, or that could hurt or benefit him, and
none else, might depend on fair quarters at
his hands. When he luas in temper, and matters
indifferent came before him, he became his seat of
justice better than any other I ever saw in his place.
He took a pleasure in mortifying fraudulent
attorneys, and would deal forth his severities
with a sort of majesty. He had extraordinary
natural abilities, but little acquired, beyond
what practice in affairs had supplied. He
talked fluently, and with spirit; and his weak-
ness was that he could not reprehend without
scolding; and in such Billingsgate language,
as should not come out of the mouth of any
man. He called it giving a; lick with the rough
side of his tongue. It was ordinary to hear him
say, Go, you are a filthy, lousy, nitty rascal; with
much more of like elegance. Scarce a day
passed that he did not chide some one, or other,
of the bar, when he sat in the Chancery; and
it was commonly a lecture of a quarter of an
hour long. And they used to say, This is yours ;
my turn will be to-morrow. He seemed to lay
nothing of his business to heart, nor care what
he did, or left undone; and spent, in the Chan-
cery court, what time he thought fit to spare.
Many times, on days of causes at his house,
the company have wraited five hours in a morn-
ing, and, after eleven, he hath come out inflamed
and staring like one distracted. And that visage
he put on when he animadverted on such as he
took offence at, which made him a terror to real
offenders ; whom also he terrified with his face
and voice, as if the thunder of the day of judgment
broke over their heads: and nothing ever made
men tremble like his vocal inflictions. He
loved to insult, and was bold without check ,
but that only wffien his place was uppermost.
To give an instance. A city attorney was pe-
titioned against for some abuse; and affidavit
was made that wnen he was told of my loid
chancellor, My lord chancellor, said he, I made
him; meaning his being a means to bring him
early into city business. When this affidavit
f 266
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
was read, Well, said the lord chancellor, then I
will lay my maker by the heels. And, with that
conceit, one of his best old friends went to jail.
One of these intemperances was fatal to him.
There was a scrivener of Wapping brought to
hearing for relief against a bummery bond ;
the contingency of losing all being showed, the
bill was going to be dismissed. But one of
the plaintiff’s counsel said that he was a
strange fellow, and sometimes went to church,
sometimes to conventicles; and none could
tell what to make of him ; and it teas thought he
was a trimmer. At that the chancellor fired;
and, A trimmer ! said he; I have heard much of
that monster, but never saw one. Come forth, Mr.
Trimmer, turn you round, and let us see your shape :
and, at that rale, talked so long that the poor
fellow was ready to drop under him ; but, at
last the bill was dismissed with costs, and he
went his way. In the hall, one of his friends
asked him how he came off] Came off, said
he, I am escaped from the terrors of that, man s face,
which I would scarce undergo again to save my life ;
I shall certainly have the frightful impression of it as
long as I live. Afterwards, when the Prince of
Orange came, and all was in confusion, this lord
chancellor, being very obnoxious, disguised
himself in order to go beyond sea. He was in a
seaman’s garb, and drinking a pot in a cellar.
This scrivener came into the cellar after some
of his clients : and his eye caught that face,
which made him start; and the chancellor
seeing himself eyed, feigned a cough, and
turned to the wall with his pot in his hand.
But Mr. Trimmer went out, and gave notice that
he was there ; whereupon the mob flowed in,
and he was in extreme hazard of his life; but
the lord mayor saved him and lost himself.
For the chancellor being hurried with such
crowd and noise before him, and appearing so
dismally, not only disguised, but disordered;
and there having been an amity between them,
as also a veneration on the lord mayor’s part,
he had not spirits to sustain the shock, but fell
down in a swoon ; and, in not many hours
after, died. But this Lord Jeffries came to the
seal without any concern at the weight of duty
incumbent upon him ; for, at the first, being
merry over a bottle with some of his old
friends, one of them told him that he would
find the business heavy. No, said he, Fit make
it light. But, to conclude with a strange in-
consistency, he would drink and be merry,
kiss and slaver, with these bon companions
over night, as the way of such is, and the
next day fall upon them, ranting and scolding
with a virulence unsufferable.”
But the richest portion of these volumes is
the character of the Lord Chief Justice Saun-
ders, the author of the Reports which Mr. Ser-
jeant Williams has rendered popular by clus-
tering about them the products of his learned
industry. He has a better immortality in the
memoir. What a picture is exhibited of the
stoutest industry, joined with the most luxu-
rious spirit of enjoyment—of the most intense
acquaintance with nice technicalities and the
most bounteous humour—of more distressing
infirmities and scarcely less wit than those of
Falstaff! What a singular being is here—
what a laborious, acute, happy and affectionate
spirit in a loathsome frame !—But, we forget;
—we are indulging ourselves, when we ought
to gratify our readers.
“The Lord Chief Justice Saunders suc-
ceeded in the room of Pemberton. His cha-
racter, and his beginning, were equally strange.
He was at first no belter than a poor beggar
boy, if not a parish foundling, without known pa-
rents or relations. He had found a way to live
by obsequiousness (in Clement’s-Inn, as I re-
member) and courting the attorney’s clerks for
scraps. The extraordinary observance and
diligence of the boy made the society willing
to do him good. He appeared very ambitious
to learn to write; and one of the attorneys
got a board knocked up at a window on the
top of a staircase; and that was his desk,
where he sat and wrote after copies of court
and other hands the clerks gave him. He made
himself so expert a writer that he took in busi-
ness, and earned some pence by hackney
writing. And thus, by degrees, he pushed his
faculties, and fell to forms, and, by books that
were lent him, became an exquisite entering
clerk ; and by the same course of improvement
of himself, an able counsel, first in special
pleading, then, at large. And, after he was
called to the bar, had practice, in the King’s
Bench court, equal with any there. As to his
person, he was very corpulent and beastly; a
mere lump of morbid flesh. He used to say,
by his troggs, (such a humorous way of talking
he affected,) none could say he wanted issue of his
body, for he had nine in his back. He was a fetid
mass that offended his neighbours at the bar
in the sharpest degree. Those, whose ill for-
tune it was to stand near him, were confessors,
and, in summer-time, almost martyrs. This
hateful decay of his carcass came upon him
by continued sottishness ; for, to say nothing of
brandy, he was seldom without a pot of ale at
his nose, or near him. That exercise was all
he used ; the rest of his life was sitting at his
desk, or piping at home ; and that home was a
tailor’s house in Butcher-Row, called his
lodging, and the man’s wife was his nurse, or
worse; but by virtue of his money, of which he
made little account, though he got a great deal,\\Q
soon became master of the family ; and, being
no changeling, he never removed, but was true
to his friends, and they to him, to the last hour
of his life.
“ So much for his person and education. As
for his parts, none had them more lively than
he. Wit and repartee, in an affected rusticity,
was natural to him. He was ever ready, and
never at a loss ; and none came so near as he
to be a match for Serjeant Maynard. His
great dexterity was in the art of special plead-
ing, and he would lay snares that often caught
his superiors, who were not aware of his traps.
And he was so fond of success for his clients
tiiat, rather than fail, he would set the court
hard with a trick ; for which he met sometimes
with a reprimand, which he would wittily ward
off, so that no one was much offended with
him. But Hales could not bear his irregularity
of life; and for that, and suspicion of his
tricks, used to bear hard upon him in the court.
But no ill usage from the bench was too hard
for his hold of business, being such as scarceNORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD.
»
67
any could do but himself. With all this, he
had a goodness of nature and disposition in so
great a degree that he may be deservedly styled
a philanthrope. He was a very Silenus to the
boys, as, in this place, I may term the students
of the law, to make them merry whenever they
had a mind to it. He had nothing of rigid or
austere in him. If any, near him at the bar,
grumbled at his stench, he ever converted the
complaint into content and laughing with the
abundance of his wit. As to his ordinary
dealing, he was as honest as the driven snow
was white; and why nof, having no regard for
money, nor desire to be rich 1 And, for good
nature and condescension, there was not his fel-
low. I have seen him,for hours and half hours
together, before the court sat, stand at the bar,
with an audience of students over against him,
putting of cases, and debating so as suited
their capacities, and encouraging their industry.
And so in the Temple, he seldom moved with-
out a parcel of youths hanging about him, and
he merry and jesting with them.
“ It will be readily conceived that this man
was never cut out to be a presbyter, or any
thing that is severe and crabbed. In no time
did he lean to faction, but did his business
without offence to any. He put off officious
talk of government or politics, with jests, and
so made his wit a catholicon, or shield, to cover
all his weak places and infirmities. When the
court fell into a steady course of using the
law against all kinds of offenders, this man
was taken into the king’s business ; and had
the part of drawing and perusal of almost all
indictments and informations that were then
to be prosecuted, with the pleadings thereon if
any were special; and he had the settling of
the large pleadings in the quo warranto against
London. His lordship had no sort of conver-
sation with him, but in the way of business,
and at the bar; but once after he was in the
king’s business, he dined with his lordship, and
no more. And there he showed another quali-
fication he had acquired, and that was to play
jigs upon a harpsichord ; having taught him-
self with the opportunity of an old virginal of
his landlady’s; but in such a manner, not for
defect but figure, as to see him were a jest.
The king, observing him to be of a free dispo-
sition, loyal, friendly, and without greediness
or guile, thought of him to be the chief justice
of the King’s Bench at that nice time. And
the ministry could not but approve of it. So
great a weight was then at stake, as could not
be trusted to men of doubtful principles, or
such as any thing might tempt to desert them.
While he sat in the Court of King’s Bench, he
gave the rule to the general satisfaction of the
lawyers. But his course of life was so differ-
ent from what it had been, his business inces-
sant, and, withal, crabbed; and his diet and
exercise.changed, that the constitution of his
body, or head rather, could not sustain it, and
he fell into an apoplexy and palsy, which
numbed his parts; and he never recovered the
strength of them. He out-lived the judgment
in the quo warranto; but was not present, other-
wise than by sending his opinion, b}r one of
the judges, to be for the king, who, at the pro-
nouncing of the judgment, declared it to be
the court accordingly, which is frequently done
in like cases.”
Although we have been able to give but a
few of the choice peculiarities of these volumes,
our readers will be able to gather, from our ex-
tracts, that the profession of the law was a
very different thing in the reign of Charles the
Second, from what it is in the present era.
There was something in it more robust and
hearty than there is now. Lawyers treated on
the dryest subjects, in a “full and heightened
style,” which now would receive merited ridi-
cule, because it is natural no longer. When
Lord Coke “wanders in the wilderness of the
laws of the forest”—or stops to “ recreate him-
self with a view of Dido’s deer”—or looks on
his own fourth Institute, as “the high and
honourable building of the jurisdiction of the
courts”—we feel that he uses the language of
metaphor, merely because he thinks in it.
Modern improvement has introduced a division
of labour among the faculties. The regions of
imagination and of reality are separated by
stricter and more definite limits, than in the
days of old. Our poems and orations are
more wild and extravagant, and our ordinary
duties more dry and laborious. Men have
learned to refine on their own feelings—to
analyze all their sensations—to class all their
powers, feelings, and fantasies, as in a museum;
and to mark and label them so that they
may never be applied, except to appropriate
uses. The imagination is only cultivated as a
kind of exotic luxur)^. No one unconsciously
writes in a picturesque style, or suffers the
colour of his thoughts to suffuse itself over
his disquisitions, without caring for the effect
on the reader. The rich conceit is either sup-
pressed, or carefully reserved to adorn some
cold oration where it may be duly applauded.
Our ancestors permitted the wall-flower, when
it would, to spread out its sweets from the
massive battlement, without thinking there
was any thing extraordinary in its growth, or
desiring to transplant it to a garden, where it
would add little fragrance to the perfume of
other flowers.
The study of the law has sunk of late years.
Formerly, the path of those by whom it was
chosen, though steep and rugged, was clear
and open before them. Destitute of adventi-
tious aids, they were compelled to salutary
and hopeful toils. They were forced to trace
back every doctrine to the principle which was
its germ, and to search for their precedents
amidst the remotest grandeur of our history.
Patient labour was required of them, but their
reward was certain. In the most barren and
difficult parts of their ascent, they found, at
least, in the masses which they surmounted,
the staius and colourings of a humanizing an-
tiquity to soften and to dignify their labours.
But abridgments, commentaries, and digests
without number, have precluded the necessity
of these liberal researches, while the vast
accumulation of statutes and decisions have
rendered them almost hopeless. Instead of a
difficult mountain to ascend, there is a briary
labyrinth to penetrate. Wearied out with vain
attempts, the student accepts such temporary
helps as he can procure, and despairs of re-G8
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
during the ever-increasing multitude of deci-
sions to any fixed and intelligible principles.
Thus his labours are not directed to a visible
goal—nor cheered by the venerableness of
old time—nor crowned with that certainty of
conclusion, which is the best reward of scien-
tific researches. The lot of a superficial stu-
dent of a dry science, is, of all conditions, the
most harassing and fruitless. The evil must
increase until it shall work its own cure—
until accumulated reports shall lose their au-
thority— or the legislature shall be com-
pelled, by the vastness of the mischief, to
undertake the tremendous task of revising
and condensing the whole statute law, and
fixing the construction of the unwritten
maxims within some tolerable boundaries.
REVIEW OF TIIE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE
AGE OF ELIZABETH.
[Edinburgh Review.]
If Mr. Hazlitt has not generally met with
impartial justice from his contemporaries, we
must say that he has himself partly to blame.
Some of the attacks of which he has been the
object, have, no doubt, been purely brutal and
malignant; but others have, in a great measu re,
arisen from feelings of which he has himself
set the example. His seeming carelessness of
that public opinion which he would influence
—his love of startling paradoxes—and his in-
trusion of political virulence, at seasons when
the mind is prepared only for the delicate in-
vestigations of taste, have naturally provoked
a good deal of asperity, and prevented the due
appreciation of his powers. We shall strive,
however, to divest ourselves of all preposses-
sions, and calmly to estimate those talents and
feelings which he has here brought to the con-
templation of such beauty and grandeur, as
none of the low passions of this “ignorant
present time” should ever be permitted to
overcloud.
Those who regard Mr. Hazlitt as an ordinary
wrriter, have little right to accuse him of suf-
fering antipathies in philosophy or politics to
influence his critical decisions. He possesses
one excellent quality, at least, for the office
which he has chosen, in the intense admira-
tion and love which he feels for the great au-
thors on whose excellences he chiefly dwells.
His relish for their beauties is so keen, that
while he describes them, the pleasures which
they impart become almost palpable to the
sense ; and we seem, scarcely in a figure, to
feast and banquet on their “ nectared sweets.”
He introduces us almost corporally into the
divine presence of the Great of old time—
enables us to hear the living oracles of wisdom
drop from their lips—and makes us partakers,
not only of those joys which they diffused,
but of those which they felt in the inmost re-
cesses of their souls. He draws aside the
veil of Time with a hand tremulous with
mingled delight and reverence; and descants,
with kindling enthusiasm, on all the delicacies
of that picture of genius which he discloses.
His intense admiration of intellectual beauty
seems always to sharpen his critical faculties.
He perceives it, by a kind of intuitive power,
how deeply soever it may be buried in rubbish;
and separates it, in a moment, from all that
would encumber or deface it. At the same
time, he exhibits to us those hidden sources of
beauty, not like an anatomist, but like a lover:
he does not coolly dissect the form to show the
springs whence the blood flows all eloquent,
and the divine expression is kindled; but
makes us feel it in the sparkling or softened
eye, the wreathed smile, and the tender bloom.
In a word, he at once analyzes and describes,
so that our enjoyments of loveliness are not
chilled, but brightened, by our acquaintance
with their inward sources. The knowledge
communicated in his lectures, breaks no sweet
enchantment, nor chills one feeling of youth-
ful joy. His criticisms, while they extend our
insight into the causes of poetical excellence,
teach us, at the same time, more keenly to
enjoy, and more fondly to revere it.
It must seem, at first sight, strange, that
powers like these should have failed to excite
universal sympathy. Much, doubtless, of the
coldness and misrepresentation cast on them,
has arisen from causes at which we have
already hinted—from the apparent readiness
of the author to “ give up to party what was
meant for mankind”—and from the occasional
breaking in of personal animosities on that
deep harmony which should attend the reverent
contemplation of genius. But we apprehend
that there are other causes which have dimin-
ished the influence of Mr. Hazlitt’s faculties,
originating in his mind itself; and these we
shall endeavour briefly to specify.
The chief of these may, we think, be as-
cribed primarily to the want of proportion, of
arrangement, and of harmony, in his powers.
His mind resembles the “ rich stronde” which
Spencer has so nobly described, and to rvhich
he has himself likened the age of Elizabeth,
where treasures of every description lie, with-
out order, in inexhaustible profusion. Noble
masses of exquisite marble are there, which
might be fashioned to support a glorious tem-
ple; and gems of peerless lustre, which would
adorn the holiest shrine. He has no lack of
the deepest feelings, the profoundest sentiments
of humanity, or the loftiest aspirations after
ideal good. But there are no great leading
principles of taste to give singleness to hisHAZLITT’S LECTURES ON THE DRAMA.
69
aims, nor any central points in his mind, around
which his feelings may revolve, and his im-
aginations cluster. There is no sufficient dis-
tinction between his intellectual and his ima-
ginative faculties. He confounds the truths of
imagination with those of fact—the processes
of argument with those of feeling—the immu-
nities of intellect with those of virtue. Hence
the seeming inconsistency of many of his doc-
trines. Hence the want of all continuity in
his style. Hence his failure in producing one
single, harmonious, and lasting impression on
the hearts of his hearers. He never waits to
consider whether a sentiment or an image is
in place—so it be in itself striking. The keen
sense of pleasure in intellectual beauty, which
is the best charm of his writings, is also his
chief deluder. He cannot resist a powerful
image, an exquisite quotation, or a pregnant
remark, however it may dissipate, or even sub-
vert, the general feeling which his theme should
inspire. Thus, on one occasion, in the midst
of a violent political invective, he represents
the objects of his scorn as “having been be-
guiled, like Miss Clarissa Harlowe, into a
house of ill-fame, and, like her, defending them-
selves to the last;” as if the reader’s whole
current of feeling would not be diverted from
all political disputes, by the remembrance thus
awakened of one of the sublimest scenes of
romance ever imbodied by human power. He
will never be contented to touch that most
strange and curious instrument, the human
heart, with a steady aim, but throws his hand
rapidly over the chords, mingling strange dis-
cord with “ most eloquent music.” Instead of
conducting us onward to a given object, he
opens so many delicious prospects by the way-
side, and suffers us to gaze at them so long,
that we forget the end of our journey. He is
perpetually dazzled among the sunbeams of
his fancy, and plays with them in elegant fan-
tasy, when he should point them to the spots
where they might fall on truth and beauty, and
render them visible by a clearer and lovelier
radiance than had yet revealed them.
The work before us is not the best verifica-
tion of these remarks; for it has more of con-
tinuity, and less of paradox, than any of his
previous writings. With the exception of
some strong political allusions in the account
of the Sejanus of Ben Jonson, it is entirely
free from those expressions of party feeling
which respect for an audience, consisting of
men of all parties, and men of no party, ought
always to restrain. There is also none of that
personal bitterness towards Messrs. Words-
worth, Coleridge, and Southey, which disfigured
his former lectures. His hostility towards
these poets, the associates of his early days,
has always, indeed, been mingled with some
redeeming feelings which have heightened the
regret occasioned by its public disclosure.—
While he has pursued them with all possible
severity of invective, and acuteness of sarcasm,
he has protected their intellectual character
with a chivalrous zeal. He has spoken as if
“ his only hate had sprung from his only love;”
and his thoughts of its objects, deep rooted in
old affection, could not lose all traces of their ,
“primal sympathy.” His bitterest language I
has had its dash of the early sweets, which no
changes of opinion could entirely destroy. Still
his audiences and his readers had ample
ground of complaint for the intrusion of per-
sonal feelings, in inquiries which should be
sacred from all discordant emotions. We re-
joice to observe, that this blemish is now
effaced; and that full and free course is at last
given to that deep humanity which has ever
held its current in his productions, sometimes
in open day, and sometimes beneath the soil
which it fertilized, though occasionally dashed
and thrown back in its course by the obstacles
of prejudice and of passion.
The first of these lectures consists of a gene-
ral view of the subject, expressed in terms of
the deepest veneration and of the most pas-
sionate eulogy. After eloquently censuring
the gross prejudice, that genius and beauty are
things of modern discovery, or that in old time
a few amazing spirits shone forth amidst gene-
ral darkness, as the harbingers of brighter
days, the author proceeds to combat the notion
that Shakspeare was a sort of monster of poet-
ical genius, and all his contemporaries of an
order far below him.
“He, indeed, overlooks and commands the
admiration of posterity; but he does it from
the table land of the age in which he lived.
He towered above his fellows ‘ in shade and
gesture proudly eminent;’ but he was but one
of a race of giants, the tallest, the strongest,
the most graceful and beautiful of them ; but
it was a common and noble brood. He was
not something sacred and aloof from the vul-
gar herd of men, but shook hands with Nature
and the circumstances of the time; and is dis-
tinguished from his immediate contemporaries,
not in kind, but in degree, and greater variety
of excellence. He did not form a class or
species by himself, but belonged to a class or
species. His age was necessary to him; nor
could he have been wrenched from his place
in the edifice, of which he was so conspicuous
a part, without equal injury to himself and it.
Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton, that ‘his soul
was like a star, and dwelt apart.’ This cannot
be said with any propriety of Shakspeare, who
certainly moved in a constellation of bright
luminaries, and ‘ drew after him the third part
of the heavens.’” Pp. 12, 13.
The author then proceeds to investigate the
general causes of that sudden and rich deve-
lopment of poetical feeling which forms his
theme. He attributes it chiefly to the mighty
impulse given to thought by the Reformation—
to the disclosure of all the marvellous stores
of sacred antiquity, by the translation of the
Scriptures—and to the infinite sweetness,
breathing from the divine character of the
Messiah, with which he seems to imagine that
the people were not familiar in darker ages.
We are far from insensible to the exquisite
beauty with which this last subject is treated;
and fully agree with our author, that “ there is
something in the character of Christ, of more
sweetness and majesty, and more likely to
work a change in the mind of man, than any
to be found in history, whether actual or
feigned.” But we cannot think that the gentle
influences which that character shed upon the70
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
general heart, were weak or partial even before
the translation of the Scriptures. The young
had received it, not from books, but from the
living voice of their parents, made softer in
its tones by reverence and love. It had tem-
pered early enthusiasm, and prompted visions
of celestial beauty, in the souls even of the
most low, before men had been taught to reason
on their faith. The instances of the Saviour’s
compassion—his wondrous and beneficent
miracles—his agonies and death, did not lie
forgotten during centuries, because the people
could not read of them. They were written
“on the fleshy tables of the heart,” and soft-
ened the tenour of humble existence, while
superstition, ignorance, and priestcraft held
sway in high places.
These old feelings of love, however, tended
greatly to sweeten and moderate the first excur-.
sions of the intellect, when released from its
long thraldom. The new opening of the stores
of classic lore, of Ancient History, of Italian
Poetry, and of Spanish Romance, contributed
much, doubtless, to the incitement and the
perfection of our national genius. The dis-
covery of the New World, too, opened fresh
fields for the imagination to revel in. “Green
islands, and golden sands,” says our author,
“ seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of the
bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cu-
pidity, or wing the imagination of the dream-
ing speculator. Fairy land was realized in
new and unknown worlds.”—“ Fortunate fields,
and groves, and flowery vales—thrice happy
isles,” were found floating “like those Hespe-
rian gardens famed of old,”—“ beyond Atlantic
seas, as dropped from the zenith.” Ancient
superstitions also still lingered among the peo-
ple. The romance of human life had not then
departed. It “ was more full of traps and pit-
falls; of moving accidents by flood and field:
more way-laid by sudden and startling evils,
it stood on the brink of hope and fear, or stum-
bled upon fate unawares,—while imagination,
close behind it, caught at and clung to the
shape of danger, or snatched a wild and fear-
ful joy from its escape.” The martial and
heroic spirit was not dead. It was compara-
tively an age of peace, “ Like Strength repos-
ing on his own right arm;” but the sound of
civil combat might still be heard in the dis-
tance,—the spear glittered to the eye of me-
mory, or the clashing of armour struck on the
imagination of the ardent and the young. The
people of that day were borderers on the savage
state, on the times of war and bigotiy,—though
themselves in the lap of arts, of luxury, and
knowledge. They stood on the shore, and saw
the billows rolling after the storm. They
heard the tumult, and were still. Another
source of imaginative feelings, which Mr.
Hazlitt quotes from Mr. Lamb, is found in the
distinctions of dress, and all the external sym-
bols of trade, profession, and degree, by which
“ the surface of society was embossed with
hieroglyphics, and poetry existed in act and
complement extern.” Lastly, our author al-
ludes to the first enjoyment and uncontrolled
range of our old poets through Nature, whose
fairest flowers were then uncropped,—and to
the movements of the soul then laid open to
their view, without disguise or control. All
those causes Mr. Hazlitt regards as directed,
and their immediate effects as united by the
genius of our country, native, unaffected,
sturdy, and unyielding. His lecture concludes
with a character, equally beautiful and just,
of the Genius of our Poetry, with reference to
the classical models, as having more of Pan
than of Apollo:—“but Pan is a God, Apollo
is no more!”
The five succeeding Lectures contain the
opinions of the author on most of the celebrated
works produced from the time of the Reforma-
tion, until the death of Charles the First. The
second comprises the characters of Lyly, Mar-
low, Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley. The
account of Lyly’s Endymion is worthy of that
sweet but singular work. The address of
Eumenides to Endymion, on his awaking from
his long sleep, “ Behold the twig to which thou
laidest down thy head is become a tree,” is in-
deed, as described by our author, “ an exqui-
sitely chosen image, and dumb proof of the
manner in which he has passed his life from
youth to old age,—in a dream, a dream of
love !” His description of Marlow’s qualities,
when he says “ there is a lust of power in his
writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteous-
ness, a glow of the imagination unhallowed by
any thing but its own energies,” is very striking.
The characters of Middleton and Rowley in
this Lecture, and those of Marston, Chapman,
Deckar, and Webster in the third, are sketched
with great spirit; and the peculiar beauties of
each are dwelt on in a style and with a senti-
ment congenial with the predominant feeling
of the poet. At the close of the Lecture, the
observation, that the old dramatic writers have
nothing theatrical about them, introduces the
following eulogy on that fresh delight which
books are ever ready to yield us.
“ Here, on Salisbury Plain, where I write
this, even here, with a few old authors, I can
manage to get through the summer or the win-
ter months, without ever knowing what it is to
feel ennui. They sit with me at breakfast, they
walk out with me before dinner. After a long
walk through unfrequented tracts,—after start-
ing the hare from the fern, or hearing the
wing of the raven rustling above my head, or
being greeted with the woodman’s ‘ stern good-
night’ as he strikes into his narrow homeward
path,—I can take ‘ mine ease at mine inn’ be-
side the blazing hearth, and shake hands with
Signor Orlando Frescobaldo, as the oldest ac-
quaintance I have. Ben Jonson, learned
Chapman, Master Webster, and Master Hey-
wood are there; and, seated round, discourse
the silent hours away. Shakspeare is there
himself, rich in Cibber’s Manager’s coat.
Spenser is hardly returned from a ramble
through the woods, or is concealed behind a
group of nymphs, fawns, and satyrs. Milton
lies on the table as on an altar, never taken up
or laid down without reverence. Lyly’s En-
dymion sleeps with the moon that shines in
at the window; and a breath of wind stirring
at a distance, seems a sigh from the tree
under which he grew old. Faustus dis-
putes in one corner of the room with fiendish
faces, and reasons of divine astrology. Bella-HAZLITT’S LECTURES ON THE DRAMA.
7:
front soothes Mattheo, Vittoria triumphs over
her Judges, and Old Chapman repeats one of
the hymns of Homer, in his owr fine trans-
lation” Pp. 136, 137.
The spirit of this passage is very deep and
cordial; and the expression, for the most part,
exquisite. But we wonder that Mr. Hazlitt
should commit so great an incongruity, as to
represent the other poets around him in per-
son, while Milton, introduced among the rest,
is used only as the title of a book. Why are
other authors to be “seated round,” to'cheer
the critic’s retirement as if living,—while Mil-
ton, like a petition in the House of Commons,
is only ordered “to lie upon the table !”
In the Fourth Lecture, ample justice is done
to Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and Ben
Jonson; but we think the same measure is
not meted to Ford. We cannot regard the
author of “ ’Tis a Pity she’s a Whore,” and
“The Broken Heart,” as “finical and fastidious.”
We are directly at issue, indeed, with our au-
thor on his opinions respecting the catastrophe
of the latter tragedy. Calantha, Princess of
Sparta, is celebrating the nuptials of a noble
nair, with solemn dancing, when a mes-
senger enters, and informs her that the
king, her father, is dead:—she dances on.
Another report is brought to her, that the sister
of her betrothed husband is starved ;—she calls
for the other change. A third informs her that
Ithocles, her lover, is cruelly murdered;—she
complains that the music sounds dull, and
orders sprightlier measures. The dance ended,
she announces herself queen, pronounces sen-
tence on the murderer of Ithocles, and directs
thfe ceremonials of her coronation to be im-
mediately prepared. Her commands are
obeyed. She enters the Temple in white,
crowned, while the dead body of her husband
is borne on a hearse, and placed beside the
altar; at which she kneels in silent prayer.
After her devotions, she addresses Nearchus,
Prince of Argos, as though she would choose
him for her husband, and lays down all orders
for the regulation of her kingdom, under the
guise of proposals of marriage. This done,
she turns to the body of Ithocles, “ the shadow
of her contracted lord,” puts her mother’s wed-
ding ring on his finger, “to new-marry him
whose wife she is,” and from whom death
shall not part her. She then kisses his cold
lips, and dies smiling. This Mr. Hazlitt calls
“ tragedy in masquerade,” “ the true false gal-
lop of sentiment;” and declares, that “any
thing more artificial and mechanical he can-
not conceive.” He regards the whole scene as
a forced transposition of one in Marston’s Mal-
content, where Aurelia dances on in defiance
to the world, when she hears of the death of a
detested husband. He observes, “ that a
woman should call for music, and dance on
in spite of the death of a husband whom she
hates, without regard to common decency, is
but too possible: that she should dance on
with the same heroic perseverance, in spite of
the death of her father, and of everyone else
whom she loves, from regard to common cour-
tesy or appearance, is not surely natural. The
passions may silence the voice of humanity;
but it is, I think, equally against probability
and decorum, to make both the passions ami
the voice of humanity give way (as in the ex-
ample of Calantha) to a mere form of outward
behaviour. Such a suppression of the strong-
est and most uncontrollable feelings, can only
be justified from necessity, for some great pur-
pose,—which is not the case in Ford’s play;
or it must be done for the effect and eclat of the
thing, which is not fortitude but affectation.”
The fallacy of this criticism appears to us to
lie in the assumption, that the violent suppres-
sion of her feelings by the heroine was a mere
piece of court etiquette—a compliment to the
ceremonies of a festival. Surely the object
was noble, and the effort sublime. While the
deadly force of sorrow oppressed her heart,
she felt that she had solemn duties to dis-
charge, and that, if she did not arm herself
against affliction till they were finished, she
could never perform them. She could seek
temporary strength only by refusing to pause
—by hurrying on the final scene; and dared
not to give the least vent to the tide of grief,
which would at once have relieved her over-
charged heart, and left her, exhausted, to die.
Nothing less than the appearance of gayety
could hide or suppress the deep anguish of
her soul. We agree with Mr. Lamb, whose
opinion is referred to by our author, that there
is scarcely in any other play “a catastrophe
so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as
this!”
The Fifth Lecture, on Single Plays and
Poems, brings into view many curious speci-
mens of old humour, hitherto little known, and
which sparkle brightly in their new setting.
The Sixth, on Miscellaneous Poems and
Works, is chiefly remarkable for the admira-
ble criticism on the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sid-
ney, with which it closes. Here the critic
separates with great skill the wheat from the
chaff, showing at once the power of his author,
and its perversion, and how images of touch-
ing beauty and everlasting truth are marred
by “ the spirit of Gothic quaintness, criticism,
and conceit.” The passage, which is far too
long for quotation, makes us desire more earn-
estly than ever that an author, capable of so
lucid and convincing a development of his
critical doctrines, would less frequently con-
tent himself with giving the mere results of his
thought, and even conveying these in the most
abrupt and startling language. A remark ut-
tered in the parenthesis of a sarcasm, or an
image thrown in to heighten a piece of irony,
might often furnish extended matter for the
delight of those whom it now only disgusts or
bewilders.
The Seventh Lecture, on the works of Lord
Bacon, compared as to style with those of Sir
Thomas Browne and of Jeremy Tajdor, is very
unequal. The character of Lord Bacon is
eloquent, and the praise sufficiently lavish;
but it does not show any proper knowledge of
his works. That of Jeremy Taylor is some-
what more appropriate, but too full of gaudy
images and mere pomp of words. The style
of that delicious writer is ingeniously described
as “ prismatic;” though there is too much of
shadowy chillness in the phrase, adequately
to represent the warm and tender Dloom which72
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
he casts on all that he touches. And when we
are afterwards told that it “ unfolds the colours
of the rainbow ; floats like a bubble through
the air; or is like innumerable dewdrops,
that glitter on the face of morning, and twinkle
as they glitter;”—we can only understand that
the critic means to represent it as variegated,
light, and sparkling: but it appears to us that
the style of Jeremy Taylor is like nothing un-
substantial or airy. The blossoms put forth
in his works spring from a deep and eternal
stock, and have no similitude to any thing wa-
vering or unstable. His account of Sir Tho-
mas- Browne, however, seems to us very cha-
racteristic, both of himself and of that most
extraordinary of English writers. We can
make room only for a part of it.
“ As Bacon seemed to bend all his thoughts
to the practice of life, and to bring home the
light of science ‘ to the bosoms and business
of men,’ Sir Thomas Browne seemed to be of
opinion, that the only business of life was to
think ; and that the proper object of specula-
tion was, by darkening knowledge, to breed
more speculation, and ‘ find no end in wan-
dering mazes lost.’ He chose the incompre-
hensible and the impracticable, as almost the
only subjects fit for a lofty and lasting contem-
plation, or for the exercise of a solid faith. He
cried out for an ‘oh altitudo’ be}^ond the heights
of revelation ; and posed himself with apocry-
phal mysteries as the pastime of his leisure
hours. He pushes a question to the utmost
verge of conjecture, that he may repose on the
certainty of doubt: and he removes an object
to the greatest distance from him, that he may
take a high and abstracted interest in it, con-
sider it in relation to the sum of things, not
to himself, and bewilder his understanding in
the universality of its nature, and the inscruta-
bleness of its origin. His is the sublime of
indifference; a passion for the abstruse and
imaginary. He turns the world round for his
amusement, as if it were a globe of pasteboard.
He looks down on sublunary affairs as if he
had taken his station in one of the planets.
The antipodes are next-door neighbours to
him: and doomsday is not far off. With a
thought he embraces both the poles ; the march
of his pen is over the great divisions of geo-
graphy and chronology. Nothing touches him
nearer than humanity. He feels that he is
mortal only in the decay of nature, and the
dust of long-forgotten tombs. The finite is lost
in the infinite. The orbits of the heavenly bo-
dies, or the history of empires, are to him but
a point in time, or a speck in the universe.
The great Platonic year revolves in one of his
periods. Nature is too little for the grasp of
his style. He scoops an antithesis out of fa-
bulous antiquity, and rakes up an epithet from
the sweepings of chaos. It is as if his books
had dropped from the clouds, or as if Friar
Bacon’s head could speak. He stands on the
edge of the world of sense and reason, and gets
a vertigo by looking down at impossibilities
and chimeras. Or he busies himself with the
mysteries of the Cabbala, or the enclosed se-
crets of the heavenly quincunxes, as children are
amused with tales of the nursery. The passion
of curiosity (the only passion of childhood) had
in him survived to old age, and had super-
annuated his other faculties. He moralizes
and grows pathetic on a mere idle fancy of his
own, as if thought and being were the same,
or as if ‘ all this world were one glorious lie.’
He had the most intense consciousness of con-
tradictions and nonentities; and he decks them
out in the pride and pedantry of words, as if
they were the attire of his proper person. The
categories hang about his neck like the gold
chain of knighthood: and he‘walks gowned’
in the intricate folds and swelling drapery of
dark sayings and impenetrable riddles.” Pp.
292—295.
The Eighth and Last Lecture begins with
a few words on the merits of Sheil, Tobin,
Lamb, and Cornwall, who, in our own time,
have written in the spirit of the elder drama-
tists. The observations in this lecture, on the
spirit of the romantic and classic literature,
are followed by a striking development of the
materials, and an examination of the success
of the German drama. Mr. Hazlitt attributes
the triumph of its monstrous paradoxes to those
abuses and hypocrisies of society, those inco-
herences between its professions and its mo-
tives, which excite enthusiastic minds to seek
for the opposite, at once, of its defects and
blessings. His account of his own sensations
on the first perusal of the Robbers, is one of
the most striking passages in the work.
“ I have half trifled with this subject; and I
believe I have done so because I despaired of
finding language for some old-rooted feelings
I have about it, which a theory could neither
give, nor can it take away. The Robbers
was the first play I ever read; and the effect
it produced upon me was the greatest. It
stunned me like a blow; and I have not reco-
vered enough from it to tell how it was. There
are impressions which neither time nor cir-
cumstances can efface. Were I to live much
longer than I have any chance of doing, the
books I have read when I was young, I can
never forget. Five-and-twenty years have
elapsed since I first read the translation of the
Robbers, but they have not blotted the impres-
sion from my mind; it is here still—an old
dweller in the chambers of the brain. The
scene, in particular, in which Moor looks
through his tears at the evening sun from the
mountain’s brow, and says in his despair,‘It
was my v7ish like him to live, like him to die:
it was an idle thought, a boy’s conceit,’ took
first hold of my imagination,—and that sun
has to me never set!”
While we sympathize in all Mr. Hazlitt’s
sentiments of reverence for the mighty works
of the older times, we must guard against
that exclusive admiration of antiquity, ren-
dered fashionable by some great critics, which
would induce the belief that the age of genius
is past, and the world grown too old to be ro-
mantic. We can observe in these Lectures,
and in other works of their author, a jealousy
of the advances of civilization as lessening the
dominion of fancy. But this is, we think, a
dangerous error; tending to chill the earliest
aspirations after excellence, and to roll its
rising energies back on the kindling soul,
i There remains yet abundant space for geniusWALLACE’S PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, &c.
73
to possess; and science is rather the pioneer
lhan the impeder of its progress. The level
roads, in deed, which it cuts through unexplored
regions, are, in themselves, less fitted for its
wanderings than the tangled ways through
which it delights to stray; but they afford it
new glimpses into the wild scenes and noble
vistas which open near them, and enable it to
deviate into fresh scenes of beauty, and hitherto
unexplored fastnesses. The face of nature
changes not with the variations of fashion
One state of society may be somewhat more
favourable to the development of genius than
another; but wherever its divine seed is cast,
there will it strike its roots far beneath the sur-
face of artificial life, and rear its branches into
the heavens, far above the busy haunts of com-
mon mortals.
VARIOUS PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, NATURE, AND
PROVIDENCE.
[Retrospective Review.]
Mr. Wallace, the author of the work be-
fore us, was of the number of those speculators
who have delighted to form schemes of ideal
felicity for their species. Men of this class,
often despised as dreaming theorists, have been
found among the best and wisest of all ages.
Those, indeed, wrho have seen the farthest into
their nature, have found the surest grounds of
hope even for its earthly progress. Their en-
thusiasm has been, at the least, innoxious. The
belief, that humanity is on the decline—that
the energy of mam is decaying—that the heart
is becoming harder—and that imagination and
intellect are dwindling away—lays an icy
finger on the soul, confirms the most debasing
selfishness, and tends to retard the good which
it denies. We propose, therefore, in this ar-
ticle very cursorily to inquire how far the
hopes of those who believe that man is, on the
whole, advancing, are sanctioned by experience
and by reason.
But we must not forget, that, in the very
work before us, an obstacle to the happiness
of the species is brought forward, which has
subsequently been explained as of a dreadful
nature, and has been represented as casting
an impenetrable gloom over the brightest an-
ticipations of human progress. We shall first
set it forth in the words of Wallace—then trace
its expansion and various applications by Mal-
thus—and inquire how far it compels us to de-
spair for man.
“ Under a perfect government, the inconve-
niencies of having a family would be so en-
tirely removed, children would be so well
taken care of, and every thing become so
favourable to populousness, that though some
sickly seasons or dreadful plagues in particu-
lar climates might cut off multitudes, yet, in
general, mankind would increase so prodi-
giously, that the earth would at last be over-
stocked, and become unable to support its nu-
merous inhabitants.
“ How long the earth, with the best culture
of which it is capable from human genius and
industry, might be able to nourish its perpetu-
ally increasing inhabitants, is as impossible
as it is unnecessary to be determined. It is
not probable that it could have supported them
during so long a period as since the creation ,,
10
of Adam. But whatever may be supposed of
the length of this period, of necessity it must
be granted, that the earth could not nourish
them for ever, unless either its fertility could
be continually augmented, or, by some secret
in nature, like what certain enthusiasts have
expected from the philosopher’s stone, some
wise adept in the occult sciences should invent
a method of supporting mankind quite differ-
ent from any thing known at present. Nay,
though some extraordinary method of support-
ing them might possibly be found out, yet if
there was no bound to the increase of man-
kind, which would be the case under a perfect
government, there would not even be sufficient
room for containing their bodies upon the sur-
face of the earth, or upon any limited surface
whatsoever. It would be necessary, therefore,
in order to find room for such multitudes of
men, that the earth should be continually en-
larging in bulk, as an animal or vegetable body.
“Now, since philosophers may as soon at-
tempt to make mankind immortal, as to sup-
port the animal frame without food, it is equally
certain, that limits are set to the fertility of the
earth; and that its bulk, so far as is hitherto
known, hath continued always the same, and
probably could not be much altered without
making considerable changes in the solar sys-
tem. It would be impossible, therefore, to sup-
port the great numbers of men who would be
raised up under a perfect government; the
earth would be overstocked at last, and the
greatest admirers of such fanciful schemes
must foresee the fatal period when they would
come to an end, as they are altogether incon-
sistent with the limits of that earth in which
they must exist.
“What a miserable catastrophe of the most
generous of all human systems of government!
How dreadfully would the magistrates of such
commonwealths find themselves disconcerted
at that fatal period, when there was no longer
any room for new colonies, and when the earth
could produce no farther supplies! During
all the preceding ages, while there was room
for increase, mankind must have been happy;
the earth must have been a paradise in the
literal sense, as the greatest part of it must
have been turned into delightful and fruitful
G74
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
gardens. But when the dreadful time should
at last come, when our globe, by the most
diligent culture, could not produce what was
sufficient to nourish its numerous inhabitants,
what happy expedient could then be found out
to remedy so great an evil I
“In such a cruel necessity, must there be a
law to restrain marriage'? Must multitudes
of women be shut up in cloisters, like the
ancient vestals or modern nuns'? To keep a
balance between the two sexes, must a propor-
tionable number of men be debarred from
marriage? Shall the Utopians, following the
wicked policy of superstition, forbid their
priests to marry; or shall they rather sacrifice
men of some other profession for the good of
the state ? Or, shall they appoint the sons of
certain families to be maimed at their birth,
and give a sanction to the unnatural institu-
tion of eunuchs ? If none of these expedients
can be thought proper, shall they appoint a cer-
tain number of infants to be exposed to death
as soon as they are born, determining the pro-
portion according to the exigencies of the state ;
and pointing out the particular victims by lot,
or according to some established rule? Or,
must they shorten the period of human life by
a law, and condemn all to die after they had
completed a certain age, which might be
shorter or longer, as provisions were either
more scanty or plentiful ? Or what other me-
thod should they devise (for an expedient
would be absolutely necessary) to restrain
the number of citizens within reasonable
bounds ?
“Alas ! how unnatural and inhuman must
every such expedient be accounted? The
natural passions and appetites of mankind are
planted in our frame, to answer the best ends
for the happiness both of the individuals and
of the species. Shall we be obliged to con-
tradict such a wise order? Shall we be laid
under the necessity of acting barbarously and
inhumanly? Sad and fatal necessity! And
which, after all, could never answer the end,
but would give rise to violence and war. For
mankind would never agree about such regu-
lations. Force and arms must at last decide
their quarrels, and the deaths of such as fall
in battle leave sufficient provisions for the
survivors, and make room for others to be born.
“Thus the tranquillity and numerous bless-
ings of the Utopian governments would come
to an end; war, or cruel and unnatural cus-
toms, be introduced, and a stop put to the in-
crease of mankind, to the advancement of
knowledge, and to the culture of the earth, in
spite of the most excellent laws and wisest pre-
cautions. The more excellent the laws had
been, and the more strictly they had been ob-
served, mankind must have sooner become
miserable. The remembrance of former times,
the greatness of their wisdom and virtue, would
conspire to heighten their distress; and the
world, instead of remaining the mansion of
wisdom and happiness, become the scene of
vice and confusion. Force and fraud must
prevail, and mankind be reduced to the same
calamitous condition as at present.
“Such a melancholy situation, in conse-
quence merely of the want of provisions, is in
truth more unnatural than all their present
calamities. Supposing men to nave abused
their liberty, by which abuse vice has once
been introduced into the world; and tha*
wrong notions, a bad taste, and vicious habits,
have been strengthened by the defects of edu-
cation and government, our present distresses
may be easily explained. They may even
be called natural, being the natural conse-
quences of our depravity. They may be
supposed to be the means by which Provi-
dence punishes vice ; and by setting -bounds
to the increase of mankind, prevents the
earth’s being overstocked, and men being laid
under the cruel necessity of killing one an-
other. But to suppose, that in the course of
a favourable Providence a perfect govern-
ment had been established, under which the
disorders of human passions had been power-
fully corrected and restrained; poverty, idle-
ness and war banished; the earth made a para-
dise; universal friendship and concord esta-
blished, and human society rendered flourish-
ing in all respects ; and that such a lovely con-
stitution should be overturned, not by the vices
of men, or their abuse of liberty, but by the
order of nature itself, seems wholly unnatural,’
and altogether disagreeable to the methods of
Providence.”
To this passage, the gloomy theories of Mr.
Malthus owe their origin. He took the evil
which Wallace regarded as awaiting the
species in its highest state of earthly per-
fection, as instant and pressing in almost
every state of society, and as causing man-
kind perpetually to oscillate. He represented
nature herself as imposing an adamantine
barrier to improvement. He depicted the
tendency of the species to increase in num-
bers, as arising from passion, mad and un-
governable as well as universal, and as re-
sisted, in its fatal consequences, only by war,
famine, or disease. He maintained, that man
was placed by nature between two tremen-
dous evils, and could never recede from the
strait within which his movements were con-
tracted.
The system thus promulgated in the first
edition of the work on Population, could not
be well applied to any practical uses. It
tended to destroy the fair visions of human
improvement, and to place a gigantic demon
in their room. But it could not form a
part of any rational scheme of legislation,
because it represented the evils which it
depicted as hopeless. Its only moral was de-
spair. But its author—-a man whose personal
benevolence withstood his doctrines—became
anxious to discover some moral purposes to
which he might apply his scheme. Accord-
ingly, in his second edition, which was so
altered and rewritten as to be almost a new
work, he introduced a new preventive check
on the tendency of population to increase,
which he designated “moral restraint,” and
proposed to inculcate, by the negative course of
leaving all those who did not practise it to the
consequences of their error. This new fea-
ture appears to us subversive of the whole sys-
tem, in so far, at least, as it is designed to exhibit
insuperable obstacles to the progressive hap-WALLACE’S PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, &c.
75
piness of man. Instead of the evil being re-
garded as inevitable, a means was expressly
enforced by which it might be completely
avoided. Celibacy was shown to be a state
of attainable and exalted virtue. In calcu-
lating on the tendency of the species to in-
crease, we were no longer required to spec-
ulate on a mere instinct, but on a thousand
moral and intellectual causes—on the move-
ments of reason, sensibility, imagination, and
hope. The rainbow could be as easily grasped
or a sun-beam measured by a line, as the ope-
rations of the blended passion and sentiment
of love estimated by geometrical series ! We
will, however, examine a little more closely
the popular objection to theories of human
improvement, which the principle of popula-
tion is supposed to offer.
The real question, in this case, is not whe-
ther, when the world is fully cultivated, the
tendency of the species to increase will be
greater than the means of subsistence; but
whether this tendency really presses on us at
every step of our progress. For, if there is no
insuperable barrier to the complete cultivation
of the earth, the cessation of all the countless
evils of war, and the union of all the brethren
of mankind in one great family, we may safely
trust to Heaven for the rest. When this uni-
versal harmony shall begin, men will surely
have attained the virtue and the wisdom to ex-
ercise a self-denial, which Mr. Malthus himself
represents as fully within their power. In the
era of knowledge and of peace, that degree of
self-sacrifice can scarcely be impossible, which,
even now, our philosopher would inculcate at
the peril of starvation. At least, there can be
no danger in promoting the happiness of the
species, until it shall arise to this fulness; for
we are told, that every effort towards it pro-
duces a similar peril with that which will em-
bitter its final reign. And if it should exist at
last, we may safely believe, that He who pro-
nounced the blessing, “ increase and multiply,”
will not abandon the work of his hands; but
that this world then will have answered all the
purposes of its creation, and that immortal
state will begin, “in which we shall neither
marry nor be given in marriage, but be as the
angels of God.”
Let us inquire, then, whether the evidence
of history, or the present aspect of the world,
warrant the belief, that the tendency of the
species to increase beyond the means of sub-
sistence is a necessary obstacle to the improve-
ment of its condition. If the wretchedness of
man really flowed from this source, it is strange
that the discovery should not have been made
during six thousand years of his misery. He is
not usually thus obtuse, respecting the cause
of his sorrows. It will be admitted, that his
distresses have most frequently arisen from
luxury and from war, as their immediate
causes. The first will scarcely be attributed
to the want of food; nor can the second be
traced to so fantastical an origin. Shakspeare,
indeed, represents Coriolanus, in his insolent
contempt for humanity, as rejoicing in the ap-
proach of war, as the means of “ venting the
musty superfluity” of the people ; but kings
have not often engaged in the fearful game on
so refined and philosophic principles. On the
contrary, the strength of a state was always
regarded, in old time, as consisting in the
number of its citizens. And, indeed, it is im-
possible that any of the gigantic evils of man-
kind should have arisen from the pressure of
population against the means of subsistence ;
because it is impossible to point out any one
state in which the means of subsistence have
been fully developed and exhausted. If the
want of subsistence, then, has ever afflicted a
people, it has not arisen, except in case of tem-
porary famine, from a deficiency in the means of
subsistence, but in the mode and spirit of using
them. The fault has been not in nature, but
in man. Population may, in a few instances,
have increased beyond the energy of the peo-
ple to provide for it, but not beyond the re-
sources which God has placed within their
power.
The assertion, that there is, in the constant
tendency of population to press hardly against
the means of subsistence, an insuperable check
to any great improvement of the species, is in
direct contradiction to history. The species
has increased in numbers, and has risen in in-
telligence, under far more unfavourable cir-
cumstances than the present, in spite of this
fancied obstacle. There is no stage of civili-
zation, in which the objection to any farther
advance might not have been urged with as
much plausibility as at the present. While
any region, capable of fruitfulness, remains
uninhabited and barren, the argument applies
with no more force against its cultivation, than
it would have applied against the desire of him
who founded the first city to extend its boun-
daries. While the world was before him, he
might as reasonably have been warned to de-
cline any plan for bringing wastes into tillage,
on the ground that the tendency of man to mul-
tiply would thus be incited beyond the means
of supplying food, as we, in our time, while
the greater part of the earth yet remains to be
possessed. And, indeed, the objection has far
less force now than at any preceding period :
—because not only is space left, but the aids
of human power are far greater than in old
time. Machinery now enables one man to do
as much towards the supply of human wants,
as could formerly have been done by hundreds.
And shall we select this as the period of so-
ciety in which the species must stand still, be-
cause the means of subsistence can be carried
but a little farther 1
It seems impossible to cast a cursory glance
over the earth, and retain the belief, that there
is some insuperable obstacle in the constitution
of nature, to the development of its vast and
untried resources. Surely, immense regions
of unbounded fertility—long successions of
spicy groves—trackless pastures watered by
ocean—rivers formed to let in wealth to the
midst of a great continent—and islands which
lie calmly on the breast of crystal seas, were
not created for eternal solitude and silence.
Until these are peopled, and the earth is
indeed “ replenished and subdued,” the com-
mand and the blessing, “ increase and mul-
tiply,” must continue unrecalled by its great
Author. Shall not Egypt revive its old fruit-76
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
fuln ess, and Palestine again flow with milk and I
honey!
The hypothesis, that population left to itself
will increase in a geometrical progression,
while the means of subsistence can only be
enlarged in an arithmetical progression, is a
mere fantasy. Vegetables, cattle, and fish,
have far greater powers of productiveness than
the human species ; and the only obstacle to
those powers being developed in an equal de-
gree, is the want of room for them to increase,
or the want of energy or wisdom in man to
apply the bounty of nature to its fittest uses.
The first want cannot exist while the larger
part of the earth is barren, and the riches of
the ocean remain unexhausted. The second,
with all the disadvantages of ignorance, war,
tyranny, and vice, has not prevented the boun-
daries of civilization from widely extending.
What is there then in this particular stage of
society, which should induce the belief, that
the sinews of humanity are shrivelled up, and
its energy falling to decay! The same quan-
tity of food or of clothing—the same comforts
and the same luxuries—which once required
the labour of a hundred hands, are now pro-
duced almost without personal exertion. And
is the spirit in man so broken down and de-
based, that, with all the aids of machinery, he
cannot effect as much as the labour of his own
right arm would achieve in the elder time!
If, indeed, he is thus degenerate, the fault, at
least, is not in nature, but in external and
transitory causes. But we are prepared
clearly, though briefly, to show, that man has
been and is, on the whole, advancing in true
virtue, and in moral and intellectual energy.
It cannot be denied, that there are many ap-
parent oscillations in the course of the species.
If we look at only a small portion of history,
it may seem retrograde, as a view of one of the
windings of a noble river may lead us to
imagine that it is flowing from the ocean. The
intricacies of human affairs, the perpetual op-
position of interests, prejudices, and passions,
do not permit mankind to proceed in a right
line; but, if we overlook any large series of
ages, we shall clearly perceive, that the course
of man is towards perfection. In contemplat-
ing the past, our attention is naturally at-
tracted to the illustrious nations, whose story
is consecrated by our early studies. But even
if we take these, and forget the savage barbar-
ism of the rest of the world, we shall find little
to excite our envy. Far be it from us to deny,
that there were, among these, some men of
pure and disinterested virtue, whose names
are like great sea-marks in the dreariness of
the perspective, and whom future generations
can only desire to imitate. Our nature has al-
ways had some to vindicate its high capabili-
ties of good. But even among the privileged
classes of Greece and Rome—the selected mi-
nority, to whom all the rights of nature were
confined more strictly than in the strictest
modern despotism—how rare are the instances
of real and genuine goodness ! The long suc-
cession of bloody tragedies—that frightful al-
ternation of cruelties and of meannesses—the
Peloponnesian war, was perpetrated in the
midst of the people, who had just carried the
arts to their highest perfection. Gratitude,
honesty, and good faith, had no place in the
breast of Athenian citizens. The morals of
the Spartans were even more despicable than
those of their rivals. Their mixture of bar-
barity and of craft towards their foes and the
states which were tributary to their power—
their unnatural sacrifice of the most sacred of
the affections of nature to mere national glory
—and their dreadful conduct towards the
wretched Helots, who were their property,—
have scarcely a parallel in human history. The
long conspiracy of Rome against the liberties
of mankind, carried on from the time of its
foundation until it began to decline, served to
string every sinew into a horrid rigidity, and
to steel the heart to the feelings of compassion.
This is the description of its progress by one
of its own historians:
“ Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastanti-
bus defuere terrae, et mare scrutantur; si
locuples hostis est, avari; si pauper, ambitiosi:
quos non oriens non occidens satiaverit; soli
omnium opes atque inopiam pari aflfectu con-
cupiscunt. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis
nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem
pacem appellent.”	(Tacitus, Vita Agricol^
30.)
The proscriptions of Marius and Sylla alone
proved what this savage spirit could perpetrate
at home, when it had exhausted all opportuni-
ties of satiating, among foreign states, its
thirst for slaughter.
If we pass over the improvements in morals
—the amelioration of war—the progress of po-
litical science—and the redemption of the fe-
male sex from degradation and from bondage
—we shall find, in one great change alone,
ample reason to rejoice in the advances of the
species. The simple term, humanity, expresses
the chief difference between our times and the
brightest of classical ages. In those there was
no feeling for man, as man—no recognition
of a common brotherhood—no sense of those
qualities which all men have in common, and
of those claims which those who are “made
of one blood” have on each other for justice
and for mercy. Manhood was nothing, citizen-
ship was all in all. Nearly all the virtues
were aristocratical and exclusive. The num-
ber of slaves—their dreadful condition—and
the sanction which the law gave to all the
cruelties practised on them—showed that the
masters of the world had no sense of the dig-
nity of their nature, whatever they might feel
for the renown of their country, or the privi-
leges of their order. The Spartan youths mas-
sacred their Helots, to nurture their valour.
Indeed, the barbarities inflicted on that mise-
rable race, by those whpm we are sometimes
taught to admire, would exceed belief, if they
were not attested by the clearest proofs. At
Rome, slaves, when too old for work, were
often sent to an island in the Tiber, and left
there to perish. On the slightest offence, they
were frequently thrown into fish-ponds, ex-
posed to wild beasts, or sentenced to die upon
the cross. And in the same spirit of contempt
for humanity, and veneration for the privileged
orders, parents had power to imprison their
children or put them, to death, and wives wereWALLACE’S PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, &c.
77
left, without protection, to the brutal ferocity
of their husbands.
With how different feelings are the rights of
humanity regarded in these happier seasons !
Slavery is abolished throughout the Christian
kingdoms of Europe, and, with few exceptions,
equal justice is administered to all. There is
no grief which does not meet with pity, and
few miseries which do not excite the attempt
to relieve them. Men are found of sensibili-
ties keen even to agony, who, tremblingly alive
in every fibre to wretchedness, have yet the
moral heroism to steel their nerves to the in-
vestigation of the most hideous details of suf-
fering, with no desire of applause or wish for
reward, except that which success itself will
give them. Within a few short years, what
great moral changes have been effected ! The
traffic in human beings, which was practised
without compunction or disgrace, and defended
in parliament as a fair branch of commerce,
is now made a felony, and those who are de-
tected in pursuing it would almost be torn in
pieces by popular fury. The most cruel
enactments against freedom of thought and of
discussion have been silently repealed, while
scarcely a voice has been raised to defend or
to mourn them. And, above all, a moral ele-
vation has been given to the great mass of the
rising generation, by the provision for their
instruction, of which no time, or change, or
accident can deprive them.
There is a deep-rooted opinion, which has
been eloquently propounded by some of the
first critics of our age, that works of imagina-
tion must necessarily decline as civilization
advances. It will readily be conceded, that
no individual minds can be expected to arise,
in the most refined periods, which will surpass
those which have been developed in rude and
barbarous ages. But theru does not appear
any solid reason for believing, that the mighty
works of old time occupy the whole region of
poetry—or necessarily chill the fancy of these
later times by their vast and unbroken sha-
dows. Genius does not depend on times or on
seasons, it waits not on external circumstances,
it can neither be subdued by the violence of the
most savage means, nor polished away or dis-
sipated among the refinements of the most glit-
tering scenes of artificial life. It is “itself
alone.” To the heart of a young poet, the
world is ever beginning anew. He is in the
generation by which he is surrounded, but he
is not of it; he can live in the light of the
holiest times, or range amidst gorgeous mar-
vels of eldest superstition, or sit “ lone upon
the shores of old romance,” or pierce the veil
of mortality, and “breathe in worlds to which
the heaven of heavens is but a veil.” The
very deficiency of the romantic, in the actual
paths of existence, will cause him to dwell in
thought more apart from them, and to seek the
wildest recesses in those regions which ima-
gination opens to his inward gaze. To the
eye of young joy, the earth is as fresh as at
the first—the dew-drop is lit up as it was in
Eden—and “ the splendour in the grass, the
glory in the flower,” yet glitters as in the
spring-time of the world.
The subjects in which genius rejoices are
not the vain and the transitory, but the true
and the eternal, which are the same through
all changes of society and shifting varieties
of fashion. The heavens yet “tell the glory
of God the hills, the vales, and the ocean, do
not alter, nor does the heart of man wax old.
The wonders of these are as exhaustless as
they are lasting. While these remain, the cir-
cumstances of busy life—the exact mechanism
of the social state—will affect the true poet but
little. The seeds of genius, which contain
within themselves the germs of expanded
beauties and divinest sublimities, cannot
perish. Wheresoever they are scattered, they
must take root, striking far below the surface,
overcropped and exhausted by the multitude
of transitory productions, into a deep richness
of soil, and, rising up above the weeds and
tangled underwood which would crush them,
lift their innumerable boughs into the free and
rejoicing heavens.
The advancement of natural science and of
moral truth do not tend really to lesson the
resources of the bard. The more we know,
the more we feel there is yet to be known.
The mysteries of nature and of humanity are
not lessened, but increased, by the discoveries
of philosophic skill. The lustre which breaks
on the vast clouds, which encircle us in our
earthly condition, does not merely set in clear
vision that which before was hidden in sacred
gloom; but, at the same time, half exhibits
masses of magnificent shadow, unknown be-
fore, and casts an uncertain light on vast re-
gions, in which the imagination may devoutly
expatiate. A plastic superstition may fill a
limited circle with beautiful images, but it
chills and confines the fancy, almost as strictly
as it limits the reasoning faculties. The my-
thology of Greece, for example, while it peo-
pled earth with a thousand glorious shapes,
shut out the free grace of nature from poetic
vision, and excluded from the ken the high
beatings of the soul. x\ll the loveliness of
creation, and all the qualities, feelings, and
passions, were invested with personal attri-
butes. The evening’s sigh was the breath of
Zephyr—the streams were celebrated, not in
their rural clearness, but as visionary nymphs
—and ocean, that old agitator of sublimest
thoughts, gave place, in the imagination, to a
trident-bearing god. The tragic muse almost
“ forgot herself to stone,” in her lone contem-
plations of destiny. No wild excursiveness
of fancy marked their lighter poems—no ma-
jestical struggle of high passions and high
actions filled the scene—no genial wisdom
threw a penetrating, yet lovely, light on the
silent recesses of the bosom. The diffusion of
a purer faith restored to poetry its glowing af-
fections, its far-searching intelligence, and its
excursive power. And not only this, but it
left it free to use those exquisite figures, and to
avail itself of all the chaste and delicate
imagery, which the exploded superstition first
called into being. In the stately regions of
imagination, the wonders of Greek fable yet
have place, though they no longer hide from
our view the secrets of our nature, or the long
vistas which extend to the dim verge of the
moral horizon. Well, indeed, does a grea
r 9!
(jr «78
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
living poet assert their poetic existence, under
the form of defending the science of the
stars:
“ For Fable is Love’s world, his home, his birth-place ;
Delightedly dwells he ’mong fays, and talismans,
And spirits ; and delightedly believes
Divinities, being himself divine.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty,
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest, by slow stream or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths ! all these have vanish’d ;
They live no longer in the faith of reason !
But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names;
And to yon starry world they now are gone,
Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth
With man as with their friend ; and to the lover
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence down ; and, even at this day
’Tis Jupiter who brings vvhate’er is great,
And Venus that brings every thing that’s fair !”*
The poet is the inheritor of the imaginative
treasures of all creeds which reason has now
exploded. The dim gigantic shadows of the
north—the gentle superstitions of the Greeks
—the wild and wondrous prodigies of the Ara-
bian enchantment—the dark rites of magic,
more heart-stirring than all—have their places
in the vast region of his soul. When we climb
above the floating mists which have so long
overspread humanity, to breathe a purer air,
and gaze on the unclouded heavens, we do
not lose our feeling of veneration for majestic
errors, nor our sense of their glories. Instead
of wandering in the region of cloud, we over-
look it all, and behold its gorgeous varieties
of arch, minaret, dome, or spire, without par-
taking in its delusions.
But we have no need of resort to argument,
in order to show that genius is not gradually
declining. A glance at its productions, in the
present age, will suffice to prove the gloom}^
mistake of desponding criticism. We will
sketch very lightly over the principal living
authors, to illustrate this position—satisfied
that the mere mention of their names will
awaken, within our readers, recollections of
delight, far more than sufficient triumphantly
to contravene the theory of those who believe
in the degeneracy of genius.
And first—in the great walk of poesy—is
Wordsworth, who, if he stood alone, would
vindicate the immortality of his art. He has,
in his works, built up a rock of defence for his
species, which will resist the mightiest tides
of demoralizing luxury. Setting aside the
varied and majestic harmony of his verse—the
freshness and the grandeur of his descriptions
—the exquisite softness of his delineations of
character—and the high and rapturous spirit
of his choral songs—we may produce his “ di-
vine philosophy” as unequalled by any pre-
ceding bard. And surely it is no small proof
of the infinity of the resources of genius, that
in this late age of the world, the first of all phi-
losophic poets should have arisen, to open a
new vein of sentiment and thought, deeper and
richer than yet had been laid bare to mortal
eyes. His rural pictures are as fresh and as
lively as those of Cowper, yet how much love-
lier is the poetic light which is shed over them?
His exhibition of gentle peculiarities of cha-
racter, and dear immunities of heart, is as true
and as genial as that of Goldsmith, yet how
much is its interest heightened by its intimate
connection, as by golden chords, with the no-
blest and most universal truths ? His little
pieces of tranquil beauty are as holy and as
sweet as those of Collins, and yet, while we feel
the calm of the elder poet gliding into our souls,
we catch farther glimpses through the luxu-
riant boughs into “the highest heaven of in-
vention.” His soul mantles as high with love
and joy, as that of Burns, but yet “ hovT bright,
how solemn, how serene,” is the brimming
and lucid stream? His poetry not only dis-
covers, within the heart, new faculties, but
awakens within, its untried powers, to com-
prehend and to enjoy its beauty and its wis-
dom.
Not less marvellously gifted, though in a
far different manner, is Coleridge, who, by a
strange error, has been usually regarded as
belonging to the same school, partaking of the
same peculiarities, and upholding the same-
doctrines. Instead, like Wordsworth, of seek-
ing the sources of sublimity and of beauty in
the simplest elements of humanity, he ranges
through all history and science, investigating
all that has really existed, and all that has
had foundation only in the strangest and wild-
est minds, combining, condensing, developing,
and multiplying the rich products of his re-
search with marvellous facility and skill;
now pondering fondly over some piece of ex-
quisite loveliness, brought from a wild and un-
known recess; now tracing out the hidden
germ of the eldest and most barbaric theories;
and now calling fantastic spirits from the
vasty deep, where they have slept since the
dawn of reason. The term, “ myriad-minded,”
which he has happily applied to Shakspeare,
is truly descriptive of himself. He is notone,
but Legion—“ rich with the spoils of time,”
richer in his own glorious imagination and
sportive fantasy. There is nothing more won-
derful than the facile majesty of his images, or
rather of his worlds of imagery, which, even
in his poetry or his prose, start up before us
self-raised and all perfect, like the palace of
Aladdin. He ascends to the sublimest truths,
by a winding track of sparkling glory, which
can only be described in his own language—
“ the spirits’ ladder,
That from this gross and visible world of dust
Even to the starry world, with thousand rounds
Builds itself up; on which the unseen powers
Move up and down on heavenly ministries—
The circles in the circles, that approach
The central sun with ever-narrowing orbit.”
In various beauty of versification, he has
never been exceeded. Shakspeare, doubtless,
has surpassed him in linked sweetness and ex-
quisite continuity, and Milton in pure majesty
and classic grace—but this is in one species
of verse only—and, taking all his trials of va-
rious me'tres, the swelling harmony of his blank
verse, the sweet breathing of his gentler odes,
* Coleridge’s translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein.WALLACE’S PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, &c.
79
and the sybil-like flutter alternate with the mur-
muring charm of his wizard spells, we doubt
if even these great masters have so fully de-
veloped the music of the English tongue. He
has yet completed no adequate memorials of
his genius; yet it is most unjust to assert, that
he has done nothing or little. To refute this
assertion, there are, his noble translation of
Wallenstein—his love-poems of intensest beauty
—his Ancient Mariner, with its touches of pro-
foundest tenderness amidst the wildest and
most bewildering terrors—his holy and most
sweet tale of Christabel, with its rich enchant-
ments and its richer humanities—the depths,
the sublimities, and the pensive sweetness of
his tragedy—the heart-dilating sentiments scat-
tered through his “Friend”—and the stately
imagery which breaks upon us at every turn
of the golden paths of his metaphysical laby-
rinths. And, if he has a power within mightier
than that which even these glorious creations
indicate, shall he be censured because he has
deviated from the ordinary course of the age,
in its development; and, instead of committing
his imaginative wisdom to the press, has deli-
vered it from his living lips 1 He has gone about
in the true spirit of an old Creek bard, with
a noble carelessness of self, giving fit utterance
to the divine spirit within him. Who that has
heard can ever forget him—his mild benignity
—the unbounded variety of his knowledge—the
fast succeeding products of his imagination—
the child-like simplicity vrith which he rises,
from the driest and commonest theme, into the
widest magnificence of thought, pouring on
the soul a stream of beauty and of wisdom, to
mellow and enrich it for ever'? The seeds of
poetry, which he has thus scattered, will not
perish. The records of his fame are not in
books only, but on the fleshly tablets of young
hearts, who will not suffer it to die even in the
general ear, however base and unfeeling criti-
cism may deride their gratitude !
