THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES 2 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. A valuable addition to the class of -works by Hazlitt, Hunt, D'ls- raeli, and others, illustrative of English Literature. It is a book of taste and reflection, an admirable library companion. Wiley's News Letter. Good sense characterizes all Mr. Jones's writings, and the scholar and gentleman are every where plainly visible. He has lately favor- ed'the public with some fruits of his more mature genius, under the title of " Literary Studies ;" one of the very best books ever written, bv an American. It displays much and varied reading, refined and delicate taste. No one can write better than Mr. Jones on the old English Divines, essayists and novelists. American Mail. Mr. W. A. Jones, long favorably known to readers of American periodicals, belongs to a class of writers but too" little prized among us- those whom a, deep-rooted and highly cultivated love of litera ture, leads to research, comparison, and discriminating criticism. It would seem the most natural thing in the world, that the people who are forever lamenting that their hard fate prevents any attempt at study that they have not time for even light reading, beyond the page of a newspaper should delight in books which show a royal perhaps we ought rather to say a mercantile road to some know ledge of elegant letters, should feel really indebted to' the patient gold- finder who saves them the time which might be expended in unprofit able search, even to the sifting out of the sprinkling ore from the mere dross. Such has long been Mr. Jones' office; and in this volume we have the result of much of that labor of love which en riches him who pursues it, whether the world appreciate or not. Christian Enquirer. " LITERARY STUDIES " is the title given to a collection of Miscel laneous Essays, by W. A. JONES, who has been long and favorably known as a coutributer to the periodical literature of the day. They evince a sharp, critical acumen, sound common sense and general felicity of expression. They are modelled, quite successfully in form and spirit, upon some of the best and most highly esteemed English Essayists, and ought to be very widely popular. Cour. $ Enquirer. We have before expressed our high opinion of Mr. Jones' abilities as an essayist, and our earnest admiration of the spirit as well as the matter of his writings. As a critic we do not know his superior among American writers. His conception of the merits and beauties of his author, is in all cases, just and discriminating, while his highly cultivated taste and delicate appreciation of those minuter traits of excellency which are apt to escape the glance ef the mere reviewer, render him the delightful and intelligent companion of our "literary studies." The essays iu these volumes treat of a variety of subjects aud books, ancient and modern, but they all bear the stamp of an original, acute and cultivated mind. Protestant Churchman. This is an excellent book, full of good criticism aud just senti ment. Essay writing is by no means an easy department of litera- OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 3 ture. We think a book of bad essays the dullest of all books. A good deal of talent, or rather, tact, is needed to bring out these points of a didactic subject which are apt to arrest the attention of common readers. We think the author of this book quite successful in the department which he has chosen, and that its tendency will be to improve and elevate the taste of its readers ; and that, not merely by a compilation of correct opinions upon books and authors, which might be easilv made with the aid of a little reading. The author has evi dently an independent ground of his own, and does not hesitate to dissent from the authority of high names. There is that in the book which should be in every good one, viz : enough is original to influence strongly opinion upon the books, authors, or subjects treated of. Evening Post. After all, the best trait in the writer of these papers, is his quiet, genial sympathy with all that have written well the stronger, ap parently, for the more obscure and the excellent moral tone pervad ing his columns, not the less sincere and effective for his making no noise about it. He a,cts, indeed, upon the' sentiments implied in his reniai-ks on the offensive, all-perfect moral characters obtruded into religious novels. In short, this little volume is entirely worthy of being bought ; it is more it is worth stealing, as we can testify, having lost two from our table within a week, by means unknown to any except to those who took them. American Review, July, 1847. MEMORIAL OF THE.LATE HON. DAVID S. JONES. Contain- taining notices of the Jones family of Queens county. New- York. Stanford & Swords, 137 Broadway, 1849. Banks & Gould. It contains a variety of interesting matter relating to the early history of the New-York bar, and is a very appropriate tribute to one of its early and distinguished ornaments. Evening Post. This is au affectionate tribute, to a member of one of the most eminent families of our state by one of its representatives of the present generation, who has himself acquired an enviable reputation, in a sphere of his own. It is written with elegance, in excellent taste, and a spirit of reverent judgment, altogether becoming in a memoir of a father by a son. Express, July 24. Filial affection has, in this brief and well printed memoir, reared a monument of simple dignity and beauty to the private virtues and professional attainments of one, who was entitled to rank among the best of an eminently judicial and legal family. Mr. Win. A. Jones, the writer, is eminently fitted to raise this tab let to hie father's memory. Among the many learned, well educated, and legal members of the Jones family, none have (if we recollect aright> striven for the laurel of literature but Mr. Wm. A. Jones ; and with what success some of the finest Essays in the English language, published in the " Analyst," and two recent volumes of " Essays " will amply demonstrate. Brooklyn Star, July 25. 4 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. One of the best written American family memorials winch has been issued. The style is simple, yet weighty ; the matter well chosen, consisting of substantial facts of interest. It is in general, an- excellent model of this species ot composition. Though the tendency is to eulogy, and though eulogy would have a satisfactory apology when a son commemorates the virtues of a father, yet this is not over done on that score, the picture presented bearing strong traits of reality. There is, as characteristic of the old New- York society, much deference paid to family and birth. This book, besides being of interest to the family and friends of the subject, is a valuable contribution to the local history of the State. It has been prepared with unusual care, and is worthy the reputation of the writer, the acute critic and essayist, William A. Jones, whose authorship of the volume is disclosed in tlje preface. Literary World, July 28. A neatly written and affectionate tribute of filial love and rever ence, and includes several interesting biographical details of the various branches of the family. It is handsomely printed, by Stanford and Swords. Churchman, July 28. It is from the pen of Mr. William A. Jones, and is a graceful and honorable tribute of filial affection to the memory of a father of whom his children might well feel proud. Of Mr. Jones, the author of this little volume, we have often bad occasion to publish our opinions when reviewing some of his writings, which he has lately given to the public too rarely. Holderis Magazine for August. This is an appropriate and modest tribute of filial affection to the memory of a late eminent citizen of New- York. It describes his per sonal character, his in -door habits and tastes, his private friendships and studies, with a natural simplicity and pathos that is adapted to awaken a lively interest even in the reader who was not acquainted with the subject, and to those who were within the sphere of his do mestic intimacies it must be an invaluable memorial of departed excellence. As Mr. Jones is presented in this little volume, though meeting with constant points of difference on social and political ques tions which we deem of vital importance, we cannot withhold our admiration of his intellectual acuteness, his dignified cordiality, his refined taste, and his high conscientiousness, which seemed to form an essential part of his nature. The style of the book is in keeping with the polished and tasteful Essays which have given the author the reputation of an accomplished writer. Tribune, Auguit 4. ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS, W. ALFRED JONES. NEW-YORK: STANFORD AND SWORDS, 137, BROADWAY. 1849. j. JK,. M'oowN, 57, ANN-STRIET, PROFESSOR JOHN W. FRANCIS, M.D., 8Ejje Sfctlful $)i)2S(cfan, tjje Constant JFvicnU, THE GENIAL HUMORIST, AND THE LOVER OF LITERATURE cc J IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED c\j HIS OBLIGED FRIEND AND O o o O 00 01 THE AUTHOR CONTENTS. 3, LL.D. t ' I. ESSAY WRITING. THE CHAMPION II. TRAITS OF AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP III. HOME CRITICISM . r',^.IV. THE TWO EVERETTS . -'" V. POEMS BY CLEMENT C. MOORE, VI. AMERICAN VERSE : RALPH HOYT _ V.II. THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF R. H. DANA TALES OF THE SOUTH AND WEST IX. THE_ LECTURE ..... . X. HUGH LATIMER . " . . . . XI. SIR PHILIP SIDNEYS' "DEFENCE OF POESY" XII. BURTON'S " ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY" . > XIII. MEMOIRS OF LADY FANSHAWE . . . . ' : ~t XIV. CURIOUS EXTRAVAGANCIES IN THE FORMS OF VERSE XV. THE SPIRITUAL QUIXOTE . . . . V . XVI. SATIRE AND SENTIMENT ..... XVII, SUMMER READING ...... XVIII. THE CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION XIX. POLITICAL SATIRE. ...... FARRAGO, . . . '. ' . XXI. THE LITERATURE OF QUAKERISM . . . I . XXII. POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE X CONTENTS. Pajre XXIII. AESTHETIC A L FRAGMENTS 174 XXIV. CORRESPONDENCE OF RICHARDSON ... 182 XXV. THOMAS MOORE . 191 XXVI. LITERARY PORTRAITS 196 XXVII. LORD BOLING BROKE 210 XXVIII. THE LITERATURE OF THE PROFESSIONS . . 215 XXIX. THE PROFESSION OF AN ACTOR . . .223 XXX. CHILDREN'S BOOKS . 230 INTRODUCTION. The present collection embraces articles in various Journals, ( Arcturus, the Church Record, the Boston Mis cellany, Democratic and Whig Reviews, Union Maga zine and- the Literary World ; from which sources, the volume entitled Literary Studies was also selected,) publish ed during the last nine years. This fact is mentioned to ac count for a diversity of style, that may be remarked among the essays, a comparative harshness in some and an acquired facility in others. The papers are not arranged chronologi cally, but rather according to the subjects, a natural divis ion under which they fall. None of the papers in this volume are included in either ' Literary Studies' or ' the Analyst.' The contents of this series have been selected with no little care : long review articles, and certain papers of literary statistics, at once didactic and declamatory, in some cases hastily made up and in which a good deal of cata- logueing too frequently occurs, have been omitted. A Xll INTRODUCTION. volume of equal size might be filled with these, but it was preferred to present a single volume of a choicer character than a brace of volumes of a more miscellaneous description. In some instances, the essay matter of a gossiping retro spective review has been] retained and the illustrative literary portraits excluded, and again in other cases, literary portraits have been extracted without any reference to the text in which they occur. W. A. J, NOVEMBER 19th, 1849. ESSAY WRITING THE CHAMPION. " TEN censure wrong for one who writes amiss," sang Pope, . and a juster line he never wrote himself. We have daily evidence of its truth, especially in this era of multifarious and indiscriminate criticism. Every man is a reader, and a critic, of course ; the corollary follows the proposition as closely as demonstration upon mathematical reasoning. To be a tolerable author requires some brains and tact in writing ; but to become a regular critic, nothing is needed but the not uncommon union of arrogance, ignorance, insolence, and stupidity. To praise judiciously the rarest works (the ver dict of love and knowledge combined) appears tame and insipid, to those who love the slashing style, who consider abuse, satire ; and presumption, boldness ; who vote ribaldry, wit; and give the palm of copious, manly eloquence, to coarse, declamatory invective. In a late notice of Chambers' Essays in the London. Spectator, we find the writer, who gives the author his fair share of praise, speaking of the decline of the Essay, and of its gradual extinction, as if the shortest, the most direct, the most personal, the most natural, form of prose-writing could ever become extinct, any more than letters, or songs, 14 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. or oratory. "With all of these the essay has much in com mon, and especially in its personal character, implying a familiarity, a mutual confidence and an explicit directness, not to be attained in a higher or more ambitious form of composition. Since composition has become the business of men of the world and men of business since it has found its way into other hands than those of the monks and scho lastics of the Middle Ages, it has become more and more conversational, pithy, plain, arid unpretending. Respecta bility in authorship is now nothing to be proud of, in intel lectual circles and in the midst oi a high civilization. No longer do we gaze with awe and admiring wonder at poet or philosopher. They have become commonplace people in the popular eye. They are as wise, as good, as imaginative as ever, but they do not seem to be so. Essay-writing in prose is very much the same thing as song-writing in verse. A certain lyrical spirit is to be found in the best essayists, however homely and anti-poetical the essays may be ; as in Franklin's, or the second-rate papers of Hazlitt (who is hardly a fair instance, for he was a poet as much as Burke or Jeremy Taylor.) Some of Lamb's are conceived in the highest poetic strain, as Bulwer has remarked of the Horatian Apostrophe to the Shade of Ellis- ton, and numberless passages in the Essays of Elia. Hunt displays as much fancy in prose description, often as in his poetry. Emerson's essays often conceal more poetic feeling than he developes in his poetry. This kind of writing is as natural to a young prose writer to attempt as it is in a genuine poet to commence his career by songs, as natural as for the " feathered song ster of the field" to pour forth his " unpremeditated lay." It is certainly a matter of impulse with most, and most ESSAY WRITING. THE CHAMPION. 15 naturally is with those who are destined to succeed in that way of writing. With the scholar, in one of the old come dies, the youthful aspirant may honestly confess, " I did essay to write essays." That a vast proportion of failures might be recorded, weighs no more against our views than the as frequent failures in lyric efforts. The essayist is thus an humbler sort of bard, a prose lyrist, a writer of the walk of poetry, which Horace includes under the designation " musa pedestris." Under this class fall most of the essay ists. Swift, in verse and in prose, is much the same ; so we may say of Pope, and of the earlier English satirists. Essays, too, are very similar to letters, in their variety of topics; in their familiarity of address, and in the "hand ling" or style. Most letter- writers address individuals only ; the regular essayist addresses the public as well. There is only a wider circle of readers, and something, by way of difference, in the feelings of professed authorship. Equal vanity, or egotism, or wise self-consideration, as you will, is to be allowed to either writer, equal room for portraits of cha racter and sketches of manners, for humorous satire or gene rous compliment, for speculative or ethical discussion, for aesthetical analysis, or historical retrospect. Both are in the nature of confessions as well as homilies, though the latter are apt to predominate. The history of a man's mind, his only true autobiography, change of tastes and pursuits, favorite opinions held at different periods, why changed, and how often, these are to be studied in volumes of essays, with more confidence than in most volumes of biography. There are two remarks of Zimmerman that deserve to be noticed on this subject. Defending the practice of a man's writing memoirs of himself, he says, he thinks it wiser and more laudable, than for him to leave his body by will to a pro- 16 ESSAYS UPON BOOKS AND AUTHORS. fessor of anatomy : and, in another place he tells an obvious truth, (not noticed perhaps for that reason,) that the great advantage of writing, is to give a man an opportunity to express that upon paper, which he could not with freedom or courtesy, in the ordinary intercourse with society. Now essays give that freedom in its widest allowable limits, restrict the writer less in the development of his humors, whims, and agreeable prejudices upon paper than any other species of composition. It is indeed a mixed kind of writingj personal authorship, as free as possible from mere scholas ticism or pedantry. Neither is it any nearer extinction now than in the days of Montagne, who is commonly known as the father of the Essay. Its features may be somewhat changed, but there is the same outline, the same expression. It may at one epoch handle different topics from those which engross it at another. Fashion, manners, character, books, and poli tics. The commonest leaders in the penny papers are strictly essays, no less than most of the Review articles, The best portion of the contemporary lectures and addresses is strictly of an essay character, and the passages in the greatest orations are of the same description, and can be taken from the text in which they appear as independent essays. Trifling writers of insipid imitations of Byron and Moore, speak contemptuously of essays, as dull or vapid. No more such, we venture to say, than the same attempts of writers in verse of equal power. Dull essayists enough are to be found, but at least as many bad poets, and certainly a larger number of indifferent books of sermons. Indeed, a good essay is likely to be better than even a good sermon ; we entirely exclude those of the great old divines, who rank ESSAY WRITING. THE CHAMPION. 17 with the poets and dramatists of their age. A sermon ad mits of many formal divisions, easily filled up in a mechan ical manner ; it allows a good deal of commonplace, in the way of logical discussion and incentives to devotion. Its exhortations and apostrophes are stereotyped. And only the fancy of Taylor, the wit of South, the fullness of Bar row, the ingenuity of Clarke, can overcome the mass of arguments, illustrations, and appeals, that encumber the path of the preacher. Even able men are often dull in the pulpit ; while ; at the bar, or in a contest of wit, they might become bright by the encounter. Sermons must be copi ously written and illustrated, to suit the majority of con gregations ; essays must be close and compact ; containing a page in a paragraph, an argument in an epigram, full of quick transitions, stating results and processes, which must be alluded to, and in a word giving in a few pages what a common writer might spread over a volume. On this side of the water, notwithstanding its prevalence in the Review, the Magazine, and the Newspaper, we find a clever critic in a Charleston paper, simultaneously uttering the heresy of the London Spectator. As for this last writer's general remarks upon the essay, the facts of literary his tory are against him, from Bacon to Leigh Hunt. Eng lish literature has always been rich in essayists, though in the reign of William III. and Anne they were most promi nent. It is needless to make a long list, but we can promise this much : For every sterling writer of prose fiction in. England, we will bring the name and works of a classic, among the essayists. This assertion may appear a little loose or careless, but we can support it with confidence. Writers of this class have been quite too long huffed and bullied by the long-winded historical novelists and re- 18 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. viewers, who think the essay contemptible from its brevity, certainly not from its subjects, nor yet from its execu tion. J Our literature is pre-eminently a periodical one thus far, and slurs on the essay certainly do come with a bad grace from those who know the reading community with us live almost altogether on journals of different classes. Our finest writers thus far have been essayists, Dana, Channing, Eve rett, &c., to say nothing of minor names. It was once a common folly to depreciate a host of writers of short pieces, as minor poets, because the authors (thank heaven !) of no long poems ; yet they have often flown higher, if they do not remain so long on the wing. A falcon is a nobler bird than the buzzard, who may be hovering over carrion all day, while the former towers in his pride of place, when there is fit occasion, and does not waste his energies on every petty one. " The PhcEnix Pindar is a vast species alone," yet that same Pindar came from a certain district of Greece where the owls predominated, who doubtless thought they could see far better and judge more wisely than he. They are not a species alone; we have critical birds of the same strain here also. The political essay was that form first cultivated by the writers of consecutive papers, arranged in order, and under a leading caption. Thus the first series of essays in Eng land (not the miscellanies of Temple and Cowley) formed a melange of politics, social satire, town sketches, person ality, and criticism of these Defoe's Journal the Review, which preceded the Tatler and Spectator, is perhaps the first specimen of the kind we can point to. L'Estrange, ESSAY WRITING. THE CHAMPION. 19 who was the very first of the political pamphleteers,* re stricting his lucubrations chiefly to politics ; but Defoe, in his Review, had his club, like that in the Spectator, who discussed similar questions, and to whom were alloted va rious duties. From Defoe to Hazlitt, there have been the admirable collections of Addison, Steele, Swift, Bolingbroke, Fielding, Burke, Junius, and Johnson, to mention only the most prominent writers. In this list, Fielding, "the prose Homer of human na ture," finds a place, ga the ground of his Champion ; a book little known, but worthy of being revived in company with the Freeholder. In the Lord Mayor's grand annual procession, rides clad in complete steel, a doughty civic hero, who personates for the nonce the Champion of England. Now, alas ! a mere burlesque on the original of chivalry. In transatlantic ac counts of prize fights, we hear of the championship of England disputed or sustained by Gaunt, or Bendigo, Burke, or the hero of Bristol. In a far better sense, we would nominate Fielding as one of the true champions of England, a genuine representative of the manly characteristics of the race of which he was a faithful advocate and zealous defender. The title of his work, a collection of papers modelled on the early periodical essayists, more particularly on the Lover of Steele and the Freeholder of Addison, in its mixed char acter of a town journal and a political paper, in which the former very much predominates, is descriptive of its aim and character. It champions the right, and honest, and true, and simple, in polities and manners, in criticism and * Vide an article on Political Pamphleteering, Dem. Review, Oct., 1842. j *U ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. behavior. Not pretending a rivalry of the Tatler or Spec tator, to which it is much inferior, it is a very pleasing, readable copy of those delightful originals. "With more in vention, force, and dramatic power than Steele or Addison, Fielding has little of the taste or delicacy of either. He has humor, but stronger and broader than Addison, without his charming elegance he has wit, but not of the glancing, piquant style of Steele's best writing. He has manly sense, ingenious turns, and true feeling, with a style next to Steele. With rich abundance of character and description in his novels ; in this collection of essays, Fielding is com paratively meagre in both, though superior to some wriiers much more talked about. The Champion is for instance a far better work of its class, than the Idler of Johnson, or Hawkes worth's Adventurer, or the World or Microcosm. We are apt to suspect (we believe it is the fact) that this was merely one of a number of the jobs of the great novelist, and by which he should not in justice be mea sured. It is a work, upon which any living periodical writer might safely rest a good literary reputation, but which is not strong enough for the name of Fielding, had he not written Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. Still, there is hardly a paper in it, without sentences or paragraphs quotable for their acute sense or ingenious turn of expression ; a talent Fielding inherited from Steele. And here we may stop to trace the parallel features, in which these two true wits and genuine good fellows resembled each other. Both gentlemen, men of the world, professed men of pleasure, living on the town, and by their wits, guilty of the greatest imprudences, but we believe of nothing more, according to the trite saying, their own worst ene mies, although most friendly to all others beside ; at one ESSAY WRITING*. THE CHAMPION. 21 time living in affluence, and soon after in a spunging house or a jail, or trammelled within the rules of the Fleet, cheerful, social, humane, and thoughtless, yet most acute and penetrating observers of life, and manners, and cha racter, and as writers, matchless for an easy, natural, graceful style, that conveyed the justest and most sensible, if they were grave, or if gay, the most pleasing and subtile, agreeable sentiment : Sir Richard Steele, and Henry Field ing, Esq., were intellectually and socially and morally brothers, in pens as well as they might have been in arms. Fielding, as a metaphysician and painter of character, is as much above Steele, as he is above all other novelists, in his peculiar style. Yet as a mere essayist, Steele is the piaster, the original, whom his later disciple is content to follow with admiring steps. II. TRAITS OF AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP, DE TOCQXTEVILLE, in one of the chapters of his work on America, thus characterizes the literature of a democratic state : " There will be more wit than erudition, more ima gination than profundity ; and literary performances will bear marks of an untutored and rude vigor of thought frequently of great variety and singular fecundity. The object of authors will be to astonish rather than to please, and to stir the passions more than to charm the taste." Without entering into the question, at present, of what may be yet expected from America, or even of what has been produced honorable to the country, and there is much to exhibit on the positive side, it may be a matter of curiosity to test ths peculiar requisitions of the distinguished French critic by a few of the results of actual experience. Our literature has, in fact, been the very opposite of the condi" tions claimed by De Toequeville. He demands originality, force, passion, fruitfuluess. What have been the accepted productions of American authorship ? They disclose, for the most part, just the opposite qualities, of imitation, tame" ness, want of passion and poverty. In place of dramatic power, we find almost altogether descriptive taleat ; for energy, elaborate elegance ; for pas-- TRAITS OP AMERICAN AUTHORSHII? . 