Charles Lamb is as original as either of
these, within the smaller circle which he has
chosen. We know not of any writer, living
or dead, to whom we can fitly liken him. The
exceeding delicacy of his fancy, the keenness
of his perceptions of truth and beauty, the
sweetness and the wisdom of his humour, and
the fine interchange and sportive combination
of all these, so frequent in his works, are en-
tirely and peculiarly his own. As it has been
said of Swift, that his better genius was his
spleen, it may be asserted of Lamb that his
kindliness is his inspiration. With how nice
an eye does he detect the least hitherto un-
noticed indication of goodness, and with how
true and gentle a touch does he bring it out to
do good to our natures ! How new and strange
do some of his more fantastical ebullitions
seem, yet how invariably do they come home
to the very core, and smile at the heart! He
makes the majesties of imagination seem fa-
miliar, and gives to familiar things a pathetic
beauty or a venerable air. Instead of finding
that every thing in his writings is made the
most of, we always feel that the tide of senti-
ment and of thought is pent in, and that the
airy and variegated bubbles spring up from
a far depth in the placid waters. The loveli-
ness of his thought looks, in the quaintness of
his style, like a modest beauty, laced-in and
attired in a dress of the superb fashion of the
elder time. His versification is not greatly in-
ferior to that of Coleridge, and it is, in all its
best qualities, unlike that of any other poet.
His heroic couplets are alternately sweet, terse,
and majestical; and his octo-syllabic measures
have a freeness and completeness, which mark
them the pure Ionic of verse.
Barry Cornwall, with the exception of Cole-
ridge, is the most genuine poet of love, who
has, for a long period, appeared among us.
There is an intense and passionate beauty, a
depth of affection, in his little dramatic poems,
which appear even in the affectionate triflings
of his gentle characters. He illustrates that
holiest of human emotions, which, while it
will twine itself with the frailest twig, or dally
with the most evanescent shadow of creation,
wasting its excess of kindliness on all around
it, is yet able to “ look on tempests and be
never shaken.” Love is gently omnipotent in
his poems ; accident and death itself are but
passing clouds, which scarcely vex and which
cannot harm it. The lover seems to breathe
out his life in the arms of his mistress, as
calmly as the infant sinks into its softest slum-
ber. The fair blossoms of his genius, though
light and trembling at the breeze, spring from
a wide, and deep, and robust stock, which will
sustain far taller branches without being ex-
hausted. In the vision, where he sees “ the
famous Babylon,” in his exquisite sonnets, and
yet more in his Marcian Colonna, has he shown
a feeling and a power for the elder venerable-
ness of the poetic art, which, we are well as-
sured, he is destined successfully to develope.
Some of our readers will, perhaps, wonder,
that we have thus long delayed the mention
of the most popular of the living poets. But,
though we have no desire to pass them by,
we must confess, that we do not rest chiefly
on them our good hope for English genius.
Lord Byron’s fame has arisen, we suspect, al-
most as much from an instinctive awe of his
nobility, and from a curiosity to know the se-
crets of his diseased soul which he so often par-
tially gratifies, as from the strength and turbid
majesty of his productions. His mind is,
however, doubtless cast in no ordinary mould.
His chief poetic attributes appear, to us, to be
an exceedingly quick sensibility to external
beauty and grandeur, a capability and a love
of violent emotion, and a singular mastery of
language. He has no power over himself,
which is the highest of all qualifications for a
poet as it is for a man. He has no calm me-
ditative greatness, no harmonizing spirit, no
pure sense of love and of joy. He is as far be-
neath the calmy imaginative poets as the re-
gion of tempests and storms is below the quiet
and unclouded heavens. He excites intense
feeling, by leading his readers to the brink of
unimaginable horror, by dark hints of name-
less sins, or by the strange union of virtues and
of vices, which God and nature have for ever
divided. Yet are there touches of grace and
beauty scattered throughout his works, occa-
sional bursts of redeeming enthusiasm, which
make us deeply regret the loo-often “admiredso
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
disorder” of his soul. The stream of his ge-
nius falls, from a vast height, amidst bleakest
rocks, into depths, which mortal eye cannot
fathom, and into which it is dangerous to gaze ;
but it sends up a radiant mist in its fall, which
the sun tints with heavenly colouring, and it
leaves its echoes on the golden and quiet
clouds! The too frequent perversion of his
genius does not prevent it from showing, in
its degree, the immortality of the most sublime
of the human faculties.
Sir Walter Scott, if his poetry is not all
which his countrymen proclaim it, is a bard,
in whose success every good man must rejoice.
His feeling of nature is true, if it is not pro-
found ; his humanity is pure, if it is not deep ;
his knowledge of facts is choice and various,
if his insight into their philosophy is not very
clear or extensive. Dr. Percy’s Reliqucs pre-
pared his way, and the unpublished Christabel
aided his inspirations ; but he is entitled to
the credit of having first brought romantic
poetry into fashion. Instead of the wretched
sentimentalities of the Dtdla Cruscan school,
he supplied the public with pictures of nature,
and with fair visions of chivalry. If he is,
and we hope as well as believe that he is, the
author of the marvellous succession of Scotch
romances, he deserves far deeper sentiments
of gratitude than those which his poems
awaken. Then does he merit the praise of
having sent the mountain breezes into the
heart of this great nation; of having supplied
us all with a glorious crowd of acquaintances,
and even of friends, whose society will never
disturb or weary us ; and of having made us
glow a thousand times with honest pride, in
that nature of which we are partakers !
Mr. Southey is an original poet, and a de-
lightful prose-writer, though he does not even
belong to the class which it has been the
fashion to represent him as redeeming. He
has neither the intensity of Wordsworth, nor
the glorious expansion of Coleridge ; but he
has their holiness of imagination, and child-
like purity of thought. His fancies are often
as sweet and as heavenly as those which
“may make a crysome child to smile.” There
is, too, sometimes an infantine love of glitter
and pomp, and of airy castle-building, dis-
played in his more fantastical writings. The
great defect of his purest and loftiest poems
is, that they are not imbued with humanity;
they do not seem to have their only home on
“this dear spot, this human earth of ours,” but
their scenes might be transferred, perhaps with
advantage, to the moon or one of the planets.
In the loneliest bower which poesy can rear,
deep in a trackless wild, or in some island,
placed “far amid the melancholy main,” the
air of this world must yet be allowed to breathe,
if the poet would interest “ us poor humans.”
It may heighten even the daintiest solitude of
blessed lovers,
“ All the while to feel and know,
That they are in a world of wo,
On such an earth as this.”
Mr. Southey’s poems are beautiful and pure,
/et too far from our common emotions. His
Joan of Arc, his Thai aba, and his Roderick, are
full of the stateliest pictures But his Kehama
is his greatest work—the most marvellous suc-
cession of fantasies, “sky tinctured,” ever
called into being, without the aid of real and
hearty faith! Mr. Southey’s prose style is
singularly lucid and simple. His life of Nel-
son is a truly British work, giving the real
heartiness ofnaval strength ofour country, with-
out ostentation or cant; his memoir of Kirke
White is very unaffected and pathetic; and his
Essays on the State of the Poor, really touching
in their benevolence, and their well-regulated
sympathies. Of the violences of his more deci-
dedly political effusions, we shall not here ven-
ture to give an opinion ; except to express our
firm belief, that they have never been influenced
by motives unworthy of a man of genius.
Mr. Campbell has not done much which is
excellent in poetry, but that which he has writ-
ten well is admirable in its kind. His battle-
odes are simple, affecting, and sublime.—Few
passages can exceed the dying speech of Ger-
trude, in sweet pathos, or the war-song of old
Outalissi, in stern and ferocious grandeur. It is
astonishing, that he, who could produce these
and other pieces of most genuine poetry, should,
on some occasions, egregiously mistake gaudy
words for imagination : and heap up fragments
of bad metaphors, as though he could scale
the “ highest heaven of invention,” by the ac-
cumulation of mere earthly materials.
It is the singular lot of Moore, to seem, in his
smaller pieces, as though he were fitted for
the highest walk of poetry; and in his more
ambitious efforts, to appear as though he could
fabricate nothing but glittering tinsel. The
truth is, however, that those of his attempts,
which the world thinks the boldest, and in
which we regard him as unsuccessful, are not
above, but beneath his powers. A thousand
tales of veiled prophets, who wed ladies in the
abodes of the dead, and frighten their associates
to death by their maimed and mangled coun-
tenances, may be produced with far less ex-
pense of true imagination, fancy, or feeling,
than one sweet song, which shall seem the
very echo “of summer days and delightful
years.” Moore is not fit for the composition
of tales of demon frenzy and feverish strength,
only because his genius is of too pure and
noble an essence. He is the most sparkling
and graceful of triflers. It signifies little,
whether the Fives Court or the Palace furnish
him with materials. However repulsive the
subject, he can “ turn all to favour, and to pret-
tiness.” Clay and gold, subjected to his easy
inimitable hand, are wrought into shapes, so
pleasingly fantastic, that the difference of the
subject is lost in the fineness of the workman-
ship. His lighter pieces are distinguished at
once by deep feeling, and a gay festive air,
which he never entirely loses. He leads wit,
sentiment, patriotism, and fancy, in a gay fan-
tastic round, gambols sportively with fate, and
holds a dazzling fence with care and with sor-
row. He has seized all the “snatches of old
tunes,” which yet lingered about the wildest
regions of his wild and fanciful country; and
has fitted to them words of accordance, the
most exquisite. There is a luxury in his grief,
and a sweet melancholy in his joy, which areWALLACE’S PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, &c.
81
old and well remembered in our experience,
though scarcely ever before thus nicely re-
vived in poetry.
The works of Crabbe are full of good sense,
condensed thought, and lively picture ; yet the
greater part of them is almost the converse of
poetry. The mirror which he holds up to
nature, is not that of imagination, which soft-
ens down the asperities of actual existences,
brings out the stately and the beautiful, while
it leaves the trivial and the low in shadow, and
sets all things which it reflects in harmony
before us : on the contrary, it exhibits the de-
tails of the coarsest and most unpleasing reali-
ties, with microscopic accuracy and minute-
ness. Some of his subjects are, in themselves,
worthless—others are absolutely revolting—
yet it is impossible to avoid admiring the
strange nicety of touch with which he has
felt their discordances, and the ingenuity with
which he has painted them. His likenesses ab-
solutely startle us.—There are cases in which
this intense consciousness of little circum-
stances is prompted by deep passion; and,
whenever Mr. Crabbe seizes one of these, his
extreme minuteness rivets and enchants us.
The effect of this vivid picturing in one of his
tales, where a husband relates to his wife the
story of her own intrigue before marriage, as
a tale of another, is thrilling and grand. In
some of his poems, as his Sir Eustace Grey and
the Gipsy-woman's Confession, he has shown that
he can wield the mightiest passions with ease,
when he chooses to rise from the contempla-
tion of the individual to that of the universal;
from the delineation of men and things, to that
of man and the universe.
We dissent from many of Leigh Hunt’s prin-
ciples of morality and of taste ; but we cannot
suffer any difference of opinion to prevent the
avowal of our deep sense of his poetical genius.
He is a poet of various and sparkly fancy, of
real affectionate heartiness, and of pathos as
deep and pure as that of any living writer. He
unites an English homeliness, with the richest
Italian luxury. The story of Rimini is one of
the most touching, which we have ever re-
ceived into our “ heart of hearts.” The crisp-
ness of the descriptive passages, the fine spirit
of gallantry in the chivalrous delineations,
the exquisite gradations of the fatal affection
and the mild heart-breaking remorse of the
heroine, form, altogether, a body of sweetly-
bitter recollections, for which none but the
most heartless of critics would be unthankful.
The fidelity and spirit of his little translations
are surprising. Nor must we forget his prose
works;—the wonderful power, with which he
has for many years sent forth weekly essays,
of great originality, both of substance and ex-
pression ; and which seem now as fresh and
unexhausted as ever. We have nothing here
to do with his religion or his politics ;—but, it
is impossible to help admiring the healthful
impulses, which he has so long been breathing
“ into the torpid breast of daily lifeor the
plain and manly energy, with which he has
shaken the selfism of the age, and sent the
claims of the wretched in full and resistless
force to the bosoms of the proud, or the thought-
less. In some of his productions—especially
11
in several numbers of the Indicator—he has re-
vived some of those lost parts of our old ex-
perience, which we had else wholly forgotten ;
and has given a fresh sacredness to our daily
walks and ordinary habits. We do not see
any occasion in this for terms of reproach or
ridicule. The scenery around London is not
the finest in the world ; but it is all which an
immense multitude can see of nature, and
surely it is no less worthy an aim to hallow a
spot which thousands may visit, than to ex-
patiate on the charms of some dainty solitude,
which can be enjoyed only by an occasional
traveller.
There are other living poets, some of them
of great excellence, on whose merits we should
be happy to dwell, but that time and space
would fail us. We might expatiate on the
heaven-breathing pensiveness of Montgomery
—on the elegant reminiscences of Rogers—on
the gentle eccentricity of Wilson—on the lux-
urious melancholy of Bowles—or on the soft
beauties of the Ettrick Shepherd. The works of
Lloyd are rich in materials of reflection—most
intense, yet most gentle—most melancholy,
yet most full of kindness—most original in
philosophic thought, yet most calm and be-
nignant towards the errors of-the world. Rey-
nolds has given delightful indications of a free,
and happy, and bounteous spirit, fit to sing of
merry out-laws and green-wood revelries,
which we trust he will suffer to refresh us
with its blithe carollings. Keats, whose Endy-
mion was so cruelly treated by the critics, has
just put forth a volume of poems which must
effectually silence his deriders. The rich ro-
mance of his Lamia—the holy beauty of his
St. Abies' Eve—the pure and simple diction and
intense feeling of his Isabella—and the rough
sublimity of his Hyperion—cannot be laughed
down, though all the periodical critics in Eng-
land and Scotland were to assail them with
their sneers. Shelley, too, notwithstanding the
odious subject of his last tragedy, evinced in
that strange work a real human power, of which
there is little trace among the old allegories and
metaphysical splendours of his earlier produc-
tions. No one can fail to perceive, that there are
mighty elements in his genius, although there is
a melancholy want of a presiding power—a
central harmony—in his soul. Indeed, rich as
the present age is in poetry, it is even richer in
promise. There are many minds—among
which we may, particularly, mention that of
Maturin—which are yet disturbed even by the
number of their own incomplete perceptions.
These, however, will doubtless fulfil their glo-
rious destiny, as their imaginations settle into
that calm lucidness, which in the instance of
Keats has so rapidly succeeded to turbid and
impetuous confusion.
The dramatic literature of the present age
does not hold a rank proportioned to its poetical
genius. But our tragedy, at least, is superior
to any which has been produced since the rich
period of Elizabeth and of James. Though
the dramatic works of Shiel, Matunn, Cole
ridge, and Milman, are not so grand, and har
monious, and impressive, as the talent of their
authors would lead us to desire, they are far
superior to the tragedies of Hill, Southern,82
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
Murphy, Johnson, Philipps, Thomson, Young,
Addison, or Rowe. Otway’s Venice Preserved
alone—and that only in the structure of its
plot—is superior to the Remorse, to Bertram,
Fazio, or Evadne. And then—more pure, more
dramatic, more gentle, than all these, is the
tragedy of Virginius—a piece of simple yet
beautiful humanity—in which the most exqui-
site succession of classic groups is animated
with young life and connected by the finest
links of interest—and the sweetest of Roman
stories lives before us at once, new and fami-
liar to our bosoms.
We shall not be suspected of any undue
partiality towards modern criticism. But its
talent shows, perhaps, more decidedly than
any thing else, the great start which the human
mind has taken of late years. Throughout
all the periodical works extant, from the Edin-
burgh Review down to the lowest of the maga-
zines, striking indications may be perceived
of “ that something far more deeply interfused,”
which is now working in the literature of
England. We not rarely see criticisms on
theatrical performances of the preceding even-
ing in the daily newspapers, which would put
to shame the elaborate observations of Dr.
Johnson on Shakspeare. Mr. Hazlitt—incom-
parably the most original of the regular cri-
tics—has almost raised criticism into an inde-
pendent art, and, while analyzing the merits
of others, has disclosed stores of sentiment,
thought, and fancy, which are his own peculiar
property. His relish for the excellencies of
those whom he eulogizes is so keen, that, in
his delineations, the pleasures of intellect be-
come almost as vivid and substantial as those
of sense. He introduces us into the very pre-
sence of the great of old time, and enables us
almost to imagine that we hear them utter the
living words of beauty and wisdom. He makes
us companions of their happiest hours, and
share not only in the pleasures which they
diffused, but in those which they tasted. He
discloses to us the hidden soul of beauty, not
like an anatomist but like a lover. His criti-
cisms, instead of breaking the sweetest en-
chantments of life, prolongs them, and teaches
uis to love poetic excellence more intensely, as
well as more wisely.
The present age is, also, honourably distin-
guished by the variety and the excellence of
productions from the pen of women. In poetry
—there is the deep passion, richly tinged with
fancy, of Baillie—the delicate romance of Mit-
ford—the gentle beauty and feminine chivalry
of Beetham—and'the classic elegance of He-
mans. There is a greater abundance of female
talent among the novelists. The exquisite sar-
casm of humour of Madame D’Arblay—the
soft and romantic charm of the novels of the
Porters—the brilliant ease and admirable good
sense of Edgeworth—the intense humanity
of Inchbald—the profound insight into the
fearful depths of the soul with which the au-
thor of Glenarvon is gifted—the heart-rending
pathos of Opie—and the gentle wisdom, the
holy sympathy with the holiest childhood, and
the sweet imaginings, of the author of Mrs.
Leicester's School—soften and brighten the lite-
rary aspect of the age. These indications of
female talent are not only delightful in them-
selves, but inestimable as proofs of the rich
intellectual treasures which are diffused
throughout the sex, to whom the next genera-
tion will owe their first and their most sacred
impressions.
But, after all, the best intellectual sign of the
present times is the general education of the
poor. This ensures duration to the principles
of good, by whatever political changes the
frame of society may be shaken. The sense
of human rights and of human duties is not
now confined to a few, and, therefore, liable to
be lost, but is stamped in living characters on
millions of hearts. And the foundations of
human improvement thus secured, it has a
tendency to advance in a true geometrical pro-
gression. Meanwhile, the effects of the spirit
of improvement which have long been silently
preparing in different portions of the globe,
are becoming brilliantly manifest. The vast
continent of South America, whether it con-
tinue nominally dependent on European states,
or retain its own newly-asserted freedom, will
teem with new intellect, enterprise, and energy.
Old Spain, long sunk into the most abject de-
gradation, has suddenly awakened, as if re-
freshed from slumber, and her old genius must
revive with her old dignities. A bloodless
revolution has just given liberty to Naples,
and thus has opened the way for the restora-
tion of Italy. That beautiful region again will
soon inspire her bards with richer strains than
of yore, and diffuse throughout the world a
purer luxury. Amidst these quickenings of
humanity, individual poets, indeed, must lose
that personal importance which in darker pe-
riods would be their portion. All selfism—all
predominant desire for the building up of indi-
vidual fame—must give way to the earnest
and simple wish to share in, and promote, the
general progress of the species. He is un-
worthy of the name of a great poet, who is
not contented that the loveliest of his imagina-
tions should be lost in the general light, or
viewed only as the soft and delicate streaks
which shall usher in that glorious dawn, which
is, we believe, about to rise on the world, and
to set no more ?ON PULPIT ORATORY.
83
ON PULPIT ORATORY.
WITH REMARKS ON THE REV. ROBERT HALL.
[London Magazine.]
The decline of eloquence in the Senate and
at the Bar is no matter of surprise. In the
freshness of its youth, it was the only medium
by which the knowledge and energy of a single
heart could be communicated to thousands.
It supplied the place, not only of the press, but
of that general communication between the
different classes of the state, which the inter-
courses of modern society supply. Then the
passions of men, unchilled by the frigid cus-
toms of later days, left them open to be in-
flamed or enraptured by the bursts of enthu-
siasm, which would now be met only with
scorn. In our courts of law occasions rarely
arise for animated addresses to the heart; and
even when these occur, the barrister is fettered
by technical rules, and yet more by the techni-
cal habits and feelings, of those by whom he
is encircled. A comparatively small degree
of fancy, and a glow of social feeling, directed
by a tact which will enable a man to proceed
with a constant appearance of directing his
course within legal confines, are now the best
qualifications of a forensic orator. They were
exhibited by Lord Erskine in the highest per-
fection, and attended with the most splendid
success. Had he been greater than he was,
he had been nothing. He ever seemed to
cherish an affection for the technicalities of
his art, which won the confidence of his duller
associates. He appeared to lean on these as
his stays and resting-places, even when he
ventured to look into the depth of human na-
ture, or to catch a momentary glimpse of the
regions of fantasy. When these were taken
from him, his powers fascinated no longer.
He was exactly adapted to the sphere of a
court of law—above his fellows, but not be-
yond their gage—and giving to the forms
which he could not forsake, an air of venera-
bieness and grandeur. Any thing more full
of beauty and wisdom than his speeches,
would be heard only with cold and bitter scorn
in an English court of justice. In the houses
of parliament, mightier questions are debated;
but no speaker hopes to influence the decision.
Indeed the members of opposition scarcely pre-
tend to struggle against the “ dead eloquence of
votes,” but speak with a view to an influence on
the public mind, which is a remote and chilling
aim. Were it otherwise, the academic educa-
tion of the members—the prevalent disposition
to ridicule, rather than to admire—and the
sensitiveness which resents a burst of enthu-
siasm as an offence against the decorum of
polished society—would effectually repress any
attempt to display an eloquence in which in-
tense passion should impel the imagination,
and noble sentiment should be steeped in
fancy. The orations delivered on charitable
occasions,—consisting, with few exceptions,
of poor conceits, miserable compliments, and
hackneyed metaphors,—are scarcely worthy
of a transient allusion.
But the causes which have opposed the ex-
cellence of pulpit oratory in modern times
are not so obvious. Its subjects have never
varied, from the day when the Holy Spirit
visibly descended on the first advocates of the
gospel, in tongues of fire. They are in no
danger of being exhausted by frequency, or
changed with the vicissitudes of mortal for-
tune. They have immediate relation to that
eternity, the idea of which is the living soul of
all poetry and art. It is the province of the
preachers of Christianity to develope the con-
nection between this world and the next—to
watch over the beginnings of a course which
will endure for ever—and to trace the broad
shadows cast from imperishable realities on the
shifting scenery of earth. This sublunary
sphere does not seem to them as trifling or
mean, in proportion as they extend their views
onward; but assumes a new grandeur and
sanctity, as the vestibule of a statelier and an
eternal region. The mysteries of our being—
life and death—both in their strange essences,
and in their sublimer relations, are topics of
their ministry. There is nothing affecting in
the human condition, nothing majestic in the
affections, nothing touching in the instability
of human dignities,—the fragility of loveli-
ness,—or the heroism of self-sacrifice—which
is not a theme suited to their high purposes.
It is theirs to dwell on the eldest history of the
world—on the beautiful simplicities of the pa-
triarchal age—on the stern and awful religion,
and marvellous story of the Hebrews—on the
glorious visions of the prophets, and their fulfil-
ment—on the character, miracles, and death
of the Saviour—on all the wonders, and all the
beauty of the Scriptures. It is theirs to trace
the spirit of the boundless and the eternal,
faintly breathing in every part of the mystic
circle of superstition, unquenched even amidst
the most barbarous rites of savage tribes, and
all the cold and beautiful shapes of Grecian
mould. The inward soul of every religious
system—the philosophical spirit of all history—
the deep secrets of the human heart, when
grandest or most wayward—are theirs to
search and to develope. Even those specula-
tions which do not immediately affect man’s
conduct and his hopes are theirs, with all their
high casuistry; for in these, at least, they dis-
cern the beatings of the soul against the barn
of its earthly tabernacle, which prove the im-
mortality of its essence, and its destiny to
move in freedom through the vast ethereal cir-
cle to which it thus vainly aspires. In all the
intensities of feeling, and all the regalities of
imagination, they may find fitting materials for84
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
their passionate expostulations with their fel-
low men to turn their hearts to those objects
which will endure for ever.
It appears, therefore, at first observation,
strange, that in this country, where an irreli-
gious spirit has never become general, the ora-
tory of the pulpit has made so little progress.
The ministers of the Established Church have
not, on the whole, fulfilled the promise given
in the days of its early zeal. The noble en-
thusiasm of Hooker—the pregnant wit of
South—the genial and tolerant warmth of
Tillotson—the vast power of reasoning and ob-
servation of Barrow—have rarely been copied,
even feebly, by their successors. Jeremy Tay-
lor stands altogether alone among churchmen.
Who has ever manifested any portion of that
exquisite intermixture of a yearning love with
a heavenly fancy, which enabled him to em-
body and render palpable the holy charities of
his religion in the loveliest and most delicate
images l Who has ever so encrusted his sub-
jects with candied words ; or has seemed, like
him, to take away the sting of death with “ rich
conceit;” or has, like him, half persuaded his
hearers to believe that they heard the voice of
pitying angels 1 Few, indeed, of the ministers
of the church have been endued with the di-
vine imagination which might combine, en-
large, and vivify the objects of sense, so as,
by stately pictures, to present us with symbols
of that uncreated beauty and grandeur in
which hereafter we shall expatiate. The most
celebrated of them have been little more than
students of vast learning and research, unless,
with Warburton and Horselejq they have
aspired at once boldly to speculate, and impe-
riously to dogmatize.
It cannot be doubted, that the species of pa-
tronage, by which the honours and emoluments
of the establishment are distributed, has lended
to prevent the development of genius within
its pale. But, perhaps, we may find a more
adequate cause for the low state of its preach-
ing in the very beauty and impressiveness of
its rites and appointed services. The tendency
of religious ceremonies, of the recurrence of
old festivals, and of a solemn and dignified
form of worship, is, doubtless, to keep alive
tender associations in the heart, and to pre-
serve the flame of devotion steady and pure,
but not to incite men to look abroad into their
nature, or to prompt any lofty excursions of
religious fancy. There have, doubtless, been
eloquent preachers in the church of Rome,—
because in her communion the ceremonies
themselves are august and fearful, and because
her proselyting zeal inspired her sons with
peculiar energy. But episcopacy in England
is by far the most tolerant of systems ever
associated with worldly power. Its ministers,
until the claim of some of them, to the exclu-
sive title of evangelical, created dissensions,
breathed almost uniformly a spirit of mildness
and peace. Within its sacred boundaries, all
was order, repose, and charity. Its rights and
observances were the helps and leaning-places
of the soul, on which it delighted to rest amidst
the vicissitudes of the world, and in its ap-
proach to its final change. The fulness, the
majesty, and the dignified benignities of the
Liturgy sunk deep into the heart, and pre-
vented the devout worshipper from feeling the
want of strength or variety in the discourses
of the preacher. The church-yard, with its
gentle risings, and pensive memorials of affec-
tion, was a silent teacher, both of vigilance
and love. And the village spire, whose “si-
lent finger points to heaven,” has supplied the
place of loftiest imaginings of celestial glory.
Obstacles of a far different kind long pre-
vented the advancement of pulpit eloquence
among the Protestant Dissenters. The minis-
ters first ejected for non-conformity were men
of rigid honesty and virtue,—but their intel-
lectual sphere was little extended beyond that
of their fellows. There cannot be a greater
mistake than to suppose that they sacrificed
their worldly interest from any regard to the
principles of free inquiry, which have since
almost become axioms. They believed that
their compliance with the requisitions of the
monarch would be offensive to God, and that
in refusing to yield it they were doing his will;
but they were prepared in their turn to assume
the right of interpreting the Bible for others,
and of condemning them for a more extended
application of their example. Harassed, ridi-
culed, and afflicted, they naturally contracted
an air of rigidity, and refused, in their turn,
with horror, an extensive sympathy with the
world. The controversies in which the learned
men among the Dissenters were long occupied,
having respect, not to grand and universal
principles, but to petty questions of ceremony
and minor points of faith, tended yet farther
to confine and depress their genius. Their
families were not the less scenes of love, be-
cause they preserved parental authority in its
state ; but the austerity of their manner tended
to repress the imaginative faculties of the
young. If they indulged themselves in any
relaxation of manner, it was not with flowing
eloquence, but with the quaint conceit and
grave jest that they garnished their conversa-
tion or their discourses. Their religion wore
a dark and uncouth garb; but to this we are
indebted, in no small degree, for its preserva-
tion through times of demoralizing luxury.
A great change has taken place, of late
years, in the literature and eloquence of Pro-
testant Dissenters. As they ceased to be ob-
jects of persecution or of scorn, they insensibly
lost the austerity and exclusiveness of their
character. They descended from their dusty
retirements to share in the pursuits and inno-
cent enjoyments of “this bright and breathing
world.” Their honest bigotries gave way at
the warm touch of social intercourse with
those from whom they dissented. Meanwhile,
the exertions of Whitefield,—his glowing, pas-
sionate, and awful eloquence ;—his daring and
quenchless enthusiasm.—and the deep and ex-
tensive impression which he made throughout
the kingdom, necessarily aroused those who
received his essential doctrines, into new zeal.
The impulse thus given was happily refined
by a taste for classical learning, and for the
arts and embellishments of life, which was
then gradually insinuating itself into their
churches. Some of the new converts who
forsook the establishment, not from repug-ON PULPIT ORATORY.
85
nance to its constitution, but to its preachers,
maintained, in the first eagerness of their faith,
the barbarous notion that human knowledge
was useless, and even dangerous, to the Chris-
tian minister. The absurdity of this position,
however strikingly exemplified in the advan-
tages gained by the enemies of those who
acted on it, served only to increase the desire
of the more enlightened and liberal among the
non-conformists, to emulate the church in the
intellectual qualification of their preachers.
They speedily enlarged the means of educa-
tion among them for the sacred office, and en-
couraged those habits of study, which promote
a refinement and delicacy of feeling in the
minds which they enlighten. Meanwhile, their
active participation in the noblest schemes of
benevolence, tended yet farther to expand their
moral horizon. Youths were found among
them prepared to sacrifice all the enjoyments
of civilized life, and at the peril of their lives
to traverse the remotest and the wildest re-
gions, that they might diffuse that religion
which is everywhere the parent of arts, chari-
ties, and peace. It is not the least benefit of
their Missionary exertions, that they have
given a romantic tinge to the feelings of men
“ in populous city pent,” and engrossed with
the petty and distracting cares of commerce.
These form the true Evangelical chivalry,
supplying to their promoters no small measure
of that mental refinement and elevation, which
the far less noble endeavours to recover the
Holy Sepulchre shed on Europe in the middle
ages. It is not easy to estimate the advantages
which spring from the extension of the imagi-
nation into the grandest regions of the earth,
and from the excitement of sympathies for the
condition of the most distant and degraded of
the species. The merchant, whose thoughts
would else rarely travel beyond his desk and
his fire-side, is thus busied with high musings
on the progress of the Gospel in the deserts
of Africa—skims with the lonely bark over
tropical seas—and sends his wishes and his
prayers over deserts which human footstep
has rarely trodden. Missionary zeal, thus dif-
fused among the people, has necessarily ope-
rated yet more strongly on the minds of the
ministers, who have leisure to indulge in these
delicious dreamings which such a cause may
sanction. These excellent men are now, for
the most part, not only the instructors, but the
ornaments of the circles in which they move.
The time which they are able to give to litera-
ture is well employed for the benefit of their
flocks. In the country, more especially, their
gentle manners, their extended information,
and their pure and blameless lives, do incalcu-
lable good to the hearts of their ruder hearers,
independent of their public services. Not
only in the more solemn of their duties,—in
admonishing the guilty, comforting the afflicted,
and cheering the dying—do they bless those
around them ; but by their demeanour, usually
dignified, yet cheerful, and their conversation
decorous, yet lively; they raise incalculably
the tone of social intercourse, and heighten
the innocent enjoyment of their friends. Some
of them are, at the present day, exhibiting no
or linary gifts and energies;—and to the most
distinguished of these, we propose to direct
the attention of our readers.
Mr. Hall, though perhaps the most distin-
guished ornament of the Calvinistic* Dissent-
ers, does not afford the best opportunity for
criticism. His excellence does not consist in
the predominance of one of his powers, but in
the exquisite proportion and harmony of all.
The richness, variety, and extent of his know-
ledge, are not so remarkable as his absolute
mastery over it. He moves about in the lof-
tiest sphere of contemplation, as though he
were “native and endued to its element.” He
uses the finest classical allusions, the noblest
images, and the most exquisite words, as though
they were those which came first to his mind,
and which formed his natural dialect. There
is not the least appearance of straining after
greatness in his most magnificent excursions,
but he rises to the loftiest heights with a child-
like ease. His style is one of the clearest and
simplest—the least encumbered with its own
beauty—of any which ever has been written.
It is bright and lucid as a mirror, and its most
highly-wrought and sparkling embellishments
are like ornaments of crystal, which, even in
their brilliant inequalities of surface, give
back to the eye little pieces of true imagery
set before them.
The works of this great preacher are, in the
highest sense of the term, imaginative, as dis-
tinguished not only from the didactic, but from
the fanciful. He possesses “ the vision and
the faculty divine,” in as high a degree as any
of our writers in prose. His noblest passages
do but make truth visible in the form of beauty,
and “ clothe upon” abstract ideas, till they be-
come palpable in exquisite shapes. The dullest
writer would not convey the same meaning in
so few words, as he has done in the most sub-
lime of his illustrations. Imagination, when
like his of the purest water, is so far from be-
ing improperly employed on divine" subjects,
that it only finds its real objects in the true
and the eternal. This power it is which dis-
dains the scattered elements of beauty, as they
appear distinctly in an imperfect world, and
strives by accumulation, and by rejecting the
alloy cast on all things, to imbody to the mind
that ideal beauty which shall be realized here-
after. This, by shedding a consecrating light
on all it touches, and “bringing them into
one,” anticipates the future harmony of crea-
tion. This ali'feady sees the “ soul of goodness
in things evil,” which shall one day change
the evil into its likeness. This already begins
the triumph over the separating powers of death
and time, and renders their victory doubtful,
by making us feel the immortality of the affec-
tions. Such is the faculty which is employed
by Mr. Hall to its noblest uses. There is no
rhetorical flourish—no mere pomp of words—
in his most eloquent discourses. With vast
excursive power, indeed, he can range through
all the glories of the Pagan world, and seizing
those traits of beauty which they derived from
* We use this epithet merely as that which will most
distinctively characterize the extensive class to which
it is applied—well aware that there are shades of differ-
ence among them—and that many of them would decline
to call themselves after any name but that of Christ.
H86
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
primeval revelation, restore them to the sys-
tem of truth. But he is ever best when he is
intensest—when he unveils the mighty foun-
dations of the rock of ages—or makes the
hearts of his hearers vibrate with a strange
joy which they will recognise in more exalted
stages of their being.
Mr. Hall has, unfortunately, committed but
few of his discourses to the press. His Ser-
mon on the tendencies of Modern Infidelity
is one of the noblest specimens of his genius.
Nothing can be more fearfully sublime, than
the picture which he gives of the desolate
state to which Atheism would reduce the
world; or more beautiful and triumphant,
than his vindication of the social affections.
His Sermon on the Death of Princess Char-
lotte contains a philosophical and eloquent
development of the causes which make the
sorrows of those who are encircled by the
brightest appearances of happiness, peculiarly
affecting; and gives an exquisite picture of the
gentle victim adorned with sacrificial glories.
His discourses on War—on the Discourage-
ments and supports of the Christian Ministry—
and on the Work of the Holy Spirit—are of
great and various excellence. But, as our
limits will allow only a single extract, we pre-
fer giving the close of a Sermon preached in
the prospect of the invasion of England by
Napoleon, in which he blends the finest re-
membrance of the antique world—the dearest
associations of British patriotism—and the
pure spirit of the gospel—in a strain as noble
as could have been poured out by Tyrtueus.
“ To form an adequate idea of the duties of
this crisis, it will be necessary to raise your
minds to a level with your station, to extend
your views to a distant futurity, and to conse-
quences the most certain, though most remote.
By a series of criminal enterprises, by the
successes of guilty ambition, the liberties of
Europe have been gradually extinguished:
the subjugation of Holland, Switzerland, and
the free towns of Germany, has completed that
catastrophe; and we are the only people in
the eastern hemisphere who are in possession
of equal laws, and a free constitution. Free-
dom, driven from every spot on the continent,
has sought an asylum in a country which she
always chose for her favourite abode: but she
is pursued even here, and threatened with de-
struction. The inundation of lawless power,
after covering the whole earth, threatens to
follow us here ; and we are most exactly, most
critically placed in the only aperture where it
can be successfully repelled, in the Thermopylae
of the universe. As far as the interests of free-
dom are concerned, the most important by far
of sublunary interests, you, my countrymen,
stand in the capacity of the federal representa-
tives of the human race ; for with you it is to
determine (under God) in what condition the
latest posterity shall be born ; their fortunes
are intrusted to your care, and on your con-
duct at this moment depends the colour and
complexion of their destiny. If liberty, after
being extinguished on the continent, is suf-
fered to expire here, whence is it ever to
emerge in the midst of that thick night that
will invest it ? It remains with you then to
decide whether that freedom, at whose voice
the kingdoms of Europe awoke from the sleep
of ages, to run a career of virtuous emulation
in every thing great and good; the freedom
which dispelled the mists of superstition, and
invited the nations to behold their God; whose
magic touch kindled the rays of genius, the
enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of elo-
quence ; the freedom which poured into our
lap opulence and arts, and embellished life
with innumerable institutions and improve-
ments, till it became a theatre of wonders; it is
for you to decide whether this freedom shall
yet survive, or be covered with a funeral pall,
and wrapped in eternal gloom. It is not
necessary to await your determination. In the
solicitude you feel to approve yourselves
worthy of such a trust, every thought of what
is afflicting in warfare, every apprehension of
danger must vanish, and you are impatient to
mingle in the battle of the civilized world. Go
then, ye defenders of your country, accompa-
nied with every auspicious omen; advance
with alacrity into the field, where God himself
musters the hosts to war. Religion is too
much interested in your success, not to lend
you her aid; she will shed over this enter-
prise her selectest influence. While you are
engaged in the field many will repair to the
closet, many to the sanctuary; the faithful of
every name will employ that prayer which has
power with God; the feeble hands which are
unequal to any other weapon, will grasp the
sword of the Spirit; and from myriads of
humble, contrite hearts, the voice of interces-
sion, supplication, and weeping, will mingle
in its ascent to heaven with the shout of battle
and the shock of arms.
“ While you have every thing to fear from
the success of the enemy, you have every
means of preventing that success, so that it is
next to impossible for victory not to crown
your exertions. The extent of your resources,
under God, is equal to the justice of our cause.
But should Providence determine otherwise,
should you fall in this struggle, should the
nation fall, you will have the satisfaction (the
purest allotted to man) of having performed
your part; your names will be enrolled with
the most illustrious dead, while posterity' to
the end of time, as often as they revolve the
events of this period, (and they will incessantly
revolve them,) will turn to you a reverential
eye, while they mourn over the freedom which
is entombed in your sepulchre. I cannot but
imagine the virtuous heroes, legislators, and
patriots, of every age and country, are bending
from their elevated seats to witness this con-
test, as if they were incapable, till it be brought
to a favourable issue, of enjoying their eternal
repose. Enjoy that repose, illustrious immor-
tals! Your mantle fell when you ascended,
and thousands, inflamed with your spirit, and
impatient to tread in your steps, are ready to
swear by Him that sitteth upon the throne, and
liveth for ever and ever, they will protect freedom
in her last asylum, and never desert that cause
which you sustained by your labours, and ce-
mented with your blood. And thou, sole Ruler
among the children of men, to whom the shields
of the earth belong, gird on thy sword, thou Not!RECOLLECTIONS OF LISBON.
87
Mighty: go forth with onr hosts in the day of
battle! Impart, in addition to their hereditary
valour, that confidence of success which springs
from thy presence ! Pour into their hearts the
spirit of departed heroes ! Inspire them with
thine own ; and, while led by thine hand, and
fighting under thy banners, open thou their
eyes to behold in every valley and in every
plain, what the prophet beheld by the same
illumination—chariots of fire, and horses of
fire : Then shall the strong man he as tow, and the
maker of it as a spark; and they shall burn toge-
ther, and none shall quench them.”
There is nothing very remarkable in Mr.
Hall’s manner of delivering his sermons. His
simplicity, yet solemnity of deportment, en-
gage the attention, but do not promise any of
his most rapturous effusions. His voice is
feeble, but distinct, and, as he proceeds, trem-
bles beneath his images, and conveys the
idea, that the spring of sublimity and beauty
in his mind is exhaustless, and would pour
forth a more copious stream, if it had a wider
channel than can be supp.ied by the bodily
organs. The plainest, and least inspired of
his discourses, are not without delicate gleams
of imagery and felicitous turns of expression.
He expatiates on the prophecies with a kindred
spirit, and affords awful glimpses into the valley
of vision. He often seems to conduct his hear-
ers to the top of the “ Delectable Mountains,”
whence they can see from afar the glorious
gates of the eternal city. He seems at home
among the marvellous Revelations of St. John ;
and, while he expatiates on them, leads his
hearers breathless through ever-varying scenes
of mystery, far more glorious and surprising
than the wildest of oriental fables. He stops
when they most desire that he should proceed
—when he has just disclosed the dawnings of
the inmost glory to their enraptured minds—
and leaves them full of imaginations of “ things
not made with hands,”—of joys too ravish-
ing for smiles—and of impulses which wing
their hearts, “ along the line of limitless de-
sires.”
RECOLLECTIONS OE LISBON.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
On the first of May, 1818, I sailed in one
of the government packets, from the beautiful
harbour of Falmouth, for Lisbon. The voy-
age, though it only lasted eight days, was suf-
ficiently long to excite an earnest desire for
our arrival at the port of our destiny. The
water which so majestically stretches before
us, when seen from a promontory or headland,
loses much of its interest and its grandeur
when it actually circles round us and shuts
us in from the world. The part which we are
able to discern from the deck of a vessel, ap-
pears of very small diameter, and its aspect
in fine weather is so uniform as to weary the
eye, which seems to sicken with following the
dance of the sunbeams, which alone diversify
its surface. There is something painfully
restless and shadowy in all around us, which
forces on our hearts that feeling of the insta-
bility and transitoriness of our nature, which
we lose among the moveless grandeurs of the
universe. On the sea, all without, instead of
affording a resting-place for the soul, is em-
blematic of the fluctuation of our mortal being.
Those who have long been accustomed to it
seem accommodated to their lot in feeling and
in character; snatch a hasty joy with eagerness
wherever it can be found,careless of the future,
and borne lightly on the wave of life without
forethought or struggle. To a landsman there
is something inexpressibly sad in the want of
material objects which endure. The eye turns
disappointed from the glorious panoply of
clouds which attend the setting sun, where it
has fancied thrones, and golden cities, and tem-
ples with their holy shrines far sunken within
outer courts of splendour, while it feels that
they are but for a moment, gay mockeries of
the state of man on earth. Often, during my
little voyage, did I, while looking over the side
of the vessel on the dark water, think of the
beautiful delineation by the most profound of
living poets, of the tender imaginations of a
mariner who had been reared among the
mountains, and in his heart was “half a shep-
herd on the stormy seas,” who was wont to
hear in the piping shrouds “the tones of water-
falls and inland sounds of caves and trees,”
and
“ When the regular wind
Between the tropics fill’d the steady sail,
And blew with the same breath through days and weeks.
Lengthening invisibly its weary line
Along the cloudless main, who in those hours
Of tiresome indolence, would often hang
Over the vessel’s side, and gaze and gaze:
And while the broad green wave and sparkling foam
Flashed round him images and hues that wrought
In union with the employment of his heart,
He, thus by feverish passion overcome,
Even with the organs of his bodily eye,
Below him, in the bosom of the deep,
Saw mountains—saw the forms of sheep that grazed
On verdant hills—with dwellings among trees,
And shepherds clad in the same country gray
Which he himself had worn.”*
I remember, however, with gratitude two
evenings, just after the renewal of the moon,
which were rendered singularly lovely by a
soft, tender, and penetrating light which seemed
* See Wordsworth’s most affecting pastoral of “The
Brothers.”88
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
scarcely of this world. The moon on its first
appearance, before the western lustre had en-
tirely faded away, cast no reflection, however
pale, on the waves; but seemed like some
princely maiden exposed for the first time to
vulgar gaze, gently to shrink back as though
she feared some contamination to her pure and
celestial beauty from shining forth on so busy
and turbulent a sphere. As night advanced, it
was a solemn pleasure to stand on the deck
of the vessel, borne swiftly along the noiseless
sea, and gaze on the far-retiring stars in the
azure distance. The mind seems, in such a
scene, almost to “o’er-inform its tenement of
clay,” and to leap beyond it. It dwells not on the
changes of the world ; for in its high abstrac-
tion, all material things seem but passing
shadows. Life, with.its realities, appears like a
vanishing dream, and the past a tale scarcely
credited. The pulses of mortal existence are
almost suspended—“thought is not—in enjoy-
ment it expires.” Nothing seems to be in the
universe but one’s self and God. No feeling
of loneliness has entrance, for the great spirit
of Eternal Good seems shedding mildest and
selectest influences on all things.
On the eighth morning after our departure
from Falmouth, on coming as usual on the
deck, I found that we were sailing almost close
under “the Rock of Lisbon,” which breasts
the vale of Cintra. It is a stupendous moun-
tain of rock, extending very far into the sea,
and rising to a dizzy height above it. The sides
are broken into huge precipices and caverns
of various and grotesque forms, are covered
with dark moss, or exhibit naked stones black-
ened with a thousand storms. The top con-
sists of an unequal ridge of apparently shivered
rock, sometimes descending in jagged lines,
and at others rising into sharp, angular and
pointed pyramids, which seem to strike into
the clouds. What a feeling does such a mo-
nument excite, shapeless, rugged, and setting
all form at defiance—when the heart feels that
it has outlived a thousand generations of pe-
rishable man, and belongs to an antiquity com-
pared with which the wonders of Egypt are
modern ! It seems like the unhewn citadel of
a giant race; the mighty wreck of an older
and more substantial world.
Leaving the steeps and everlasting recesses
of this huge mass, we passed the coasts of
Portugal. The fields lying near the shore ap-
peared for the most part barren, though broken
into gentle undulations, and adorned with large
spreading mansions and neat villages. A
pleasant breeze brought us soon to the mouth
of the Tagus, where a scene of enchantment,
“ too bright and fair almost for remembrance,”
burst upon my view. We sailed between the
two fortresses which guard the entrance of the
river, here several miles in width, close to the
walls of that on the left, denominated “ Fort
St. Julian.” The river, seen up to the beautiful
castle of Belem, lay before us, not serpentine
nor perceptibly contracting, but between al-
most parallel shores, like a noble avenue of
crystal. It was studded with vessels of every
region, as the sky is sprinkled with stars, which
rested on a bosom of waters so calm as
scarcely to be curled by the air which wafted
us softly onwards. On both sides, the shore
rose into a series of hills on the right side,
wild, abrupt, mazy, and tangled, and on the
left, covered with the freshest verdure and in*
terspersed with luxuriant trees. Noble seats
appeared crowning the hills and sloping on
their sides; and in the spaces between the
elevated spots, glimpses were caught of sweet
valleys winding among scattered woods, or
of princely domes and spires in the richness
of the distance. All wore, not the pale livery
of an opening spring, but the full bloom of
maturest summer. The transition to such a
scene, sparkling in the richest tints of sunshine
and overhung by a cloudless sky of the deepest
blue, from the scanty and just-budding foliage
of Cornwall, as I left it, was like the change
of a Midsummer Night’s Dream; a sudden ad-
mission into fairy worlds. As we glided up
the enchanted channel, the elevations on the
left became overspread with magnificent build-
ings, like mingled temples and palaces, rising
one above another into segments of vast am-
phitheatres, and interspersed with groves of the
fullest yet most delicate green. Close to the
water lay a barbaric edifice, of rich though
fantastic architecture, a relic of Moorish gran-
deur, now converted into the last earthly abode
of the monarchs of Portugal. Hence the
buildings continued to thicken over the hills
and to assume a more confused, though
scarcely less romantic aspect, till we anchored
in front of the most populous part of Lisbon.
The city was stretched beyond the reach of
the eye, on every side, upon the ascents and
summits of very lofty and steep elevations.
The white houses, thickly intersected with
windows, mostly framed with green and white
lattice-work, seemed to have their foundations
on the tops of others : terraces appeared lifted
far above the lofty buildings, and other edifices
rose above them; gardens looked as suspended
by magic in the clouds, and the whole scene
wore an aspect of the most gorgeous confusion
—“ all bright and glittering in the smokeless
air.” We landed, and the enchantment van-
ished, at least for a season. Very narrow
streets, winding in ceaseless turnings over
steep ascents and declivities, paved only with
sharp flints, and filthy beyond compare, now
seemed to form the interior of the promised
elysium. Nature and the founders of the city
appeared to have done their best to render the
spot a paradise, and modern generations their
worst to reduce it to a sink of misery.
Lisbon, like ancient Rome, is built on at
least seven hills. It is fitted by situation to be
one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Seated, or rather enthroned on such a spot,
commanding a magnificent harbour, and over-
looking one of the noblest rivers of Europe, it
might be more distinguished for external
beauty than Athens in the days of her free-
dom. Now it seems rather to be the theatre in
which the two great powers of deformity and
loveliness are perpetually struggling for the
mastery. The highest admiration and the
most sickening disgust alternately prevail in
the mind of the beholder. Never was there so
strange an intermixture of the mighty and the
mean—of the pride of wealth and the abject-RECOLLECTIONS OF LISBON.
89
ness of poverty—of the memorials of greatness
and the symbols of low misery—of the filthy
and the romantic. I will dwell, however, on
the fair side of the picture ; as I envy not those
who delight in exhibiting the frightful or the
gloomy, in the moral or the natural world.
Often after traversing dark and wretched
streets, at a sudden turn, a prospect of inimi-
table beauty bursts on the eye of the spectator.
He finds himself, perhaps, on the brink of a
mighty hollow scooped out by nature amidst
hills, all covered to the tops with edifices, save
where groves of the freshest verdure are in-
terspersed ; or on one side, a mountain rises
into a cone far above the city, tufted with
woods and crowned with some castellated pile,
the work of other days. The views fronting
the Tagus are still more extensive and grand.
On one of these I stumbled a few evenings
after my arrival, which almost suspended the
breath with wonder. I had laboured through
a steep and narrow street almost choked with
dirt, when a small avenue on one side, ap-
parently more open, tempted me to step aside
to breathe the fresher air. I found myself on
a little plot of ground, hanging apparently in
the air, in the front of one of the churches. I
stood against the column of the portico ab-
sorbed in delight and wonder. Before me lay
a large portion of the city—houses descended
beneath houses, sinking almost precipitously
to a fearful depth beneath me, whose frame-
works, covered over with vines of delicate
green, broke the ascent like prodigious steps,
by which a giant might scale the eminence—
the same “ wilderness of building” filled up the
vast hollow, and rose by a more easy slope to
the top of the opposite hills, which were
crowned with turrets, domes, mansions, and
regal pavilions of a dazzling whiteness—be-
yond the Tagus, on the southern shore, the
coast rose into wild and barren hills, wearing
an aspect of the roughest sublimity and gran-
deur—and, in the midst, occupying' the bosom
of the great vale, close between the glorious
city and the unknown wilds, lay the calm and
majestic river, from two to three miles in width,
seen with the utmost distinctness to its mouth,
on each side of which the two castles which
guard it were visible, and spread over with a
thousand ships—onward yet farther, far as the
eye could reach, the living ocean was glisten-
ing, and ships, like specks of the purest white,
were seen crossing it to and fro, giving to the
scene an imaginary extension, by carrying the
mind with them to far-distant shores. It was
the time of sunset, and clouds of the richest
saffron rested on the bosom of the air, and
were reflected in softer tints in the waters. Not
a whisper reached the ear. “ The holy time
was quiet as a nun breathless with adoration.”
The scene looked like some vision of blissful
enchantment, and I scarcely dared to stir or
breathe lest it should vanish away.
The eastern quarter of Lisbon, which is
chiefly built since the great earthquake, stands
almost on level ground; and, though sur-
rounded by steep hills, with trees among their
precipices, and aerial terraces on their sum-
mits, is not in itself very singular or romantic.
A square of noble extent, open on the south
12
to the Tagus, which here spreads out into a
breadth of many miles, so as to wear almost
the appearance of an inland lake, forms the
southern part of this modern city. At the
south-eastern angle, close to the river, stands
the Exchange, which is a square white build-
ing, of no particular beauty or size. The sides
of the square are occupied with dull-looking
white buildings, which are chiefly offices of
state, excepting, indeed, that the plan is in-
completely executed, as the unfinished state
of the western range of edifices sadly evinces.
In the centre is an equestrian statue of King
Joseph, on a scale so colossal that the image
of Charles on horseback at Charing Cross
would appear a miniature by its side. From
the northern side of this quadrangle run three
streets, narrow but built in perfect uniformity,
and of more than a quarter of a mile in length,
which connect it with another square called
the Rocio, of nearly similar magnitude and
proportions. The houses in these streets are
white, of five stories in height, with shops,
more resembling cells than the brilliant re-
positories of Cheapside, in the lower depart-
ments, and latticed windows in the upper
stories.—They have on both sides elevated
pathways for foot passengers, neatly paved
with blocks of stone, and leaving space for
two carriages to pass in the centre. The
Rocio is surrounded on three sides with houses
resembling those in the streets, and on the
north by a range of building belonging to the
Inquisition, the subterranean prisons of which
extend far beneath the square. A little on-
ward to the north of this area, amidst filthy
suburbs, stands the public garden of the city.
It is an oblong piece of ground, of considera-
ble extent, surrounded by high walls, but al-
ways open at proper hours to the public. It
is planted with high trees of the most delicate
green, which, however, do not form a mass of
impervious shade, but afford many spots of the
thickest shelter, and give room for the play
of the warm sunbeams, and for the contem-
plation of the stainless sky. The garden is
laid out with more regularity than taste: one
broad walk runs completely through it from
north to south, on each side of which, beneath
the loftier shade, are tall hedge-rows, solid
masses of green, cut into the exactest parallel-
ograms. The equal spaces on each side of the
middle walk are intersected by similar hedge-
rows—sometimes curving into an open circle,
surrounded with circular trenches ; at others,
enclosing an angular space, railed in and culti-
vated with flowers, and occasionally expanding
into shapes yet more fantastic.—There is no in
tricacy, no beautiful wildness in the scene-
“half the platform just reflects the other” in
the minutest features—but the green is so fresh
and so abundant, and the air so delicately fra
grant, that this garden forms a retreat in the
warmth of summer which seems almost ely
sian.
There are two small places of public amuse-
ment in Lisbon, where dramatic pieces are
performed, chiefly taken from the Spanish.
The “ legitimate drama,” however, is of little
attraction, compared with the wonderful con-
tortions and rope-dancings which these houses
h 290
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
exhibit, and which are truly surprising. The
Opera House, called the Theatre San Carlos,
is, except on a few particular occasions, al-
most deserted. The audiences are usually so
thin, that it is not usual to light up the body
of the house, except on particular days, when
the rare illumination is duly announced in the
bills. I visited it fortunately on the birth-day
of the king, which is one of the most splendid
of its festivals. Its interior is not much smaller
than that of Covent Garden Theatre, though
it appears at the first glance much less, from
the extreme beauty of the proportions. The
form is that of an ellipse, exquisitely turned,
intersected at the farther extremity by the
stage. The sides are occupied by five tiers of
boxes, at least in appearance, for the upper
circles, which are appropriated to the populace
by way of gallery, are externally uniform with
the rest of the theatre. The prevailing colour
is white; the ornaments between the boxes,
consisting of harps and tasteful devices, are
of brown and gold, and elegantly divided into
compartments by rims of burnished gold. The
middle of the house is occupied by the grand
entrance into the pit, the royal box, and the
gallery above it, which is in continuation of
the higher circle. The royal box is from
twelve to fifteen feet in length, and occupies
in height the space of three rows of the com-
mon boxes. Above are the crown and regal
arms in burnished gold, and the sides are sup-
ported by statues of the same radiant appear-
ance. Curtains of green silk, of a fine texture,
usually conceal its internal splendours ; but on
this occasion they were drawn aside at the
same moment that the stage was discovered,
and displayed the interior illuminated with
great brilliancy. This seat of royalty is di-
vided into two stories—a slight gallery being
thrown over the back part of it. Its ground
is a deep crimson; the top descends towards
the back in a beautiful concave, representing
a rich veil of ermine. In the front of the
lower compartment, behind the seats, is the
crown of Portugal, figured on deep green vel-
vet; and the sides are adorned with elegant
mirrors. The centre of the roof of the theatre
is an ellipse, painted to represent the sky with
the moon and stars visible ; the sides sloping
to the upper boxes are of white adorned with
gold and crimson. The stage is supported on
each side by two pillars of the composite order,
of white and gold, half in relief, with a brazen
statue between each of them. It forms an
excellent framework for a dramatic picture.
The most singular feature of the house is a
clock over the centre of the stage, which regu-
larly strikes the hours, without mercy. What
a noble invention this for the use of those who
contend for the unity of time! How nicely
would it enable the French critics to estimate
the value of a tragedy at a single glance!
How accurately might the time be measured
out in which eternal attachments should be
formed, conspiracies planned, and states over-
thrown ; how might the passions of the soul
be rerouted to a minute, and the rise and
swell of the great emotions of the heart deter-
mined to a hair; with what accuracy might
the moments which the heroes have yet to live
be counted out like those of culprits at the
Old Bailey ! What huge criticisms of Corneille
and Voltaire would that little instrument sup-
ply ! What volumes, founded on its move-
ments, would it render superfluous! Even
Grecian regularity must yield before it, and
criticism triumph, by this invariable standard,
at once over Sophocles and Shakspeare.
The scenery was wretched—the singers
tolerable—and the band excellent. The ballet
took place between the acts of the opera, and
was spun out to great length. The dancing
consisted partly of wonderful twirlings of the
French school, and partly of the more wonder-
ful contortions of the Portuguese; both kinds
exceedingly clever, but exhibiting very little
of true beauty, grace, or elegance. At the
close of the first act, a perfect shower of roses,
pinks, and carnations, together with printed
sonnets, was poured down from the top of the
theatre in honour of his majesty, whose ab-
sence, however, even Portuguese loyalty can-
not pardon.
The churches are the most remarkable of
the public buildings of Lisbon; though plain
on the outside, they are exceedingly splendid
in the interior. The tutelary saints are richer
than many Continental princes, though their
treasures are only displayed to excite the re-
verence or the cupidity of the people on high
and festal occasions. The most beautiful,
though not the largest of the churches which I
have examined, is that of the Estrella, which
is lined with finely-varied and highly-polished
marble, vaulted over with a splendid and
sculptured roof, and adorned, in its gilded
recesses, with beautiful pictures. Were it not,
indeed, for the impression made on me by one
of the latter, I should scarcely have mentioned
this edifice, unable as I am technically to de-
scribe it. The piece to which I allude is not,
that I can discover, held in particular estima-
tion, or the production of any celebrated artist;
but it excited in me feelings of admiration and
delight, which can never die away. It repre-
sents Saint John in the Isle of Patmos, gazing
on the vision in which the angels are pouring
forth the vials, and with the pen in his hand,
ready to commit to sacred and imperishable
record the awful and mysterious scenes opened
before him. Never did I behold or imagine
such a figure. He is sitting, half entranced
with wonder at the revelation disclosed to
him, half mournfully conscious of the evils
which he is darkly to predict to a fated and
unheeding world. The face, in its mere form
and colouring, is most beautiful: its features
are perfectly lovely, though inclining rather to
cherubic roundness than Grecian austerity,
and its roseate bloom of youth is gently touch-
ed and softened by the feelings attendant on
the sad and holy vocation of the beloved dis-
ciple. The head is bent forward, in eager-
ness, anxiety, and reverence; the eyebrows
arched in wonder, yet bearing in every line
some undefinable expression of pity; the eyes
are uplifted, and beaming with holy inspira-
tion, yet mild, soft, angelical; around the ex-
quisitely-formed mouth, sweet tenderness for
the inevitable sorrows of mankind are playing;
and the bright chestnut hair, falling in massesRECOLLECTIONS OF LISBON.
91
over the shoulders, gives to all this expression
of high yet soft emotion, a finishing grace and
completeness. This figure displays such un-
speakable sweetness tempering such prophetic
fire ; such religious and saintly purity, mingled
with so genial a compassion ; it is at once so
individual and so ideal; so bordering on the
celestial, and yet so perfectly within the range
of human sympathies; that it is difficult to
say, whether the delicious emotions which it
inspires partake most of wonder or of love.
The image seemed, like sweet music, to sink
into the soul, there to remain for ever. To see
such a piece is really to be made better and
happier. The recollection is a precious trea-
sure for the feelings and the imagination, of
which nothing, while they endure, can deprive
them.
The church at Belem, a fortified place on
the Tagus, three or four miles from Lisbon,
where the kings and royal family of Portugal
have, for many generations, been interred,
must not be forgotten. It is one of the most
ancient buildings in the kingdom, having ori-
ginally been erected by the Romans, and
splendidly adorned by the Moorish sovereigns.
Formed of white stone, it is now stained to a
reddish brown by the mere influence of years,
and frowns over the water “cased in the un-
feeling armour of old time.” Its shape is
oblong, its sides of gigantic proportions, and
its massive appearance most grand and awe-
inspiring. The principal entrance is by a
deep archway, reaching to a great height, and
circular within, ornamented above and around
with the most crowded, venerable, and yet
fantastic devices—martyrs and heroes of chi-
valry—swords and crosiers—monarchs and
saints—crosses and sceptres—“ the roses and
flowers of kings” and the sad emblems of
mortality—all wearing the stamp of deep anti-
quity, all appearing carved out of one eternal
rock, and promising by their air of solid
grandeur to survive as many stupendous
changes as those which have already left them
unshaken. The interior of this venerable
edifice is not less awe-breathing or substantial.
Eight huge pillars of barbaric architecture,
and covered all over with strange figures and
grotesque ornaments in relievo, support the
roof, which is white, ponderous, and of a noble
simplicity, being only divided into vast square
compartments by the beams which cross it.
Such a pile, devoted to form the last resting-
place of a line of kings who have, each in his
brief span of time, held the fate of millions at
his pleasure, cannot fail to excite solemn and
pensive thought. And yet what are the feel-
ings thus excited, to those meditations to
which the great repository of the illustrious
deceased in England invites us ! Here we
think of nothing but the perishableness of man
in his best estate—the emptiness of human
honours—the low and frail nature of all the
distinctions of earth. A race of monarchs
occupy but a narrow vault: they were kings,
and now are dust; and this idea forced home
upon us, makes us feel that the most potent
and enduring of worldly things — thrones,
dynasties, and the peaceable succession of
high families—are but as feeble shadows. We
learn only to feel our weakness. But in the
sacred place where all that could perish of our
orators, philosophers, and poets, is reposing, we
feel our mortality only to lend us a stronger
and more ethereal sense of our eternal being.
Life and death seem met together, as in a holy
fane, in peaceful concord. While we feel that
the mightiest must yield to the stern law of
necessity, we know that the very monuments
which record the decay of their outward
frame, are so many proofs and symbols tha*
they shall never really expire. We feel tha1
those whose remembrance is thus extended
beyond the desolating power of the grave*
over whose fame death and mortal accidents
have no power, are not themselves destroyed.
And when we recollect the more indestructible
monuments of their genius, those works, which
live not only in the libraries of the studious,
but in the hearts and imaginations of men;
we are conscious at once, that the spirit which
conceived, and the souls which appreciate and
love them, are not of the earth, earthy. Our
thoughts are not wholly of humiliation and
sorrow ! but stretch forward, with a pensive
majesty, into the permanent and the im-
mortal.
Having inspected the city, I was naturally
anxious to visit the celebrated Aqueduct, which
is carried across a deep valley two or three
miles from Lisbon. Having passed the su-
burbs, and reached the open country, I saw, at
a sudden turn in the pathway, the mighty ob-
ject of my wanderings. I found myself on the
summit of a gently sloping declivity, at a little %
distance from the foot of which a hill rose to
an equal height, with a bold and luxuriant sweep.
It is across the expanse thus formed, that the
stupendous bridge runs, in two straight lines
from each eminence, which form an obtuse
angle in the centre. The whole is supported
by thirty-six arches, which, as the ground from
each extremity sinks, increase in height, or
rather depth, till in the middle of the pile, the
distance to which they ascend from the vale is
fearful. This huge structure is composed of
dark gray stone, the deep colour of which gives
to its massiveness an air of the sternest gran-
deur. The water is conveyed across the level
thus formed, through a chain of building which
occupies its centre, and appears almost like a
line of solid and unbroken rock. Above this
erection, turrets of still greater height, and of
the same materials, are reared at regular in-
tervals, and crown the whole. The road is
thus divided into two passes, which are se-
cured by high ridges of stone, in the long, un-
interrupted straight lines, which have an air
of so awful a grandeur in the noblest remains
of Roman art. The view from the southern
road, though romantic, is, for the most part,
confined within narrow boundaries, as rugged
hills arise on this side almost from the foot of
the Aqueduct, to a height far above its towers,
cultivated only towards the louver parts, and
covered on the loftier spots with a thin grass
and shapeless blocks or masses of granite.
This mountainous ridge breaks, however, in
the centre, and abruptly displays a piece of the
Tagus, like an inland lake, with its tenderly
rimpled blue, and the wild and lofty banks92
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
which rise precipitously beyond it. As the sun
was declining when I traversed this path, the
portion of craggy shore thus disclosed, and the
shrubs which flourish among its steeps, were
overcast with the richest tints from the west,
and the vessels gently gliding through the
opening made by the shaggy declivities of the
nearer hills, completed the feeling of genial
composure diffused over the scene. From the
northern side, the prospect appears arrayed
in far gayer charms. The valley here, from
the narrow point at which it is seen, spreads
out into a fanlike form, till the eminences on
each side seem gradually to melt away, and
the open country lies in full expanse to the
view. It is a scene of fresh, reposing, and
perfect beauty. Not an angular intersection
breaks the roundness, or interrupts the grace,
which characterize the whole. The hills in
the foreground sink from each side of the
Aqueduct, gradually to the depth of the vale,
covered with the freshest verdure, fluctuating
in a wave-like motion ; and the more distant
landscape appears composed of a thousand
gentle undulations, thrown up by Nature in
her sweetest mood, as though the earth were
swelling with an exuberant bounty, even to the
rim of the circling sky, with the form of which
all is harmonious. The green in which the
prospect is clothed, is of a softer and more
vivid hue than in England; the pastures seem
absolutely to sparkle on the eye; and, amidst
this “ splendour in the grass, this glory in the
flower,'” the lively groves of orange and the
villas of purest white scattered thickly around,
give to the picture a fairy brightness. And
yet, setting individual associations aside, I
prefer the scenery of my own country to this
enchanted vale. This is a landscape to visit
as a spectacle, not to live in. There is no
solemnity about it,—no austere beauty,—no
retiring loveliness; there are no grand masses
of shade,—no venerable oaks, which seem
coeval with the hills over which they cast
their shadows,—no vast colonnades, in which
the fine spirit of the elder time seems yet to
keep its state. Nature wears not the pale
livery which inspires meditation or solemn
joy ; her face seems wreathed in a perpetual
smile. The landscape breathes, indeed, of in-
toxicating delight; it invites to present joy;
but it leads to no tender reminiscences of the
past, nor gives solemn indications of the future.
It is otherwise in the very deficiencies, as they
are usually regarded, of our happier land.
There “ the pale primrose that dies unmarried’,
among the scanty hedge-rows, as an emblem
of innocence peeping forth amidst a cheerless
world, suggests more pensive yet delicious
musing, than the gaudiest productions of this
brighter clime. The wild roses, thinly inter-
spersed among our thickets, with their delicate
colouring and faint perfume, afford images of
rustic modesty, far sweeter and more genial
than the rich garlands which cluster here.
Those “ echoes from beyond the grave,” which
come to us amid the stillness of forests which
have outlived generations of men, are here
unheard. In these valleys we are dazzled,
surprised, enchanted ;—in ours we are moved
with solemn yet pleasing thoughts, which “do
often lie too deep for tears.”
Having traversed both sides of the aqueduct,
I resolved to ascend one of the hills beyond it,
for the purpose of obtaining a still more exten-
sive view. After a most weary ascent, of
which my eye had taken a very inadequate
estimate, I reached the summit and was amply
rewarded for my toils* To the north lay the
prospect which I have endeavoured to de-
scribe, softened in the distance; beneath was
the huge pile, with its massive arches and
lone turrets bridging the vale. To the south
was the Tagus, and, a little onward, its
entrance, where it gently blended with the sea.
Completely round the north-eastern side of the
horizon, the same mighty and beautiful river
appeared flowing on far beyond Lisbon in
a noble curve, which seemed to dissolve in
the lighter blue of the heavens. And full to
the west beyond the coast of Portugal, now
irradiated with the most brilliant colouring,
was the free and circling ocean, on which
amidst visionary shapes of orange and saffron
glory, the sun was, for his last moment, resting.
Soon the sky became literally “ fretted with
golden fire,” and the hills seemed covered
with a tender haze of light, which rendered
them yet lovelier. The moon began to blend
her mild radiance with the sweet twilight, as I
took the last glance at the vale, and hastened
to Lisbon.
On Thursday, the 21st of May, a grand festi-
val was holden in honour of Saint George,
who is held in peculiar reverence in Lisbon.
On this most sacred occasion, all the buildings
around the vast area of the Rocio were hung
with crimson tapestry; a road was formed of
fine gravel, guarded bylines of soldiers; and
the troops, to a great number, in splendid uni-
forms, occupied the most conspicuous pas-
sages. When all was prepared, the train is-
sued from a church in one of the angles of
the square, and slowly paraded round the path
prepared for it. It consisted of all the eccle-
siastical orders, attired in their richest vest-
ments, and bearing, alternately, crosses of
gold and silver; canopies of white, purple,
orange, and crimson silk, bordered with deep
fringes; and gorgeous banners, decorated with
curious devices. The canopy which floated
over the consecrated wafer, formerly borne by
the king and the princes, was, on this occasion,
carried by the chief persons of the regency.
But the most remarkable object was the Saint
himself, who, “ not to speak it profanely,” is no
other than a wooden figure, and, I am afraid,
must yield in proportion and in grace to that
unconsecrated work, the Apollo Belvidere. He
was seated on a noble horse, and arrayed
in a profusion of gems, which, according to
the accounts of the Portuguese, human power
could hardly calculate. His boots were of
solid silver; his whole person begirt with jew-
els, and his hat glittered in the sun like one
prodigious diamond. He descended in state
from the castle to the church, whence the pro-
cession issued, and remained there during the
solemnities. He was saluted on leaving his
mansion, with a discharge of artillery, and re-RECOLLECTIONS OF LISBON.
93
ceived the same compliment on his return to
that favoured residence. The people, who were
of course assembled in great crowds, did not
appear to me to look on the magnificent dis-
play before them with any feeling of religious
awe, or to regard it in any other light than, at
the most, a national spectacle.
Of the national character of the Portuguese
in general, I can say very little, as my personal
intercourse with them was extremely limited.
Were I to believe all that some English resi-
dents in Lisbon have told me, I should draw a
gloomy picture of human degradation unre-
lieved by a single redeeming grace. I should
say that the common people are not only igno-
rant and filthy, but universally dishonest; that
they blend the vices of savage and social life,
and are ready to become either pilferers or
assassins; that they are cruel to their children,
lax in friendship, and implacable in revenge;
that the higher orders are at once the dupes
and tyrants of their servants, familiar with
them one moment, and brutally despotic the
next; that they are in constant jealousy of their
wives, and not without reason; and that even |
their vices are without dignity or decorum.
All this can never be true, or Lisbon would not be 1
subsisting in order and peace. To me, the in-
habitants appear in a more amiable light.
Filthy and ignorant the common people doubt-
less are; but they are sober; and those dreadful
excesses and sorrows which arise from the use,
in England, of ardent spirits, are consequently
unknown. They are idle; but the warmth of
the climate may, in some degree, excuse them.
No rank is destitute of some appearance of
native courteousness. The rich are not, indeed,
Howards or Clarksons; they have no idea of
exerting themselves to any great degree, to
draw down blessings on the heads of others or
their own; they do not go in search of wretched-
ness in order to remove it, but when misery is
brought before them, as it is constantly here, in
a thousand ghastly forms, they are far from with-
holding such aid as money can render. The
gardens of their country villas, which are ex-
ceedingly elegant, are always open in the even-
ings to any of the populace who choose to
walk there, so that the citizen, on the numerous
holidays which the Romish church affords,
is not compelled to inhale the dust in some
wrretched tea-garden, wThich is a libel at once on
nature and art, but may rove with his children
through groves of orange and thickets of roses.
When the company thus indulged meet any of
the family which reside in the mansion, they
acknowledge the favour which they are enjoy-
ing by obeisances not ungracefully made, which
are always returned with equal courtesy. I
am assured, that this privilege is never abused;
even the children walk amidst the flowers and
the fruits, without the slightest idea of touching
them. This circumstance alone would induce
me to doubt the justice with wrhich some have
attempted to fix the brand of dishonesty on the
inferior classes of Portugal. The people want
not the natural tenderness and gentle move-
ments of the heart; all their deficiencies arise
from the absence of high principle, the lan-
guishing of intellect, and the decay of the loftier
powers and energies -which dignify man. They
have no enthusiasm, no devoted admiration, or
love, for objects unconnected with the neces-
sities of their mortal being, or the low grati-
fications of sense. They have a few mighty
names to lend them an inspiration, -which
might supply the place of contemporary genius;
and with those, of which they ought to be
fond in proportion to their rarity, they appear
scarcely acquainted. Of the rich stores of
poetry and romance, which they might enjoy
from the neighbouring country and almost
similar language of Spain, they are,for the most
part, unconscious. Not only has the spirit
of chivalry departed from these mountains,
where it once w7as glowing; but its marvel-
lous and golden tales are neglected or for-
gotten.
The degradation of the public mind in Lis-
bon is increased by the notorious venality of
the ministers of justice. There is no crime for
-which indemnity may not be purchased by a
bribe. Even offences against the government
of the king may be -winked at, if the culprit is
able to make an ample pecuniary sacrifice.
It is a well-known fact that some of the chief
conspirators in the plot to assassinate Marshal
Beresford, and change the wrhole order of
things in Portugal, were able to make their
peace with the judges, and, on the ground of
some technical informality, -were dismissed
without trial. When any one is accused of an
offence, he is generally sent at once to prison,
where he remains until he can purchase his
freedom. There does not seem, however, any
disposition to persecution for opinions, or
to exercise wanton cruelty. The Inquisition
is no longer an engine in the hands of the
priests, but is merely a tribunal for the ex-
amination and the punishment of political of-
fences. Death is rarely inflicted; for it brings
no gain to the magistrate. Criminals guilty
of the highest offences are kept in prison until
they are forgotten, without any one knowing
or caring about their fate. In the absence of
the sovereign almost all the civil authorities
have become totally corrupted, for there is no
patriot to watch, and no public voice to awe
them. The people appear sunk in apathy to
all excepting gain; and the greater number
of them crawl on with little hope, except to
supply the cravings of hunger. The city, not-
withstanding its populousness, exhibits all the
marks of decay—buildings in ruins amidst its
stateliest streets, and houses begun on a mag-
nificent scale, and left unfinished for years.
The foreign merchants, especially the British,
who use it as a central port, give it an arti-
ficial life, without which its condition would
be most wretched. In bidding farewell to this
bright abode of degraded humanity, I felt it im-
possible to believe that it was destined gra-
dually to become desolate and voiceless. Glo-
rious indeed would be the change, if knowledge
should expand the souls, now so low and con-
tracted, into a sympathy with the natural won-
ders around them—if the arts should once
more adorn the romantic city—and the orange
groves and lovely spots among the delicate
cork trees, should' *be vocal with the innocent94
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
gayety of happy peasants, or shed their in-
fluences on the hearts of youthful bards. If,
indeed, the people were awakened into energy,
and their spirit was regulated by wise and
beneficent governors, the capital of Portugal
would assuredly become the fairest of cities.
MB, CHABLES LLOYD’S POEMS.*
[London Magazine.]
There is no more remarkable instance of the
“cant of criticism,1” than the representation
currently received as distinctive, whereby
several authors, chiefly residing in the neigh-
bourhood of the lakes, were characterized
as belonging to one school of poetry. In
truth, propinquity of residence, and the bonds
of private friendship, are the only circum-
stances which have ever given the slightest
colour to the hypothesis which marked them
out as disciples of the same creed. It is
scarcely possible to conceive individuals more
dissimilar in the objects of their choice, or in
the essential properties of their genius. Who,
for example, can have less in common than
Wordsworth and Coleridge, if we except
those faculties which are necessarily the
portion of the highest order of imaginative
minds '? The former of these has sought for
his subjects among the most ordinary oc-
currences of life, which he has dignified and
exalted, from which he has extracted the
holiest essences of good, or over which he
has cast a consecrating and harmonizing
light “ which never was by sea or land.”
The latter, on the other hand, has spread
abroad his mighty mind, searching for his
materials through all history and all science,
penetrating into the hidden soul of the wildest
superstitions, and selecting the richest spoils
of time from the remotest ages. Wordsworth
is all intensity—he sees nothing, but through
the hallowing medium of his own soul, and
represents all things calm, silent, and harmo-
nious as his own perceptions. Coleridge
throws himself into all the various objects
which he contemplates, and attracts to his
own imagery their colours and forms. The
first, seizes only the mighty and the true with
a giant grasp;—the last has a passionate and
almost effeminate love of beauty and tender-
ness which he never loses. One looks only
on the affections in their inmost home, while
the other perceives them in the lightest and
remotest tints, which they cast on objects the
strangest and most barbarous. All the distinc-
tion, in short, between the intense and the ex-
pansive—the severe and the lovely—the phi-
losophic and the magical—really separates these
great poets, whom it has been the fashion to cen-
sure as united in one heresy. If we cast the
slightest glance at Southey’s productions, we
shall find him unlike either of these, his asso-
* Desultory Thoughts in London, Titus and Gisippus, with
other Poems. By Charles Lloyd, author of Nuga: Canorse,
and uanslator of Alfieri’s Tragedies^ 12rno, 1821.
ciates—offering a child-like feebleness in con-
trast to Wordsworth’s nerve—and ranging
through mythologies and strange fantasies, not
only with less dominion than Coleridge, but
merely portraying the shapes to which they gave
existence, instead of discovering the spirit of
truth and beauty within them. Nor does the
author before us, often combined with these
by the ignorance or the artifice of criticism,
differ less widely from them. Without Words-
worth’s intuitive perception of the profoundest
truths, or Coleridge’s feeling of beauty, he has
a subtile activity of mind which supplies the
place of the first, and a wonderful power of
minute observation, which, when directed to
lovely objects, in a great degree produces the
effect of the latter. All these three rise on
some occasions to the highest heaven of thought
and feeling, though by various processes—
Wordsworth reaching it at once by the divine
wingedness of his genius—Coleridge ascend-
ing to it by a spiral track of glory winding on
through many a circuit of celestial light—and
Lloyd stepping thither by a firm ladder, like
that of Jacob, by even steps, which the feet
of angels have trodden!
The peculiar qualities of Mr. Lloyd’s genius
have never been so clearly developed as in the
chief poem of the work before us. In his
“Nugce Canorse,” all his thoughts and feel-
ings were overcast by a gentle melancholy,
which rendered their prominences less distinct,
as it shed over them one sad and sober hue.
Even, however, in his most pensive moods,
the vigorous and restless activity of his intel-
lect might be discerned, curiously inquiring
for the secret springs of its own distress, and
regarding its sorrows as high problems worthy
of the most painful scrutiny. While he exhi-
bited to us the full and pensive stream of emo-
tion, with all the images of soft clouds and de-
licate foliage reflected on its bosom, he failed
not to conduct us to its deep-seated fountains,
or to lay open to our view the jagged caverns
within its banks. Yet here the vast intellec-
tual power was less conspicuous than in his
last poems, because the personal emotion was
more intense, single, and pervading. He is
now, we rejoice to observe, more “ i’ the sun,”
and consequently, the nice -workings of his
reason are set more distinctly before us. The
“ Desultory Thoughts in London” embrace a
great variety of topics, associated in the mind
of the author with the metropolis, but many
of them belonging to those classes of abstrac-
tion which might as fitly be contemplated in aLLOYD’S POEMS.
95
desert. Among these are “Fate, free-will,
foreknowledge absolute,”—the theories of
manners and morals—the doctrines of ex-
pediency and self-interest—with many specu-
lations relating to the imaginative parts of
literature, and the influences of religion upon
them—all of which are grasped by the hand
of a master. The whole range of contro-
versial writing scarcely affords an example of
propositions stated so lucidly, qualified so
craftily, and urged with such exemplary fair-
ness and candour as in this work. It must,
indeed, be admitted, that the admirable qualities
of the argument render it somewhat unfit for
marriage “ with immortal verse.” Philoso-
phical poetry, when most attractive, seizes on
some grand elemental truths, which it links to
the noblest material images, and seeks rather
to send one vast sentiment to the heart through
the medium of the imagination, than to lead
the mind by a regular process of logic, to the
result which it contemplates. Mere didactic
poetry, as Pope’s Essay on Man, succeeds not
by the nice balance of reasons, but by decking
out some obvious common-place in a gorgeous
rhetoric, or by expressing a familiar sentiment
in such forcible language as will give it a
singular charm to all who have felt its justice
in a plainer garb. In.general, the poet, no
less than the woman, who deliberates, is lost.
But Mr. Lloyd’s effusions are in a great mea-
sure exceptions to this rule;—for though they
are sometimes “ harsh and crabbed,” and some-
times too minute, they are marked by so
hearty an earnestness, and adorned by such
variety of illustration, and imbued with such
deep sentiment, that they often enchant while
they convince us. Although his processes
are careful, his results belong to the stateliest
range of truths. His most laborious reason-
ings lead us to elevated views of humanity—
to the sense of a might above reason itself—to
those objects which have inspired the most
glorious enthusiasm, and of which the pro-
foundest bards have delighted to afford us
glimpses. It is quite inspiring to follow him
as he detects the inconsistencies of worldly
wisdom, as he breaks the shallow reasonings
of the advocates of expediency into pieces, or
as he vindicates their prerogatives to faith and
hope. He leads us up a steep and stony as-
cent, step by step ; but cheers us by many a
ravishing prospect by the way, and conducts
at last to an eminence, not only above the
mists of error, but where the rainbow comes,
and whence the gate of heaven may be seen
as from the Delectable Mountains which Bun-
yan’s Pilgrim visited.
We scarcely know how to select a specimen
which shall do justice to an author whose
speculations are too vast to be completed
within a short space, and are connected with
others by delicate links of thought. We will
give, however, his vindication of the enthusi-
astic and self-denying spirit, which, however
associated with absurdity, is the soul of all
religion and virtue.
Reasoners, that argue of ye know not what,
Do not, as mystical, my strain deride :
By facts’ criterion be its doctrine tried.
The blind as well might doubt of sense and sight;
Peruse their lives, who thus have vow’d pursuit
Of heavenly communion : in despite
Of all your arguments ye can’t dispute
Their singleness of heart: except ye fight
’Gainst facts, ye, self-convicted, must be mute.
Will ye deny, that they’ve a secret found
To bailie fate, and heal each mortal wound?
Will ye deny, to them alone ’tis given,
Who its existence, as a faith, embraced ?
’Tis mainly requisite, to partake of heaven,
That the heart’s treasures there should first be placed.
According to thy faith shall it be given
To thee, with spiritual glories, to be graced.
As well all facts whence man experience hath,
As doubt immunities bound up in faith.
’Tis easy thing to say, that men are knaves ;
’Tis easy thing to say, that men are fools ;
’Tis easy thing to say, an author raves ;
Easy, to him who always ridicules
The incomprehensible, to allege—and saves
Trouble of farther thought—that oft there rules
Fanatic feeling in a madman’s brain :
That half-pretence oft ekes out half-insane.
We know all this ; but we know also well,
These men we speak of tried by every test
Admissible, all oilier men excel
In virtue, and in happiness. Since bless’d
Are they, stern Fate, spite of thy direst spell:
Infection, loathsome maladies, each pest
And plague,—for these have they,—should they assail
A panacea which will never fail.
God is their rock, their fortress of defence,
In time of trouble, a defence most holy ;
For them the wrath of man is impotence ;
His pride, a bubble ; and his wisdom, folly.
That “peace” have they—unspeakable intense,—
“ Which passeth understanding !” Melancholy
Life’s gauds to them : the unseen they explore :
Roofed in heaven, to live is—to adore !
Ye, that might cavil at these humble lays,
Peruse the page of child-like Fenelon :
Hear what the wrapped, transfigured Guion says
With ills of body such as few have known ;—
Tedious imprisonment; in youthful days
To luxuries used, they all aside are thrown ;
To poverty devoted, she defies
Its sorest ills, blessing the sacrifice.
Was e’er an instance known, that man could taste
True peace of mind, and spurn religion’s laws?
In other things were this alliance traced ;
Constant coincidence ; effect, and cause,
We scruple not to call them ; or, at least,
Condition indispensable, whence draws
The one, the other. This coincidence
But grant me hereand grant the consequence.
Facts, facts, are stubborn things! We trust the sense
Of sight, because the experience of each day
Warrants our trust in it. Now, tell me whence
It is, no mortal yet. could dare to say,
Man trusted in his God for his defence,
And was confounded? cover’d with dismay ?
Loses he friends? Religion dries his tears'.
Loses he life ? Religion calms his fears !
Loses he health? Religion balms his mind,
And pains of flesh seem ministers of grace,
And wait upon a rapture more refined,
Than e’en in lustiest health e’er found a place.
Loses he wealth? the pleasure it can find
He had before renounced ; thus he can trace
No difference, but that now the heart bestows
What through a hand less affluent scantier flows.
He too as much enjoys the spectacle
Of good, when done by others as by him:96
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS,
Loses he fame ? the honour he loves well
Is not of earth, but that which seraphim
Might prize I Loses he liberty'? his cell,
And all its vaults, echo his rapturous hymn :
He feels as free as freest bird in air!
His heaven-shrined spirit finds heaven everywhere!
*Tis not romance which we are uttering! No;
Thousands of volumes each word’s truth attest!
Thousands of souls redeem’d from all below
Can bring a proof, that, e’en while earthly guest,
’Tis possible for man that peace to know,
Which maketh him impassive to the test
Of mortal sufferance! Many and many a martyr
Has found this bound up in religion’s charter.
Pleasure, or philosophical or sensual,
Is not, ought not to be, man’s primary rule ;
We often feel bound by a law potential
To do those things which e’en our reasons fool.
God, and he only, sees the consequential;
The mind well nurtured in religion’s school
Feels that He only—to whom all’s obedient—
Has right to guide itself by ihe expedient.
Duty is man’s first law, not satisfaction !
That satisfaction comes from this perform’d
We grant! But should this be the prime attraction
That led us to performance, soon inform’d
By finding that we’ve miss’d the meed of action,
We shall confess our error. Oft we’re warm’d,
By a strong spirit we cannot restrain,
To deeds, which make all calculation vain.
Had Regulus reason’d, whether on the scale
Of use, in Rome, his faculties would most,
Or Carthage—patriotism’s cause avail,
He never had resumed his fatal post.
Brutus, Virginius had they tried by tale
Their country’s cause, had never been her boast.
Yet had it not these self-doom’d heroes seen,
Rome “ the eternal city,” ne’er had been!
Shall Christ submit upon the cross to bleed,
And man for all he does a reason ask ?
Have martyrs died, and confessors, indeed,
That he must seek a why for every task ?
If it be so, to prate we’ve little need
Of this enlighten'd age ! Take off the mask !
If it be so, and ye’ll find this our proud age,—
Its grand climacterick past is in its dotage.
Thy name, Thermopylae, had ne’er been heard,
Were not the Greeks wiser than our wise men.
I grant, that heaven alone to man transferr’d,
When he would raise up states for history’s pen,
This more than mortal instinct! Yet absurd
It is (because, perhaps, our narrower ken
Their heights cannot descry; yea, and a curse
’Twill bring) to make a theory of the worse.
A theory for a declining race !
No, let us keep at least our lips from lies ;
If we have forfeited Truth's soaring grace,
Let us not falsify her prodigies.
We well may wear a blush upon our face,
From her past triumphs so t’ apostatize
In deeds ; but let us not with this invent
An infidelity of argument.
Go to Palmyra’s ruins ; visit Greece,
Behold ! The wrecks of her magnificence
Seem left, in spite of man, thus to increase
The sting of satire on his impotence.
As to betray how soon man’s glories cease ;
To mbs, time defying, of the most pretence
But onfy make us feel with more surprise,
How mean the things they would immortalize!
The following is only a portion of a series
of reminiscences equally luxurious and in-
tense, and which are attended throughout by
that vein of reflection which our author never
loses:
Oh, were the eye of youth a moment ours!
When every flower that gemm’d the various earth
Brought down from Heaven enjoyment’s genial showers.
And every bird, of everlasting mirth
Prophesied to us in romantic bowers !
Love was the garniture, whose blameless birth
Caused that each filmy web where dew-drops trembled,
The gossamery haunt of elves resembled!
We can remember earliest days of spring,
When violets blue and white, and primrose pale,
Like callow nestlings ’neath their mother’s wing
Each peep’d from under the broad leafs green veil.
When streams look’d blue ; and thin clouds clustering
O’er the wide empyrean did prevail,
Rising like incense from the breathing world,
Whose gracious aspect was with dew impearl’d.
When a soft moisture, steaming everywhere,
To the earth’s countenance mellower hues imparted;
When sylvan choristers self-poised in air,
Or perched on bows, in shrilly quiverings darted
Their little raptures forth ; when the warm glare
(While glancing lights backwards and forwards started,
As if with meteors silver-sheathed ’twere flooded)
Sultry, and silent, on the hill’s turf brooded.
Oh in these moments we such joy have felt,
As if the earth were nothing but a shrine ;
Where all, or awe inspired or made one melt
Gratefully towards its architect divine!
Father ! in future (as I once have dwelt
Within that very sanctuary of thine
WThen shapes, and sounds,seem’d as but modes of Thee!)
That with experience gain’d were heaven to me!
Oft in the fulness of the joy ye give,
Oh, days of youth ! in summer’s noon-tide hours,
Did I a depth of quietness receive
From insects’ drowsy hum, that all my powers
Would baffle to portray ! Let them that live
In vacant solitude, speak from their bowers
What nameless pleasures letter’d ease may cheer,
Thee, Nature ! bless’d to mark with eye and ear !—
Who can have watch’d the wild rose’ blushing dye,
And seen what treasures its rich cups contain;
Who, of soft shades the fine variety,
From white to deepest flush of vermeil stain?
Who, when impearl’d with dew-drop’s radiancy
Its petals breathed perfume, while he did strain
His very being, lest the sense should fail
T’ imbibe each sweet its beauties did exhale?
Who, amid lanes, on eve of summer days,
Which sheep brouse, could the thicket’s wealth behold?
The fragrant honey-suckle’s bowery maze?
The furze bush, with its vegetable gold?
In every satin sheath that helps to raise
The fox-glove’s cone, the figures manifold
With such a dainty exquisiteness wrought?—
Nor grant that thoughtful love they all have taught?
The daisy, cowslip, each have to them given—
The wood anemone, the strawberry wild,
Grass of Parnassus, meek as star of even:—
Bright, as the brightening eye of smiling child,
And bathed in blue transparency of heaven,
Veronica ; the primrose pale, and mild ;—
Of charms (of which to speak no tongue is able)
Intercommunion incommunicable!
I had a cottage in a Paradise !
’Twere hard to enumerate the charms combined
W’ithin the little space, greeting the eyes,
Its unpretending precincts that confined.
Onward, in front, a mountain stream did rise
Up, whose long course the fascinated mind
(So apt the scene to awaken wildest themes)
Might localize the most romantic dreams.LLOYD’S POEMS.
97
When winter torrents, by the rain and snow,
Surlily dashing down the hills, were fed,
Its mighty mass of waters seem’d to flow
With deafening course precipitous: its bed
Rocky, such steep declivities did show
That towards us with a rapid course it sped,
Broken by frequent falls ; thus did it roam
In whirlpools eddying, and convulsed with foam.
Flank’d were its banks with perpendicular rocks,
Whose scars enormous, sometimes gray and bare,
And sometimes clad with ash and gnarled oaks,
The birch, the hazel, pine, and holly were.
Their tawny leaves, the sport of winters’ shocks,
Oft o’er its channel circled in the air;
While, on their tops, and midway up them, seen,
Lower’d cone-like firs and yews in gloomiest green.
So many voices from this river came
In summer, winter, autumn, or the spring ;
So many sounds accordant to each frame
Of Nature’s aspect, (whether the storm’s wing
Brooded on it, or pantingly, and tame,
The low breeze crisp’d its waters) that, to sing
Half of their tones, impossible ! or tell
The listener’s feelings from their viewless spell.
When fires gleam’d bright, and when the curtain’d room,
Well stock’d with books and music’s implements,
When children’s faces, dress’d in all the bloom
Of innocent enjoyments, deep content’s
Deepest delight inspired ; when nature’s gloom
To the domesticated heart presents
(By consummate tranquillity possest)
Contrast, that might have stirr’d the dullest breast;
Yes,—in such hour as that—thy voice I’ve known,
Oh, hallow’d stream !—fitly so named—(since tones
Of deepest melancholy svvell’d upon
The breeze that bore it)—fearful as the groans
Of fierce night spirits I Yes, when tapers shone
Athwart the room (when, from their skyey thrones
Of ice-piled height abrupt, rush’d rudely forth,
Riding the blast, the tempests of the North ;)
Thy voice I’ve known to wake a dream of wonder!
For though ’twas loud, and wild with turbulence,
And absolute as is the deep-voiced thunder,
Such fine gradations mark’d its difference
Of audibility, one scarce could sunder
Its gradual swellings from the influence
Of harp iEolian, when, upon the breeze,
Floats in a stream its plaintive harmonies.
One might have thought, that spirits of the air
Warbled amid it in an undersong;
And oft one might have thought, that shrieks were there
Of spirits, driven for chastisement along
The invisible regions that above earth are.
All species seem’d of intonation (strong
To bind the soul, Imagination rouse,)
Conjured from preternatural prison-house.
But when the heavens are blue, and summer skies
Are pictured in thy wave’s cerulean glances;
Then thy crisp stream its course so gayly plies,
Trips on so merrily in endless dances,
Such low sweet tone,.fit for the time, does rise
From thy swift course, methinks, that it enhances
The hue of flowers which decorate thy banks,
While each one’s freshness seems to pay thee thanks.
Solemn the mountains that the horizon close,
From whose drear verge thou seem’st to issue forth :
Sorcery might fitly dwell, one could suppose,
(Or any wondrous spell of heaven or earth,
Which e’en to name man’s utterance not knows,)
Amid the forms that mark thy place of birth.
Thither direct your eye, and you will find
All that excites the imaginative mind !
The tale of Titus and Gisippus, which fol-
lows, while it is very interesting as a story,
13
exhibits the same great intellectual power and
ceaseless activity of thought, which character-
ize the Thoughts in London. Mr. Lloyd has
taken the common incident of one lover re-
signing his mistress to another, and the names
of his chief characters from Boccaccio, but, in
all other respects, the poem is original. Its
chief peculiarity is the manner in which it
reasons upon all the emotions which it por-
trays, especially on the progress of love in the
soul, with infinite nicety of discrimination, not
unlike that which Shakspeare has manifested
in his amatory poems. He accounts for the
finest shade of feeling, and analyzes its essence.,
with the same care, as though he were de-
monstrating a proposition of Euclid. He is as
minute in his delineation of all the variations
of the heart, as Richardson was in his narra-
tives of matters of fact;—and, like him, thus
throws such an air of truth over his statements,
that we can scarcely avoid receiving them as
authentic history. At the same time, he con-
ducts this process with so delicate a hand, and
touches his subjects with so deep a reverence
for humanity, that he teaches us to love our
nature the more from his masterly dissection.
By way of example of these remarks, we will
give part of the scene between a lover who
long has secretly been agitated by a passion
for the betrothed mistress of his friend, and the
object of his silent affection whom he has just
rescued from a watery grave—though it is
not perhaps the most beautiful passage of the
poem :
He is on land ; on safe land is lie come:
Sophronia’s head he pillows on a stone :
A death-like paleness hath usurp’d her bloom ;
Her head falls lapsing on his shoulder. None
Were there to give him aid ! He fears her doom
Is seal’d for evermore! At last a groan
Burst from her livid lips, and then the word
uTitus” he heard, or fancied that he heard!—
Where was he then 7 From death to life restored!
From hell to heaven ! To rapture from despair !
His hand he now lays on that breast adored ;
And now her pulse he feels ; and now—(beware,
Beware, rash youth!) his lips draw in a hoard
Of perfume from her lips, which though they were
Still closed, yet oft the inarticulate sigh,
Issuing from thence, he drank with ecstasy.
Still were they cold ; her hands were also cold ;
Those hands he chafed and, perhaps to restore
To her chill, paly lips their warmth, so bold
He grew, he kiss’d those pale lips o’er and o’er.
Nay, to revive in their most perfect mould
Their wonted rubeous hue, he dared do more ;—
He glued his mouth to them, and breathed his breath
To die with her, or rescue her from death.—
Thou art undone, mad youth! The fire of love
Burn’d so intensely in his throbbing veins,
That, had she been a statue, he might prove
A new Pygmalion, and the icy chains
Of death defy. Well then might he remove
The torpor which her o’er-wrought frame sustains.—
If sweet, revival from such menaced death ;
More sweet, revival by a lover’s breath!
She feels the delicate influence through her thrill,
And with seal’d eye lay in a giddy trance,
Scarce dare she open them, when had her will
On this been bent, she felt the power to glance
Their lights on him. No, with a lingering skill—
Oh, blame her not!—she did awhile enhance
I98
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
The bliss of that revival, by a feign’d
Or half-feign’d show of conflict still sustain’d.
At last, she look’d '.—They looked !—Eye met with eye !
The whole was told ! The lover and the loved,
The adored, and the adorer, ecstasy
Never till then experienced—swiftly proved !-
Thanks for his aid were a mean courtesy !
They were forgotten ! Transport unreproved,
This was his guerdon ; this his rich reward!
An hour’s oblivion with Sophronia shared !
Then all the world was lost to them, in one
Fulness of unimaginable bliss!—
Infinity was with them ! and the zone
Unbound whence Venus sheds upon a kiss
Nectareous essences, and raptures known
Ne’er save to moments unprepared as this !
And in that earnest impulse did they find
Peace and intensity, alike combined !
To frame such joy, these things are requisite ;
A lofty nature ; the exalting stress
Of stimulating trials, which requite,
And antecedent sorrows doubly bless ;
Consummate sympathies, which souls unite ;
And a conjuncture, whence no longer press
Impulses—long as these delights we prove—
From one thing foreign to the world of love.
This could not last! Not merely would a word ;—
A gesture would, a look, dissolve the charm !—
Could home be mention’d nor the thought restored,
To her remembrance of Gisippus’ warm
And manly love ? Bless’d be ye with your hour
Of transient bliss, and be ye safe from harm,
Ye fond, fond pair! But think not joys so high
Can be inwoven with reality!
At last a swift revulsion through her frame
And o’er her countenance stole : a sudden pause!
Her eyes which had imbibed a piercing flame,
Fell at once rayless; and her bosom draws
One in-pent sigh ; one look imploring came
O’er her fine face ! Titus knew well the cause
Of this so sudden change : he d-ared not speak;
He dared not move ; dared not its reasons seek!
Some minutes they were silent. Night advanced;
Titus towards himself Sophronia press’d,
But dumb he stood ; upwards she faintly glanced
A look upbraiding, and upon his breast—
Gently reclining—lay like one entranced!
No longer was happiness her guest.
She starts ! She cries “Gisippus !” all is told !
Cold fell the word, on bosoms still more cold!
They rose and crept along in silentness—
Sophronia reach’d her home, but nothing said,
E’en to her mother, of her past distress.
Her threshold past not Titus—Thence he fled,
Soon as in safety he the maid did guess,
Like to a madman madden’d more with dread!
Nor ever of this night, or of its spell
Of mighty love, did he breathe a syllable!
We now take leave of Mr. Lloyd with pecu-
liar gratitude for the rich materials for thought
with which a perusal of his poems has en-
dowed us. We shall look for his next appear-
ance before the public with anxiety;—assured
that his powers are not even yet fully deve-
loped to the world, and that he is destined to
occupy a high station among the finest spirits
of his age.
MR. OLD AKER ON MODERN IMPROVEMENTS.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
Mr. Editor :—I trust that even in this age of
improvement you will suffer one of the oldest
of the old school to occupy a small space in
your pages. A few words respecting myself
will, however, be necessary to apologize for
my opinions. Once I was among the gayest
and sprightliest of youthful aspirants for fame
and fortune. Being a second son, I was bred
to the bar, and pursued my studies with great
vigour and eager hope, in the Middle Temple.
I loved, too, one of the fairest of her sex, and
was beloved in return. My toils were sweet-
ened by the delightful hope that they would
procure me an income sufficient for the credi-
table support of the mistress of my soul. Alas !
at the very moment when the unlooked-for
devise of a large estate from a distant relative
gave me affluence, she for whom alone I de-
sired wealth, sunk under the attack of a fever
into the grave. Religion enabled me to bear her
loss with firmness, but I determined, for her
sake, ever to remain a bachelor. Although
composed and tranquil, I felt myself unable to
endure the forms, or to taste the pleasures of
London. I retired to my estate in the country,
where I have lived for almost forty years in
the society of a maiden sister, happy if an old
friend came for a few days to visit me, but
chiefly delighting to cherish in silence the re-
membrance of my only love, and to anticipate
the time when I shall be laid beside her. At
last, a wish to settle an orphan nephew in my
own profession, has compelled me to visit the
scenes of my early days, and to mingle, fora
short time, with the world. My resolution once
taken, I felt a melancholy pleasure in the ex-
pectation of seeing the places with which I
was once familiar, and which were ever linked
in my mind with sweet and blighted hope.
Every change has been to me as a shock. I
have looked at large on society too, and there
I see little in brilliant innovation to admire.
Returned at last to my own fire-side, I sit down
to throw together a few thoughts on the new
and boasted Improvements, over which I mourn.
If I should seem too querulous, let it be re-
membered, that my own happy days are long
past, and that recollection is the sole earthly
joy which is left me.
My old haunts have indeed suffered compa-
ratively small mutation. The princely hall of
the Middle Temple has the same venerable as-MODERN IMPROVEMENTS.
99
pect as when, in my boyish days, I felt my
heart beating with a strange feeling of mingled
pride and reverence on becoming one of its
members. The fountain yet plays among the
old trees, which used to gladden my eye in
spring for a few days with their tender green,
to become so prematurely desolate. But the
front of the Inner Temple hall, upon the
terrace, is sadly altered for the worse. When
I first knew it, the noble solidity of its appear-
ance, especially of the figure over the gateway,
cut massively in the stone, carried the mind
back into the deep antiquity of the scene.
Now the whole building is white-washed and
plastered over, the majestic entrance supplied
by an arch of pseudo-gothic, and a new library
added, at vast cost, in the worst taste of the
modern antique. The view from the garden
is spoiled by that splendid nuisance, the Water-
loo Bridge. Formerly we used to enjoy the
enormous bend of the river, far fairer than the
most marvellous work of art; and while our eyes
dwelt on the placid mirror of water, our imagi-
nation went over it, through calm and majestic
windings, into sweet rural scenes, and far in-
land bowers. Now the river appears only an
oblong lake, and the feeling of the country once
let into the town by that glorious avenue of
crystal, is shut out by a noble piece of mere
human workmanship! But nature never
changes, and some of her humble w'orks are
ever found to renew old feelings within us, not-
withstanding the sportive changes of mortal
fancy. The short grass of the Temple garden is
the same as when forty years ago I was accus-
tomed to refresh my weary eyes with its green-
ness. There I have strolled again ; and while I
bent my head downwards and fixed my eyes
on the thin blades and the soft daisies, I felt as
I had felt when last I walked there—all be-
tween was as nothing, or a feverish dream—
and I once more dreamed of the Seals, and of
the living Sophia!—I felt—but I dare not trust
myself on this subject farther.
The profession of the law is strangely altered
since the days of my youth. It was then surely
more liberal, as well as more rational, than I
now find it. The business and pleasure of a
lawyer were not entirely separated, as at pre-
sent, when the first is mere toil, and the second
lighter than vanity. The old stout-hearted
pleaders threw a jovial life into their tremen-
dous drudgeries, which almost rendered them
delightful. Wine did but open to them the
most curious intricacies of their art: they rose
from it, like giants refreshed, to grapple with
the sternest difficulties, and rejoiced in the en-
counter. Their powers caught a glow in the
severity of the struggle, almost like that arising
from strong exertion of the bodily frame. Nor
did they disdain to enjoy the quaint jest, the
far-fetched allusion, or the antique fancy, which
sometimes craftily peeped out on them amidst
their laborious researches. Poor T------W-------
was one of the last of the race. He was the
heartiest and most romantic of special pleaders.
Thrice happy was the attorney who could engage
him to a steak or broiled fowl in the old coffee
room in Fleet-street, were I have often met him.
How would he then dilate, in the warmth of his
heart, on all his professional triumphs—now
chuckling over the fall of a brother into a trap
set artfully for him in the fair guise of liberal
pleading—now whispering a joy past joy in a
stumble of the Lord Chief Justice himself,
among the filmy cords drawn about his path I
When the first bottle was despatched, arrived
the time for his wary host to produce his
papers in succession, to be drawn or settled
by the joyous pleader. The well-lauded inspi-
ration of a poet is not more genuine than that
with which he then was gifted. All his nice
discernment—ail his vast memory—all his
skill in drawing analogies and discerning prin-
ciples in the “great obscurity” of the Year
Books—were set in rapid and unerring action.
On he went—covering page after page, his pen
“in giddy mazes running,” and his mind
growing subtler and more acute with every
glass. How dextrously did he then glide
through all the strange windings of the case,
with a sagacity which never failed, while he
garnished his discourse with many a legal
pun and learned conceit, which was as the
light bubble on the deep stream of his know-
ledge ! He is gone!—and I find none to re-
semble him in this generation—none who thus
can put a spirit into their work, which may
make cobweb-sophistries look golden, and
change a laborious life into one long holi-
day !
In the greater world, I have observed, with
sorrow, a prevailing disregard of the past, and
a desire to extol the present, or to expatiate in
visionary prospects of the future. I fear this
may be traced not so much to philanthropy as
to self-love, which inspires men with the wish
personally to distinguish themselves as the
teachers and benefactors of their species, in-
stead of resting contented to share in the vas*
stock of recollections and sympathies which
is common to all. They would fain persuade
us that mankind, created “ a little lower than,
the angels,” is now for the first time “crowmed
with glory and honour;” and they exultingly
point to institutions of yesterday for the means
to regenerate the earth. Some, for example,
pronounce the great mass of the people, through
all ages, as scarcely elevated above the brutes
which perish, because the arts of reading,
writing, and arithmetic, were not commonly
diffused among them; and on the diffusion of
these they ground their predictions of a golden
age. And were there then no virtuous hardi-
hood, no guileless innocence, no affections
stronger than the grave, in that mighty lapse
of years which we contemptuously stigmatize
as dark! Are disinterested patriotism, con-
jugal love, open-handed hospitality, meek self-
sacrifice, and chivalrous contempt of danger
and of death, modern inventions 1 Has man’s
great birth-right been in abeyance even until
now? Oh, no ! The Chaldrean shepherd did
not cast his quiet gaze through weeks and
years in vain to the silent skies. He knew
not, indeed, the discoveries of science, which
have substituted an immense variety of figures
on space and distance, for the sweet influences
of the stars; yet did the heavens tell to him
the glory of God, and angel faces smile on
him from the golden clouds. Book-learning
is, perhaps, the least part of the education of100
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
the species. Nature is the mightiest and the
kindliest of teachers. The rocks and unchang-
ing hills give to the heart the sense of a dura-
tion beyond that of the perishable body. The
flowing stream images to the soul an everlast-
ing continuity of tranquil existence. “ The
brave o’er-hanging firmament,” even to the
most rugged swain, imparts some conscious-
ness of the universal brotherhood of those over
whom it hangs. The affections ask no leave
of the understanding to “glow and spread and
kindle,” to shoot through all the frame a tre-
mulous joy, or animate to holiest constancy.
We taste the dearest blessedness of earth in
our childhood, before we have learned to ex-
press it in mortal language. Life has its uni-
versal lessons far beyond human lore. Kind-
ness is as cheering, sorrow as purifying, and
the aspect of death as softening to the ignorant
in this world’s wisdom, as to the scholar. The
purest delights grow beneath our feet, and all
who will stoop may gather them. While sages
lose the idea of the Universal Parent in their
subtleties, the lowly “feel after Him and find
Him.” Sentiment precedes reason in point of
time, and is a surer guide to the noblest reali-
ties. Thus man hopes, loves, reveres, and en-
joys, without the aid of writing or of the press
to inspire or direct him. Many of his feelings
are even heartier and more genuine before he
has learned to describe them. He does not
perpetually mistake words for things, nor cul-
tivate his faculties and affections for a dis-
cerning public. His aspirations “are raised,
not marked.” If he is gifted with divine ima-
gination, he may “ walk in glory and in joy
beside his plough upon the mountain side,”
without the chilling idea that he must make
the most of his sensations to secure the ap-
plause of gay saloons or crowded theatres.
The deepest impressions are worn out by the
multiplication of their copies. Talking has
almost usurped the place of acting and of feel-
ing ; and the world of authors seem as though
their hearts were but paper scrolls, and ink,
instead of blood, were flowing in their veins.
“The great events with which old story rings,
seem vain and hollow.” If all these evils will
not be extended by what is falsely termed the
Education of the Poor, let us at least be on our
guard lest we transform our peasantry from
men into critics, teach them scorn instead of
humble hope, and leave them nothing to love,
to revere, or to enjoy !
The Bible Society, founded and supported,
no doubt, from the noblest motives, also puts
forth pretensions which are sickening. Its ad-
vocates frequently represent it as destined to
change all earth into a paradise. That a com-
plete triumph of the principles of the Bible
would bring in the happy state which they look
for can never be disputed ; but the history of
our religion affords no ground for anticipating
such a result from the unaided perusal of its
pages. Deep and extensive impressions of the
truths of the gospel have never been made by
mere reading, but always by the exertions of
living enthusiasm in the holy cause. Provi-
dence may, indeed, in its inscrutable wisdom,
impart new energy to particular instruments ;
but there appears no sufficient indication of
such a change as shall make the printed Bibh
alone the means of regenerating the species.
“An age of Bibles” may not be an age of
Christian charity and hope. The word of God
may not be revered the more by becoming a
common book in every cottage, and a drug in
the shop of every pawnbroker. It was surely
neither known nor revered the less when it
was a rare treasure, when it was proscribed
by those who sat in high places, and its torn
leaves and fragments were cherished even
unto death. In those days, when a single
copy chained to the desk of the church was
alone in extensive parishes, did it diffuse less
sweetness through rustic hearts than now,
when the poor are almost compelled to possess
it 1 How then did the villagers flock from dis-
tant farms, cheered in their long walks by
thoughts not of this world, to converse for a
short hour with patriarchs, saints, and apostles!
How did they devour the venerable and well-
worn page with tearful eyes, or listen delighted
to the voice of one gifted above his fellows,
who read aloud the oracles of celestial wisdom!
What ideas of the Bible must they have en-
joyed, who came many a joyful pilgrimage to
hear or to read it! Yet even more precious was
the enjoyment of those who, in times of perse-
cution, snatched glances in secret at its pages,
and thus entered, as by stealth, into the para-
disiacal region, to gather immortal fruits and
listen to angel voices. The word of God was
dearer to them than house, land, or the “ruddy
drops which warmed their hearts.” Instead of
the lamentable weariness and disgust with
which the young now too often turn from the
perusal of the Scriptures, they heard with mute
attention and serious joy the histories of the Old
Testament and the parables of the New. They
heard with revering sympathy of Abraham re-
ceiving seraphs unawares—of Isaac walking
out at eventide to meditate, and meeting the
holy partner of his days—of Jacob’s dream, and
of that immortal Syrian Shepherdess, for whose
love he served a hard master fourteen years,
which seemed to him but a few days—of Joseph
the beloved, the exile, the tempted, and the
forgiven—of all the ^wonders of the Jewish
story—and of the character and sufferings of
the Messiah. These things were to them at
once august realities, and surrounded with a
dream-like glory from afar. “Heaven lay
about them in their infancy.” They preserved
the purity—the spirit of meek submission—the
patient confiding love of their childhood in
their maturest years. They, in their turn, in-
stilled the sweetness of Christian charity, drop
by drop, into the hearts of their offspring, and
left their example as a deathless legacy.
Surely this wras better than the dignified pa-
tronage now courted for the Scriptures, or the•
pompous eulogies pronounced on them by
rival orators ! The reports of anniversaries
of the Bible Society are often, to me, inexpres-
sibly nauseous. The word of God is praised
in the style of eulogy employed on a common
book by a friendly reviewer. It is evidently
used as a theme to declaim on. But the praise
of the Bible is almost overshadowed by the
flatteries lavished on the nobleman or county
member who has condescended to preside, andA CHAPTER ON “ TIME.”
101
which it is the highest ambition of the speak-
ers ingeniously to introduce and to vary. Happy
is he who can give a new turn to the compli-
ment, or invent a new alliteration or antithesis
for the occasion ! The copious nonsense of the
successful orators is even more painful than
the failures of the novices. After a string of
false metaphors and poor conceits, applauded
to the echo, the meeting are perhaps called on
to sympathize with some unhappy debutant,
whose sense of the virtues of the chairman
proves too vast for his powers of expression ;
and with Miss Peachum in the Beggars’ Opera,
to lament “that so noble a youth should come
to an untimely end.” Alas ! these exhibitions
have little connection with a deep love of the
Bible, or with real pity for the sufferings of man.
Were religious tyranny to render the Scriptures
scarce, and to forbid their circulation, they
would speedily be better prized and honoured
than when scattered with gorgeous profusion,
and lauded by nobles and princes.
The Society for the Suppression of Mendicity
is another boasted institution of these cold-
hearted days. It would annihilate the race of
beggars, and remove from the delicate eye the
very form and aspect of misery. Strange in-
fatuation ! as if an old class of the great fa-
mily of man might be cut off without harm !
“All are but parts of one stupendous whole,”
bound together by ties of antique sympathy, of
which the lowest and most despised are not
without their uses. In striking from society
a race whom we have, from childhood, been
accustomed to observe, a vast body of old as-
sociations and gentle thoughts must necessarily
be lost for ever. The poor mendicants whom
we would banish from the earth, are the best
sinecurists to whose sustenance we contribute.
In the great science—the science of humanity
—they not rarely are our first teachers: they
affectingly remind us of our own state of mu-
tual dependance ; bring sorrow palpably before
the eyes of the prosperous and the vain ; and
prevent the hearts of many from utterly “ losing
their nature.” They give, at least, a salutary
disturbance to gross selfishness, and hinder it
from entirely forming an ossified crust about
the soul. We see them too with gentle interest,
because we have always seen them, and were
accustomed to relieve them in the spring-time
of our days. And if some of them are what
the world calls imposters, and literally “ do be-
guile us of our tears,” and our alms, those
tears are not shed, nor those alms given, in
vain. If they have even their occasional re-
vellings and hidden luxuries, we should rather
rejoice to believe that happiness has every-
where its nooks and corners which we do not
see; that there is more gladness in the earth
than meets the politician’s gaze; and that for-
tune has her favours, “ secret, sweet, and pre-
cious,” even for those on whom she seems
most bitterly to frown. Well may that divinest
of philosophers, Shakspeare, make Lear reply
to his daughters, who had been speaking in the
true spirit of modern improvements :
“ O reason not the need : our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous :
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life is cheap as beasts !”
There are many other painful instances in
these times of that “ restless wisdom” which
“ has a broom for ever in its hand to rid the
world of nuisances.” There are, for example,
the plans of Mr. Owen, with his infallible
recipes for the formation of character. Virtue
is not to be forced in artificial hot-beds, as he
proposes. Rather let it spring up where it will
from the seed scattered throughout the earth,
and rise hardly in sun and shower, while the
“ free mountain winds have leave to blow
against it.” But I feel that I have already
broken too violently on my habits of dreamy
thought, by the asperity into which I now and
then have fallen. Let me then break off at
once, with the single expression of a hope, that
this “ bright and breathing world” may not be
changed into a Penitentiary by the efforts of
modern reformers.
I am, Sir,
Your hearty well-wisher,
FRANCIS OLDAKER.
A CHATTER ON TIME.”
BEING AN ATTEMPT TO THROW NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD SUBJECT.
•ft
[New Monthly Magazine.]
" We know what we are,” said poor Ophelia,
" knft we know not what we may be.” Perhaps
she would have spoken with a nicer accuracy
had she said, “ we know what we have been.”
Of our present state we can, strictly speaking,
•enow nothing. The act of meditation on our-
selves, however quick and subtle, must refer
to the past, in which alone we can truly be
said to live. Even in the moments of intensest
enjoyment, our pleasures are multiplied by the
quick-revolving images of thought; we feel
the past and future in each fragment of the in-
stant, even as the flavour of every drop of
some delicious liquid is heightened and pro-
longed on the lips. It is the past only which
we really enjoy as soon as we become sensible
of duration. Each bygone instant of delight
becomes rapidly present to us, and “ bears a
glass which shows us many more.” This is
the great privilege of a meditative being—never
properly to have any sense of the present, but
to feel the great realities as they pass away,102
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
casting their delicate shadows on the fu-
ture.
Time, then, is only a notion—unfelt in its
passage—a mere measure given by the mind
to its own past emotions. Is there, then, any
abstract common measure by which the infi-
nite variety of intellectual acts can be meted—
any real passage of years which is the same
to all—any periodical revolution, in which all
who have lived, have lived out equal hours !
Is chronology any other than a fable, a ‘‘tale
that is told'!” Certain outward visible actions
have passed, and certain seasons have rolled
over them; but has the common idea of
time, as applicable to these, any truth higher
or surer than those infinite varieties of dura-
tion which have been felt by each single heart !
Who shall truly count the measure of his own
days—much more scan the real life of the mil-
lions around him 'I
The ordinary language of moralists respect-
ing time shows that we really know nothing
respecting it. They say that life is fleeting
and short; why, humanly speaking, may they
not as well affirm that it is extended and last-
ing! The words “short” and “long” have
only meaning when used comparatively; and
to what can we compare or liken this our hu-
man existence ! The images of fragility—thin
vapours, delicate flowers, and shadows cast
from the most fleeting things—which we em-
ploy as emblems of its transitoriness, really
serve to exhibit its durability as great in com-
parison with their own. If life is short, com-
pared with the age of some fine animals, how
much longer is it than that of many, some of
whom pass through all the varieties of youth,
maturity, and age, during a few hours, accord-
ing to man’s reckoning, and, if they are en-
dowed with memory, look back on their early
minutes through the long vista of a summer’s
day ! An antediluvian shepherd might com-
plain with as much apparent reason of the
brevity of his nine hundred years, as we of our
threescore and ten. He would find as little to
confute or to establish his theory. There is
nothing visible by which we can fairly reckon
the measure of our lives. It is not just to com-
pare them with the duration of rocks and hills,
which have withstood “ a thousand storms, a
thousand thunders ;” because where there is
no consciousness, there is really no time. The
power of imagination supplies to us the place
of ages. We have thoughts which “date be-«
yond the pyramids.” Antiquity spreads around
us her mighty wings. We live centuries in
contemplation, and have all the sentiment of
six thousand years in our memories :—
“The wars we too remember of King Nine,
And old Assaracus and Ibycus divine.”
Whence, then, the prevalent feeling of the
brevity of our life! Not, assuredly, from its
comparison with any thing which is presented
to our senses. It is only because the mind is
formed for eternity that it feels the shortness
of its earthly sojourn. Seventy years, or se-
venty thousand, or seven, shared as the com-
mon lot of a species, would seem alike suffi-
cient to those who had no sense within them
of a being which should have no end. When
this sense has been weakened, as it was amidst
all the exquisite forms of Grecian mythology,
the brevity of life has been forgotten. There
is scarcely an allusion to this general senti-
ment, so deep a spring of the pathetic, through-
out all the Greek tragedies. It will be found
also to prevail in individuals in proportion
as they meditate on themselves, or as they
nurse in solitude and silence the instinct of the
Eternal.
The doctrine that Time exists only in re-
membrance, may serve to explain some ap-
parent inconsistencies in the language which
we use respecting our sense of its passage.
We hear persons complaining of the slow
passage of time, when they have spent a single
night of unbroken wearisomeness, and won-
dering how speedily hours, filled with pleasure
or engrossing occupations, have flown; and
yet we all know how long any period seems
which has been crowded with events or feel-
ings leaving a strong impression behind them.
In thinking on seasons of ennui we have no-
thing but a sense of length—we merely re-
member that we felt the tedium of existence;
but there is reallyr no space in the imagination
filled up by the period. Mere time, unpeopled
with diversified emotions or circumstances, is
but one idea, and that idea is nothing more
than the remembrance of a listless sensation.
A night of dull pain and months of lingering
weakness are, in the retrospect,nearly the same
thing. When our hands or our hearts are busy,
we know nothing of time—it does not exist for
us; but as soon as wre pause to meditate on
that which is gone, we seem to have lived long
because we look back through a long series
of events, or feel them at once peering one
above the other like ranges of distant hills.
Actions or feelings, not hours, mark all the
backward course of our being. Our sense of
the nearness to us of any circumstance in our
life is determined on the same principles—not
by the revolution of the seasons, but by the
relation 'which the event bears in importance
to all that has happened to us since. To him
who has thought, or done, or suffered much,
the level days of his childhood seem at an im-
measurable distance, far off as the age of chi-
valry, or as the line of Sesostris. There are
some recollections of such overpowering vast-
ness, that their objects seem ever near; their
size reduces all intermediate events to nothing;
and they peer upon us like “ a forked moun-
tain, or blue promontory,” which, being far
off, is yet nigh. How different from these ap-
pears some inconsiderable occurrence of more
recent date, which a flash of thought redeems
for a moment from long oblivion;—which is
seen amidst the dim confusion of half-forgotten
things, like a little rock lighted up by a
chance gleam of sunshine afar in the mighty
waters !
What immense difference is there, then, in
the real duration of men’s lives! He lives
longest of all who looks back oftenest, whose
life is most populous of thought or action, and
on every retrospect makes the vastest picture.
The man who does not meditate has no real
consciousness of being. Such a on« g^ec toA CHAPTER ON “TIME”
103
death as to a drunken sleep; he parts with ex-
istence wantonly, because he knows nothing
of its value. Mere men of pleasure are, there-
fore the most careless of duelists, the gayest
of soldiers. To know the true value of being,
yet to lay it down for a great cause, is a pitch
of heroism which has rarely been attained by
man. That mastery of the fear of death which
is so common among men of spirit, is nothing
but a conquest over the apprehension of dying.
It is a mere victory of nerve and muscle.
Those whose days have no principle of conti-
nuity—who never feel time but in the shape
of ennui—may quit the world for sport or for
honour. But he who truly lives, who feels the
past and future in the instant, whose days are
to him a possession of majestic remembrances
and golden hopes, ought not to fancy himself
bound by such an example. Pie may be in-
spired to lay down his life, when truth or vir-
tue shall demand so great a sacrifice ; but he
will be influenced by mere weakness of reso-
lution, not by courage, if he suffer himself to
be shamed,-or laughed, or worried out of it!
Besides those who have no proper con-
sciousness of being, there are others even per-
naps more pitiable, who are constantly irritated
by the knowledge that their life is cut up into
melancholy fragments. This is the case of all
the pretending and the vain; those who are
ever attempting to seem what they are not, or
to do what they cannot; who live in the lying
breath of contemporary report, and bask out a
sort of occasional holiday in the glimmers of
public favour. They are always in a feverish
struggle, yet they make no progress. There
is no dramatic coherence, no unity of action,
in the tragi-comedy of their lives. They have
hits and brilliant passages perhaps, which
may come on review before them in straggling
succession; but nothing dignified or massive,
tending to one end of good or evil. Such are
self-fancied poets and panting essayists, who
live on from volume to volume, or from ma-
gazine to magazine, who tremble with nervous
delight at a favourable mention, are cast down
by a sly alliteration or satirical play on their
names, and die of an elaborate eulogy “ in aro-
matic pain.” They begin life once a quarter,
or once a month, according to the will of their
publishers. They dedicate nothing to poste-
rity ; but toil on for applause till praise sick-
ens, and their “life’s idle business” grows too
heavy to be borne. They feel their best days
passing away without even the effort to build
up an enduring fame ; and they write an elegy
on their own weaknesses! They give their
thoughts immaturely to the world, and thus
spoil them for themselves for ever. Their
own earliest, and deepest, and most sacred
feelings become at last dull common-places,
which they have talked of and written about
till they are glad to escape from the theme.
Their days are not “linked each to each by
natural piety,” but at best bound together in
forgotten volumes. Better, far better than this,
is the lot of those whose characters and pre-
tensions have little “mark of likelihood;”—
whose days are filled up by the exercises of
honest industry, and who, on looking back, re-
cognise their lives only by the turns of their
fortune, or the events which have called forth
their affections. Their first parting from home
is indelibly impressed on their minds—their
school-days seem to them like one sweet April
of shower and sunshine—their apprenticeship
is a long week of toil;—but then their first
love is fresh to them as yesterday, and their
marriage, the births of their children, and of
their grand-children, are events which mark
their course even to old age. They reach their
infancy again in thought by an easy process,
through a range of remembrances few and
simple, but pure, and sometimes holy. Yet
happier is the lot of those who have one great
aim ; who devote their undivided energy to a
single pursuit; who have one idea of practical
or visionary good, to which they are wedded.
There is a harmony, a proportion, in their
lives. The Alchemist of old, labouring with
undiminished hope, cheering his solitude with
dreams of boundless wealth, and yet working on,
could not be said to live in vain. His life was
continuous—one unbroken struggle—one ar-
dent sigh. There is the same unity of interest
in the life of a great verbal scholar, or of a true
miser ; the same singleness of purpose, which
gives solidity to floating minutes, hours, and
years.
The great Lawyer deserves an eminent rank
among true livers. We do not mean a politi-
cal adventurer, who breathes feverishly amidst
the contests, the intrigues, and petty triumphs
of party; nor a dabbler in criticism, poetry,
or the drama; nor even a popular nisi-prius
advocate, who passes through a succession of
hasty toils and violent excitements to fortune
and to oblivion. But we have respect to the
real dull plodder—to him who has bidden an
early “ Farewell to his Muse,” if he ever had
one: who anticipates years of solitary study,
and shrinks not back; who proceeds, step by
step, through the mighty maze with a cheerful
heart, and counts on his distant success with
mathematical precision. His industry and
self-denial are powers as true as fancy or elo-
quence, and he soon learns to take as hearty a
pleasure in their exercise. H’s retrospect is
vast and single—of doubt solved, stoutest books
mastered, nicest webs disentangled, and all
from one intelligible motive which grows old
with him, and, though it “ strengthened with
his strength,” will not diminish with his de-
cline. It is better in the end to have had the
pathway of life circumscribed and railed in by
forms and narrow observances, than to have
strayed at will about the vast field open to
human enterprise, in the freest and most grace-
ful wanderings; because in the latter case we
cannot trace our road again, or call it over;
while in the first, we see it distinctly to the
end, and can linger in thought over all the
spots where our feet have trodden. The “old
names” bring back the “old instincts” to our
hearts. Instead of faint sympathies with a
multitude of things, a kind of small partner-
ship with thousands in certain general dogmas
and speculations, we have all our own past in-
dividual being as a solid and abiding posses-
sion.
A metaphysician who thinks earnestly and
intensely for himself, may truly be said to live104
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
long. He has this great advantage over the
most felicitous inventor of machinery, or the
most acute of scientific inquirers, that all his
discoveries have a personal interest; he has
his existence for his living study; his own
heart is the mighty problem on which he medi-
tates, and the “ exceeding great reward” of his
victories. In a moment of happy thought he
may attain conquests, “ compared to which the
laurels which a Caesar reaps are weeds.”
Years of anxious thought are rewarded by the
attainment of one triumphant certainty, which
immediately gives a key to the solution of a
thousand pregnant doubts and mysteries, and
enables him almost to “ curdle a long life into
an hour.” When he has, after long pursued and
baffled endeavours, rolled aside some huge diffi-
culty which lay in his path, he will find beneath
it a passage to the bright subtleties of his nature,
through which he may range at will, and
gather immortal fruits, like Aladdin in the sub-
terranean gardens. He counts his life thus not
only by the steps which he has taken, but
by the vast prospects which, at every turn
of his journey, have recompensed his toils,
over which he has diffused his spirit as he
went on his way rejoicing. We will conclude
this article with the estimate made of life from
his own experience by one of the most pro-
found and original of thinkers.
“ It is little, it is short, it is not worth having
—if we take the last hour, and leave out all
that has gone before, which has been one way
of looking at the subject. Such calculators
seem to say that life is nothing when it is over;
and that may, in their sense, be true. If the
old rule—Respice finem—were to be made abso-
lute, and no one could be pronounced fortunate
till the day of his death, there are few among
us whose existence would, upon such condi-
tions, be much to be envied. But this is not a
fair view of the case. A man’s life is his
whole life, not to the last glimmering snuff of
the candle ; and this I say is considerable, and
not a little matter, whether we regard its plea-
sures or its pains. To draw a peevish con-
clusion to the contrary, from our own super-
annuated desires of forgetful indifference, is
about as reasonable as to say, a man never
was young because he has grown old, or never
lived because he is now dead. The length or
agreeableness of a journey does not depend on
the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a
building to be judged of from the last stone
that is added to it. It is neither the first nor
the last hour of our existence, but the space
that parts these two—not our exit, nor our en-
trance upon the stage, but what we do feel, and
think while there—that we are to attend to in
pronouncing sentence upon it. Indeed, it would
be easy to show that it is the very extent of
human life, the infinite number of things con-
tained in it, its contradictory and fluctuating
interests, the transition from one situation to
another, the hours, months, years, spent in one
fond pursuit after another ; that it is, in a word,
the length of our common journey, and the
quantity of events crowded into it, that, baffling
the grasp of our actual perception, make it
slide from our memory, and dwindle into no-
thing in its own perspective. It is too mighty
for us, and we say it is nothing! It is a specs
in our fancy, and yet what canvas would be
big enough to hold its striking groups, its end-
less objects! It is light as vanity; and yet if
all its weary moments, if all its head and heart-
aches were compressed into one, what forti-
tude would not be overwhelmed with the blow!
What a huge heap, a ‘huge dumb heap,’of
wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, sooth-
ing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is com-
posed of! How many ideas and trains of sen-
timent, long, deep, and intense, often pass
through the mind in one day’s thinking or read-
ing for instance ! How many such days are
there in a year, how many years in a long life,
still occupied with something interesting—still
recalling some old impression—still recurring
to some difficult question, and making progress
in it, every step accompanied with a sense of
power, and every moment conscious of ‘the
high endeavour or the glad success;” for the
mind seizes only on that which keeps it em-
ployed, and is wound up to a certain pitch of
pleasurable excitement by the necessity of
its own nature.”—Hazlitt’s Table Talk, Essay 6.

ON THE PROFESSION OF THE BAR.
[London Magazine.]
There is no pursuit in life which appears
more captivating at a distance than the profes-
sion of the bar, as it is followed and rewarded
in English courts of justice. It is the great
avenue to political influence and reputation ;
its honours are among the most splendid
which can be attained in a free state; and its
emoluments and privileges are exhibited as
prizes, to be contested freely b}'- all its mem-
bers. Its annals celebrate many individuals
who have risen from the lowest ranks of the
people, by fortunate coincidence, or by patient
labour, to wealth and station, and have become
the founders of honourable families. If the
young aspirant perceives, even in his hasty
and sanguine glance, that something depends
on fortuitous circumstances, the conviction
only renders the pursuit more inviting, by add-
ing the fascinations of a game of chance to
those of a trial of skill. If he is forced to con-
fess that a sacrifice of principle is occasionally
required of the candidate for its most lucrative
situations, he glories in the pride of untempted
virtue, and pictures himself generously resist-
ing the bribe which would give him riches and
authority in exchange for conscious rectitudeON THE PROFESSION OF THE BAR.
105
and the approbation of the good and wise.
While he sees nothing in the distance, but
glorious success or more glorious self-denial,
he feels braced for the severest exertion;
nerved for the fiercest struggle; and regards
every throb of an impatient ambition as a
presage of victory.
Not only do the high offices of the profession
wear an inviting aspect, but its level course
has much to charm the inexperienced observer.
It affords perpetual excitement; keeps the fa-
culties in unceasing play; and constantly ap-
plies research, ingenuity, and eloquence, to the
actual business of life. A Court of Nisi Prius
is a sort of epitome of human concerns, in
which advocates are the representatives of the
hopes and fears, the prejudices, the affections,
and the hatreds of others, which stir their blood,
yet do not endanger their fortune or their peace.
The most important interests are committed
to their discretion, and the most susceptible
feelings to their forbearance. They enjoy a
fearful latitude of sarcasm and invective, with
an audience ready to admire their sallies, and
reporters eager to circulate them through the
land. Their professional dress, which might
else be ludicrous, becomes formidable as the
symbol of power; for, with it, they assume the
privilege of denouncing their adversaries, con-
founding witnesses, and withstanding the judge.
If the matter on which they expatiate is not
often of a dignified nature or productive of
large consequences, it is always of real im-
portance ; not a mere theme for display, or a
parliamentary shadow. The men whom they
address are usually open to receive impres-
sions, either from declamation or reasoning,
unlike other audiences who are guarded by
system, by party, or by interest, against the
access of conviction. They are not confined
to rigid logic, or to scholastic sophistry, but
may appeal to every prejudice, habit, and feel-
ing, which can aid their cause or adorn their
harangue; and possess a large store of popu-
lar topics always ready for use. They do not
contend for distant objects, nor vainly seek to
awaken an interest for futurity, but struggle for
palpable results which immediately follow their
exertions. They play an animating game for
verdicts with the resources of others, in which
success is full of pleasure, and defeat is rarely
attended with personal disgrace or injury.
This is their ordinary vocation; but they have,
or seem to have, a chance of putting forth all the
energies of their mind on some high issue ; and
of vindicating their moral courage, perchance
by rescuing an innocent man from dishonour
and the grave, or by standing, in a tumultuous
season, between the frenzy of the people and
the encroachments of their enemies, and pro-
tecting the constitutional rights of their fellows
with the sacred weapons of the laws. What
dream is more inspiring to a youth of sanguine
temperament than that of conducting the de-
fence of a man prosecuted by the whole force
of the state 1 He runs over in thought the
hurried and feverish labour of preparation : the
agitations of the heart quelled by the very
magnitude of the endeavour and the peril; and
imagines himself settled and bent up to his
own part in the day of trial—the low tremulous
14
i beginning, the gradually strengthening assur-
ance ; the dawning recognition of sympathy
j excited in the men on whose lips the issue
hangs; till the whole world of thought and
feeling seems to open full of irresistible argu-
ment and happy illustrations; till his reason-
ings become steeped in passion ; and he feels
his cause and his triumph secure. To every
enthusiastic boy, flattered by the prophecies
of friends, such an event appears possible; and,
in the contemplation, wealth, honour, and long
life, seem things of little value.
But the state of anticipation cannot last for
ever. The day arrives, when the candidate
for forensic opportunities and honours must
assume the gown amidst the congratulations
of his friends, and attempt to realize their
wishes. The hour is, no doubt, happy, in
spite of some intruding thoughts ; its festivi-
ties are not less joyous, because they wear a
colouring of solemnity; it is one more season
of hope snatched from fate, inviting the mind
to bright remembrance, and rich in the honest
assurances of affections and sympathy. It
passes, however, as rapidly as its predecessors,
and the morrow sees the youth at Westminster,
pressing a wig upon aching temples, and taking
a fearful survey of the awful bench where the
judges sit, and the more awful benches crowd-
ed with competitors who have set out with as
good hopes, who have been encouraged by as
enthusiastic friends, and who have as valid
claims to success as he. Now then, having
allowed him to enjoy the foretastes of prospe-
rity, let us investigate what are the probabili-
ties that he will realize them. Are they, in
any degree, proportioned to his intellectual
powers and accomplishments'? Is the posses-
sion of some share of the highest faculties of
the mind, which has given him confidence,
really in his favour 1 These questions we will
try to solve. We may, perhaps, explain to the
misjudging friends of some promising aspirant,
who has not attained the eminence they ex-
pected, why their prophecies have been un-
fulfilled. They think that, with such powers
as they know him to possess, there must be
some fault which they did not perceive; some
want of industry, or perseverance; but there
was probably none ; and they may rather seek
for the cause of failure in the delicacy of feel-
ing which won their sympathy, or in the genius
which they were accustomed to admire.