23 sion, sentimentality, not even (the very few instances, again, excepted, of the best character) sentiment, and] so far from fruitfulness in the case of our best writers, they are uncommonly meagre, and easily exhausted. Fecundity is, with us, rather a badge of disgrace, considered a mark of our worst pretenders to authorship. Imitation is natural, or rather, we should say, was for. merly pardonable, from our social and political condition. For to the end of the last century, or even the first quar ter (perhaps) of the present, there were good English wri ters in the country, with no pretence to an American spirit, except in their political speculations. The grave writing of that period, and the lighter efforts as well, were con ceived and modelled on English originals. The dependence of the colonies had not yet ceased : our independence was civil only. This was especially the case in New England from the fact of its early settlement by Englishmen. There the English race was kept pure, without the admission of foreign elements. This made New England the stronghold of the English feeling of the country. This kept her, for a long while, the most provincial and colonial part of the Union. This made Boston a literary town for English wares, and gave to it its peculiar character and attitude, in respect to English writers, who found their heaven there> when as voyagers they arrived, all prepared for idolatry and man-worship. How different from New- York, which is cosmopolitan, and truly a' Metropolis, the city of the Dutch, and of the English, and of the native American, crossed by the French, German, Welsh, Scottish and Irish races a city of the world like London, not a country town of literateurs and blue-stockings. There can be no doubt of the incalculable moral value of England to us as a 24 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. means of culture. Our past is hers, and let no man under value the sacred influences of Ancient Times, when rival ries are forgotten, jealousies have disappeared, when the drama of life appears to us simple and complete, when evil has perished and good alone remains. The tree of Ameri can Literature will be found to have its roots in English soil. But we can only show ourselves capable of receiving those blessed lessons by having in ourselves the virtue to live an independent life. "To him that hath shall be given." Tameness, as general as imitation, and its co-relative, may be deduced from the same cause. Coldness of tempe rament, and the unnatural development of the faculty of taste, have " repressed the noble rage " of our writers ; even in those whose early or most spontaneous writings are instinct with strength and self-reliance. Taught to look up to certain English names as unapproachable, and only to be copied with assiduous care, they have feared to give full scope to their natural genius, which they rather confined within the barriers of propriety and decorum. Hence our finest poets have been, save when their Muse would not be trammelled, but soared " Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air," in the majority of cases, themselves, gladly and humbly, " Content to dwell in decencies for ever." Hence the frequent charge of Plagiarism, upon which, as between authors of original merit, little account is always to be placed for what may appear to be a theft to minds of coarse perceptions, might, perhaps, be held by the great originals as simply a proof of honorable allegiance to them- TRAITS OF AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP. 25 selves. There is such a thing as this allegiance, and the thoughts of great authors may be worn by later ones as modern piety wears and hallows the relics of ancient reli gion. For our own part, we like to trace this communica tion between the writers of distant times. It is proof of common sympathies ; the zeal which reverences may not be very far from the original spirit which creates. But it is quite another matter when the jackdaw struts about in borrowed plumes ; when "memory and her syren daugh ters " are invoked in quite another than the Miltonic sense ; when affectation and pretence take the place of reverence ; and imbecility challenges the seat of power. The evil un- rebuked increases with alarming rapidity. When our critics talk of our poets by hundreds, they make it a matter of fashion to set up for a poet, and the regiment of the Muses is speedily filled by a crowd of fops and pretenders without strength or valor. "We see delicate and tasteful artists and adapters rather than original authors, and the plaudits of the one transferred to the other ; the phenomenon of the disciple above his master ; a democratic highway to Par nassus travelled by witlings ; Sancho Fanza receiving in earnest the honors of governorship. The want of passion is a defect so prominent, that we must try to account for it still further. Not to repeat the standard criticism, that the bulk of American writing hitherto has been done in New England, and thence re ceived its cold impress from the local character ; it is also to be observed, that the majority of our writers, serious and gay, alike, have come out from the profession of the law, a school, undoubtedly, of ingenuity, perspicuity and intellectual force, but not equally a nursery for the imagi nation, or fancy, or sentiment. The temple of Themis is 26 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND not built upon Parnassus' Hill, and although we are honest* ly told by one of the old masters, that there are poets which did never dream upon Parnassus, yet few poets, we sus pect, have ever lived who have not seen it at least in visions of the night. The law has given us our great practical statesmen, and fervid orators, and acute critics, and logical heads, and wise moral teachers, and sharp sati rists of vice and folly ; but it has no fair pictures, or noble forms, or aerial harmonies. It is not the true calling of the poet, though many true poets have been lawyers. Circumstances have had their effect ; the necessity of leaving literary pursuits for more profitable labors, the love of gain or reputation in some other line, overlaying the natural weak, since so easily benumbed 'impulses of the mind. Characters have changed ; the ardent youth has become a cautious man ; trade has taken the place of poe try, and a love of art has been supplanted by a total indif ference to all early impressions. How stands the point of productiveness ? To confess the truth, the few good, and the very few admirable wri ters we have, have done comparatively little, from one or all of the causes above enumerated, and have done that at a very early age. This reminds us of as frequent a trait to be met with as any of the rest ; the early maturity of our writers, which has as often been followed by as early a decay of power. The vein was shallow and soon worked. Certain sentiments or fancies had early possessed the mind and heart, and demanded immediate utterance. These Were produced, and with freshness, vivacity, and genuine force. Afterwards, the author, if modest and a self-stu dent, a man of culture, feels he cannot do better, or, per chance, equal his first effort. He retires from the arena, TRAITS OF AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP. and becomes a miniature classic. This is the truth ^ our best men, but a vast herd continue writing worse 1 " worse, until at last the severest punishment for them >"" be to read their own works, under which they have ne( * the little spirit or the small faculty with which tr se * out. From these hasty remarks one may readily in' the following conclusions : that our writers have been -'gene ral men of talent, and rarely men of genius ; rePg * much upon artificial aids, and by far too little on e ever- fresh resources of nature. That their greatest ijjl defect, too often with the best, has been want denoe ; and the leading moral defect occasio^y with others, a want of honesty. in. HOME CRITICISM. nourish in this country, if no other form of prose "Viting meet with favor, for Americans are con fessedly artcute and shrewd race. These faculties applied to the judaent of books and authors, by educated men, ought to be ade the most of in the absence of original pow er and create genius. Goldsmith has remarked in one of his Essays, iat criticism is more highly cultivated in the decline of th higher productions of art and genius ; which opinion, wittyhose who consider American to form a sup plement of EJglish Literature, itself in their view effete, and in its ver weakest phase, should be allowed as an ar gument in faior of our position. In the judgment of some of the ablest (vriters, American critics stand in the most favorable atti^de for judging English authors, as perfectly free from biai of any kind, not blinded by patriotism or party, beyond the reach of rivalry, and uninfluenced by malevolence or friendship. Many portions of English Literature are lp be recriticised, and that from a new point of view, such as is afforded only to American writers. Es* pecially the contemporary literature of England can be best estimated here, where distance and difference of govern ment place the American critic in the position which would HOME CRITICISM. 29 naturally be filled by an English writer of the succeeding generation. In this surely we are the posterity of the pre sent race of English authors, and consequently, can judge more dispassionately and clearly than might be expected of contemporaries. But we do not intend to go further into this question at present. Our object now is, to point out the prevailing character of our home critics : to depict the general de fects of our criticism, rather than to paint the portraits of the few fine critics we have ; to show what ought to be avoided more than what we should seek to attain : this is our present endeavor. What is the character of our criticism ? Is it reliable, is it sincere or thoroughly just ? "We may safely and truly answer, no ! It is not reliable because it is not sincere : it is unjust because deficient in thoroughness. Morally and intellectually it is unsound. Much of it is paltry and shal low, more is spurious and mercenary. From personal or party reasons, on some private ground of pique or partial ity, from prejudice or from prepossession, almost all of our written criticism is either directly hostile or friendly towards and on account of the writer, not his book. It is the man, not the author or his book that conciliates or repels, makes friends or enemies, and keeps them through a literary ca reer. This is manifestly wrong. Criticism absolutely just, we hardly have at all. Puffing and abuse form the two extremes of criticism ; the two strings upon which its professors love to play, and incited to either much more from impulse than any settled design ; and so well is this understood, that most newspa per notices have just the influence and tendency of the ad vertisements for quack medicines, to deceive nobody but 30 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. the ignorant and simple. " Mr. Orator Puff had two tones to his voice," and so with the newspaper critics, they have but two also, the one " up high," eulogium. and the other "down low," detraction. It is not intelligent. Few of those who sit in the seat of judgment are fit for the office ; they rather sit in the seat of the scornful. And they generally do both, which is the reason their judgments are unjust and ridiculous. Themselves wanting in true literary feeling, in honest en thusiasm, or as honest indignation, in independence, in knowledge, we should not wonder at the vile subterfuges and miserable apologies for criticism, that pass under its name. How many professed literary critics, conductors of literary journals, are adapted to their duties ? From lazi ness, or want of training, we have few educated critics ; a class of writers requiring knowledge of books more than any other. The poet may rely upon his fancies, the his torian on oral tradition, the philosopher may study only his own mind, but the critic must have learning to compare and contrast, to distinguish and divide, to apprehend a va riety of talents and topics, authors and manners of writing, and forms of composition. The want of knowledge has led to the most prominent defect of our criticism indiscrimination. This is shame fully common. The good are all good alike : the bad no worse than the worst. Everything like nicety or refine ment is lost in a wide and sweeping confusion of epithets. Wycherly has said, in his manly way, that it is wicked to speak well of those who don't deserve to be well spoken of, since the good men are thereby indirectly depreciated. A good man, or writer, can but be so called ; while if a knave passes for a gentlemen, the gentleman passes for no better than the knave himself. HOME CRITICISM. 31 The character of the critic is misunderstood. He is not to be carping at every petty fault, but must be able to praise with judgment. He must have a natural capacity for his office. The true critic is as much fitted, by nature and education, for his office, as the poet is for his. With him, too, he must have a cordial sympathy, and a heart open to all the impulses of goodness and beauty. Truth and justice should be his leading guides, not pleasure or fancy ; yet, to express the noblest truth, he must be much more than an exact didactic writer : an able critic of Locke will prove but an indifferent judge of Milton. Locke him self made sad havoc when he attempted poetical criticism. To be truly fair, the critic must have an intimate sympathy with his authors ; Lamb, only, could write cordially of Donne and Burton. Hazlitt is the best expounder of Abra ham Tucker, and John Buncle, Rousseau, the novelists and essayists. Hunt is best in writing on Chaucer and Milton's minor poems. American criticism should be principally directed to American writers and their contemporaries, as well as to living European authors. American criticism of an En glish book should be so far impartial, that no review or no tice of it should be read by the critic before he has finished his work, which should be entirely individual. We have had as much imitation and plagiarism of for eign criticism as of foreign original writing. The reviewers have shown, at least, as much deference as the poets to their English brethren, and we are not sure that they have not been still more servile and dependent. The reader can readily enumerate, on his fingers, the good, the fine, the just critics we have, while to enumerate the trifling, the malignant, the shallow, the illiterate, almost transcends the powers of numbers. IV. THE TWO EVERETTS." WE have here three volumes of miscellanies by two ac complished brothers, American writers, whom in their sphere and with their individual talents, we should cherish as among the ablest of their class we can point to, albeit we may not rank that class very high, nor consider its pro minent members as the astounding and immense (that's the favorite laudatory adjective of the day) prodigies of genius and scholarship certain hyberbolical eulogists claim them to be. We have unfeigned respect for the man who at an early age filled the chair of Greek Professor, which he re signed for the pulpit of a most desirable parish of which he was the idol, and which he in turn resigned for the editorship of the North American Review after which, entering into political life, we find Mr. Everett, successively Senator and Governor of his native State, Ambassador to England, and finally, at the present writing (1847), President of Harvard University, the oldest literary institution of the country. 1. Importance of Practical Education and Useful Knowledge ; a selection from the Orations and other Discourses of Edward Eve- rett. Ne\v York, Harper & Brothers. J5. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays first and second Series. By Alexander H. Everett. 2 vols. 12mo. Boston, James Munroe & Co. THE TWO EVERETtfS. 33 Mr. Alexander Everett has gone through much the same course, and with almost equal eclat ; we are not aware that he was a popular pulpit orator, nor that he went to Con gress ; but he has filled successively, the offices of Clergy man, Editor, President of a College, and Diplomatist. The volume of Edward Everett is filled with essays, ad dresses, &c., addressed to the audiences at the Mechanics' Institute and similar societies of Boston ; where, in his Lec tures, his aim always appears to have been the improve ment of artisans, and of making labor intelligent, to stim ulate the invention of workingmen, to give them an ob- ]'ect above the supply of those common wants which render labor necessary, but which does not give it a character of refinement or elevation, such as science or philosophy im parts. The Miscellanies of Alexander Everett are truly such, being essays (articles in reviews) on topics of history, literature, manners, philosophy; sensible discussions couch ed in a clear, readable, and sometimes graceful style. The leading trait in the addresses of Edward Everett is a graceful didacticism, somewhat trite and commonplace it must be confessed, both as to topics and the manner of pre senting them ; he is too fond of recurring to certain stereo typed instances of industry and perseverance ; yet if super ficial, he is always correct and pleasing, his matter tells far more effectually in a spoken address (most of the present essays first appeared in that form) than in an elaborate arti cle. His personal presence, carriage, and action, make up for want of boldness of views, for an almost utter want of imagination and fancy, and power of thought. Force, Everett has next to none, nor has he any degree of fancy, beyond an occasional streak of ingenuity in illustration, the least possible satiric sting, a glimpse of pleasantry. These 34 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. papers are chiefly made up of facts and illustrations, very neatly compiled with care, " All rang'd with order, and disposed with grace," to confirm some popular principle or to set off an obvious sentiment. The ground-work of his addresses into which these facts are woven, is very plain sense and very thin sen timent elegantly dressed up. His muse is an ordinary look ing, economical, neat-handed housewife, with a pleasant voice, clean, dressed like a lady, and with agreeable manners. Everett appears in his works, purely as a teacher, dog matic and direct, his dogmatism (never obtrusive) and his didacticism being covered and wrapped up in the folds of his insinuating style. He is an accomplished rhetorician. As a polished gentleman, man of business, diplomatist, and classical scholar, Everett stands "primus inter primos ;" we speak only of the author and of the volume before us. We know little of Mr. Everett as the editor of the North American, but we presume he was at least the equal of the Sparkses and Palfreys who succeeded him. Alexander Everett is generally considered a man of more varied acquirements, as to the languages, literature, and philosophy of the nations of Europe equally a statesman and man of business ; originally, too, both Unitarians, and clergymen, and New Englanders ; of much the same cast of mind and talent with his distinguished brother, only per haps less airy and graceful in point of style. The brothers may be fairly considered as representing a particular phase of American literature, thus far, and as confirming certain established strictures upon it. They represent the New Englandism of American wri ters ; they represent the intellectual Unitarian sect, and the THE TWO EVERETTS. 35 large body of respectable prose writers of this country, the literary orators, lecturers, critics, scholars, translaters. They have carried taste, in its lowest form (cold and cautious), to its point of perfection, and they have exhibited all the marks of colonial writers ; good and sensible writers, they are yet no more American (albeit Alexander Everett has written largely of American literature, and Edward Ever ett has dwelt on the physical features of the country), than if writing from Ireland or the Island of Jamaica, or any other portion of the British possessions. We have a few words to say on both of these topics. New Englandism has certainly made our writers imitative, con strained, tasteful, and timid. That portion of our country, more English and as decidedly sectional, perhaps more so, than either the South or the West, is certainly far better educated, more intellectual and more desirous of literary fame than either. As a district, New England has (as a matter of fact) produced on a fair allowance two-thirds of the best writers we have yet to show. We say this, though native born New-Yorkers, and proud of Irving and Cooper, still the foremost American classics ; we say this with a full knowledge of our best men here. The cause for this supe riority lies in their exclusiveness and the sober qualities of the Yankee character, inherited from a peculiar race of men, earnest and vigorous ; the absence, formerly almost entire, of public amusements, then held there in disgrace, and now little more than barely allowed ; the fact of the establish ment, in that part of the country, first of all, of universities arid schools. We had no Harvards, Yales, or Berkleys. Our Dutch ancestors were not generally lovers of literature, either here or in the mother country (for though Holland was full of learned men, it has rarely had popular cosmopo- 36 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. litan writers) ; commerce, thrift, comfortable living, quiet, chiefly occupied their attention, not the quarrels or the amen ities of literature. The looking constantly to England gave its provincial tone to the writers of New England, and encouraged imita tion, a trait in our writers almost universal. "VVe have had American counterfeits of every English writer of this cen tury, from Scott down to the conductors of the most scurri lous English Sunday newspapers. Too often, an inferior writer has been the model, and from being surpassed perhaps by his American copyist, some have come to place Ameri can literature on a par with, or above English. The Everetts may be regarded as representing the force of the Unitarians who have yet much stronger men to boast of, and who, as including the most intellectual class of Amer icans, are entitled at least to respectful mention. They count among them now, Bryant, the Sedgwicks, Mrs. Kirk- land, the Everetts, Dewey, Bancroft and formerly Chan- ning and the Wares, Emerson, Brownson, and a number of individuals less able and less well known, yet intelligent and accomplished characters. Rationalism, a love of dialectics and of speculative inquiry, together with much elegance of taste, variety of information and skill in writing, distinguish this sect, and these are qualities and tendencies that curb the fancy and check the flights of imagination. They have, hence, but one true Poet (we think) of their communion ; most of them are reasoners, critics, scholars, lecturers, essay ists, speculative philosophers. They address the understand ing or the moral sentiment ; rarely appeal to the feelings ; still less frequently to the imagination. Hence their writers are apt to be tame and cautious ; they are accurate and neat, but cold and superficial. They have no passion, not much THE TWO EVERETTS. 37 enthusiasm, nor any marked individuality. Channing's elo quence is noble declamatory sentiment, not the fire of native eloquence. The style and reach of thought and rhetorical skill of the Everetts (in a lower degree) are much the same ; and we think any judicious reader must confess, that we have told only the truth, without circumlocution or evasion respecting these gentlemen ; who, both as writers, scholars, public characters, and private gentlemen, deserve well of their countrymen, though merely as writers we should place them lower than in their other characters ; not overlooking, in re cording their best qualities, in a literary point of view, of elegance of mind and style, general justness and propriety of sentiment, with much varied acquisition. 3 r. POEMS BY CLEMT C. MOOltE, LL.E THIS is a pure volume of refined and classie Poetry, in itsr genuine sense. Not to be sure in the highest sense, for these pages include none of the higher aspirations of the Muse. There is nothing dramatic nor epical ; no Pindaric strains, no Miltonic fervor and sublimity, nor the grand sweep of Dryden's glorious verse, but there is still a great deal that is truly excellent, nay admirable, both positively and negatively. To begin with the latter cold praise, (which we do not mean to be so considered, in these days of extravagance and crudity, in poetical attempts,) there i not a particle of affectation, cant, false pretence, or straining after eiFect, in the whole collection. Artistically and morally, it is one of the most honest books we ever read. The author does not once feign a sentiment or court popular prejudice ; he is utterly without duplicity er ostentation. It is true, circumstances may have had something to do with this. Dr. Moore, the son of the excellent Bishop Moore, of New- York, himself not only a pure and refined character, but superadding to the accomplishments of the gentleman the nobler character of a benevolent Christian philanthropist, has been most fortunately placed as well for the culture of refined taste as for the development of indi vidual character. POEMS BY CLEMENT C. MOORE, LL. D. 39 The author of this volume (we add this for the benefit of those who are ignorant of his name and position) is at present a professor of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, giving his services for the benefit of the Institution (to which he presented the grounds on which the buildings stand, with the beautiful adjacent green) and the Church. The poems here collected, are the fruit of leisure hours, and form the expression of personal feelings. They are mostly occasional poems : a description of verses often styled fugitive, but not assuredly to be such in this instance, and we risk little in predicting a permanent repu-. tation for them and their author. Refinement is their characteristic ; not weakness nor sentimentality, but fine sense, elegance, graceful turns of pleasantry, natural and pleasing sentiment, genuine pathos. Gilford's highly praised verses to his Anna are weak and pue : rile compared with the verses to the Poet's Children, to his late wife, and on the death of a favorite daughter. The purest moral feeling and polished versification are also to be remarked as prominent traits of Dr. Moore's poetry. Neither Bryant nor Dana is more careful in the musical structure of his verse ; neither of these finished poets is more deserving of being read, for elevation and high aims. Yet there is no assumption on the part of the poet. From his natural elevation, and from a religious tone of character, surrounded by admiring friends and devoted children, our author writes naturally either as a moralist or as a companion, when he writes for others : it is different when he pours out the full tide of his own feelings, in the purest elegiac verse, far more touching than the verses of Hammond, whom it was once the fashion to call the Eng lish Tibullus. In humor, too, our author has been quite 40 ESSAYS WON AtTHOES AND BOOKS, successful. His visit of St. Nicholas, we believe, has been regularly reprinted for some years past in certain of our city journals ; and together with the two exquisite poems of " Lines to my Children, with their Father's Portrait," and " Lines from a Husband to his Wife," are to be found in most of the collections of American poetry. Dr. Moore's poetical talents incline him to domestic themes and incidents and characters ; he is a disciple of Cowper and Goldsmith ; yet by no means an imitator of either. His vein is original : his manner is his own still, his admiration for classic models may guide his taste and control his pen. Both of these fine poets might be proud of such a follower, each of them would have gloried in such a friend. We can see nothing in this writer of the ordinary sins of American versifiers, no plagiarism, no imitation, no morbid feeling, no rhetorical flourishes, no transcendentalism. The poems are occasional ; and so far, instead of being worthy of rejection on that score, they are the natural effu sions of the writer's heart and fancy. After the highest walks of song, the drama and the epic, (only worthy, when admirable,) what forms of verse are so enduring and so pop ular, as the songs and ballads which make up the popular staple of every national poetic literature ? These are truly occasional, spontaneous, individual. It is in such poems the poet writes his life, gives his experience ; proclaims his joys and praises ; embalms a friend or an enemy ; deepens a sentiment or renders his description most vivid. The regu lar forms of poetry seem strained and elaborate compared with this. They want, apparently, the impulse which gives truth to these, and which infuses its life into them. Other verse is more reflective or philosophical : this gives the essence of the art ; the true poetic afflatus. POEMS BY CLEMENT C. MOORE, LL. D. 41 Much of our American verse (the best portion) is lyrical. Not always verses for music, nor drinking songs, nor effu sions of gallantry, though we can point to a rich anthology of that class. But a lyrical spirit runs through much of the serious poetry of Bryant, all of Halleck's and Brainard's ; and most of the productions of Dr. Moore's muse are essen tially lyrical, although they often run into the more purely elegiac form of this, the following poems are more espe cially to be remarked, in confirmation of our criticism. The Organist, a spirited address, in epistolary guise, the Wine Drinker and the Water Drinker, two capital poems, that would have delighted Green, (author of the Spleen,) and much after his manner ; and that must gratify every ra tional man, as well as lover of fine verse ; and the exquisite lines to my Daughter on her Marriage, the equally admira ble address to Southey, which with the fine poems to the Poet's Children and Wife, we have referred to before, em phatically stamp our Poet's mastery of the pathetic, in do mestic scenes. The parallel may seem strained, but we are apt to compare these rare gems with such a poem as Cow- per's Address to his Mother's Picture ; and we think our bard loses not a whit by the comparison. With Goldsmith, our poet is a model of simplicity and natural grace, which shine out in the lightest copy of verses. A few of the pieces in this volume of this kind and exactly suited to the occasion that produced them, may not be adequately appreciated by the common reader, but none can fail to be impressed (who have a heart to feel or a taste sufficiently cultivated to ap preciate our author's delicacy) with the poems we have mentioned above. They are, truly, classical poems. VI. AMERICAN VERSE :-RALPH HOYT. WHAT is true, generally, of the best poets, holds with re gard to our own writers of verse : they are almost invaria bly the briefest. Brevity is the essence of wit in its widest acceptation ; of passion and imagination no less than of epigrammatic smartness. The very highest flights of Fancy cannot be long sustained ; the most brilliant flashes of genius are the most evanescent. This has ever been the case, from the days of the He brew Bards to the present epoch. And where great Poets have written long poems, how few of these are fairly en- denizened in the national heart, and have taken a firm hold on the popular feeling. Few, very few, great, long poems survive a very limited period ; and even the classic national epics, which can be counted on the fingers, are by no means perfect throughout. In the grandest of epics, Paradise Lost, how much there is one could willingly let die. Many fine poets of the second rank assume that position from their perfect short pieces, not from mediocre long ones. But a short effort must be complete and finished, in itself, to be valuable. It is, as in statuary : the critic de mands perfection ; whereas, in architecture, one is necessa rily more lenient. Or, as in painting, an historical picture AMERICAN VERSE: U.ALPH HOTT. 43 may be deficient in parts, while a portrait ought to reflect the living features. Tet, one shall often find the Poet pri ding himself on his elaborate and longer productions, and contemning, as slight and worthless, those fugitive, occa sional effusions which alone stamp him with immortality. The length of the performances of our Poets is in an. inverse ratio to their intrinsic merits. Thus far, the longest are superlatively meagre and valueless, and fill single volumes, any one of which would probably contain the Gems of American Verse. We need aa American anthology, which should bring together raany delicate blossoms, mostly reared in hot houses, and which can ill bear the rude air of common criticism or the chilling breezes of neglect. Our Parnassus is a garden of exotics chiefly : we have no forest trees yet growing upon it. The soil is not hardy and vigorous enough for the towering oak or majestic elm : it produces, instead, the ever-sweet rose, the graceful lily, the variegated ftilip, and the exquisite mignionette. "We have no cedars of Lebanon, but beautiful japonicas. The cactus is a true type of our poetical flowers. It is a foreigner ; it is raised and developed with care and pains ; and its flower is delicately fair. 