Men who take a cursory view of the pro-
fession are liable to forget how peculiarly it is
situated in relation to those who distribute its
business. These are not the people at large ;
not even the factitious assemblage called the
public ; not scholars, nor readers, nor thinkers,
nor admiring audiences, nor sages of the law,
but simply attorneys. In this class of men are,
of course, comprised infinite varieties of know-
ledge and of worth; ipany men of sound learn-
ing and honourable character; many who are
tolerably honest and decorously dull; some
who are acute and knavish ; and more who are
knavish without being acute. Respectable as
is the station of attorneys, they are, as a body,
greatly inferior to the bar in education and en-
dowments ; and yet on their opinion, without
appeal, the fate of the members of the profes-106
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
sion depends. It can scarcely be matter of
surprise that they do not always perceive, as
by intuition, the accurate thinking, the delicate
satire, the playful fancy, or the lucid eloquence,
which have charmed a domestic circle, and
obtained the applause of a college, even if
these were exactly the qualities adapted to
their purposes. They will never, indeed, con-
tinue to retain men who are obviously unequal
to their duty; but they have a large portion of
business to scatter, which numbers, greatly
differing in real power, can do equally well;
and some junior business, which hardly re-
quires any talent at all. In some cases, there-
fore, they are virtually not only judges but
patrons, who, by employing young men early,
give them not merely fees, but courage, prac-
tice, and the means of becoming known to
others. From this extraordinary position
arises the necessity of the strictest etiquette in
form, and the nicest honour in conduct, which
strangers are apt to ridicule, but which alone
can prevent the. bar from being prostrated at
the feet of an inferior class. But for that bar-
rier of rule and personal behaviour, solicitors
would be enabled to assume the language and
manner of dictators ; and no barrister could
retain at once prosperity and self-respect, ex-
cept the few, whose reputations for peculiar
skill are so well established, as to render it in-
dispensable to obtain their services. It is no
small proof of the spirit and intelligence of
the profession, as a body, that these qualities
are able to preserve them in a station of ap-
parent superiority to those on whom they vir-
tually depend. They frequent the places of
business ; they follow the judges from town to
town, and appear ready to undertake any side
of any cause; they sit to be looked at, and
chosen, day after day, and year after year ; and
yet by force of professional honour and gentle-
manly accomplishments, and by these alone,
they continue to be respected by the men who
are to decide their destiny. But no rule of eti-
quette, however strict, and no feelings of de-
licacy, however nice and generous, can pre-
vent a man, who has connections among
attorneys, from possessing a great advantage
over his equals who have none. It is natural
that his friends should think highly of him, and
desire to assist him, and it would be absurd to
expect that he should disappoint them by re-
fusing their briefs, when conscious of ability
to do them justice. Hence a youth, born and
educated in the middle ranks of life, who is
able to struggle to the bar, has often a far bet-
ter chance of speedy success than a gentle-
man of rank and family. This consideration
may lesson the wonder, so often expressed, at
the number of men who have risen to eminence
in the law from comparatively humble stations.
Without industry and talent, they could have
done little; but, perhaps, with both these they
might have done less, if their early fame had
not been nurtured by those to whom their suc-
cess was a favourite object, and whose zeal
afforded them at once opportunity and stimulus
which to more elevated adventurers are want-
in g-
Let us now examine a little (he kind of talent
by which success at the bar will most probably
be obtained ; as, from want of attention to this
point much disappointment frequently springs.
We will first refer to the lower order of busi-
ness—that by which a young man usually be-
comes known—and then take a glance at the
Court of Nisi Prius, as it affords scope to the
powers of leaders. We pass over at present
that class of men who begin to practice as spe-
cial pleaders, and after acquiring reputation,
are called late in life with a number of clients
who have learned to value them as they de-
serve. These have chosen a safe and honour-
able course; but the general reader would find
little to excite his interest in a view of their
silent and laborious progress. We speak rather
of the business of Criminal Courts and of Ses-
sions, in which young men generally make
first trial of their powers, and of the more
trivial and showy order of causes which it
may sometimes be their good or ill fortune to
lead.
In this description of business, it must be
obvious to every one that there is no scope for
the higher powers and more elegant accom-
plishments of the mind. But it is not so ob-
vious, though not less true, that these are often
encumbrances in the way of the advocate.
This will appear, if we glance at the kind of
work he has to perform, the jury whom he is
to influence, or the audience by whom he is
surrounded. Even if the successful perform-
ance of his duty, without regard to appear-
ances, be his only aim, he will often find it
necessary to do something more painful than
merely to lay aside his most refined tastes. To
succeed with the jury, he must rectify his un-
derstanding to the level of theirs; to succeed
with the audience, he must necessarily go still
lower; because, although there are great com-
mon themes on wThich an advocate may raise
almost any assembly to his own level, and
there are occasions in which he may touch on
universal sympathies, these rarely, if ever,
arise in the beginning of his professional life.
On those whom he has to impress, the fine al-
lusion, the happy conceit, the graceful sophis-
try, which will naturally occur to his mind,
would be worse than lost. But though he may
abstain from these, how is he to find, on the
inspiration of the instant, the matter which
ought to supply their place 1 Can he, accus-
tomed to enjoy the most felicitous turns of ex-
pression, the airiest wit, the keenest satire,
think in a moment of a joke sufficiently broad
and stale to set the jury box and the galleries
in a roar! Has he an instinctive sense of
what they will admire 1 If not, he is wrong to
wonder that he makes less impression than
others, who may be better able to sacrifice the
refinements which he prizes, and ought not to
grudge them the success which fairly and na-
turally follows their exertions.
The chief duties of a junior are to examine
witnesses; to raise legal objections; and, in
smaller cases, to address juries. We will
show in each of these instances how much a
man of accurate perceptions and fastidious
tastes must overcome before he can hope for
prosperity.
The examination of witnesses, in chief gene*
rally requires little more than a clear voice, aON THE PROFESSION OF THE BAR.
107
tolerable degree of self-possession, a superficial
knowledge of the law of evidence, and an ac-
quaintance with the matter to "which the wit-
nesses are expected to speak. There are cri-
tical cases, it is true, in which it is one of the
most important duties which an advocate can
perform, and requires all the dexterity and
address of which he is master. But the more
popular work, and that which most dazzles by-
standers, is cross-examination, to which some men
attribute the talismanic property of bringing
falsehood out of truth. In most cases, before
an intelligent jury it is mere show. * When it
is not founded on materials of contradiction, or
directed to obtain some information which the
witness will probably give, it proceeds on the
assumption that the party interrogated has
sworn an untruth, which he may be induced
to vary. But, in the great majority of cases,
the contrary is the fact, and therefore the usual
consequence of speculative cross-examining is
the production of a more minute and distinct
story than was originally told. Still a jury may
be puzzled ; an effect may be produced; and as,
in cases of felony, an advocate is not permitted
to make a speech, he must either cross-examine
or do nothing.* Here then, taste, feeling, and
judgment, are sometimes no trifling hindrances.
A man who has a vivid perception of the true
relation of things cannot, without difficulty,
force himself to occupy the attention of the
court for an hour with questions which he
feels have no bearing on the matter substan-
tially in issue. Even when he might confound
the transaction, the clearness of his own head
will scarcely permit him to do the business
well. He finds it hard to apply his mind to
the elaborate scrutiny of a labourer’s dinner or
dress, the soundness of his sleep or the slow-
ness of his cottage time-piece; and he hesitates
to place himself exactly on a level with the wit-
ness who comes to detail them. His discretion
may sometimes restrain him from imitating the
popular cross-examiners of the day, but his in-
capacity will prevent him still oftener,until, like
them, he has become thoroughly habituated to
the intellectual atmosphere of the court in
which he practises.
In starting and arguing points of law, a
deep knowledge of law, and a faculty of clear
and cogent reasoning, might seem qualities of
the highest value. At Nisi Prius, before a
Judge, they are so, or rather would be if the
modern course of transacting business left a
junior any opportunity to use them. But they
are very far from producing unmingled advan-
tage before inferior tribunals. As the bench
is not often filled with magistrates profoundly
learned, futile objections are almost as likely
to succeed as good ones, and sometimes more
so, because those to whom they are addressed
have a vague notion of law as something full
of mere arbitrary quiddities, and therefore
likely to be found in direct opposition to com-
mon sense. Now, a man who is himself igno-
rant of a science is obviously better fitted to
hit the fancies of the respectable gentlemen
who entertain such a notion, than one who
thoroughly understands its rules. The first
* This has been happily altered since the publication
of this copy.
will raise objections where the last would be
silent; or will defend them with the warmth
of honest conviction, where the lawyer would
introduce them with hesitation and abandon
them without a struggle. When a man has
nothing really to say, he is assisted greatly by
confusion of language, and a total want of ar-
rangement and grammar. Mere stupidity, ac-
companied by a certain degree of fluency, is
no inconsiderable power. It enables its pos-
sessor to protract the contest long after he is
beaten, because he neither understands his own
case, nor the arguments by which he has been
answered. It is a weapon of defence, behind
which'he obtains protection, not only from his
adversaries, but from the judge. If the learned
person who presides, wearied out with endless
irrelevancies, should attempt to stop him, he
will insist on his privilege to be dull, and ob-
tain the admiration of the audience by his
firmness in supporting the rights of the bar.
In these points, a sensitive and acute advocate
has no chance of rivalling him in the estima-
tion of the by-standers. A young man may,
indeed, display correctness of thought, depth
of research, and elegant perspicuity in an ar-
gument on a special case, in the Court of
King’s Bench; but few will hear and fewer
listen to him; and he will see the proceedings
of the day shortly characterized in the news-
paper ofthe morrow as “ totally destitute of pub-
lic interest,” while the opposite column will be
filled with an elaborate report of a case of as-
sault at Clerkenwell, or a picturesque account
of a squabble between a pawnbroker and an
alderman !
To address a jury, even in cases of minor
importance, seems at first to require talents
and requirements of a superior kind. It really
requires a certain degree of nerve, a readiness
of utterance, and a sufficient acquaintance with
the ordinary line of illustration used and ap-
proved on similar occasions. A power of
stating facts, indeed, distinctly and concisely
is often important to the real issue of the cause;
but it is not one which the audience are likely
to appreciate. The man who would please
them best should omit all the facts of his case,
and luxuriate in the commonplaces which he
can connect with it, unless he is able to em-
bellish his statement, and invest the circum-
stances he relates with adventitious importance
and dignity. An advocate of accurate percep-
tions, accustomed to rate things according to
their true value, will find great difficulty in
doing either. Most of the subject matter of
flourish, which is quite as real to the super-
ficial orator as any thing in the world, is
thrown far back from his habitual thoughts,
and hardly retains a place among the lumber
of his memory. Grant him time for prepara-
tion, and a disposition to do violence to his
own tastes, in order to acquire popularity, and
he may approach a genuine artist in the
factitious ; but, after all, he will run great risk
of being detected as a pretender. A single
touch of real feeling, a single piece of concise
logical reasoning, will ruin the effect of the
whole, and disturb the well-attuned minds of
an enlightened jury. Even the topics which
must be dilated on are often such as would103
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
not weigh a feather with an intelligent man,
out of court, and still oftener give occasion to
watery amplifications of ideas, which may be
fairly and fully expressed in a few words. It is
obvious, therefore, that the more an advocate’s
mind is furnished with topics rather than with
opinions or thoughts, the more easy will he
find the task of addressing a jury. A sense
of truth is ever in his way. It breaks the fine,
flimsy, gossamer tissue of his eloquence, which,
but for this sturdy obstacle, might hang sus-
pended on slender props to glitter in the view
of fascinated juries. If he has been accustomed
to recognise a proportion between words and
things, he will, with difficulty, screw himself
up to describe a petty affray in the style of
Gibbon, though to his client the battle of Holy-
well-lane may seem more important than the
fall of the Roman Empire. If he would en-
rapture the audience when intrusted to open a
criminal case of importance, he should begin
with the first murder; pass a well-rounded
eulogy on the social system; quote Blackstone,
and the Precepts of Noah ; and dilate on crime,
conscience, and the trial by jury; before he
begins to state the particular facts which he
expects to prove. He disdains to do this—or
the favourite topics never occur to his mind
even to be rejected; and, instead of winning
the admiration of a county, he only obtains a
conviction ! In addition to an inward repug-
nance to solemn fooling, men of sterling sense
have also to overcome the dread of the criti-
cism of others whose opinion they value, be-
fore they can descend to the blandishments of
popular eloquence. It is seldom, therefore, that
a young barrister can employ the most effica-
cious mode of delighting his audience, unless
he is nearly on a par with them, and thinks, in
honest stupidity, that he is pouring forth pathos
and wisdom. There is, indeed, an excessive
proneness to adopt the tone of the moment, an
easiness of temperament, which sometimes may
enable him to make a display in a trifling mat-
ter without conscious degradation; but he is
ashamed of his own success when he grows
cool, and was reduced by excessive sympathy
to the level of his hearers only for the hour.
Let no one, therefore, hastily conclude that the
failure of a youth, to whom early opportunities
are given, is a proof of essential inferiority to
successful rivals. It may be, indeed, that he
is below his business ; for want of words does
not necessarily imply plenitude of ideas, nor
is abstinence from lofty prosings and stale jests
conclusive evidence of wit and knowledge ;
but he is more probably superior to his voca-
tion—too clear in his own perceptions to per-
plex others; too much accustomed to think to
make a show without thought; and too deeply
impressed with admiration of the venerable
and the affecting readily to apply their attri-
butes to the miserable facts he is retained to
embellish.
Let us now take a glance at that higher
sphere in which a barrister moves when he
has overcome the difficulties of his profession,
and has obtained a share of leading business
in the superior courts. Here it must at once
be conceded that considerable powers are neces-
sary, and that the deficiencies which aided the
aspiring junior will no longer prevail. The
learning and authority of the judge, and the
acuteness of established rivals, not only pre-
vent the success of those experiments, which
ignorance only can hazard, but generally stifle
them in the birth. The number and variety of
causes, and the business-like manner in which
they are conducted, restrain the use of fine
spun rhetoric to a few special occasions. A
man who would keep any large portion of
general practice must have industry and reten-
tive memory; clearness of mind enough to
state facts with distinctness, and to arrange
them in lucid order; a knowledge of law suffi-
cient for the discovery of any point in his own
favour, and for the supply of a ready evasion
of any suggested by his opponent; quick-
ness and comprehension of intellect to seethe
whole case on both sides at one view; and
complete self-possession and coolness, without
which all other capacities will be useless.
These are essentials for Nisi Prius practice;
but does it give scope to no higher faculties!
Is there nothing in human intellect which may
be allowed to adorn, to lighten, and to inspire
the dull mass of facts and reasonings'! Was
Erskine no more than a distinct narrator, a
tolerable lawyer, and a powerful reasoner
on opposing facts! Can no higher praise
be given to Scarlett, who sways the Court
of King’s Bench like a monarch, and to
Brougham,* whose eloquence sheds terror
into the enemies of freedom throughout the
world! We will answer these questions as
well as we are able.
For the highest powers of the mind which
can be developed in eloquence even a superior
court rarely affords room. Some have ascribed
their absence to a chilling spirit of criticism
in the legal auditors ; but it is really attributa-
ble to the want of fitness in the subjects, and
in the occasions. The noble faculty of imagi-
nation may, indeed, sometimes be excited to
produce sublime creations, in the fervour of a
speech, as justly as in the rage or sorrow of a
tragedy; but in both the passion must enkindle
the imagination, not the imagination create the
passion. The distinction of eloquence from
other modes of prose composition is, that it is
primarily inspired by passion, and that it is
either solely addressed to the feelings, or sways
the understanding through the medium of the
affections. It is only true when it is propor-
tioned to the subject out of which it arises, be-
cause otherwise the passion is but fantastical
and belongs to the mock heroic. In its course,
it may edge the most subtle reasonings, point
the keenest satire, and excite the imagination
to imbody truth in living images of grandeur
and beauty; but its spring and instinct must
be passion. Nor is this all; it must not only
be proportioned to the feeling in its author’s
mind, but to the feeling and intellect of those
to whom it is addressed. A man of ardent
temperament may work himself into a state
of excitation by contemplating things which
are remote and visionary; he may learn to
take an enthusiastic interest in the objects of
his own solitary musings ; but if he brings into
* Now Lord Brougham.ON THE PROFESSION OF THE BAR.
109
court the passionate dreams of his study, he
will invite scorn and make failure certain.
Not only is there rarely a subject which can
worthily enkindle such passion as may excite
imagination, but still more rarely an audience
who can justify it by receiving it into their
hearts. On some few occasions, as of great
political trials, a burning indignation can be
felt and reflected ; the thoughts which the jury
themselves swell with may be imaged in
shapes of fire; and the orator may, while
clothing mighty principles in noble yet fami-
liar shapes, by a felicitous compromise, bring
grandeur and beauty half way to the audience,
and raise the audience to a station where they
can feel their influence. But he must take care
that he does not deceive himself by his own
emotions; and mistake the inspiration of the
study for that of the court. He is safe only
while he is impelled by the feeling of those
whom he addresses, and while he keeps fully
within their view. In ordinary causes, imagi-
nation would not only be out of place, but it
cannot enter; because its own essence is
truth, and because it never has part in genuine
eloquence unless inspired by adequate emo-
tion. The flowers of oratory which are with-
held by fear of contempt, or regarded as mere
ornaments if produced, are not those which
grow out of the subject, and are streaked and
coloured by the feeling of the time ; but gaudy
exotics, leisurely gathered and stuck in out of
season, and destitute of root. These fantasti-
cal decorations do not prove the existence of
fervour or of imagination, but the want of both;
and it is well if they are kept back by the good
sense of the speaker, or his reasonable fears.
But while a man, endowed with high faculties,
cautiously abstains from displaying them on
inadequate occasions, he will find them too
often an impediment and a burden. He is in
danger of timidity from a consciousness of
power yet unascertained even by himself, and
from an apprehension lest he should profane
his long-cherished thoughts by a needless ex-
posure. He is liable to be posed by the re-
currence of some delicate association which
he feels will not be understood, and modestly
hesitates on the verge of the profound. He is,
therefore, less fitted for ordinary business than
another who can survey his own mental re-
sources at a glance, as a well-ordered armoury,
and select, without hesitation, the weapon best
adapted for the struggle.
Pathos, much oftener than imagination, falls
within the province of the advocate. But the
art of exciting pity holds no elevated rank in
the scale of intellectual power. As employed
at the bar in actions for adultery, seduction, and
breach of promise of marriage, ostensibly as a
means of effecting a transfer of money from
the purse of the culprit to that of the sufferer,
it sinks yet lower than its natural place, and
robs the sorrows on which it expatiates of all
their dignity. The first of these actions is a
disgrace to the English character; for the
plaintiff, who asks for money, has sustained
no pecuniary loss; and what money does he
deserve who seeks it as a compensation for
domestic comfort, at the price of exposing to the
greedy public all the shameful particulars of his
wife’s crime and of his own disgrace 1 In the
other cases, where the party has been injured,
not only in feeling, but in property or proper-
ty’s value, it is right that redress should be
given; and that redress, even when sought in
the form of damages, may be demanded in a
tone of eloquent reprobation of villany; but
the moment the advocate recounts the miseries
of his client, in order to show how much mo-
ney ought to be awarded, his task is degrading
and irksome. He speaks of modesty destroyed,
of love turned to bitterness, of youth blasted in
its prime, and of age brought down by sorrow
to the grave; and he asks for money! He
hawks the wrongs of the inmost spirit, “ as
beggars do their sores,” and unveils the sacred
agonies of the heart, that the jury may estimate
the value of their palpitations! It is in vain
that he urges the specious plea, that no money
can compensate the sufferer, to sustain the in-
ference that the jury must give the whole sum
.laid in the declaration ; for the inference does
not follow. Money will not compensate, not
because it is insufficient in degree but in kind ;
and, therefore, the consequence is—not that
great damages should be given, but that none
should be claimed. When once money is con-
nected with the idea of mental grief, by the
advocate who represents the sufferer, all re-
spect for both is gone. Subjects, therefore,
of this kind are never susceptible in a court
of law of the truest pathetic; and the topics
to which they give occasion are somewhat
musty.
If, however, the highest powers of the mind
are rarely brought into action in a Court of
Nisi Prius, its more ordinary faculties.are re-
quired in full perfection, and readiness for use.
To an uninitiated spectator, the course of a
leader in considerable business seems little
less than a miracle. He opens his brief with
apparent unconcern; states complicated facts
and dates with marvellous accuracy; conducts
his cause with zeal and caution through all its
dangers; replies on the instant, dexterously
placing the adverse features of each side in
the most favourable position for his client;
and, having won or lost the verdict for which
he has struggled, as if his fortune depended
on the issue, dismisses it from his mind like
one of the spectators. The next cause is
called on; the jury are sworn; he unfolds
another brief and another tale, and is instantly
inspired with a new zeal, and possessed by a
new set of feelings; and so he goes on till the
court rises, finding time in the intervals of
actual exertion to read the newspaper, and
talk over all the scandal of the day ! This is
curious work; it obviously requires all the
powers to which we have referred as essen-
tial, and the complete absorption of the mind
in each successive case. Besides these, there
are two qualities essential to splendid success
—a pliable temperament, and that compound
quality, or result of several qualities, called
tact, in the management of a cause.
To the first of these we have already alluded,
in its excessive degree, as supplying a young
barrister with the capability of making a dis-
play on trivial occasions ; but, when chastened
by time, it is a most important means of suc-
K110
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
cess in the higher departments of the profes-
sion. An advocate should not only throw his
mind into the cause, but his heart also. It is
not enough that the ingenuity is engaged to
elicit strength, or conceal weakness, unless
the sympathies are fairly enlisted on the same
side. To men of lofty habits of thinking, or
of cold constitution, this is impossible, unless
the case is of intrinsic magnitude, or the client
has been wise enough to supply an artificial
stimulus in the endorsement on the brief.
Such men, therefore, are only excellent in pe-
culiar cases, where their sluggish natures are
quickened, and their pride gratified or disarmed
by a high issue, or a splendid fee. Persons,
on the other hand, who are prevented from
saying “ no,” not by cowardice, but by sym-
pathy ; whose hearts open to all who happen
to be their companions; whose prejudices
vanish with a cordial grasp of the hand, or
melt before a word of judicious flattery; who
have a spare fund of warmth and kindness to
bestow on whoever seeks it; and who, ener-
getic in action, are wavering in opinion, and
infirm of purpose—will be delighted advocates,
if they happen also to possess industry and
nerve. The statement in their brief is enough
to convert them into partisans, ready to triumph
in the cause, if it is good, and to cling to it, if
it is hopeless, as to a friend in misfortune. By
this instinct of sociality, they are enabled not
only to throw life into its details, and energy
into its struggles, but to create for themselves
a personal interest with the jury, which they
turn to the advantage of their clients. It has
often been alleged that the practice of the law
prepares men to abandon their principles in
the hour of temptation; but it will often ap-
pear, on an attentive survey of their character,
that the extent of their practice was the effect
rather than the cause of their inconstancy.
They are not unstable because they were suc-
cessful barristers, but became successful bar-
risters by virtue of the very qualities which
render them unstable. They do not yield on
a base calculation of honour or gain, but be-
cause they cannot resist a decisive compliment
paid to their talents by the advisers of the
crown. They are undone by the very trick of
sympathy which has often moulded them to
the purposes of their clients, and swayed juries
to their pleasure.
But the great power of a Nisi Prius advo-
cate consists of tact in the management of a
cause. Of this a by-stander sees but little ; if
the art be consummate, nothing; and he is,
with difficulty, made to comprehend its full
value. He hears the cause tried fairly out;
observes perhaps witnesses on both sides ex-
amined; and thinking the whole merits have
been necessarily disclosed, he sees no room
for peculiar skill, except in the choice of topics
to address to the jury. But a trial is not a
hearing of all the matters capable of discovery
which are relevant to the issue, or which
would assist an impartial mind in forming a
just decision. It is an artificial mode of de-
termination, bounded by narrow limits, go-
verned by artificial rules, and allowing each
party to present to the court as much or as
little of his own case as he pleases. A leader,
then, has often, on the instant, to select out of
a variety of matters, precisely those which will
make the best show, and be least exposed to
observation and answer; to estimate the pro-
bable case which lies hid in his adversary’s
brief, and prepare his own to elude its force;
to decide between the advantage of producing
a witness and the danger of exposing him; or,
if he represents the defendant, to apply evi-
dence to a case new in many of its aspects, or
take the grave responsibility of offering none.
Besides the opportunity which the forms and
mode of trial give to the exercise of skill, the
laws of evidence afford still greater play for
ingenuity, and ground for caution. Some of
these are founded on principle; some on mere
precedent; some caprice; some on a desire to
swell the revenue; and all serve to perplex
the game of Nisi Prius, and give advantages
to its masters. The power which they exhibit
among its intricacies is really admirable, and
may almost be considered as a lower order of
genius. Its efforts must be immediate; for the
exigency presses, and the lawyer, like the
woman, “ who deliberates is lost.” He cannot
stop to recollect a precedent, or to estimate all
the consequences of a single step; yet he de-
cides boldly and justly. His tact is, in truth,
the result of a great number of impressions,
of which he is now unconscious, which gives
him a kind of intuitive power to arrive at once
at the right conclusion. Its effects do not make
a show in the newspapers: but they are very
eloquent in the sheriff’s office, and in the rolls
of the court.
Besides exerting these qualities, a leader
may render his statements not only perspicu-
ous but elegant; relieve the dulness of a cause
by wit not too subtle; and sometimes enliven
the court by a momentary play of fancy. To
describe Mr. Erskine, when at the bar, is to
ascertain the highest intellectual eminence to
which a barrister, under the most favourable
circumstances, may safely aspire. He had no
imaginative power, no originality of thought,
no great comprehension of intellect, to encum-
ber his progress. Inimitable as pleadings, his
corrected speeches supply nothing which, taken
apart from its context and the occasion, is
worthy of a place in the memory. Their most
brilliant passages are but commonplaces ex-
quisitely wrought, and curiously adapted to
his design. Had his mind been pregnant with
greater things, teeming with beautiful images,
or endued with deep wisdom, he would have
been less fitted to shed lustre on the ordinary
feelings and transactions of life. If he had
been able to answer Pitt without fainting, or
to support Fox without sinking into insignifi-
cance, he would not have been the delight of
special juries, and the glory of the Court of
King’s Bench. For that sphere, his powers,
his acquisitions, and his temperament were
exactly framed. He brought into it, indeed,
accomplishments never displayed there before
in equal perfection—glancing wit, rich humour,
infinite grace of action, singular felicity of
language, and a memory elegantly stored, yet
not crowded with subjects of classical and fan-
ciful illustration. Above his audience, he was
not beyond their sight, and he possessed rareON THE PROFESSION OF THE BAR.
Ill
facilities of raising them to his own level. In
this purpose he was aided by his connection
with a noble family, by a musical voice, and
by an eloquent eye, which enticed men to for-
give, and even to admire his natural polish
and refined allusions. But his moral qualities
tended even more to win them. Who could
resist a disposition overflowing with kindness,
animal spirits as elastic as those of a school-
boy, and a love of gayety and pleasure which
shone out amidst the most anxious labours 'l
His very weaknesses became instruments of
fascination. His egotism, his vanity, his per-
sonal frailties, were all genial, and gave him
an irresistible claim to sympathy. His warm-
est colours were drawn, not from the fancy,
but the affections. If he touched on the ro-
mantic, it was on the little chapter of romance
which belongs to the most hurried and feverish
life. The unlettered clown, and the assiduous
tradesman, understood him, when he revived
some bright recollection of childhood, or
brought back on the heart the enjoyments of
old friendship, or touched the chord of domes-
tic love and sorrow. He wielded with skill
and power the weapons which precedent sup-
plied, but he rarely sought for others. When
he defended the rights of the subject, it was
not by abstract disquisition, but by freshening
up anew the venerable customs and immuni-
ties which he found sanctioned by courts and
parliaments, and infusing into them new en-
ergy. He entrenched himself within the forms
of pleading, even when he ventured to glance
into literature and history. These forms he
rendered dignified as a fence against oppres-
sion, and cast on them sometimes the playful
hues of his fancy. His powers were not only
adapted to his sphere, but directed by admi-
rable discretion and taste. In small causes he
was never betrayed into exaggeration, but con-
trived to give an interest to their details, and
to conduct them at once with dexterity and
grace. His jests told for arguments; his di-
gressions only threw the jury off their guard,
that he might strike a decisive blow; his au-
dacity was always wise. His firmness was no
less under right direction than his weaknesses.
He withstood the bench, and rendered the bar
immortal service ; not so much by the courage
of the resistance, as by the happy selection of
its time, and the exact propriety of its manner.
He was, in short, the most consummate advo-
cate of whom we have any trace; he left his
profession higher than he found it; and yet,
beyond its pale, he was only an incomparable
companion, a lively pamphleteer, and a weak
and superficial debater!
Mr. Scarlett, the present leader of the Court
of King’s Bench, has less brilliancy than his
predecessor, but is not perhaps essentially in-
ferior to him in the management of causes.
He studiously disclaims imagination; he rarely
addresses the passions; but he now and then
gives indications which prove that he has
disciplined a mind of considerable elegance
and strength to Nisi Prius uses. In the fine
tact of which we have already spoken—the in-
tuitive power of common sense sharpened
within a peculiar circle—he has no superior,
and perhaps no equal. He never betrays
anxiety in the crisis of a cause, but instantly
decides among complicated difficulties, and is
almost always right. He can bridge over a
nonsuit with insignificant facts, and tread upon
the gulf steadily but warily to its end. What
Johnson said of Burke’s manner of treating a
subject is true of his management of a cause,
“ he winds himself into it like a great serpent.”
He does not take a single view of it, nor de-
sert it when it begins to fail, but throws him-
self into all its windings, and struggles in it
while it has life. There is a lucid arrange-
ment, and sometimes a light vein of pleasantry
and feeling in his opening speeches; but his
greatest visible triumph is in his replies. These
do not consist of a mere series of ingenious
remarks on conflicting evidence ; still less of a
tiresome examination of the testimony of each
witness singly; but are as finely arranged on
the instant, and thrown into as noble and de-
cisive masses, as if they had been prepared in
the study. By a vigorous grasp of thought, he
forms a plan and an outline, which he first dis-
tinctly marks, and then proceeds to fill up with
masterly touches. Whei^ a case has been
spread over half a day, and apparently shattered
by the speech and witnesses of his adversary,
he will gather it up, condense, concentrate, and
render it conclusive. He imparts a weight
and solidity to all that he touches. Vague
suspicions become certainties, as he exhibits
them ; and circumstances light, valueless, and
unconnected till then, are united together, and
come down in wedges which drive conviction
into the mind. Of this extraordinary power,
his reply on the first trial of‘‘The King v.
Collins,” where he gained the verdict against
evidence and justice, was a wonderful speci-
men. If such a speech is not an effort of genius,
it is so much more complete than many works
which have a portion of that higher faculty,
that we almost hesitate to place it below them.
Mr. Scarlett, in the debate on the motion rela-
tive to the Chancellor’s attack on Mr. Aber-
crombie, showed that he has felt it neces-
sary to bend his mind considerably to the rou-
tine of his practice. He was then surprised
into his own original nature ; and forgetting
the measured compass of his long adopted
voice and manner, spoke out in a broad north-
ern dialect, and told daring truths wrhich asto-
nished the house. It is not thus, however, that
he wins verdicts and compels the court to grant
“ rules to show cause !”
Mr. Brougham may, at first, appear to form
an exception to the doctrines we have endea
voured to establish; but, on attentive consi-
deration, will be found their most striking ex
ample. True it is, that this extraordinary man,
wrho, without high birth, splendid fortune, or
aristocratic connection, has, by mere intellec-
tual power, become the parliamentary leader
of the whigs of England, is at last beginning
to succeed in the profession he has conde-
scended to follow. But, stupendous as his
abilities, and various as his acquisitions are,
he does not possess that one presiding faculty
—imagination, which, as it concentrates all
others, chiefly renders them unavailing for in
ferior uses. Mr. Brougham’s powers are not thus
united and rendered unwieldy and prodigious,112
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
but remain apart, and neither assist nor im-
pede each other. The same speech, indeed,
may give scope to several talents; to lucid
narration, to brilliant wit, to irresistible rea-
soning, and even to heart-touching pathos;
but these will be found in parcels, not blended
and interfused in one superhuman burst of
passionate eloquence. The single power in
which he excels all others is sarcasm, and his
deepest inspiration—Scorn. Hence he can
awaken terror and shame far better than he
can melt, agitate, and raise. Animated by
this blasting spirit, he can “bare the mean
hearts” which “ lurk beneath” a hundred
“stars,” and smite a majority of lordly
persecutors into the dust! His power is all
directed to the practical and earthy. It is
rather that of a giant than a magician ; of
Briareus than of Prospero. He can do a hun-
dred things well, and almost at once; but he
cannot do the one highest thing; he cannot by
a single touch reveal the hidden treasures of
the soul, and astonish the world with truth and
beauty unknown till disclosed at his bidding.
Over his vast domain he ranges with amazing
activity, and is a different man in each pro-
vince which he occupies. He is not one, but
Legion. At three in the morning he will make
a reply in parliament, which shall blanch the
cheeks and appal the hearts of his enemies;
and at half-past nine he will be found in his
place in court, working out a case in which a
bill of five pounds is disputed, with all the
plodding care of the most laborious junior.
This multiplicity of avocation, and division of
talent, suit the temper of his constitution and
mind. Not only does he accomplish a greater
variety of purposes than any other man—not
only does he give anxious attention to every
petty cause, while he is fighting a great politi-
cal battle, and weighing the relative interests
of nations—not only does he write an article
for the Edinburgh Review while contesting a
county, and prepare complicated arguments on
Scotch appeals by way of rest from his gene-
rous endeavours to educate a people—but he
does all this as if it were perfectly natural to
him, in a manner so unpretending and quiet,
that a stranger would think him a merry gen-
tleman, who had nothing to do but enjoy him-
self and fascinate others. The fire which burns
in the tough fibres of his intellect does not
quicken his pulse, or kindle his blood to more
than a genial warmth. He, therefore, is one
man in the senate, another in the study, an-
other in a committee room, and another in a
petty cause; and consequently is never above
the work which he has to perform. His pow-
ers are all as distinct and as ready for use as
those of the most accomplished of Old Bailey
practitioners. His most remarkable faculty,
taken singly, the power of sarcasm, can be
understood, even by a Lancaster jury. And
yet, though worthy to rank with statesmen be-
fore whom Erskine sunk into insignificance,
and though following his profession with zeal
and perseverence almost unequalled, he has
hardly been able to conquer the impediment
of that splendid reputation, which to any other
man must have been fatal!
These great examples are sufficient for our
purpose, and it would be invidious to add
more. Without particularizing any, we may
♦safely affirm that if the majority of successful
advocates are not men of genius, they are men
of very active and penetrating intellect, dis-
ciplined by the peculiar necessity of their pro-
fession to the strictest honour, and taught by
their intimate and near acquaintance with all
the casualties of human life, and the varieties
of human nature, indulgence to frailty and
generosity to misfortune. It is impossible to
estimate too highly the value of such a body
of men, aspiring, charitable, and acute; who,
sprung from the people, naturally sympathize
with their interests ; who, being permitted to
grasp at the honours of the state, are supplied
with high motives to preserve its constitution;
and who, if not very eager for improving the
laws, at least keep unceasing watch over
every attempt to infringe on the rights they
sustain, or to pervert them to purposes of op-
pression. If they are too prone to change their
party as they rise, they seldom do so from base
or sordid motives, and often infuse a better
spirit into those whose favours they consent
to receive.
Let no one of those who, with a conscious-
ness of fine talents, has failed in his profes-
sion, abate his self-esteem, or repine at his
fortune. A life of success, though a life of
excitement, is also a life of constant toil, in
which the pleasures of contemplation and of
society are sparingly felt, and which some-
times tends to a melancholy close. Besides,
the best part of our days is past before the
struggle begins. Success itself has nothing
half so sweet as the anticipations of boyish
ambition and the partial love by which they
were fostered. A barrister can scarcely hope
to begin a career of anxious prosperity till
after thirty; and surely he who has attained
that age, after a youth of robust study and
manly pleasure, with firm friends, and an un-
spotted character, has no right to complain of
the world!THE WINE CELLAR.
113
THE WINE CELLAR.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
Facilis descensus Averni,
Sed rcvocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras,
Hie labor, hoc opus est.	Verg.
In the deep discovery of the subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some inquirers, who, if two os-
three yards were opened beneath the surface would not care to rake the bowels of Potosi and regions towards
the centre.	Sir Thomas Browne.
Men have always attached a peculiar inte-
rest to that region of the earth which extends
for a few yards beneath its surface. Below
this depth the imagination, delighting to busy
itself among the secrets of Time and Mortality,
hath rarely cared to penetrate. A few feet of
ground may suffice for the repose of the first
dwellers of the earth until its frame shall grow
old and perish. The little coin, silent picture
of forgotten battles, lies among the roots of
shrubs and vegetables for centuries, till it is
turned into light by some careful husbandman,
who ploughs an inch deeper than his fathers.
The dead bones which, loosened from their
urns, gave occasion to Sir Thomas Browne’s
noblest essay, “had outlasted the living ones
of Methusalem, and in a yard under ground,
and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong
and spacious buildings above them, and quietly
rested under the drums and tramplings of three
conquests.” Superstition chooses the subter-
ranean space which borders on the abodes of
the living, and ranges her vaults and mysteri-
ous caverns near to the scenes of revelry,
passion, and joy ; and within this narrow rind
rest the mighty products of glorious vintages,
the stores of that divine juice which, partaking
of the rarest qualities of physical and intellec-
tual nature, blends them in happier union
within us. Here, in this hallowed ground, the
germs of inspiration and the memorials of de-
cay lie side by side, and Bacchus holds divided
empire with the King of Terrors.
As I sat indulging this serious vein of re-
flection, some years ago, when my relish of
philosophy and port was young, a friend called
to remind me that we had agreed to dine to-
gether with rather more luxury than usual.
I had made the appointment with boyish eager-
ness, and now started gladly from my solitary
reveries to keep it. The friend with whom I
had planned our holiday, was one of those few
persons whom you may challenge to a convi-
vial evening with a mathematical certainty of
enjoying it;—which is the rarest quality of
friendship. Many who are equal to great exi-
gencies, and would go through fire and water
to serve you, want the delicate art to allay the
petty irritations, and heighten the ordinary en-
joyments of life, and are quite unable to make
themselves agreeable at a tete-a-tcte dinner.
Not so my companion ; who, zealous, prompt,
and consoling in all seasons of trial, had good
sense for every little difficulty, and a happy
humour for every social moment; at all times
15
a better and wiser self. Blest with good but
never boisterous spirits; endowed with the
rare faculty not only of divining one’s wishes,
but instantly making them his own ; skilful
in sweetening good counsel with honest flat-
tery ; able to bear with enthusiasm in which
he might not participate, and to avoid smiling
at the follies he could not help discerning;
ever ready to indulge the secret wish of his
guest “for another bottle,” with heart enough
to drink it with him, and head enough to take
care of him when it was gone, he was (and yet
is) the pleasantest of advisers, the most genial
of listeners, and the quietest of lively compa-
nions. On this memorable day he had, with
his accustomed forethought, given particular
orders for our entertainment, and I hastened
to enjoy it with him, little thinking how deep
and solemn was the pleasure which awaited
us.
We arrived at the-------Coffee House about
six on a bright afternoon in the middle of Sep-
tember, and found every thing ready and ex-
cellent ; and the turtle magnificent and finely
relieved by lime punch effectually iced; grilled
salmon crisply prepared for its appropriate
lemon and mustard; a leg of Welch mutton
just tasted as a “sweet remembrancer” of its
heathy and hungry hills; woodcocks with
thighs of exquisite delicacy and essence
“deeply interfused” in thick soft toast; and
mushrooms, which Nero justly called “the
flesh of the gods,” simply broiled and faintly
sprinkled with Cayenne.* Our conversation
was, of course, confined to mutual invitations
and expressive criticisms on the dishes; the
only table-talk which men of sense can tole-
rate. But the most substantial gratifications,
in this world at least, must have an end; and
the last mushroom was at length eaten. Un-
*This trait sufficiently accounts for the flowers which
were seen scattered on the sepulchre of Nero, when the
popular indignation raged highest against his memory—
the grateful Roman had eaten his mushroom under im-
perial auspices. Had Lord Byron been acquainted with
the flavour of choice mushrooms, he would have turned
to give it honour due after the following stanza, one of
the noblest in that work, which, with all its faults of
waywardness add haste, is a miracle of language, pa-
thos, playfulness, sublimity, and sense.
When Nero perish’d by the justest doom
Which ever the destroyer yet destroy’d,
Amidst the roar of liberated Rome,
The nations free, and the world overjoy’d,
Some hand unseen strew’d flowers upon his tomb—
Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void
Of feeling for some kindness done when power
Had left the wretch one uncorrupted hour!
K 2in
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
fortunately for the repose of the evening, we
were haunted by the recollection of some
highly flavoured port, and, in spite of strong
evidence of identity from conspiring waiters,
sought for the like in vain. Bottle after bottle
was produced and dismissed as “not the thing,”
till our generous host, somewhat between libe-
ral hospitality and just impatience, smilingly
begged us to accompany him into the cellar,
inspect the whole of “ his little stock,” and
choose for ourselves ! We took him at his
word ; another friend of riper years and graver
authority joined us; and we prepared to fol-
low our guide, who stood ready to conduct us
to the banks of Lethe. All the preparations,
like those which preceded similar descents
of the heroes of old, bespoke the awfulness
and peril of the journey. Our host preceded
us with his massive keys to perform an office
collateral to that of St. Peter; behind, a dingy
imp of the nether regions stood with glasses
in his hands and a prophetic grin on his face;
and each of us was armed with a darning torch
to penetrate the gloom which now stretched
through the narrow entrance before us.
We descended the broken and winding stair-
case with cautious steps, and, to confess the
truth, not without some apprehension for our
upward journey, yet hoping to be numbered
among that select class of Plato’s visiters,
“ quos ardens evexit ad oethera virtus.” On a
sudden, turning a segment of a mighty cask,
we stood in the centre of the vast receptacle
of spirituous riches. The roof of solid and
stoutly compacted brickwork, low, but boldly
arched, looked substantial enough to defy all
attacks of the natural enemy, water, and resist
a second deluge. From each side ran long
galleries, partially shown by the red glare of
the torches, extending one way far beneath the
busy trampling of the greatest shopkeepers
and stock-jobbers in the world; and, on the
other, below the clamour of the Old Bailey
Court and the cells of its victims. What a
range ! Here rest, cooling in the deep-delved
cells, the concentrated essences of sunny
years ! In this archway huge casks of mighty
wine are scattered in bounteous confusion,
like the heaped jewels and gold on the “-rich
strond” of Spenser, the least of which would
lay Sir Walter’s Fleming low! Throughout
that long succession of vaults, thousands of
bottles, “in avenues disposed,” lie silently
waiting their time to kindle the imagination,
to sharpen the wit, to open the soul, and to
unchain the trembling tongue. There may
you feel the true grandeur of quiescent power,
and walk amidst the palpable elements of mad-
ness or of wisdom. What stores of sentiment
in that butt of raciest Sherry! What a fund
of pensive thought! What suggestions for
delicious remembrance ! What “ aids to re-
flection !” (genuine as those of Coleridge) in
that Hock of a century old. What sparkling
fancies, whirling and foaming, from a stout
body of thought in that full and ripe Cham-
pagne ! What mild and serene philosophy in
that Burgundy, ready to shed “ its sunset glow”
on society and nature! This pale Brandy,
softened by age, is the true “ spirit” which
“disturbs us with the joy of elevated thoughts.”
That Hermitage, stealing gently into th^ cham-
bers of the brain, shall make us “ babble of green
fields;” and that delicate Claret,'innocently
bubbling and dancing in the slender glass, shall
bring its own vine-coloured hills more vividly
before us even than Mr. Stanfield’s pencil!
There from a time-changed bottle, tenderly
drawn from a crypt, protected by huge prime-
val cobwebs, you may taste antiquity, and
feel the olden time on your palate! As we
sip this marvellous Port,* to the very colour
of which age has been gentle, methinks we
have broken into one of those rich vaults in
which Sir Thomas Browne, the chief butler
of the tomb, finds treasures rarer than jewels.
“ Some,” saith he, “ discover sepulchral vessels
containing liquors which time hath incrassated
into jellies. For besides lacrymatories,notable
lamps, with oils and aromatic liquors, attended
noble ossuaries; and some yet retaining a
vinosity and spirit in them, wfhich, if any have
tasted, the}^ have far exceeded the palates of
antiquity;—liquors, not to be computed by
years of annual magistrates, but by great con-
junctions and the fatal periods of kingdoms.
The draughts of consulary date were but crude
unto these, and opimian wine but in the must
unto them.”
We passed on from flavour to flavour with
our proud and liberal guide, whose comments
added zest even to the text which he had to
dilate on. A scent, a note of music, a voice
long unheard, the stirring of the summer
breeze, may startle us wdth the sudden revival
of long-forgotten feelings and thoughts, but
none of these little whisperers to the heart is
so potently endowed with this simple spell as
the various flavours of Port to one who has
tried, and, in various moods of his own mind,
relished them all. This full, rough, yet fruity
wine, brings back that first season of London
life, when topics seemed exhaustless as words
and coloured wuth rainbow hues ; when Irish
students, fresh from Trinity College, Dublin,
wrere not too loud or familiar to be borne;
when the florid fluency of others was only tire-
some as it interrupted one’s own; when the
vast Temple Hall wras not too large or too cold
for sociality; and ambition, dilating in the
venerable space, shaped dreams of enterprise,
labour, and glory, till it required more wine to
assuage its fervours. This taste of a liquor,
firm yet in body, though tawmy with years,
bears with it to the heart that hour when, hav-
ing returned to my birth-place, after a long and
eventful absence, and having been cordially
welcomed by my hearty friends, I slipped
away from the table, and hurried, in the light
of a brilliant sunset, to the gently declining
fields and richly wooded hedgerows which were
the favourite haunt of my serious boyhood.
The swelling hills seemed touched with ethe-
real softness; the level plain wras invested
“ with purpureal gleams;” every wild rose and
stirring branch was eloquent with vivid recol-
lections : a thousand hours of happy thought-
*01d Port wine is more ancient to the imagination
than any other, though in fact it may have been known
fewer years; as a broken Gothic arch has more of the
spirit of antiquity about it than a Grecian temple. Port
reminds us of the obscure middle ages; but Hock, like
the classical mythology, is always young.THE WINE CELLAR.
115
fulness came back upon the heart; and the
glorious clouds which fringed the western ho-
rizon looked prophetic of golden j^ears “ pre-
destined to descend and bless mankind.” This
soft, highly-flavoured Port, in every drop of
which you seem to taste an aromatic flower,
revives that delicious evening, when, after
days of search for the tale of Rosamond Grey,
of which I had indistinctly heard, I returned
from an obscure circulating library with my
prize, and brought out a dong-cherished bottle,
given me two years before as a curiosity, by
way of accompaniment to that quintessence of
imaginative romance. How did I enjoy, with
a strange delight, its scriptural pathos, like a
newly discovered chapter of the Book of Ruth ;
hang enamoured over its young beauty, love-
lier for the antique frame of language in which
it was set; and long to be acquainted with the
author, though I scarcely dared aspire so high,
and little anticipated those hundreds of happy
evenings since passed in his society, which
now crowd on me in rich confusion!—Thus
is it that these subtlest of remembrancers not
only revive some joyful season, but this also
“contains a glass which shows us many
more,” unlocking the choicest stores of memo-
ry, that cellar of the brain, in which lie the
treasures which make life precious.
But see! our party have seated themselves
beneath that central arch to enjoy a calmer
pleasure after the fatigues of their travel. They
look romantic as banditti in a cave, and good-
humoured as a committee of aldermen. A
cask which has done good service in its day—
the shell of the evaporated spirit—serves for a
table, round which they sit on rude but ample
benches. The torches planted in the ground
cast a broad light over the scene, making the
ruddy wine glisten, and seeming, by their irre-
gular flickering, as if they too felt the influence
of the spot. My friend, usually so gentle in
his convivialities, has actually broken forth
into a song, such as these vaults never heard ;
our respected senior sits trying to preserve
his solemn look, but unconsciously smiling;
and Mr. B-----1, the founder of the banquet, is
sedulously doing the honours with only in-
tenser civility, and calling out for fresh store
of ham, sandwiches, and broiled mushrooms,
to enable us to do justice to the liquid delica-
cies before us. The usual order of wines is
disregarded; no affected climax, no squeamish
assortments of tastes for us here; we despise
all rules, and yield a sentimental indulgence to
the aberrations of the bottle. “Riches fine-
less” are piled around us; we are below the
laws and their ministers; and just, lo ! in the
farthest glimmer of the torches lies outstretched
our black Mercury, made happy by our leav-
ings, and seeming to rejoice that in the cellar,
as in the grave, all men are equal.
How the soul expands from this narrow cell
and bids defiance to the massive walls ! What
Elysian scenes begin to dawn amidst the dark-
ness ! Now do I understand the glorious tale
of Aladdin and the subterranean gardens. It
is plain that the visionary boy had discovered
just such a cellar as this, and there eagerly
learned to gather amaranthine fruits, and
range in celestial groves till the Genius of the
Ring, who has sobered many a youth, took
him in charge, and restored him to common
air. Here is the true temple, the inner shrine
of Bacchus. Feebly have they understood the
attributes of the benignant god, who have re-
presented him as delighting in a garish bower
with clustering grapes ; here he rejoices to sit,
in his true citadel, amidst his mightier trea-
sures. Methinks we could now, in prophetic
mood, trace the gay histories of these imbodied
inspirations among those who shall feel them
hereafter; live at once along a thousand lines
of sympathy and thought which they shall
kindle; reverse the melancholy musing of
Hamlet, and trace that which the bunghole-
stopper confines to “ the noble dust of an Alex-
ander,” which it shall quicken ; and peeping
into the studies of our brother contributors,
see how that vintage which flushed the hills
of France with purple, shall mantle afresh in
the choice articles of this Magazine.
But it is time to stop, or my readers will
suspect me of a more recent visit to the cellar.
They will be mistaken. One such descent is
enough for a life ; and I stand too much in
awe of the Powers of the Grave to venture
again so near to their precincts.116
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
ON THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BRUNSWICK
THEATRE BY FIRE.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
We notice this lamentable accident in our
dramatic record, not for the sake of inquiry
into its causes, or of multiplying the dismal
associations which it awakens, but for the
striking manner in which it has brought out
the proper virtues of players. Actors of all
ranks; managers of all interests; the retired
and the active ; the successful and the obscure ;
the refined and the vulgar; from Mrs. Siddons
down to the scene-shifters of Sadler’s Wells,
have pressed forward to afford their sympathy
and relief to the living sufferers. The pro-
prietors of the patent theatres, who were just
complaining of'the infringements on their pur-
chased rights, which have rendered them
almost valueless, at once forgot the meditated
injury to themselves, and saw nothing but the
misery of their comrades. It is only on occa-
sions such as these that the charities which
are nurtured amidst the excitements and vi-
cissitudes of a theatrical life are exhibited, so
as to put the indiscriminate condemnations of
the crabbed moralist and the fanatic to shame.
There is more equality in the distribution of
goodness and evil than either of these classes
imagine; for the “respectable” part of the
community are powerful and permanent; and
obtain, perhaps, something more than justice
for the negative virtues. Far be it from us to
undervalue these, or to sympathize with any
who would represent the ordinary guards and
fences of morality as things of little value;
but justice is due to all; and justice, we cannot
help thinking, is scarcely done to those whose
irregularities and wrhose virtues grow together
on that verge of ruin and despair on which
they stand in the times of their giddiest eleva-
tion. A cold observance of the decencies of
life excites no man’s envy and v7ounds no
man’s self-love ; and, therefore, it is allowed
without grudging; wdiile the dazzling errors
and redeeming nobleness of the light-hearted
and the generous are more easily abused than
copied. To detect “ the soul of goodness in
things evil,” is not to confound evil with good,
or to weaken the laws of honour and con-
science, but to give to them a finer precision
and a more penetrating vigour. It is not by
distinguishing, but by confounding, that perni-
cious sentimentalists pervert the understanding
and corrupt the affections. They lend to vice
the names and attributes of virtue ; tack toge-
ther qualities which could never be united in
nature; and thus, in order to produce a new
and startling effect, deprave the moral sensibi-
lity, and relax the tone of manly feeling. But
it is another thing to hold the balance fairly
between the excellencies and the frailties of
imperfect men ; to trace the hints and indica-
tions of high emotion amidst the weaknesses
of our nature; to consider temptations as well
as transgressions, and to estimate not only
what is done but what is resisted. We can,
indeed, do this but partially, yet we should, as
far as possible, dispose ourselves to be just in
our moral censures ; and we shall find in those
whom we call “ good for nothing people,” more
good than we think for. Actors are, no doubt,
more liable to deviate from the ordinary pro-
prieties of conduct, than merchants or agricul-
turists ; it is their business to give pleasure to
others, and, therefore, they must incline to the
pleasurable ; they live in the present, and it is
no wonder that, as their tenure is more preca-
rious than that of others, they take less thought
for the future. But if they have less of
the virtue of discretion, they have also less of
that allo}r of gross selfishness to which it is
allied ; they have much of the compassion
which they help to diffuse; and ludicrous as
their vanities sometimes are, they give way at
once on the touch of sympathy for unmerited
or merited sorrow. Mr. Kean is an extreme
instance, perhaps, both of imprudence and ge-
nerosity ; and accordingly no man living has
been treated with greater injustice by amoral
and discerning public. Raised in a moment
from obscurity and want to be the idol of the
town ; courted, caressed, and applauded by the
multitude, praised by men of genius, with rank,
beauty, and wit, proud to be enlisted in his
train, he grew giddy and fell, and was hooted
from the stage with brutal indignities. All
knew7 his faults ; but how few were capable of
understanding his virtues—his princely spirit,
his warm and cordial friendship, his proneness
to forget his own interests in those of others,
his magnanimity and his kindness! The
“ respectable” part of the community do not
engross all its goodness, although they turn it
to the best account for their own benefit. Un-
der the shield of this character, they sometimes
do things which the vagabonds they sneer at
v7ould not, and could not achieve ; and such is
the submission of mankind to custom, that they
retain their name even when they are detected.
An attorney, in large practice, convicted of a
fraud, retains the addition “ respectable” till he
receives judgment; the announcement of the
failure of a country bank, by wrhich hundreds
are ruined, styles the swindlers “ the respecta-
ble firm ;” and a most respectable member of
the religious world speculates in hops, or in
stock, without reproach, and, wdien he has failed
for thousands, fraudulently gambled away,
continues to hold shilling whist in pious abo-
mination. We have been led to this train of
reflection by seeing in a newspaper the speech
of a most respectable Home Missionary, named
Smith, at the Mansion-house, in wdiich he
exults in the horrible catastrophe as “ the
triumph of piety in London !” and this person,FIRST APPEARANCE OF MISS FANNY KEMBLE.
117
no doubt, regards the accidental mention of the
name of the Supreme Being on the stage as
blasphemy. It is difficult to express one’s in-
dignation at such a spirit and such language
without wounding the feelings of those whose
opinions of the guilt of theatrical enjoyments
have not rendered them insensible to the feelings
of others.
It must be admitted that there is something
in the sudden death of actors which shocks us
peculiarly at the moment, because the contrast
between life and death seems more violent in
their case than in that of others. We connect
them, by the law of association, with our own
gayest moments, and fancy that they who live
to please must lead a life of pleasure. Alas I
the truth is often far otherwise. The comedian
droops behind the scenes, quite chapfallen ;
the tragic hero retires from his stately griefs to
brood over homely and familiar sorrows,
which no poetry softens ; the triumphant ac-
tress, arrayed in purple and in pall, may know
the pangs of despised love, or anticipate the
coming on of the time when she shall be pre-
maturely old, and as certainly neglected. The
stage is a grave business to those who study it
even successfully, though its rewards are in-
toxicating enough to turn the most sober brain.
The professors in misfortune—especially such
a misfortune as this—have the most urgent
claims on our sympathy. Should we allow
those to be miserable who have so often made
us and thousands happy 1 Should we shut our
) hearts against those who have touched them so
truly; who have helped to lighten the weight
of existence; and have made us feel our kin-
dred with a world of sorrow and of tears 1 Their
art has the most sacred right to the protection
of humanity, for it touches it most nearly. It
makes no appeal to posterity; it does not aim
at the immortal, in contempt of our perishable
aims and regards ; but it is contented to live in
our enjoyments, and to die with them. Its
triumphs are not diffused by the press, nor re-
corded in marble, but registered on the red-
leaved tablets of the heart, satisfied to date its
fame with the personal existence of its wit-
nesses. It forms a part of ourselves ; beats in
the quickest pulses of our youth, and supplies
the choicest topics of our garrulous age. It
partakes of our fragility, nay even dies before
us, and leaves its monument in our memories.
Surely, then, it becomes us “ to see the players
well bestowed,” when their gayeties are sud-
denly and prematurely eclipsed, and their short
flutterings of vanity stayed before their time;
or to provide for those who depended on their
exertions. Of all people, they do most for re-
lations ; they hence most depend on them ;
and, therefore, their case both deserves and
requires our most active sympathy. The call
has been, in this instance, powerfully made,
and will, we hope, be answered practically
by all who revere the genius, and love the pro-
fession, and partake the humanity of Shak-
speare.
FIRST APPEARANCE OF MISS FANNY KEMBLE.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
When we predicted, last month, that if Co-
vent Garden theatre should be opened at all, it
would derive attraction even from the extreme
depression into which it had sunk, we had no
idea of the manner in which this hope would
be realized. We little dreamed that the cir-
cumstances which had threatened to render
this house desolate, would inspire female
genius to spring from the family whose ho-
nours were interwoven with its destiny, like
an infant Minerva, almost perfect at birth, to
revive its fortunes and renew its glories. In
the announcement that, on the opening night,
Miss Fanny Kemble, known to be a young lady
of high literary endowments, though educated
without the slightest view to the stage as a
profession, would present herself as Juliet—
that her mother, who, in her retirement, had
been followed by the grateful recollections of
all lovers of the drama, would reappear, in the
part of Lady Capulet, to introduce and support
her; and that her father would imbody, for
the first time, that delightful creation of Shak-
speare’s happiest mood, Mercutio—there was
abundant interest to ensure a full, respectable,
and excited audience; but no general expecta-
tion had gone forth of the splendid event which
was to follow. Even in our youngest days,
we never shared in so anxious a throb of ex-
pectation as that which awaited the several
appearances of these personages on the stage.
The interest was almost too complicated and
intense to be borne with pleasure; and when
Kemble bounded on the scene, gayly pointed at
Romeo, as if he had cast all his cares and
twenty of his years behind him, there was
a grateful relief from the first suspense, that
expressed itself in the heartiest enthusiasm we
ever witnessed. Similar testimonies of feel-
ing greeted the entrance of Mrs. Kemble; but
our hearts did not breathe freely till the fair
debutant herself had entered, pale, trembling
but resolved, and had found encouragement
and shelter in her mother’s arms. But another
and a happier source of interest was soon
opened; for the first act did not close till all
fears for Miss Kemble’s success had been dis-
pelled ; the looks of every spectator conveyed
that he was electrified by the influence of new-
tried genius, and was collecting emotions, in
silence, as he watched its development, to
swell its triumph with fresh acclamations. Fo*118
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
our own part, the illusion that she was Shak-
speare’s own Juliet came so speedily upon us,
as to suspend the power of specific criticism—
so delicious was the fascination, that we dis-
liked even the remarks of by-standers that dis-
turbed that illusive spell; and though, half an
hour before, we had blessed the applauding
bursts of the audience, like omens of propi-
tious thunder, we were now half-impatient of
their frequency and duration, because they in-
truded on a still higher pleasure, and because
we needed no assurance that Miss Kemble’s
success was sealed.
Feeling that the occasion formed an era in
our recolleclions of the theatre, we compared
her, in our imagination, with all the great ac-
tresses we had; and it is singular, though we
can allege nothing like personal likeness, that
Mrs. Jordan was the one whom she brought
back, in the first instance, to our memory. We
might have set down this idea as purely fanci-
ful, if we had not learned that it has crossed
the minds of other observers. As form and
features seem to have nothing to do with this
reminiscence, we attribute it to the exquisite
naturalness of Miss Kemble’s manner, and we
cannot help connecting it with an anticipation
that she will one day be as pre-eminently
the comic as the tragic muse of our stage.
Her traits of family resemblance struck us
most powerfully in the deeper and more earn-
est parts of her tragic performance. On one
occasion, when her face only was revealed by
her drapery, its intense expression brought
Mrs. Siddons most vividly back to us. Miss
Kemble’s personal qualifications for her pro-
fession are, indeed, such as we might expect
from one so parented and related. Her head
is nobly formed and admirably placed on her
shoulders—her brow is expansive and shaded
by very dark hair—her eyes are full of a gifted
soul, and her features are significant of intel-
lect to a very extraordinary degree. Though
scarcely reaching the middle height, she is
finely proportioned, and she moves with such
dignity and decision that it is only on recollec-
tion we discover she is not tall. In boldness
and dignity of action she unquestionably ap-
proaches more nearly to Mrs. Siddons than any
actress of our time excepting Pasta. Her voice,
whilst it is perfectly feminine in its tones, is
of great compass, and though, perhaps, not yet
entirely within her command, gives proof of
being able to express the sweetest emotions,
without monotony, and the sternest passions
without harshness. She seems to know the
stage by intuition, “ as native there and to the
manner born,” and she understands even now,
by what magic we cannot divine, the precise
effect she will produce on the most distant spec-
tators. She treads the stage as if she had been
matured by the study and practice of years.
We dreamed for a while of being able to ana-
lyze her acting, and to fix in'our memory the
finest moments of its power and grace ; but her
attitudes glide into each other so harmoniously
that we at last gave up enumerating how often
she seemed a study to the painter’s eye and a
vision to the poet’s heart.
At the first sight, Miss Kemble’s counte-
nance conveys an impression of extraordinary
intellect, and the manifestation of that faculty
is a pervading charm of her acting. It gives
her courage, it gives her promptitude—the
power of seeing what is to be done, and of
doing it without faltering or hesitation. She
always aims at the highest effect, and almost
always succeeds in realizing her finest concep-
tions.
The Juliet of Shakspeare is young and beau-
tiful ; but no mistake can be greater than the
idea that her character can be impersonated
with probability by a merely beautiful young
woman. Juliet is a being of rich imagination;
her eloquence breathes an ethereal spirit; and
her heroic devotedness is as different from
common-place romance, as superficial gilding
is unlike the solid ore. By many an observer,
the beautiful surface of her character is alone
appreciated, and not that force and grandeur
in it which is capable of sustaining itself in
harmony, not only with the luxuriant com-
mencement of the piece, but with the funeral
terrors of its tragic close. Hence the expec-
tation has been so often excited, that a lovely
girl, who can look the character very inno-
cently, and speak the garden-scene very pret-
tily, is quite sufficient to be a representative
of the heroine throughout; and hence the same
expectation has been so often disappointed.
The debutante may be often carried, without
apparent failure, through a scene or two, by
her beauty and pretty manner of love-making;
but when the tragedy commences in earnest,
her intellectual expression sinks under its
terrors, and she appears no more than a poor
young lady, driven mad with the vexation of
love.
Far remote from this description is the
Juliet of Miss Kemble. It never was our for-
tune to see Mrs. Siddons in the part, but Miss
Kemble gives it a depth of tragic tone which
none of her predecessors whom we have seen
ever gave to it. Miss O’Neil, loth as we are
to forget her fascinations, used to lighten the
earlier scenes of the piece with some girlish
graces that were accused of being infantine.
Be that as it may, there were certainly a hun-
dred little preltinesses enacted by hundreds of
novices in the character, which attracted
habitual applauses, but which Miss Kemble at
once repudiated with the wise audacity of ge-
nius ; at the same time, though she blends not
a particle of affected girlishness with the part
of Juliet, her youth and her truth still leave in
it a Shakspearian naivete. As the tragedy deep-
ens, her powers are developed in unison with
the strengthened decision of purpose which
the poet gives to the character. What a noble
effect she produced in that scene where the
Nurse, who had hitherto been the partner of
all her counsels, recommends her to marry
Paris, and to her astonished exclamation,
“ Speak’st thou from thy heart!” answers,
“ And from my soul too, or else beshrew them
both.” At that momentous passage Miss Kem-
ble erected her head, and extended her arm,
with an expressive air which we never saw
surpassed in acting, and with a power like
magic pronounced “ Amen !” In that attitude,
and look, and word, she made us feel that Juliet,
so late a nurseling, was now left alone in theTHE MELO-DRAMAS AGAINST GAMBLING.
119
world—that the child was gone, and that the
heroic woman had begun her part. By her
change of tone and manner she showed that
her heart was wound up to fulfil its destiny,
and she bids the Nurse “ Go in,” i,n a tone of
dignified command. That there was such a
change in Juliet we have always felt, but to
mark its precise moment was reserved for this
accomplished actress in a single tone.
It is hardly needless to say, that Mr. Kemble’s
Mercutio was delightful, independent even of
the gallant spirit with which he carried off the
weight of his anxieties on the first evening. It
was charmingly looked, acted, and spoken—
with only one little touch of baser matter in
the mimickry of the Nurse—and closed by a
death true to nature, and exhibiting, in milder
light, all the brilliant traits of the character.
Warde showed his good feeling in accepting
the part of Friar Laurence, and his good taste
in speaking the poetry of which it is made up:
Mrs. Davenport played the Nurse as excellent-
ly as she has played it for the last twenty years,
and not better than she will play it for twenty
years to come ; and Mrs. Kemble went through
the Lttle she had to do in Lady Capulet with
true motherly grace.
THE MELO-DRAMAS AGAINST GAMBLING.
[New Monthly Magazine.]
There is at Paris, where all extremes meet,
a kind of sub-theatrical public, which makes
amends for the severity of the orthodox dra-
matic code, by running wild after the most
extravagant violations of all rules, and the
strangest outrages on feeling and taste. Thus
the members of this living paradox keep the
balance even, and avenge the beautiful and the
romantic. If they turn away with disgust from
the Weird Sisters, and defy the magic in the
web of Othello’s handkerchief, they dote on
Mr. Cooke in the Monster, and consecrate
ribands to his fame. If they refuse to pardon
the grave-diggers in Hamlet, they seek for
materials of absorbing interest in the charnal-
house which no divine philosophy illumines.
If they refuse to tragedy any larger bounds of
time than their own classical poets could oc-
cupy with frigid declamations, they will select
three days from distant parts of a wretched
and criminal life, in order to exhibit in full and
odious perfection, the horrors which two fifteen
years of atrocity can accumulate and mature.
Of all the examples of the daring side of their
eternal antithesis, the melo-drama against
gambling, produced within the last few months,
is the most extraordinary and the most suc-
cessful. Each act is crowded with incidents,
in which'the only relief from the basest fraud
and the most sickening selfishness is to be
found in deeds which would chill the blood if
it had leisure to freeze. We do not only “ sup
full of horrors,” but breakfast and dine on them
also. A youth, who on the eve of his wed-
ding-day sells the jewels of his bride to gam-
ble with the price, and who deceives her by the
most paltry equivocations ; a friend, who sup-
plies this youth with substituted diamonds
which he has himself stolen ; a broken-hearted
father who dies cursing his son ; and a seduc-
tion of the wife, filthily attempted while the
husband is evading the officers of justice, are
among the attractions which should enchain
the attention, and gently arouse curiosity in
the first act of this fascinating drama. The
second act, exhibiting the same pair of fiends,
after a lapse of fifteen years, is replete with
appropriate fraud, heartlessness, and misery.
But the last act crowns all, and completes the
“moral lesson.” Here, after another fifteen
years passed in the preparatory school of guilt,
the hero verging on old age is represented as
in the most squalid penury—an outcast from
society, starving with a wife bent down by
suffering, and a family of most miserable
children crying for bread. His first exploit is
to plunder a traveller, murder him, and hide
his body in the sand; but this is little; the
horror is only beginning. While his last
murder is literally “ sticking on his hands,”
his old tempter and companion, who had at-
tempted to seduce his wife and had utterly
blasted his fortunes, enters his hut, ragged and
destitute, and by a few sentences rekindles the
old love of play, and engages him in schemes
of fraudulent gaming. After this little scene
of more subdued interest, the party leave the
hut to inter the corpse of the assassinated tra-
veller, and give opportunity for the entrance
of the eldest son of the hero, and his recogni-
tion by his mother. In her brief absence, con-
trived for this special occasion, the friends re-
solve on murdering the youth, of whose name
they are ignorant; the father watches while
his familiar stabs the stranger on his couch;
and just as the full horror is discovered, a
thunderbolt sets fire to the dwelling of iniquity,
and the father hurls his tempter into the flames
and follows him ! Such is the piece which has
delighted the dainty critics of Paris, who revolt
from Julius Caesar as bloody, and characterize
Hamlet as “the work of a drunken savage.”
But the most offensive circumstance attend-
ant on the production of this bloody trash is
the pretence that it is calculated to advance
the cause of morality by deterring from the
passion of gambling. What a libel is this on
poor human nature! Of what stuff must that
nature be made, if it could receive benefit from
such shocking pictures as representations af-
fecting it nearly ! No longer must we regard
it as a thing of passion and weakness,—erring,
frail, and misguided, yet full of noble impulses
and gentle compassions and traits, indicating120
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
a heaven]}7, origin and an immortal home; but
moulded of low selfishness, and animated by
demoniac fury. If earth has ever produced
such beings as are here exposed on the scene,
they are not specimens of any class of hu-
manity, but its monsters. And on what minds
is the exhibition to operate? On such as con-
tain within themselves a conscious disposition
to its atrocities, if any such there be, or on the
rest of mankind, who sicken at the sight ? The
first are far beyond the reach of the actor’s
preaching; the last feel the lesson is not for
them—if they indulge in gambling, they have
no fear of murdering their sons, and “ their
withers are unwrung.” In the mean time the
“moral lesson,” impotent for good, has a mis-
chievous power to wear out the sources of
sympathy, and to produce a dangerous fami-
liarity with the forms of guilt, which according
to the solemn warnings of Sir Thomas Browne,
“ have oft-times a sin even in their histories.”
“We desire,” continues this quaint but noble
writer, “no records of such enormities; sins
should be accounted new, that so they may be
esteemed monstrous; they omit of monstrosity
as they fall from their rarity; for men count
it venial to err with their forefathers, and fool-
ishly conceive they divide a sin in its society.
The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate
without these singularities of villany; for, as
they increase the hatred of vice in some, so do
they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all.