'Critically, the American Poets fall within the class of Minor Poets. They do not as a class none of those whose verse will last write at length, or in the highest walks of the Epic and Tragic Muse. Yet, their efforts may be and often are excellent. And we have thus far at least a score but surely not over two hundred, as one collecter affirmed, a BOYt. 45 Tiarrative style ; fine touches of good humored satiric wit, with a true vein of mild and gentle pathos, just and deli cate sentiment, all couched in a style of transparent clear ness, of limpid beauty, constitute the poetic capital of our poet. Mr. Hoyt is to be considered chiefly as a rural, descrip tive poet, and as a domestic painter. He is at home in the fields and by the fireside. No grand, no brilliant, no pro found bard is he, but peculiarly sweet and agreeable. He might be ranked, perhaps, with Farnell, (their lives are dif ferent, to be sure, but the sum total, to speak mathemati cally of his poetical traits and talents, might be accounted as nearly equal to those of the Gtueen Anne's poet,) who stands among the lesser lights, the Dii Minores of the poeti cal firmament. Altogether, Mr. Hoyt has published very little ; two very thin pamphlets, previously to his last collection, which includes the best things in the earlier publications, as well as his more recent efibrts. But they " are choicely good," as Walton says of Marlow and Raleigh, better than most of " the strong lines in this critical age." Lovers of sim plicity, of meditative reflection, of polish, sentiment, and purity of style, will admire the verses of Mr. Hoyt ; but the majority of poetical readers will think him wanting in passion and excitement. Indeed he eschews passion, dra matic effect, and " exciting" topics altogether. His favorite topics are domestic scenes of fireside happiness, the joys of innocence and home, the heaven of childhood, the beautiful serenity of virtuous age. Nor is he deficient in touches of ironical humor, with out bitterness, and instinct with wisdom. He has a manly vein of satire and eloquence, as in World Sale and New, 3* 46 ESSAYS trrotf AUTHORS A?O> BOOKS. Snow and Rain are universally admitted to be finished landscapes ; and, indeed, we agree with Mr. Hoyt's critic in the American Review, (we believe the late Mr. Colton,) that these are the best specimens of idyllic verse, or rural painting, that American poetry can show. Other names may be mentioned more brilliant, of more varied resources, of more profound philosophy ; TVC have had lyrists and moralists in verse of the first class ; but, perhaps, no one, who, in his peculiar sphere, has surpassed Mr. Hoyt. His sphere is limited ; it is the province of the domestic poet and pastoral bard : its range is narrow, yet in it he is a master. The peculiar measure of Mr. Hoyt's poetical efforts strikes us most agreeably, though they have affected other critics differently. The returning strain, the recurrence of a harmonious line, add, to our ear, to the rhythmical beauty. Yet it is a mannerism, and might become monotonous. Most of these poems have passed through a number of edi tions and meet a ready sale. Their popularity affords proof that an uncontaminated poetical taste still remains. Mr. Hoyt has in print some delightful poetical jeux d' esprit : we wish he would collect them with these pieces in a larger volume. In the Evening Mirror, he has had several ; and we have lighted upon verses in the Sun, so much superior to the common run of newspaper verse, that we charged upon our author pieces he confessed to be his. We have not quoted a line, as we wish our readers to find out the separate beauties for themselves. The critic is a literary taster, but the reader must mark and inwardly digest for himself. Mr. Hoyt is a clergyman of the Episcopal Church, and may be fitly regarded as the best clerical poet, by far, of AMEEICAN VERSE : RALPH HOYT. 47 that church. A modest, though manly preacher, he is not by any means a fashionable preacher ; most fortunately for us and for his own true interest, though not for his pecu niary interest. Able controvertists arise, flourish, die, are forgotten. Brilliant declaimers flash and vanish more suddenly still ; but genuine poetry outlasts controversies and fashions in oratory, though it gives no personal popularity or worldly honors, or worldly gear. The Muse yields nothing perish able to her followers. . Gold is not lasting, but glory is ; so the Poet, too often, is poor and famous. In the case of a professional man, this should not be ; and we hope will not be with our author. Such as he, the Church should especially cherish. VII. THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF R. H.DANA. THE review of American novelists in the Foreign Quarterly, just and fair in the main, was yet guilty of omissions that should have heen noticed at the time, and the authors neg lected fully discussed by a competent critic. It is not our purpose at present to occupy the whole ground, nor to at tempt filling the wide and unseemly gap left by the review er more, we apprehend, from ignorance or inadvertence, than from any desire to suppress excellence, or hide real merit. That duty we leave to the American critic, who can honestly appraise the peculiar talents and unique productions of several among our lighter writers, whose names we might mention, not one of whom is alluded to by the critic ; while two serious writers the one a great painter, and the other a true poet, of unquestioned excellence as writers of prose fiction, Allston in his Monaldi, and Dana in certain tales, among prose fictions holding a somewhat analogous rank to that the master-pieces of Heywood and Middleton would sustain in a comparison with the Shaksperian drama have been passed over without attracting the most casual remark. This extreme carelessness may furnish some excuse for the critical remarks we are about to make, and for attempt ing to sketch the features of one of the purest and noblest of our American men of genius. THE LITERARY CHARACTER OP R. H. DANA. 49 An equally good reason for such a sketch may be found in the fact of the great injustice done our author by the present race of readers, to whom he is known only by name. Genius and virtue like that of Mr. Dana's should be kept fresh and alive befijre his countrymen. Such men as he are not given to the world to be left in doubt as to whether they have lighted upon their appropriate sphere, or whether they have not \vandered into some stranger orb. Though Mr. Dana has not been a voluminous writer, he has still written abundantly enough, and with adequate power, to reveal to all who can understand him, the purity and nobleness of his aims, and to impress young and docile minds with the wisest lessons of life and duty. It is now nearly a quarter of a century since we have seen anything in the way of prose fiction, in print, by the author of the Idle Man ; during which period so many candidates for public honor, and claimants for a niche in the temple of fame, have been pouring in, that the public eye is well nigh clouded by the sparkling ephemerida, and the public ear confounded by loud clamors and noisy appeals. In the midst of this hubbub, the silent speculative genius of Dana, and the power, the purity, and the classic cast of Dana's writings have passed almost unregarded. Among the thousands who devour James, the tens who study Dana may be easily enu merated. The lovers of historical melodrama see nothing in simple, undisguised, unaffected, yet most real and vigor ous true dramatic painting. Perhaps the American is too much of a philosopher for these readers, who are captivated by detailed narrative, and circumstantial description ; though, as a mere writer of tales, full of striking characters, closely crowded with stirring incidents, set in a frame of poetic de scription, and enshrined within a halo of pure imagination, 50 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. Dana is in the first rank of novelists. It is wrong to speak of him as a mere tale writer, for his tales are not only as long as certain short novels, (as long and longer than Rasse- las, Zadig, Candide, or the admirable fictions of Richter, Zschokke, and other German novelists,) but they are so closely woven that they read sometimes like abstracts of longer works. There is nothing to be spared ; the utmost economy is observed. Yet, as we said, the evident philo sophic character of the author, the basis, indeed, of his poet ical nature, as well as the love of speculating upon charac ter, the motives to action, the principles of conduct, may deter the mere readers for amusement, since Dana is mani festly a teacher of men, and is to be estimated rightly only in that character. He has selected prose fiction, we imagine, only as a vehicle for conveying certain pictures of life, por traits of certain individuals, wholesome moral satire, an ideal of contented private enjoyments, and of a life of active, enlightened duty. Sentiment, we apprehend, forms the most prominent fea ture in the genius and writings of Mr. Dana. No mere sen timentalist, our author is emphatically a man of sentiment ; no hypocritical Joseph Surface, full of cant and moral pre tensions, but a genuine man of feeling, unlike, or rather su perior to, Mackenzie's hero, in being besides a true philoso phic observer of life and character, a stern self-student, and a powerful painter, according to the stereotyped phrase, of men and manners. This attribute of sentiment, in the instance of our author, is at one and the same time, a moral and intellectual quality, religious, high-toned, upright, masculine, partaking of the pathetic sweetness of Mackenzie, and the stern dignity of Wordsworth. Apart from this faculty, Mr. Dana is a writer THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF R. H. DANA. 51 of great purity and power, of much acuteness, and elegance in other walks than in those of philosophic sentiment, or of sentimental description ; but in those he is master, and ranks first among his contemporaries and countrymen. He has vast power in depicting the struggles of the darker passions, jealousy, hatred, suspicion and remorse. Paul Felton has touches of Byronic force, and discloses a similar vein to that so fully opened, arid with such popular effect, in the works of Godwin and Charles Brockden Brown. Sentiment furnishes the key also to the criticisms of Dana. We noticed this in his lectures a few winters since, on the poets and dramatists. He finds this, his favorite faculty, beautifully expressed by the ballad writers and Shaksperian dramatists among the old writers ; and by Wordsworth and Coleridge, among the new ; and to them he has given his heart. The single critical paper, in the volume of Dana's selected works, on the acting of Kean, is full of it, no less than? of acuteness, and deep insight into the mystery of art, and which are colored and defined by it, to a point and degree that may be honestly declared as not being very far distant from perfection. The paper is almost equal in its way to Ella's admirable sketches, in the same vein of subtle criticism. As a writer of sentiment, love in its forms, both of sen timent and passion, (for it varies in different natures, and is the offspring of the affections and of the fancy, according to the individual constitution, mental or moral or sensitive, of the recipient and cherisher of it,) constitutes the staple of Dana's invention and speculation ; of love, in all its degrees, he is a delicate limner or a vigorous painter, according as the subject is a delicate woman or a manly man, a quiet re tired meditative nature or a stirring ambitious character. The female character has full justice done it by the writer 52 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. of Edward and Mary. Judging from his writings Mr. Dana has been a happy man. Yet he can paint a weak credulous mother, or a dashing heartless woman of fashion, (see Tom Thornton,) with as subtle skill as he can delineate the fond confiding heart, the clear and nice judgment, the gentle and amiable tastes of a true woman, and a goooTwife. With the single exception of the Buccaneer, his] finest poem, the entire body of his poetry is ethical and deeply im bued with the manner and cast of mind, distinguishable in the great English Bards, the elder and later. This is no disparagement ; moral verse (of all others) allows most of imitation, and is least marked by nationality : thus we think of Cowper, and Crabbe, and Wordsworth, in reading Dana ; we think of them as fellow- workers on the same field. Dana is no copyist, if he does employ, to a certain degree, the man ner of Cowper, which we think we perceive he does, in ' Fac titious Life ;' of Crabbe, in ' The Changes of Home,' and of Wordsworth in almost all the remaining pieces in the vol ume ; except, perhaps, in ' Thoughts on the Soul,' which might have been written (all the speculative portion of it ; indeed all but a few lines on the second page, in the more familiar vein of later writers) by Sir John Davies himself, who furnishes a text for the poet. Dana's poem is like the verse of the Elizabethan writer, equally close, full of thought and austere. The characteristic sentiment of Dana these poems are full of : he imbues all nature with his peculiar feeling and purity, and solemn fancy, as with an atmosphere of meditation and religious musing. Wordsworth has not in England worthier disciples of his school than Dana and Bryant, and they have done some things that no other of the followers of the great English poet have ever attempted. Critically to speak of Mr. Dana, he is truly ' eldest appren- THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF R. H. DANA. 53 tice in the school of art,' over which Coleridge and Crabbe and "Wordsworth preside. With the soul and heart of a poet, Mr. Dana has more of the speculative intellect than mere imagination or fancy, not that he is deficient in either. The critic's esthetical views are strongly tinged with his ethical doctrines, and a turn for moralising, and vein of spec ulation runs through all of his critical papers, and forms the basis (as it were) of his critical opinions with Plato and the highest spiritual philosophy, he seeks to unite invariably, the good and the beautiful ; he is not easy in their disunion, cannot properly admit their severance. Moral Beauty, the highest object of our love and admiration, is the sole beauty with him. Hence, our critic, like a true Poet, includes in the scope of his admiration, the highest qualities both of writing and manliness ; he would not take into his regard, minor and lighter graces, unaccompanied by purity and re ligion. Himself a Poet, and skilled in the mysteries of versifi cation, no less than in the subtle windings of the heart and the affections, Mr. Dana is admirably well qualified to judge of poetry, both as an artist and a thinker. To say nothing of his original capacity for the office of critic, with a judg ment clear and refined, powerful imagination, depth and fineness of feeling, high, healthy moral sentiment, purified by the practice of the manly virtues, and a life of single- hearted purpose, the Poet has, besides the general cultivation of his qualities, mastered the old English literature, and the entire fruitful K province of old English poetry, in particular. The structure and elaboration of the author's style prove this ; his language and expression is uncommonly choice and select, full of meaning, perfectly simple and unaffected, and yet to a scholar's eye full of richness and discrimination ; not 54 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. the finest but the justest terms are used ; nor is the manner above, but precisely equal to the matter, the latter is as abundant and copious as the former is refined and judicious. Much of Mr. Dana's prose (not in his Tales so much as in. his Essays and Reviews) has all the sweetness and fluent rhetorical amplitude of Taylor and the old Divines, carried sometimes almost to redundance. In direct narrative, our author can be rigidly concise and produce a powerful effect ia description, also by a few touches. VIII. TALES OF THE SOUTH AND WEST. ENGLISH critics have noticed, as a trait in American litera ture now becoming a veritable something, the facility of invention and power, with skill of execution, of our writers of fiction. American tales are at a premium at this present writing, in London and Edinburgh, and are employed to eke out the pages of some of the most flourishing of their magazines. From English critics of the present dynasty have come some of the most generous praises of American authors, as from Jerrold, Miss Barrett, and even Dickens, who at first copied Irving. The article on American works of fiction, in the For eign and Colonial Quarterly Review, some years since, was much the honestest and most liberal piece of criticism we have seen on American romance ; but its excellence is in its general judgment almost wholly ; inasmuch as many capital writers are not even mentioned, while inferior scribes occupy their place, to their exclusion. Such sins of omission and commission can result only from ignorance of their works. Dr. Bird, Mr. Ware, and Mr. Carlton receive a just sen tence ; whilst we read not a word respecting Mr. Dana, Judge Hall, Mr. Poe, Mr. Simms, authors certainly entitled to honorable mention. Not to speak of the finish, the humor, the delicate grace 56 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. of Irving, in his Dutch and English tales ; without referring to the fine invention, aerial fancy, and purely original vein of Hawthorne, in his admirable fancy sketches and admirable pictures of New England romance, that practical mingling of shrewdness and mysticism ; entirely excluding the do mestic histories of Mr. Dana, so earnest and true, instinct with genuine passion, and with its rare accompaniment, deep, rich, "marrowy" sentiment, the very breath of our intellectual and sensitive life ; and leaving entirely out of question the powerful fictions of Brown and Cooper, we still can point to a large body of writers of fiction, tales, " miniature novels," (which Schelegel thought the best form of the novel,) and narrative sketches, affording convincing proof, if any could be wanting, that imagination, at least adequate to the production of a prose fiction of the first class, and creative power, are not wanting here, and which, employed on American themes, whether of history, character or manners, legend or landscape, cannot fail to give to our literature a national character, which, indeed, it is every day acquiring. Thus, beside the genuine originals we have mentioned, we have to fill out a good list of tale- writers ; Miss Leslie, a sort of modernized Miss Burney on a smaller scale, and like her, expert in strong satire of vulgarity ; Miss Sedg- wick, pleasing in her home pictures and tales for children ; and pre-eminent among American female writers, Mrs. Kirkland, the cleverest sketcher of western manners we have, and the best western raconteur, at the same time ; not in the same line with Judge Hall or any other western writer, but in a class unique and individual. Of the two Neals, John has tact and power; Joseph, humor, (of the broadest,) and copiousness. The Portland writer is expert TALES OF THE SOUTH AND WEST. 57 in a love history or life-assurance story ; while the Phila- delphian is best in city scenes of local and burlesque humof . Briggs is quite at home in a satirical tale, with his ingenuity, tact, keen observation and dry humor. Hoffman can throw off a better hunting or sporting story than any writer we have. Mathews has both humor and pathetic skill, and in his Motley Book has done some excellent things. Sands left some laughable pieces, verging on caricature. The critic in the Quarterly referred to, says, and says hand somely, though truly : " We rarely, if ever, take up an American Annual or Magazine, without finding some one contribution individually racy, and without any peer or prototype on this side of the ocean " With the same critic we hardly agree, that though more unpretending in form than the regular novel, the list of tale writers, in their at tempts, "contains more characteristic excellence than is to be found in the library of accredited novels." We have no one capital novel except the Pilot; all Cooper's fictions, admirable as they are in scenes and particular descriptions, being confessedly, even according to Mr. Simms, Cooper's heartiest critic, excellent only in those passages, and abound ing in faults elsewhere. Many of these tales have a sectional character and reputation. They are, professedly, so in their choice of subject and back-grounds. It is a history of love or hate, to be sure ; but the locality is laid in Illinois, Michigan or South Caro lina, with the scenery peculiar to those regions. It is a love- history, but of planter, Indian negro, or early settler, and the interest varies accordingly, European readers cannot be supposed to read with sufficient knowledge, or with ana logous feeling of patriotic interest, and hence these national and local narratives lose for them a striking and peculiar 69 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. charm. To us, Americans, for this reason, they offer a very strong attraction, independent of the genius involved in the conception of them, or the artistic skill employed in their execution. "We have for the West, Judge Hall and Mrs. Kirkland ; for the South, Mr. Simrns ; for New-England, Mr. Haw thorne ; Dutch New- York has her Irving ; for revolutionary historical novelist, Cooper ; Philadelphia has her Brown ; Virginia, Wirt. Mary Clavers, the most agreeable and original of Ameri can female writers, the equal, not the imitator of Miss Mitford, is perhaps the best writer of western sketches and manners we have seen ; she pursues a course, and occupies a prominent place in her line of authorship, quite distinct from Judge Hall. The latter writer illustrates rather the historical romance of the west especially that of Indian and French settlers' life, than the manners of the present race of emigrants. Her sprightliness, good sense, and keen penetration, are inexhaustible, and her style is a clear and natural reflection of these fine qualities. Her circle is ap parently confined to that region ; but why it should be so, does not follow, necessarily, or by consequence. After the universal applause with which her western tales have been received, what new tribute can we bring to her grace, hu mor and naturalness ? Mrs. Kirkland is the Miss Burney of the new settlements, (not the Madame d'Arblay, for Evelina is the best of the fictions of that writer, as well as the earliest.) Her ordinary observation is not confined to the city or village, but flourishes in the back-woods. The broad vulgarity, the rustic pedantry, the senseless pretensions of a certain class of vulgar minds the world over, is to be found .wherever real coarseness but affected fastidiousness TALES OP THE SOUTH AND WEST. 5'9 exists. Mrs. Clavers, with all her satire of such persons, has nothing of the same quality in her own writings, a cri ticism that cannot so justly be passed upon the authoress of Evelina, who cherished a certain artificial gentility, the re verse in appearance of vulgarity, but still its invariable accompaniment. The humor of Mrs. Kirkland is gay and sympathetic, as well as keen and satirical. She can jest as well as ridicule ; she laughs with, as often as she laughs at, her characters. We know not anything we can add to our previous judgment of Mr. Simms' Wigwam and Cabin, save in the way of parallel with the somewhat similar series of tales by Judge Hall, the western historian, par excellence. Eoth are accomplished raconteurs, but Mr. Simms brings more of the novelist's art, and the concentrated force of the prac tised writer to his aid, than the Judge appears to us to pos sess, or to be able to control. In level passages, Hall is generally the neater writer, always correct and pleasing : yet Mr. Simms throws more power, passion and energy into his narratives. The Judge is something of a humorous satirist, and indulges in a playful vein of innocent raillery, which we are not apt to meet in the pages of the southern novelist. Making a fair allowance for the difference be tween the Indian in the south or at the west, we still think Mr. Simms' Indians the more truly and graphically painted. Judge Hall seems to be most at home in his romantic legends and domestic history of the early French settlers, their manners, customs, character and disposition. This writer holds a pleasing pencil, and with which he has sketched many a fair scene. His descriptions of the prairie scattered through all of his tales, are peculiarly well done. 60 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. Judge Hall has been very justly classified by a judicious critic, as a Western Irving, without his force of humor or fertility of resources ; comparatively a feebler writer, yet still well worthy of a place among our first American standards. For Irving's rich humor and charming descrip tion, you find in him agreeable pleasantry. He has not equal fineness, yet as much truth of sentiment. In style he is equally pure, though by no means as rich and mu sical. If Judge Hall is justly styled a "Western Irving, Mr. Simms may be at least as appropriately called the Cooper of the south. For, with his favorite novelist, the south ern writer enjoys in common many of his best qualities; his directness, manliness, force and skill in painting details. Mr. Simrns has produced no long work of the same sus tained interest and power as the Pilot, but he has done many capital things which either his Northern rival cannot execute, or will not attempt. In shorter tales, each of which embodies all the interest and concentrates the power of a fiction of higher preten sions of Indian and Planters' life, our southerner is at the head of a very respectable class of writers. He is a faith ful painter, also, of negro character, and perfectly at home with the average society and current manners of the south. He is admirable in his personal histories, as of Boone and "Weems in his local scenery, especially in Carolina and Georgia. His narrative is clear, racy, natural, constructed with practised art, (Mr. Simms has at least as much judg ment as invention,) and thoroughly American. In these novelettes the interest is always well sustained sometimes to a pitch of painful interest. Mr. Simms, besides, as critic and miscellaneous writer no less than as an imaginative wri- TALES OF THE SODTH AND WEST. 61 ter, is the foremost writer of the South, and is naturally the idol of those generous critics whose blood runs warmer than in these Hyperborean regions. He has identified him self with their feelings and institutions, and labors man fully to earn an honorable place for his native State, not only in a political, but also in a literary point of view. IX. THE LECTUBE. THE lecture, as a form of composition, is a skilful union of the oration and the essay. The lecturer is, consequently, both writer and speaker, and enjoys the double advantage of an audience of hearers as well as of readers. Hence, the personal reputation of the able lecturer is much more captivating than the general reputation of even a popular author, and, consequently, the field is crowded with com petitors. The lecture is to be tested, therefore, in two ways : as it reads, and as it sounds when delivered. In one of the two departments it must take, else it fails altogether. A skilful declaimer may palm off a worthless production on his hearers by the charms of voice and manner, but print is the final appeal ; on the other hand, a careful thinker may be a tiresome reader or speaker ; but in his case, too, print must decide his merits. The lecture is the popular philosophical teaching of the day. It is essentially didactic, and here most popular lec turers err ; they substitute the declamation, or literary address, for the lecture ; they adorn and illustrate, instead of analysing and discussing, old or new truths. They ap pear to regard the lecture merely as an occasion for orator ical display. Now this, in the best instances, certainly THE LECTURE. 63 forms a part of the true idea of a good lecture, though it is not its highest aim, nor its sole aim. hut rather a quite inconsiderable incident in it. Such display, if in good taste, is very gratifying, and to most hearers, the most agreeable part of a lecture. But the better part of each audience go to learn something. Flourishes, and tricks of metaphor, and arts of elocution, can never effect this end. The first requisite of a lecture is perfect clearness, both of thought and style ; the next is force and fertility of ideas and illustration ; and the last, and the most important, is genuine sincerity, and a liberal cast of thought. The last gives a certain moral value to the lecture. We do not consider it necessary to add, that a complete knowledge and mastery of the subject is perfectly essential, nor that here, as in the other departments of oratory, an impressive manner and brilliant elocution cannot fail to carry very great weight with them. "We define the lecture as a skilful union of the oration and the essay. In our view, the essay should greatly pre dominate, inasmuch as the object is to teach. It is very well if amusement can be afforded ; and to the right hearer, the most philosophical instruction affords the highest intel lectual pleasure. All, however, occasionally require relax ation and amusement. A lively epigram, entertaining anecdotes, a quaint picture, or a story in point, may serve very agreeably to relieve the well-compacted chain of ar gument and deduction. An occasional golden ring of fan cies may be soldered, as it were, into the delicate net-work of consecutive propositions. Breaks, and transitions, and episodes, will rest the mind, tired with a close discussion of abstract principles, as landing-places on the staircase of the palace of truth. But this by the way. The principal de- 64 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOHS, sign is to place in the most conspicuous light some one central truth, or idea, or fact in philosophy, criticism or history. In order to ascertain the proper position of this truth, the comparative history or anatomy of similar truths, ideas, or facts, must be gained. Thus, to fix one rule, to certify one fact, to arrive at a just notion of one doctrine, or the spirit of one system, the lecturer must be acquainted with, must allude to many. The lecture then is exhaustive, and in this, resembles a philosophical essay, or a chapter in a history, or a review article, as the subject-matter may be. In addition to this, there should be similes and con ceits. There must be expansion of one picture, or thought, and epigrammatic brevity. A tirade of declamation .must serve as a corps de reserve to a battalion of arguments, and a fine fancy may sometimes occur as the avant-courier of a series of reflections. The two most important talents in a lecturer, are, the analytic power, and a brilliant fancy. Few possess both, and therefore, in general, the ablest lecturers either regard a lecture wholly as an essay, or a declamation, as their talent may be for analysis or rhetoric. The lecture, in common with the essay, enjoys an uni versality of topics. It may be of very different kinds ; it may be historical, or critical, or speculative. It may serve as a medium for the expression of political or religious opinion. It may ofier a new view in natural or moral science. It may re-criticise a favorite poet, or introduce a new one to the public. It includes every subject, from Eesthetical culture to steam navigation and lightning rods. It may be even an advertisement for the merchant, as it has often served for the itinerant quack and pill- vender. The lecture, then, has become a most important means THE LECTURE. 65 ef popular instruction. As such, it should be carefully scrutinized ; for it is capable both of great good, or conside rable evil. It has its advantages as a means of instruction, and it also has correspondent defects. An able lecturer can impress, in the space of an hour's teaching, an import ant principle that may guide a man's conduct through life ; he can dissipate a prejudice, and disabuse the mind of an ignorant man of some baleful error that had blinded his eyes to the perception of the truth. He can give a picture of an epoch so vividly characterized, and so accurately painted, as to supersede the reading of a long history. He can expound in one lecture a moral or metaphysical sys tem that months of hard reading might not so clearly elu cidate and stamp on the memory. He can distinguish (for it is his business) between errors that were so contiguous as to seem to form a true whole. He can train the literary, as well as the moral, sense of the reader, and interpret for him the books of great minds. But in order to do all these things, he must be exactly informed, and perfectly trust worthy. He needs no originality, for he deals with facts, or with the ideas of others. He is the expositor of the one, and the translator of the other. Pure originality might set him wrong where the path lay plain before him. Not a little modesty is therefore requisite, to prevent -the lecturer from relying too much on his own resources. Instead of this, what do we generally find ? Superficial information, a crude view of the subject, stale fancies the thrown-ofF ornaments of greater intellects stereotyped prejudice, a boastful arrogance, and a curious medley of styles. Instead of completeness, confused variety ; in place of continuity, endless digressions. You ask for an argument, and you are helped to an allegory. You require a fact, and 66 ESSAYS OTON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. they give you a figure. Everywhere you see a constant attempt at display. A man of a barren imagination is at a forced-put to give birth to a simile, and no-fancy aims at being very fanciful. There are some lecturers, who, like single-speech Hamilton, deliver but one lecture in the whole course of their lives. This is, generally, an outpour ing of the contents of their common-place book a curious composition resembling in literature, as to variety, (though by no means in excellence,) what a mince-pie, or a plum- pudding, is in cookery. There are other abuses of the lecture that need a reme dy. Men of wealth, who have the itch of authorship, or of oratory, must needs deliver lectures, as an opiate to their ill-regulated self-love. As men of a certain standing, capable of exerting considerable influence, committees al ways defer to them. These lecture gratuitously, though for our own parts, were we able, we would pay for their si lence. These pretenders hurt the professed lecturer, by under-bidding him, and as the treasury is always first re garded, a gratuitous lecture, however inefficient, is gene rally preferred to a good one that must be well paid. Some who need pay, entertain a mawkish feeling in the matter, as most petty scribblers have a burlesque contempt for the profits of authorship. The truth should be felt, that lec turing, as authorship, is now become a profession ; a pro fession, too, of scholars and gentlemen for the better part, though there are quacks enough in it, as in everything else. It is a profession to which such a man as Dewey is reported to have once thought of turning his attention, as a fixed, pursuit one honored in this country by Dana, Channing, Hawks, Longfellow, Emerson, Bancroft, and many other gentlemen of ability and high standing. It is very true THE LECTURE. 67 that it has been taken up by inferior men, but how long have they succeeded ? Unless they are happily gifted in the personal qualifications of a lecturer, which have enabled some mere quacks to get along, they sink very soon. There is a common error that tends to distract the at tention of audiences, and, consequently, to lower the proper value of lectures. This is, the jurnble of lectures in a long course, on a variety of topics : of politics, morals, history, natural science, and literature. Now, the great body of lecture-goers are supposed to go with but a moderate know ledge of the evening's topic ; perhaps, ignorant altogether. The lecturer should assume the latter as probably true. Therefore, he should have time to produce a proper effect ; instead of one lecture on morals, or one on the steam- engine, and one on the nerves, let him deliver three on one subject. Completeness and clearness are far preferable to multiplicity of facts and experiments. We would suggest fewer topics, and more lectures on each. Three or four single courses, of at least two or three lectures, or a long course of six or eight by one lecturer, are much better than sixteen or twenty lectures by sixteen or twenty lecturers. This last produces too much the effect of modern education, which substitutes the encyclopaedia for a few sound text books. This want of selection of discrimination springs from the incapacity, in most cases, of the lecture committee, for their office of selecting lecturers; though, occasionally, it arises from the diversified tastes of the audience, and the endeavor to meet them. The chairman and his associates. are either men of a respectable station in life, and wealthy, who know nothing of literature, authors, or the value of literary labor, or young clerks of a bookish turn, who wish 68 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. to employ their critical propensities on their betters, in every sense of the word. Both of these classes of persons are utterly unfit to judge of the ability of a lecturer, or of the real merit of a lecture. They judge mostly from per sonal appearance, and general reputation. A dashing bravura sort of speaker takes them at once. They sur render to assurance. Modest merit never succeeds, as the lottery-dealer confessed, when he found his newspaper pufis not sufficiently stimulant. This requires the vigorous protest of scholars and liberal thinkers; that scholars should sit as the critics that scholars should sit on the committee. It is an affair of scholarship, not of trade. An excellent man of business may be a very commonplace critic. The flour market has no connection with the fancy, and imagination and industry are not always found in company. The lecture is a purely modern form of composition. The Greeks and Romans wrote dissertations, and published philosophical dialogues, but they have left nothing like our modern lecture. Probably, Socrates talked lectures; but, like Ulysses, he was too wise to print. England, France, Germany, and the United States, have produced the most eminent public teachers. In Germany, the Schlegels, with a host of able men, equally distinguished for learning and eloquence ; in France, Cousin, Guizot, Vil- lemain, and the Professors of the Institute ; in England, Hazlitt, Coleridge, and Mr. Fox, the Unitarian clergyman ; in our own country, Charming, Dewey, Dana, Longfellow, Emerson. In the three leading divisions of the lecture, the literary, or critical, the speculative, and the historical, we would place Hazlitt at the head of the lecturers on poetry and the belles-lettres; Guizot, would stand the first of his- THE LECTURE. 69 torical lecturers, and Dewey, the foremost of the speculative lecturers on practical subjects. Dewey does not lecture on. abstract topics, but discusses practical themes in an abstract manner. Cousin is the most popular metaphysical teacher ; but even here, a lecturer for students -not a popular lec turer. Dana, is our most impressive lecturer on poetry. Longfellow, a picturesque scholar in his address, and Em erson, a modern mystic. The lecture is more sought after here, than perhaps any where else. As a people, we like to get knowledge by as short a course of study as possible. In lectures, the audience are passive students ; they receive knowledge instead of working for its acquisition. It also finds favor among us, from the love of mixing in public, which we, of all the people under the sun, most affect. It reminds the politician of caucuses, and the merchants of a meeting on 'change. It jumps with our democratic humor of equalizing knowledge, and in this respect, resembles the popular periodical literature of the day. What is the future influence of the lecture to be ? Much greater, we apprehend; than it is now. When the class of lecturers shall comprise a majority of able men, scholars, gentlemen we feel warranted in asserting, it will be the favorite method of public instruction. It will not, to be sure, take the place of really sound reviews and newspa pers ; but it will obliterate the inefficient organs of public opinion. Good lectures will kill off weak papers. Neither will it hurt the stage, but rather, by refined criticism, tend to elevate it. It will not interfere with the pulpit, since it will expressly enforce the precepts of moral duty, arid specu late profoundly on the minor moralities. It will rather come in aid of the pulpit, giving audiences on week day evenings what an enlarged view of religion would give them at Church on Sundays. 4* 70 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. Perhaps we should have before discriminated popular lectures from lectures for students. There will always be both, as long as there is a distinct class of students in the world, and a large class of persons who are not professed students, but yet who continue learners all their lives. The use of lectures to students is rather for revision than the beginning of any study. They serve to revive or review old studies or doctrines, but they ought not to be heard at the beginning of their course. Lectures give results, not processes. Profound scholars must, however, go through certain processes to verify these results, whereas a mixed audience must build their knowledge on faith in the lec turer. The present is allowed to be a critical age an analytic age. We would rather speculate on principles than follow a long narrative of facts. We substitute, then, the historical lecture for the history. The same will apply to morals, and religion, and politics. For one who reads Locke, twenty read Cousin ; for one who reads Cudworth, twenty study Macintosh. The Federalist is laid by when Daniel Webster is to speak ; and the old divines are closed, when a fashion able preacher mounts the pulpit. We have spoken of lectures for students, and popular lectures. The last kind are infinite in variety, and as re gards the class of audiences they address from merchants to mechanics, from ladies to laborers. Every craft must have its lecture-room, and will have at some future day. The whole empire of knowledge will be ransacked for sub jects of disquisition and amusement. Many attend lectures now as they attend the opera, for the sake of the fashion. But good lectures require a capa city of attention, and a degree of thought, that are not THE LECTURE. 71 always possessed, or bestowed. When placed on a right footing, none will attend except for instruction, and partial entertainment. Few persons go to a lecture knowing what they have a right to expect. The subject is an abstract topic, and they expect an amusing narrative, or it is histo rical, and they look for sentimental passages. This is to be reformed. On the whole, we are apt to consider the lecture a very important department of modern literature, and a most pow erful instrument of popular instruction. As a corollary to this, it follows, the lecturer should occupy a dignified position. The public taste, to be sure, needs correction on many ma terial points connected with this subject ; nor are the best critics infallible in their judgments on lecturers. Like most evils in this world, these will mend themselves in good time. There must be no forced improvements ; but gradual changes, and a wiser policy. Some of these errors, as the selection of committees, can be amended at once ; but the taste of audiences is to be formed. The surest method to attain good ends is to employ noble means ; and thus we hope lectures will continue to improve with the capacity in the public for appreciating them. We look for the time, with confidence, when the lecture shall occupy no neutral ground in the public esteem, and when the lecturer will be an established professional character. X. HUGH LATIMER. Tms brave old Bishop, an apostolic prelate of the true stamp, a gallant chief in the IvToble Army of Martyrs, is the earliest great name, now extant, in the long list of great English Di vines.* His humor and eloquence, rude and homely as they are, were in his day above rivalry ; and to him was conceded the fame, not only of the simple minded and upright Christian, but also of the fervid, indignant, copious orator. He was, be yond dispute, the St. Paul of London, of the sixteenth cen tury, who attracted the dainty ears of fastidious scholars, and high bred courtiers, equally with the unlettered, but not inattentive, audiences of a lower stamp. Admired by the gentry, except where he was feared for his honesty, he was the idol of the populace, who would crowd around him as he walked down the Strand, to preach at Whitehall, and, en deavoring to catch but the hem of his cloak, would cry aloud, " Have at them, Father Latimer !" It is this paternal character, exhibited in his public discourses, as well as iu his private conduct, that we would describe, in a portrait of the successor of the Apostles. The life of Latimer,is impressed with more than one ira- * Of those who have left printed Discourses for the edification of posterity. HUGH LATIMER. 73 portant lesson. A great change occurred both in his doc* trines and his preaching. He was, at one time, a zealous Romanist, and preached with severity against the Reform ers, reflecting bitterly against Melancthon, the gentlest of men : again, he renounced the Pope, and declared in favor of Henry, both as to his supremacy, as head of the Church, and in the matter of the divorce. Finally, he became a de cided Protestant, and was a distinguished leader of the Re formation, under Edward VI., when he was at the zenith of his popularity. In the savage reign of Mary, he was burnt at the stake, with those other glorious Martyrs to Truth and Religious Liberty, Cranmer and Ridley. In his conversion, we may admit no question of his sincerity : and in his devoted adherence, first to Henry, and afterwards to Edward, (differing as the tiger and the lamb,) he was pur suing a single purpose. Always the sentinel of the Church, he was, besides, an effective champion. He attacked vice and crime, with all its pride of place, and pomp of pedigree, at the same time that he stood on the defensive ; and, at last, lost his life in the same way that he had gained his just fame, by the exercise of a pure, undaunted, and holy zeal, that knew no obstacles to the propagation of truth and the extirpation of error, while the means of advancing the one, and destroying the other, remained. The paternal character was the leading feature of Lari mer's mind and moral constitution. He knew how, and when, to give wise and safe counsel, and feared not to ad minister it. He was indignant at the open vices of the clergy and nobles, and hesitated not to express his indigna tion, generally by way of strong humorous satire. He was the Patriarch of old, revived in modern days. Generally, the Priest has been said, and often truly, to defend the failings 74 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. of his caste, in order to preserve an esprit de corps. This is, in a right sense, commendable. But Latimer sided with the people against the corruptions of the clergy. He openly and sharply rebuked them. He disclosed many an acknow ledged evil, that the timidity of the good would have shield ed from the vulgar eye, lest Religion herself, and the pure priestly character, might be indiscriminately attacked. But he feared nothing of the sort. It was he that so vigorously depicted ' idle ministers,' ' unpreaching prelates,' 'mock gos pellers,' ' minting priests,' ' blanchers,' ' mingle manglers,' ' bells without clappers,' i. e., unfurnished pulpits, from which lazy preachers drew regular salaries. In his com prehensive care of his people, Latimer was no less observant of the broad and undistinguishing corruption of the times, among the lawyers, and especially the judges, with whom bribery was considered a perquisite of their offices. He in veighed, with force and acuteness, against bribers, whom he also calls gifie-gaffes, against covetousness, against wood- mongers (an odious class of monopolists), against flock-pan ders, against gratifiers of rich men. Latimer wisely joined religion with daily life, and moral censures to incentives to piety. So glaring were the corruptions above mentioned, in his time, that he devoted not a little space to a severe casti- gation of their abettors. Some of his sermons, in themselves, were true Juvenal strains : in all of them he has long pas sages of a similar kind. Many of his discourses might be collected under the same title, that Wither adopted for his satires, ' Abuses stript and whipt.' And the good Bishop's censures were far from unavailing. His keen rebukes cut many to the heart. In his second sermon, preached before King Edward, he refers to the common practice of giving and taking bribes, and also of restitution. He proceeds, in HUGH LATIMER. 75 his plain, direct way : " I have now preached three Lents, The first time I preached Restitution. ' Restitution !' quoth some, ' what should he preach of Restitution ? Let him preach of contrition, quoth they, and let restitution alone ; we can never make restitution. Then, say I (\vhat a whole hearted Christian man !) if thou wilt not make, restitution, thou shalt go to the devil for it. Now choose thee, either restitution or endless damnation. But now there be two manner of restitutions, secret restitution and open restitution ; whether of both it be so that restitution is made, it is all good enough. At my first preaching of restitution, one good man took remorse of conscience, and acknowledged himself to me, that he had deceived the king, and willing he was to make restitution ; and so, the first Lent came to my hands twenty pounds to be restored to the king's use. I was promised twenty pounds more the same Lent ; but it could not be made, so that it came not. Well, the next Lent came three hundred and twenty pounds more. I received it myself, and paid it to the king's council. So I was asked what he was that made restitution ? But should I have named him ? Nay, they should as soon have this weasand of mine. Well, now this Lent came one hundred and fourscore pounds ten shillings, which I have paid and delivered this present day to the king's council. And so this man hath made a godly restitution. And so, quoth I, to a certain nobleman thai? is one of the king's council, if every man that hath beguiled the king, should make restitution after this sort, it would cough the king twenty thousand pounds, I think, quoth I. Yes, that it would, quoth the other, a whole hundred thou sand pounds. Alack, alack ! make restitution for God's sake, make restitution ; ye will cough in hell else, that all the devils there Mall laugh at your coughing." In such a 76 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. channel flowed the simple but vigorous rhetoric of the old master. As adviser and defender of their rights, Latimer was the people's friend, no less than by his ripping open the abuses of the rich and powerful. He was, in one view, a democrat, more from disgust of the aristocracy, than from any individual tendencies. His true position was rather that of a conservative, or perhaps, if living, he would bear the same relation to the prevailing parties that the mode * rate whig sustains to the violent tory, or reckless radical. Robin Hood was a type of the perfect democrat, without many of the vices, and free from all the meanness of the modern demagogue : and to show Latimer' s estimation of the generous freebooter, we read the following incident in one of his sermons, of which the burden is, the decay of religion, the necessity of preaching, and bells without clap pers. On a holy day, Latimer stopped once at a village church, having sent word the night before that he would preach there the next morning. He found the door locked, and the key could not be found until more than half an hour's delay. He was then told, "Sir, this is a busy day with us, we cannot hear you -it is Robin Hood's day." Robin Hood carried the day away from the good Father. But ignominiously he styles the bold outlaw (in many fea tures of his character, as, in his love for the poor, regard for female chastity, indignation at legalized corruption, strongly resembling himself,) 'a traitor and a thief,' forget ting what was really sound in the favorite ideal of the populace, and their generous defender.* / * Robin Hood is rather to be regarded as a patriot, one of the last of the chieftains of the old Saxon race, who denied the Con- HUGH LATIMEK. 