And this is one thing that may make latter
ages worse than the former, for the vicious
example of ages past poisons the curiosity of
these present, affording a hint of sin unto se-
duceable spirits, and soliciting those unto the
imitation of them, whose heads were never so
perversely principled as to invent them. In
things of this nature, silence commendeth
history; it is the veniable part of things lost;
wherein there must never rise a Pancovillus,
nor remain any register but that of Hell.” The
murderous phantasm of Paris will never deter
men from becoming gamblers, who have the
fatal passion within them, but it may assist in
making gamblers demons.
In London this piece has, we are happy to
find, succeeded only in the minor houses,
where the audience are accustomed to look
for coarse and violent stimulants. It was first
produced at the Coburgh; and, assisted by
splendid scenery and powerful melo-dramatic
acting, was attractive for some time; but has
given way to real operas, got up with great
liberality, and the graceful performances of a
young gentleman named Smith, who acts with
more taste and feeling than the clever aspirants
of his age usually exhibit. It was afterwards
announced at both the winter theatres; but,
fortunately for Covent-Garden, Drury Lane ob-
tained the precedence, and the good sense of
Mr. Kemble profited by the example set before
him. Here the enormities were somewhat
foreshortened, being compressed into two acts,
but unredeemed by a single trait of kind or
noble emotion. Cooper, as the more potent
devil, and Wallack, as his disgusting tool,
played with considerable energy; but no talent
could alleviate the mingled sense of sickness
and suffocation with which their slimy infamies
oppressed the spectators. Although much
curiosity had been excited, the piece did not
draw, and was speedily laid aside; while at
Covent-Garden, where its announcement was
dignified by the names of Kemble, Ward, and
Miss Kelly, it was most wisely suppressed in
the shell. At the Adelphi, we have been told
that it was rendered somewhat less revolting;
but we could not muster courage to face it
here, or even to endure it in the improved ver-
sion of the Surrey, where, according to the
play-bills, the Manager has, “after due correc-
tion, reformed his hero, and restored him to
happiness and virtue.” What a fine touch of
maudlin morality! To hear Elliston deliver
it from the stage with all the earnestness of his
mock-heroic style, we would undergo the purga-
tory with which he threatens us. He is the
reforming Quaker of dramatic legislation, and
his stage, during the run of the piece, was a
court of ease to Brixton, as Drury-Lane was
to Newgate. Nothing can equal the benevolent
discrimination of his theory, except that of a
popular preacher whom we once heard depre-
cating the orthodox doctrine of the eternity of
future punishment, and cheering his audience
with the invigorating hope, that, after being
tormented for three hundred and sixty-five
thousand years, the wicked would be made
good and happy. We are thankful, neverthe-
less, that Mr. Elliston’s tread-mill for gamblers
has rested with the axes and ropes of his more
sanguinary rivals; and that the young gentle-
men addicted to play have finished their lesson.
How it may operate in Paris and the neigh-
bourhood of St. James’s, will be ascertained
in the ensuing winter.ON THE LATE WILLIAM HAZLITT.
131
ON THE INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER OF THE LATE
WILLIAM HAZLITT.
[From “The Examiner” and “The Review of William Hazlitt.”]
As an author, Mr. Hazlitt may be contem-
plated principally in three aspects,—as a moral
and political reasoner; as an observer of cha-
racter and manners ; and as a critic in litera-
ture and painting. It is in the first character
only, that he should be followed with caution.
His metaphysical and political essays contain
rich treasures, sought with years of patient
toil, and poured forth with careless prodigality,
—materials for thinking, a small part of which
wisely employed, will enrich him who makes
them his own,—but the choice is not wholly
unattended with perplexity an*d danger. He
had, indeed, as passionate a desire for truth
as others have for wealth, or power, or fame.
The purpose of his research was always steady
and pure; and no temptation from without
could induce him to pervert or to conceal the
faith that was in him. But, besides that love
of truth, that sincerity in pursuing it, and that
boldness in telling it, he had earnest aspira-
tions after the beautiful, a strong sense of
pleasure, an intense consciousness of his own
individual being, which broke the current of
abstract speculation into dazzling eddies, and
sometimes turned it astray. The vivid sense
of beauty may, indeed, have fit home in the
breast of the searcher after truth,—but then he
must also be endowed with the highest of all
human faculties, the great mediatory and inter-
fusing power of imagination, which presides
supreme in the mind, brings all its powders and
impulses into harmonious action, and becomes
itself the single organ of all. At its touch,
truth becomes visible in the shapes of beauty;
the fairest of material things appear the living
symbols of airy thought; and the mind appre-
hends the finest affinities of the worlds of sense
and of spirit “ in clear dream and solemn
vision.” By its aid the faculties are not only
balanced, but multiplied into each other; are
pervaded by one feeling, and directed to one
issue. But, without it, the inquirer after truth
will sometimes be confounded by too intense a
yearning after the grand and the lovely,—not,
indeed, by an elegant taste, the indulgence of
which is a graceful and harmless recreation
amidst severer studies, but by that passionate
regard which quickens the pulse, and tingles
in the veins, and ‘‘hangs upon the beatings of
the heart.” Such was the power of beauty in
Hazlitt’s mind ; and the interfusing faculty was
wanting. The spirit, indeed, was willing, but
the flesh was strong; and when these contend,
it is not difficult to foretell which will obtain
the mastery; for “ the power of beauty shall
sooner transform honesty from what it is into
a bawd, than the power of honesty shall trans-
form beauty into its likeness.” How this
some-time paradox became exemplified in the
writings of one whose purpose was always
16
single, may be traced in the history of his mind,
at which it may be well to glance before ad-
verting to the examples.
William Hazlitt was the son of a dissenting
minister, who presided over a small Unitarian
congregation at Went, in Shropshire. His
father was one of those blameless enthusiasts
who, taking only one view of the question be-
tween right and power, embrace it with single-
ness of heart, and hold it fast with inflexible
purpose. He cherished in his son that attach-
ment to truth for its own sake, and those habits
of fearless investigation which are the natural
defences of a creed maintaining its ground
against the indolent force of a wealthy es-
tablishment, and the fervid attacks of combin-
ing sectaries, without the fascinations of mys-
tery or terror. In the solitude of the country,
his pupil learned, at an early age, to think.
But that solitude was something more to him
than a noiseless study, in which he might fight
over the battle between Filmer and Locke; or
exult on the shattered dogmas of Calvin ; or
rivet the links of the immortal chain of neces-
sity, and strike with the force of ponderous
understanding, on all mental fetters. A tem-
perament of unusual ardour glowed amidst
those lonely fields, and imparted to the silent
objects of nature a weight of interest akin to
that with which Rousseau has oppressed the
picture of his early years. He had not then,
nor did he find till long afterwards, power to
imbody his meditations and feelings in words;
the consciousness of thoughts which he could
not hope adequately to express, increased his
natural reserve; and he turned for relief to
the art of painting, in which he might silently
realize his dreams of beauty, and repay the
bounties of nature. A few old prints from the
old masters awakened the spirit of emulation
within him; the sense of beauty became
identified in his mind with that of glory and
duration; while the peaceful labour calmed the
tumult in his veins, and gave steadiness to his
pure and distant aim. He pursued the art
with an earnestness and patience which he
vividly describes in his essay “ On the Plea-
sure of Painting;” and to which he frequently
reverts in some of his most exquisite passages;
and, although in this, his chosen pursuit, he
failed, the passionate desire for success, and
the long struggle to attain it, left deep traces
in his mind, heightening his strong perception
of external things, and mingling, with all the
thoughts, shapes and hues which he had vainly
striven to render immortal. A painter may
acquire a fine insight into the nice distinctions
of character,—he may copy manners in words
as he does in colours,—but it may be appre-
hended that his course as a severe reasoner
will be somewhat “troubled with thick coming
L122
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
fancies.” And if the successful pursuit of art
may thus disturb the process of abstract con-
templation, how much more may an unsatis-
fied passion ruffle it, bid the dark threads of
thought glitter with radiant fancies unrealized,
and clothe its diagrams with the fragments of
picture which the hand refused to execute!
What wonder, if, in the mind of an ardent
youth, thus struggling in vain to give palpable
existence to the shapes of loveliness which
haunted him, “the homely beauty of the good
old cause” should assume the fascinations not
properly its own ! At this time, also, while at
once laborious and listless, he became the
associate of a band of young poets of power
and promise such as England had not pro-
duced for two centuries, whose genius had
been awakened by the rising sun of liberty,
and breathed forth most eloquent music.
Their political creed resembled his own; yet,
for the better and more influential part, they
were poets, not metaphysicians ; and his inter-
course with them tended yet farther to spread
the noble infection of beauty through all his
thoughts. That they should have partially
understood him at that time was much, both
for them and for him; for the faculty of ex-
pression remained imperfect and doubtful until
quickened at that chosen home of genius and
kindness, the fire-side of the author of “John
Woodvil.” There his bashful struggles to ex-
press the fine conceptions with which his
bosom laboured were met by entire sympathy ;
there he began to stammer out his just and
original notions of Chaucer and Spenser, and
old English writers, less talked of, though not
less known, by their countrymen ; there he
was understood and cheered by one who
thought after their antique mode, and wrote in
their spirit, and by a lady, “ sister ever}?- way”
to his friend, whose fine discernment of his
first efforts in conversation, he dwelt upon
with gratitude even when most out of humour
with the world. He wrote then slowly, and
with great difficulty, being, as he himself states
in his “Letter to Gifford,” “eight years in
writing as many pages;” in that austere labour
the sense of the beautiful was rebuked, and
his first work, the “Essay on the Principles
of Human Action,” is composed in a style as
dry and hard as a mathematical demonstration.
But when his pen was loosed from its long
bondage, the accumulated stores of thought
and observation pressed upon him ; images of
beauty hovered round him ; deep-rooted attach-
ments to books and works of art, which had
been friends to him through silent years,
glowed for expression, and a long arrear of
personal resentments struggled to share in the
masterdom of conscious power. The room of
Imagination, which would have enabled him
to command all his resources, and place his
rare experiences to their true account, was
supplied by a will—sufficiently sturdy by na-
ture, and made irritable and capricious by the
most inexcusable misrepresentation and abuse
with which the virulence of party-spirit ever
disgraced literary criticism. His works were
shamelessly garbled ; his person and habits
slandered; and volumes, any one page of
which contained thought sufficient to supply a
whole “ Quarterly Review,” were dismissed
with affected contempt, as the drivelling of an
impudent pretender, whose judgment was to
be estimated by an enthusiastic expression
torn from its context, and of whose English
style a decisive specimen was found in an
error of the press. Thus was a temperament,
always fervid, stung into irregular action; the
strong regard to things was matched by as
vivid a dislike of persons ; and the sense of
injury joined with the sense of beauty to dis-
turb the solemn musings of the philosopher
and the great hatreds of the patriots.
One of the most remarkable effects of the
strong sense of the personal on Hazlitfs abstract
speculations, is a habit of confounding his own
feelings and experiences in relation to a sub-
ject with proofs of some theory which had
grown out of them, or had become associated
with them. Thus, in his “Essay on the Past
and the Future,” he asserts the startling propo-
sition, that the past is, at any given moment,
of as much consequence to the individual as
the future; that he has no more actual interest
in what is to come than in what has gone by,
except so far as he may think himself able to
avert the future by action; that whether he
was put to torture a year ago, or anticipates the
rack a year hence, is of no importance, if his
destiny is so fixed that no effort can alter it;
and this paradox its author chiefly seeks to
establish by beautiful instances of what the
past, as matter of contemplation, is to thought-
ful minds, and in fine glances at his individual
history. The principal sophism consists in
varying the aspect in which the past and future
are viewed;—in one paragraph, regarding
them as apart from personal identity and con-
sciousness, as if a being, who was “not a child
of time,” looked down upon them; and, in
another, speaking in his own person as one
who feels the past as well as future in the in-
stant. When the quarrels with a supposed
disputant who would rather not have been
Claude, because then all would have been
over with him, and asserts that it cannot sig-
nify. when we live, because the value of exist-
ence is not altered in the course of centuries,
he takes a stand apart from present conscious-
ness- and the immediate question—for the
desire to have been Claude could only be
gratified in the consciousness of having been
Claude—which belongs to the present moment,
and implies present existence in the party
making the choice, though for such a moment
he might be willing to die. He strays still
wider from the subject when he observes a
treatise on the Millennium is dull; but asks
who was ever weary of reading the fables of
the Golden Age I for both fables essentially
belong neither to past nor future, and depend
for their interest, not on the time to which they
are referred, but the vividness with which
they are drawn. But supposing the Golden
Age and the Millennium to be happy conditions
of being—which to our poor, frail, shivering
virtue they are not—and the proposal to be
made, whether we would remember the first, or
enter upon the last, surely we should “hailthe
coming on of time,” and prefer having our
store of happiness yet to expend, to the know-ON THE LATE WILLIAM HAZLITT.
123
ledge that we had just spent it! When Mr. ]
Hazlitt instances the agitation of criminals
before their trial, and their composure after
their conviction, as proofs that if a future
event is certain, “ it gives little more disturb-
ance or emotion than if it had already taken
place, or were something to happen in another
state of being, or to another person,” he gives
an example which is perfectly fair, but which
every one sees is decisive against his theory.
If peace followed when hope was no longer
busy; if the quiet of indifference was the same
thing as the stillness of despair; if the palsy
of fear did not partially anticipate the stroke
of death, and whiten the devoted head with
premature age; there might’be some ground
for this sacrifice of the future at the shrine of
the past; but the poor wretch who grasps the
hand of the chaplain or the under-sheriff’s
clerk, or a turnkey, or an alderman, in con-
vulsive agony, as his last hold on life, and
declares that he is happy, would tell a different
tale! It seems strange that so profound a
thinker, and so fair a reasoner, as Mr. Hazlitt,
should adduce such a proof of such an hypo-
thesis—but the mystery is solved when we
regard the mass of personal feeling he has
brought to bear on the subject, and which has
made his own view of it unsteady. All
this picturesque and affecting retrospection
amounts to nothing, or rather tells against the
argument; because the store of contemplation
which is, will ever be while consciousness re-
mains ; nay, must increase even while we
reckon it, as the present glides into the past,
and turns another arch over the cave of me-
mory. This very possession which he would
set against the future is the only treasure
which with certainty belongs to it, and of
which no change of fortune can deprive him;
and, therefore, it is clear that the essayist mis-
takes a sentiment for a demonstration, when
he expatiates upon it as proof of such a doc-
trine. There is nothing affected in the asser-
tion—no desire to startle—no playing with the
subject or the reader; for of such intellectual
trickeries he was incapable; but an honest
mistake into which the strong power of per-
sonal recollection, and the desire to secure it
within the lasting fret-work of a theory, drew
him. So, when wearied with the injustice
done to his writings by the profligate misre-
presentations of the government critics, and the
slothful acquiescence of the public, and con-
trasting with it the success of the sturdy play-
ers at his favourite game of Jives, which no one
could question, he wrote elaborate essays* to
prove the superiority of physical qualifications
to those of intellect—full of happy illustrations
and striking instances, and containing one in-
imitable bit of truth and pathos “ On the Death
of Cavanagh,”—but all beside the mark—proving
nothing but that which required no proof—that
corporeal strength and beauty are more speed-
ily and more surely appreciated than the pro-
ducts of genius; and leaving the essential
differences of the two, of the transitory and the
lasting—of that which is confined to a few
*“On the Indian Jugglers,” and “On the Disadvan-
tages of Intellectual Superiority.”
barren spectators, and that which is diffused
through the hearts and affections of thousands,
and fructifies and expands in generations yet
unborn, and connects its author with far dis-
tant times, not by cold renown, but by the links
of living sympathy—to be exemplified in the
very essay which would decry it, and to be
nobly vindicated by its author at other times,
when he shows, and makes us feel, that
“words are the only things which last for
ever.”* So his attacks on the doctrine of
utility, which were provoked by the cold ex-
travagancies of some of its supporters, consist
of noble and passionate eulogies on the graces,
pleasures, and ornaments, of life, which leave
the theory itself, with which all these are con-
sistent, precisely where it was. So his “ Essays
on Mr. Owen’s View of Society” are full of
exquisite banter, well-directed againsi the in-
dividual: of unanswerable expositions of the
falsehood of his pretensions to novelty and of
the quackery by which he attempted to render
them notorious; of happy satire against the
aristocratic and religious patronage which he
sought and obtained for schemes which were
tolerated by the great because they were
believed by them to be impracticable; but the
truth of the principal idea itself remains almost
untouched. In these instances the personal
has prevailed over the abstract in the mind of
the thinker; his else clear intellectual vision
has been obscured by the intervention of his
own recollections, loves, resentments, or fan-
cies; and the real outlines of the subject have
been overgrown by the exuberant fertility of
the region which bordered upon them.
The same causes diminished the immediate
effect of Mr. Hazlitt’s political writings. It
was the fashion to denounce him as a sour
Jacobin; but no description could be more un-
just. Under the influence of some bitter feel-
ing, he occasionally poured out a furious in-
vective against those whom he regarded as the
enemies of liberty, or the apostates from its
cause; but, in general, his force was diverted'
(unconsciously to himself) by figures and
fantasies, by fine and quaint allusions, by
quotations from his favourite authors, intro-
duced with singular felicity as respects the
direct link of association, but tending by their
very beauty to unnerve the mind of the reader,
and substitute the sense of luxury for that of
hatred or anger. In some of his essays, when
the reasoning is most cogent, every other sen-
tence contains some exquisite passage from
Shakspeare, or Fletcher, or Wordsworth, trail-
ing after it a line of golden associations—or
some reference to a novel, over which we have
a thousand times forgotten the wrongs of
mankind; till in the recurring shock of plea-
surable surprise, the main argument escapes
us. When, for example, he compares the po-
sition of certain political waverers to that of
Clarissa Harlowe when Lovelace would re-
peat his outrage, and describes them as having
been, like her, trepanned into a house of ill-
fame near Pall Mall, and defending their soiled
virtue with their pen-knives,—who, at the
suggestion of the stupendous scene which the
*uOn Thought and Action.”124
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
allusion directly revives, can think or care
about the renegade of yesterday! Here, again,
is felt the want of that imagination which
brings all things into one, tinges all our
thoughts and sympathies with one joyous or
solemn hue, and rejects every ornament which
does not heighten or prolong the feeling which
is proper to the design. Even when Mr. Haz-
litt retaliates on Mr. Southey for attacking his
old co-patriots, the poetical associations which
bitter remembrance suggests almost neutralize
the attack, else overpowering; he brings every
“flower which sad embroidery wears to strew
the laureate hearse,” where patriotism is in-
terred ; and diverts our indignation and his
own by affecting references to an early friend-
ship. So little does he regard the unity of his
compositions, that in his “ Letter to Gifford,”
after a series of the most just and bitter retorts
on his maligner,—“the fine link which con-
nected literature with the police”—he takes a
fancy to teach that “ Ultra-crepidarian Critic”
his own theory of the natural disinterestedness
of the human mind, and developes it—not now
in the mathematical style in which it was first
enunciated, but “ o’er-informed” with the glow
of sentiment, and terminating in an eloquent
rhapsody. This latter part of the letter is one
of the noblest of his effusions, but it entirely
destroys the first in the mind of the reader;
for who, when thus contemplating the living
wheels on which human benevolence is borne
onward in its triumphant career, and the spirit
with which they are instinct, can think of the
poor wasp settled upon them, and who was
just before transfixed with minikin arrows'?
Bat the most signal result which “ the shows
of things ” had over Mr. Hazlitt’s mind, was
his setting up the Emperor Napoleon as his
idol. He strove to justify his predilection to
himself by referring it to the revolutionary
origin of his hero, and the contempt with
which he trampled upon the claims of legiti-
macy, and humbled the pride of kings. But
if his “ only love ” thus sprung “ from his only
hate,” it was not wholly cherished by antipa-
thies. If there had been nothing in his mind
which tended to aggrandizement and glory,
and which would fain reconcile the principles
of liberty with the lavish accumulation of
power, he might have desired the triumph of
young tyranny over legitimate thrones ; but he
would scarcely have watched its progress
“like a lover and a child.” His feeling for
Bonaparte was not a sentiment of respect for
fallen greatness: not a desire to trace “the
soul of goodness in things evil;” not a loath-
ing of the treatment the emperor received
from “his cousin kings” in the day of adver-
sity ; but entire affection mingling with the
current of the blood, and pervading the moral
and intellectual being.* Nothing less than
* Proofs of the singular fascination which the idea of
Bonaparte created on Mr. Hazlitt’s mind abound in his
writings. One example of which suffices to show how
it mingled with his most passionate thoughts—his earli-
est aspirations, and his latest sympathies. Having re-
ferred to some association which revived the memory
of his happiest days, he breathes out into this rhapsody:
—“As I look on the long-neglected copy of the Death
of Clorinda, golden dreams play upon the canvas as
they used when I painted it. The flowers of Hope and
Joy springing up in my mind, recall the time when they
this strong attachment, at once personal and
refined, would have enabled him to encounter
the toil of collecting and arranging facts and
dates for four volumes of narrative ;—a drudg-
ery too abhorrent to his habits of mind as a
thinker, to be sustained by any stimulus which
the prospect of wealth or reputation could
supply. It is not so much in the ingenious
excuses which he discovers for the worst acts
of his hero, even for the midnight execution
of the Duke d’Enghein, and the invasion of
Spain, that the stamp of personal devotion is
obvious, as in the graphic force with which
he has delineated the short-lived splendours
of the Imperial Court, and “the trivial fond
records ” he has gathered of every vestige of
human feeling by which he could reconcile
the Emperor to his mind. The first two vo-
lumes of the “ Life of Napoleon,” although
redeemed by scattered thoughts of true origi-
nality and depth, are often confused and spi-
ritless ; the characters of the principal revo-
lutionists are drawn too much in the style of
caricatures ; but when the hero throws all his
rivals into the distance, erects himself the in-
dividual enemy of England, consecrates his
power by religious ceremonies, and defines it
by the circle of a crown, the author’s strength
becomes concentrated, his narrative assumes
an epic dignity and fervour, and glows with
“the long-resounding march and energy di-
vine.” How happy and proud is he to picture
the meeting of Napoleon with the Pope, and
the grandeurs of the coronation ! How he
grows wanton in celebrating the fetes of the
Tuileries, as “ presenting all the elegance of
enchanted pageants,” and laments them as
“gone like a fairy revel!” How he “lives
along the line ” of Austerlitz, and rejoices in
its thunder, and hails its setting sun, and ex-
ults in the minutest details of the subsequent
meeting of the conquered sovereigns with the
conqueror! How he expatiates on the fatal
marriage with the “deadly Austrian,” (as Mr.
Cobbett justly called that most heartless of her
sex,) as though it were a chapter in romance,
and added the grace of beauty to the imperial
picture ! How he kindles with martial ardour
as he describes the preparations for the expe-
dition against Russia; musters the myriads
of barbarians with a show of dramatic jus-
tice; and fondly lingers among the brief tri-
umphs of Moskwa on the verge of the terrible
catastrophe ! The narrative of that disastrous
expedition is, indeed, written with a master’s
hand; we see the “Grand Army” marching
to its destruction through the immense per-
spective ; the wild hordes flying before the
terror of its “coming;” the barbaric magnifi-
cence of Moscow towering in the far distance;
and when we gaze upon the sacrificial confla-
gration of the Kremlin, we feel that it is the
funeral pile of the conqueror’s glories. It is
well for the readers of this splendid work,
that there is more in it of the painter than of
first bloomed there. The years that are fled knock at
the door and enter. I am in the Louvre once more.
The Sun of Austerlitz has not set. It shines here, in my
heart; and he the Son of Glory is not dead, nor ever shall
be to me. I am as when my life began.”—See the Essay
on “Great and Little Things Table Talk, vol. ii., p.
171.ON THE LATE WILLIAM HAZLITT.
125
the metaphysician; that its style glows with
the fervour of battle, or stiffens with the spoils
of victory ; yet we wonder that this monument
to imperial grandeur should be raised from
the dead level of Jacobinism by an honest and
profound thinker. The solution is, that al-
though he was this, he was also more—that,
in opinion, he was devoted to the cause of the
people; but that, in feeling, he required some
individual object of worship; that he selected
Napoleon as one in whose origin and career
he might impersonate his principles and gra-
tify his affections; and that he adhered to his
own idea with heroic obstinacy when the
“ child and champion of the republic ” openly
sought to repress all feeling and thought, but
such as he could cast in his own iron moulds,
and scoffed at popular enthusiasm even while
it bore him to the accomplishment of his lof-
tiest desires.
If the experiences and the sympathies which
acted so powerfully on the mind of Hazlitt,
detract somewhat from his authority as a rea-
soner, they give an unprecedented interest
and value to his essays on character and
books. The excellence of these works ditfer
not so much in degree as in kind from that of
all others of their class. There is a weight
and substance about them, which makes us
feel that amidst all their nice and dexterous
analysis, they are, in no small measure, crea-
tions. The quantity of thought which is ac-
cumulated upon his favourite subjects ; the
variety and richness of the illustrations; and
the strong sense of beauty and pleasure which
pervades and animates the composition, give
them a place, if not above, yet apart from the
writings of all other essayists. They have
not, indeed, the dramatic charm of the old
“ Spectator ” and “ Tattler,” not the airy touch
with which Addison and Steele skimmed along
the surface of many-coloured life ; but they
disclose the subtle essences of character, and
trace the secret springs of the affections with
a more learned and penetrating spirit of hu-
man dealing than either. The intense interest
which he takes in his theme, and which
prompts him to adorn it lavishly with the
spoils of many an intellectual struggle, com-
mends it to the feelings as well as the under-
standing, and makes the thread of his argu-
ment seem to us like a fibre of our own
moral being. Thus his essay on “ Pedantry”
seems, within its few pages, to condense not
only all that can be said, but all* that can be
felt, on the happiness which we derive from
the force of habit, on the softening influences
of blameless vanity, and on the moral and pic-
turesque effect of those peculiarities of man-
ner, arising from professional associations,
which diversify and emboss the plain ground-
work of modern life. Thus, his character of
Rousseau is not merely a just estimate of the
extraordinary person to whom it relates, but
is so imbued with the predominant feeling of
his works that they seem to glide in review
before us, and we rise from the essayist as if
we had pursued the “ Confessions” anew with
him, and had partaken in the strong sympathy
which they excited within him during the hap-
piest summers of his youth. Thus, his paper
on “Actors and Acting,” breathes the very
soul of abandonment to impulse and heedless
enjoyment, affording glimpses of those brief
triumphs which make a stroller’s career “less
forlorn,” and presenting mirrors to the stage
in which its grand and affecting images, them-
selves reflected from nature, are yet farther
prolonged and multiplied. His individual
portraits of friends and enemies are hit off
with all the strength of hatred or affection,
neither mitigated by courtesy nor mistrust:—
partial, as they embrace, at most, only one as-
pect of the character, but startling in their vi-
vidness, and productive of infinite amusement
to those who are acquainted with the originals.
It must be conceded that these personal refer-
ences were sometimes made with unjustifiable
freedom; but they were more rarely prompted
by malice prepense, than by his strong con-
sciousness of the eccentricities of mankind,
which pressed upon him for expression, and
irritated his pen into satiric picture. And
when this keen observance was exerted on
scenes in which he delighted—as the Wednes-
day evening parties of Mr. Lamb’s—how fine,
how genial, how happy his delineations ! How
he gathers up the precious moments, when
poets and artists known to fame, and men of
fancy and wit yet unexhausted by publication,
met in careless pleasure; and distils their
finest essence. And if sometimes the tempta-
tion of making a spiteful hit at one of his
friends was too urgent for resistance, what
amends he made by some oblique compliment,
at once as hearty and as refined as those by
which Pope has made those whom he loved
immortal. But these essays, in which the
spirit of personality sometimes runs riot, are
inferior, in our apprehension, to those in
which it warms and peoples more abstracted
views of humanity—not purely metaphysical
reasonings, which it tended to disturb,* nor
political disquisitions which it checked and
turned from their aim; but estimates of the
high condition and solemn incidents of our
nature. Of this class, his papers on the “Love
of Life,” on the “ Fear of Death,” on the “Rea-
sons why Distant Objects Please,” on “Anti-
quity,” on the “ Love of the Country,” and on
“Living to Oneself,” are choice specimens,
written with equal earnestness and ingenuity,
and full of noble pieces of retrospection on
his own past being. Beyond their immediate
* Of the writers since Hume, who have written on
metaphysics, with the severity proper to the subject,
are Mr. Fearne, the author of the Essay on “ Conscious-
ness,” and Lady Mary Shepherd, whose works on
“Cause and Effect” are amongst the most remarkable
productions of the age. Beattie, Dugald Stewart. Dr.
Brown, and his imitators, turned what should have been
abstract reasoning “ to favour and to prettiness.” Mr.
Hazlitt obscured it by thickly clustered associations;
and Coleridge presented it in the masquerade of a gor-
geous fancy. Lady Mary Shepherd, on the other hand,
is a thinker of as much honesty as courage; her specu-
lations are colourless, and leave nothing on the mind
but the fine-drawn lines of thought. Coleridge, address-
ing the Duchess of Devonshire, on a spirited verse she
had written on the heroism of Tell, asks—
“ O lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure,
Where got ye that heroic measure ?”
The poet might have found in the reasonings of Lady
Mery Shephcrd'a worthier object of admiration than in
the little stanza which seemed so extraordinary an ef*
fort for a lady of fashion.
l 2126
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
objects of contemplation, there is always
opened a moral perspective ; and the tender
hues of memory gleam and tremble over
them.
“Books,” says Mr. Wordsworth, “are a
substantial world,” and surely those on which
Hazlitt has expatiated with true regard, have
assumed, to our apprehensions, a stouter re-
ality since we surveyed them through the me-
dium of his mind. In general, the effect of cri-
ticism, even when fairly and tenderly applied,
is the reverse of this ; for the very process of
subjecting the creations of the poet and the no-
velist to examination as works of art, and of
estimating the force of passion or of habit, as
exemplified in them, so necessarily implies
that they are but the shadows of thought, as in-
sensibly to dissipate the illusion which our
dreamy youth had perchance cast around them.
But in all that Hazlitt has written on old Eng-
lish authors, he is seldom merely critical. His
masterly exposition of that huge book of fan-
tastical fallacies, the vaunted “Arcadia” of Sir
Philip Sidney,* stands almost alone in his
works as a specimen of the mere power of un-
erring dissection and impartial judgment. In
the laboratory of his intellect, analysis was
turned to the sweet uses of alchemy. While
he discourses of characters he has known the
longest, he sheds over them the light of his
own boyhood, and makes us partakers of that
realizing power by which they become crea-
tures of flesh and blood, with whom we may
eat, drink, and be merry. He bids us enjoy all
that he has enjoyed in their society ; invites us
to gaze, as he did first, on that setting sun
which Schiller’s heroic Robber watched in his
sadness, and makes us feel that to us “ that sun
will never set;” or introduces us to honest old
Deckar on the borders of Salisbury Plain,
when he struck a bargain for life with the best
creation of the poet’s genius. “ After a long
walk” with him “through unfrequented tracks
—after starting the hare from the fern, or hear-
ing the wing of the raven rustle above our
heads, being greeted by the woodman’s stern
•good night,’ as he strikes into his narrow
homeward path,” we too “take our ease at our
inn beside the blazing hearth, and shake hands
with Signor Orlando Friscobaldo as the oldest
acquaintance we have.”f He has increased
our personal knowledge of Don'Quixote, of
John Buncle, of Parson Adams, of Pamela, of
Clarissa Harlowe, of Lovelace, of Sir Roger de
Coverly, and a hundred other undying teachers
of humanity, and placed us on nearer and
dearer terms with them. His cordial warmth
brings out their pleasantest and most charac-
teristic traits as heat makes visible the writing
which a lover’s caution has traced in colourless
liquid ; and he thus attests their reality with
an evidence like that of the senses. He restored
the “ Beggar’s Opera,” which had been long
treated as a burlesque appendage to the “ New-
gate Calendar,” to its proper station ; showing
how the depth of the design, and the brilliancy
of the workmanship, had been overlooked in
the palpable coarseness of the materials ; and
* Lectures on the Age of ElizabethLecture VI.
t Ibid.—Lecture III.
tracing instances of pathos and germs of mo-
rality amidst scenes which the world had
agreed to censure and to enjoy as vulgar and
immoral.* He revels in the delights of old
English comedy; exhibits the soul of art in its
town-born graces, and the spirit of gayety in its
mirth ; detects for us a more delicate flavour
in the wit of Congreve, and lights up the age
of Charles the Second, “ when kings and no-
bles led purely ornamental lives,” with the airy
and harmless splendour in which it streamed
upon him amidst rustic manners and Presby-
terian virtues. But his accounts of many of
the dramatists of Shakspeare’s age are less
happy; for he had no early acquaintance with
these that he should receive them into his
own heart, and commend them to ours; he
read them that he might lecture upon them,—
and he lectures upon them for effect, not for
love. With the exception of a single charac-
ter, that of Sir Orlando Friscobaldo, whom he
recognised at first sight as one with whose qua-
lities he had been long familiar, they did not
touch him nearly ; and, therefore, his com-
ments upon them are comparatively meagre
and turgid, and he gladly escapes from them
into “wise saws and modern instances.” The
light of his own experience does not thicken
about their scenes. His notices of Marlow,
Heywood, Middleton, Marston, Deckar, Chap-
man, Webster, and Ford, do not let us half so
far into the secret of these extraordinary wri-
ters as the notes which Mr. Lamb has scatter-
ed (stray gifts of beauty and wisdom) through
the little volume of his “ Specimens ;” imbued
with the very feeling which swelled and crim-
soned in their intensest passages, and coming
on the listening mind like strains of antique
melody, breathed from the midst of that wild
and solemn region in which their natural ma-
gic wrought its wonders. His regard for Beau-
mont and Fletcher is more hearty, and his ap-
preciation of scattered excellencies in them as
fine as can be wished ; but he does not seem to
apprehend the pervading spirit of their dramas,
—the mere spirit of careless grace and fleeting
beauty, which made tjie walk of tragedy a
fairy land ; turned passions and motives to its
own sweet will; annihilated space and time;
and sheds its rainbow hues with bountiful in-
difference on the just and the unjust; repre-
sented virtue as a happy accident, vice as a
wayward fancy; and changed one for the other
in the same person by sovereign caprice, as by
a touch of Harlequin’s wand, leaving “ nothing
serious in mortality,” but reducing the struggle
of life to an heroic game, to be played splen-
didly out, and left without a sigh. Nor does he
pierce through the hard and knotty rind of Ben
Jonson’s manner, which alone, in our time,
has been entirely penetrated by the author of
*This exquisite morsel of criticism (if that name be
proper) first appeared in the “ Morning Chronicle,” as an
introduction to the account of the first appearance ofMiss
Stephens in “ Polly Peachum” (her second character)—
an occasion worthy to be so celebrated—but not exciting
any hope of such an article. What a surprise it was to
read it for the first time, amidst the tempered patriotism
and measured praise of Mr. Perry’s columns! It was
afterwards printed in the “ Round Table,” and (being
justly a favourite of its author) found fit place in his
“ Lectures on the English Poets.”—See Lecture VI.ON THE LATE WILLLIAM HAZLITT.
127
the “Merchant of London,” who, when a mere
lad, grappled with this tough subject and mas-
tered it;* and whose long and earnest aspira-
tion after a kindred force and beauty with this
and other idols of his serious boyhood, is not,
even now, wholly unfulfilled!
Of Shakspeare’s genius, Mr. Hazlitt has
written largely and well; but there is more
felicity in his incidental references to this
great subject, than in those elaborate essays
upon it, which fill the volume entitled “ Cha-
racters of Shakspeare’s Plays.” In reading them
we are fatigued by perpetual eulogy,—not be-
cause we deem it excessive, but because
we observe in it a constant straining to ex-
press an admiration too vast for any style.
There is so much suggested by the poet to
each individual mind, which blends with, and
colours its own most profound meditations and
dearest feelings, without assuming a distinct
form, that we resent the laborious efforts of
another to body forth his own ideas of our
common inheritance, unless they vindicate
themselves by entire success, as intruding on
the holy ground of our own thoughts. Mr.
Lamb’s brief glance at “Lear” is the only in-
stance of a commentary on one of Shakspeare’s
four great tragedies which ever appeared to us
entirely worthy of the original; and this, in-
deed, seems to prolong, and even to heighten,
the feeling of the tremendous scenes to which
it applies, and to make compensation for dis-
placing our own dim and faint conceptions,
long cherished as they were, by the huge image
clearly reflected in another’s mind. There is
nothing approaching to this excellence in Mr.
Hazlitt’s account of “Lear,” of “ Hamlet,” of
“ Othello,” or of “ Macbeth.” He piles epithet
on epithet in a vain attempt to reach “ the
height of his great argumentor trifles with
the subject, in despair of giving adequate ex-
pression to his own feelings respecting it.
Nor is his essay on “Romeo and Juliet”
more successful; for here, unable to find lan-
guage which may breathe the sense of love
and joy which the play awakens, he attacks
Wordsworth’s “Ode on the Intimations of Im-
mortality in Early Childhood,” because it
refers the glory of our intellectual being to a
season antecedent to the dawn of passion ; as
if there was any common standard for the
most delicious of all plays of which love is
the essence, and the noblest train of philoso-
phic thought which ever “ voluntary moved
harmonious numbers;” as if each had not a
truth of its own ; or as if there was not room
enough in the great world of poetry for both !
When thus reduced by conscious inability to
grasp the subject, into vague declamation, he
was lost; but wherever he found “ jutting freeze
or cornice” to lodge the store of his own re-
flections, as in estimating the aristocratic pride
of “Coriolanus,” he was excellent; still better
where he could mingle the remembrances of
sportive childhood with the poet’s fantasies,
as in describing the “Midsummer Night’s
Dream;” and best of all when he could vindi-
cate his own hatred of the sickly cant of mor-
tality, and his sense of hearty and wise enjoy-
ment, by precept and example such as “The
Twelfth Night” gave him. In these instances,
his own peculiar faculty, as a commentator on
the writings of others,—that of enriching his
criticism by congenial associations, and, at the
«ame time infusing into it the spirit of his
author, thus “ stealing and giving odour”—
had free scope, while the greatest tragedies
remained beyond the reach of all earthly in-
fluence, too far withdrawn “in the highest
heaven of invention,” to be affected by any
atmosphere of sentiment he might inhale him-
self, or shed around others.
The strong sense of pleasure, both intellect-
ual and physical, naturally produced in Hazl/.t
a rooted attachment to the theatre, wrhere the de
lights of the mind and the senses are blended;
where the grandeur of the poet’s conceptions
is, in some degree, made palpable, and luxury
is raised and refined by wit, sentiment, and
fancy. His dramatic criticisms are more
pregnant with fine thoughts on that bright
epitome of human life than any others which
ever were written ; yet they are often more
successful in making us forget their immediate
subjects than in doing them justice. He began
to write with a rich fund of theatrical recollec-
tions ; and, except when Kean, or Miss Ste-
phens, or Liston supplied new and decided im-
pulses, he did little more than draw upon this
old treasury. The theatre to him wras redolent
of the past; images of Siddons, of Kemble, of
Bannister, of Jordan, thickened the air; im-
perfect recognitions of a hundred evenings,
when mirth or sympathy had loosened the
pressure at the heart, and set the springs of
life in happier motion, thronged around him,
and “ more than echoes talked along the walls.”
He loved the theatre for these associations, and
for the immediate pleasure which it gave to
thousands about him, and the humanizing in-
fluences it shed among them, and attended it
with constancy to the very last;* and to those
personal feelings and universal sympathies he
gave fit expression ; but his habits of mind
were unsuited to the ordinary duties of the
critic. The players put him out. He could not,
like Mr. Leigh Hunt, who gave theatrical criti-
cism a place in modern literature, apply his
graphic powers to a detail of a performance,
and make it interesting by the delicacy of the
touch ; encr}rstal the cobweb intricacies of a
plot writh the sparkling dew of his own fancy
—bid the light plume wave in the fluttering
grace of his style—or “ catch ere she fell the
Cynthia of the minute,” and fix the airy charm
in lasting words. In criticism, thus just and
picturesque, Mr. Hunt has never been ap-
proached; and the wonder is, that, instead of
falling off with the art of acting, he even grew
richer; for the articles of the “Tatler” equal-
ling those of the “ Examiner” in niceness of
discrimination, are superior to them in depth
and colouring. But Hazlitt required a more
powerful impulse; he never wrote willingly,
except on what was great in itself, or, forming
a portion of his own past, being, was great to
him ; and when both these felicities combined
* See his article entitled “The Free Admission,” in
the “New Monthly Magazine,” vol. xxix. p. 93; one of
his last, and one oi'his most characteristic effusions.
♦ “Retrospective Review,”vol. i. pp. 161—206.128
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
in the subject, he was best of all—as upon
Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. Mr. Kean satisfied
the first requisite only, but in the highest pos-
sible degree. His extraordinary vigour struck
Hazlitt, who attended the theatre for the “ Morn-
ing Chronicle,” on the night of his debut, in
the very first scene, and who, from that night,
became the most devoted and efficient of his
supporters. Yet if, on principle, Hazlitt pre-
ferred Kean to Kemble, and sometimes drew
parallels between them disparaging to the idol
of his earlier affections, there is nothing half
so fine in his eloquent eulogies on the first, as
in his occasional recurrences to the last, when
the stately form which had realized full many
a boyish dream of Roman greatness “came
back upon his heart again,” and seemed to re-
proach him for his late preference of the pas-
sionate to the ideal. He criticised new plays
with reluctant and indecisive hand, except
when strong friendship supplied the place of old
reccilection, as in the instances of Barry Corn-
wall and Sheridan Knowles—the first of whom,
not exhausting all the sweetness of his nature
in scenes of fanciful tenderness and gentle
sorrow, cheered him by unwearied kindness in
hours of the greatest need—and the last, as
kind and as true, had, even from a boy, been the
object of his warmest esteem. He rejoiced to
observe his true-hearted pupil manifesting a
dramatic instinct akin to that of the old masters
of passion—like them forgetting himself in his
subject, and contented to see fair play between
his persons—working all his interest out of
the purest affections, which might beat in-
deed beneath the armour of old Rome, and
beside its domestic hearths, but belong to all
time—and finding an actor who, with taste and
skill to preserve his unstudied grace, had heart
enough to send his honest homely touches to
the hearts of thousands. Would that Hazlitt
had lived to witness the success of the “ Hunch-
back”—not that it is better than the plays
which he did see, but that he would have ex-
ulted to find the town surprised for once into
justice, recognising the pathos and beauty
which had been among them unappreciated so
long, and paying part of that debt to the living
author, which he feared they would leave for
posterity to acknowledge in vain!
Mr. Hazlitt’s criticisms on pictures are, as
we have been informed by persons competent
to judge, and believe, masterly. Of their jus-
tice we are unable to form an opinion for our-
selves ; but we know that they are instinct
with earnest devotion to art, and rich with il-
lustrations of its beauties. Accounts of paint-
ings are too often either made up of technical
terms, which convey no meaning to the un-
initiated, or of florid description of the scenes
represented, with scarce an allusion to the j
skill by which the painter has succeeded in
emulating nature; but Hazlitt’s early aspira-
tions, and fond endeavours after excellence in
the art, preserved him effectually from these
errors. He regarded the subject with a perfect
love. No gusty passion here ruffled the course
of his thoughts: all his irritability was soothed,
and all his disappointments forgotten, before
the silent miracles of human genius; and his
own vain attempts, fondly remembered instead
of exciting envy of the success of others,
heightened his sense of their merit, and his
pleasure and pride in accumulating honours on
their names. Mr. Hunt says of these essays,
that they “ throw a light on art as from a
painted window,”—a sentence which, in its
few words, characterizes them all, and leaves
nothing to be wished or added.
In person, Mr. Hazlitt was of the middle size,
with a handsome and eager countenance, worn
by sickness and thought; and dark hair, which
had curled stiffly over the temples, and was
only of late years sprinkled with gray. His
gait was slouching and awkward, and hisdresi
neglected; but when he began to talk he could
not be mistaken for a common man. In the
company of persons with whom he was not
familiar his bashfulness was painful: but when
he became entirely at ease, and entered on a
favourite topic, no one’s conversation was
ever more delightful. He did not talk for ef-
fect, to dazzle, or surprise, or annoy, but with
the most simple and honest desire to make his
view of the subject entirely apprehended by his
hearer. There was sometimes an obvious
struggle to do this to his own satisfaction: he
seemed labouring to drag his thought to light
from its deep lurking place ; and, writh modest
distrust of that power of expression which he
had found so late in life, he often betrayed a
fear that he had failed to make himself under-
stood, and recurred to the subject again and
again, that he might be assured he had suc-
ceeded. In argument, he was candid and libe-
ral : there was nothing about him pragmati-
cal or exclusive ; he never drove a principle to
its utmost possible - consequences, but like
Locksley, “allowedfor the wind.” For some
years previous to his death, he observed an
entire abstinence from fermented liquors, which
he had once quaffed with the proper relish he
had for all the good things of this life, but which
he courageously resigned when he found the
indulgence perilous to his health and faculties.
The cheerfulness with which he made this sa-
crifice always appeared to us one of the most
amiable traits in his character. He had no
censure for others, who for the same motives
were less wise or less resolute; nor did he
think he had earned, by his own constan-
cy, any right to intrude advice which he
knew, if wanted, must be unavailing. Nor did
he profess to be a convert to the general system
of abstinence which was advocated by one of
his kindest and stanchest friends: he avowed
that he yielded to necessity ; and instead of
avoiding the sight of that which he could no
longer taste, he was seldom so happy as when
he sat with friends at their wine, participating
the sociality of the time, and renewing his own
past enjoyment in that of his companions, with-
out regret and without envy. Like Dr. John-
son, he made himself poor amends for the loss
of wine by drinking tea, not so largely, indeed,
as the hero of Boswrell, but at least of equal
potency—for he might have challenged Mrs.
Thrale and all her sex to make stronger tea
than his own. In society, as in politics, he was
no flincher. He loved “ to hear the chimes at
midnight,” without considering them as a sum-
mons to rise. At these seasons, when in hisON THE LATE WILLIAM HAZLITT.
129
happiest mood, he used to dwell on the conver-
sational powers of his friends, and live over
again the delightful hours he had passed with
them ; repeat the pregnant puns that one had
made; tell over again a story with which ano-
ther had convulsed the room; or expand in the
eloquence of a third: always best pleased when
he could detect some talent which was unre-
garded by the world, and giving alike, to the
celebrated and the unknown, due honour.
Mr. Hazlitt delivered three courses of Lec-
tures at the Surrey Institution, to the matter of
which we have repeatedly alluded—on The
English Poets; on The English Comic Writers,
and on The Age of Elizabeth—before audiences
with whom he had but “ an imperfect sympa-
thy.” They consisted chiefly of Dissenters,
who agreed with him in his hatred of Lord
Castlereagh, but who “ loved no plays of
Quakers, who approved him as the opponent of
Slavery and Capital Punishment, but who
“heard no music;” of citizens, devoted to the
main chance, who had a hankering after “ the
improvement of the mind,” but to whom his
favourite doctrine of its natural disinterested-
ness was a riddle ; of a few enemies who came
to sneer; and a few friends, who were eager to
learn and to admire. The comparative insen-
sibility of the bulk of his audience to his finest
passages, sometimes provoked him to awaken
their attention by points which broke the train
of his discourse, after which he could make
himself amends by some abrupt paradox which
might set their prejudices on edge, and make
them fancy they were shocked. He startled
many of them at the onset, by observing, that,
since Jacob’s Dream, “the heavens have gone
farther off and become astronomical,”—a fine
extravagance, which the ladies and gentlemen,
who had grown astronomical themselves un-
der the preceding lecturer, felt called on to re-
sent as an attack on their severer studies.
When he read a well-known extract from Cow-
per, comparing a poor cottager with Voltaire,
and had pronounced the line “ a truth the bril-
liant Frenchman never knew,” they broke into
a joyous shout of self-gratulation, that they
were so much wiser than a wicked Frenchman!
When he passed by Mrs. Hannah More with
observing, that “ she had written a great deal
which he had never read,” a voice gave ex-
pression to the general commiseration and
surprise, by calling out “More pity for you !”
They were confounded at his reading with
more emphasis perhaps than discretion, Gay’s
epigrammatic lines on Sir Richard Blackstone,
in which scriptural persons are freely hitched
into rhyme; but he went doggedly on to the
end, and, by his perseverance, baffled those
who, if he had acknowledged himself wrong by
stopping, would have hissed him without mer-
cy. He once had an edifying advantage over
them. He was enumerating the humanities
which endeared Dr. Johnson to his mind, and
at the close of an agreeable catalogue, men-
tioned, as last and noblest, “his carrying the
poor victim of disease and dissipation on his
back through Fleet-street,”—at which a titter
arose from some, who were struck by the pic-
ture as ludicrous, and a murmur from others,
who deemed the allusion unfit for ears polite.
17
He paused for an instant, and then added in
his sturdiest and most impressive manner, “an
act which realizes the parable of the Good Sa-
maritan,” at which his moral and delicate
hearers shrunk rebuked into deep silence. He
was not eloquent in the true sense of the term;
for his thoughts were too weighty to be moved
along by the shallow stream of feeling which
an evening’s excitement can rouse. He wrote
all his lectures, and read them as they were
written : but his deep voice and earnest manner
suited his matter well. He seemed to dig.into
his subject—and not in vain. In delivering his
longer quotations, he had scarcely continuity
enough for the versification of Shakspeare and
Milton, “ with linked sweetness long drawn
out;” but he gave Pope’s brilliant satire and
divine compliments, which are usually com-
plete within the couplet, with an elegance and
point which the poet himself would have felt
as their highest praise.
Mr. Hazlitt had little inclination to write
about contemporary authors,—and still less to
read them. He was with difficulty persuaded
to look into the Scotch Novels ! but when he
did so, he found them old in substance though
new in form, read them with as much avidity
as the rest of the world, and expressed better
than any one else what all the world felt about
them. His hearty love of them, however, did
not decrease, but aggravate, his dislike of the
political opinions and practices of their author;
and yet, the strength of his hatred towards that
which was accidental and transitory, only set
off the unabated power of his regard for the
free and the lasting. Coleridge and Words-
worth were not moderns to him ; for he knew
them in his youth, which was his own an-
tiquity, and the feelings which were the germ
of their poetry had sunk deep into his heart.
His personal acquaintance with them was
broken before he became known to the world
as an author, and he sometimes alluded to
them with bitterness: but he, and he alone,
has done justice to the immortal works of the
one, and the genius of the other. The very
prominence which he gave to them as objects
of attack, at the time when it was the fashion
to pour contempt on their names—when the
public echoed those articles of the “ Edinburgh
Review” upon them, which they now regard
with wonder as the curiosities of criticism,
proved what they still were to him; and, in the
midst of those attacks, there are involuntary
confessions of their influence over his mind,
are touches of admiration, heightened by fond
regret, which speak more than his elaborate
eulogies upon them in his “Spirit of the Age.”
With the exception of the works of these, and
of two or three friends to whom we have al-
luded, he held modern literature in slight es-
teem ; and he regarded the discoveries of
science, and the visions of optimism, with an
undazzled eye. His “ large discourse of rea-
son” looked not before, but after. He felt it his
great duty, as a lover of genius and art, to de-
fend the fame of the mighty dead. When the
old painters were assailed in “The Catalogue
Raisonnee of the British Institution,” he was
“ touched with noble anger.” All his own
vain longings after the immortality of the worksT30
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
which were libelled,—the very tranquillity and
beauty they had shed into his soul,—all his
comprehension of the sympathy and delight of
thousands, which, accumulating through long
time, had attested their worth—were fused to-
gether to dazzle and to blast the poor caviller
who would disturb the judgment of ages. So,
when a popular poet assailed the fame of
Rousseau—seeking to reverse the decision of
posterity on what that great writer had done,
by fancying the opinion of people of condition
in his neighbourhood on what he seemed to
their apprehensions while living with Madame
de Warrens, he vindicated the prerogatives of
genius with the true logic of passion. Few
things irritated him more than the claims set
up for the present generation to be wiser and
better than those which have gone before it.
He had no power of imagination to embrace
the golden clouds which hung over the Future,
but he rested and expatiated in the Past. To
his apprehension human good did not appear
a slender shoot of yesterday, like the bean-stalk
in the fairy-tale, aspiring to the skies, and end-
ing in an enchanted castle, but a huge growth
of intertwisted fibres, grasping the earth by
numberless roots, and bearing vestiges of “ a
thousand storms, a thousand thunders.,,
It would be beside our purpose to discuss
the relative merits of Mr. Hazlitt’s publica-
tions, to most of which we have alluded in
passing; or to detail the scanty vicissitudes
of a literary life. Still less do we feel bound
to expose or to defend the personal frailties
which fell to his portion. We have endea-
voured to trace his intellectual character in
the records he has left of himself in his works,
as an excitement and a guide to their perusal
by those who have yet to know them. The
concern of mankind is with this alone. In
the case of a profound thinker more than of
any other, “that which men call evil”—the
accident of his condition—is interred with
him, while the good which he has achieved
lies unmingled and entire. The events of Mr.
Hazlitt’s true life are not his engagement by
the “Morning Chronicle,” or his transfer of
his services to the “ Times,” or his introduc-
tion to the “ Edinburgh Review,” or his con-
tracts or quarrels with booksellers; but the
progress and the development of his under-
standing as nurtured or swayed by his affec-
tions. “His warfare was within;” and its
spoils are ours ! His “thoughts which wan-
dered through eternity” live with us, though
the hand which traced them for our benefit is
cold. His death, though at the age of only
fifty-two, can hardly be deemed untimely. He
lived to complete the laborious work in which
he sought to embalm his idea of his chosen
hero ; to see the unhoped-for downfall of the
legitimate throne which had been raised on
the ruins of the empire ; and to open, without
exhausting, those stores which he had gathered
in his youth. If the impress of his power is
not left on the sympathies of a people, it has
(all he wished) sunk into minds neither unre-
flecting nor ungrateful.ADDITIONAL ARTICLES
THE LATE DOWAGER LADY HOLLAND.
[Morning Chronicle, Nov. 25, 1845.]
It seems scarcely fitting that the grave
should close over the remains of the late Dow-
ager Lady Holland without some passing tri-
bute beyond the paragraph which announces,
with the ordinary expression of regret, the de-
cease of a widow lady advanced in years, and
reminds the world of fashion that the event
has placed several noble families in mourning.
That event, which a fortnight ago was re-
garded by friendly apprehensions as probably
at the distance of some years, has not merely
clouded and impaired the enjoyments of one
large circle, but has extinguished for ever a
spirit of social happiness which has animated
many, and severed the most genial link of as-
sociation, by which some of the finest minds
which yet grace the literary and political
world were connected with the mightiest of
those which have left us. The charms of the
celebrated hospitalities of Holland House, in
the time of its late revered master, have been
too gracefully developed, by one who has often
partaken and enhanced them, in the Edinburgh
Review for July, 1841, to allow a feebler expres-
sion ; but death had not then bestowed the
melancholy privilege of expatiating on the
share of its mistress in crowding those me-
morable hours with various pleasure, or on
the energetic kindness with which she strove,
against the perpetual sense of unutterable
loss, to renew some portion of their enjoy-
ments. For the remarkable position she oc-
cupied, during many years of those daily fes-
tivals in which genius, wit, and patriotic hope
were triumphant, she was eminently gifted.
While her own remarks were full of fine
practical sense, and nice observation, her in-
fluence was chiefly felt in the discourse of those
whom she directed and inspired, and which,
as she impelled it, startled by the most animated
contrasts, or blended in the most graceful har-
monies. Beyond any other hostess we ever
knew—and very far beyond any host—she pos-
sessed the tact of perceiving and the power
of evoking the various capacities which lurked
in every part of the brilliant circles she drew
around her. To enkindle the enthusiasm of
an artist on the theme over which he had
achieved the most facile mastery; to set loose
the heart of the rustic poet, and imbue his
speech with the freedom of his native hills;
to draw from the adventurous traveller a
breathing picture of his most imminent dan-
ger, or to embolden the bashful soldier to dis-
close his own share in the perils and glories
of some famous battle-field ; to encourage the
generous praise of friendship, when the speaker
and the subject reflected interest on each other,
or win the secret history of some effort which
had astonished the world or shed new lights
on science;—to conduct those brilliant deve-
lopments to the height of satisfaction, and
then to shift the scene by the magic of a word,
were among her daily successes. And if this
extraordinary power over the elements of so-
cial enjoyment was sometimes wielded without
the entire concealment of its despotism ; if a
decisive check sometimes rebuked a speaker
who might intercept the variegated beauty of
Jeffrey’s indulgent criticism, or the jest an-
nounced and self-rewarded in Sydney Smith’s
delighted and delighting chuckle, the authority
was too clearly exerted for the evening’s pros-
perity, and too manifestly impelled by an
urgent consciousness of the value of those
golden hours which were fleeting within its
confines, to sadden the enforced silence with
more than a momentary regret. If ever her
prohibition, clear, abrupt, and decisive, indi-
cated more than a preferable regard for live-
lier discourse, it was when a depreciatory tone
was adopted towards genius, or goodness, or
honest endeavour, or when some friend, per-
sonal or intellectual, was mentioned in slight-
ing phrase. Habituated to a generous partisan-
ship by strong sympathy with a great political
cause, she carried the fidelity of her devotion
to that cause into her social relations, and was
ever the truest and the fastest of friends.
The tendency, often more idle than malicious,
to soften down the intellectual claims of the
absent, which so insidiously besets literary
conversation, and teaches a superficial insin-
cerity even to substantial esteem and regard,
found no favour in her presence ; and hence
the conversations over which she presided,
perhaps beyond all that ever flashed with a
kindred splendour, were marked by that integ-
rity of good nature which might admit of their
exact repetition to every living individual
whose merits were discussed, without the dan-
ger of inflicting pain. Under her auspices,
not only all critical, but all personal talk was
tinged with kindness; the strong interest
131132
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
which she took in the happiness of her friends
shed a peculiar sunniness over the aspects of
life presented by the common topics of alli-
ances, and marriages, and promotions ; and
not a hopeful engagement, or a happy wed-
ding, or a promotion of a friend’s son, or a
new intellectual triumph of any youth with
whose name and history she was familiar, but
became an event on which she expected and
required congratulation, as on a part of her
own fortune. Although there was naturally
a preponderance in her society of the senti-
ment of popular progress, which once was
cherished almost exclusively by the party to
whom Lord Holland was united by sacred ties,
no expression of triumph in success, no viru-
lence in sudden disappointment, was ever per-
mitted to wound the most sensitive ear of her
conservative guests. It might be that some
placid comparison of recent with former times
spoke a sense of freedom’s peaceful victory;
or that, on the giddy edge of some great party
struggle, the festivities of the evening might
take a more serious cast, as news arrived
from the scene of contest, and the pleasure be
deepened with the peril; but the feeling was
always restrained by the present evidence of
permanent solaces for the mind, which no po-
litical changes could disturb. If to hail and
welcome genius—or even talent which revered
and imitated genius—was one of the greatest
pleasures of Lord Holland’s life, to search it
out, and bring it within the sphere of his noble
sympathy, was the delightful study of her’s.
How often, during the last half century, has
the steep ascent of fame been brightened by
the genial appreciation she bestowed, and the
festal light she cast on its solitude! How of-
ten has the assurance of success received its
crowning delight amid the genial luxury of
her circle, where renown itself has been real-
ized for the first time in all its sweetness!
How large a share she communicated to the
delights of Holland House will be understood
by those who shared her kindness, first in
South-street, and recently in Stanhope-street,
where, after Lord Holland’s death, she ho-
noured his memory by cherishing his friends
and following his example ; where, to the last,
with a voice retaining its girlish sweetness,
she welcomed every guest, invited or casual,
with the old cordiality and queenly grace;
where authors of every age and school—from
Rogers, her old and affectionate friend, whose
first poem illuminated the darkness of the last
closing century “like a rich jewel in an Ethi-
op’s ear,” down to the youngest disciple of the
latest school—found that honour paid to litera-
ture wffiich English aristocracy has too com-
monly denied it; and where, every day, almost
to her last, added to her claim to be remem-
bered as one who, during a long life, culti-
vated the great art of living happily, by the
great means of making others happy.
ADDRESS
AT THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE MANCHESTER ATHENAEUM, Oct. 23, 1845.
[Manchester Guardian, Oct. 25, 1845.]
If there were not virtue in the objects and
purposes, and power in the affections, which
have called into life the splendid scene before
me, capable of emboldening the apprehensive
and strengthening the feeble, I should shrink
at this moment from attempting to discharge
the duties of the high office to which the kind-
ness of your directors has raised me. When
I remember that the first of this series of bril-
liant anniversaries, which is still only begin-
ning, was illustrated by the presidency of my
friend, Mr. Charles Dickens,—who brought to
your cause not only the most earnest sympathy
with the healthful enjoyments and steady ad-
vancement of his species, but the splendour
of a fame as early matured and as deeply im-
pressed on the hearts of his countrymen as that
of any writer since the greatest of her intellec-
tual eras : when I recollect that his place was
filled last year by one whose genius, singularly
diversified and vivid, has glanced with arrowy
flame over various departments of literature
and conditions of life, and who was associated
with kindred spirits, eager to lavish the ardours
of generous youth, on the noble labour of re-
newing old ties of brotherhood and attachment
among all classes, ranks, and degrees of
human family,—I feel that scarcely less than
the inspiration which breathes upon us here,
through every avenue of good you have opened,
could justify the hope that the deficiencies of
the chairman of this night may be forgotten in
the interest and the majesty of his themes.
Impressive as such an assembly as this would
be in any place, and under any circumstances,
it becomes solemn, almost awful, when the
true significancy of its splendour is unveiled
to the mind. If we consider that this festival
of intellect is holden in the capital of a district
containing, within comparatively narrow con-
fines, a population scarcely less than two mil-
lions of immortal beings, engrossed in a pro-
portion far beyond that of any other in the
world, in the toils of manufacture and com-
merce; that it indicates at once an unprece-
dented desire on the part of those elder and
wealthier labourers in this region of industry,
to share with those whom they employ and
protect, the blessings which equally sweeten
the lot of all, and the resolution of the youngADDRESS AT THE MANCHESTER ATHENAEUM.
133
to win and to diffuse them; that it exhibits
literature, once the privilege only of a clois-
tered few, supplying the finest links of social
union for this vast society, to be expanded by
those numerous members of the middle class
whom they are now embracing, and who yet
comprise, as the poet says, “two-thirds of all
the virtue that remains,” throughout that greater
mass which they are elevating, and of whose
welfare they, in turn, will be the guardians,—
we feel that this assembly represents objects
which, though intensely local, are yet of uni-
versal concern, and cease to wonder at that
familiar interest with which strangers at once
regard them.
Personally till a few days ago a stranger to
almost every member of your institution, or
rather cluster of institutions, I find now to-day,
in the little histories of your aims and achieve-
ments, which your reports present, an affinity,
sudden indeed but lasting, with some of the
best and happiest passages in a thousand earn-
est and laborious lives. I seem to take my
place in your lecture room, an eager and
docile listener, among young men whom daily
duties preclude from a laborious course of
studies, to be refreshed, invigorated, enlight-
ened—sometimes nobly elevated, sometimes
as nobly humbled, by the living lessons of phi-
losophic wisdom—whether penetrating the
earth or elucidating the heavens, or developing'
the more august wonders of the world which
lies within our own natures, or informing the
Present with the spirit of the Past;—happy to
listen to such lessons from some gifted stran-
ger, or well-known and esteemed professor,
scattering the gems of knowledge and taste, to
find root in opening minds ;—but, better still,
if the effort should be made by one of your-
selves, by a fellow-townsman and fellow-
student, emboldened and inspirited by the as-
surance of welcome to try some short ex-
cursion of modest fancy, or to illustrate some
cherished theory by genial examples, and pri-
vileged to taste, in the heartiest applause of
those who know him best and esteem him most,
that which, after all, is the choicest ingredient
in the pleasure of the widest fame. I mingle
with your Essay and Discussion Class ; share
in the tumultuous but hopeful throbbings of
some young debater; grow placid as his just
self-reliance masters his fears; triumph in his
crowning success; and understand, in his
timid acceptance of your unenvying congra-
tulations, at the close of his address, that most
exquisite pleasure which attends the first as-
surance of ability to render palpable in lan-
guage the products of lonely self-culture, and
the consciousness that, as ideas which seemed
obscure and doubtful while they lurked in the
recesses of the mind, are, by the genial inspi-
ration of the hour, shaped into form and kindled
into life, they are attested by the understand-
ings and welcomed by the affections of num-
bers. I seek your Library, yet indeed but in
its infancy, but from whence information and
refined enjoyment speed on quicker and more
multitudinous wings than from some of the
stateliest repositories of accumulated and
cloistered learning, to vindicate that the right
which the youngest apprentice lad possesses,
not merely to claim, but to select for his own
a portion in that inheritance which the mighty
dead have left to mankind,—secured by the
magic power of the press, against the deca)rs
of time and the shocks of fortune ; or to exult
in a communion with the spirit of that mighty
literature which yet breathes on us fresh from
the genius of the living; to feel that we live
in a great and original age of literature, proud
also in the consciousness that its spirit is not
only to be felt as animating works elaborately
constructed to endure, but as, with a noble
prodigality, diffusing lofty sentiments, spark-
ling wit, exquisite grace, and suggestions even
for serene contemplation through the most
rapid effusions, weekly, monthly, daily given
to the world; and, far beyond the literature
of every previous age of the world, aiding the
spirit of humanity, in appreciating the suffer-
ings, the virtues, and the claims of the poor.
And if I must confess, even when refreshed by
the invigorating influences of this hour, that I
can scarcely fancy myself virtuous enough to
join one of your classes for the acquisition of
science or language, or young enough to share
in the exeixises of }rour gymnasium, where
good spirits and kind affections attend on the
development of physical energy, there are yet
some of your gay and graceful intermixtures
of amusement to which I would gladly claim
admission. I would welcome that delightful
alternation of gentle excitement and thought-
ful repose by which your musical entertain-
ments tend to the harmony and proportion of
life itself. I should rejoice to share in some of
those Irish Evenings by which our friend Mr.
Lover has suggested, in its happiest aspects,
that land which is daily acquiring, I hope, that
degree of affection and justice which it so
strongly claims. I would appreciate with the
heart, if not with the ear, the illustrations of
Burns, by which some true Scottish melodist
has made you familiar with that poet, and ena-
bled you to forget labour and care, and walk
with the inspired rustic “in glory and in joy”
among his native hills ; and with peculiar gra-
titude to your directors for enabling you to
snatch from death and time some vestiges of
departing grandeur in a genial art, which the
soonest yields to their ravages ;—I would hail
with you the mightiest and the loveliest dramas
of the world’s poet, made palpable without the
blandishments of decoration or scenery by th6
voice of the surviving artist of the Kemble
name—in whose accents, softened, not sub-
dued, by time, the elder of us may refresh great
memories of classic grace, heroic daring, and
softened grief, when he shared the scene with
his brother and his sister; and those of us who
cannot vaunt this privilege of age, may guess
the greatness of the powers which thrilled their
fathers in those efforts to which your cause—
the cause of the youth of Manchester—breathing
into the golden evening of life, a second spring,
redolent with hope and joy, have lent a more
than youthful inspiration. And while I am in-
dulging in a participation of your pleasures,
let me take leave to congratulate you on that
gracious boon, which I am informed—(and I
rejoice to hear it, as one of the best of all
prizes and all omens in a young career)—your
M134
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
virtues have won for a large number of your
fellow-workers—that precious Saturday’s half-
holiday—precious almost to man as to boy,
when manhood, having borrowed the endearing
name from childhood, seeks to enrich it with
all that remains to it of childhood’s delights—
precious as a noble proof of the respect and
sympathy of the employers for those whose in-
dustry they direct—and most precious of all in
its results, if, being brightened and graced by
such images as your association invokes on
your leisure, it shall leave body and mind more
fit for the work and service of earth and of
heaven.