77 All Latimer's virtues partook of the same direct and inartificial character. He was honest, bold, simple, and pious. His honesty was enlightened by judgment and ex perience ; his boldness was confirmed by truth and sin cerity ; his simplicity was tha transparent veil of his free thoughts and manly actions, and his piety gave a tone to, and cast a lustre over, all of these. Instances of all these qualities are numerous. A single fact may prove his honest frankness, fearing no evil, as it had intended none, and ut terly unsuspicious of malice, as he was free from guile. It was a current custom to present the king (Henry VIII.) every New Year's day with an annual offering : a purse of gold was the common oblation. Latimer sent, as his tri bute, a New Testament, with the leaf doubled down in a very conspicuous manner at the passage, " Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." Previously to this, and afterward, he had opposed Henry with a manly unconcern, and, by his fearlessness, gained the respect of that tyran nical despot. The martyrdom of Latimer is one of the bloodiest spots even upon the reign of bloody Q,ueen Mary. The familiar ity of the relation in Fox's Book of Martyrs, renders it su perfluous to re-state the details here : neither can any student of English history be supposed ignorant of the par ticulars of that disgraceful scene. quest, and persisted in living out of the law of the descendants of foreigners, than as a mere freebooter, the character commonly as signed to him. [Vide Thierry s History of the Norman Conquest.] Robin was canonized, and the holy day above referred to was his ann ual festival. The French historian, one of the ablest of the mo dern school, quotes this very passage out of Latimer, to show the strong hold the brave outlaw had on the popular affection. 78 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. The style and eloquence of Latimer were characteristic of the man and of his age ; homely almost to rudeness, yet vigorous, learned, manly, idiomatic, and practical in the highest degree. He was a humorous satirist, a sharp de bater, a grave and ornate orator, and a keen student of human nature combined. His simplicity confirmed his honesty ; and he was utterly free from any equivocation or duplicity. His understanding and talents, generally, were of the true old English stamp, and which we see repro duced in the best modern writers of English. His age was a pedantic one, that had not left quoting Latin by the page ; but in his case, the English mind was formed chiefly out of the best Saxon traits. The old Saxon formed the best parts of the moral character, as well as of the language, of the modern Englishman. Latimer has some of Hogarth's humor, and Morland's naturalness. He enjoys a talent in common with Cobbett, of calling names. He has not a little of honest John Bunyan's allegorical fancy. His style, like all of these, is completely English, and smacks of that sterling vein. Inheriting the democratic tendencies of the Saxon, he feared not to rebuke nobles and prelates, though himself a priest ; nor to recognise the godlike characteristics of hu manity in the meanest individual ; loved in life, honored in his death, though a suffering martyr, and venerated by all after ages. This comprises the history of good Father Latimer. XL SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S "DEFENCE OF POESY." IT may appear unseasonable and superfluous at this epoch of the literary history of the world, to re-write the defence of poesy, so much better done in the works of the best poets themselves ; and such a defence would be no less ill- timed than impertinent, as if that divine art needed any advocates, and therefore we shall merely recur, for the purpose of analysis arid criticism, to the earliest and perhaps the most elaborately eloquent argument in the English lan guage, in behalf of the claims of the poet and his vocation. The Defense of Poesy, is the richest gem in the poetic crown of Sidney. It is a pure and lofty appeal to the god like in human nature; it contains in itself the essence of an art of poetry ; is full of generous sentiment, all clenched and compacted by the fine logic and finer declamation of the poet of the Arcadia. Indeed, so much at least to us critical readers is it to be preferred to the Romance of that name, that Warton recommended a separate publication of the Essay, since being generally printed at the end of the Arcadia, no one would be likely to read it. Bad poets, unskilful critics, dull scholars, had united to made verse well nigh contemptible. Sidney was influenced by a loyal zeal to recover the lost purity and splendor of 80 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. poetic triumphs, and therefore wrote the Defense of Poesy. A complete analysis of the essay would occupy almost as much space as the essay itself, so close and consecutive is the strain; we shall therefore be obliged to condense our notice much within the merits of the case, or the true value of the arguments. The author commences by urging the great antiquity of poetry as a proof of its necessity and excellence. Verse was the earliest shape that language assumed : the first mould into which ideas fell. The first laws, the oldest moral and prudential maxims, religion, politics, were couched in metrical sentences. Oracle and prophesy were coeval with antiquity and fable. The poet was then priest and prophet: alas ! that the characters have ever been dis joined. The earliest Greek writers were poets ; we read no au thor prior to the time of Homer and Hesiod and the Cylic bards. The greatest Italian writers were poets, and so of our noble literature. The noblest illustrations of the worth of poetry have occurred since the time of Sidney, for he numbered not among English poets, Shakspeare nor Spen ser, Milton nor Wordsworth. Plato himself (vulgarly con sidered the villifier of poetry, but in truth only of soft, lascivious, enervating verses) was the most poetic of the philosophers. Herodotus entitled the several books of his history after the names of the muses. The northern na tions preserve an original national poetry of the greatest antiquity. This is the first argument. Next he compares the poet with the astronomer, mathe matician, the natural and moral philosopher, the lawyer, the historian, grammarian, logician, physician all of whom have a basis in nature or palpable reality to proceed upon, SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S "DEFENCE OF POESY." 81 and therefore exercise not the higher faculty of poetical invention. " Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own inven tion, doth grow, in effect, into another nature ; in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, chymeras, faries, and such like ; so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not inclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never sets forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done ; neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet smelling flowers, nor whatever else may make the too much loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden. But let those things alone, and go to man, for whom, as the other things are, it seemeth in him her uttermost cunning is employed, and know whether she have brought forth so true . a lover as Theagenes so constant a friend as Pylades so valiant a man as Orlando so right a prince as Xenophon's Cyrus, and so excellent a man every way as Virgil's JEneas ?" He gives the derivation of the name, meaning, Maker or Cre ator, the highest of titles. He insists upon the philosophical doctrine now settled by Coleridge and Hazlitt, that the truth of poetic fiction is a wide and general verity, tran scending the truth of common understandings that feigned histories may contain more of philosophical probability than literal narratives ; as Fielding used to say of the pompous writers of history, in comparison with his own inimitable pictures of real life, that in their works only the names and dates were true, whereas in his fictions all was true but the names and dates. All the purely didactic and critical por tions of the Defense have now become trite from frequent 82 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. repetition, such as that rhyme does not constitute the differ ence between poetry and prose, though an admirable ad junct ; and the division of the several varieties of poetry, with a critical and enthusiastic commentary upon each. We pass to his satirical picture of the moral philoso pher, with his array of prejudice and pretension, and his comparison of the poet with him and the historian the one giving precepts by the hour, and the other examples by the volume. Both pompous, proud, disputatious ; neither of them reaching the heart nor moving the affections. Sidney rightly considers poetry to be the highest philoso phy : he slights it not as a light, gay artifice of pleasure, but reverences it as the most spiritual art, the divinest form of letters. He urges the thesis of the poet as "the right popular philosopher," teaching not in a direct, set manner, but by implication and inference ; investing life with the lessons of experience, animating the stage by scenes of deep tragic passion, or by keen satirical comic ridicule : substituting Macbeth for an essay upon ambition, and Othello instead of a lecture upon jealousy. He regards 'poetry as involving the teachings of philosophy, as the greater includes the less, or as Campbell has elegantly ex pressed a similar doctrine : " Oh deem not midst this worldly strife, An idle art the poet brings, Let high philosophy control And sages calm the stream of life, 'Tis he refift.es its fountain springy, The nobler passions of the soul." Our author quotes Aristotle, who with all his devotion to method and science, determined poetry to be more philo sophical, and more than history, as dealing with universal sm PHILIP SIDNEY'S "DEFENCE of POESY." 83 truth, and instinct with a living power. We agree entirely with Owen Felltham, who wrote, " I think, a grave poem, the deepest kind of writing !" Such poetry is beyond any philosophy, scientifically so named. We now arrive at a summary of the character of the poet, by one who was himself of the craft : " Now, therein of all sciences, I speak still of human, and, accord ing to the human concert, is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only shew the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first, give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste, you may long to pass farther. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness ; but he oometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accom panied with, or prepared for the well-enchanting skill of musick, and with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you with a tale, which hold- elk children from flay, and old men from, the chimney corner ; and pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wick edness to virtue ; even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste; which if one should begin to tell them the name of the aloes or rheubarum they should receive, would sooner take their physic at their ears, than at their mouth ; so is it in men, (most of which are Childish in the best things till they be cradled in their graves,) glad they will be to hear the tales of Hercules, Achilles, ^Eneas, Cyrus, and hearing them, must needs hear the right description of wisdom, valor and justice ; which, if they had been barely (that is to say, philosophically) set out, they would swear they be brought to echool again. That imitation whereof poetry is, both the most convinc ing to nature of all other, insomuch that, as Aristotle saith, those things which in themselves are horrible, as cruel battles, unnatural mon sters, are made in poetical imitation delightful. Truly I have known men, that even with reading Amadis de Gaul, which. God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect poesy, have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage. Who 84 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. readeth JEueas carrying old Anchises on his back, that wished not it were his fortune to perform so excellent an act ? " * And, of the influence of poetry upon himself, Sidney con- fe&ses in that oft-repeated sentence : " Certainly I must confess mine own barbarousness ; I never heard the old song of Piercy and Douglass, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet ; and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude stile." A powerful argument of the noble, original and wonder ful efficacy of true poetry, is to be found in the frequent use of fable and allegory in the Holy Scriptures, and especially, by our Saviour himself. The beautiful parables of the New Testament contain the the noblest moral lessons, and as nar ratives, are perfect in form and detail, full of a sweet pa thetic sentiment, and of a friendly, expostulating eloquence. This brings us to a consideration we are prone to indulge in of the religious tone of all really fine poetry, whether it be devotional, chivalric or moral. We have so frequently re marked upon this characteristic, as to believe it unnecessary to repeat the same reflections which must sooner or later be made by every diligent wooer of the muse. We are now more than half way through the Essay. The remainder is chiefly occupied with replies to the various objections renewed from age to age, and by the weak, the malicious, the low and the ignorant, against the art of arts, the prima philosophia, the Harp of David, the Song of Sol omon. The general, and the .largest class of objectors are those who abuse every thing that is good, and praised by others ; those who hated Aristides for his justice, and Wash ington for his patriotism ; those who could see nought but design in the most disinterested charity, and suspected self- interest in the wisest patriotism. In the same class he ranks SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S " BEFENCE OF POESY." 85 railing wits, who delight to turn every thing into ridicule, (themselves too contemptible for less than the severest sar casm.) The special objections to poetry he notices in turn; that there are worthier walks of learning : that it is the mother of lies : by its softness enervates the soul, and by a copious lascivious fancy fills the mind with vicious phanta sies ; and, as a fourth objection, he repeats the old cry of Plato's banishing poets out of his republic. To these, he offers the following replies ; to the first, that it begs the question, and utterly denies that there is sprung out of the earth a more fruitful knowledge. The answer to the sec ond, is contained in a defence of the vraisemblance of the poet's fable. The third objection, he admits, has some force ; but then it is by the way ; the incidental lapses of bad or wicked poets hurts not good poetry, any more than vice hurts the essential beauty of virtue. It may affect par tially, and for a time, the character, but it does not affect the thing itself. As to the fourth objection, Plato did not depreciate fine poetry, but lascivious strains. He was him self a poet, and in his own person honored the muse. He was too religious to allow infidel rhymers (of which modern times is not wanting in parellels) to vent their impious blasphemies. He might have excluded Byron : but there is no question he would have received Wordsworth with open arms. After an enumeration of patrons and favorers of poetry among the great and good, the wise and powerful, kings, nobles, senators, cardinals, philosophers, wits, orators and statesmen, he proceeds to the discussion of some still mooted points ; i. e., whether tragedy should be on the Grecian, and modern French mode, free from any mixture of comedy, or whether like Shakespeare's dramas, it should partake of 5 86 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. both ? Such points as .respect the unities are closely scruti nized, and even humorously satirized, wherein he appears to glance at Shakespeare, or at least, at his predecessors. There is a very nice and discriminating passage on laughter, which we would quote but for its length. The antithesis in this section may be regarded as a type of Johnson's style, in the use of this figure. Much sensible criticism is ex pended on diction, with lively raillery on the current euphu isms of the time. A liberal eulogy follows, on the English tongue, and the piece concludes with a page of rhetoric worthy of the subject and of the writer, clear, copious, in sinuating and harmonious ; a passage such as you often find the like of in the writers of the age of Elizabeth, and after wards in the reigns of the first two Stuarts ; but very rarely in the present day, or since that glorious era : " So that since the ever praiseworthy poesy is full of virtue, breed ing, delightfulness, and void of no gift that ought to be in the noble name'of learning ; since the blames laid against it are either false or feeble ; since the cause why it is not esteemed in England, is the fault of poet-asses, not of poets : since, lastly, our tongue is most fit to be honored by poesy ; I conjure you all that have had the evil luck to read into this wasting toy of mine, even in the name of the nine muses, no more to scorn the sacred mysteries of poesy ; no more to laugh at the name of poets as though they were next inher itors to fools ; no more to jest at the reverend title of ' rhymer,' but to believe with Aristotle, that they were the ancient treasures of the Grecian's divinity ; to believe with Bembus, that they were the first bringers in of all civility ; to believe with Scaliger, that no philosopher's precepts can sooner make you an honest man than the reading of Virgil ; to believe with Clauserus, the translator of Cor- nutu, that it pleased the heavenly Deity by Hesiod and Homer, under the veil of fables, to give us all knowledge, logick, rhetoric, philos ophy natural and moral, and quid non ? To believe with me, that there are many mysteries contained in poetry, which of purpose were SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S "DEFENCE OF POESY." 87 written darkly, lest by profane wits it should be abused ; to believe with Landui, that they are so beloved by the gods, that whatsoever they write proceeds of a divine fury ; lastly, to believe themselves when they tell you they will make you immortal by their verses. "Tims doing, your names shall flourish in the printers', shops : thus doing, you shall be of kin to many a poetical preface : thus do ing, you shall be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all you shall dwell upon superlatives : thus doing, though you be libertino patro natus, you shall suddenly grow Herculea proles : r Si quid mea carmine possunt.' Thus doing, your soul shall be placed with Dante's Beatrix, or Vir gil's Anchises. But if (fie for such a but ?) you be born so near the dull-making Cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry ; if you have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look at the sky of poetry, or rather, by a certain rus tical disdain, will 'become such a mome, as to wish to be a momus of poetry, then, though I will not wish unto you the ass's ears of Midas, nor be driven by a poet's verses as Bubonax was, to hang himself; nor to be rhymed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland ; yet thns much curse I must lend you in the behalf of all poets, that while you live, you live in love, and never get favor, for lacking skill of a sonnet ; and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph. XII. BURTON'S "ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY." THE Anatomy of Melancholy is a book oftener mentioned than read, and upon the subject of which it is easier to write than upon the treatise itself. Connected criticism is out of the question, on account of the variety of the topics, and the mosaic character of the text : to say nothing of the tedious difFuseness, (an extravagance in point of co piousness,) the harsh, crabbed accumulation of images and scholastic references, and the half medical, half metaphy sical style of execution. Some stupid old physician placed this among the volumes " without which no medical man's library is complete." And it is so frequently entitled and ranked in booksellers' catalogues. Neither is it wholly a work of humor or the production of pure wit. It is not a burlesque, but a serious essay of rising seven hundred folio pages. But its chief character is a total want of decided character. It is a medley, a common-place book, a hodge podge, a complete farrago. He touches, incidentally or purposely, upon almost every object under the sun and upon the face of the earth, things known and things unknown, dogmas and mere speculations, medicine and magic, anato my and the arts, devils and diet, love and madness, religion and superstitious folly. Not a poet or historian, critic or BURTON'S "ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY." 89 commentator, naturalist or divine, of antiquity, of modern, times, or of the middle age, but is called upon the stand as a witness, and requested to bear his testimony to the author's theories or counsel. A whole sentence of plain English occurs rarely. The usual style is a mixed manner, English cut on Latin, or an interlacing of the two. Half a passage in one language, is balanced by the remaining portion in another, and one member nods to another, as Pope's groves and alleys. Never was a book so made up of quotation and reference. Montaigne used to say, if all his quotations were taken from him, nothing valuable would be left ; a similar abstraction from Burton would leave him pretty bare, as his best passages are translations or imita tions of rare old writers. This leads to an unnecessary fullness and repetition ; and, indeed, the whole matter might be reduced into one-third its present compass. From but a very superficial knowledge of the works, we should suspect it to be tinged with the prevalent defects in two other celebrated treatises, the one political and the other metaphysical ; we refer to " Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis," and" " Cudworth's Intellectual System," both of them works always alluded to with respect, but very seldom familiarly read. And however it may astonish a vulgar reader, this fertility of quotation argues an innate deficiency of original power. A good cause, or a sound argument, needs few witnesses and no propitiating patrons. A clear eye needs no spectacles to see through, and the unaided vision of good natural sight is blurred by the speckled glasses of prejudice and traditionary opinion. The learning, then, of this curious treatise, together with its length, and perversely ingenious tautology ; its jumble of phrases and ideas, real izing the witty strictures of Hudibras ; the endless digres- 90 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. sions, and want of condensed, methodical argument, render it a work that will be sought after chiefly for its oddity and fantastic strangeness. It cannot ever reach popularity, and is indeed written only for antiquarian scholars. Lamb, himself the true lover and warm eulogist of the Anatomy, admitted this fact, nor can it be concealed, that even liberal and philosophic students care for little else than a taste of it, a glimpse of its index and a few particular references, a mere sip at this Lethean stream. "We feel constrained to this confession at the risk of losing caste in the eyes of those who make no distinction among the writers of our elder literature. Yet -we add, "can these dry bones live?" Is a witty or eloquent des cription, buried under a long chapter of heterogeneous mat ter, to save that from decay ? There is salt to preserve, but too little of it, we apprehend. Ourselves, retrospective critics, we must admit we find not sufficient in Burton to reward a thorough perusal, (if, indeed, any man but Lamb ever read it entirely through.) Johnson's criticism cannot be taken for a standard in this instance, since it proved so unequal and deficient in former cases. Sterne used the book well, but then for thievish purposes, which Dr. Ferrier has tracked with remorseless scrutiny. And here lies its value, as a mine of thoughts original, borrowed, imitated, and palpably exposed to view, in their crude state, and which a skilful plagiarist, one who can steal wisely, may work up to great advantage. For the systematic plagiarist, then, and the mere antiquary, Burton is a choice author, and for the reasons we have enumerated. Still, even to the most indif ferent reader, we can promise, that though discursive, Bur ton still possesses a method of his own, and a plan ; that his matter is almost as copious as his style : both supera- BURTON'S " ANATOMY OP MELANCHOLY." 91 bundant ; and that, unfinished, Latinized, and corrupt as is his ordinary composition, yet when especially in earnest, he is a writer of racy and idiomatic English. We love in him a true sympathy with the life, and pursuits, and char acter, of that strangely misconceived animal, the scholar. We admire his natural aeuteness, visible through all his erudi tion, and a vein of caustic, homely, rustic humor . Above all, we respect in his case, as in that of all true scholars , that manly dignity of soul, which is the most invaluable possession of humanity. Little is known of the author of the Anatomy of Mel ancholy. He was a man of learning, and disposed to gloomy fits and desponding humors. To drive away these, he resorted to the writing of this work, which occupatio n, filling and occupying his rnind, (the true cure for nervous diseases, hypochondria, and all affections by which the mind infects the body with aches and ills,) tended greatly to relieve him. He was accustomed, we learn, to frequent the docks and wharves about London, and would break jests with the watermen, enjoying highly their uncouth smartness. He had the wisdom to endeavor at counteracting his dis temper by every occasion of jollity and laughter. When he adopted the name and title of Democritus, he assumed his proper designation of Merry Philosopher, whose creed was to laugh at the follies of mankind, and jest at his own sufferings, feeling tenderly for those of others. Like the Italian jester, he made sport for others whilst tortured by nameless ills himself, and might now be condemned, as suf ficient punishment, (for all the evil it is possible he was ever guilty of,) to read his book continuously through, word for word. The Anatomy of Melancholy deserves this praise at 92 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. % least, that it is thorough and minute. The very heart of the matter is explored, and its internal system. The thou sand causes and correspondent cures of Hypochondria are enumerated and classified in: three partitions. The first partition relates to the different causes of Melancholy, phy sical and metaphysical ; moral and religious ; considered as diseases of the body, or diseases of the mind, or hoth, re acting on each other ; induced by the operations of Nature, or inflicted by the hand of God, or consigned to the mali cious employment of the devil and his spirits ; the creaturfe of temperament, the companion of sickness, the attendant upon age. It explains how it is begotten in infancy, (if not inherited,) through the careless treatment of nurses, or the harsh behavior of parents ; how it is caught from gloomy sights and infectious mourning. Its natural as well as moral history is investigated, whether it arise from scorn or calumny, servitude or want ; whether produced by loss of friends, loss of health, loss of liberty, loss of reputation, or loss of property. It is more specifically derived from the indulgence of the passions of anger, fear, shame, rage, ha tred, sorrow, discontent : or from excess in the gratification, of laudable propensities, as the desire of glory, the accumu lation of substance, manly pride, a temper disposed to en joyment, the love of books and study, a disposition for repose and retirement. We may here introduce that fine passage on the poor scholar, which is one of the very best to be met \vith in the whole work. It is a sort of apologetic eulogium : " Because Ibey cannot ride an horse, -which every clowne can doe ; salute and court a gentlewoman, carve at a table, cringe and make congies, \vhich every common swather can doe, hos populus ridet, &c. t they are laughed to scorne, and accompted silly fooles by our gallants. BURTON'S " ANATOMY OP MELANCHOLY." 