Thus regarding myself as a partaker, at least
in thought and in spirit, of the various benefits
of your association, I would venture to regard
them less as the appliances by which a few
may change their station in our external life,
than as the means of adorning and ennobling
that sphere of action in which the many must
continue to move; which, without often en-
kindling an ambition to emulate the immortal
productions of genius, may enable you the
more keenly to enjoy, and the more gratefully
to revere them ; which, if they do not teach you
the art of more rapidly accumulating worldly
riches; and if they shall not—because they
cannot—endow you with more munificent dis-
positions to dispense them than those which
have made the generosity of Manchester pro-
verbial throughout the Christian world, may
ensure its happiest and safest direction in time
to come, by encouraging those who may dis-
pense it hereafter, to associate in youth, with
the affection of brotherhood, for objects which
suggest and breathe of nothing but what is
wise, and good, and kind. It may be, indeed,
that some master mind, one of those by which
Providence, in all generations and various con-
ditions of our species, has vindicated the
Divinity which stirs within it, beyond the
power of barbarism to stifle, or education to
improve, or patronage to enslave, may start
from your ranks into fame, under auspices
peculiarly favourable for the safe direction of
its strength; and, if such rare felicity should
await you, with how generous a pride will you
expatiate on the greatness which you had
watched in its dawning, and with how pure a
satisfaction will your sometime comrade, your
then illustrious townsman, satiated with the
applause of strangers, revert to those scenes
where his genius found its earliest expression,
and earned its most delightful praise. If an-
other ‘‘marvellous boy,” gifted like him of
Bristol, should now arise in Manchester, his
“sleepless soul” would not “perish in its
pride ;” his energies, neither scoffed at nor neg-
lected, would not be suffered to harden through
sullenness into despair; but his genius, fos-
tered by timely kindness, and aided by your
judicious counsel, would spring, in fitting sea-
son, from amidst the protecting cares of admir-
ing friends, to its proper quarry, mindful,
when soaring loftiest, of the associations and
scenes among which it was cherished, “true to
the kindred points of heaven and home.” But
it is not in the cultivation ajid encouragement
of such rare intellectual prodigies, still less in
ILe formation of a race of imitators of excel-1
lence, that I anticipate the best fruits of your
peaceful victories. A season has arrived in
the history of mankind, when talents, which in
darker ages might justify the desire to quit the
obscure and honourable labours of common
life in quest of glittering distinction, can now
only be employed with safety in adorning the
sphere to which they are native; when of a
multitude of competitors for public favour, few
only can arrest attention; and when even of
those who attain a flattering and merited popu-
larity, the larger number must be content to
regard the richest hues of their fancy and
thought, but as streaks in the dawn of that
jocund day which now “stands tiptoe on the
misty mountain’s top,” and in the full light of
which they will speedily be blended. But if it
is almost “ too late to be ambitious,” except on
some rare occasions, of the immortality which
earth can bestow ; yet for that true immortality
of which Fame’s longest duration is but the
most vivid symbol; for that immortality which
dawns now in the childhood of every man as
freshly as in the morning of the world, and
which breaks with as solemn a foreshadowing
in the soul of the most ordinary faculties, as
in that of the mightiest poet; for that immor-
tality, the cultivation of wisdom and beauty is
as momentous now as ever, although no eyes,
but those which are unseen, may take note
how they flourish. In the presence of that
immortality, how vain appears all undue rest-
lessness for a little or a great change in our
outward earthly condition! How worse than
idle all assumptions of superior dignity of one
mode of honourable toil to another!—how
worthless all differences of station, except so
far as station may enable men to vindicate
some everlasting principle, to exemplify some
arduous duty, to grapple with some giant
oppression, or to achieve the blessings of those
who are ready to perish! How trivial, even
as the pebbles and shells upon “this end and
shoal of time,” seem all those immunities
which can only be spared by fortune, to be
swept away by death, compared with those
images and thoughts, wdiich, being reflected
from the eternal, not only through,the clear
meridian of holy writ, but, though more dimly,
through all that is affecting in history, exqui-
site in art, suggestive in eloquence, profound
in science, and divine in poetry, shall not only
outlast all the chances and changes of this
mortal life, but shall defy the chilness of the
grave ! Believe me, there is no path more
open to the influences of heaven, than the
common path of daily duty; on that path the
lights from the various departments of your
Athenoeum will fall with the steadiest lustre;
that path, so illumined, will be trodden in peace
and joy, if not in glory; happy if it afford the
opportunity, as it may to some of you, of
clearly elucidating some great truth, which,
being reflected from the polished mirrors of
thousands of associated minds, sure of the
opportunity of affording the means of perceiv-
ing and accepting, embracing and diffusing
many glorious truths, which, when once fairly
presented, although they may be surveyed in
different aspects, and tinted with the hues of
the various minds which receive them, mayADDRESS AT THE MANCHESTER ATHENAEUM.
135
seem to have “ a difference,” will be found es-
sentially the same to all, and will enrich the
being of each and all.
There is one advantage which I may justly
boast over both my predecessors in this office,
—that of being privileged to announce to you
a state of prosperity far more advanced and
more confirmed than that which either could
develop. The fairest prophecies which Mr.
Dickens put forth, in the inspiration of the
time, in the year 1843, have been amply ful-
filled ;—the eloquent exhortations of Mr. D’ls-
raeli, in 1844, have been met by noble re-
sponses. From a state of depression, which,
four or five years ago, had reduced the number
of members nearly to 400, and steeped the in-
stitution in difficulty, it is now so elevated
that, as to life members, you number 133 of
those who have made the best of all possible
investments, because the returns are sure and
certain, and the rewards at once palpable and
fair, which thus greet your life governors upon
these happy anniversaries; you have of pay-
ing members no fewer than 2500—with an in-
come of £4000 a year—with a debt annihi-
lated, with the exception of that on mortgage,
and with good hope even that this encum-
brance may be soon swept away, and of in-
forming the Courts of Bankruptcy, which I
understand have taken shelter beneath your
roof, that it will soon be time for them to look
out for a more appropriate home. Before I
entered this room, I confess I was inclined to
wonder how these great effects had been
achieved; I knew they had been principally
accomplished by the great exertions, the sac-
rifices scarcely less than heroic, of some few
members of your society, who had taken its
interest deeply to heart; but now, when I see
the scene before me, so graced and adorned as
it is, I certainly need be surprised at no energies
which have been put forth,—I can wonder at
no results that have been attained. Those ex-
ertions, however, permit me to remind you,
having been of extraordinary character, you
can scarcely hope to be renewed. You must
look for the welfare of this institution to its
younger members. To them I speak when I
say, “To you its destinies are confided; on
you, if not its existence, yet its progress and
its glory depend; for its happiest success will
not arise mainly from emancipated revenues,
or the admiring sympathy of strangers, or even
from a scheme remarkably liberal and com-
prehensive, adapted to all, and embracing the
feelings of all; nor yet in laws admirably
framed, to preserve and support its proportion
and order; but it is by the vigorous efforts of
yourselves—perpetually renewing spirit and
life in its forms—without which their very
perfection will be dangerous, because, while
presenting the fairest shows, they may, with
less violence of apparent and startling transi-
tion, cease to be realities, and, instead of a
great arena of intellectual exertion, may
become only the abode of intellectual enjoy-
ment and luxury—fair, admirable, graceful
still; but the moving and elevating impulse of
a vast population no more !—I know I wrong
you in deprecating such a result as possible;
a result I only imagine, to remind you that, as
all momentous changes of the world have been
produced by individual greatness, so all popu-
lar and free institutions can only be rendered
and kept vital by individual energies—a result
which nothing can even threaten but that most
insidious form of indolence which is called
modesty and self-distrust; a result against
which not only the welfare of this great town,
and of each stranger who comes to Manchester,
and who may now hope to find beneath the
shelter of your roof a great intellectual home,
but also the exigencies of the time in which
we live, plead with solemn voices !—They
remind you that existence has become almost
a different thing since it began with some of
us. It then justified its old similitude of a
journey; it quickened with intellect into a
march; it is now whirling with science and
speculation into a flight. Space is contracted
and shrivelled up like a scroll; time disdains
its old relations to distance; the intervals
between the “ flighty purpose” and the deed
through which thought might lazily spread out
its attenuated films, are almost annihilated;
and the national mind must either glow with
generous excitement, or waste in fitful fever.
How important then is it, that throughout our
land—but more especially here where all the
greatest of the material instruments have their
triumphant home—almost that of the alchemist
—the spiritual agencies should be quickened
into kindred activity; that the few minutes of
leisure and repose which may be left us should,
by the succession of those “thoughts which
wander through eternity,” become hours of
that true time which is dialled in heaven ; that
to a mind winged for distant scenes, conver-
sant with the society of the great of all ages,
and warmed by sympathy to embrace the vast
interests of its species, the few hours in which
the space between London and Manchester is
now traversed—nay the little hour in which it
may soon be flashed over—shall have an in-
tellectual duration equal to the old, legitimate,
six days’ journey of our fathers; while thought,
no longer feebly circling in vapid dream, but
impelled right onward with divine energy,
shall not only outspeed the realized miracles
of steam, but the divinest visions of atmo-
spheric prophecy, and still keep “ the start of
the majestic world.” Mr. Canning once
boasted of his South American policy, that he
had “ called a new world into existence to
redress the balance of the old;” be it your
nobler endeavour to preserve the balance even
between the world within us and the world
without us—not vainly seeking to retard the
life of action, but to make it steady by con-
templation’s immortal freightage. In your
course,—members of the Manchester Athe-
naeum,—society at large may watch, and I
believe will mark, the clear indications both
of its progress and its safety. While the soli-
tary leisure of the clerk, of the shopman, of
the apprentice, of the overseer, as well as of
the worker in all departments of labours, from
the highest to the lowest, shall be gladdened,
at will, by those companions to whom the
“ serene creators of immortal things,” in verse
and prose, have given him perpetual intro-
duction, and who will never weary, or betray136
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
Dr forsake him;—while the voluntary toils of
associated labour and study shall nourish
among you friendships, not like the slight alli-
ances of idle pleasure, to vanish with the hour
they gladdened, but to endure through life with
the products of the industry which fed them ;—
while in those high casuistries which your
most ambitious discussions shall engender, the
ardent reasoner shall recognise here the beat-
ings of the soul against the bars of its clay
tenement, and gather even from the mortal
impediments that confound and baffle it, assu-
rance that it is winged to soar into an ampler
and diviner ether than invests his earthly heri-
tage ;—while the mind and heart of Manchester,
turning the very alloy and dross of its condi-
tion to noble uses, even as its mechanists
transmute the coarsest substances to flame and
speed, shall expand beyond the busy confines
of its manufactures and commerce to listen to
the harmonies of the universe;—while, vindi-
cating the power of the soul to be its own
place, it shall draw within the narrow and
dingy walls to which duty may confine the
body, scenes touched with colours more fair
and lovely than “ ever were by sea or land,” or
trace in each sullen mass of dense and hover-
ing vapour,
u A forked mountain, a blue promontory,
With trees upon’t that nod into the world,
And mock our eyes with air;”
while it shall give the last and noblest proof of
the superiority of spirit over matter by com-
manding, by its own naked force, as by an en-
chanter’s wand, the presence of those shapes
of beauty and power which have hitherto nur-
tured the imagination in the solitude and still-
ness of their realities ;—while the glory of such
institutions shall illumine the fiercest rapids of
commercial life with those consecrating gleams
which shall disclose in every small mirror of
smooth water which its tumultuous eddies may
circle, a steady reflection of some fair and
peaceful image of earthly loveliness, or some
glory of cloud or sky, preserving amidst the
most passionate impulses of earth some traces
of the serenity of heaven ;—then may we exult
as the chariot of humanity flies onward with
safety in its speed,—for we shall discover, like
Ezekiel of old, in prophetic vision, the spirit
in its wheels!
There is yet one other aspect in which I
would contemplate your association before I
enter on the more delightful part of my duty—
that in which success is certain—the soliciting
for you the addresses of distinguished men,
some of them attached to your welfare as well
by local ties as by general sympathy, others
gladly attending on your invitation, who feel
your cause to be their cause, the cause of their
generation and of the future. It is that in
which its influences will be perceived, not
merely banishing from this one night’s emi-
nence, raised above the level of common life,
and devoted by knowledge to kindness, all
sense of political differences, but softening,
gracing, and ennobling the spirit of party itself
as long as it must continue active. For
although party’s out-worn moulds have been
shivered, and names which have flashed and
thundered as the watchwords of unnumbered
struggles for power are now fast waning into
history, it is too much to hope, perhaps to
desire, until the education of mankind shall
more nearly approach its completion, that
strong differences of opinion and feeling
should cease to agitate the scenes on which
freemen are called to discharge political duties.
But the mind of the staunchest partisan, ex-
panded by the knowledge and embellished by
the graces which your Athenseum nurtures,
will find its own chosen range of political
associations dignified—the weapons of its war-
fare not blunted, but ornamented and embossed
—and, instead of cherishing an ignorant at-
tachment to a symbol, a name, or a ribbon,
expressed in vulgar rage, infuriated by intem-
perance to madness, blindly violating the
charities of life, and disturbing sometimes its
holiest domestic affections—it shall grow calm
in the assertion of principle, disdain the sug-
gestions of expediency, even as those of cor-
ruption, and partake of the refinement which
distance lends, while “ with large discourse
looking before and after,” he expands his
prospect to the dim horizon of human hopes,
and seeks his incentives and examples in the
tragic pictures of history. A politician thus
instructed and ennobled, who adopts the course
which most inclines to the conservation of
establishments, will not support the objects of
his devotion with a mere obstinate adherence,
chiefly because they oppose barriers to the
aims of his opponents, but will learn to revere
in them the grandeur of their antiquity, the
human affections they have sheltered and nur-
tured, the human experiences which mantle
round them, and the inward spirit which has
rendered them vital; while he who pants for
important political changes will no longer
anticipate, in the removal of those things
which he honestly regards as obstacles to th6
advancement of his species, a mere dead level
or avast expanse redeemed only from vacancy
by the cold diagrams- of theory, but will hail
the dawning years as thronged by visions of
peaceful happiness; and, as all great senti-
ments, like all great passions, however oppo
site may be their superficial aspects, have their
secret affinities, so may these champions and
representatives of conflicting parties, at the
very height of the excitation produced by the
energy of their struggle, break on a sense of
kindred, if not of their creeds, at least of their
memories and their hopes—embrace the past
and the future in one glorious instant, con-
scious, at once, of those ancient anticipations
with which the youth of the past was inspired,
when the point we have attained was faintly
discerned at the verge of its horizon by the
intensest vision of its philosophy, and grasp-
ing and embracing the genial idea of the future
as richest in the ever-accumulating past which
time prepares for its treasure. Then shall
they join in hailing, as now we hail from this
neutral eminence, the gradual awakening of
individual man of every class, colour, and
clime, to a full consciousness of the loftiness
of his origin, the majesty of his duties, the
glories of his destiny. Then shall they re-
joice with us in the assurance that, as he con-LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL.
137
quers the yet desert regions of the earth which
was given him to be replenished and subdued,
the same magic by which you are here ena-
bled to let in on the densest population the air
and feeling of mountain solitude, will, in turn,
breathe through the opening wilderness the
genial refinements of old society; that, as the
forest yields to his stout heart and sturdy arm,
the dominion of imagination and fancy will
extend before him, their powers investing the
glades he opens with poetic visions, shedding
the purple light of love through thickets and
groves till then unthreaded, and touching the
extremest hills, when first disclosed to the
human eye, with the old familiar hues of
Christian hope and joy. Then, in the remotest
conquests of civilization, shall new Athenaeums
arise, framed on your model—vocal with your
language—inspired with your hopes—to echo
back the congratulations which shall be wafted
to them even from this place, on each succeed-
ing anniversary, if not by yourselves, by your
children and your children’s children, and yet
more remote descendants, and to bless the
names of those who, amidst the toils, the cares,
and the excitements of a season of transition
and struggle, rescued the golden hours of the
youth around them from debasing pleasures
and more debasing sloth, and enabled them to
set to the world, in a great crisis of its moral
condition, this glorious example of intellectual
courage and progress.*
LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL.
[Quarterly Review, Dec. 1844.]
The remarkable success which has attended
the publication of Mr. Twiss’s Life of Lord
Chancellor Eldon is a striking proof of the
deep and enduring interest which attaches to
the character it develops. More than six
years had then elapsed since Lord Eldon’s
death, and many more since he ceased to dig-
nify the highest seat of British Justice—or to
influence, except by the weight of reputation
and age, the discussions and the conflicts of
the busy world. The principal incidents of his
life were too well known to leave room for the
gratification of curiosity—the political scenes
in which he moved had passed from the arena
of living things without having reached an
historical distance—and yet the sale of these
three massive volumes has exceeded that of
any similar work within our recollection.
This success has not, we think, been height-
ened by the courtly revelations and piquant
anecdotes with which the work is diversified—
some of which, indeed, so far impair its effect
as to suggest the wish we expressed for their
excision—but has arisen purely from the inte-
rest excited by a vigorous, honest, and affec-
tionate delineation of the character and the
fortunes of a great Englishman of sturdy na-
ture, by a hand peculiarly fitted for its office.
This remarkable career, thus depicted and
*TO SERJEANT TALFOURD,
On reading his Address to the Manchester Athenceum.
BY EDWARD KENEALY.
O’er the white urn that held the sacred heart
Of great Isocrates of old, was placed
The marble image of a Syren, graced
T^'th all the loveliness of Grecian art;
Emblem of eloquence, whose music sweet
Won the whole world by its enchanting spells;
Oh. with what type shall we our Talfourd greet?
What Image shall pourtray the spirit that dwells
Within his soul? An angel from the skies
Beaming celestial beauty from his eyes—
The olden Syren sang but to deceive,
To lure mankind to death her voice was given;
But thine, dear Talfourd, thy brig.'it words enweave
Immortal truths that guide to God and Heaven.
IS
thus appreciated, vividly suggests the remem-
brance of a kindred instance of industry,
worth, and success—less prominently placed
before the world, because less intimately asso-
ciated with its contests and its changes, but
not less crowned with emolument and honour,
and hardly less fertile of instruction—that of
Lord Eldon’s elder brother, Lord Stowell; and
if each life is worthy of separate contempla-
tion, both are attended with additional interest
when considered as springing from one source,
and fostered in the same nurture. That two
sons of a reputable tradesman in a provincial
town at the extremity of England, devoting
their powers to different branches of the same
profession, should attain the highest honours
which could be achieved in the course which
each had chosen—and that each, after attain-
ing an age far beyond that usually allotted to
man, should leave, with a magnificent fortune,
a name indestructibly associated with the de-
partment in which his work was performed—
is a moral phenomenon not worthy only of
national pride, but of respectful scrutiny.
This similarity in the results of the labours
of these two brothers is rendered more re-
markable by the points of strong difference
between their intellectual qualities and tastes,
as developed in their mature years : inviting
us to inquire what faculties were inherent in
their youth ; how far they were affected by
early education ; how far varied by the cir-
cumstances of their histor}^
The incidents of Lord Stowell’s life, not
supplying materials for voluminous biogra-
phy, are laboriously collected and admirably
detailed in an Essay in the “Law Magazine,”
apparently from the pen which, in a series of
papers, seemed to have done enough for Lord
Eldon’s fame, until Mr. Twiss proved how
much more might be achieved by happier op-
portunity and larger scope. Fortunately, how-
ever, the intellectual triumphs of the elder
m 2138
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS
Scott were of a nature capable of preserva-
tion : as they will be found recorded entire in
the Reports of his judicial decisions, of which
Dr. Haggard’s form the most interesting spe-
cimen, as they relate to a class of cases in
which manners and affections are frequently
involved, and were corrected by the judge him-
self with sedulous nicety. It is a subject of
deep regret that his Lectures on History,
which he delivered at Oxford from the Chair
of the Camden Professorship, have hitherto
been withheld from the world. Of these lec-
tures Dr. Parr writes :—“ To these discourses,
which, when delivered before an academical
audience, captivated the young and interested
the old—which are argumentative without for-
mality, and brilliant without gaudiness—and
in which the happiest selection of topics was
united with the most luminous arrangement
of matter—it cannot be unsafe for me to pay
the tribute of my praise, because every hearer
was an admirer, and every admirer will be a
witness.” The writer of the article in the
“Law Magazine ” confirms a rumour we have
elsewhere heard, that “a copy of those lec-
tures, transcribed with all the care and accu-
racy which their noble author was accustomed
to bestow on his labours, exists in manu-
script;” and we cordially join in this hope
“ that no false delicacy will prevent their pub-
lication,”—as we feel assured that they will
gratify a similar curiosity to that which Gib-
bon expressed, and justify even Dr. Parr’s ar-
chitectural praise. It would be interesting,
for a different reason, to recover the Essay by
which the younger Scott, when scarcely twenty-
one years of age, obtained the prize of English
Composition at Oxford—“On the Advantages
and Disadvantages of Foreign Travel,”—a
subject far removed from his experience, alien
from hi ? studies, and which, therefore, would
seem tc have owed its success either to the in-
genuity of its suggestions, or the graces of its
style. As, in after-life, the essayist was never
distinguished for felicity of expression or fer-
tility of illustration, and acquired a style not
only destitute of ornament, but unwieldy and
ponderous, this youthful success suggests the
question—Whether, in devoting all his powers
to the study of the law, he crushed the facult}^
of graceful composition with so violent an
effort, that Nature, in revenge, made his ear
dull to the music of language, and involved,
though she did not darken his wisest words 1
The school-day annals of the brothers dis-
close no trace of difference between them:
tmless the statement of their various recollec-
tions of the Sunday sermon—William gives a
lucid detail of its substance, and John an ex-
act detail of portions—may be so regarded :
which may scarcely be, when it is recollected
that if they were required to perform the ex-
ercise at the same time, there was a difference
in their ages of six years. That interval—
long as a section of school-boy life—implies,
however, no variety in the system of their
education : for Mr. Moises, the master of the
ancient grammar-school of their native town,
one of the best “of the old leven,” admitted no
innovations: the stern requisition—the un-
spared rod—the hearty commendation, which
customary severities made more sweet—had
the same influence at first as at last: no fa-
vour was shown to the youth of one genera-
tion more than to that of one degree over an-
other; and the results seem to have been
equafiy uniform—the insurance of that “holy
habit of obedience,” which is not only the
most wholesome, but the happiest state of
boyhood; and of a life-long affection to the
veteran distributor of justice and praise, which
the modern instructor—who, instead of the
master, governing by old rules, is the instru-
ment of new theories—can never hope to en-
joy. Each of these celebrated pupils of Mr.
Moises delighted in the opportunity which
after-life afforded him of acknowledging his
obligations to this excellent person; and each
testified his gratitude in a manner appropriate
to his position, and perhaps characteristic of
his nature: Lord Eldon, by the substantial
promotion of their schoolmaster, till the good
old man declined all worldly favours, and then
by transferring them to his son ; and Lord
Stowell, by contributing to his monument an
inscription of graceful and just praise, ex-
pressed in Latin, which Dr. Parr might envy.
Among the law3rers who have emerged
from that rank which the honest coal-fitter of
Newcastle adorned, few have enjoyed, like his
sons, the blessings of an education completed
at one of our old English Universities. Many
youths of such parentage, by means equally
honourable to their own ambition and indus-
try, have worked and cut their way through
the impediments of fortune to forensic emi-
nence—perhaps acquiring, from the difficulties
with which they have struggled, nerve and
courage for the painful controversies in which
they aspired to mingle—and deriving from the
varieties of “many-coloured life” with 'which
they were personally conversant, “ a learned
spirit of human dealing,” which they were
able forcibly and happily to apply to the sud-
den exigencies of their professional career.
But no such advantages can supply, however
they may sometimes compensate for, the want
of that protective influence, extended over
opening manhood, which, superseding the
restraints of school by a more generous and
appropriate discipline, delays the fever and
turmoil of life for a few of life’s happiest
years—which presents to yet unworldly ambi-
tion the achievements of praise and fame, be-
fore it is compelled to seek the lower rewards
of fortune—which, amidst the flutterings of
expectation and beneath the uncertain gleams
of fancy, lays the deep and sure foundation of
principle to be cemented in the mind amidst
pliant affections—and which blends the vene-
ration for ancient things with the aspirations
of hope and the quickenings of joy. The
youth who, quitting school, has been initiated
at once into the perplexities of the law as
practised in the most respectable attorney’s
office, or immersed amidst its more refined
technicalities in the chambers of an eminent
pleader, will acquire an earlier aptitude in
some points of practical routine and pigeon-hole
knowledge; but, unless gifted with some rare
felicity of nature, will be less prepared for the
systematic acquisition of legal learning, thanLORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL.
139
he whose mind has been restrained and braced
amidst academical studies. It is, indeed, of
the greatest importance that he should look
abroad upon humanity from a Seat of Learn-
ing, before he enters on a pursuit which will
be to him either a science or a puzzle, as he is
prepared to trace its details from its princi-
ples—or compelled to master them for imme-
diate use, and to retain them by the painful
and harassing process of unrefreshid and
almost artificial memory.
Lord Eldon—who, although so much the
younger of the brothers, was the first impelled
to enter on the study of the law, by the pres-
sure of need, consequent on an early and
happy marriage—had not forestalled, by any
direct preparation, the weight of professional
labour; but he was eminently fitted by the
constitution of his moral nature, and by the
discipline with which it had been trained, for
the arduous path he selected. It is delightful
to contemplate him, in the pages of Mr. Twiss,
as first settled in his dark and obscure abode
in London, engaged in gigantic labours—ex-
cited only by the prospect of far-distant suc-
cess, seen through a long avenue of toil, and
cheered only by the unwearied affection of her
for whose sake he had relinquished learned
ease, and who watched through the hours of
midnight study by his side. As he had been
fortunate above most youths of his rank in
life in the achievement of University associ-
ations, so he was favoured in the constancy,
or perhaps in the inaptitude, which withheld
him from seeking those aids to his scanty re-
sources which many honourable aspirants to
professional honours have sought and found
in literary exertions. Without meaning dis-
paragement to those who have availed them-
selves of such assistance, and, unseduced by
the premature gratifications of authorship,
have won the rewards of graver toil, we may
regard it as a happiness to an incipient law-
yer to be able and willing to hold his course
without them. It too often happens that the
immediate gifts of early praise fascinate and
dazzle the mind so as to indispose it for pa-
tient labour; that the pleasure of imbodying
the cherished thoughts of boyhood, and recog-
nising the sympathy of many with them,
prompts to their imperfect development; and
that the feelings which should spread freshly
through the whole course of life become
outworn and faded in the process of ren-
dering them intelligible to the world, and con-
fused to the writer himself by their pale reflec-
tion in the quivering mirror of the public
mind. No such mental dissipation weakened
the intellectual frame of either of the brothers.
Even Lord Stowell, whose occupations and
tastes, pursued and enjoyed and cherished at
Oxford, presented the temptation to seek lite-
rary fame, which the success of his lectures
heightened—even he thought it better to “bide
his time;” resisted all importunities to seek
reputation beyond the University he adorned
and charmed; and preserved undeveloped his
variety of knowledge and exquisite felicity of
expression, until they were felt exalting and
refining the happiest efforts of his advocacy,
and shedding new lustre on judicial wisdom.
Lord Eldon, and his great opponent in the
State Trials of 1794, Lord Erskine, entered on
the profession which, with far differing powers
and in various courses, each exalted, under
personal circumstances strikingly similar—
each having the favourite qualifications of
Lord Thurlow—a wife, and no hope of fortune
but in his own exertions and success. To
them that profession presented aspects as dis-
similar as their capacities and their disposi-
tions,—on each of which we will glance for a
moment, before accompanying Lord Eldon to
his choice, his career, and his reward.
There is no section of this world’s hopes
and struggles which is replete with so much
animation of contest and such frequent recur-
rence of triumphant result, as the practice of
the Common Law Bar before juries, as it was
exulted in by Erskine—graced by Scarlett—
variegated by Brougham—and elucidated by
Lyndhurst. The grotesque and passionate
forms of many-coloured life with which the
advocate becomes familiar; the truths stranger
than fiction, of which he is the depositary,
and which, implicitly believing, he sometimes
thinks too improbable to offer to the belief of
others ; the multitude of human affections
and fortunes of which he becomes, in turn,
not only the representative, but the sharer,
passioned for the hour, even as those who
have the deepest stake in the issue;—render
his professional life almost like a dazzling
chimera, a waking dream. For let it not
be supposed, that because he is compelled,
by the laws of retainer, to adopt any cause
which may be offered to him in the regular
course of his practice—with some extreme
exceptions—that, therefore, he is often the
conscious advocate of wrong. To him are
presented those aspects of the case which it
wears to the party who seeks his aid, and who,
therefore, scarcely appears to him as stripped
of claim to an honest sympathy. Is the rule
of law, too, probably against him:—there are
reasons, which cannot be exhibited to the
court, but which are the counsel’s “ in pri-
vate,” why, in this instance, to relax or evade
it will be to attain substantial justice. Does
the client, on the other hand, require of his
advocate that he should insist on the “ rigour
of the game,”—he only desires to succeed by
a course apparently so odious, because tech-
nicality will, for once, repair some secret in-
jury, and make even the odds of fortune. Is
he guilty of some high crime,—he has his own
palliations—his prosecutor seeks his convic-
tion by means which it is virtue to repel,—or
some great principle will be asserted by his
acquittal. In all cases of directly opposing
testimony, the counsel is necessarily predis-
posed to believe the statements which have
first occupied his mind, and to listen to those
which would displace his impression with
incredulity, if not with anger. And how many
cases arise in which there is no absolute right
or wrong, truth or falsehood—cases dependent
on user; on consent; on waiver; on mental
competency,—and in which the ultimate ques-
tion arises less from disputed facts, than from
the arguments to be deduced from them;—and
all these perplexed, distorted, or irradiated by140
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
the lights cast on them from the passions and
the hopes of the client, to be refracted through
the mind and coloured by the fancy of the
counsel! In the majority of his causes he
becomes, therefore, always a zealous, often a
passionate partisan ; lives in the life of every
cause (often the most momentous part of his
client’s life)—“ burns with one love, with one
resentment glows,”—and never ceases to hope,
to struggle, or to complain,—till the next cause
is called on, and he is involved in a new world
of circumstances, passions, and affections.
Sometimes it will be his province to track the
subtle windings of fraud, pursuing its dark
unwearied course beneath the tramplings of
busy life ; to develop, in lucid array, a little
history or cluster of histories, tending to one
great disclosure; to combine fragments of
scattered truths into a vivid picture; or to
cast the light from numerous facts on secret
guilt., and render it almost as palpable to be-
lief as if disclosed to vision. At another time,
the honour or the life of man may tremble in
his hands;—he may be the last prop of sink-
ing hope to the guilty or the sole refuge clasped
by the innocent; or, called on to defend the
subject against the power of state prosecution,
may give to the very forms and quibbles with
which ancient liberty was fenced, a dignity,
and breathe over them a magic power. Some-
times it will be his privilege to pierce the
darkness of time, guided by mouldering char-
ters and heroic names; or,-tracing out the
fibres of old relationships, to explore dim
monuments and forgotten tombs, retracing
with anxious gaze those paths of common
life which have been so lightly trodden as to
retain faint impress of the passenger. One
day he may touch the heart with sympathy for
“the pangs of despised love,” or glow indig-
nantly at the violation of friendship, and ask,
for wrongs beyond- all appreciation, as much
money as the pleader’s imagination has dared
to claim as damages ; the next he may implore
commiseration for human frailty, and preach
nothing but charity and forgiveness. The
sentiment of antiquity—the dawnings of hope
—the sanctity of the human heart in its
strength and its weaknesses, are among the
subjects presented in rapid succession to his
grasp ;—with the opportunity sometimes, in
moments of excitement, when his audience
are raised by the solemnity of the occasion
above the level of their daily thoughts, to give
hints of beauty and grace which may gleam
for a moment only, but will never be forgotten
by his delighted hearers. In this sphere, Ers-
kine moved triumphant;—lending his pliant
sensibility to every modification of human
feeling he touched on—gay, grave, pitying,
humourous, pathetic, by turns—casting all
himself into every subject, and forgetting him-
self within it, and shedding on the world of
Nisi Prius hues of living beauty, which
seemed to glance and tremble over it. Mr.
Scott touched on the verge of his sphere in
his circuits; but though an earnestness which
all clients admire, a humour not too refined
for the most vulgar apprehension, and a tem-
per always under control, procured for him
some business at the Assizes in days when
competitors were few, he soon found that this
was not the scene on which he could fulfil
the prophecies which great judges had pro-
nounced on the outset of his career.
But there is another branch, or rather asso-
ciated branches of this great profession, re-
quiring powers and habits of thought and
feeling different, perhaps opposite, to those
which should endow the advocate who would
be the charmer of the hearts of juries. To
study the law as a science; to trace its prin-
ciples upwards to their source in the early yet
ripe wisdom of our English annals, and thence
to follow it through the thousand ramifications
which extending wealth and population have
rendered needful; and thus to acquire that
knowledge which may enable its possessor to
solve with confidence the most intricate ques-
tions, and to present the aspect of each which
he is retained to sustain, encrusted with learn-
ing, but lucid in outline and clear in result,—
is an employment laborious and silent indeed,
but not unhappy in its progress nor doubtful
in its reward. To succeed in this course, a
clear and sound understanding, a retentive
and not fastidious memory, an untiring ndus-
try, either finding or creating a love of its
work, are all that is required; but how rare
are these qualities, compared to the lower de-
grees of those which are deemed loftier—or
how rarely do they withstand the temptations
of pleasure or the more dangerous seductions
of the listlessness and dreamy inaction which
are the besetting sins of studious life! The
student who is brave enough to embrace such
a course with heroic devotion, has objects
strongly defined before him in the horizon of
his mind; for him hour is linked to hour, and
day to day, by the continuous effort to ap-
proach them ; and his life, instead of being
dissipated among various pursuits, and fretted
by doubts and vanities, is massed by the co-
herence of its habits into one consistent whole,
and acquires a dignified harmony. By toiling
thus in an artificial world, the great lawyer
not rarely preserves to old age the simplicity
and the freshness of childhood,—moving about
as unconscious of the fever of life as a shep-
herd whose experience is bounded by his na-
tive mountains.
When Lord Eldon entered on his studies, the
English law formed a body of old principles
and modern instances, far better adapted to
animate and reward such a career than its
present condition. Although even then greatly
increased in bulk since the palmy days of its
first expositors, it was not, as now, perplexed
by multitudes of statutes, expressed in the bar-
barous jargon peculiar to modern legislation,
oppressing the understanding and “darkening
counsel with words without knowledge;” nor
bound up or frittered away by new rules,
fashioned more on imagined expediency than
on principle, and presenting an array of volu-
minous discords which may well strike a
student with dismay, and induce him, in des-
pair of acquiring a mastery over the whole, to
rest contented with such knowledge of indexes,
“small pricks to their subsequent volumes,”
as may enable him to find some authority to
quote, or some expedient to grasp, on the exi-LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL.
141
gency of each occasion. The system of law,
however applicable to the enjoyment, the de-
scent, and the transfer of real property, though
despoiled of some of its forms of ancient dig-
nity, and debased by limitations of time, which,
however generally convenient, sometimes pro-
tect the grossest injustice—making kindness
work a sort of disseisin, and arming ingrati-
tude with power—is even still an extraordinary
scheme of ingenious architecture, reducing the
vestiges of feudal barbarism to consistent form,
and extracting from the usages of violence and
tyranny the securities of social rights. The
system of equity too, not a capricious relaxa-
tion of the strict rules of law, but having a
sisterly entireness of its own, little disturbed
as yet by the busy hand of tumultuous legis-
lation, retains a kindred if not an equal claim
for a mind braced for laborious study. To
the perfect mastery of these systems, with
the more miscellaneous complexities of com-
mercial law, Lord Eldon on quitting Oxford
devoted his powers, admirably fitted for the
work by all they included, and scarcely less
by all they wanted; and the consequence was
slow, gradual, and complete success in his pro-
fession—secured before he added to his toils
the anxieties of political life—and calmly and
steadily grasped as his first object amidst
them.
The great element of Lord Eldon’s success,
both in legal and political life, was the re-
markable simplicity which characterized his
moral nature, his intellect, his opinions, and
his purposes. Even his prodigious industry,
which seemed to rejoice in the accumulation
of toils on those which would stupify men who
are accounted laborious, was a subordinate
power to this singleness of being and aim.
If he ever cherished tastes which might dazzle
or distract him in his stubborn career, he soon
crushed them beneath the weight of his studies.
Once, indeed, when a young member of the
House of Commons, he attempted an elaborate
speech on the third reading of the India Bill,
garnished with Shakspearian quotations vio-
lently applied, and scraps of Latin and texts
of Scripture let into the mosaic-work of his
composition, with strange contrast of colour—
having resolved, with characteristic boldness,
to rival Sheridan; but the House listened with
astonishment to the wilful extravagance of the
hard-headed lawyer; and he never repeated
the error. Encouraged by the intellectual suc-
cesses which his industry won in more con-
genial studies, he thought perhaps that he had
only to apply the same labour to the depart-
ment of wit and eloquence, in order to obtain
a similar victory—as an eminent special
pleader whom we had the happiness to know,
rejoicing in the ease with which he produced
works of extraordinary practical merit by dis-
tributing the labour of filling up his own mas-
terly outlines among his pupils, once gravely
proposed to manufacture novels and plays by
a similar process. After this failure—which
does not seem to have impaired his character
with the House for sterling sense and compre-
hensive legal knowledge—he resolutely ab-
stained from all attempts to adorn his natural
plainness of speaking, or to relieve his toil by
a single distracting pleasure. Mr. Twiss’s just
remark—“ that in the station he was eventu-
ally called to fill, his want of imagination was
one of his advantages; for the judgment, the
highest of the intellectual powers, and in pub-
lic affairs worth all the rest, was thus left to
exercise undivided and undisturbed its empire
in his mind and its influence in the counsels
of his sovereign,” is equally applicable to the
early triumphs of his professional career. His
powers were all massed together, and moved
by a single impulse, and did not jostle or in-
terfere with each other’s influence. In every
suit in which he was counsel at the bar, in
every struggle of political controversy, or in
the tenor of his private life, he saw his object
clearly before him ; and toiled upward to real-
ize it with undivided strength by the straight-
est, though often the most arduous paths—
some joke, innocent of wit or fancy alone re-
lieving its patient sternness.
Thus constituted by nature of masculine
understanding — beyond the common order
rather in its grasp than in its essence—des-
tined ‘ to move altogether when it moved at
all,’ Lord Eldon was fortunate in a kindred
simplicity of religious and political creed. The
effect of his early lessons in the old-fashioned
school at Newcastle was to implant in a strong
and simple mind a sense of the reality of reli-
gious truths, as imbodied in the formularies
of the Church of England, which admitted of
no more question than if it was the object of
corporal vision. In his defence, therefore, of
that which was part of his own being, he felt
no scruple ; no airy speculations disturbed the
repose of his settled thought; to protect the
Church against Romanism on the one side,
and Dissent on the other—regardless of the
expediencies of the times, or deriving new
strength of opposition from them—became to
him through life a natural if not an easy office.
He at least “knew his course.” In like man-
ner, his attachment to the order of things in
the State, as he found it, was scarcely less
hearted—with him it was not a matter of
reasoning, but of fact, so distinctly perceived,
that he regarded the brilliant defence of the in-
stitutions he loved by the eloquence and wit
of Canning with uneasiness, as if unquestion-
able truths were lowered in dignity by being
protected by the dazzling fence of genius.
When, therefore, his tendency to doubt and
hesitate in the decision of those complicated
questions of fact and equity which depended
for adjudication on his individual view of their
bearings, is invidiously contrasted with his
prompt resistance to all extensive innovations,
it should be recollected that his attachment to
the institutions of England, as he first knew
them, was one of the laws of his moral and in-
tellectual nature ;—it might be narrow, bigoted,
inconvenient; incapable of gracefully bending
to the necessities of the times; but still it was
part of his true self: an attack on Church and
State was to him the same thing as a violation
of his paternal roof or an insult to a domestic
affection. The same simplicity of nature, wiser
than the most cunning policy, rendered him a
greater, or rather a dearer favourite in the
closet of the Sovereign than many who have142
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
striven to maintain an ascendency by the ap-
pliances of servility or the arts of flattery. In
George III. he found a master with a nature
congenial to his own; and devoted himself
with his whole heart to him, in the true spirit
of Shakspeare’s servant “ of the antique world/’
The qualities in his Royal Master which, be-
yond his station, attracted and justified this
strong attachment, have never been so fairly
developed as in the disclosures made and ve-
rified by Mr. Twiss, who shows the King as
sustained in maintaining his resistance to re-
volutionary associations and movements, not
merely by a regal obstinacy and undaunted
courage, but by a depth of sentiment and earn-
est belief in principles, to which even those
who have been most disposed to admire the
resolution and to bless the issue have not al-
ways done justice. His Chancellor’s conduct
towards him, amidst those oscillations of reason
which made him feel the need of a true friend,
well requited his affection. Lord Eldon, by
personal interviews with the King, became
convinced that he was competent to discharge
the functions of royalty; and, therefore, instead
of encouraging measures which might induce
the malady they assumed, he took on himself
the responsibility of treating him as competent,
wdien his own wavering might have been de-
structive. Surely there is no inconsistency
between a sudden decision in such a case of
feeling and conduct, and long hesitation on the
result of a mass of facts, or of nice legal ana-
logies, determining the earthly fate of a family,
and affording a precedent for the adminis-
tration of justice in similar cases for future
times!
Although Lord Eldon strenuously resisted
all important changes in the law, he was earn-
estly devoted to its liberal administration, with-
out regard to persons or consequences. “The
quality” of justice was with him as little
“ strained” as that of mercy. In deciding on
the charges to be preferred against the parties
accused of treason for their share in the Eng-
lish combination of 1794, he manifested a
nobleness of determination, beyond the sug-
gestions of expediency, as, in the conduct of
the prosecutions, he maintained a courtesy of
demeanor which won the respect of his most
ardent opponents. He believed the offence to
be treason ; and although a conviction for that
crime was more than doubtful, while a convic-
tion for seditious conspiracy might have been
regarded as almost certain, he rejected the
safer and the baser course, and acted on the
severe judgment of his reason. The analysis
of these trials by Mr. Twiss—one of the most
masterly and striking passages of his work—
while it may leave the prudence of the At-
torney-General open to question, must satisfy
every impartial mind of the elevation of the
motive by which he was impelled. While he
dreaded any relaxation of the criminal law—
as if all its old “ terrors to evil-doers” would *
vanish in air if its most awful penalty were
removed from crimes against which it had
long been threatened—he endured the most
anxious labour to prevent its falling on an in-
nocent sufferer, or one who, however guilty, was
not subjected to its infliction by the plainest
construction of law. Mr. Peel, when Secretary
for the Home Department, in one of the de-
bates on the imputed delays of the Lord Chan-
cellor’s Court, thus bore testimony to this ex-
emplary caution in sanctioning the infliction
of capital punishment:—
“ It had fallen,” he said, “ to his lot to send to
the Lord Chancellor at the rising of his court,
to inform him that on the ensuing morning his
majesty would receive the recorder’s report,
containing probably forty or fifty cases. On
proceeding from his Court of Chancery, the
noble and learned Lord would, as was his uni-
form practice on *uch occasions, apply him-
self to the reading of every individual case,
and abstract notes from all of them; and he
had known more than one instance in which
he had commenced this labour in the evening,
and had been found pursuing it at the rising
of the next sun. Thus, after having spent
several hours in the Court of Chancery, he
often employed twelve or fourteen more in the
consideration of cases which involved the life
or death of unhappy culprits.”
One remarkable instance, in which his
doubts—more valuable often than the certain-
ties of ordinary minds—stood between a con-
vict and death, notwithstanding the unfavoura-
ble opinion of a majority of the judges, may
here be selected from a long catalogue. Mr.
Aslett, after many years’ service as second
cashier of the Bank of England under Mr.
Abraham Newland, was tempted to supply the
deficiency of large speculations in stock by
misappropriating an immense amount of the
Exchequer bills which the bank held, and
which were committed to his care. On detec-
tion, he was indicted for the capital felony of
embezzling Exchequer bills, the property of
the Bank of England: butwhen his fate seemed
sealed beyond the reach of hope, it was dis-
covered that the auditor, whose signature was
necessary, by statute, to authenticate Exche-
quer bills, had not been regularly appointed to
his office; and though an act of Parliament
was passed to render the documents he had
signed valid as between the government and
the holders, that retrospective authentication
did not justify the description of the embezzled
papers in the proceedings against the prisoner
as Exchequer bills. On this objection, Mr. Aslett
was acquitted, but was detained to meet the
charge in another form—that of misapplying
“ effects and securities” of the bank—on which
he was convicted, and upon which a majority
of the twelve judges held him amenable to the
extreme sentence of the law. The Lord Chan-
cellor’s mind, however, was not satisfied that
these irregular documents could, in a case of
life, be strictly holden even to justify this more
general description : Mr. Aslett therefore es-
caped death ; and after suffering many years’
imprisonment in the State apariments of New-
gate, with this sentence hanging over him, but
not unsolaced by social and even festive re-
liefs, was pardoned on condition of quitting his
country for ever.
In the comprehensiveness and accuracy of
his legal knowledge, Lord Eldon was perhaps
the greatest of all English lawyers—certainly
exceeded by no one of any age. If it is re-LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL.
143
membered how greatly, even in his time, the
mass of statutes and decisions had expanded
from the days of Lord Coke—how the pro-
vinces of common law and equity had assumed
a systematic distinctness—and how easy of
application his knowledge was to each of them
in turn, and also to every branch of Scottish
law which arose before him on appeal—it will
be scarcely possible adequately to conceive the
aptitude for study and the power of continuous
labour which he must have exercised in the
few years which elapsed before his time was
engrossed by an enormous practice, which
must have rendered systematic study impossi-
ble. After years spent in the Court of Chan-
cery—exclusively engaged in equity, with the
exception of the superficial varieties of his
circuits, and the arduous duties of his great
offices in state prosecutions—he assumed the
functions of Lord Chief Justice of the Court
of Common Pleas with as much ease, and
performed them with as perfect a mastery over
all subjects, as though his life had been spent
in the practice of the common law; and in-
deed manifested a promptitude and vigour,
which he was so often accused of wanting
when called upon solely and almost finally to
decide on the fortunes of suitors in the Court
of Chancery. One passing allusion to his
having just come from a court of equity, by
way of apology for quoting a decision in that
court, is the only circumstance throughout his
judgments, reported by Bosanquet and Puller
in the second volume of their reports, which
could lead to the suspicion that he had ever
practised on the other side of Westminster
Hall. In subtlety of apprehension, indeed, he
is exceeded by Littledale; in ingenious appli-
cation of legal analogies, by Holroyd; in lucid
purity of expression, by Lord Chief Justice
Tindal and Lord Lyndhurst; but in extent of
knowledge and the facility of its application,
he is exceeded by no judge of whom we have
either experience or memorial. It is true that
his style is heavy and involved—that the prin-
ciples of law and the circumstances of fact are
sometimes blended in his judgments so as to
appear confused—but the matter is always
there which not only justifies the particular
decision, but supplies the rule for time to come.
So far was he from shrinking from the deve-
lopment of principle, that in the only case
which, while he was Chief Justice, was sent
from the Court of Chancery for the opinion of
the Court of Common Pleas,* he deviated from
the usual practice of merely certifying the
opinion of the Court to the Chancellor, and
delivered a long exposition of the principles
involved in the question—what words in a de-
vise will pass leaseholds—discussing all the
numerous authorities, and reconciling them to
each other and to an intelligible rule. In this
case, with a noble zeal for the fame of a de-
ceased lawyer, he manifests that vigour of
mind which was never perplexed except by
the fear of doing injustice. Referring to some
reported expressions of Lord Northington, im-
peaching without overruling the old case of
“ Rose v. Bartlett,” he refused to believe that
they had been used.
“ We all know,” said he, “ that Lord North-
ington was possessed of great law-learning
and a very manly mind ; and I cannot but
think that he would rather have denied the
rule altogether than have set it afloat by treat-
ing it with a degree of scorn, and by intro-
ducing distinctions calculated to disturb the
judgments of his predecessors and remove the
landmarks of the law.”
As Lord Eldon spoke of Lord Northington,
so would he be spoken of himself. He too
had a “manly mind”—firm in principle, appre-
hensive and slow in its application—deliberat-
ing sometimes to the injury of individuals, but
maintaining the majesty of justice by the fear
of precipitate decision—and (notwithstanding
the complaints annually made of him in the
House of Commons because he pondered long
before he pronounced judgments which would
decide the destiny of a suitor, and did not
achieve impossibilities) over-mastering a
world of labour which almost makes the
mind dizzy in its contemplation. Nothing,
indeed, could have enabled him to endure
such labour but his undoubting faith in the
great principles of his life—that kindness of
nature which charms away animosities by its
unaffected courtesy—and which, amidst the
distractions of party, and the “fears of change
perplexing nations,” enabled him to preserve
an exalted position in the minds of friends
and opponents—
“ An ever-fixed mark,
Which look’d on tempests and was never shaken.”
With a gentler devotion to legal studies, but
with accomplishments felicitously harmoniz-
ing with them, Lord Stowell nearly kept pace,
step by step, with the promotion of his younger
brother. His residence at Oxford for eighteen
years—a period of collegiate seclusion unex-
ampled in the life of a successful lawyer—
prepared him to look on the varieties of hu-
man life and character which passed before
him during the ensuing half century of pro-
fessional labour, through a softening medium.
Selecting for the scene of his practice the
cloistered courts in Doctors’ Commons, he
avoided both the dazzling hurry of Nisi Prius
advocacy, and those tremendous labours of the
equity student which are scarcely enlivened
by the arguments of the open Court of Chan-
cery. But although the scene of his exertions
was quiet and sequestered, his competitors
few, and the discussions conducted with a sort
of academical amenity, the subjects which, as
advocate and as judge, he examined and
adorned, spread widely throughout society:
on the one hand, extending through the gravest
considerations of international law to the ho
rizon of the civilized world; and on the other,
affecting those domestic relations in which
delicate subtleties of passion and temper in-
fluence the most important of human rights
and duties, and, above all the changes of for-
tune, tend to make life wretched or happy. In
the dingy recesses of Doctors’ Commons, th*
hopes and fears, the frailties, the passions, the
loves, the charities of many lives were dis-
* Thompson v. Lady Lawley, 2 Bos. and Pul. 303.144
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
cerned in ever-shifting variety—as in a camera
obscura—and never were they refined by such
elegance as when touched by Lord Stowed.
Of his efforts during his period of advocacy,
when his evenings were enjoyed in the bril-
liant society of which Dr. Johnson was the
centre, the world knows little; but his judg-
ments during the years when he presided over
the High Court of Admiralty and the Consis-
tory Court, exhibiting all the aspects of each
case, enable us to guess at the dexteritjr with
which he presented the favourable views of
the causes committed to his charge, and the
beauty with which he graced them.
Of Lord Stowell’s decisions the following
character is given by Mr. Twiss in language
worthy of the subject: —
“Lord Stowell had the good fortune to live
in an age of which the events and circum-
stances were peculiarly qualified to exercise
and exhibit the high faculties of his mind.
The greatest maritime questions which had
ever presented themselves for adjudication—
questions involving all the most important
points both in the rights of belligerents and in
those of neutrals—arose in his time out of
that great war in which England became the
sole occupant of the sea, and held at her girdle
the keys of all the harbours upon the globe.
Of these questions, most of them of first im-
pression, a large portion could be determined
only by a long and cautious process of refer-
ence to principle and induction from analogy.
The genius of Lord Stowed, at once profound
and expansive, vigorous and acute, impartial
and decisive, penetrated, marshalled, and mas-
tered all the difficulties of these complex in-
quiries; till, having “sounded ad their depths
and shoals,” he framed and laid down that
great comprehensive chart of maritime law
which has become the rule of his successors
and the admiration of the world. What he
thus achieved in the wide field of international
jurisprudence, he accomplished also with equal
success in the narrower spheres of ecclesias-
tical, matrimonial, and testamentary law. And
though, where so many higher excellencies
stand forth, that of style may seem compara-
tively immaterial, it is impossible not to notice
that scholar-like finish of his judicial composi-
tions, by which they delight the taste of the
critic, as by their learning and their logic they
satisfy the understanding of the lawyer.”—
Life of Lord Eldon, vol. iii. pp. 255-6.
The perspicuity of Lord Stowell’s judgments
in the Admiralty Court obtained for them not
only the respect, but the reluctant accordance
of the foreign powers who were most inte-
rested in impugning them. Having sent a
copy of some of them, privately printed, to the
Admiralty Judge of the United States, he re-
ceived the following remarkable answer:—
“ In the excitement caused by the hostilities
raging between our countries, I frequently im-
pugned your judgments, and considered them
as severe and partial; but, on a calm review
of your decisions, after a lapse of years, I am
bound to confess my entire conviction both of
their accuracy and equity. I have taken care
that they shall form the basis of the maritime
law of the United States, and I have no hesita-
tion in saying, that they ought to do so in every
country of the civilized world.”
But the more popular judicial essays of
Lord Stowell—for so his judgments may be
not improperly regarded—are those pro-
nounced in the Consistory Court in questions
of divorce, restitution of conjugal rights, and
nullity of marriage. Partaking more of the
tone of a mediator than a censor, they are
models of practical wisdom for domestic use.
The judgment in the case of Evans v. Evans—
a suit, by a lady, for divorce by reason of
cruelty—presents a beautiful example of his
enunciation of wise and just principles, of his
skill in extracting from the exaggerations of
passion and interest the essential truth, and of
the amenity and grace with which he could
soften his refusal to comply with a lady’s
prayer.* Thus he lays down the rule which
should govern such unfortunate appeals:—
“ The humanity of the court has been loudly
and repeatedhr invoked. Humanity is the
second virtue of courts, but undoubtedly the
first is justice. If it were a question of hu-
manity simply, and of humanity which confined
its views merely to the happiness of the pre-
sent* parties, it would be a question easily de-
cided upon first impressions. Everybody must
feel a wish to sever those who wish to live
separate from each other, who cannot live
together with any degree of harmony, and con-
sequently with any degree of happiness; but my
situation does not allow me to indulge the feel-
ings, much less th e first feelings of an individual.
The law has said that married persons shall not
be legally separated upon themere*disinclination
of one or both to cohabit together. The disin-
clination must be founded upon reasons which
the law approves, and it is my duty to see whe-
ther these reasons exist in the present case.
“To vindicate the policy of the law is no
necessary part of the office of a judge ; but, if
it were, it would not be difficult to show that
the law, in this respect, has acted with its
usual wisdom and humanity—with that true
wisdom and that real humanity that regards
the general interests of mankind. For though,
in particular cases, the repugnance of the law
to dissolve the obligations of matrimonial co-
habitation may operate with great severity
upon individuals, yet it must be carefully re-
membered that the general happiness of the
married life is secured by its indissolubility.
When people understand that they must live
together, except for a very few reasons known
to the law, they learn to soften, by mutual ac-
commodation, that yoke which they know they
cannot shake off: they become good husbands
and good wives from the necessity of remain-
ing husbands and wives—for necessity is a
powerful master in teaching the duties which
it imposes. If it were once understood that,
upon mutual disgust, married persons might
be legally separated, many couples who now
pass through the world with mutual comfort,
with attention to their common offspring, and
to the moral order of civil society, might have
been at this moment living in a state of mu-
tual unkindness—in a state of estrangement
*1 Haggard, 35.LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL.
145
from their common offspring—and in a state
of the most licentious and unreserved immo-
rality. In this case, as in many others, the
happiness of some individuals must be sacri-
ficed to the greater and more general good.”
We wish we could follow the famous civi-
lian through all the delicate windings of this
“ pretty quarrel” between Mr. and Mrs. Evans;
the masterly analysis of the waiting-woman’s
motives; the elegant etiquette of the lying-in
chamber; the prerogatives of the nurse, and
fantastical distresses of the mistress—and give
some specimens of Sir William Scott’s gayer
style. But the embroidery of each case is so
equally woven, the effect so much depends
upon harmon}7, of colour and exact proportion ;
the sly humour is so nicely, and almost im-
perceptibly, mingled with the worldly wisdom,
that it would be unjust to tear away fragments
and exhibit them as specimens. If there is a
fault it lies in a tendency to attenuation of the
matter in sentences
“ With linked sweetness long drawn out ;**
and yet it would be difficult to find a word we
would change, or a sentence we would spare.
Although the refinement of expression is al-
most undisturbed, the sense is always manly—
nothing affected, sickly, or sentimental—but
common sense arrayed in the garb of fancy.
The vivid exhibition of scenes in domestic
life; the opposition of motives and passions;
all invested with a certain air from the rank
in society of the suitors, (for the poor rarely
indulge in the luxuries of the Consistory
Court,) reminds us more of the style of
comedy which was fading from the stage be-
fore Sir William Scott retired from the bench,
and which his dramatic tastes particularly
fitted him to appreciate. He must have been
indignant, even when Garrick performed
Archer, at the impudent usurpation by the
hero of the Beau’s Stratagem of the civilian’s
office, when he sets up a rival court of his own
for the dissolution of unhappy partnerships
for life, audaciously declares
“Consent, if mutual, saves the lawyer’s fee
and consequently destroys the Judge’s func-
tion. In each of his best civic developments,
the curtain seems lifted on an elegant drama
of manners: husbands and wives quarrel and
recriminate in dialogue almost as graceful as
Sheridan’s; youths of fortune become the ap-
propriate prey of rustic lasses, in spite of ob-
durate fathers; and a good moral, better en-
forced than most stage conclusions, dismisses
the parties and charms the audience. He
once said he could furnish a series of stories
from the annals of Doctors’ Commons which
should rival the Waverley Novels in interest;
and we wish he had tried it!
In Lord Stowell’s latter days a cause came
before him which afforded a strong contrast to
the vivacity of those nuptial and connubial
contests which had glowed and sparkled and
loured so often before him; and if dull in the
progress, grew beautiful in the judgment. It
involved a question between the churchwar-
dens of the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn,
and the patentee of iron coffins, on the right
of a parishioner to burial in the crowded
19
churchyard at the usual fees, when his last
earthly mansion was composed of materials
so durable as to resist for an unusual number
of years that decomposition which might ena-
ble the narrow space to receive a due succes-
sion of occupiers. This subject, so shocking
in some of its attendant details, so mortifying
to human pride in some of its aspects, be-
comes in his hands suggestive of solemn but
gentle disquisition on the essence of the senti-
ment which requires the reverent disposal of
the dead, and on the forms through which, in
various nations and times, it has been breathed.
From the simplicity of patriarchal days, through
the splendid varieties of that affected duration
at which the Egyptian monarchs aimed, down
to the humble necessities of a pauper funeral
and brief sojourn of the untitled dead in a
domicile of their own, before being associated
directly with dust, he discourses—“ turning all
to favour,” if not to “prettiness,” and giving a
vital interest to ashes and the urn. In his re-
searches he delights to measure stately wit
with that prodigious master in the empire of
the grave, Sir Thomas Browne; and though
he tails far short of the embossed grandeur of
the sepulchral essay on “ Urn-Burial,” which
stands alone for fantastic solemnity in English
prose, he diffuses a gentle atmosphere over the
poor-crowded cemetery, and regulates the cere-
monies and gradations in the world of death
with the same Grandisonian air with which he
had adjusted the contests of the fair and inno-
cent and frail among the living. After dis-
cussing the modes of sepulture, and vindicating
the authority of his court to arrange the differ-
ences, he thus sums up the matter in imme-
diate dispute :—
“It being assumed that the court is justified
in holding this opinion upon the fact of a com-
parative duration; the pretensions of these
coffins to an admission upon the same pecu-
niary terms as those of wood, must resort to
the other proposition, which declares that the
difference of duration ought to produce no dif-
ference in those terms. Accordingly, it has
been argued that the ground once given to the
body is appropriated to it for ever—it is literally
in mortmain unalienably—it is not only the do-
onus ultima, but the domus celerna of that tenant,
who is never to be disturbed, be his condition
what it may—the introduction of another body
into that lodgment at any time, however dis-
tant, is an unwarrantable intrusion. If these
positions be true, it certainly follows that the
question of comparative duration sinks into
utter insignificance.
“ In support of them, it seems to be assumed
that the tenant himself is imperishable; for
surely there can be no inextinguishable title,
no perpetuity of possession, belonging to a
subject which itself is perishable—but the
fact is, that ‘ man,’and ‘for ever,’ are terms
quite incompatible in any state of his exist-
ence, dead or living, in this world. The time
must come when ‘ ip see periere ruina,' when the
posthumous remains must mingle with and
compose a part of that soil in which they have
been deposited. Precious embalments and
costly monuments may preserve for a long
time the remains of those who have filled the
N146
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
more commanding stations of human life—
but the common lot of mankind furnishes no
such means of conservation. With reference
to them, the domus ceternci is a mere flourish of
rhetoric; the process of nature will speedily
resolve them into an intimate mixture with
their kindred dust; and their dust will help to
furnish a place of repose for other occupants
in succession.”
These seem serious matters of disquisition
for advanced age; but Lord Stowell, like his
brother, was too vividly assured of the life be-
yond the grave to contemplate the close of this
life and the subsequent decay of his mortal
frame with anxiety; and though his faculties
almost faded before he sunk into the tomb—
gently as he had lived, and talked, and judged
—his serenity of mind was undisturbed, and
his grace of manner even to the last lingered
about him.
In finally contemplating the history of these
two brothers, we are struck with the harmo-
nious interest which the picture derives from
their unenvying, unbroken affection, which
must have doubled to each the pride and suc-
cess of his own life in that of the other. To
William, John Scott, Lord Eldon, owed that he
was not a tradesman in a country town; and
year after year, as poverty pressed on him and
briefs came slowly, he was indebted to the
purse of one who felt the full value of money,
but insisted on investing his own savings in
his brother’s fortune. Both sharing the same
undoubting faith in the Established Church of
their country ; the same dread of innovation;
the same recollections of their arduous, painful,
merry school-days, and of the loveliness of the
same university—they found in the differences
of their tastes new grounds of mutual congra-
tulation and pride,—Sir William delighting to
speak of Sir John’s almost incredible labours ;
while the attorney-general took credit for the
civilian’s gentle gayeties, and grew proud while
listening to his social praise. Both were
charged with an undue love of pecuniary ac-
cumulation ; and, no doubt, they went firmly
on, almost with equal steps, to the attainment
of great wealth ; but this not so much with an
ignoble desire of mere money, as the steady
wish to achieve an end of which the gain was
only the symbol, and its amount the proof—part
of that single aspiration to get the start of their
fellows in the game of life, which disregarded
all minor excitements, vanities, and successes,
and placed ‘ Respice Finern’ for its rule. The
bounties of Lord Eldon were unostentatious,
frequent, and sometimes princely; magnifi-
cently conceived and often dexterously hidden ;
and although the long possession of the Great
Seal enabled him to rival the estate which
Lord Stowell derived literally from the fortune
of war, there seems no reason to doubt the sin-
cerity of the regret with which he left the Court
of Common Pleas—the quiet of which suited
his disposition, while its dignified office of ad-
ministering the law of real property by ancient
forms now no more, proposed to him genial
labours and serene decisions. Both, indeed,
were chargeable with a want of the splendid
hospitality befitting their station ;—a fault the
more to be regretted in the case of Lord Eldon,
who, while filling at the bar its first offices, and
during his long possession of the most digni-
fied of all civil positions under the crown, had
cast upon him the duty of keeping alive the
social spirit of the bar ; encouraging its young
and timid aspirants ; disarming jealousies, and
soothing the animosities which its contests
may engender; and preserving its common
conscience and feeling of honour, by en-
couraging the association cf its members in
convivial enjoyments under the highest aus-
pices. But Mr. Twiss gives the true excuse—
we can scarcely admit it as a perfect justifica-
tion—for a dereliction of that duty which for-
tune casts on her favourites—in the distaste of
Lady Eldon for society, and in the habits which
she acquired when obliged to practise rigid
self-denial,—and asserts, we believe truly, that
“ his domestic arrangements, from the time of
his lady’s death, were such as befitted his great
fortune and high station.” This was, however,
too late to repair the opportunities lost during
many years, of not only securing the love but
sustaining the character of the profession, to
which he was devotedly attached in all its
branches.
If, however, these great lawyers were not
prodigal of extensive entertainments, they
loved good cheer themselves, and delighted to
believe that it was enjoyed by others. No total
abstinence, nor half-abstinence, system was
theirs. Whether the statement be true, which
the genial biographer of Lord Stowell in the
“ Law Magazine” makes, “That he would often
take the refection of the Middle Temple Hall
by way of whet for the eight o’clock banquet,”
we will not venture to assert; but we well re-
member, more than thirty years ago, the be-
nignant smile which Sir William Scott would
cast on the students rising in the dim light of
their glorious hall, as he passed out from the
dinner table to his wine in the parliament
chamber; his faded dress and tattered silk
gown set off by his innate air of elegance ; and
his fine pale features beaming with a serene
satisfaction which bumpers might heighten but
could not disturb. He and Lord Eldon per-
fectly agreed in one great taste—if a noble
thirst should be called by so finical a name—
an attachment to port wine, strong almost as
that to constitution and crown; and, indeed, a
modification of the same sentiment. Sir Wil-
liam Scott may possibly in his lighter moods
have dallied with the innocence of claret—or,
in excess of the gallantry for which he was
famed, have crowned a compliment to a fair
listener with a glass of champagne—but, in his
sedater hours, he stood fast by the port, which
was the daily refreshment of Lord Eldon fora
large segment of a century. It is, indeed, the
proper beverage of a great lawyer—that by the
strength of which Blackstone wrote his Com-
mentaries—and Sir William Grant meditated
his judgments—and Lord Eldon repaired the
ravages of study, and withstood the shocks of
party and of time. This sustaining, tranquil-
lizing power, is the true cement of various la-
bours, and prompter of great thoughts. Cham-
pagne, and hock, and claret, may animate the
glittering superficial course of a Nisi Prius
leader—though Erskine used to share his dailyLORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL.
147
bottle of port with his wife and children, and
complain, as his family increased, of the dimi-
nution of his residue—but port only can har-
monize with the noble simplicity of ancient
law, or assuage the fervour of a great intellec-
tual triumph. Each of the Scotts, to a very
late period of his old age, was true to the gene-
rous liquor, and renewed in it the pastimes of
youth and the crowding memories of life-long
labour. It is related of Lord Stowell, that, a
short time before his death, having, in the deep-
ening twilight of his powers, submitted to a
less genial regimen, on a visit from his brother
he resumed his glass : and, as he quaffed, the
light of early days flashed upon his over-
wrought brain—its inner chamber was irra-
diated with its ancient splendour—and he told
old stories with all that exquisite felicity which
had once charmed young and old, the care-worn
and the fair—and talked of old friends and old
times with more than the happiness of middle
age. When Lord Eldon visited him in his
season of decay at his seat near Reading, he
sometimes slept at Maidenhead on his way;
and on one occasion, having dined at the inn,
and learned that the revising barristers were
staying at the house, he desired his compli-
ments to be presented to them, and requested
the favour of their company to share his wine.
He received the young gentlemen—very
young compared with their host—with the
kindest courtesy ; talked of his early struggles
and successes as much for their edifica-
tion as delight—and finished at least his own
bottle of port before they parted. Surely no
lighter or airier liquor could befit such festal
hours of honoured old age, or so well link long
years together in the memory by its flavours !
In closing this imperfect notice of the lives
of Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, we venture to
express a hope that Mr. Twiss’s work, minute-
ly tracing the course of one and reviving the
remembrance of the other, will fix the attention
of his own profession on examples which have
raised, and should help to sustain it. If so,
the work will be in good season. Great as the
influence of the profession of the law is in this
country, many causes have tended of late to
perplex the objects of its ambition, and to
tempt its aspirants to lower means of success
than steady industry and conduct free from
stain. The number of inferior offices which
suggest the appliances of patronage, and offer
low stimuli to its hopes—the increase of num-
bers, which weakens the power of moral con-
trol, while it heightens the turmoil of competi-
tion—and a feeling which pervades a certain
class of members of the House of Commons,
that any measure which detracts from the re-
sources of the bar tends to the public good—
have endangered the elevation of its character,
in the maintenance of which the interests of
order and justice are deeply involved. We
can conceive of no more vivid proof of the im-
portance of preserving a body which embraces
within it alike the younger sons of our nobility
and the aspirants of the middle classes, and
offers to all the opportunity of achieving its
highest and most lasting honours, than that
which the history of the two sons of the good
coal-fitter of Newcastle exhibits: nor any happier
incitement to that industry which is power,
and to that honour which is better than all
gain, than the example it presents to those who
may follow in their steps.148
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
SPEECH FOE THE DEFENDANT,
IN THE PROSECUTION OF THE QUEEN MOXON, FOR THE PUBLI-
CATION OF SHELLEY’S WORKS.
Delivered in the Court of Queen’s Bench, June 23, 1841.
PREFACE.
In consenting to revise and publish the following Speech, I trust the circumstances attend-
ant on the trial in which it was delivered will be found to justify an exception to the usual
abstinence of Counsel from interfering with the publication of speeches delivered at the bar.
The peculiarity of the occasion—the prosecution of an eminent publisher of unblemished
character at the instance of a person who had been himself convicted of blasphemous libel,
on a similar charge—and the nature of the question which that prosecution involved, between
Literature and the Law of Libel—may render the attempt of the defendant’s advocate, to defeat
the former and to solve the latter, worthy of more consideration than it could command either
by its power or its success. Observing that the case has been unavoidably deprived, by the
urgency of political topics and electioneering details, of the notice it would have received
from the press at a calmer season; and being anxious that the references necessarily made to
matters of solemn interest and of delicate relation should not be subject to the misconception
attendant on any imperfect reports, I have thought it right to take on myself the responsibility
of presenting to the public, as correctly as I can, the substance of that which I addressed to
the jury. The necessary brevity of the reports of the trial, which has partly induced this
publication of the speech for the defendant, also renders it proper to give a short account of
the circumstances which preceded it.
In the month of April, 1840, an indictment was preferred against Mr. Henry Hetherington,
a bookseller in the Strand, at the instance of the Attorney-general, for selling certain numbers
of a wrork entitled “ Haslam’s Letters to the Clergy of all Denominations,” sold each at the price
of one penny, and charging them as libels on the Old Testament. The cause came on to be
tried before Lord Denman, in the Court of Queen’s Bench, on 8th December, 1840, when
the defence was conducted, with great propriety and talent, by the defendant himself, who
rested it mainly on a claim of unqualified right to publish all matters of opinion, and on the
argument, that the work charged as blasphemous came fairly within the operation of that prin-
ciple. Mr. Hetherington was, however, convicted, and ultimately received judgment, under
which he underwent an imprisonment of four months in the Queen’s Bench prison.
While this prosecution was pending, Mr. Hetherington appears to have adopted the design
of becoming in his turn the Prosecutor of several booksellers for the sale of the complete edi-
tion of Shelley’s Works, which had been recently issued by Mr. Moxon in a form similar to
that in which he had published the collected works of the greatest English poets. He accord-
ingly commissioned a person na-med Holt, then a compositor in his employ, to apply for the
work at the shops of several persons eminent in the trade, and thus succeeded in obtaining
copies of Mr. Moxon, of Mr. Fraser, and of Mr. Otley, or rather of the persons in their employ.