93 Yea, many times such is their misery they deserve it : a. meere schol- ler, a meere asse. They goe about commonly meditating unto them selves, thus they sit, such is their action and gesture. Fulgosus, lib. 8, chap. 7, makes mention how Th. Aquinas, supping with King Louis of France, upon a sudden knocked his fist upon the table and cryed, ^conclusum est contra Manichceos,' his wits were a wool gathering, as they say, and his head busied about other matters, when he perceived his error, he was much abashed. Such a story there is of Archimedes in Vitruvius, that having found how much gold was mingled with the silver in King Hieron's crown, ran naked forth of the bath and cryed, Eureka, I have found: and was commonly so intent to his studies, that he never perceived what was done about him, when the city was taken, and the soldiers were ready to rifle his house, he took no notice of it. S. Bernard rode all day long by the Lemnian lake, and asked at last where he was. Marcullus, lib. 2, cap. 4. It was Democritua' carriage alone that made the Abderites suppose him to have been mad, and send for Hippocrates to cure him : if he had been in any solemne company, hee would upon all occasions fall a laughing. Theophrastus saith as much of Heraclitus, for that he continually wept, and Laertius of Menedemus Lampsacus, because he ran about like a madman, saying he came from hell as a spy, to tell the divella what mortal men did. Your greatest students are commonly no better, silly, soft fellowes in their outward behaveiour, absurd, ridicu lous to others, and no whit experienced in worldly businesse ; they can measure the heavens, range over the world, teach others wisdome, and yet in bargains and contracts they are circumvented by every base tradesman. Are not these men fooles ? And how should they be otherwise ? But as so many sots in schooles, when, (as has been observed) they neither hear nor see, such things as are practised abroad, how should they get experience, by what means ? I knew in my time many schollers, saith ./Eneas Sylvius, (in an Epistle of his to Gaspar Sciticke Ohancelour to the Emperoure,) excellent well learned, but so rude, so silly, that they had no common civility, nor knew how to manage their domestique or publique affaires. Paglarensis waa amazed, and said his farmer had surely cozened him, when hee heard him tell that his sow had eleven pigges, and his ass had but one foal. To say the best of this profession, I can give no other testimony of 5* 94 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. them in general!, than that of Pliny of Isaeus; ' Hee is yet a schollcr, than which kind of men, there is nothing so simple, so sincere, none better, they are for the most part harmless, honest, upright, innocent, plain-dealing men.'" The second partition is occupied with the cures of melancholy. By magic, by company, by music : " In sweet music is such Art ; Killing care and grief of heart." Consolatory devices, the remedies of the Materia Medica and of surgical skill, air, and the numberless fantastic pre scriptions Bacon arid Sir Kenelm Digby advise, and all the old writers., traditional, fabulous and poetical. As might naturally be supposed, this head includes much good sense, with abundance of absurdity and nonsense, set forth with no little pomp of reference and allusion. The third partition is devoted entirely to the considera tion of love melancholy, and religious melancholy. Here, our author ranges at will in the boundless field of quotation and theory. He is far more minute than Shakspeare, who has described but a few prominent characteristics of this disease : " The scholar's melancholy, which is emulation ; the musician's, which is fantastical ; the courtier's, which is fraud ; the soldier's, which is ambitious ; the lawyer's, which is politick ; the lady's, which is nice ; the lover's, which is all of these.'" Every symptom of affection, or love-sickness, or frenzy, or jealousy, or disappointment ; all the marks of superstition, remorse, hopelessness and despair are noted down with mathematical particularity. Among a variety of topics, it is hard to select an exam ple, but we have chanced upon this, of artificial alture- S) and transcribe it : BUUTON'S "ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY." 95 " When you have all done, ' veniunt a veste sagitte, the greatest provocations of lust are frm our apparell.' ' God makes, man shapes ' they say, and there is no motive like unto it ; a filthy knave, a deformed queane, a crooked carcass, a maukin, a witch, a rotten post, an hedge stake, may be so set out and tricked up, that it shall make as faire a show, as much enamour, as the rest : many a silly fellow is so taken. ' Priinum luxuriae aucupium' one calls it, 'the first snare of lust.' Bossus 'aucupium animarum; lethalem arundinem, a fatell reede, the greatest bawde;' 'forte lenocinium, sanguineis lachrymis deplorandum,' saith Matenesius, and with tears of blood to be deplored ! Not that comeliness of clothes is therefore to be condemned, and those usual ornaments, there is a decency and decorum to be observed in this, as well as .in other things, fit to be used, becoming severall persons, and befitting their estates ; he is only fantastical, that is not in fashion, and like an old image in Arras hangings, where a manner of attire is generally received : but when they are so new-fangled, so unstaid, so prodigious in their attires be yond their meanes and fortunes, unbefitting their age, place, quality, condition, what should we otherwise think of them ? Why do they adorne themselves with so many colours of hearbes, fictitious flowers, curious needle works, quaint devices, sweet smelling odors, with those inestimable riches of pretious stones, pearles, rubies, diamonds, eme ralds, &c. Why doe they crowne themselves with golde and silver, use coronets and ties of severall fashions, decke themselves with pen dants, bracelets, eare-rings, chaines, girdles, rings, pinnes, spangles, embroideries, shadows, rebatoes, versicolor ribands ; why doe they make such glorious shews with their scarfs, feathers, fannes, maskes, furres, laces, tiffanies, ruffles, falls, calls, cuffs, damasks, velvets, tin sels, cloth of gold, silver, tissue ? with colors of heavens, stars, planets, the strength of metalls, stones, odors, flowers, birds, beasts, fishes, and whatever Afrike, Asia, America, sea, land, art and industry can afford ? Why doe they use and covet such novelty of inventions ; such new fangled types, and spend such inestimable sums on them ? To what end are those crisped, false haires, painted faces, as the satyrist ob serves, such a composed gait, not a step awry ? Why are they like so many Sybarites, or Neroe's Poppasa, Assuerus' concubines, so long a dressing, as Cesar was marshalling his army, or an hawke in prun- 96 ESSAYS UPON ATJTHORS AND BOOKS. ing ? Dum moliuntur, dum comuntur annus est. A gardiner takes not so much paines in his garden, an horseman to dress his horse, scour his armour, ,a mariner about his ship, a merchant his shop and shop booke, as they doe about their faces, and those other parts ; such setting up with corkes, streigthening "With whalebone ; why is it but as a day -net catcheth larkes to make young men stoupe unto them." Burton concludes this complete map of the region Hy pochondria, with his excursions into every quarter of it, by these words of mark and wisdom : " Bee not solitary, bee not idle." To which Johnson pertinently added, clenching the point : but if solitary, be not idle ; and if idle, be not solitary. Sagacious Q,uarles discriminates justly : " Let not the sweetnesse of contemplation he so esteemed, that action be despised ; Rachel was more faire, Leah more fruitful ; as contemplation is more delightful, so is it more dangerous. Lot was upright in the city, but wicked in the mountaine." The portion of the volume with which we have been most gratified, is the Preface, or Democritus to the reader. It is personal and characteristic. The poetical abstract prefixed to the preface is very smooth and neatly turned. But the finest thing ever written upon melancholia, con taining the romance and essence of the subject, is unques tionably that perfect poem, the Penseroso of Milton. Almost equally fine are the following beautiful lines from a play of Beaumont and Fletcher : Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights "Wherein you spend your folly ! There's nought in this life sweete, If man were wise to see't But only melancholy ; BURTON'S "ANATOMY OP MELANCHOLY." 97 Oh, sweetest melancholy ! Welcome folded arms, and fixed eyes, A sigh that piercing mortifies, A look that's fastened to the ground, A tongue chained up, without a sound 1 Fountain heads and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves I Moonlight walks where all the fowls Are warmly housed, save bats and owls 1 A midnight bell, a parting groan !" These are the sounds we feed upon ; Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley : Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy. These dainty lines leave a sweet relish behind them : after reading which, the reader will acknowledge the pru dence of an immediate conclusion. XIII. MEMOIRS OF LADY FANSHAW, "WRITTEN BY HERSELF. As a true wife, a kind but judicious mother, as a woman of wit and spirit, no less than of feminine softness and modest beauty, the life and conduct of Lady Fanshaw, in a corrupt age and in troubled times, is one of the most pleas ing, and one of the most useful narratives of the olden time. The memoirs of Lady Fanshaw were written for the instruc tion and entertainment of her son ; and, like the conversation of a wise old man, rich in experience and tempered by trials, it abounds with practical lessons of familiar morality, and inculcates everywhere a high tone of principle. Sir Richard Fanshaw, her husband, who was chiefly known as ambas sador to the Court of Spain in the reign of Charles II., had also been a devoted public servant of the first Charles ; and, during the protectorate of Cromwell, whilst in England, managed to obtain the respect of Cromwell, (who tried all means to buy him over to himself,) and to preserve his loy alty to his sovereign, whom he constantly attended on the continent after retiring from England. Sir Richard was one of the very few honest courtiers and able men in the service of Charles II., whose court and government was encircled by a set of witty rascals and heartless flatterers. In such MEMOIRS OF LADY FANSHAW. 99 a sphere Sir Richard was one out of place ; his honesty suited not the office, and he was, after all his genuine merit and undoubted services, politely dropped. To the evil influ ence of Clarendon, (another honest and great man,) the lady attributed the misfortunes of her husband. She suspected a very probable jealousy on the part of the chancellor, who, with his great qualities, had that defect of disposition. The lives of this faithful pair were of the most chequered grain. At one time almost penniless, at another living like vice roys'; now in want, proscribed, and under apprehension of death ; again rich, flourishing, courted, and happy. But in all adversity, as in the brightest sunshine of fortune, ever constant, forbearing, and hopeful. The husband was a statesman of the best description, learned, (beyond the or dinary acquisitions of his equals in rank,) a great traveller, (who had gained much knowledge thereby,) an accomplished gentleman, down to the minutest formalities of the Spanish court, and yet no mere courtier ; with a dash of the author, very expert and clever in diplomacy, and a practical Chris tian moralist in all his dealings and conversation. The volume is, in almost equal parts, a biography of her husband, including the events of contemporary history, a description of her travels, an account of herself, and a miscel lany of curious matters of fact. Under this last head would come the narrative of a singular trance, in which the mother of our heroine lay for two days ; a good old-fashioned ghost story, the scene of which is laid in Ireland, and a fearful instance of the righteous providence of the Almighty in a case of incest and blasphemy. The relation of the principal events of the lives of Lady Fanshaw and Sir Richard, afford genuine materials for, history. She describes a very affecting interview between her husband and Charles I., 100 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. who loved him as a friend, and always addressed him fa miliarly as Dick Fanshaw. The plague in London and the horrors of the civil war are told with remarkable distinct ness. Then a gayer scene, the Restoration, and the em bassy to Spain. Considered in part as a book of travels, the memoirs are full of pleasing sketches and descriptions, that might rank above that criticism. Among these are pictures of the chief places she saw in Spain and Portugal ; of which the account of the Alharnbra is circumstantial, and as pictu resque as that building is magnificent. Washington Irving might have taken it for his motto to the delightful volumes he published under the same title. But the charm of the book consists mainly in the en gaging naivete and exhibition of personal character. Clever as a writer, cleverer as a woman on the great stage of the World, it is as a faithful and affectionate wife and mother that Lady Fanshaw is best entitled to our regard, and even admiration. Instances are abundant and confirmatory of this character. At sea, with her husband, and the vessel at tacked with pirates, she had been locked up by the captain, but bribed the cabin-boy to let her out and give her his coat and tarpaulin, dressed and disguised with which she " crept up softly to her husband's side, as free from sickness and fear as, I confess, from discretion ; but it was the effect of that passion which I could never master." When Sir Richard, as a "malignant," was imprisoned, his wife thus relates : "I failed not constantly to go, when the clock struck four in the morning, with a dark lantern in my hand, all alone and on foot, from my lodging in Chan cery-lane, at my cousin Young's, to Whitehall, in at the entry that went out of King-street, into -the bowling-green. MEMOIE.S OF LADY FANSHAW. 101 There I would go under his window and softly call him ; he, after the first time excepted, never failed to put out his head at the first call. Thus we talked together ; and sometimes I was so wet with the rain, that it went in at my neck and out at my heels." The story of her procuring a pass to join her husband, when separated by the fortune of war, is a lively example of what a woman can by stratagem do at a pinch, but is too long to be inserted. Sir Richard knew the value of this admirable woman, who materially served him as a banker and agent, as well as in all the duties of a good wife. Often she went to raise money for him ; often played the diplomatist to serve his purposes. In both characters she was invariably successful, having wit, beauty, and accomplishments to set off her devotion, sense, and dis cretion. Among the less remarkable traits of the memoirs are the genuine relish this fine woman took in two very opposite gratifications in good living, and pomp and ceremony. She betrays an innate female love of dress and show, and oc cupies several pages with a minute detail of her appear ance, and that of her husband, on public occasions. Court shows and ceremonies she recounts, with equal pleasure, and yet she is always remarking how much her husband and herself preferred a quiet retreat in the country, to the bustle, and crowd, and envy, and heartburnings of a life passed at the court. As to her honest liking for the good things of this life, she never stops at a town or describes a country without a particular and minute inventory of its delicious products and artificial luxuries. These little ex hibitions of an every-day sort let us into the real character, and are not to be neglected. Who does not love Dr. John^ son for his thousand-and-one peculiarities, especially for his 102 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. partialities in eating. The anecdote of Milton praising his wife for the well-cooked dish, is grateful to us. Nor should we forget that Wordsworth was at one period, and is perhaps now, fond of cheese, arid that Lamb has recorded his exquisite relish of roast pig. The man that would sneer at these trifling memoranda may he a very useful, but cer tainly not a very companionable specimen of his species. XIV. CURIOUS EXTRAVAGANCIES IN THE FORMS OF VERSE. QUITE early in the history of English poetry, we meet the most fantastic taste displayed in the forms of metrical pro ductions. The English Muse was used occasionally to cut strange capers, even before the days of Elizabeth, as we learn from Puttenham, a sensible critic of that reign, and, we be lieve, the author of the first English ' Art of Poesie.' Later still, we find in the writings even of Q,uarles and Wither, curiosities of this kind : in all probability, written purely for the sake of indulging a love of ingenious amuse ment. This class of verse, we suppose, may be styled geo metrical poetry, more appropriately than by any other name. For those who indulged a love of these trivial conceits, (a species of off-shoot of the general tastes of the metaphysical school,) wrote verses in the shape and after the fashion of lozenges, rhomboids, triangles, or pyramids. Sometimes, this absurd fashion led them to versify in the style of obelisks, eggs, squares, equilateral triangles. As a general rule, closer attention appears to have been bestowed on the architectu ral portion of poems, thus constructed, than to the special subject-matter. Yet, sometimes, the form added strength and dignity to 104 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. the most solemn strains. "VVe think this is the case in the following poem of duarles. BREVITY OF LIFE. Behold t How short a span Was long enough, of old, To measure out the life of man ! In those well-temper'd days, his time was then Survey 'd, cast up, and found but three score years and ten. Alas! And what is that ? They come, and slide, and pass, Before my pen can tell thee what. The posts of time are swift, which having run, Their sev'n short stages o'er, their short-liv'd task is done. Our days Begun, we lend To sleep, to antic plays And toys, until the first stage end: Twelve waning moons, twice five times told, we give To unrecover'd loss we rather breathe than live. We spend A ten year's breath, Before we apprehend "What 'tis to live, or fear a death : Our childish dreams are filled with painted joys, Which please our sense awhile, and waking, prove but toys. CURIOUS EXTRAVAGANCIES IN THE FORMS Of VERSE. 105 How vain, How wretched is Poor man, that doth remain A slave to such a state as this ! His days are short, at longest ; few, at most ; They are but bad, at best ; yet lavished out, or lost. They be The secret springs That make our minutes flee On wheels more swift than eagles' wings : Our life 'B a clock, and every gasp of breath Brings forth a warning grief, till time shall strike a death. Sow soon Our new-born light Attains to full-aged noon ! And this, how soon to gray-hair'd night ! We spring, we bud, we blossom, and we blast, Ere we can count our day's, our days they flee so fast. They end When scarce begun ; And ere we apprehend That we begin to live, our life is done. Man count thy days ; and if they fly too fast For thy dull thoughts to count, count every day thy last. Here is something of a different tone : 106 ESSAYS UPON AUTHOES AND BOOKS. RHOMBOID AL DIEGE: BY GEORGE WITHEE. Ah me! Am I the swain, That late from sorrow free, Did all the cares on earth disdain ? And still untouch'd, as at some safer games, Played "with the burning coals of love, and beauty's flames ? Was 't I could dive, and sound each passion's secret depth at will, And from those huge o'erwheknings rise, by help of reason still 1 And am I now, oh heavens ! for trying this in vain, So sunk that I shall never rise again f Then let despair set sorrow's string For strains that doleful'st be, And I will sing Ah me 1 There are five more stanzas in. the same style ; lacka- daysical enough, in all conscience, and unworthy of the author of a few of the very sweetest strains that have ever been evoked from the English lyre. We have extracted the above, purely for the same reason that the tasteful Ellis in cluded it in his choice selections, on account of its singularity. XV. THIS is a very lively, and no less edifying, oldfashioned re ligious satire, directed against the extravagances of Meth odism, just then coming into vogue, by the Rev. Richard Graves, a sensible divine of the last century, a man of wide and acute observation, and a humorous writer of no mean scope and abilities. The work is thrown into the form of a novel, in all probability to attract general readers ; and, apart from the palpable hits the author is continually mak ing, it is full of adventure and reflection, a fair picture of the manners of the day, and the current fashionable follies of the time. It is interspersed with cleverly drawn charac ters, real and fictitious ; and altogether, to employ a com mon phrase, deserves to be much better known than it is. It is modelled, in a very distant manner, on the romance of Cervantes. The hero, Mr. Geoffrey Wildgoose, is the ex pectant heir of a genteel estate, and the only child of a widow lady residing in the country. After having gone through a regular university education, he comes home to represent the family in his own person. But soon after this, the young squire, conceiving a pique against the parson of his parish, who had got the better of him in a theological discussion, betakes himself to the systematic study of that swarm of 108 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. sectaries and dissenting authors who flourished in England during the Protectorate, and which have not yet become ex tinct. Having pursued this line of study for some months, the operation of puritanical principles inclined his mind to the reception of Methodism, a lately published doctrine, and he forthwith embraced its doctrines with peculiar ardor. After trying his hand in discussions of a religious character with the lower class in his neighborhood, who were proud to be ranked among his disciples and followers, and by whom he was never once contradicted, (this silent flattery confirm ing his conceit,) and giving the word, on several occasions, to limited assemblies, he at last began to conceive the idea that he was called to the work of the ministry. Prepared (as he imagined he was) by personal experience of the power of faith and the working of grace in the soul, and still more, stimulated by a perusal of the journals of Wesley and Whit- field, our knight commenced itinerant, and for a summer, footed it over the kingdom. What occurred during this period of time, occupies the major portion of this ingenious history Happily, his field preaching proved not so successful as his zeal had inspired him to expect ; and he finally relin quishes his scheme and returns to the society of his family, re-embracing the doctrines and discipline of the Church into which he had been baptized. His attendant, or squire, (a knight is nothing without a squire,) Jeremiah Tugwell, like Sancho Panza, is a shrewd fellow, and a great lover of good cheer. His idea of Heaven seems to have been, if we may judge from his literal inter pretation of his master's spiritual allegories, that of a first rate ordinary, free to all comers. Not a chapter passes off without some mention of his hearty relish of creature com- THE SPIRITUAL QUIXOTE. 109 forts. He is a cobbler by trade, past middle life, and in duced, by a strange mixture of motives, to follow Wildgoose ; policy, perhaps, predominating. Yet he, too, has a vein of spiritual presumption, and expects to mend souls as he would patch shoes ; one of that class, in a word, whom South has so admirably satirized ia his sermon on the Christian Pen tecost. The Danish Don was riot more misguided by Enthusi asm, made no more signal blunders, in his knight errantry, than did our spiritual knight in his attempts to convert the world. Uniformly he is beaten off the ground, whether it be at the race-course or the fair. He is heard with applause, in the private conventicles of his own sect, but makes no pros elytes out of it. He is heard with civil contempt in the drawing-room, which is suppressed in the servants' hall. A love adventure divides his attention with the concerns of the spiritual man, and he is continually engaged in a strife be tween the flesh and the spirit. The leading idea in the mind of Wildgoose, is the conversion of souls : that is his first object, in every company and under all circumstances. The leading idea in the mind, or rather stomach, of his fol lower is, a perpetual stuffing himself; and a thirstier soul never yet appeared as bottle-holder to any theological pugi list. Many living characters of note are introduced in the course of this work ; Wesley, and Whitfield ; Beau Nash, and Shenstone the poet ; Lady Lyttleton, etc. All of the portraits executed with spirit. Like the good old Novels, the history is full of episodes : there are the private histo ries of Mrs. Booby and Miss Townsend, Capt. Johnson and the poor tinker, and Mr. Rivers capital pictures of an an tiquary, a Welsh parson, a quack Doctor, and a hypochon- 6 110 -ESSAYS' UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. driac. The two last are irresistibly comic. Not less hu morous are the scenes where Wildgoose is consulted on several points of casuistry, and the scrapes he is continually involved in at taverns. There are two or three chapters of a rather warm description, and verging on coarseness In general, notwithstanding, the humor is as pure as it is caustic, and the satire vigorous and well applied. It is impossible to convey a fair impression of the book by occasional extracts ; so we will advise, at once, a perusal of it, which will well reward a judicious reader. This novel, with Southey's life of Wesley, will give one a pretty accu rate view of the two sides of Methodism ; in which sect there is much to praise, and a good deal to censure. It is open to censure, among other reasons, for its secta rian spirit, to say nothing of its presumption in dissent. The distinguishing beauty of the Church, is its liberal tole rance of mere diversities of opinion, and in its including the elements of all true theological doctrine. Now, the Metho dists, Baptists, etc., select some one or more dogmas of faith or practice, and pamper that, or them, out, into an exclu sive system, making the whole of Christianity to consist in but a portion of Christian doctrine. They slight other and more valuable truths, perhaps, to give prominence to one. The first Methodists were only stricter Episcopalians, en deavoring to revive a primitive simplicity of life, and cor responding purity of faith. But in the body of the Church they left, were to be found sincere, good, and wise men, seeking the same object, and only differing from them, in possessing greater prudential sagacity, and a truer, because less exacting and less arrogant piety. Pride and stubborn ness led to a separation, most causeless reasons- for dissent. Even now, the- Methodists can return to the bosom of THE SPIRITUAL QUIXOTE. Ill the Church with a better grace than any other class of dissenters, for they have borrowed the Episcopal office, and we understand, sometimes employ part of the Liturgy. The leading doctrine of those who followed Whitfield in preference to Wesley ; of the party that held of faith, not only as superior to, but as independent of, outward actions, alto gether ; which teaching, not only refrained from making a merit of works, but even did not sufficiently insist on the necessity of works as fruits of the Spirit, is often placed in a ridiculous light in the Spiritual duixote. This division among the Methodists, (we know not to what extent it now exists,) aflbrds of itself, a fact sufficient to warrant a pro phecy of their final extinction. Dissenting sects, if not perfectly united among themselves, must fall to pieces, since they want a conservative principle of union. It is so with the Unitarians, every preacher of which denomination frames a creed of his own. It is so with the Quakers, and Presbyterians, and Baptists, who are divided into parties numberless." So, in all probability, it will be with the Methodists. And so, we trust, in time it may come to pass, that they too, may be gathered into the Church, and again, united, one fold under one shepherd. With all their extravagances, the absurdity of some members and the wickedness of others, Methodism may point to many brilliant exemplars of piety and talent united. But we have laid most stress on the corrupt parts of the system, as there is no fear that the really good portion will be overlooked by candid inquirers. Apart from the soundness of the theological opinions advanced in the Spiritual duixote, it is impressed with a deep, though simple moral lesson. The hero, after his ex travagancies and follies, finally settles down into a rational 112 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. and sincere Christian, with an enlightened zeal and a spirit of liberal piety. The tendency of the work is most deci dedly on the side of virtue and religion, though we fear occasional scenes may mar its real value, and lead an idle reader to regard it as a work of mere entertainment, with out any idea of its admirable end, in point of religious in struction. For our own part, we can praise it highly for both qualities, neither of which is more inimical to the other, than a hearty laugh and cheerful spirit are adverse to the possession of the warmest heart, or the living up to the strictest principles. XVI. SATIRE AND SENTIMENT. SATIRE and sentiment represent the extreme opposite poles of conversation and authorship ; the tendency of the first being to bitterness, and of the second, to affectation. The love of scandalous gossip is the offspring and bond of fash ionable society, as weak sentimentality results from an unnatural refinement of the feelings. In their natural and healthy state, both of these faculties are of the utmost im portance to society as well as to individuals ; but we oftener find the instinctive appetite for both depraved, rather than indulged to a proper and satisfactory limit. As the virtue of censure may soon become debased into the vice of lam poon, and delicate generosity gradually descend into ephe meral sensibility, some line of distinction appears necessary to mark the province of each. Honest satire, from a writer or speaker of worth, pro voked by meanness or inflamed by dishonesty, serves as one of the strongest checks upon folly and crime. Without it the world would run mad. Next to religion, it offers the surest moral restraint on the absurd conceits and wild pas sions of man. Nay, many who affect to despise religion, dread the sharp pen of the satirist, when he has truth and justice on his side. Even the virtuous who are not endued 114 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. with strength of will or intellectual courage, are too often deterred from praiseworthy actions by the dread of personal ridicule. Pope says of himself as a satirist and the world has never seen a better that they who feared not God, we're still afraid of him ; and this was written without pre sumption or hastiness. But is satire always honest ? Is it so, generally ? We suspect the answer would be decidedly in the negative. Instead of correction of abuses, we meet abuse itself; in place of truth, we hear scandal ; for general censure, we read personalities ; we find bigotry where we should enlarged views. The same holds true with regard to sentiment. By dwelling too much on the kind impulses that prompt to friendship and love among equals, and to compassion and assistance towards inferiors in fortune and station, the sen sitive part of our natures overlays the practical. We write pathetically or talk like Howard, but refuse the aid common humanity expects us to bestow. Excessive indulgence of feeling paralyzes the active powers, and frequently unfits one, however charitably inclined, for the offices of charity. The moral influence of satire, pursued to more than an or dinary extent and without just intentions, is to embitter the heart. Few satirists have been kind-hearted men. The pen of the satirist is dipt in gall, and his fierce denuncia tions flow too often from a malicious disposition. Even light, airy ridicule, tnay come from the depths of a sore and wounded spirit, and of which it may serve as the cloak. Most writers of satire those eminent chiefly for that pe culiar talent have been disappointed men, or somehow unfortunately placed in the world. A crooked back in Pope, a club-foot in. Byron, and even slighter personal defects, have fretted many a noble spirit. Poverty, too, first animated SATIRE AND SENTIMENT. 115 the powers of Johnson, and sustained the keen rebukes of Churchill. Swift's ill success at court, and Walpole's luxu rious leisure the extremes of fortune soured the one, and rendered the other flippant, cold, and unfeeling. And if we knew the exact" personal history of the prominent sati rists, we should learn how greatly their intellectual powers were modified by the mischances of life or the uncertainties of fortune. Scorn and scoffing, in turn, react upon the writer and produce ill effects in unhinging the whole har mony of the faculties and affections. The hard heart and the skeptical head, the unbelief in goodness an-d the triumph over the destruction of even the most criminal, are the natu ral fruits of this same satirical spirit. A mere sentimentalist, again, is nearly as bad. His refinements as well as those of the satirist, serve to harden, the heart, though in a different and more plausible way. His object is, to make a heart in the head ; to change the sensitive into the. intellectual part ,of our nature, and to make reflective ideas stand for genuine emotions. Authors have in this way been guilty to a great degree. How much false pity have not their books engendered ! How tho roughly they have managed, by their soft tales of woe, to petrify the affections ! Strange paradox, yet a truism. This whining sort of philosophy, in time grows into a levity of character and utter indifference. . Objects of compassion are only regarded as objects of speculation, not as objects of charity. They are considered as topics for ingenious lec tures, and the boast of analytic skill. A painter looks at a beggar for his picturesqueness, his rags, and colored skin, and forlorn air ; the moral anatomist prefers to read an af fecting description of him : the philanthropist alone offers him aid as a suffering fellow-creature. Practical benevo- 116 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. lence is thus made the test of fine sentiment ; all else Is little better than an intellectual grace, and the cunning refine ment of the elegant courtier. In conversation, satire bears the palm, as the love of gossip is universal, and, indeed, forms the strongest bond of what is called fashionable society. Take away from that charmed circle its bitterness, its jealousies, its scandalous reports, its mean bickerings, its spirit of scorn, its self-suf ficiency, its real emptiness, and what do you leave behind? Abuse well spiced, falsehoods well told, a want of charity handsomely set off, are they not the prime talents of the leaders of fashion? In books, too, nothing passes off BO well, now-a-days, as a lively relation of personal history, and the domestic manners of the great vulgar. Sentiment is ex cluded from the very strictest circles of fashion, as too grave and serious. It cannot such as it is, for the most part withstand the attacks of ridicule and ironical eulogium. It takes refuge in the blue stocking circles ; not in the com pany of real scholars or authors of genius. Satire is hence more generally appreciable than senti ment, as it appeals to a lower range of faculties, an inferior class of minds. Indignation is a commoner feeling than pity. We hate more heartily taking the world in general than we commiserate. Satire is more palpable than sen timent; applies oftener to personal than mental defects-; is better gratified with ridicule of dress and manner, than with contempt of character or abilities. Sentiment, the simpler it is the better ; satire must be fine to cut deep. A coarse and bitter satirist, who mangles while he "whips" abuses, is a mere butcher; a delicate censor is like a skilful surgeon, who probes the moral gan grene only to heal it the more completely. The finer satire 'SATIRE AND SENTIMENT. 117 is, the more lasting, though more indirect, its effects. The broader and rougher satire is, the more opposition it pro vokes, and the less benefit it affords. Elaborate sentiment is harsh and cold. The old ballad writers held this spirits in perfection ; they were simple, because natural. The mod ern parlor poets, the sentimental song writers of the day, are full of frigid conceits and turgid ornaments. Compare Moore with Burns the last of the old minstrels and you may see the difference between true feeling and affected emotion. Moore endeavors to create a sensation among his audience ; Burns, to touch the heart of the reader or singer. Of the sentimental talker of fashion, Joseph Surface is a fair specimen, eternally moralizing and making reflections upon trivialities. This rs the true fashionable pedantry, more contracted than that of the scholar and antiquary. True sentiment, the offspring of natural feeling and in telligent judgment, is the sure bond of friendship and love, for what is love but the purest and highest of all senti ments? which is only such in its essence, when wholly detached from all thoughts of a sensual description. The highest love is the noblest sentiment self-denying, exalted, sincere. Next to that sublime emotion, and perhaps more lasting where really constant at all is generous friend ship of which, though the longer we live the more inere- dulous we become, yet which, when we do find it firm, we revere as the noblest passion that can fill the breast of humanity. As to the requisites for writers in these departments : Satire requires intellectual acuteness; sentiment, a refine ment and . nicety of thought. There is a sentiment of the head already referred to current among authors; there is a sentiment of the heart, native to philanthropists. There 6* 118 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS, is a commoner sort still, the sentiment of conversation. To be a witty satirist, requires a keen understanding. To be come a tolerable sentimental writer, a goodly quantity of interjections. In books, to be a strong satirist, demands greater force of intellect; to write delicate sentiment calls for ingenuity of perception and delicacy of taste. Sentiment requires an author with a certain effeminacy of thought and style, like Marmontel, who, in his memoirs, confesses the effect of female society and conversation on his writings. Satire, on the other hand is masculine, and braces the powers of the intellect. Sentiment is of three kinds : plain, honest, manly, sim ple the outbursting of an uncorrupted heart or, graceful and refined, cultivated by education, elevated by society, purified by religion ; or else of that magnificent and swelling character, such as fills the breast of the patriot and the gen uine philanthropist. The sentiment of old Izaak Walton to take examples from books answers to the first: the sentiment of Mackenzie and Sterne, to the second : the sen timent of Wordsworth, and Burke, and Shakespeare, to the third. In the character of a complete gentleman, satire should occupy no position of consequence ; it should be held sub ordinate to the higher principles and nobler sentiments. A desire to diminish and ridicule is meaner than the ambition " to elevate and surprise." It is even more agreeable to find eulogy in excess, than censure. A boaster ranks above a tattler, and a vain-glorious fellow is always better received than a carking, contemptible depreciater. Easy, pleasant raillery is' not the thing we mean, but a cold, malicious, sneering humor, a turn for degrading and vitiating every thing. Sentiment, in its purity, which continually leans to SATIRE AND SENTIMENT. 119 the ideal of perfection, is to be cherished a remnant of Christian chivalry as the fit ornament of the accomplished gentleman ; an ornament like that promised in the Book of Proverbs to the good son, " an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck." XVII. SUMMER READING. HAZLITT, in one of his delightful Table Talks, speaks of certain of Hume's lighter miscellaneous Essays as mere " summer reading," in comparison with his Treatise on Human Nature, which he very judiciously calls " a meta physical choke-pear." The distinction between the two classes of writing may afford a slight distinction between light reading and laborious study, or rather between winter studies and summer reading. We are far from calling even the least labored and sub tle of Hume's speculations, or those of any metaphysician, indeed, properly summer "reading. They would rather rank among the studies of that season. By summer reading, we mean generally to express agreeable, pleasant, intellectual entertainment, to be derived from light, graceful, and inter esting writers. It is true, that with most readers this sum mer reading extends over the whole year. That what should be kept for a season of lassitude and comparative indolence, is too often retained throughout the season of labor and study the winter ; the season, as Hunt sings, * " To which the poet looks, For hiving his sweet thoughts and making honeyed books." SUMMER READING". 121 But we. do not write to those who transpose the seasons, or rather make all seasons alike ; like those birds of passage, who, at the close of autumn, leave the north for a more genial region ; and unlike those wise and grateful (yet per haps necessarily robust) natures, who delight in every va riety of the seasons who love the cordial heats of summer, and feel braced by the rough blasts of winter who admire the fullness and freshness of life in spring, and are delighted with the rich glories and sombre tints of autumn. All pleasures are made equal : the summer morning " with song of earliest birds ;" the winter evening by the cheerful fire-side ; the April showers, and the fine days of October ; even the chill blasts of March, and the wintry sky of De cember. Summer "refulgent summer" the period of repose, the season of early dinners and mid-day or afternoon siestas of cool morning and evening walks of iced drinks, and salt baths, and sea-shore breezes, and country visits ; it is of this glowing period we write. And what are the books to be read now ? Surely nothing difficult, or complex, or intricate, or dry, or subtle. 'No hard study for us, my mas ters ; give us easy reading not to be confounded with that which is easily written, however, by any means. On this sultry, close day, who would take up Locke, or Hobbes ; Milton's prose, or even his poetry ? No, we want something gossamer-light, the syllabub, not the pieces de resistance of literature. Even fine poetry of the more elevated descrip tion is too high. No tragedy for hot weather, except the farce of that name : no epic strain, no ardent Pindarics, or flaming lyrics of love. Nothing that requires much thought , or attention : nothing that deeply affects the heart. Banish sentiment, banish imagination ; but not gay wit, nor ever- 122 ESSAYS UPON AtJTHORS AND BOOKS. cheerful humor. Swift's saturnine humor is not the thing, nor the biting wit of the satirist ; but the gay writers gene rally. Yet, as a class of books, none appear to me better fitted for this season than lively and sensible travels, espe cially in the South and East the regions of the Tropics and the Orient. Eastern travels always read best in summer : the season is in consonance with the text. The sultry heat out o'doors gives a confirmation strong of the stifling air of the desert, on the author's pages ; and the sweet spray of fountains is cooling, both to see and hear. Camels, dates, elephants, palm trees, the dusky Arab, the swart Moslem, all appear to be, and are, strictly in keeping with a burning sun and his ardent rays, in midsummer. By a slight ex ercise of imagination we can easily transport ourselves over land and sea, by the aid of the warm weather, as well as on the wing of that sightless laborer, the wind. Sitting in a close room, of a hot day, how easy to think of- cities in Spain or Morocco of Stamboul and Grand Cairo of the Nile and the desert. Fancy can travel faster than steam, and takes the willing voyager captive over the passages of leaded type, rendered heavy to give emphasis to light description. It is difficult for a person of little imagination to reverse the matter ; to think heartily, and realize the warmth and richness of oriental life, in winter. " Oh, who can hold a fire in his hands," etc. Some of the later books of travels, (Eothen, the Crescent and the Cross, and particularly Thackeray's Tour,) deserve to be especially remembered just now. They are to be read on a breezy eminence, or under a spreading tree, not as Midsummer Night's Dream, but as noon-day fancies. We forget the name of the writer, (French, English, or German, we are not certain,) who, some fifty years ago SUMMER READING. 123 made the remark, that in no department of modern litera ture had so great improvement been made as in the class of hooks of travel. Probubly this was a fair judgment at the time, although (with regard to the mass of books of this kind, not the few we may select for praise,) if the case were to be re-heard arid tried over again on its merits, the deci sion migljt be reversed. For, to tell the truth, at this pre sent writing, in no walk of authorship have there been greater failures, (tragedies and epic poems excepted,) than in that of travels. The literature of travel is singularly rich in the article of copiousness, but it is almost equally meagre in real power, whether of thought or style. Among the hundred popular books on the East, perhaps ten will last a genera tion or so. And so of other countries. We are yet to have classic local geographies, that shall combine truth of detail and liveliness of style, with antiquarianism, philosophy, pictures of manners, and topographical accuracy. The same places have been described, and the same adventures repeated ad nauseam. Hardly a town, -a ca thedral, a fall, mountain, or lake in Great Britain, or on the continent of Europe, that has not been abimdantly prated about ; while our own good country has been laid under contribution by every idle sea-captain, or petty official, on a holyday excursion of a couple of months travelling divines, or wandering female Syntaxes, or, (still preserving the sex,) female reformers of church and state. One who can write nothing else, can make up a book of travels. Many^ can write a volume abroad who have never written a page at home. This is true, both of lite rary amateurs and literary traders. The secret is compila- tion. At least two-thirds of the material of nine-tenths of 124* ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. these books is obtained from guide-books, tourist companions, gazetteers, historical compends, newspapers, and an ency clopedia. Such is travel-writing made easy for the tarry-at-home traveller, and by one who need not himself stir from his writing-desk. Even in two such lively works as the Cross and the Crescent, and Hochelaga, there is a good deal of " cramming" for the task. Yet much of this work is done by actual voyageurs : dull fellows, who return from a year's Periplus with a couple of portfolios stuffed full of MSS. In this way, apparently, shoals of travels are manufac tured, especially travelling letters for the newspapers. In deed, so common is the product, answering to a regular demand, that a writer of taste and spirit will not print his own admirable letters, because so many raw, stupid things have preceded his choice collection. Among our writers a considerable body have published Letters from Abroad, and Travels in Europe and Asia ; yet how few live past their season. Almost every one rests his reputation on something else. Willis, perhaps, the best, as the most brilliant, on his tales and sketches ; Cooper is dull and prolix, and must be read only in his admirable early novels ; Garter is buried under his own newspapers, as well as Brooks. Slidell is elegant but feeble; (Irving 's tales, and sketches, and histories, have done far more for Spain than all the American travellers ;) Dewey is strongest in his pulpit and the lecture room ; MtssSedgwick in fiction, &c. Two American writers are unique as paint ers of French manners and living Sanderson and Appleton Jewett. At home, far too little has been done to illustrate our scenery, habits, and customs, by native travellers ; Irving, SUMMER READING. 125 for Dutchland and the far west : Miss Fuller for the lakes ; and Bryant in his fine letters on the South are the best. Nor should we forget Charles Fenno Hoffman's Winter in the "West, (his best book ;) Judge Hall's Notes ; Schoolcraft, for the Indian country ; and Timothy Flint for the Valley of the Mississippi. A good sized library might be made up of European travels ; yet very few of the whole collection are worth reading. For France, Sterne's Sentimental. Journey has not yet been, and we doubt if it ever will be, superseded ; and, after the piles of volumes, perhaps, the two best written on France, by English authors, and as books of travels, are Lady Morgan's and Hazlitt's Notes. Other books may be useful for other purposes ; for scientific information, or con temporary historical evidence. The soil of Italy is covered some feet thick with books of travels, by the nobility, antiquaries, artists, newspaper correspondents, and invalid tourists, (a part of whose dis ease is to scribble.) To know Italy tolerably well, one must read poet and novelist, historian and philosopher, native and foreign. The fourth canto of Childe Harold may serve for a guide. In Venice, one would, on the spot, try the effect of Radcliff 's, Schiller's, Sbakspeare's, Otway's art. In Florence, we should read Machiavelli's and Roscoe's histories, corrected by Sismondi ; the Decameron and Dante. And so throughout. Borrow and Irving have spoiled us for reading any other books on Spain, although within a year or two several sprightly works have been issued from the press. England has sent two true humorists to Germany, as well as a horde of compilers, Head and Hood. The Bub- 126 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. bles of the first writer are a happy hit, and Up the Rhine is a masterly copy of Humphrey Clinker. At home, the English have sent a capital sketcher to Ireland, Mr. Thackeray. But to return to travels in the East. Travels in the East had been heretofore pretty dull matters, given over chiefly to missionaries, (unlike Borrow,) to biblical critics, to topographical surveys and Bible statis tics, sometimes $. Poet like Lamartine or Chateaubriand, or Milnes, but until the present day, no readable, picturesque prose accounts had appeared like those of Kinglake, Warbur- ton, Thackeray, and our own Stephens. We do not pretend to speak of the grave and learned works on the East the labors of Niebuhr and Burkhart, and Professor Robinson ; but of the sparkling pages of the various tourists we have referred to, and among whom there is much to choose. Eothen is for instance, much superior to the Cross and Crescent fresher, closer, more original. The volumes of Warburton smack too much of historical and geographical compilation, something in the manner of the voluminous medley of history, geography, and personal remarks, by Buckingham. Thackeray is a brilliant cockney everywhere, and cannot shake off the character. He is most of all so, when he even plays at playing the character, more particu larly his passages on Athens, and at the Pyramids. The writer is honest in despising affected raptures, and has a true hatred of cant; but there are certain objects which naturally inspire awe and a genuine feeling of reverence, which a man may be sincere in avowing himself deficient in ; yet that defect (a real one) does not alter the character of the thing admired generally, in which he can see noth ing. He is candid, who says with truth, that he has beea SUMMER READING. 127 disappointed in Niagara Falls ; at the same time, he con fesses himself without eye, ear, heart and soul, for one of the Wonders of Creation. Mr. Thackeray sees nothing to excite him on the ground sacred to enthusiasm ; yet greater men have felt generous emotions there, and expressed their feeling nobly. In general, with all his admirable sense and picturesque eye, and tact for brilliant description, Mr. Tit- marsh (a cockney name) sees the contemptible and absurd more readily, and paints it with stronger gust, than the beautiful or grand. The burlesque rather than the beauti ful ; fun more than fancy ; and, generally, gaiety and not gravity, preponderates in his composition and in his writings, He lives in the present ; the past appears to affect him very slightly, and he speculates with little enthusiasm about the future. Mr. Stephens preceded these writers in point of time, and in this country in point of popularity. He has merits and qualities of the popular kind, effective in description, clear and sensible, with a knack of story-telling, and a read able style. He has been one of our few writers successful in a pecuniary sense. Whatever relates to the East, is properly summer read ing. History Jewish, as told by Moses and Josephus ; that of the Turks and Tartars, by Gibbon, and, indeed, all the oriental part of his admirable history. A delightful ori ental library (as interesting, and perhaps as instructive, as the learned work of D'Herbelot) would include, besides the works just mentioned, the delightful fictions, Rasselas, Zadig, other Eastern tales of Voltaire, the Arabian Nights, Vathek, the Epicurean, Scott's Tales of the Crusaders, and Pillpay's Fables, and Keene's Persian Fables, the oriental poems of Lord Byron and Tom Moore, Sir Wm. Jones' translations, 128 ESSAYS UPON AUTHOKS AND BOOKS. Life and Journals of Heber, Embassies to China, &c. In later English history, the splendid Orations of Burke, with Macauley's articles on Clive and Warren Hastings. Spain and Italy, South America and the West Indies, our own Southern States, Mexico and Central America, the islands in the Pacific Ocean and South Sea, are regions about which we read with more pleasure than even about the East. They are nearer to us ; and the southern coun tries of Europe far more famous in story. The southern portion of our own hemisphere offers many rare attractions to the reader and student, as well as to the traveller. Just now, Mexico is a point of great interest to all of us. Why does not some enterprising man get up panoramas of the city of Mexico, and of the surrounding country. We have often thought it would prove a good speculation to exhibit here views of the cities of the South, Havana, New Orleans, Charleston, the prairies of the West and South West, plan tations of rice, cotton, sugar and tobacco. Those at the North, who cannot afford to visit the South, and yet wish to know something of their own coun try, remote from their own homes, could, in this way, get some idea of the scenery and localities of the South. To say a good word for ourselves, and a true one, mag azines especially form a favorite species of summer reading. Light, graceful, versatile and sprightly, they contain matter for all tastes and every disposition, "that the mind of desul tory man, studious of change " may have no just reason for complaint on the score of want of attraction. xvnt. TH CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION. THERE is always danger in the pursuit of the immediate practical wants of life lest the fair claims of the imagination may be neglected. This tendency has invested the reason ing faculty, the intellectual understanding, with more than equitable attributes, and certainly granted it a more than reasonable sway. The culture of science is a culture of the reason, almost exclusively. Now, the culture of any one faculty in excess, or to the exclusion of a free culture of the others, is, of necessity, hurtful. More especially in the case of the reason, which is but a co-worker with the ima gination iu the pursuit of truth, and its servant in the crea tion of beauty. The soul is the parent of them both, and an impartial mother. The Americans, in a land comparatively destitute of those historical landmarks that carry back the imagination to the past, are, more than the inhabitants of Europe, where the traveller is in a land of monuments and ancient temples, the devices of the early and the middle age, forced to regard the present time as our peculiar age. Hence, we are almost destitute of antiquities and antiquaries, though our land be, perhaps, the ancient seat of creation and paradise. There are many projectors into the misty vale of the future ; but 130 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. most of us live in and for the present. A very narrow hori zon bounds that view. This would not be the case, had we formed a proper conceptiou of that glorious faculty, which, more than any other, assimilates man to the Divinity, and which enables the creature to become a creator. The imagination is commonly considered a faculty placed in man for the mere purposes of amusement and recreation. This