On the sales thus obtained, indictments were preferred at the Central Criminal Court against
the several vendors, which, with a similar indictment against Mr. Marshall, doubtless pre-
ferred by the same Prosecutor, were removed by certiorari at the instance of the defendants,
and set down for trial by special juries. Mr. Moxon felt that, as the original publisher of the
edition, he ought to bear the first attack ; and therefore, although some advantage might have
been gained by placing the case of a mere vendor before his own, he declined to use it, and
entered his own cause the first of the series which were to be tried in Middlesex. These
causes were called on for trial at the sittings after Hilary term ; but the prosecutor was not
prepared with the Attorney-general’s warrant to pray a talcs to supply the default of the spe-
cial jury, and as the counsel for the defendant did not think it right to expedite his proceedings
by doing so themselves, the cause went over, and ultimately came on for trial on Wednesday
23d June, when nine special jurymen appeared, and the panel was completed by a tales prayed
for the prosecution.
The indictment against Mr. Moxon, which the others exactly resembled, charged that he,
“ being an evil-disposed and wicked person, disregarding the laws and religion of this realm,
and wickedly and profanely devising and intending to bring the Holy Scriptures and the
Christian religion into disbelief and contempt, unlawfully and wickedly, did falsely and mali-
ciously publish a scandalous, impious, profane, and malicious libel of and concerning the
Christian religion, and of and concerning the Holy Scriptures, and of and concerning Almighty
God,” in which were contained certain passages charged as blasphemous and profane. It then
set forth a passage in blank verse, beginning, “ They have three words : ivell tyrants know their use,SPEECH IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON.
149
well pay them for the loan, with usury torn from a bleeding world!—God, Hell, and Heaven and after
adding an innuendo, “meaning thereby that God, He//, and Heaven, were merely words,” proceeded
to recite a few more lines, applying very coarse and irreverent, but not very intelligible com-
ments to each of those words. It then charged, that the libel contained, in other parts, two
other passages, also in verse, and to which the same character may be justly applied.* It
lastly set forth a passage of prose from the notes, the object of which seems to be to assert,
that the belief in the plurality of worlds is inconsistent with “ religious systems,” and with
“deifying the principle of the universe and which, after speaking in very disrespectful terms
of the statements of Christian history as “ irreconcilable with the knowledge of the stars,”
concludes with the strange inconsistency pointed out by Lord Denman in his charge, (if the
author’s intention was to deny the being of God,) “The work of His fingers have borne witness
against them.”
The case for the prosecution was opened by Mr. Thomas with a judicious abstinence from
any remark on the motives or object of the Prosecutor, and without informing the jury who
the Prosecutor was. He stated several cases, and dicta to establish the general proposition,
that a work tending to bring religion into contempt and odium is an offence against the com-
mon law, and, among others, that of Mr. Hetherington ; read, besides the indicted passages,
several others of a similar character, all selected from the poem of “Queen Mab;” eloquently
eulogized the genius of Shelley, and fairly admitted the respectability of the defendant; and
concluded by expressing the satisfaction he should feel if the result of this trial should esta-
blish, that no publications on religion should be subject for prosecution in future. He then
called Thomas Holt, who proved the purchase of the volume for twelve shillings at Mr. Mox-
on’s shop; and who also proved, on cross-examination, that he made the purchase and others
at the desire of Mr. Hetherington, whom he understood to be the Prosecutor in this and the
succeeding causes.
The success of such a prosecution, proceeding from such a quarter, gives rise to very seri-
ous considerations ; for although, in determining sentences, Judges will be able to diminish
the evil, by a just discrimination between the publication of the complete works of an author
of established fame, for the use of the studious, and for deposit in libraries, and the dissemi-
nation of cheap irreligion, directed to no object but to unsettle the belief of the reader—the
power of prosecuting to conviction every one who may sell, or give, or lend any work con-
taining passages to which the indictable character may be applied, is a fearful engine of
oppression. Should such prosecutions be multiplied, and juries should not feel justified in
adopting some principle of distinction like that for which I have feebly endeavoured to con-
tend, they must lead to some alteration in the law, or to some restriction of the right to set it
in action. It will, I think, be matter of regret among many who desire to respect the Law,
and to see it wisely applied, that the question should have arisen ; but since it has been so
painfully raised, it is difficult to avoid it; and if the following address should present any
materials for its elucidation, it will not, although unsuccessful in its immediate object, have
been delivered entirely in vain.	T. N. T.
Serjeant1 s Lin, 28th June, 1841.
SPEECH,
May it please your Lordship,
Gentlemen of the Jury,
It has sometimes been my lot to express,
and much oftener to feel, a degree of anxiety
in addressing juries, which has painfully di-
minished the little power which I can ever
command in representing the interests com-
mitted to my charge ; but never has that feel-
ing been so excited, and so justified, by any
occasion as that on which it is my duty to ad-
dress you. I am called from the Court in which
I usually practise, to defend from the odious
charge of blasphemy one with whom I have
been acquainted for many years—one whom I
have always believed incapable of wilful of-
fence towards God or towards man—one who
was introduced to me in early and happy days,
by the dearest of my friends who are gone be-
fore me—by Charles Lamb—to whom the wife
* It has not been thought necessary to the argument to
set out these passages; as it proceeds on the admission,
that, separately considered, they are very offensive both
to piety and good taste.
of the defendant was as an adopted daughter;
and who, dying, committed the interests which
he left her in the products of his life of kind-
ness to my charge. Would to God that the
spirit which pervaded his being could decide
the fate of this strange prosecution—I should
only have to pronounce his name and to receive
your verdict.
Apart from these personal considerations,
there is something in the nature of the charge
itself, however unjustly applied to the party
accused, which must depress a Christian advo-
cate addressing a Christian jury. On all other
cases of accusation, he would implore the
jurors, sworn to decide between the accuser
and the defendant, to lay aside every prepos-
session—to forget every rumour—to strip them-
selves of every prejudice—to suppress every
affection, which could prevent the exercise of
a free and unclouded judgment; and, having
made this appeal, or having forborne to make
it as needless, he would regard the jury-box
as a sacred spot, raised above all encircling
n 2TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
150
influences, to which he might address the
arguments of justice and mercy with the as-
surance of obtaining a decision only divested
of the certainty of unerring truth by the im-
perfection of human evidence and of human
reason. But in this case you cannot grant—
I cannot ask—the cold impartiality which on
all other charges may be sought and expected
from English juries. Sworn on the Gospel to
try a charge of wickedly and profanely at-
tempting to bring that Gospel, and the holy
religion which it reveals, into disbelief and
contempt, you are reminded even by that oath
—if it were possible you could ever forget—
of the deep, the solemn, the imperishable in-
terest you have in those sacred things which
the defendant is charged with assailing. The
feelings which such a charge awakens are
not like those political differences which it is
delightful sometimes to forget or to trample
on ;—or those local partialities which it is en-
nobling to forsake for a wider sphere of con-
templation—or those hasty opinions wThich the
daily press, in its vivid course, has scattered
over our thoughts, and which we are proud
sometimes to bring to the test of dispassionate
reflection ;—or those worldly interests which,
if they sway the honourable mind at all, in-
cline it to take part against them ;—but the
emotions which this charge enkindles are in-
tertwined with all that endears the Past and
peoples the Future—with all that renders this
life noble by enriching it with the hope of that
which is to come. If the passages which
have been read to you—torn asunder from the
connection in which they stand—regarded with-
out reference to the time, the object, the mode of
their publication,—should array you at this mo-
ment almost as plaintiffs, personally wronged
and insulted, against their publisher, I must
not complain ; for I shall not be provoked,
even by the peculiarity of this charge, to de-
fend Mr. Moxon by a suggestion which can
violate the associations which are intertwined
with all that is dear to you. He would rather
submit to the utmost consequences which the
selfish recklessness of this prosecution could
entail, if you should sanction, and the court
hereafter should support, its aim ; he would
rather be severed from the family whom he
cherishes, and from the society of the good
and the great in our literature, which he is
privileged to share ; than he would obtain im-
munity by a recourse to those weapons which
the prosecutor would fain present to his choice.
Neither will I, notwithstanding the anticipation
of my learned friend, ask you to palter with
your consciences, and, because you may doubt
or deny the policy of the law which is thus
set in action, invite you to do other than ad-
minister justice according to your oath and
your duty. I take my stand on Christian
ground ; I base my defence on the recognised
law; and if I do not show you that the Christian-
ity, which the prosecutor most needlessly pre-
sumes to vindicate, and the law which with un-
hallowed hands he is striving to pervert, justify
your verdict of acquittal, I am content that
you should become the instruments of his at-
tempt to retort the penalties of his own sentence
on one who never wronged him even in thought
—that you should aid him to render the law
under which he has suffered, odious by sanc-
tioning the odious application which he con-
templates ; and that at his bidding you should
scatter through the loftiest and serenest paths
of literature, distress, and doubt, and dismay,
awarding him that success which, “ if not vic-
tory, is yet revenge.”
The charge which Mr. Moxon is called upon
to answer is, that with a wicked intention to
bring the Holy Scriptures and the Christian
religion into contempt, he published the volume
which is in evidence before you, and which is
characterized as a libel on that religion, on
the Scriptures, and on Almighty God. I speak
advisedly when I say the whole volume is thus in-
dicted; it must be so considered in point of
justice—it is so charged in point of form. The
indictment, indeed, sets forth four passages,
torn violently asunder from their context; yet
it does not charge them as separate libels, but
as portions of one “ impious, blasphemous,
profane and malicious libel,” in different parts
of which the selected parts are found. Now
these are not all to be found even in one poem,
for the first three being in poetry, the last is
taken from a mass of prose appended to the
first poem of “ Queen Mab,” and intervening
between it and a poem entitled “Alastor,”
which is the next in the series. And if this
were not the form of the record, can it be
doubted that, in point of justice, the scope, the
object, the tendency of the entire publication,
must be determined before you can decide on
the guilt or innocence of the party who has
thus published the passages charged as blas-
phemous ! Supposing some question of law
should be raised on the sufficiency of the in-
dictment in which they are inserted, and they
should be copied necessarily for the elucidation
of the argument in one of the reports in which
the decisions of this court are perpetuated;
would the reporter, the law-bookseller, the
officer of the court, who should hand the
volume to a barrister, be guilty of blasphemy 1
Or if they should appear in some correct report,
partaking of a more popular form, and that re-
port should be indicted as containing them,
what form would the question of the guilt or in-
nocence of the publisher assume! Would it
not be, whether he had been honestly anxious
to lay before the world the history of an un-
exampled attempt to degrade and destroy the
law, under pretence of asserting it; or whether
he was studious to disseminate some frag-
ments of strange and fearful audacity, and
had professed to report an extraordinary trial,
only as a pretext to cover the popular dissemi-
nation of blasphemy! And would not the
form, the commentary, the occasion, the price,
all be material in deciding whether the work
were laudable or guilty—whether, as a vvnole,
it tended to good or to evil! These passages,
like details and pictures in works of anatomy
and surgery, are either innocent or criminal,
according to the accompaniments which sur-
round them, and the class to whom they are
addressed. If really intended for the eye of
the scientific student, they are most innocent;
but if so published as to manifest another in-
tention, they will not be protected from legalSPEECH IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON.
151
censure by the flimsy guise of science. By a
similar test let this publication be judged! If
its whole tenor lead you to believe that the
dissemination of irreligious feelings was its
object—nay, that such will be its natural con-
sequence—let Mr. Hetherington have his tri-
umph ; but if you believe that these words,
however offensive when abstractedly taken,
form part of a great intellectual and moral phe-
nomenon, which may be disclosed to the class
of readers who alone will purchase the volume,
not only without injury, but to their instruc-
tion, you will joyfully find Mr. Moxon as free
from blasphemy in contemplation of the strict-
est law, as I know he is in purpose and in spirit.
The passages selected as specimens of the
indicted libel are found in a complete edition
of the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley—a work
comprising more than twenty thousand lines
of verse, and occupy something less than the
three-hundredth part of the volume which con-
tains them. The book presents the entire in-
tellectual history—true and faithful, because
traced in the series of those works which were
its events—of one of the most extraordinary
persons ever gifted and doomed to illustrate
the nobleness, the grandeur, the imperfections,
and the progress of human genius—whom it
pleased God to take from this world while the
process harmonizing his stupendous powers
was yet incomplete, but not before it had indicat-
ed its beneficent workings. It is edited by his
widow, a lady endowed with great and original
talent, who, as she states in her preface, hast-
ens “to fulfil an important duty, that of giving
the productions of a sublime genius to the
world, with all the correctness possible, and of,
at the same time, detailing the history of these
productions as they sprang, warm and living,
from his heart and brain.” And, accordingly,
the poems are all connected together by state-
ments as to the circumstances under which
they were written, and the feelings which in-
spired them. The “alterations (says Mrs.
Shelley) his opinions underwent ought to be
recorded, for they form his history.”
The first of these works is a poem, written
at the age of eighteen, entitled “Queen Mab;”
a composition marked with nothing to attract
the casual reader—irregular in versification,
wild, disjointed, visionary; often difficult to be
understood even by a painful student of poetry,
and sometimes wholly unintelligible even to
him; but containing as much to wonder at, to
ponder on, to weep over, as any half-formed
work of genius which ever emanated from
the vigour and the rashness of youth. This
poem, which I shall bring before you presently,
is followed by the marvellous series of works
of which “ Alastor,” “ The Revolt of Islam,”
the “Prometheus Unbound,” and “The Cenci”
form the principal, exhibiting a continuous
triumph of mellowing and consecrating influ-
ences, down to the moment when sudden
death shrouded the poet’s career from the ob-
servation of mortals. Now the question is,
whether it is blasphemy to present to the
world—say rather to the calm, the laborious,
the patient searcher after wisdom and beauty,
who alone will peruse ihis volume—the awful
mistakes, the mighty struggles, the strange de-
pressions, and the imperfect victories of such
a spirit, because the picture has some pas-
sages of frightful gloom. I am far from con-
tending that every thing which genius has in
rashness or in wantonness produced, becomes,
when once committed to the press, the inalien-
able property of mankind. Such a principle,
indeed, seems to be involved in an argument
which was recently sanctioned by the autho-
rity of a Cabinet Minister more distinguished
even as a profound thinker and an eloquent
and accomplished critic, than by political
station. When I last urged the claim of the
descendants of men of genius to be the guar-
dians of their fame, as well as the recipients
of its attendant rewards, I was met with denial
on the plea that, from some fastidiousness of
taste, or some over-niceness of moral appre-
hension, the hereditary representatives of a
great writer may cover his works with artifi-
cial oblivion. I have asked, whether, if a poet
has written “some line which, dying, he may
wish to blot,” he shall not be allowed by the
insatiate public to blot it dying; and I have
asked in vain! Fielding and Richardson have
been quoted, as writers whose works, multi-
plying as they will through all time the sources
of innocent enjoyment, might have been sup-
pressed by some too dainty moralist. Now,
admitting that the tendency of Fielding’s
works, taken as a whole, is as invigorating as
it is delightful, I fear there are chapters which,
if taken from their connection—apart from the
healthful atmosphere in which their impurities
evaporate and die—and printed at some penny
cost for dissemination among the young, would
justly incuy the censure of that law which has
too long withheld its visitations from those
who have sought a detestable profit by spread-
ing cheap corruption through the land. It
may be true, as Dr. Johnson ruled, that Rich-
ardson “had taught the passions to move at
the command of virtue and, as was recently
asserted, that Mrs. Hannah More “first learned
from his writings those principles of piety by
which her life was guidedbut (to leave out
of consideration the Adventures of Pamela,
which must sometimes have put Mrs. Hannah
More to the blush) I fear that selections might
be made, even from the greatest of all prose
romances, Clarissa Harlowe, which the Society
for the Suppression of Vice would scarcely
endure. Do I wish them therefore suppressed 1
No! Because in these massive volumes the
antidote is found with the bane; because the
effect of Lovelace’s daring pleas for vice, and
of pictures yet more vicious, is neutralized by
the scenes of passion and suffering which
surround them; because the unsullied image
of heroic purity and beautiful endurance rises
fairer from amidst the encircling pollutions,
and conquers every feeling but those of admi-
ration and pity. Yet if detached scenes were,
like these passages of Shelley, selected for the
prosecution, how could they be defended—but,
like them, by reference to the spirit, and in-
tent, and tendency of the entire work from
which they were torn I And yet the defence
would be less conclusive than that which I
now offer; as descriptions which appeal to
passion are far less capable of correction by152
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
accompanying moralities, than the cold specu-
lations of a wild infidelity by the considera-
tions which the history of their author’s mind
supplies. In the wise and just dispensations
of Providence great powers are often found
associated with weakness or with sorrow; but
when these are not blended with the intellec-
tual greatness they countervail, but merely
affect the personal fortunes of their possessors
—as when a sanguine temperament leads into
vicious excesses—there is no more propriety
in unveiling the truth, because it is truth, than
in exhibiting the details of some physical
disease. But when the greatness of the poet’s
intellect contains within itself the elements of
tumult and disorder—when the appreciation
of the genius, in all its divine relations and
all its human lapses, depends on a view of the
entire picture, must it be withheld] It is not
a sinful Elysium, full of lascivious blandish-
ments, but a heaving chaos of mighty elements,
that the publisher of the early productions of
Shelley unveils. In such a case, the more
awful the alienation, the more pregnant with
good will be the lesson. Shall this life,
fevered with beauty, restless with inspiration,
be hidden; or, wanting its first blind but
gigantic efforts, be falsely, because partially,
revealed I If to trace back the stream of
genius, from its greatest and most lucid earthly
breadth to its remotest fountain, is one of the
most interesting and instructive objects of phi-
losophic research, shall we—when we have
followed that of Shelley through its majestic
windings, beneath the solemn glooms of “The
Cenci,” through the glory-tinged expanses of
“The Revolt of Islam,” amidst the dream-like
haziness of the “ Prometheus”—be forbidden
to ascend with painful steps its narrowing
course to its furthest spring, because black
rocks may encircle the spot whence it rushes
into day, and demon shapes—frightful but
powerless for harm—may gleam and frown on
us beside it]
Having thus endeavoured to present to you
the foundation of my defence—that the volume
in which these passages appear is in its sub-
stance historical, and that, so far from being
adopted by the compiler, they are presented as
necessary to historical truth—I will consider
the passages themselves, and the poem in
which they appear, with a view to inquire
whether they are of a nature capable of being
fairly regarded as innoxious in their connection
with Shelley’s life. Admitting, as I do, that if
published with an aim to commend them to
the reader as the breathings or suggestions of
truth—nay, that if recklessly published in
such a manner as to present them to the reader
for approval, they deserve all the indignation
which can be lavished on them; I cannot
think, even then, they would have power to
injure. They appeal to no passion—they per-
vert no affection—they find nothing in human
nature, frail as it always is, guilty as it some-
times becomes—to work on. Contemplated
apart from the intellectual history of the ex-
traordinary being who produced them, and
from which they can never be severed by any
reader of this book, they would excite no feel-
ings but those of wonder at their audacity, and
pity for their weakness. Not only are they
incapable of awakening any chords of evil ia
the soul, but they are ineffectual even to pre-
sent to it an intelligible heresy. “We under-
stand a fury in the words—but not the words.”
What do they import] Is it atheism]—oris
it mad defiance of a God by one who believes
and hates, yet does not tremble ] To the first
passage, commencing, “ They have three words”
—“God, Hell, and Heaven/”—the prosecutor
does not venture to affix any meaning at all,
but tears them from their context, and alleges
that they are part of a libel on the Holy Scrip-
tures, though there is no reference in them to
the Bible, or to any Scripture doctrine; nor
does the indictment supply any definite mean-
ing or reference to explain or to answer. To
the second paragraph—
Is there a God 1—ay, an Almighty God,
And vengeful as almighty ! Once his voice
Was heard on earth : earth shudder’d at the sound;
The fiery-visaged firmament express’d
Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawn’d
To swallow all the dauntless and the good
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,
Girt as it was with power—
the indictment does present a most extended
innuendo ; “ Thereby meaning and referring to the
Scripture history of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram;
and meaning that the said Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram, were dauntless and good, and were so
daimtless and good for daring to hurl defiance at
the throne of Almighty God.” This is, indeed; a
flight of the poetry of pleading—a construction
which you must find as the undoubted sense
of the passage—before you can sustain this
part of the accusation. But again, I ask, is
there any determinate meaning in these “ wild
and whirling words ]” Are they more than
atoms of chaotic thought not yet subsided into
harmony—over which the Spirit of Love has
not yet brooded, so as to make them pregnant
with life, and beauty, and joy] But suppose,
for a moment, they nakedly assert atheism—
never was there an error which, thus inci-
dentally exhibited, had less power to charm.
How far it is possible that such a miserable
dogma, dexterously insinuated into a perplexed
understanding or a corrupted heart, may find
reception, I will not venture to speculate, but
I venture to affirm that thus nakedly presented,
as the dream of a wild fancy, it can at most
only glare for a moment, a bloodless phantom,
and pass into kindred nothing! Or do the
words rather import a belief in a God—the
ruling Power of the universe—yet an insane
hatred of his attributes ! Is it possible to con-
template the creature of a day standing up
amidst countless ages—like a shadowy film
among the confused grandeur of the universe
—thus propelled, with any other feeling than
those of wonder and pity] Or do these words
merely import that the name and attributes of
the Supreme Being have been abused and per-
verted by “the oppressors of mankind,” for
their own purposes, to the misery of the op-
pressed ] Or do they vibrate and oscillate
between all these meanings, so as to leave the
mind in a state of perplexity, balancing and
destroying each other! In either case, they
are powerless for evil. Unlike that seductive153
SPEECH IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON.
infidelity which flatters the pride of the under-
standing, by glittering sophistry—or that still
more dangerous infidelity, which gratifies its
love of power by bitter sarcasm—or that most
dangerous of all which perverts the sensibili-
ties, and corrupts the affections—it resembles
that evil of which Milton speaks, when, with a
boldness which the fastidious might deem pro-
fane, he exclaims,
Evil into the mind of God or man
May come and go, so unapproved, and leave
No spot or blame behind.
if, regarded in themselves, these passages
were endowed with any power of mischief, the
manner in which they are introduced in the
poem—or rather phantasm of a poem—of
‘‘Queen Mab” must surely neutralize them.
It has no human interest—no local affinities—
no machinery familiar even to thought. It
opens in a lyrical measure, wanting even the
accomplishment of rhyme, with an apostrophe
uttered, no one knows by whom or where, on
a sleeping nymph—whether human or divine
—the creature of what mythology—on earth
or in some other sphere—is unexplained; all
we know is, that the lady or spirit is called
lanthe. Thus it begins :—
How wonderful is Death—
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue ;
The other, rosy as the morn
When, throned in Ocean’s wave,
It blushes o’er the world;
Yet both so passing wonderful!
Hath then the gloomy power
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres
Seized on her sinless soul 7
Must then that peerless form,
Which love and admiration cannot view
Without a beating heart—those azure veins
Which steal like streams along a field of snow—
That lovely outline which is fair
As breathing marble, perish 7
Must putrefaction’s breath
Leave nothing of this heavenly sight
But loathsomeness and ruin !
Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,
On which the lightest heart might moralize 7
Or is it only a sweet slumber
Stealing o’er sensation,
Which the breath of roseate morning
Chaseth into darkness 7
Will lanthe wake again,
And give that faithful bosom joy,
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
Light, life, and rapture from her smile 7
The answer to the last question is, that
lanthe will awake,—which is expressed in
terms appropriately elaborate and mystical.
But while she is thus sleeping, the Fairy Mab
descends—invites the soul of the nymph to quit
her form—and conveys it through systems,
suns, and worlds to the temple of “ The Spirit
of Nature,” where the Fairy and the Soul enter
“The Hall of Spells,” and a kind of phantas-
magoria passes before them, in which are j
dimly seen representations of the miseries, op-
pressions, and hopes of mankind. Few, indeed,
are the readers who will ever enter the dreary
portals of that fane, or gaze on the wild inter-
mixture of half-formed visions and theories
which gleam through the hazy prospects seen ,
from its battlements. The discourse of the
Fairy—to the few who have followed that dizzy
career—is an extraordinary mixture of wild
rhapsody on the miseries attendant on human-
ity, and the supposed errors of its faith, and of
fancies “of the moonshine’s watery beams.”
After the “obstinate questioning” respecting
the existence of a God, this Fairy—who is
supposed to deny all supernatural existence—
calls forth a shape of one whose imaginary
being is entirely derived from Christian tradi-
tion—Ahasuerus, the Jew—who is said to have
scoffed at our Saviour as he bore his cross to
Calvary, and to have been doomed by Him to
wander on the earth until His second coming.
Of this phantom the question is asked, “ Is
there a God?” and to him are the words ascribed
in answer which form the second and third
portions of the Prosecutor’s charge. Can any
thing be conceived more inconsistent—more
completely self-refuted—and therefore more
harmless! The whole machinery, indeed,
answers to the description of the Fairy,—
The matter of which dreams are made,
Not more endow’d with actual life,
Than this phantasmal portraiture
Of wandering human thought.
All, indeed, is fantastical—nothing clear ex-
cept that atheism, and the materialism on
which alone atheism can rest, are refuted in
every page. If the being of God is in terms
denied—which I deny—it is confessed in sub-
stance ; and what injury can an author do,
who one moment deprecates the “deifying the
Spirit of the universe,” and the next himself
deifies “the spirit of nature,”—speaks of her
“eternal breath,” and fashions for her “a fit-
ting temple 1” Nay, in this strange poem, the
spiritual immunities of the soul and its im-
mortal destinies are distinctly asserted amidst
all its visionary splendours. The Spirit of
lanthe is supposed to arise from the slumber-
ing body, and to stand beside it; while the poet
thus represents each :—
’Twas a sight
Of wonder to behold the body and soul.
The self-same lineaments, the same
Marks of identity were there,
Yet, Oh how different! One aspires to heaven,
Pants for its sempiternal heritage,
And ever changing, ever rising, still
Wantons in endless being;
The other for a time the unwilling sport
Of circumstance and passion, struggles on,
Fleets through its sad duration rapidly;
Then, like a useless and worn-out machine,
Rots, perishes, and passes.
Now, when it is found that this poem, thus
containing the doctrine of immortality, is pre-
sented with the distinct statement that Shelley
himself in maturer life departed from its offen-
sive dogmas—when it is accompanied by his
own letter in which he expresses his wish for
its suppression—when, therefore, it is not given
even as containing his deliberate assertions,
but only as a feature in the development of his
intellectual character—surely all sting is taken
out of the rash and uncertain passages which
have been selected as indicating blasphemy!
But is it not antidote enough to the poison of a
pretended atheism, that the poet who is supposed
to-day to deny Deity, finds Deity in all things!154
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
T cannot proceed with this defence without
feeling that I move tremulously among sacred
things which should be approached only in
serene contemplation; that I am compelled to
solicit your attention to considerations more
lit to be weighed in the stillness of thought
than amidst the excitements of a public trial;
and that I am able only to suggest reasonings
which, if woven into a chain, no strength of
mine could utter, nor your kindest patience
follow. But the fault is not mine. I cannot
otherwise even hint the truth—the living truth
—of this case to your minds as it fills and
struggles in my own, or protect my client and
friend from a prosecution without parallel in
our legal history. If the prosecutor, in return
for his own conviction of publishing some
cheap and popular work of alleged blasphemy
—prepared, calculated, and intended by the
author to shake the religious principles of the
uneducated and the young,—has attempted to
assail the efforts of genius, and to bring into
question the relations, the uses, the tendencies
of the divinest faculties, I must not shrink
from entreating you to consider those bearings
of the question which are essential to its jus-
tice. And if you feel unable fully to examine
them within the limits of a trial, and in the
atmosphere of a court of justice, yet if you
feel with me that they are necessary to a just
decision, you cannot doubt what your duty to
the defendant and to justice is, on a criminal
charge ! Pardon me, therefore, if I now seek
to show you, by a great example, how unjustly
you would deal with so vast and so divine a
thing as the imagination of a poet, if you were
to take his isolated passages which may seem
to deal too boldly with sacred things, and—
without regard to the process of the faculty by
which they are educed—to brand them as the
effusions of a blasphemous mind, or as tend-
ing to evil issues. That example will also
show you how a poet—devoting the noblest
powers to the loftiest themes—when he ven-
tures to grapple with the spiritual existences
revealed by the Christian faith, in the very
purpose of vindicating “ the ways of God to
men,” may seem to incur a charge like the
present, and with as much justice, and may
be absolved from it only by nice regard to the
tendencies of the divine faculty he exerts. I
speak not of a “marvellous boy,” as Shelley
was at eighteen, but of Milton, in the maturity
of his powers, when he brought all the “spoils
of time,” and the clustered beauty hoarded
through a long life, to the deliberate construc-
tion of a work which should never die. His
case is the converse of that of Shelley—he be-
gins from an opposite point; he falls into an
opposite error; but he expatiates in language
and imagery out of which Mr. Hetherington
might shape a charge as spacious as that
which he has given you to decide. Shelley
fancies himself irreligious, and everywhere
falters or trembles into piety; Milton, believ-
ing himself engaged in a most pious work, is
led by the tendencies of his imagination to
individualize—to adorn—to enthrone—the En-
emy of God ; and to invest his struggles against
Omnipotence with all the nobleness of a pa-
triotic resistance to tyranny, and his suffering
from Almighty justice with the graces of for-
titude. Let it not be urged that the language
which his Satan utters is merely to be regarded
with reference to dramatic proprieties—it is
attributed to the being in whom the interest of
his poem centres ; and on whom admiration
and sympathy attend as on a sufferer in the
eternal struggle of right against power. Omni-
potence becomes tyranny in the poet’s vision,
and resistance to its requisitions appears the
more generous even because hopelessly vain.
Before I advert to that language, and ask you
to compare it with the expressions selected for
prosecution, let me call to your recollection
the grandeurs—nay, the luxuries of thought
with which the “Lost Archangel” is sur-
rounded ;—the magic by which even out of
the materials of torture dusky magnificence is
created in his place of exile, beyond “the
wealth of Ormus and of Ind;” and the faded
glory and unconquerable spirit attributed to
those rebel legions who still sustain him in
opposition to the Most High. Observe the
hosts, still angelic, as they march at his bid-
ding !—
Anon they move
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised
To height of noblest temper heroes old
Arming to battle ; and, instead of rage,
Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved
With dread of death, to flight or foul retreat;
Nor wanting power to mitigate and ’suage
With solemn touches troubled thoughts, and chase
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain,
From mortal or immortal minds.
Whether we listen to those who—
More mild,
Retreated in a silent valley, sing,
With notes angelical, to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall
By doom of battle—
or those with whom the moral philosopher
sympathizes yet more—who
Sat on a hill retired
In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,
Fix’d fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute—
or expatiate over the muster-roll of their chiefs,
in which all the splendours of the East, the
gigantic mysteries of Egypt, and the chastest
forms of Grecian beauty gleam on us—all re-
flect back the greatness of Him who surveys
them with “ tears such as angels weep.” His
very armour and accoutrements glisten on us
with a thousand beauties !
His ponderous shield,
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon-----
And not only like the moon as seen to the up-
turned gaze of ordinary men, but as associated
with Italian art, and discerned from places
whose names are music—
---Like the moon whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening, from the top of FesoI6,
Or in Valdarnoj to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe.
“His spear” is not only likened to a pine
hewn in the depth of mountain forests, but, asSPEECH IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON.
155
if the sublimest references to nature were in-
sufficient to accumulate glories for the bearer,
is consecrated by allusions to the thousand
storms and thousand thunders which the mast
of an imperial ship withstands.
His spear (to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand)
He walk’d with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marie ; not like those steps
On Heaven’s azure.
Now, having seen how the great Christian
Poet has lavished all the glories of his art on
the attendant hosts and personal investiture
of the brave opponent of Almighty Power, let
us attend to the language in which he ad-
dresses his comrade in enterprise and suffer-
ing.
Into what pit thou seest,
From what height fallen—so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder : and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms ? Yet not for those,
Nor ichat the potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Though changed in outward lustre, that fix’d mind,
And high disdain, from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of spirits arm’d,
That durst dislike His reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook His throne !
Such is the force of the poet’s enthusiastic
sympathy with the speaker, that the reader al-
most thinks Omnipotence doubtful; or, if that
is impossible, admires the more the courage
that can resist it! The chief proceeds—
What though the field be lost ?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
? And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome;
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify His power,
Who from the terror of this arm so late
Doubted his empire ; that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy, and shame beneath
This downfall!
This mighty representation of generous re-
sistance, of mind superior to fortune, of re-
solution nobler than the conquest, concludes
by proclaiming “ eternal war” against Him—
Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy,
Sole reigning, holds the tyranny of heaven.
Surely, but for the exquisite grace of the
language compared with the baldness of Shel-
ley’s, I might parallel from this speech all that
the indictment charges about “an Almighty
Fiend” and “ Tyrannous Omnipotence.” Listen
again to the more composed determination
and sedate self-reliance of the archangelic
sufferer!
“Is this the region'? this the soil, the clime?”
Said then the lost archangel, “this the seat
That we must change for heaven 1 this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he,
Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid
What shall be right; farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equall1 d. force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells ! Hail, horrors, hail 1
Infernal world, and thou, profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor ; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same 1
And what I should be, all but less than he
TVhom thunder hath made greater. Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence ;
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell;
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven !”
I might multiply passages of the same kind ;
but I dare only allude to the proposition made
of assaulting the throne of God “with Tarta-
rean sulphur and strange fire, his own invented
torments and to the address of Satan to the
newly-created sun, in which he actually curses
the love of God. Suppose that last passage
introduced into this indictment—suppose that
instead of the unintelligible lines beginning
“ They have three words, God, Hell, and Heaven,”
we had these—Be then His love accursed,” with
the innuendo, “ Thereby meaning the love of Al-
mighty God,” how would you deal with the
charge? How! but by looking at the object
of the great poem of which those words are
part; by observing how the poet, incapable of
resting in a mere abstraction, had been led
insensibly to clothe it from the armory of vir-
tue and grandeur; by showing that although
the names of the Almighty and Satan were re-
tained, in truth, other ideas had usurped those
names, as the theme itself had eluded even
Milton’s grasp ! I will not ask you whether
you agree with me in the defence which might
be made for Milton ; but I will ask, do you not
feel with me that these are matters for another
tribunal ? Do you not feel with me that ex-
cept that the boldness of Milton’s thoughts
comes softened to the ears by the exquisite
beauty of Milton’s language, I may find paral-
lels in the passages I have quoted from the
Paradise Lost, for those selected for prosecu-
tion from Queen Mab ? Do you not feel with
me that, as without a knowledge of the Para-
dise Lost, you could not absolve the publisher
of Milton from the prosecution of “ some mute
inglorious” Hetherington ; so neither can you,
dare you, convict Mr. Moxon of a libel on God
and religion, in publishing the works of Shel-
ley, without having read and studied them all ?
If rashly you assail the mighty masters of
thought and fantasy, you will, indeed, assail
them in vain, for the purpose of suppression,
though not for the purpose of torture ; all you
can do is to make them suffer, as being human,
they are liable to corporal suffering; but, like
the wounded spirits of Milton, “ they will soon
close,” “ confounded, though immortal!”
If, however, these are considerations affect-
ing the exercise of human genius on themes
beyond its grasp, wffiich we cannot discuss in
this place, however essential to the decision of
the charge, there is one plain position which I
will venture to assert: that the poetry which
pretends to a denial of God or of an immor-
tal life, xust contain its own refutation in it-
self, and sustain what it would deny ! A poet,
though never one of the highest order, may156
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
Mink vice to a radiant angelhe may diffuse
luxurious indifference to virtue and to truth;
but he cannot inculcate atheism. Let him
strive to do it, and like Balaam, who came to
curse, like him he must end in blessing ! His
art convicts him ; for it is “ Eternity revealing
itself in Time!” His fancies maybe wayward,
his theories absurd, but they will prove, no less
in their failure than in their success, the divi-
nity of their origin, and the inadequacy of this
world to give scope to his impulses. They are
the beatings of the soul against the bars of its
clay tenement, which though they may ruffle
and sadden it, prove that it is winged for a di-
viner sphere ! Young has said, “ An undevout
astronomer is mad ;” how much more truly
might he have said, an atheist poet is a con-
tradiction in terms ! Let the poet take what
range of associations he will—let him adopt
what notions he may—he cannot dissolve his
alliance with the Eternal. Let him strive to
shut out the vistas of the future by encircling
the present with images of exquisite beauty ;
his own forms of ideal grace will disappoint
him with eternal looks, and vindicate the im-
mortality they were fashioned to veil! Let him
rear temples, and consecrate them to fabled di-
vinities, they will indicate in their enduring
beauty “ temples not made with hands, eter-
nal in the heavens !” If he celebrates the de-
lights of social intercourse, the festal reference
to their fragility includes the sense of that
which must endure; for the very sadness
which tempers them speaks the longing after
that “which prompts the eternal sigh.” If he
desires to bid the hearts of thousands beat as
one man at the touch of tragic passion, he
must present “ the future in the instant,”—show
in the death-grapple of contending emotions a
strength which death cannot destroy—vindicate
the immortality of affection at the moment when
the warm passages of life are closed against it;
and anticipate in the virtue which dares to die,
the power by which “mortality shall be swal-
lowed up of life !” The world is too narrow for
us. Time is too short for man,—and the poet
only feels the sphere more inadequate, and
pants for the “ all-hail hereafter,” with more
urgent sense of weakness than his fellows :—
Too—too contracted are these walls of flesh,
This vital heat too cold ; these visual orbs,
Though inconceivably endow’d, too dim
For any passion of the soul which leads
To ecstasy, and all the frigid bonds
Of time and change disdaining, takes the range
Along the line of limitless desires /
If this prosecution can succeed, on what
principle can the publishers of the great works
of ancient times, replete with the images of
idolatrous faith, and with moralities only to be
endured as historical, escape a similar doom ?
These are the works which engage and reward
the first labours of our English youth,—which,
in spite of the objections raised to them, prac-
tically teach lessons of beauty and wisdom—
the sense of antiquity—the admiration of heroic
daring and suffering; and refine and elevate
their lives. It was destined in the education
of the human race, that imperfect and faint
suggestions of truth, combined with exquisite
perceptions of beauty, should in a few teeming
years give birth to images of grace which, un-
touched by time, people the retreats which are
sought by youthful toil, and make learning
lovely. Why shall not these be brought, with
the poetry of Shelley, within the range of cri-
minal jurisdiction? Because, with all their
beauty, they do not belong to the passions of the
present time,—because they hold their domi-
nion apart from the realities which form the
business of life,—because they are presented
to the mind as creations of another sphere, to
be admired, not believed. And yet, without
prosecution—without offence—one of the great-
est and purest of our English poets, wearied
with the selfishness which he saw pervading a
Christian nation, has dared an ejaculating
wish for the return of those old palpable shapes
of divinity, when he exclaimed,
Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on some pleasant lee,
Have glimpses which may makeone less forlorn,
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn !
And the fantasies of Queen Mab, if not so
compact of imagination, are as harmless now
as those forms of Grecian deities which Words-
worth thus invokes ! Pure—passionless—they
were while their author lived; they have
grown classic by that touch of death which
stopped the generous heart and teeming fancy
of their fated author. They have no more in-
fluence on living opinion, than that world of
beauty to which Shelley adverts, when he ex-
claims in “ Hellas,”
But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity.
Having considered this charge chiefly as
affecting poetry, I must not forget that the last
passage selected by the Prosecutor is in prose,
culled from the essay which was appended to
the poem of “Queen Mab,” disclaimed by the
editor—disclaimed by Shelley long before he
reached the prime of manhood—but rightly
preserved, shocking as it is in itself, as essen-
tial to the just contemplation of his moral and
intellectual nature. They form the dark
ground of a picture of surpassing interest to
the philosopher. There shall )rou see a poet
whose fancies are most ethereal, struggling
with a theory gross, material, shallow, imaging
the great struggle by which the Spirit of the
Eternal seeks to subdue the material world to
its uses. His genius was pent up within the
hard and bitter rind of his philosophy, as
Ariel was in the rift of the cloven pine; and
what wonder if a Spirit thus enthralled should
send forth strange and discordant cries? Be-
cause the words which those strange voices
syllabled are recorded here, will you say the
record is a crime? I recollect in the speech
of that great ornament of our profession, Mr.
Erskine, an illustration of the injustice of se-
lecting part of a conversation or of a book,
and because singly considered it is shocking,
charging a criminal intent on the utterer or
the publisher; which, if, at first, it may notSPEECH IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON.
157
seem applicable to this case, will be found es-
sentially to govern it. He refers to the pas-
sage in the Bible, “ The fool hath said in his
heart, There is no God” and shows how the pub-
lisher of the Book of God itself might be
charged with atheism, by the insertion only
of the latter division of the sentence. It is not
surely by the division of a sentence only that
the context may be judged ; but by the general
intent of him who publishes what is in itself
offensive, for the purpose of curious record—
of controversy—of evidence—of example. The
publisher of Shelley has not indeed said “ The
fool hath said in his heart, There is no God
but he has in effect said, The poet has tried to
say with his lips “ There is no God,” but his
genius and his heart belie his words ! What
indeed does the publisher of Shelley’s works
virtually say, where he thus presents to his
readers this record of the poet’s life and death ?
He says—Behold! Here is a spectacle which
angels may admire and weep over! Here is
a poet of fancy the most ethereal—feelings the
most devout—charity the most Christian—en-
thralled by opinions the most cold, hollow, and
debasing! Here is a youth endowed with
that sensibility to the beautiful and the grand
which peoples his minutes with the perceptions
of years—who, with a. spirit of self-sacrifice
which the eldest Christianity might exult in if
found in one of its martyrs, is ready to lay down
that intellectual being—to be lost in loss itself
—if by annihilation he could multiply the en-
joyments and hasten the progress of his spe-
cies—and yet, with strange wilfulness, reject-
ing that religion in form to which in essence
he is imperishably allied! Observe these
radiant fancies—pure and cold as frostwork—
how would they be kindled by the warmth of
Christian love ! Track those “ thoughts that
wander through eternity,” and think how they
would repose in their proper home! And
trace the inspired, yet erring youth, poem after
poem—year after year, month after month—
how shall you see the icy fetters which en-
circle his genius gradually dissolve; the
wreaths of mist ascend from his path; and the
distance spread out before him peopled with
human affections, and skirted by angel wings!
See how this seeming atheist begins to adore—
how the divine image of suffering and love
presented at Calvary, never unfelt, begins to
be seen—and in its contemplation the softened,
not yet convinced poet exclaims, in his Pro-
metheus, of the followers of Christ—
The wise, the pure, the lofty, and the just,
Whom thy slaves hate—for being like to thee!
And thus he proceeds—with light shining
more and more towards the perfect day, which
ne was not permitted to realize in this world.
As you trace this progress, alas ! Death veils
it—veils it, not stops it—and this perturbed,
imperfect, but glorious being is hidden from
us—“Till the sea shall give up its dead!”
What say you now to the book which exhibits
this spectacle, and stops with this catastrophe '!
Is it a libel on religion and God 1 Talk of
proofs of Divine existence in the wonders of
the material universe, there is nothing in any—
nor in all—compared to the proof which this’
indicted volume conveys! What can the
telescope disclose of worlds and suns and sys-
tems in the heavens above us, or the micro-
scope detect in the descending scale of various
life, endowed with a speech and a language
like that with which Shelley, being dead, here
speaks'? Not even do the most serene pro-
ductions of poets, whose faculties in this world
have attained comparative harmony—strongly
as they plead for the immortality of the mind
which produced them—afford so unanswerable
a proof of a life to come, as the mighty em-
bryo which this book exhibits ;—as the course,
the frailty, the imperfection, with the dark
curtain dropped on all! It is, indeed, when
best surveyed, but the infancy of an eternal
being; an infancy wayward but gigantic; an
infancy which we shall never fully understand,
till we behold its development “ when time
shall be no more”—when doubt shall be dis-
solved in vision—“when this corruptible shall
have put on incorruption, and when this
mortal shall have put on immortality!”
Let me, before I sit down, entreat you to ask
yourselves where the course of prosecution
will stop if you crown with success Mr. Heth-
erington’s revenge. Revenge, did I say? I
recall the word. Revenge means the returning
of injury for injury—an emotion most unwise
and unchristian, but still human;—the satis-
faction of a feeling of ill-regulated justice che-
rished by a heart which judges bitterly^ in its
own cause. But this attempt to retaliate on
one who is a stranger to the evil suffered—this
infliction of misery for doing that which the
prosecutor has maintained within these works
the right of all men to do—has no claim to the
savage plea of wild justice; but is poor, cruel,
paltry injustice; as bare of excuse as ever
tyrant, above or below the opinion of the wise
and good, ever ventured to threaten. Admit
its power in this case—grant its right to select
for the punishment of blasphemy the exhibi-
tion of an anomaly as harmless as the stuffed
aspic in a museum, or as its image on the
passionless bosom of a pictured Cleopatra—
and what ancient, what modern history, shall
be lent unchallenged to our friends ? If the
thousand booksellers who sell the “Paradise
Lost”—from the greatest publisher in London
or Edinburgh down to the proprietor of the
little book-stall, where the poor wayfarer
snatches a hasty glance at the grandeur and
beauty of the poet, and goes on his way re-
freshed—may hope that genius will render to
the name of Milton what they deny to that of
Shelley ; what can they who sell “ The History
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”
hope from the prosecutor of “Queen Mab?”
In that work are tvro celebrated chapters,
sparkling with all the meretricious felicities
of epigrammatic style, v/hich, full of polished
sarcasm against infant Christianity, are elabo-
rately directed to wither the fame of its Martyrs
and Confessors with bitterest scorn—two
chapters which, if published at a penny each,
would do more mischief than thousands of
metaphysical poems; but which, retained in
their apppropriate place, to be sought only by
the readers of history, may serve the cause of
truth by proving the poverty of the spite by158
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
which it has been assailed, and find ample
counterpoise in the sequel. The possibility
that this history should be suppressed by some
descendant of Gibbon, who might extrava-
gantly suppose it his duty to stifle cold and
crafty sneers aimed at the first followers of
Christ, was urged—and urged with success—
against me when I pleaded for the right of
those descendants to the fruits of the labours
of their ancestor; yet, if you sanction this
attempt, any Hetherington may compel by law
that suppression, the remote possibility of
which has been accepted as a reason for deny-
ing to the posterity of the author a property in
the work he has created ! This work, invested
with the peculiar interest which belongs to the
picture of waning greatness, has recently been
printed in a cheap form, under the sanction of
a dignitary of the Established Church—a
Christian Poet of the noblest aim—whose early
genius was the pride of our fairest university,
and who is now the honoured minister of the
very parish in which we are assembled. If I
were now defending Mr. Milman, of whose
friendship I am justly proud, for this last and
cheapest and best edition of Gibbon, I could
only resort to the arguments I am now urging
for Mr. Moxon, and claim the benefit of the
same distinction between the tendency of a
book adapted to the promotion of infidelity, and
one which, containing incidental matter of
offence, is commended to the student with
those silent guards which its form and accom-
paniments supply. True it is that Mr. Milman
has accompanied the text with notes in which
he sometimes explains or counteracts the in-
sinuations of the author; but what Notes can
be so effectual as that which follows “ Queen
Mab” —in which Shelley’s own letter is set
forth, stating, on his authority, that the work
was immature, and that he did not intend it for
the general eye ? Is not the publication of this
letter by the publisher as decisive of his mo-
tive—not to commend the wild fancies and
stormy words of the young poet to the reader’s
approval, but to give them as part of his
biography,—as the notes of Mr. Milman are
of that which no one doubts, his desire to make
the perusal of Gibbon healthful? Prosper this
attempt, and what a field of speculative prose-
cution will open before us ! Every publisher
of the works of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Vol-
ney, of Hume—of the Classics and of their
Translations—works regarded as innoxious,
because presented in a certain aspect and
offered to a certain class, will become liable to
every publisher of penny blasphemy who may
suffer or hate or fear the law;—nor of such
only, but of every small attorney in search of
practice, who may find in the machinery of the
Crown-office the facilities of extortion. Nor
will the unjust principle you are asked to sanc-
tion stop with retaliation in the case of alleged
blasphemy—the retailer of cheap lascivious-
ness, if checked in his wicked trade, will have
his revenge against the works of the mighty
dead in which some tinge of mortal stain may
unfortunately be detected. The printer of one
of those penny atrocities which are thrust into
the hands of ingenuous youths when bound on
duty or innocent pleasure, the emissaries of
which—children often themselves—mount the
chariot and board the steamboat to scatter that
poison which may infect the soul as long as
the soul shall endure—whom, to do this prose-
cutor justice, I know he disclaims—may obtain
true bills of indictment against any man, who
has sold Horace, or Virgil, or Lucretius, or
Ovid, or Juvenal—against all who have sold a
copy of any of our old dramatists—and thus
not only Congreve, and Farquhar, and Wych-
erley, but Fletcher, and Massinger, and Ford,
and Webster, and Ben Jonson ; nay, with reve-
rence be it spoken, even Shakspeare, though
ever pure in essence, may be placed at the
mercy of an insect abuser of the press—unless
juries have the courage and the virtue to
recognise the distinction between a man who
publishes works which are infidel or impure,
because they are infidel or impure, and publishes
them in a form and at a price which indicate
the desire that they should work out mischief,
and one who publishes works in which evil of
the same kind may be found, but who publishes
them because, in spite of that imperfection,
they are on the whole for the edification and
delight of mankind;—between one who ten-
ders the mischief for approbation, and one who
exposes it for example. And are you pre-
pared to succumb to this new censorship]
Will you allow Mr. Hetherington to prescribe
what leaves you shall tear from the classic
volumes in your libraries? Shall he dictate
to you how much of Lord Byron—a writer far
more influential than Shelley—you shall be
allowed to lend to your friends without fear of
his censure ? Shall he drag into court the
vast productions of the German mind, and ask
juries to decide whether the translator of
Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Lessing—deal-
ing with sacred things with a boldness to
which we are unused—are guilty of crime?
Shall he call for judgment on that stupendous
work, the “Faust,” with its prologue in Hea-
ven, which has been presented by my friend
Mr. Hayward, whose able assistance I have
to-day, with happy vividness to English read-
ers—and ask a jury to take it in their hand,
and at an hour’s glance to decide whether it is
a libel on God, or a hymn by Genius to His
praise ? Do }rou not feel those matters are
for other seasons—for another sphere?—If
so, will you, in the dark—without knowledge
—without evidence—sanction a prosecution
which will, in its result, impose new and
strange tasks on juries who may decide oil
other trials; which may destroy the just
allowance accorded to learning even under
absolute monarchies; and place every man
who hereafter shall print, or sell, or give, or
lend, any one of a thousand volumes sanc-
tioned by ages, at the mercy of any Prose-
cutor who for malice—for gain—or mere mis-
chief, may choose to denounce him as a
blasphemer ?
And now, I commend into your hands the
cause of the defendant—the cause of genius
—the cause of learning—the cause of history
—the cause of thought. I have not sought to
maintain it by assailing the law as it has been
expounded by courts, and administered by
juries; which, if altered, should be changedSPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.
159
by the authority of the legislature, and neither
by the violation of oaths, nor by the machinery
which the prosecutor has employed to render
it odious at the cost of those whom he himself
contends to be guiltless; but I have striven to
convince you, that by a just application of that
law, you may hold this publication of the
works of Shelley to be no crime. It has been
fairly conceded that Mr. Moxon is a most re-
spectable publisher; one who has done good
service to the cause of poetry and wisdom;
and one who could not intentionally publish a
blasphemous work, without treason to all the
associations which honour his life. Beginning
his career under the auspices of Rogers, the
eldest of a great age of poets, and blessed with
the continued support of that excellent person,
who never broke by one unworthy line the
charm of moral grace which pervades his
works, he has been associated with Lamb,
whose kindness embraced all sects, all parties,
all classes, and whose genius shed new and
pleasant lights on daily life; with Southey, the
pure and childlike in heart; with Coleridge,
in the light of whose Christian philosophy
these indicted poems would assume their true
character as mournful, yet salutary specimens
of power developed imperfectly in this world ;
and with Wordsworth, whose works so long
neglected or scorned, but so long silently nur-
I turing tastes for the lofty and the pure, it has
been Mr. Moxon’s privilege to diffuse largely
throughout this and other lands, and with them
the sympathies which link the human heart to
nature and to God, and all classes of mankind
i to each other! Reject then, in your justice,
the charge which imputes to such a man, that
by publishing this book, he has been guilty of
blasphemy against the God whom he reveres!
Refuse to set the fatal precedent, which will
not. only draw the fame of the illustrious dead
into question before juries, without time to in-
vestigate their merits ; which may not only
| harass the first publishers of these works; but
which will beset the course of every book-
| seller, every librarian, throughout the country,
1 with perpetual snares, and make our criminal
courts the arenas for a savage warfare of
literary prosecutions! Protect our noble litera-
ture from the alternative of being either cor-
rupted or enslaved! Terminate those anxie-
ties which this charge, so unprovoked—so un-
deserved—has now for months inflicted on the
defendant, and his friends, by that verdict of
Not Guilty, which will disappoint only those
who desire that cheap blasphemy should have
free course; which the noblest, and purest, and
most pious of your own generation will rejoice
in ; and for which their posterity will honour
and bless you!
SPEECH ON THE MOTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL
TO AMEND THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT,
Delivered in the House of Commons, Thursday, May 18, 1837.
Mr. Speaker,—In venturing to invite the at-
tention of the House to the state of the law af-
fecting the property of men of letters in the
results of their genius and industry, I feel that
it is my duty to present their case as concisely
as its nature will permit. While I believe that
heir claims to some share in the consideration
of the legislature will not be denied, I am
aware that they appeal to feelings far different
from those which are usually excited by the
intellectual conflicts of this place ; that the in-
terest of their claim is not of that stirring kind
which belongs to the busy present, but reflects
back on the past, of which the passions are
now silent, and stretches forward with specu-
lation into the visionary future ; and that the
circumstances which impede their efforts and
frustrate their reward, are best appreciated in
the calmness of thought to which those efforts
are akin. I shall therefore intrude as briefly
as I can on the patience of the House, while I
glance at the history of the evils of which they
complain ; suggest the principles on which I
think them entitled to redress ; and state the
outlines of the remedies by which I propose to
relieve them.
It is, indeed, time that literature should ex-
perience some of the blessings of legislation;
for hitherto, with the exception of the noble
boon conferred on the acted drama by the bill
of my honourable friend the member for Lin-
coln, it has received scarcely any thing but
evil. If we should now simply repeal all the
statutes which have been passed under the
guise of encouraging learning, and leave it to
be protected only by the principles of the com-
mon law, and the remedies which the common
law could supply, I believe the relief would be
welcome. It did not occur to our ancestors,
that the right of deriving solid benefits from
that which springs solely from within us—the
right of property in that which the mind itself
creates, and which, so far from exhausting the
materials common to all men, or limiting their
resources, enriches and expands them—a right
of property which, by the happy peculiarity of
its nature, can only be enjoyed by the proprie-
tor in proportion as it blesses mankind—should
be exempted from the protection which is ex-
tended to the ancient appropriation of the soil,
and the rewards of commercial enterprise. By
the common law of England, as solemnly ex-
pounded by a majority of seven to four of the
judges in the case of “Donaldson v. Beckett,”
and as sustained by the additional opinion of
Lord Mansfield, the author of an original wcr160
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
had for ever the sole right of multiplying co-
pies, and a remedy by action, incident to every
right, against any one who should infringe it.
The jurisdiction of the Star Chamber, while it
restrained the freedom of the press, at the same
time incidentally preserved the copyright from
violation ; and this was one of the pleas urged
for the power of licensing; for Milton, in his
immortal pleading for unlicensed printing,
states, as one of the glosses of his opponents,
“ the just retaining by each man of his several
copy, which God forbid should be gainsaid.”
In the special verdict in “Miller v. Taylor,”
(1769,) it was found as a fact, “ that before the
reign of Queen Anne, it was usual to purchase
from authors the perpetual copyright of their
books, and to assign the same from hand to
hand for valuable considerations, and to make
them the subject of family settlements.” In
truth, the claim of the author to perpetual
copyright was never disputed, until literature
had received a fatal present in the first act of
parliament “For its encouragement”—the 8th
Anne, c. 19, passed in 1709; in which the mis-
chief lurked, unsuspected, for many years be-
fore it was called into action to limit the rights
it professed, and it was probably intended, to
secure. By that act, the sole right of printing
and reprinting their works was recognised in
authors for the term of fourteen years, and, if
they should be living at its close, for another
period of the same duration,—and piracy was
made punishable during those periods by the
forfeiture of the books illegally published, and
of a penny for every sheet in the offender’s cus-
tody—one-half to the use of the queen’s ma-
jesty—the other halfpenny, not to the poor au-
thor, whose poverty the sum might seem to
befit, but to the informer; and the condition of
enjoying these summary remedies, was the en-
try of the work at Stationers’ Hall. This act,
“For the encouragement of learning,” which,
like tht; priest in the fable, while it vouchsafes
the blest ing denies the farthing, also confers a
power on the Archbishop of Canterbury and
other great functionaries to regulate the prices
of books, which was rejected by the Lords, re-
stored on conference with the Commons, and
repealed in the following reign ; and also con-
fers on learning the benefit of a forced contri-
bution of nine copies of every work, on the best
paper, for the use of certain libraries. Except
in this last particular, the act seems to have
remained a dead letter down to the year 1760,
no one, as far as I can trace, having thought it
worth while to sue for its halfpennies, and no
one having suggested that its effect had been
silently to restrict the common-law right of
authors to the term during which its remedies
were to operate. So far was this construction
from being suspected, that in this interval of
fifty years the Court of Chancery repeatedly in-
terfered by injunction to restrain the piracy of
books in which the statutable copyright had
long expired. This protection was extended in
1735 to “The Whole Duty of Man,” the first
assignment of which had been made seventy-
eight years before; in the same year to the
“Miscellanies of Pope and Swift;” in 1736 to
“Nelson’s Festivals and Fasts;” in 1739 to
the “Paradise Lost;” and in 1752 to the
same poem, with a life of the author, and the
notes of all preceding editions. Some doubts
having at length arisen, the question of the
operation of the statute was, in 1760, raised by
a sort of amicable suit, “Tonsonv. Collins,”
respecting the “Spectator,” in which the Court
of Common Pleas inclined to the plaintiff, but
before giving judgment discovered that the
proceeding was collusive, and refused to pro-
nounce any decision. In 1766 an action was
brought, “ Miller v. Taylor,” for pirating
“Thomson’s Seasons,” in the Court of King’s
Bench, before whom it was elaborately argued,
and which, in 1769, gave judgment in favour of
the subsisting copyright; Lord Mansfield, Mr.
Justice Willes, and Mr. Justice Aston, holding
that copyright was perpetual by the common
law, and not limited by the statute, except as to
penalties, and Mr. Justice Yates dissenting
from them. In 1774 the question was brought
before the House of Lords, when eleven judges
delivered their opinions upon it—six of whom
thought the copyright limited, while five held
it perpetual; and Lord Mansfield, who would
have made the numbers equal, retaining his
opinion, but expressing none. By this bare
majority—against the strong opinion of the
chief justice of England—was it decided that
the statute of Anne has substituted a short term
in copyright for an estate in fee, and the rights
of authors were delivered up to the mercy of
succeeding parliaments !
Until this decision, the copyright vested in
the universities had only shared the protection
which it was supposed had existed for all, and
in fact their copyright was gone. But they im-
mediately resorted to the legislature and ob-
tained an act, 15 George III., c. 63, “For ena-
bling the two universities in England, the four
universities of Scotland, and the several col-
leges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester,
to hold in perpetuity the copyright in books
given or bequeathed to them for the advance-
ment of learning and the purposes of educa-
tion ; and the like privilege was, by 41 George
III., c. 107, extended to Trinity College, Dub-
lin. With the immunities thus conferred on
the universities, or rather with this exemption
from the wrong incidentally indicted on indi-
viduals, I have no intention to interfere; nei-
ther do I seek to relieve literature from the
obligation, recently lightened by the just con-
sideration of parliament, of supplying the prin-
cipal universities with copies of all works at
the author’s charge. I only seek to apply the
terms of the statute, which recites that the pur-
poses of those who bequeathed copyright to the
universities for the advancement of learning
would be frustrated unless the exclusive right
of printing and reprinting such books be se-
cured in perpetuity, to support the claim of in-
dividuals to some extended interest in their
own. I only ask that some of the benefits en-
joyed by the venerable nurseries of learning
and of genius should attend the works of those
whose youth they have inspired and fostered,
and of those also who, although fortune has
denied to them that inestimable blessing, look
with reverence upon the great institutions ofSPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.
161
their country, and feel themselves in thatreve- j
rence not wholly strangers to the great body of
associations they nourish.
The next act, 41 George III., c. 107, passed
immediately after the Union, did little besides
including Ireland in the general law of copy-
right; conferring on Trinity College, Dublin,
the privilege of English universities; prohi-
biting the importation of books from abroad
which had been originally printed in the United
Kingdom; and increasing the penalty on pira-
cies from Id. to 3d. per sheet. But in the year
1814, by the statute of 54 George III., c. 156,
which is the principal subsisting act on the
subject of literary copyright, reciting ‘‘That it
would afford further encouragement to litera-
ture, if the duration of copyright were further
extended,” enlarges it to the absolute term of
twenty-eight years ; and if the author shall
survive that time, secures it to him for the re-
mainder of his life. Since then the legislature
has extended its protection to two classes of
composition which before were left in a condi-
tion to invite piracy—to the actual drama, by
the measure of 3 William IV., c. 15, and to
lectures, by 5 and 6 William IV., c. 65—and
has, by an act of last session, lightened the load
of one of the blessings conferred by the legis-
lature, by reducing the copies which authors
are privileged to render to five ; but the term
of twenty-eight years, with the possible rever-
sion beyond that time for life, is all authors
have yet obtained in return for that inherit-
ance of which the statute of Anne incidentally
deprived them.
This limitation of the ancient rights of au-
thorship has not been compensated by uni-
formity in the details of the law, by simplicity
in the modes of proving the right or of transfer-
ring it, or by the cheapness or adequacy of
the remedies. The penal clauses have proved
wholly worthless. Engravings, etchings, maps,
and charts, which are regulated by other sta-
tutes, are secured to the author for twenty-
eight years, but not, like books, for the contin-
gent term of life. Instead of the registration
at Stationers’ Hall, which has been holden not
necessary to the right of action, the work must
bear the date and the name of the proprietor;
but no provision is made in either case for
cheap transfer. Now, I propose to render the
law of copyright uniform, as to all books and
works of art; to secure to the proprietor the
same term in each ; to give one plan of regis-
tration and one mode of transfer. As the sta-
tioner’s company have long enjoyed the con-
trol over the registration of books, I do not
propose to take it from them, if they are willing
to retain it with the increased trouble, com-
pensated by the increased fees which their
officer will be entitled to receive. I propose
that, before any proceeding can be adopted for
the violation of copyright, the author, or his
assignee, shall deposit a copy of the work,
whether book or engraving, and cause an en-
try to be made in the form to be given in the
act of the proprietorship of the work, whether
absolute or limited ; and that a copy of such
entry, signed by the officer, shall be admitted
in all courts as prima facie evidence of the pro-
perty. I propose that any transfer should be
registered in like manner in a form also to be
given by the act; that such transfer shall be
proved by a similar copy; and that in neither
case shall any stamp be requisite.
At present great uncertainty prevails as to
the original right of property in papers sup-
plied to periodical works or written at the in-
stance of a bookseller, and as to the right of
engraving from original pictures. However
desirable it maybe that these questions should
be settled, it is impossible to interfere with
the existing relations of booksellers and au-
thors, or of patrons of art and artists. Nei-
ther, for the future, do I propose to lay down
any rule as to the rights which shall originally
be expressed or implied between the parties
themselves ; but that the right of copy shall be
registered as to such books, pictures or en-
gravings, only with the consent of both ex-
pressed in writing, and when this is done shall
be absolute in the party registered as owner.
At present, an engraver or publisher, who has
given a large sum for permission to engrave a
picture, and expended his money or labour in
the plate, may be met by unexcepted com-
petition, for which he has no remedy. By
making the registration not the condition of
the right itself, but of the remedy by action
or otherwise, the independence of contracting
parties will be preserved, and this evil avoided
for the future. A competent tribunal will still
be wanting; its establishment is beyond the
scope of my intention or my power ; but I feel
that complete justice will not be done to Litera-
ture and Art until a mode shall be devised for
a cheap and summary vindication of their in-
juries before some parties better qualified to
determine it than judges who have passed
their lives in the laborious study of the law,
or jurors who are surrounded with the cares
of business, and, except by accident, little ac-
quainted with the subjects presented to them
for decision.
But the main object of the bill which I con-
template is—I will not use those words of ill
omen, “ the further advancement of learning,!"
but—for additional justice to learning, by the
further extension of time during which au-
thors shall enjoy the direct pecuniary benefit
immediately flowing from the sale of their own
works.
Although I see no reason why authors should
not be restored to that inheritance which, un-
der the name of protection and encourage-
ment, has been taken from them, I feel that
the subject has so long been treated as matter
of compromise between those who deny that
the creations of the inventive faculty, or the
achievements of reason, are the subjects of
property at all, and those who think the pro-
perty should last as long as the works which
contain truth and beauty live, that I propose
still to treat it on the principle of compromise,
and to rest satisfied with a fairer adjustment
of the difference than the last Act of Parlia-
ment affords. I shall propose—subject to
modification wrhen the details of the measure
shall be discussed—that the terra of property
in all works of learning, genius, and art, to be
produced hereafter, or in which the statutable
copyright now subsists, shall be extended to
o 2162
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
sixty years, to be computed from the death of
the author; which will at least enable him,
while providing for the instruction and the de-
light of distant ages, to contemplate that he
shall leave in his works themselves some
legacy to those for whom a nearer, if not a
higher duty, requires him to provide, and
which shall make “ death less terrible.’’ When
the opponents of literary property speak of
glory as the reward of genius, they make an
ungenerous use of the very nobleness of its
impulses, and show how little they have pro-
fited by its high example. When Milton, in
poverty and in blindness, fed the flame of his
divine enthusiasm by the assurance of a du-
ration coequal with his language, I believe
with Lord Camden that no thought crossed
him of the wealth which might be amassed by
the sale of his poem ; but surely some shadow
would have been cast upon “ the clear dream
and solemn vision ” of his future glories, had
he foreseen that, while booksellers were striv-
ing to rival each other in the magnificence of
their editions, or their adaptation to the con-
venience of various classes of his admirers,
his only surviving descendant—a woman—
should be rescued from abject want only by
the charity of Garrick, who, at the solicitation
of Dr. Johnson, gave her a benefit at the the-
atre which had appropriated to itself all that
could be represented of Comus. The libe-
rality of genius is surely ill urged as an excuse
for our ungrateful denial of its rights. The
late Mr. Coleridge gave an example not merely
of its liberality, but of its profuseness; while
he sought not even to appropriate to his fame
the vast intellectual treasures which he had
derived from boundless research, and coloured
by a glorious imagination; while he scattered
abroad the seeds of beauty and of wisdom to
take root in congenial minds, and wras content
to witness their fruits in the productions of
those who heard him. But ought we, there-
fore, the less to deplore, now when the music
of his divine philosophy is for ever hushed,
that the earlier portion of those works on
which he stamped his own impress—all which
he desired of the world that it should recog-
nise as his—is published for the gain of others
than his children—that his death is illustrated
by the forfeiture of their birthright! What
justice is there in this ! Do we reward our
heroes thus! Did we tell our Marlboroughs,
oltr Nelsons, our Wellingtons, that glory was
their reward, that they fought for posterity,
and that posterity would pay them ! We leave
them to no such cold and uncertain requital;
we do not even leave them merely to enjoy
the spoils of their victories, which wre deny
to the author; we concentrate a nation’s ho-
nest feeling of gratitude and pride into the
form of an endowment, and teach other ages
what we thought, and what they ought to think,
of their deeds, by the substantial memorials
of our praise. Were our Shakspeare and Mil-
ton less the ornaments of their country, less
tfie benefactors of mankind! Would the ex-
ample be less inspiring if we permitted them
to enjoy the spoils of their peaceful victories—
if we allowed to their descendants, not the tax
assessed by present gratitude, and charged on
the Future, but the mere amount which that
Future would be delighted to pay—extending
as the circle of their glory expands, and ren-
dered only by those who individually reap the
benefits, and are contented at once to enjoy
and to reward its author!
But I do not press these considerations to
the full extent; the Past is beyond our power,
and I only ask for the present a brief rever-
sion in the Future. “Riches fineless ” cre-
ated by the mighty dead are already ours. It
is in truth the greatness of blessings which
the world inherits from genius that dazzles
the mind on this question; and the habit of
repaying its bounty by words, that confuses
us and indisposes us to justice. It is because
the spoils of time are freely and irrevocably
ours—because the forms of antique beauty
wear for us the bloom of an imperishable
youth—because the elder literature of our
own country is a free mine of wealth to the
bookseller and of delight to ourselves, that
we are unable to understand the claim of
our contemporaries to a beneficial interest in
their works. Because genius by a genial ne-
cessity communicates so much, we cannot
conceive it as retaining any thing for its pos-
sessor. There is a sense, indeed, in which
the poets “ on earth have made us heirs of
truth and pure delight in heavenly lays ;” and
it is because of the greatness of this very
boon—because their thoughts become our
thoughts, and their phrases unconsciously en-
rich our daily language—because their works,
harmonious by the law of their own nature,
suggest to us the rules of composition by
which their imitators should be guided—be-
cause to them we can resort, and “in our
golden urns draw light,” that we cannot fancy
them apart from ourselves, or admit that they
have any property except in our praise. And
our gratitude is shown not only in leaving
their descendants without portion in the pecu-
niary benefits derived from their works, but in
permitting their fame to be frittered away in
abridgments, and polluted by base intermix-
tures, and denying to their children even the
cold privilege of watching over and protect-
ing it!
There is something, sir, peculiarly unjust
in bounding the term of an author’s property
by his natural life, if he should survive so
short a period as twenty-eight years. It de-
nies to age and experience the probable reward
it permits to youth—to youth, sufficiently full
of hope and joy, to slight his promises. It
gives a bounty to haste, and informs the labo-
rious student, who would wear away his
strength to complete some work which “the
world will not willingly let die,” that the more
of his life he devotes to its perfection, the
more limited shall be his interest in its fruits.
It stops the progress of remuneration at the
moment it is most needed, and when the be-
nignity of Nature would extract from her last
calamity a means of support and comfort to
survivors. At the season when the author’s
name is invested with the solemn interest of
mortalit}"—when his eccentricities or frailties
excite a smile or a sneer no longer—when the
last seal is set upon his earthty course, andSPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.
163
his works assume their place among the clas-
sics of his country, your law declares that his
works shall become your property, and you
requite him by seizing the patrimony of his
children. We blame the errors and excesses
of genius, and we leave them—justly leave
them—for the most part, to the consequences
of their strangely blended nature. But if ge-
nius, in assertion of its diviner alliances, pro-
duces large returns when the earthly course
of its frail possessor is past, why is the pub-
lic to insult his descendants with their alms
and their pity 1 What right have we to moral-
ize over the excesses of a Burns, and insult
his memory by charitable honours, while we
are taking the benefit of his premature death,
in the expiration of his copyright and the
vaunted cheapness of his works 1 Or, to ad-
vert to a case in which the highest intellec-
tual powers were associated with the noblest
moral excellence, what right have we to take
credit to ourselves for a paltry and ineffectual
subscription to rescue Abbotsford for the fa-
mily of its great author, (Abbotsford, his ro-
mance in stone and mortar, but not more indi-
vidually his than those hundred fabrics, not
made with hands, which he has raised, and
peopled for the delight of mankind,) while we
insist on appropriating now the profits of his
earlier poems, and anticipate the time when,
in a few years, his novels will be ours without
rent-charge to enjoy—and any one’s to copy,
to emasculate, and to garble 1 This is the
case of one whom kings and people delighted
to honour. But look on another picture—that
of a man of genius and integrity, who has re-
ceived all the insult and injury from his con-
temporaries, and obtains nothing from poste-
rity but a name. Look at Daniel De Foe;
recollect him pilloried, bankrupt, wearing
away his life to pay his creditors in full, and
dying in the struggle!—and his works live,
imitated, corrupted, yet casting off the stains,
not by protection of law, but by their own
pure essence. Had every school-boy, whose
young imagination has been prompted by his
great work, and whose heart has learned to
throb in the strange, yet familiar, solitude he
created, given even the halfpenny of the sta-
tute of Anne, there would have been no want
of a provision for his children, no need of a
subscription for a statue to his memory !
The term allowed by the existing law is
curiously adapted to encourage the lightest
works, and to leave the noblest unprotected.
Its little span is ample for authors who seek
only to amuse ; who, “ to beguile the time, look
like the time who lend to frivolity or corrup-
tion “ lighter wings to flywho sparkle,
blaze, and expire. These may delight for a
season—glisten as the fire-flies on the heaving
sea of public opinion—the airy proofs of the
intellectual activity of the age;—yet surely it
is not just to legislate for those alone, and deny
all reward to that literature which aspires to
endure. Let us suppose an author, of true
original genius, disgusted with the inane phra-
seology which had usurped the place of poetry,
and devoting himself from youth to its service;
disdaining the gauds which attract the care-
less, and unskilled in the moving accidents of
fortune—not seeking his triumph in the tem-
pest of the passions, but in the serenity which
lies above them—whose works shall be scoffed
at—whose name made a by-word—and yet
who shall persevere in his high and holy
course, gradually impressing thoughtful minds
with the sense of truth made visible in the
severest forms of beauty, until he shall create
the taste by which he shall be appreciated—
influence, one after another, the master-spirits
of his age—be felt pervading every part of the
national literature, softening, raising, and en-
riching it; and when at last he shall find his
confidence in his own aspirations justified,
and the name which once was the scorn ad-
mitted to be the glory of his age—he shall look
forward to the close of his earthly career, as
the event that shall consecrate his fame and
deprive his children of the opening harvest he
is beginning to reap. As soon as his copy-
right becomes valuable, it is gone ! This is no
imaginary case—I refer to one who “in this
setting part of time” has opened a vein of the
deepest sentiment and thought before unknown
—who has supplied the noblest antidote to the
freezing effects of the scientific spirit of the
age—who, while he has detected that poetry
which is the essence of the greatest things,
has cast a glory around the lowliest conditions
of humanity, and traced out the subtle links
by which they are connected with the highest
—of one whose name will now find an echo,
not only in the heart of the secluded student,
but in that of the busiest of those who are
fevered by political controversy—of William
Wordsworth. Ought we not to requite such
a poet, while yet we may, for the injustice of
our boyhood 1 For those works which are
now insensibly quoted by our most popular
writers, the spirit of which now mingles with
our intellectual atmosphere, he probably has
not received through the long life he has de-
voted to his art, until lately, as much as the
same labour, with moderate talent, might
justly produce in a single year. Shall the
law, whose term has been amply sufficient to
his scorners, now afford him no protection,
because he has outlasted their scoffs—because
his fame has been fostered amidst the storms,
and is now the growth of years'?
There is only one other consideration to
which I will advert, as connected with this
subject—the expedience and justice of ac-
knowledging the rights of foreigners to copy-
right in this country, and of claiming it from
them for ourselves in return. If at this time
it wrere clear that our law afforded no protec-
tion to foreigners, first publishing in other
countries, there would be great difficulty in
dealing with this question for ourselves, and
we might feel bound to leave it to negotiation
to give and to obtain reciprocal benefits. But
if a recent decision on the subject of musical
copyright is to be regarded as correct, the
principle of international copyright is already
acknowledged here, and there is little for us to
do in order that we maybe enabled to claim its
recognition from foreign states. It has been
decided by a judge conversant with the busi-
ness and with the elegancies of life to a degree
unusual with an eminent lawyer—by one who164
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
was the most successful advocate of his time,
yet who was not more remarkable for his skill
in dealing with facts than for the grace with
which he embellished them—by Lord Abinger
—that the assignee of foreign copyright, de-
riving title from the author abroad to publish
in this country, and creating that right within
a reasonable time, may claim the protection
of our courts against any infringement of his
copy.* If this is law—and I believe and trust
it is—we shall make no sacrifice in so declaring
it, and in setting an example which France,
Prussia, America, and Germany, are prepared
to follow. Let us do justice to our law and to
ourselves. At present, not only is the literary
intercourse of countries, who should form one
great family, degraded into a low series of
mutual piracies—not only are industry and
talent deprived of their just reward, but our
literature is debased in the eyes of the world,
by the wretched medium through which they
behold it. Pilfered, and disfigured in the pilfer-
ing, the noblest images are broken, wit falls
pointless, and verse is only felt in fragments
of broken music;—sad fate for an irritable
race ! The great minds of our time have now
an audience to impress far vaster than it en-
tered into the minds of their predecessors to
hope for; an audience increasing as popula-
tion thickens in the cities of America, and
spreads itself out through its diminishing wilds,
who speak our language, and who look on our
old poets as their own immortal ancestry. And
if this our literature shall be theirs; if its dif-
fusion shall follow the efforts of the stout heart
and sturdy arm in their triumph over the ob-
stacles of nature; if the woods, stretching be-
yond their confines, shall be haunted with
visions of beauty which our poets have
created; let those who thus are softening the
ruggedness of young society have some present
interest about which affection may gather, and
at least let them be protected from those who
would exhibit them mangled or corrupted to
their transatlantic disciples. I do not in truth
ask for literature favour; Ido not ask for it
charity; I do not even appeal to gratitude in
its behalf; but I ask for it a portion, and but a
portion, of that common justice which the
coarsest industry obtains for its natural reward,
and which nothing but the very extent of its
claims, and the nobleness of the associations
to which they are akin, have prevented it from
receiving from our laws.
Sir, I will trespass no longer on the patience
of the house, for which I am most grateful, but
move that leave be given to bring in a bill “to
consolidate and amend the laws relating to
property in the nature of copyright in books,
musical compositions, acted dramas, pictures,
and engravings, to provide remedies for the
violation thereof, and to extend the term of its
duration.”
The motion, seconded by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and supported by Sir Robert
Harry Inglis, was carried without opposition; and the bill was ordered to be brought in by Sii
Robert Harry Inglis, Lord Mahon, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in conjunction with
the mover. The bill which under these auspices was introduced, contained, according to the
proposition, clauses for the protection of the arts of painting and engraving, and provided for
the recognition and security of copyright in the works of foreign authors, on certain condi-
tions. Its second reading was carried without debate or division ; and it stood for committal
when the death of the king precluded the further progress of all measures except those of ur
gency, and in a few weeks produced the dissolution of parliament. On the 14th December,
1838, the motion for leave to introduce the bill was renewed—with the difference that it hac
been found expedient to confine the measure to literature, and to defer until a suitable oppor
tunity the introduction of a separate measure for consolidating and amending the laws affect
ing the arts of painting, engraving, and also that of sculpture, which had not been included ir
the original measure. This separation of the objects of the bill received the approbation of
Lord Mahon, who had previously concurred in its necessity, and of Sir Robert Peel, who sug
gested the expedience of appointing a select committee to report on the state of the law relat-
ing to the fine arts, before proceeding to the arduous but most needful work of legislating for their
protection, and securing their reward. On this occasion, also, that part of the original mea-
sure which related to international copyright was, at the request of Mr. Poulett Thomson, re-
signed into the hands of ministers, under whose auspices a bill has since passed, enabling
them to negotiate on this important subject with foreign powers. After expressions of ap-
proval from Sir Edward Lytton Buhver and Mr. D’lsraeli, leave was given to bring in the bill.
The circumstances and character of the opposition which had, in the interval, been raised
against it, sufficiently appear from the following speech on the motion that it be read a second
time.
* D’Almaine and another v. Bossey, 1 Younge and Collyer’s Reports, 288.
This case has been since overruled by that of Chappell v. Purday, in which the Court of Exchequer decided
that a foreigner has no copyright in a work first published abroad.SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.
165
SPEECH ON THE MOTION FOR THE SECOND READING OF THE
BILL TO AMEND THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT,
Delivered in the House of Commons, Wednesday, April 25, 1838.
Mr. Speaker,—When I had the honour last
year to move the second reading of a bill
essentially similar to the present, I found it
unnecessary to trouble the house with a single
remark; for scarcely a trace then appeared
of the opposition which has since gathered
around it. I do not, however, regret that the
measure was not carried through the legisla-
ture by the current of feeling which then pre-
vailed in its favour, but that opportunity has
been afforded for the full discussi-on of the
claims on which it is founded, and of the con-
sequences to individuals and to the public that
may be expected from its operation. Believing,
as I do, that the interests of those who, by
intellectual power, laboriously and virtuously
exerted, contribute to the delight and instruc-
tion of mankind—of those engaged in the me-
chanical processes by which those labours are
made effectual—and of the people who at once
enjoy and reward them, are essentially one;
believing that it is impossible at the same time
to enhance the reward of authors, and to injure
those who derive their means of subsistence
from them—and desiring only that this bill
shall succeed if it shall be found, on the fullest
discussion, that it will serve the cause of
intellect in its noblest and most expanded
sense; I rejoice that all classes who are
interested in reality or in belief in the proposed
change have had the means of presenting their
statements and their reasonings to the con-
sideration of Parliament, and of urging them
with all the zeal which an apprehension of
pecuniary loss can inspire. I do not, indeed,
disguise that the main and direct object of the
bill is to insure to authors of the highest and
most enduring merit a larger share in the
fruits of their own industry and genius than
our law now accords to them ; and whatever
fate may attend the endeavour, I feel with
satisfaction that it is the first which has been
made substantially for the benefit of authors,
and sustained by no interest except that which
the appeal on their behalf to the gratitude of
those whose minds they have enriched, and
whose lives they have gladdened, has enkindled.
The statutes of Anne and of George III., espe-
cially the last, were measures suggested and
maintained by publishers; and it must be con-
soling to the silent toilers after fame, who in
this country have no ascertained rank, no civil
distinction, in their hours of weariness and
anxiety to feel that their claim to consideration
has been cheerfully recognised by Parliament,
and that their cause, however feebly presented,
has been regarded with respect and with sym-
pathy.
In order that I may trespass as briefly as I
can on the indulgence with which this subject
has been treated, I will attempt to narrow the
controversy of to-night by stating at once what
I regard to be the principle of this bill, and call
on honourable members now to affirm—and
what I regard as matters of mere detail, which
it is unnecessary at this moment to consider.
That principle is, that the present term of
copyright is much too short for the attainment
of that justice which society owes to authors,
especially to those (few though they be) whose
reputation is of slow growth and of enduring
character. Whether that term shall be ex-
tended from its present length to sixty years,
or to some intermediate period—whether it
shall commence at the death of the author or
at the date of first publication—in what man-
ner it shall be reckoned in the cases of works
given to the world in portions—are questions
of detail on which I do not think the house are
to-night required to decide. On the one hand,
I do not ask honourable members to vote for
the second reading of this bill merely because
they think there are some uncertainties in the
law of copyright which it is desirable to
remove, or some minor defects which they are
prepared to remedy. On the other hand, I en-
treat them not to reject it on account of any
objections to its mere details ; but as they may
think the legalized property of authors suffi-
ciently prolonged and secured, or requiring a
substantial extension, to oppose or to support it.
In maintaining the claim of authors to this
extension, I will not intrude on the time of the
house with any discussion on the question of
law—whether perpetual copyright had exist-
ence by our common law; or of the philo-
sophical question, whether the claim to this
extent is founded in natural justice. On the
first point, it is sufficient for me to repeat,
what cannot be contradicted, that the existence
of the legal right was recognised by a large
majority of the judges, with Lord Mansfield at
their head, after solemn and repeated argu-
ment; and that six to five of the judges only
determined that the stringent words “and no
longer” in the statute of Anne had taken that
right away. And even this I do not call in aid
so much by way of legal authority, as evidence
of the feeling of those men (mighty, though
few,) to whom our infant literature was con-
fided by Providence, and of those who were in
early time able to estimate the labour which
we inherit. On the second point I will say
nothing; unable, indeed, to understand why
that which springs wholly from within, and
contracts no other right by its usurpation, is
to be regarded as baseless, because, by the
condition of its very enjoyment, it not only
enlarges the source of happiness to readers,
but becomes the means of mechanical employ
ment to printers, and of speculation to pub
lishers. I am content to adopt the interme-186
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
diate course, and to argue the question, whe-
ther a fair medium between two extremes has
been chosen. What is to be said in favour of
the line now drawn, except that it exists and
bears an antiquity commencing in 1814? Is
there any magic in the term of twenty-eight
years 1 Is there any conceivable principle of
justice which bounds the right, if the author
survives that term, by the limit of his natural
life 1 As far as expediency shall prevail—
as far as the welfare of those for whom it is
the duty and the wish of the dying author to
provide, may be regarded by Parliament; the
period of his death is precisely that when they
will most need the worldly comforts which the
property in his works would confer. And, as
far as analogy may govern, the very attribute
which induces us to regard with pride the
works of intellect is, that they survive the
mortal course of those who framed them—that
they are akin to what is deathless. Why
should that quality render them profitless to
those in whose affectionate remembrance their
author still lives, while they attest a nobler
immortality'? Indeed, among the opponents
of this measure, it is ground of cavil that it is
proposed to take the death of the author as a
starting point for the period which it adds to
the present term. It is urged as absurd that
even the extent of this distant period should
be affected by the accident of death; and yet
those who thus argue are content to support
the system which makes that accident the final
boundary at which the living efficacy of
authorship, for the advantage of its professors,
ceases.
I perfectly agree with the publishers in the
evidence given in 1818, and the statements
which have been repeated more recently—that
the extension of time will be a benefit only in
one case in five hundred of works now issuing
from the press; and I agree with them that
we are legislating for that five hundredth case.
Why not ? It is the great prize which, out of
the five hundred risks, genius and goodness
win. It is the benefit that can only be achieved
by that which has stood the test of time—of
that which is essentially true and pure—of that
which has survived spleen, criticism, envy,
and the changing fashions of the world. Grant-
ed that only one author in five hundred attains
this end ; does it not invite many to attempt it,
and impress on literature itself a visible mark
of permanence and of dignity 1 The writers
who attain it must belong to one of two classes.
The first class consists of authors who have
laboured to create the taste which should ap-
preciate and reward them, and only attain that
reputation which brings with it a pecuniary
recompense when the term for which that re-
ward is secured to them wanes. Is it unjust
in this case, which is that of Wordsworth, now
in the evening of life, and in the dawn of his
fame, to allow the author to share in the re-
muneration that society tardily awards him ?
The other classes includes those who, like Sir
Walter Scott, have combined the art of minis-
tering to immediate delight with that of out-
lasting successive races of imitators and ap-
parent rivals; who do receive a large actual
amount of recompense, but whose accumulat-
ing compensation is stopped when it mos1.
should increase. Now, surely, as to them, the
question is not what remuneration is sufficient
in the judgment of the legislature to repay for
certain benefactions to society, but whether,
having won the splendid reward, our laws shall
permit the winner to enjoy it? We could not
decide the abstract question between genius
and money, because there exist no common
properties by which they can be tested, if we
were dispensing an arbitrary reward; but the
question how much the author ought to receive
is easity answered—so much as his readers
are delighted to pay him. When we say that
he has obtained immense wealth by his writ-
ings, what do we assert, but that he has multi-
plied the sources of enjoyment to countless
readers, and lightened thousands of else sad,
or weary, or dissolute hours? The two pro-
positions are identical; the proof of the one
at once establishing the other. Why, then,
should we grudge it, any more than we would
reckon against the soldier, not the pension or
the grant, but the very prize-money which
attests the splendour of his victories, and in the
amount of his gains proves the extent of ours ?
Complaints have been made by one in the
foremost rank in the opposition to this bill, the
pioneer of the noble army of publishers, book-
sellers, printers, and bookbinders, who are ar-
rayed against it *—that in selecting the case
of Sir Walter Scott as an instance in which the
extension of copyright would be just, I had
been singularly unfortunate, because that
great writer received, during the period of sub-
sisting copyright, an unprecedented revenue
from the immediate sale of his works. But,
sir, the question is not one of reward—it is
* This allusion has been singularly misconceived by
the gentleman to whom it applies—Mr. Tegg, who thus
notices it in his letter “To the Editor of the Times,” oi
20th Feb.,1839 :	“The learned serjeant calls me a.pioneer
of literature, because I open my shop for the sale of books,
and not for the encouragement of authors; but what is
the object of my customers who buy the books? Not
one in a thousand would allege that he bought a book for
the encouragement of the author; they come to procure
the means of amusement, information, or instruction. The
learned serjeant—a liberal—a friend to literature, a pro-
moter of education—persists in bringing forward an ex
post facto law, to counteract the advantages of education,
to check the diffusion of literature, and to abridge the
innocent entertainment of the public, by enhancing the
price of books. I glory in the difference of our position.”
It will be seen by the comparison of the text and the
comment, that Mr. Tegg is mistaken in supposing I had
called him “a pioneer of literature.” I only called him
the pioneer of the opponents of the bill;—and that he is
equally mistaken in supposing that I complained that he
opens his shop for the sale of books, and not for the en-
couragement of authors. I ask for no encouragement to
authors, but that which arises from the purchase ofbooks
by those who seek in them “the means of amusement,
information and instruction;”—who voluntarily tax
themselves for their own benefit:—and I venture to
think that, as the gains of the publisher are just as effec-
tually added to the price of a book as those of its author,
it would be as beneficial to the public if the author of a
book shared in the profit with the bookseller, even after
the period to which the law now confines his interest
in his own work, and when Mr. Tegg’s good office in
“opening his shop for its sale” sometimes commences
So far from regarding Mr. Tegg as the “pioneer of lite-
rature,” I have always contemplated him in the very
opposite position,—as a follower of the march, whom
the law allows to collect the spoils which it denies
to the soldier who has fought for them. He has abun-
dant reason, no doubt, “to glory in the difference of his
position” and mine ; but he quite mistakes his own, if he
think he has any relation to literature, except as the
deoository of its winning’s.SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.
16V
one of justice. How would this gentleman
-pprove of the application of a similar rule to
his own honest gains 1 From small beginnings
this very publisher has, in the fair and honour-
able course of trade, I doubt not, acquired a
splendid fortune, amassed by the sale of works,
the property of the public—of works, whose
authors have gone to their repose, from the
fevers, the disappointments, and the jealousies
which await a life of literary toil. Who grudges
it to him ] Who doubts his title to retain it]
And yet this gentleman’s fortune is all, every
farthing of it, so much taken from the public,
in the sense of the publisher’s argument; it is
all profit on books bought by that public, the
accumulation of pence, which, if he had sold
his books without profit, would have remained
in the pockets of the buyers. On what princi-
ple is Mr. Tegg to retain what is denied to Sir
Walter] Is it the claim of superior merit I
Is it greater toil ] Is it larger public service ]
His course, I doubt not, has been that of an
honest laborious tradesman ; but what have
been its anxieties, compared to the stupendous
labour, the sharp agonies of him, whose deadly
alliance with those very trades whose mem-
bers oppose me now, and whose noble resolu-
tion to combine the severest integrity with the
loftiest genius, brought him to a premature
grave—a grave which, by the operation of the
law, extends its chillness even to the result of
those labours, and despoils them of the living
efiicacy to assist those whom he has left to
mourn him] Let any man contemplate that
heroic struggle of which the aifecting record
has just been completed; and turn from the
sad spectacle of one who had once rejoiced in
the rapid creation of a thousand characters
glowing from his brain, and stamped with in-
dividuality for ever, straining the fibres of the
mind till the exercise which had been delight
became torture—girding himself to the mighty
task of achieving his deliverance from the load
which pressed upon him, and with brave en-
deavour, but relaxing strength, returning to the
toil till his faculties give way, the pen falls
from his hand on the unmarked paper, and the
silent tears of half-conscious imbecility fall
upon it—to some prosperous bookseller in his
country house, calculating the approach of the
time (too swiftly accelerated) when he should
be able to publish for his own gain those works
fatal to life,—and then tell me, if we are to ap-
portion the reward to the effort, where is the
justice .of the bookseller’s claim ] Had Sir
Walter Scott been able to see, in the distance,
an extension of his own right in his own pro-
ductions, his estate and his heart had been set
free, and the publishers and printers, who are
our opponents now, would have been grateful
to him for a continuation of labour and re-
wards which would have impelled and aug-
mented their own.
These two classes comprise, of necessity,
all the instances in which the proposed change
would operate at all; the first, that of those
whose copyright only becomes valuable just
as it is about to expire ; the last, that of whose
works which, at once popular and lasting,
have probably, in the season of their first suc-
cess, enriched the publisher far more than the
author. It will not be denied that it is desira-
ble to extend the benefit to both classes, if it
can be done without injury to the public, or to
subsisting individual interests. The suggested
injury to the public is, that the price of books
would be greatly enhanced; and on this as-
sumption the printers and bookbinders have
been induced to sustain the publishers in re-
sisting a change which is represented as tend-
ing to paralyze speculation—to cause fewer
books to be written, printed, bound, and bought
—to deprive the honest workmen of their sub-
sistence, and the people oTf the opportunity of
enjoying the productions of genius. Even if
such consequences are to be dreaded, and jus-
tice requires the sacrifice, it ought to be made.
The community have no right to be enriched
at the expense of individuals, nor is the Li-
berty of the Press (magic words, which I have
heard strangely blended in the din of this con-
troversy) the liberty to smuggle and to steal.
Still, if to these respectable petitioners, men
often of intelligence and refinement beyond
their sphere, which they have acquired from
their mechanical association with literature,
I could think the measure fraught with such
mischiefs, I should regard it with distrust
and alarm. But never, surely, were the ap-
prehensions of intelligent men so utterly
baseless. In the first place, I believe that the
existence of the copyright, even in that five-
hundredth case, would not enhance the price
of the fortunate work; for the author or the
bookseller, who enjoys the monopoly, as it is
called, is enabled to supply the article at a
much cheaper rate when a single press is re-
quired to print all the copies offered for sale,
instead of the presses and establishments of
competing publishers ; and I believe a com-
parison between the editions of standard works
in which there is copyright, with those in
which there is none, would confirm the truth
of the inference.* To cite, as an instance to
the contrary, “ Clarendon’s History of the Re-
bellion,” is to confess that a fair test would
disprove the objection ; for what analogy is
there between the motives and the acts of a
great body, having no personal stimulus or
interest, except to retain what is an ornament
to their own power, and those of a number of
individual proprietors] But, after all, it is
only in this five-hundredth case—the one rare
prize in this huge lottery—that even this effect
is to be dreaded. Now, this effect is the pos-
sible enhancing the price of me five-hundredth
or five-thousandth book, and this is actually
supposed “ to be a heavy blow and great dis-
couragement to literature,” enough to paralyze
the energies of publishers, and to make Pater-
noster-row a desert! Let it only be announced,
say our opponents, that an author, whose works
may outlast twenty-eight years, shall bequeath
to his children the right which he enjoyed, that
* The case of the Scriptures seems decisive on this
point,—on which the entire argument against the bill
hinges. In the First of hooks there is perpetual copy-
right; and does any one believe it would be cheaper
than it is if it were the subject of competition? The truth
is, that the only way in which the printer could suffer by
the extension of copyright is by a process which would
make books cheaper;—the employment of one press, in
stead of many, to produce the same number of eopies.1G8
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
possibly some sixpence a volume may be added
to its price in such an event, and all the ma-
chinery of printing and publication will come
to a pause ! Why, sir, the same apprehension
was entertained in 1813, when the publishers
sought to obtain the extension of copyright for
their own advantage to twenty-eight years.
The printers then dreaded the effect of the
prolonged monopoly: they petitioned against
the bill, and they succeeded in delaying it for
a session. And surely they had then far greater
plausibility in their terrors; for in proportion
as the period at which the contemplated exten-
sion begins is distant, its effects must be in-
distinct and feeble. Fewer books, of course,
will survive twenty-eight years than fourteen ;
the act of 1814 operated on the greater number
if at all; and has experience justified the fears
which the publishers then laughed to scorn!
Has the number of books diminished since
then 1 Has the price of books been enhanced ?
Has the demand for the labour of printers or
bookbinders slackened! Have the profits of
the bookseller failed! I need no committee
of inquiry to answer these questions, and they
are really decisive of the issue. We all know
that books have multiplied; that the quartos,
in which the works of high pretension were
first enshrined, have vanished; and, while
the prices paid for copyrights have been far
higher than in any former time, the proprietors
of these copyrights have found it more profit-
able to publish in a cheap than in a costly
form. Will authors, or the children of authors,
be more obstinate—less able to appreciate and
to meet the demands of the age—more appre-
hensive of too large a circulation—when both
will be impelled by other motives than those
of interest to seek the largest sale ; the first by
the impulse of blameless vanity or love of fame;
the last by the affection and the pride with
which they must regard the living thoughts
of a parent taken from this world, finding their
way through every variety of life, and cherished
by unnumbered minds, which will bless that
parent’s memory!
If, sir, I were called to state in a sentence the
most powerful argument against the objection
raised to the extension of copyright on the
part of the public, I would answer,—“The op-
position of the publishers.” If they have ground
to complain of loss, the public can have none.
The objection supposes that the works would
be sold at something more than the price of the
materials, the workmanship, and a fair profit
on the outlay, if the copyright be continued to
the author; and, of course, also supposes that
works of which the copyrights have expired
are sold without profit beyond those charges—
that, in fact, the author’s superadded gain will
be the measure of the public loss. Where,
then, does the publisher intervene ! Is the
truth this—that the usage of the publishing
trade at this moment indefinitely prolongs the
monopoly by a mutual understanding of its
members, and that besides the term of twenty-
eight years, which the publisher has bought
and paid for, he has something more ! Is it a
conventional copyright that is in danger! Is
the real question whether the author shall here-
after have the full term to dispose of, or shall sell
a smaller term, and really assign a greater?
Now, either the publishers have no interest in
the main question, or this is that interest. If
this is that interest, how will the public lose
by paying their extra sixpence to the author
who created the work, instead of the gentleman
who prints’ his name at the foot of the title-
page^ and who will still take his 25 per cent,
on the copies he may sell? This argument
applies, and, I apprehend, conclusively, to the
main question—the justice and expediency of
extending the term. I am aware that there is
another ground of complaint more plausible,
which does not apply to the main question, but
to what is called the retrospective clause—a
complaint, that in cases where the extended
term will revert to the family of the author,
instead of excluding, by virtue of an implied
compact, all the rest of the world, they, like all
the rest of the world, will be excluded ; that they
had a right to calculate on this liberty in com-
mon with others when they made this bargain ;
and that, therefore, it is a violation of faith to
deprive them of their share of the common
benefit. That there is any violation of faith I
utterly deny—they still have all they have paid
for; and when, indeed, they assert (which
they do when they argue that the measure will
confer no benefit on authors) they would not
give an author any more for a copyright of
sixty than of twenty-eight years, they them-
selves refute the charge of breach of faith, by
showing that they do not reckon such distant
contingencies in the price which they pay. If
any inconvenience should arise, I should re-
joice to consider how it can be obviated; and
with that view I introduced those clauses
which have been the subject of much censure,
empowering the assignee to dispose of .all
copies on hand at the close of his term, and
allowing the proprietors of stereotype plates
still to use them. But supposing some incon-
venience to attend this act of justice to au-
thors, which I should greatly regret, still are
the publishers entirely without consolation?
In the first place, they would, as the bill now
stands, gain all the benefit of the extension of
future copyrights, hereafter sold absolutely to
them by the author, and, according to their own
statement, without any advance of price. If
this benefit is small—is contingent—is nothing
in 500 cases to one, so is the loss in those
cases in which the right will result to the au-
thor. But it should further be recollected that
every year, as copyrights expire, adds to the
store from which they may take freely. In the
infancy of literature a publisher’s stock is
scanty unless he pays for original composition;
but as one generation after another passes
away, histories, novels, poems—all of undying
interest and certain sale—fall in; and each
generation of booksellers becomes enriched
by the spoils of time, to which he has contri-
buted nothing. If, then, in a measure which
restores to the author what the bookseller has
conventionally received, some inconvenience
beyond the just loss of what he was never en-
titled to obtain be incurred, is not the balance
greatly in his favour ? And can it be doubted
that, in any case where the properties of the
publisher and of the author’s representativesSPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.
169
are imperfect apart, either from additions to
the original, or from the succession of several
works falling in at different times, their com-
mon interest would unite them!
One of the arguments used, whether on be-
half of the trade or the public I scarcely know,
against the extension of the term, is derived
from a supposed analogy between the works
of an author and the discoveries of an inventor,
whence it is inferred that the term which suf-
fices for the protection of the one is long enough
for the recompense of the other. It remains to
be proved that the protection granted to paten-
tees is sufficient; but supposing it to be so,
although there are points of similarity between
the cases, there are grounds of essential and
obvious distinction. In cases of patent, the
merits of the invention are palpable; the de-
mand is usually immediate; and the recom-
pense of the inventor, in proportion to the utility
of his work, speedy and certain. In cases of
patent, the subject is generally one to which
many minds are at once applied; the invention
is often no more than a step in a series of pro-
cesses, the first of which being given, the con-
sequence will almost certainly present itself
sooner or later to some of those minds; and
if it were not hit on this year by one, would
probably be discovered the next by another;
but who will suggest that if Shakspeare had
not written Lear, or Richardson Clarissa, other
poets or novelists would have invented them !
In practical science every discovery is a step
to something more perfect; and to give to the
inventor of each a protracted monopoly would
be to shut out improvement by others. But
who can improve the masterpieces of genius!
They stand perfect; apart from all things else ;
self-sustained; the models for imitation; the
sources whence rules of art take their origin.
Still they are ours in a sense in which no me-
chanical invention can be;—ours not only to
ponder over and converse with—ours not only
as furnishing our minds with thoughts, and
peopling our weary seasons with ever-delight-
ful acquaintances; but ours as suggesting
principles of composition which we may freely
strive to apply, opening new regions of specu-
lation which we may delightfully explore,
and defining the magic circle, within which, if
we are bold and happy enough to tread, we
may discern some traces of the visions they
have invoked, to imbody for our own profit
and honour; for the benefit of the printers
and publishers who may send forth the pro-
ducts of these secondary inspirations to the
world; and of all who may become refined or
exalted by reading them.
But it may be said that this argument applies
only to works of invention, which spring wholly
or chiefly from the author’s mind, as poems
and romances; and that works which exhibit
the results of historical search, of medical or
scientific skill, and of philosophic thought,
ought to be governed by the same law as im-
provements in mechanics employed on timber
and metal. The analogy here is, to a certain
extent, correct, so far as it applies to the fact
discovered, the principle developed, the mode
invented; the fallacy consists in this, that
while the patent for fourteen years secures to
22
the inventor the entire benefit of his discovery,
the copyright does not give it to the author for
a single hour, but, when published, it is the
free unincumbent property of the world at
once and for ever; all that the author retains
is the sole right of publishing his own view of
it in the style of illustration or argument which
he has chosen. A fact ascertained by laborious
inquiry becomes, on the instant, the property
of every historian; a rule of grammar, of
criticism, or of art, takes its place at once in
the common treasury of human knowledge;
nay, a theory in political economy or morals,
once published, is the property of any man to
accept, to analyze, to reason on, to carry out,
to make the foundation of other kindred specu-
lations. No one ever dreamed that to assume
a position which another had discovered; to
reject what another had proved to be falla-
cious; to occupy the table-land of recognised
truths and erect upon it new theories, was an
invasion of the copyright of the original
thinker, without whose discoveries his suc-
cessors might labour in vain. How earnest,
how severe, how protracted, has been the
mental toil by which the noblest speculations
in regard to the human mind and its destiny
have been conducted! Even when they attain
to no certain results, they are no less than the
beatings of the soul against the bars of its clay
tenement, which show by their strength and
their failure that it is destined and propertied
for a higher sphere of action. Yet what right
does the author retain in these, when he has
once suggested them ! The divine philosophy,
won by years of patient thought, melts into the
intellectual atmosphere which it encircles;
tinges the. dreams and strengthens the assur-
ances of thousands. The truth is, that the
law of copyright adapts itself, by its very na-
ture, to the various descriptions of composi-
tion, preserving to the author, in every case,
only that which he ought to retain. Regard it
from its operation on the lowest species of
authorship—mere compilation, in which it can
protect nothing but the particular arrange-
ments, leaving the materials common to all;
through the gradations of history, of science,
of criticism, of moral and political philosophy,
of divinity, up to the highest efforts of the ima-
ginationjand it will be found to preserve nothing
to the author, except that which is properly
his own; while the free use of his materials
is open to those who would follow in his steps.
When I am asked, why should the inventor of
the steam-engine have an exclusive right to
multiply its form for only fourteen years, while
a longer time is claimed for the author of a
book! I may retort, why should he have for
fourteen years what the discoverer of a prin-
ciple in politics or morals, or of a chain of
proof in divinity, or a canon of criticism, has
not the protection of as many hours, except
for the mere mode of exposition which he has
adopted! Where, then, the analogy between
literature and mechanical science really exists,
that is, wherever the essence of the literary
work is, like mechanism, capable of being used
and improved on by others, the legal protection
will be found far more liberally applied to the
latter—necessarily and justly so applied—but
P170
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
affording no reason why we should take from
the author that which is not only his own, but
can never, from its nature, be another’s.
It has, sir, been asserted, that authors them-
selves have little interest in this question, and
that they are, in fact, indifferent or hostile to
the measure. True it is, that the greatest
living writers have felt reluctant to appear as
petitioners for it, as a personal boon ; but I
believe there are few who do not feel the
honour of literature embarked in the cause,
and earnestly desire its success. Mr. Words-
worth, emerging for a moment from the seclu-
sion he has courted, has publicly declared his
conviction of its justice. Mr. Lockhart has
stated his apprehension that the complete
emancipation of the estate of Sir Walter Scott
from its encumbrances depends on the issue;
and, although I agree that we ought not to le-
gislate for these cases, I contend that we ought
to legislate by the light of their examples.
While I admit that I should rejoice if the im-
mediate effect of this measure were to cheer
the evening of a great poet’s life, to whom I
am under intellectual obligations beyond all
price, and to enlarge the rewards of other
living authors whose fame will endure, I do
not ask support to this measure on their be-
half; but I present these as the proofs of the
subsisting wrong. The instances pass away ;
successive generations do successive injus-
tice ; but the principle is eternal. True it is
that in many instances, if the boon be granted,
the errors and frailties which often attend
genius may render it vain; true it is that in
multitudes of cases it will not operate; but by
conceding it we shall give to authors and to
readers a great lesson of justice; we shall
show that where virtue and genius combine
we are ready to protect their noble offspring,
and that we do not desire a miserable advan-
tage at the cost of the ornaments and benefac-
tors of the world. I call on each party in this
house to unite in rendering this tribute to the
minds by which even party associations are
dignified. I call on those who anticipate suc-
cessive changes in society, to acknowledge
their debt to those who expand the vista of the
future, and people it with goodly visions ; on
those who fondly linger on the past, and repose
on time-hallowed institutions, to consider how
much that is ennobling in their creed has been
drawn from minds which have clothed the
usages and forms of other days with the sym-
bols of venerableness and beauty; on all, if
they cannot find some common ground on
which they may unite in drawing assurance
of progressive good for the future from the
glories of the past, to recognise their obli-
gation to those, the products of whose intel-
lect shall grace, and soften, and dignify
the struggle!
The motion was opposed by Mr. Hume, Mr. Warburton, the Solicitor-General, Mr. Pryne,
Mr. Warde, Mr. Grote, the Attorney-General, Mr. John Jervis, and Sir Edward Sugden; and
supported by Sir Robert Inglis, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. DTsraeli, Mr. Milnes, and
Mr. Wynn. On the division, the numbers were, for the second reading, 39 ; against it, 34. On the
question that the bill should be committed, Mr. Philip Howard, who had voted in favour of the
second reading, moved that it be referred to a select committee. This was declined by the
mover: and after a short conversation, the house divided—for the committal of the bill in the
usual course, 38; against it, 31,—upon which the bill was ordered to be committed on the
following Wednesday.
On Wednesday, 2d of May, for which day the committee was fixed, there was no house;
and the “ dropped order” was fixed for the following Wednesday. On that day, Mr. Wakley,—
adverting to the thinness of the house on the second reading of the bill, and the small majority
by which it was carried,—pursuant to notice previously given, opposed the motion for the
speaker leaving the chair. His speech on this occasion consisted chiefly of statements with
which he had been supplied by Mr. Tegg, of the low prices at which he had purchased several
popular works of living authors, some of whom were members of the house ;—a series of per-
sonalities which afforded that kind of amusement which attend such allusions, and which,
being delivered without ill-nature, gave no pain to the authors who were the subject of them;
but not tending with very exact logic to show that the extension of the copyright, which pro-
tected all these works, would injure the public by maintaining a price beyond its reach. The
motion for going into committee was also opposed by Mr. Warburton and Mr. Strutt, and sup-
ported by Mr. Wolverly Attwood, Mr. Milnes, and Sir Robert Inglis. On a division the num-
bers were,—for the committee, 116 ; against it, 64. In a desultory conversation which followed,
Sir Edward Sugden complained that, as the bill then stood, the children of an author who had
assigned his copyright to them “in consideration of natural love and affection,” would be pre-
cluded from enjoying the proposed extension—the justice of which was felt by the supporters
of the bill—and obviated in its further progress. The house then resolved itself into committee;
but the lateness of the hour rendered it impossible to proceed with details; and the evening
was spent without the measure having made any progress, except in the great increase of the
majority by which it was supported.
The state of public business on the following Wednesdays—for which day the bill was
always, without objection, fixed, and on which alone it had any chance of being discussed—•
prevented its further consideration till Wednesday, 6th of June. In the interval, an anxious
consideration of the objections of the publishers of London and Edinburgh to the clause where-
by a reverting interest in copyrights absolutely assigned was created in favour of authors,
convinced those who had charge of the bill that it was impossible by any arrangements to pre-SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.
171
vent the inconvenience and loss which they suggested as consequential on such a boon to
authors. They, therefore, determined to confine the operation of the bill on subsisting copy-
rights to cases in which the author had retained some interest on which it might operate; and
with this, to their honour, the publishers were satisfied. Other alterations in matters of detail
were suggested, which induced the mover to listen to the wishes of both friends and opponents
of the bill, that it should be reprinted and committed again. When, therefore, on Wednesday,
6th of June, the bill again was before the house, and Mr. Warburton urged that it should be
reprinted, the mover at once acceded to his desire; briefly stated the principal alterations which
he had accorded to the washes of the publishers, and did justice to the spirit of fairness and
moderation with which they had foreborne to ask for themselves any share of the benefits
proposed for authors ; and had only desired that these benefits should not be attended by unde-
served injury to themselves. Lord John Russell, who had hitherto refrained from expressing
any opinion on the measure, took this opportunity of throwing out a hesitating disapproval, or
rather, doubt, but did not object to the course proposed. The bill was accordingly committed
pro forma, ordered to be reprinted, and its further consideration adjourned to Wednesday, 20th
of June. In pursuance of this arrangement, the bill was reprinted in nearly its present form;
and came on for discussion at a late hour on the 28th of June. It was then obvious that,—
considering the opposition with which its details were menaced by Mr. Warburton and others,
and the state of the order-book,—no reasonable hope remained of carrying it through commit-
tee, and the subsequent stages, during the session. When, therefore, the period of its discus-
sion arrived, it was, on the friendly recommendation of Mr. Gladstone, withdrawn, with a
pledge for its early introduction in the ensuing year.
On Tuesday, 12th of February, in the session of 1839, leave was obtained to bring in the
bill, which, nearly in the state in which it had been settled the preceding year, was introduced
the same evening. On Wednesday, 28th of February, its second reading was moved ;—after
the presentation of the petitions which are alluded to in the following sheets.
SPEECH ON MOVING THE SECOND HEADING OF A BILL TO
AMEND THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT,
Delivered in the House of Commons, Thursday, February 28, 1839.
Mr. Speaker—After the attention which, in
past sessions, has been rendered by this House
to the interests of literature, as affected by the
laws of copyright—an attention gratefully ac-
knowledged in the petitions which I have just
presented—I shall best discharge my duty by
reminding you, without preface, of the question
which we once more are called on to decide,
and by stating the position in which it stands,
and the materials which we have to assist us
in answering it. That question is, Whether the
present limitation of copyright is just? I will sum
up my reasons for contending for the negative
in language adopted by some of the distin-
guished persons whose petitions are before
you. They allege—“That the term during
which the law secures to the authors the profits
arising from the productions of their own in-
dustry and genius is insufficient to provide for
the fair rewrard of works written to endure : that
the extension of the term proposed by this bill
would encourage such compositions; that it
wrould enable individuals to devote their pow-
ers to the lasting benefit and delight of man-
kind, without the apprehension that in so doing
they shall impoverish their own descendants ;
and, that, while it would tend to the profit only
of the greatest and the best of those engaged in
literature, it would confer dignity and honour
on the pursuits of all.”
These propositions, to which I seek your as-
sent, are now for the first time imbodied by
some of the most distinguished authors as the
grounds of their own prayer, and will probably
be expressed by many others, wdiose feelings I
know, if you permit this bill to proceed. When
I first solicited for these arguments the notice
of this House, I thought they rested on princi-
ples so general; that the interests of those who
labour to instruct and illustrate the age in
which they live are so inseparably blended
with all that affects its morality and its happi-
ness; that the due reward of the greatest of its
authors is so identified with the impulses they
quicken—with the traits of character they
mirror—with the deeds of generosity, of cou-
rage and of virtue, which they celebrate, and
with the multitudes whom they delight and re-
fine, that I felt it was not for them alone that I
asked the shelter of the law, and I did not wish
to see them soliciting it as a personal boon.
The appeal, though thus unsupported, was not
unfelt; and the bill proceeded, without a hint
of opposition, until the demise of the crown
closed the session and stopped its progress. In
the interval which thus occurred, a number of
eminent publishers saw reason to apprehend
that certain clauses in the bill, by which it was
proposed to give to authors who had assigned
their copyrights under the subsisting law a
reverting interest after the expiration of its
term, would injuriously affect their vested
rights, and they naturally prepared to oppose
it. They were accompanied or followed in
this opposition by various persons connected
with the mechanical appliances of literature—
by master-printers, compositors, pressmen,
type-founders, paper-makers, and book-bind-172
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
ers, smitten with the strange fear that to ex-
tend the term of copyright (though they all
agree that the extension would operate only in
one case out of five hundred) would destroy
their trade, and their petitions were plenteously
showered on the table of the House. Regard
to the state of public business, and a belief
that, although supported by increasing majori-
ties, the nature of the opposition with which
the bill was threatened would multiply and
prolong the discussions beyond the bounds of
the time which could be applied to such an ob-
ject, induced me, at the suggestion of my ho-
nourable friend the member for Newark, again
to withdraw it. Having been taunted with the
absence of petitions in favour of the measure, I
have now the support I did not before seek ;
and I doubt not, the example once set will be
followed by many who feel deeply the justice
of the cause, and are indignant at the grounds
on which it has been opposed. Few as these
petitions are, compared with the number of
those who desire the success of this bill, I
shall not fear to oppose the facts they state,
the reasonings they suggest, or the authority
with which they are stamped, with those accu-
mulated by its opponents during the last ses-
sion.
Having carefully perused the petitions
against us, I am surprised to find how utterly
destitute they are of information really bear-
ing on the case, with an exception which does
not now apply to the bill; for I may dismiss
the complaints of the eminent members of the
publishing trade, and of all who sympathized
in their fears. Impressed with the force of
some of their objections, I proposed various
means by which I hoped to remove them, with-
out denying to authors who had assigned their
subsisting interest the benefits of that extended
term which it was proposed to create. But I
was compelled to abandon the attempt as hope-
less, and to content myself with applying the
extension to the cases of authors who had re-
tained an interest in their works, and to books
hereafter to be written. In this alteration I
have offered nothing to the publishers, except
in the rare and peculiar case of a joint interest
co-extensive with the entire copyright, in
which case, unable to sever the benefit with-
out extreme inconvenience to the publisher, I
have chosen rather to grant it to both than to
neither; and it is to the honour of the pub-
lishers, that, instead of seeking an unworthy
compromise, they have been satisfied with the
mere withdrawal of clauses which would have
subjected them to certain inconvenience, and
probable loss. Their opposition has ceased
with the provisions which raised it; and with
it all the allegations in the petitions which re-
late to it may be dismissed. There remain
those of the printers and their allies, persons
whose interests deserve the careful regard of
the legislature, but whose opinions have no
authority beyond the reasonings they adduce
to support them. They are not like persons
engaged in some occupation on which there is
an immediate pressure, which they who feel
most keenly can most vividly explain ; nor
like persons apprehending some change di-
rectly affecting their profits, under circum-
stances peculiarly within the range of their
experience; they are mere speculators, like
ourselves, on the probabilities of the distant
future. All their apprehensions centre in one
—that if the term of copyright be extended,
fewer books will be printed ; fewer hands .will
be required; fewer presses set up; fewer
types cast; fewer reams of paper needed; and
(though I know not whether the panic has pe-
netrated to the iron-mine or ascended to the
rag-loft) that a paralysis will affect all these
departments of trade. Now, if there were
any real ground for these busy fears, they
would not want facts to support them. In the
year, 1814, when the term of copyright was
extended from fourteen to twenty-eight years,
the same classes expressed similar alarms.
The projected change was far more likely to
be prejudicial to them than the present, as the
number of books on which it operated was
much larger; and yet there is no suggestion
in their petitions that a single press remained
unemployed, or a paper-mill stood still; and,
indeed, it is a matter of notoriety, that since
then publications have greatly multiplied, and
that books have been reduced in price with
the increase of readers. The general argu-
ments of these petitions are those which the
opponents of the measure urge, all resolving
themselves into the assumptions, that if copy-
rights be extended, books will be dearer; that
cheap books are necessarily a benefit to the
public; and that the public interest should
prevail over the claims of those who create
the materials of its instruction. But there is
one petition which illustrates so curiously the
knowledge which these petitioners possess on
the subject of their fears, and the modesty
with which they urge them, that I must tres-
pass on the patience of the House while I offer
a specimen of its allegations. It is a petition
presented by the honourable member for Kil-
kenny, agreed on at a public meeting at the Me-
chanics’ Institute, Southampton-buildings, by
“ compositors, pressmen, and others engaged
in the printing profession.” After a sweeping
assumption of the whole question between au-
thors and readers, these petitioners thus desig-
nate the application made to this House on
behalf of literature:—“The books to which
it is assumed the present law does not afford
sufficient protection are those of a trashy and
meretricious character, whose present popu-
larity deludes their writers with a vain hope
of an immortal reputation.” Now, the works
which were named by way of example, when
this bill was introduced, were those of Cole-
ridge, of Wordsworth, and of Sir Walter Scott;
and if these are intended by the petitioners, I
fear they have made no good use of cheap
books, or that the books they have read are
dear at any price. If the object of the bill is
the protection of “ trashy and meretricious ”
works, it may be absurd, but it must be harm-
less ; for, as to such works, it must be a dead
letter. The printers who fear that one set of
“trashy and meretricious” works should en-
dure after the lapse of twenty-eight years, and
should thus deprive them of the opportunity
of printing a brilliant succession of such
works, to which they do not refuse the aid ofSPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.
173
their types, partake an apprehension like the
alarm of some nervous remainderman, who
should take fright at the creation of a term of
999 years by a tenant for life, overlooking in
his fears the necessary condition “if he should
so long live for so surely as natural death
will await the decay of the human frame, shall
oblivion cover the “ trashy and meretricious”
book, and leave room for successor after suc-
cessor to employ compositors, to sparkle and
expire. But, the petitioners proceed—“Even
suppose their success would be permanent,
the present high profits derived by their au-
thors are an ample return for the time em-
ployed in their composition.” So these gen-
tlemen, forgetting that the chief ground of the
bill is, that the works on behalf of which its
extension is sought often begin to repay their
authors only when the copyright is about to
expire, think themselves competent to estimate
the anxieties, the heart-aches, the feverish
hopes, the bitter disappointments, the frequent
failures, the cheerless toils, with which an au-
thor’s time is filled, and which disturb them
little when they are arranging his words.
They proceed—“ while it is proved, that books
of deep research and intrinsic value would
not be rendered more valuable by an extension
of the law of copyright, however extended
that law might be.” How not more valuable]
Not much more valuable to sell, perhaps, but
more valuable to preserve; else, if there is no
gain to the author, where is the loss to the
public I After a round assertion, “ that the
bill must be viewed as one injuriously affect-
ing the booksellers, book-binders, paper-ma-
kers, type-founders, and all branches con-
nected with the printing business,” they then
proceed to extol their own profession:—“That
the profits derived from a book depend not on
the art of writing, but on the art of printing;
for that, without the facilities which improved
mechanical improvements afford, the number
of copies would be few and high-priced, and
the profits of the author lower ; and, therefore,
it is unjust that authors should endeavour to
injure by exclusive laws a profession to which
they are indebted for the rank they hold and
the wealth they possess.” Surely the old critic
Dennis, who, when he heard the thunder roll
over the mimic scenes, and used to claim it as
his own, was reasonable, compared to these
gentlemen of the Mechanics’ Institute. What-
ever may be the benefit which the art of print-
ing has conferred on genius—genius which
had achieved imperishable triumphs long be-
fore its discovery, it is astounding to hear this
claim made by those who are now engaged in
a simple mechanical pursuit. The manufac-
turer of bayonets or of gunpowder might as
well insist that he, and not the conqueror of
Waterloo, should be the recipient of national
gratitude. Where would their profession be
if no author had written 1 There are some
things more precious even than knowledge;
and, strange as it may seem to the utilitarian
philosophers, I venture to think gratitude one;
and if it is, I would ask these petitioners to
consider how many presses have been em-
ployed and honoured, how many families in
their own class have been enriched by the un-
ceasing labours of a single mind—that of Sir
Walter Scott—exhausted, fading, glimmering,
perishing from this world in their service!
As the concluding paragraph of this peti
tion merely repeats an analogy of literary
works to mechanical inventions, which I have
grappled with before, and which, if necessary,
I am ready to expose again, I will pass from it
and from the petitions against this bill—which,
I assert, do not presen t a single fact for the infor-
mation of the House—to the petitions which dis-
close the grievances and the claims of authors.
And first, to show, by way of example, how in-
sufficient the present term is to remunerate au-
thors who contemplate works of great labour
and research, I will refer to the petition of Mr.
Archibald Alison, sheriff of the county of Lan-
ark. This gentleman, son of the venerable
author of the celebrated “Essay on Taste,”
was brought up to the Scottish bar, and being
gifted with excellent talents, and above all
with that most valuable of talents, unwearied
industry, enjoyed the fairest prospects of suc-
cess. Having, however, conceived the design
of writing the history of Europe during the
French Revolution, he resigned those hopes
for the office of Sheriff of Lanarkshire, which,
limiting his income to a moderate sum, left
him at leisure to pursue his scheme. On that
work he has now been engaged for twenty-five
years. To collect materials for its composition
he has repeatedly visited the principal cities
of Europe, and his actual expenditure in books
and journeys to lay the foundations of his
work has already exceeded 2,000/., and will
be doubled if he should live to complete it.
Seven volumes have successively appeared;
the copyright is unassigned; and as the work
is making a regular progress, fourteen years
must elapse before the pecuniary outlay will
be repaid. At the expiration of twenty-eight
years, supposing the work to succeed on an
average calculated on its present sale, its
author will only obtain half what he might
have acquired by the devotion of the same
time to ephemeral productions; so that, unless
his life should be prolonged beyond the ordi-
nary lot of man, its labours to his family will
be almost in vain, unless you considerably
extend the term of his property; and then, in
return for his sacrifices, he will leave them a
substantial inheritance. Of a similar nature
is the case of another petitioner, Dr. Cook,
Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Univer-
sity of St. Andrew’s, author of the “ History of
the Reformation in Scotland,” a “History of
the Church of Scotland,” and of other historical
works which are now standard authorities, and
on the composition of which he has been en-
gaged for the last thirty years. In their com-
position he has incurred great expense. The
copyrights are vested in himself; but it de-
pends on your decision whether his family
shall derive any advantages from them. He
concludes—“considering this law as at vari-
ance with the essential principles of justice,
and calculated to impede the course of litera-
ture and science,” by earnestly imploring the
House to “pass this bill for so extending the
term of copyright as will secure the interest
of the authors of extensive and laborious
p 2174
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
works without in the slightest degree interfer-
ing with the public good.’’ Dr. James Thom-
son, the Professor of Mathematics in the Uni-
versity of Glasgow, states the nature and
history of several elementary works, the pro-
ducts of his labour, which are slowly beginning
to recompense him, and especially invites
attention to the manner in which the law bears
on works used as text-books in schools and
universities, having to contend against the
partialities of teachers for books with which
use has made them familiar, and of booksellers
for works in which they are interested, and
which may only begin to obtain attention
when the copyright is about to cease. Sir
David Brewster has spent a most laborious
and most useful life, and still spends it, in the
composition of works which at once instruct
and charm, and which can only remunerate
him by the extension of the term. Now, I ask,
is there no property in these petitioners worthy
of protection ?	“ No,” said, and will say, some
of the opponents of this bill; “none. We
think that from the moment an author puts his
thoughts on paper and delivers them to the
world, his property therein wholly ceases.”
What! has he invested no capital? embarked
no fortune? If human life is nothing in your
commercial tables—if the sacrifice of profes-
sion, of health, of gain, is nothing—surely the
mere outlay of him who has perilled his fortune
to instruct mankind may claim some regard!
Or is the interest itself so refined—so ethereal
—that you cannot regard it as property, because
it is not palpable to sense as to feeling? Is
there any justice in this? If so, why do you
protect moral character as a man’s most pre-
cious possession, and compensate the party
who suffers unjustly in that character by
damages? Has this possession any existence
half so palpable as the author’s right in the
printed creation of his brain? I have always
thought it one of the proudest triumphs of
human law that it is able to recognise and to
guard this breath and finer spirit of moral
action—that it can lend its aid in sheltering
that invisible property which exists solely in
the admiration and affection of others; and if
it may do this, why may it not protect his in-
terest in those living words which, as well
observed by that great thinker, Mr. Hazlitt, are,
“after all, the only things which last for
ever ?”
From these examples of works of labour and
pecuniary outlay, I turn to that of a poet, whose
name has often been mentioned in the discus-
sion of this measure, who has supported it by
his published opinion, but who has now, for
the first time, enforced it by petition. Mr.
Wordsworth states that he is on the point of
attaining his seventieth year; that forty-six
years ago he published his first work, and that
he has continued to publish original works at
various intervals down to 1835. The copy-
right in a considerable part of these works is
now contingent on his life; in a few years the
far larger portion of them will be holden by
the same tenure; and his most extensive and
elaborate work, “The Excursion,” will be in
this condition, if he should be spared for four
years longer. He represents that “having
engaged and persevered in literary labours
less with the expectation of producing speedy
effect than with a view to interest and benefit
mankind remotely, though permanently, his
works, though never out of demand, have made
their way slowly into general circulation;”
and he states as a fact, directly bearing on this
question, that his works have, within the last
four years, brought a larger emolument than
in all preceding years; which would now be
bounded by his death ; and the greater part of
which, if he had died four years ago, would
have been wholly lost to his family. How will
this case be answered? I suppose, as I have
heard it, when less fully stated, answered
before, that it proves that there is no necessity
for the extension of copyright, because without
its encouragement a poet thus gifted has been
ready to devote his powers amidst neglect and
scorn to the highest and the purest aims. I
will not answer by merely reminding those who
urge this ungenerous argument, that there may
not always be attendant on such rare endow-
ments the means of offering such a sacrifice,
either from independent resources or from
simple tastes. I reply at once, that the argu-
ment is at utter variance with the plainest
rules of morality and justice. I should like to
hear how it would be received on a motion for
a national grant to one wrho had fought his
country’s battles! I should like to hear the
indignation and the scorn vdiich would be ex-
pressed towards any one who should venture
to suggest that the impulses which had led to
heroic deeds had no respect to worldly benefits;
that the love of country and glory would
always lead to similar actions; and that, there-
fore, out of regard to the public, we ought to
withhold all reward from the conqueror. And
yet the case of the poet is the stronger; for we
do not propose to reward him out of any fund
but that which he himself creates—from any
pockets but from those of every one whom he
individually blesses—and our reward cannot
be misapplied when we take Time for our
Arbitrator and Posterity for our Witnesses!
It cannot have escaped the attention of the
house that many of the petitioners are profes-
sors in the universities of Scotland; and from
the laborious nature of their pursuits—their
love of literature, fostered at a distance from
the applause of the capital, and from the inde-
pendence and the purity of their character, I
venture to think that their experience and their
judgments are entitled to peculiar weight.
Now, the University of St. Andrew’s, after
powerfully urging the claims of authors gene-
rally, thus submits the peculiar claims of their
countrymen:—“Your petitioners venture to
submit, that in Scotland, where the fewr rewards
which used to be conferred on clergymen of
literary and scientific merit have been with-
drawn, and where the incomes of the profes-
sors in her universities have been allowed to
suffer great diminution, these individuals have
strong motives to solicit, and additional
grounds to expect, that their literary rights
may be extended, and rendered as beneficial
as possible to themselves and their families.”
Among these professors, and among the peti
tioners for this bill, is a clergyman unsurpassedSPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.
175
in Christian eloquence, in reach of thought, in
unwearied zeal; who has disregarded ease and
intellectual delights prodigally to expend his
energies on that which he regards as the sacred
cause of the church and religion of his coun-
try; and who depends on his copyrights, in
such of the labours of his mind as he has com-
mitted to the press, to make amends for a pro-
fessional income far below his great intellec-
tual claims. In addressing me on the subject
of this bill, Dr. Chalmers says, “My profes-
sional income has always been so scanty, that
I should have been in great difficulties, had it
not been for my authorship; and I am not
aware of a more desirable compensation for
the meagre emoluments of the offices I have
held, than that those profits should be secured
and perpetuated in favour of my descendants.”
And who among us, not only of those who
sympathize with his splendid exertions on
behalf of the church of Scotland, but of all who
feel grateful for the efforts by which he has
illustrated and defended our common faith,
will not desire that wish to be fulfilled! How
one of the publishers of his country feels
towards such authors may be seen in the pe-
tition of Mr. Smith, of Glasgow, who even de-
sires to limit the power of assigning copyright
to twenty-one years, and then contrasts his
case with that of those by whose creations he
has been enriched. He states, “ that he has
obtained estate and competence by the sale of
books published or sold by him, which pro-
perty he has a right to entail or give in legacy
for the benefit of his heirs; while the authors
who have produced the works that have en-
riched him have no interest for their heirs by
the present law of copyright in the property
which they have solely constituted.” When
I find these petitions signed by the most dis-
tinguished ornament of the Scotch church, Dr.
Chalmers—and by one of the most eminent
among the Dissenting divines, Dr. Wardlaw, I
cannot help associating with them a case
which came under my notice a few days ago,
on an application to me to assist a great-
grandson of Dr. Doddridge, in presenting a
memorial to the bounty of the crown. Here
was the descendant of one of the idols of the
religious world, whose works have circulated
in hundreds of thousands of copies, enduring
a state of unmerited privation and suffering,
from which a trifle on each volume of his an-
cestor’s works now adorning the libraries of
the wealthy Dissenters would amply relieve
him!
On these contrasted cases the House has now
to decide. But before I leave the question in
its hands, it is fit I should advert for a moment
to those opponents of the bill who, disclaiming
the publishers and printers, appear on behalf
of what they call the public, and who insist
that it is our duty to obtain for that public the
works of genius and labour at the lowest pos-
sible price. Now, passing over a doubt, which
I dare scarcely hint in their presence, whether
the diffusion of cheap copies of any work ne-
cessarily implies in an equal degree the diffu-
sion of its beauties or the veneration of its
injunctions, permit me to ask whether even for
the public it is not desirable that works should
be correct as well as cheap, and that it should
have the benefit of the matured judgment of
its instructors! Now, this can only be effected
by permitting the family of the author to watch
over his fame. An author who, in a life de-
voted to literature, has combined gifts of the
historian and the poet—Mr. Southey—who has
thought the statement of his case might have
more effect than a petition, has permitted me
to elucidate this view of the case by his ex-
ample. He has lately published a complete
edition of his poems, correcting the blemishes
which during many years have presented
themselves to his severer judgment; his copy-
rights in many of the original poems will
expire with his life; in the corrected edition
his family will enjoy an interest, but in the
original poems they will retain none ; and it
will be in the power of Mr. Tegg, or any other
of those worthy benefactors of the public who
keep duteous watch over the deathbed of copy-
rights, to republish any of those poems with
all their repented errors, and the addition of
those gross blunders which are always intro-
duced when a reprint undergoes no revision
but that of a printer. But is it even certain
that the books thus carelessly printed will be
actually cheaper in price than if the descend-
ants of the author published them for their own
advantage! It is not fair to judge of this by
recent instances, produced in the first eager-
ness of the freebooters of the trade to seize on
and parade their spoils. It should be recol-
lected that a proprietor who uses only one ma-
chine for publication may, with profit to him-
self, supply the market more cheaply than
numbers who have separate expenses, and
look for separate gains. But if the argument
be doubtful, the fact at least is clear, and I
may call the honourable member for Finsbury
as #iy witness to prove it; for he has shown
in this House, to the offence of none, but the
amusement of all, and to the proof of my case,
how cheaply books charged with an expensive
cop}rright may be obtained of his friend Mr.
Tegg, who, he states, nevertheless, has a stock
worth more than 170,000/., which, if the prin-
ciples of my opponents be fairty applied, is
justly distributable among their favourite and
much injured public. But grant the whole
assumption—grant that if copyright be ex-
tended, the few books it will affect will be
dearer to the public by the little the author will
gain by each copy—grant that they will not be
more correct or authentic than when issued
wholesale from the press; still is there nothing
good for the people but cheap knowledge! Is
it necessary to associate with their introduc-
tion to the works of the mighty dead the selfish
thought that they are sharing in the riot of the
grave, instead of cherishing a sense of pride
that, while they read, they are assisting to de-
prive the grave of part of its withering power
over the interests of survivors! But if it were
desirable, is it possible to separate a personal
sympathy with an author from the first admi-
ration of his works! We do not enter into his
labours as into some strange and dreamy
world, raised by the touch of a forgotten en-
chanter; the affections are breathing around
us, and the author being dead, yet speaks in176
TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.
accents triumphant over death and time. As
from the dead level of an utilitarian philosophy
no mighty work of genius ever issued, so
never can such a work be enjoyed except in
that happy forgetfulness of its doctrines, which
always softens the harshest creed. But I be-
lieve that those who thus plead for the people
are wholly unauthorized by the feelings of the
people; that the poor of these realms are richer
in spirit than their advocates understand
them; and that they would feel a pride in
bestowing their contributions in the expression
of respe-ct to that great intellectual ancestry
whose fame is as much theirs as it is the boast
of the loftiest amongst us. I do not believe
that the people of Scotland share in the exulta-
tion of the publishers who have successively
sent among them cheap editions of the “ Lay
of the Last Minstrel,” “Marmion,” and the
‘‘Lady of the Lake;” that they can buy them
at a lower price than if the great minstrel who
produced them were still among the living. I
cannot believe that they can so soon forget
their obligations to one who has given their
beautiful country a place in the imagination
of mankind which may well compensate for
the loss of that political individuality they so
long and so proudly enjoyed, as to count with
satisfaction the pence they may save by that
premature death which gave his copyrights to
contesting publishers, and left his halls silent
and cold. It is too late to do justice to Burns ;
but I cannot believe the peasant who should
be inspired by him to walk “ in glory and in
joy, following his plough by the mountain side,”
or who, casting his prideful look, on Saturday
evening, around his circle of children, feels
his pleasure heightened and reduplicated in
the poet’s mirror, would regret to think that
the well-thumbed volume which had made
him conscious of such riches had paid*the
charge of some sixpence towards the support
of that poet’s children.
There is only one other consideration I would
suggest before I sit down, which relates not to
any class, but to the community and our du-
ties towards them. It is thus expressed in Mr.
Wordsworth’s petition:—“That this bill has
for its main object to relieve men of letters from
the thraldom of being forced to court the living
generation to aid them in rising above slavish
taste and degraded prejudice, and to encourage
them to rely on their own impulses.” Surely
this is an object worthy of the legislature of a
great people, especially in an age where rest-
less activity and increasing knowledge present
temptations to the slight and the superficial
which do not exist in a ruder age. Let those
who “ to beguile the time look like the time,”
have their fair scope—let cheap and innocent
publications be multiplied as much as you
please,—still the character of the age demands
something impressed with a nobler labour, and
directed to a higher aim. “The immortal
mind craves objects that endure.” Theprinters
need not fear. There will not be too many can-
didates for “a bright reversion,” which only
falls in when the ear shall be deaf to human
praise. I have been accused of asking you to
legislate “ on some sort of sentimental feeling.”
I deny the charge : the living truth is with us;
the spectral phantoms of depopulated printing-
houses and shops are the baseless fancies of
our opponents. If I were here beseeching in-
dulgence for the frailties and excesses which
sometimes attend fine talents—if I were here
appealing to your sympathy on behalf of crush-
ed hopes and irregular aspirations, the accusa-
tion would be just. I plead not for the wild,
but for the sage ; not for the perishing, but for
the eternal: for him who, poet, philosopher, or
historian, girds himself for some toil lasting as
life—lays aside all frivolous pursuits for one
virtuous purpose—that when encouraged by
the distant hope of that “All-hail hereafter,”
which shall welcome him among the heirs of
fame, he ma)r not shudder to think of it as
sounding with hollow mockery in the ears of
those wrhom he loves, and waking sullen echoes
by the side of a cheerless hearth. For such I
ask this boon, and through them for mankind
—and I ask it in the confidence with the ex-
pression of which your veteran petitioner
Wordsworth closed his appeal to you—“ That
in this, as in all other cases, justice is capable
of working out its own expediency!”
THE WESTMINSTER PLAY.
December, 1845.
Not from the youth-illumined stage alone
Is gladness shed; it breathes around from all
"Whose names, imprinted on each honour’d wall,
Speak deathless boyhood ; on whose hearts the tone,
Which makes each ancient phrase familiar grown
New by its crisp expression, seems to fall
A strain from distant years ; while striplings, still
In careless prime, bid younger bosoms thrill
With plaudits such as lately charm’d their own—
While richest humour strangely serves to fill
Worn eyes with childlike tears ; for Memory lifts
Time’s curtain from the spirits’ holiest stage,
And makes even strangers share the precious gifts
Which clasp in golden meshes Youth and Age.
TIIE END.