was the old pedantic notion of poetry. Its province was, purely, ' to please.' But this is a very trifling and un just view. The exercise of the imagination is not merely a matter of entertainment ; it is the highest teaching. It charms, while it instructs ; but truth delights in fairy fic tion dressed ; and even the naked truth, unadorned, simple, to an eye that can well survey its fair proportions, is more truly attractive than the most beautiful fiction. It is not poetry, however, alone, that is affected by this depreciation of the imaginative faculty. The error tends to a low appreciation of the excellent in all art ; tends to a material taste in speculative 'inquiries ; to incredulity and coldness in matters of religion. It has an injurious effect on all literature, which it materially degrades ; preferring always science, business, and practical skill. Poetry and religion the highest fiction and the highest philosophy both looking to a common principle, are based upon the imagination. They both appeal to faith. With out this, neither could exist, for each would need a hold on man. In perfect sincerity, and firm trust alone, ean they attach themselves to the soul The poet must by illusion, the Christian by faith a species of illusion work and wait. Both must rely on this as their sheet-anchor. The imagination should, therefore, be cultivated, if only as an aid to the strengthening of virtuous resolves, and the THE CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION/ 131 heightening of religious aspirations. The effect of a pure imagination on the heart, is one of the most cheering evi dences of the real nobility of man. The highest poetry, we repeat, is religious, and the greatest poets must be, necessa rily, devout. The common opinion, sanctioned by great names, is against this position ; yet the truer view, sanction ed by still higher authority, is directly in its favor. For who will place Dr. Johnson, Byron, and the sensual school, against Milton, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, to say nothing of the grandest poetry in the world the poetry of the He brews ? The old-fashioned critics thought or said, that dul- ness and insipidity \vere the genuine ingredients in religious verse. This is very true in its application to some religion ists ; but is very far from true when we come on the muses' hill when we reach the enchanted city of poets. Their error could have arisen only from ignorance, or else from a minuteness of poetical and critical vision, that can see a world of poetry in Shelly and Moore, and nothing but prosaic bald ness in "Wordsworth and Milton. Milton is the most serious and impressive of uninspired lyri&ts. The whole cast of his mind was eminently religious. The Hebrew poets were his favorite reading, and after them the Greek tragedians and Shakspeare. His personal bearing is said to have been grave and austere. Even in youth, he was like his own arch angel Severe in youthful beauty, He was religious in his tastes ; he played anthems daily on the organ. What other instrument could have filled -his mind with those magnificent ideas of space and sound of which his poetry is full ? The poet then, as priest and prophet in an early age ; 132 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. so, also as a Christian and as the world's teacher, must be a man of purity and holiness. He must have clean hands, and a pure heart, that would hymn the glories of the Al mighty. Besides the great poets we have mentioned, whose motto is ' Holiness before the Lord,' there is a galaxy of lesser lights, a poetic host, just before and after the restoration in England, professedly religious Q,uarles and Crashaw, Her bert and Donne, and Vaughan and Wotton. It may be re marked, further, that the most irreligious poets discover, in stinctively, at times, a vein of devotion, and even the light est versifiers have their images of fear and terror. The gloomiest painters, occasionally, describe a fairer scene ; and through the pitchy darkness are seen gleams of light, as from a heavenly country. This arises out of a very natural cause. Religion, its hopes and fears ; the grandeur and gentleness of the su preme intellect ; the beauty of divine love ; the hallowed influences of the spirit, form the noblest themes of the poet, painter, and musician. It is from interest, if for no other reason, then, the poet should be religious. Not only is the grandest poetry religious, but also the finest music, and the immortal masterpieces of painting. The souls of Milton, Raphael, and Handel, could not be touched by common loves, or vexed by common cares. They required something vast and awful, or exquisitely tender and sweet, to fill their minds, and move their hearts. High fancies, rich colors, pealing harmonies Paradise Lost, the Holy Family, the Messiah. No themes have inspired such eloquence as reli gion. In fact, every art has laid its richest offerings at that shrine. The noblest cathedrals have been erected for the worship of the Most High ; and, in those temples, the choicest THE CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION. 133 paintings are hung, the most solemn music is played, accom panied by voices almost cherubic, the most admirable verses have been, written for its psalmody what poem is finer than that Kembi-andt strain of mingled golden, and gloomy fan cies, that rich monkish canticle, ' Dies irse, dies ilia ?' and the wisest powers of discriminative piety and judicious de votion have been exhausted in the preparation of a perfect liturgy. It must be confessed, then, the imagination is the most religious of our faculties, and consequently, the grandest. All imagination is either creative or sympathetic. The first brings man nearer to his Maker ; the second, to his fellows. The one is invention, the other sympathy. By the first, we invent scenes of delight for others as well as for ourselves, and passages of pathetic wretchedness. By the latter, we feel, instinctively, for the happy and sad, the gay and the miserable. The latter makes us better philanthro pists ; the former, better poets. Is there any comparison, between the two ? None ; except in the case of the high est poet, who is the greatest, philanthropist. Most of the hardness of heart and coldness of feeling in the world, arises out of the want of imagination. We want sympathy to place ourselves in the condition of others. Our imagination is not strong enough to touch the heart ; or rather, it does not act with reciprocal force, as it should. , With regard to the prominent position of the imagina tion in the mind, there is this suggestion to be offered ; viz, that although it be the highest faculty in the human mind, it may not be the loftiest attribute of Deity. The creative power of the A 11- Creator may be supposed to result from all-wisdom, which instinctively perceives what is the only right, joined to an energy of will, such as we can have no conception of. The reason or intellect, properly so called, 134 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. as distinct from the imagination, it may philosopically be inferred, is the ruling power in the Divine Mind. For, compared with the realities ever present to Deity, our high est imaginings must be the merest commonplace. In God, the perfection of knowledge supersedes all room for proba bility arid conjecture. All is clear to Him. There are no hidden mysteries, no inscrutable secrets, unrevealed to the Source of All. In us, imagination springs from ignorance ; we never attempt to imagine what we can accurately learn. Therefore, as the Deity knows every thing, he can, in the nature of things, imagine nothing. AYe have now attempted to state the just position of the imagination. "We proceed to the great question, how to cultivate it ? After which, we shall consider the intellec tual and moral uses this culture may subserve. How, then, are we to educate the imaginative faculty ? what aids are we to seek ? whence the sources of its de light ? Kature, the poets, art, the heart of man. These are at once both the instruments and sources of and for the culture of the imaginative faculty. It may be said, the poor cannot reach the delights of art, cannot procure access to them, and if they can, are not prepared by previous edu cation to relish or enjoy them. The public taste, then, is to be Cultivated. A taste for natural scenery, to say nothing of the refine ment of art, is, in its mere elements, inherent in man ; but training, and some study, is needed to educe and perfect it. This educated taste is very rare. "With what cold and in sensible eyes do the majority of persons regard the fairest scenes of nature ! They see with their eyes only. They never feel. There is no heart in their understanding ; no sentiment in their perceptions. They are mere literal-inind- THE CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION. 135 ed observers. The earth is not to them a most cogent argument of the wisdom and benevolence of its Great Fra- mer. They associate not matter with spirit perceive no connection. They find no spiritual influences in themselves, hallowing the material objects around them. They see nothing but thick woods, and craggy rocks, and meadows spreading far. The general study of the noble army of poets, and poetic philosophers, is, unquestionably, the best influence the brain of man has yet devised for the culture of the creative power. The numberless improvements in the art of engraving have brought the choicest works within the reach of even the laborer. People's editions, cheap libraries without end, furnish the means of mental culture to all. The poets have been oftener reprinted than any other class of writers, and this speaks well for the elevation of the public mind. The time may not yet have arrived, but it must come some day, when the wealth of the state, joined to the-mu- nificent bequests of individuals, will unite to provide classic public entertainments ; not the mere dole of the Roman people in an early day Panem, circencesque, but free lectures, free concerts, free admission to galleries of paintings and sculpture, to libraries, aud reading-rooms, to public walks and gardens of rare beauty ; and lastly, to the ' well-trod stage,' which, it is hoped, will then have be come what it once professed to be a school of virtue, and a discipline of the heart. < The rich may, indirectly, do much to improve the popu lar taste, and fix a high standard. In many costly works, where the poor may not unite with them, they can display 13G ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. a'richness, and yet a solidity of style and magnificence, that cannot fail to give a high tone to the character of even the lowest class, and impart a finer grace to the manners of all. The poor man's eye possesses a certain property in the elegancies of the man of wealth, who is also a man of taste, so that faculty will be improved in him, even if he cannot participate as an equal sharer in every luxury. The rich can introduce a style of architecture, simple, yet solemn, in the public buildings of cities ; in bridges, roads, and aqueducts, over the whole face of the country ; and in the bosom of retired vales, or on the tops of high hills, erect temples of eternal stone, and rich with Gothic tracery and later skill. The imagination, and consequently the moral frame, is nobly affected by such monuments of immortality. The rich can do more. They can maintain, if they please, a wise moderation in their private way of living, and -not, by heedless profusion, give rise to envy, or by os tentatious display, to false pride. They can discard all tawdriness in dress and furniture, the frequent bad taste ; and substitute Doric simplicity for Corinthian splendor. They can revive the art of landscape gardening ; an art brought to comparative perfection hi England, but almost unknown here. A great advantage resulting from these improvements would be the vast amount of refined labor thrown into the hands of the laboring class. This would have a more certain tendency to elevate and refine them, than all the declamations in the world on the Dignity of Man. The intellectual benefits resulting from a liberal culture of the imaginative faculty, have been too much slighted. It is not sufficiently comprehended, that even the strictest logic THE CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION. 137 must have a coloring of imagination. To conceive the clear est proposition, some invention is necessary ; to frame an apt simile, demands some fancy. The imagination is apparently lawless ; yet it has its laws, and method, and logic. But its associations are too nice and subtile to be distinguished by coarse or unreflecting minds. It proceeds, in its inquiries, on the higher instincts of the soul for its premises. It takes a wider sweep and a loftier flight than pure reason can. Hence, it sees more of a subject at once ; takes in a broader field of relations and contingencies ; more delicately distinguishes ; more vividly contrasts. It is the argument by picture ; a poetic analogy ; a creative analysis. The reason of so much severe censure of poetry and imagination, by logical men, is from the examples they have daily before them, of men of weak imaginations, who are also weak reasoners. Generalizing, unfairly, from these, they conceive all imagination to be weak and puerile. In a strong man, however, the imagination is a robust and sturdy faculty, and can do its work manfully. Look at the imagi nation of Scott ; when his whole sensitive being was almost overwhelmed, how it worked bravely on ! Survey the ample expanse of Milton's mind ; in poverty, in blindness, friend less, in trouble ; his imagination never failed him, though all other of his human resources might. And then the consolations of the imagination, a favorite topic of declamation, to the sick in mind, those suffering in physical pain, to the discontented, the ambitious, the unfor tunate, the despairing, the miserable. What a balm to the spirit is the lay of the poet, then, or the moving tale of the artful, romancer ! The phrase, moral use of the imagination, may strike 138 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. some strangely. What we mean to express is, the aid imagi nation may, by its pictures, its fair creations, its generous views, furnish to the perfection of man's moral nature. The moral value of the imagination, refers to the influence of the imagination on the heart. This influence consists in the growth of a nohler sincerity than is commonly practised in the world ; in a holier purity in act and intention ; and in the expansion of private benevolence into philanthropy and patriotism. It assures faith, and confirms love. It assures faith by its inherent elevation and nobleness ; it confirms love by its evidence of a single heart, and a natural confidence of soul. The worldling may regard such a cha racter as a simpleton ; but he is, with all his boasted wis dom, a very fool himself ! In the case of the poor, for whose advantage we cannot suggest too much, the effects of a cultivated imagination would be readily perceived in a prevalence of temperance, cleanliness, and order ; in a more cheerful aspect ; a more decent and becoming appearance ; in an intelligence that could resist the innovations of selfish ambition, and a calm strength that would dismay the attacks of overbearing power. The general diffusion of the culture of the imagination would advance many objects with which it now appears to have but a slight connection. The oratory of the bar, and the eloquence of the pulpit, would become simpler, and more impressive. A more enlightened public taste would improve private and individual performances, and much would not be tolerated then, that is patiently endured now. Religion and true poetry would then become co-workers with taste and fancy. The world would be purer and ho- THE CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION. 139 lier. The artisan would be a Christian and enlightened; and equally a good man and a skilful craftsman. The heart of man that fountain of all that is good or, if poisoned by the world's corruption, that sink of utter im purity would be truer, and more affectionate ; more earnest, and more confiding. Man would converse with his fellow man as with a brother and a friend ; and not, as is too often the case now, as with a rival or foe. The natural warfare of trade, the competition of business, would be merged in. an universal harmony and brotherly love. The cordial grasp of the hand, the warm expression of friendship, would not be simulated for foreign purposes. The body social would then be in its most perfect state ; for ' out of the heart cometh all the issues of life ;' and then the liearjt would be ihe rilling principle of tke woxld- XIX. POLITICAL SATIBK THE most marked trait in the finest political writing is its personality. It is very plausible to reiterate the hackneyed maxim, " principles, not men," but it is next to impossible to separate the two., An intimate connection necessarily subsists between principles and those who hold them, as between a man and his dress, a book and its author. Cer tain, abstract philosophers, (a very small class r ) may be ena bled by long practice and dint of study, to disabuse their minds of favorite prejudices, and set up a species of claim to impartiality and fairness ; yet such thinkers are seldom actors on the great stage, but rather spectators of the stir ring contests in the actual arena of politics. They may write philosophical treatises on Government, the "Wealth of Nations, or the Spirit of Laws, but they make inefficient "working members." Even Burke was a partisan, and such have the ablest and honestest politicians of all ages been. There is unquestionably truth mingled with error in every party ; .yet a man of decided character will find more truth and less error on one side, than on the other. Many partisans have been hypocrites, but by no manner of means all. It is rather (unless there exist natural suspi cions of interested motives or palpable deficiency) an ar- POLITICAL SATIRE. 141 t in a man's favor that he is a zealous partisan; for in its integrity, such a character supposes vigor, earnestness, and fidelity, the three manly qualities by pre-eminence. Among the many reasons that incline a man to join this party or that, may be enumerated- hereditary tendencies, peculiarities of mental or moral constitution, personal grati tude, the influence of a superior mind, chance, or prejudice. We are apt to consider that this last cause is much more defensible than is generally supposed. Viewed in a certain light, some of the noblest virtues are no more than preju dices. Compared with the universal spirit of philanthropy, patriotism shrinks into a narrow passion ; the worthy father makes by no means so distinguished a figure as the humane citizen of the world. Religion, too, in its most important article, impresses a refined selfishness at the same time that it teaches charity and general benevolence. For we must be most solicitous for our own souls ; no man can stand in our place, nor can AVC become the substitute for another. So in the field of politics : a nobler contest than that of the " tented field," a man must take his side, and stand or fall with it. Middle men become indifferent, if originally honest and well-meaning, or mere trimmers, if the reverse ; and it is difficult to determine which is the more despicable character. Imperceptibly, too, a man's principles become identified with himself, and by a natural consequence, if we have faith in the one, we learn to love the other. In the wisest men, we see every day the force of political attach ments, which sometimes exhibit a devotion* almost heroical. And this is right. One who hazards all for a great princi ple, a master-doctrine, should be strongly supported. A politician needs his backers as well as a pugilist, to give him heart and constancy. We never could understand the 7* 142 ESSAYS BTOW AUTHORS AND BOOKS. separation, upon which many insist, between the characters of the statesman and the private individual. We cannot distinguish the two different characters of the same person. A .single mind impresses an unity of design upon all its- performances, and an upright man should be governed by the same law of right and sense of duty, in his official position, that control his domestic and familiar actions. If we admire ability and trust to the unbiassed exercise of it, if we believe in the same creed and favor the same princi ples, how can we refrain from embracing the possessor of such talents, and the advocate of such doctrines as a per sonal friend. To come back to our text. Personality, we affirm to- bfe the most striking trait of the most brilliant political writing. Party spirit begets political satire. Along with its evident advantages, partisanship includes a spirit of bigotry that displays its worst features. "Party spirit in cites people to attack with rashness, and to defend without sincerity. Violent partisans are apt to treat a political op ponent in such a manner, when they argue with him, as to make the question quite personal, as if he had been present, as it were, and a chief agent in all the crimes which they attribute to his party. Nor does the accused hesitate to take the matter upon himself, and in fancied self-defence, to justify things which otherwise he would not hesitate, for one moment, to condemn."* Exact statements and precise deductions can hardly be expected when a man is making the most of his materials, and defending what he believes to be the true view, though it may have weak spots. * From an admirable Essay on Party Spirit, vide " Essays writ ten in the intervals of business." Pickering, London. POLITICAL SATIRE. 143 In politics, as in most things, the most striking argu ments are those ad hominem and ad absurdutn. Ridicule serves too often for a test of truth ; and though this deli cate instrument may be perverted to great injury, yet we all know very well how many people can be laughed out of notions which could not be removed by the fairest and most conclusive argumentation. A laugh is the best logic for these. How many subjects, too, of no little detriment to a cause, though in themselves of diminutive importance, can not be appropriately treated except in the way of jesting and raillery. The littleness of some men is far beneath aught but the levity of a squib or a pun ; whereas the spe cific gravity, (or, in plain terms, stolid presumption,) of others, requires merely a superficial exposition, to make them ridiculous for ever. There are other considerations that tend to confirm the usefulness of political satire. Much may be done indirectly that we cannot openly face and attack. An allegorical nar rative may include real characters, which it might be im prudent to depict in express language. Bold, bad men, in power, may be scourged with impunity and poetic justice, by the dramatist and novel writer, when a faithful picture of them by a chronicler of the times would, in other days and lands than our own, send him into duress. Existing public abuses, which, from their intangible and irresponsible character, cannot always be publicly met, may still be so described in a work of fiction, as in time to effect a thorough popular reformation of them. The argument ad Iwmincm affects a man's interest, and appeals to his pride, or excites his indignation, and moves his feelings. It is the most effective argument to be used with the majority of men, and when enlivened by comic 144 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS ANT) BOOK9. ridicule, or exaggerated into something like vituperative eloquence by the presence of a Juvenal tone of sarcastic rebuke, it displays the perfection of political satire, and such as we find it in the most eminent instances. The finest and most permanent satire, whether religious or political, has been conveyed in works of imagination, which, falling into the hands of the greatest number of readers, have, consequently, at the same time obtained uni versal reputation, and exercised the widest influence. Of this nature, especially, are the immortal works of Swift, " Gulliver's Travels," and " The Tale of a Tub," the most admirable union of exquisite satire and allegory. The ex travagance of unmitigated burlesque, however, does not in all respects become the true character of able political wri ting, which, when it does admit of satire, invariably de mands that the wit be based on vigorous sense and logic, and that it appear rather in the form of great intellectual acuteness, sharpened by exercise, than in the guise of pure pleasantry, or jesting without an aim. And here we may remark, that not a single political writer is to be mentioned, of any eminence, and who has a reputation for wit or humor, whose wit and humor is not founded upon great strength of understanding, shrewdness, and knowledge of mankind. Political wit admits of little play of fancy, and few or no imaginative excursions. In fact, it is only a livelier mode of stating an argument. It is reasoning by pointed analogies, or happy illustrations, a species of epi grammatic logic. This is the wit of Junius, of Home Tooke,. of Tom Paine, and of William Hazlitt. They sought to reach the reductio ad absurdum by the argument ad homi- nem. The accumulation of ridiculous traits of character made up a comic picture, and demonstrated practical absur- POLITICAL SATIRE:. 146 dities in conduct at the same time. On the other hand, by a process of exhaustive analysis, they precipitated (as a chemist would say) the ludicrous points of a subject. Cob* bett's wit consisted in calling nicknames with an original air. Satire is a prosaical talent, yet it has been exercised by some of the first poets in the second class of great poets, as Dryden, Swift, Pope, Churchill, Cowper, and Young. It handles topics essentially unpoetical, and in a way that would deprive them of what poetical qualities they might possess. For satire tends to diminish and degrade, whereas true poetry aims to exalt and refine. Satire deals with the vices, the crimes of the worst part of mankind, or the levi ties and follies of the most insignificant. Much political satire exaggerates both, but that is the original sin and in herent defect of all satire. The value of satire in a practi cal point of view is great : it is the only curb upon many, and no ineffectual check upon the best. Next to religion, it exerts a happier and a wider influence than anything else, whether law, custom, or policy. Such is forcible and well : directed satire in the worthiest hands. It is a true, manly style of writing, but it admits of wide aberrations from this standard, and may become hurtful and dangerous. It exposes hypocrisy, and encourages an open, frank, fear less spirit; yet this very openness, (in base natures,) will run into recklessness and a contempt of authority, a neglect of propriety, and a rash avowal of lawless arid foul doc trines. It may convert liberty into licentiousness. Then, again, satire is often unfair, morally unjust, or historically false. The acute perception of Butler, which, aided by his learned* wit and matchless versification, saw with exactness, and has transmitted to us with picturesque fidelity, the mere canting, controversial, corrupt Presbyterians of his day, fail- 146 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. ed to recognize the sturdy vigor of the Independent, and the sublime fanaticism of even the wildest of the Fifth Mon archy men. Even Scott, though he came much closer to the truth in his pictures, unconsciously distorted and caricatured some of the noblest features of the Puritans. That stern race of robust men has hardly yet met with its true histo rian. A too frequent consequence of successful satire, we have left for our last objection to its usefulness. It tends to beget a spirit of indifference. Men, looking on the excesses of either side with an eye of philosophic temperance, are too apt to conclude that there is nothing worth contending for ; they become disgusted with what they (in their short-sight edness) esteem fruitless struggles, and give over all desire of victory. They become indifferent spectators of a stirring scene, and might as well, for all good purposes, be altogeth er removed from it. XX. FARRAGO. nostri farrago libclli. JUVENAL. Farrago ; a Medley. JOHNSON, WE have selected the above title for this miscellaneous as semblage of thoughts upon different subjects ; for bringing together which, since they are, for the most part, dug up from comparatively unknown mines, we claim nothing but the praise of judicious research. The characters of Labru- yere are full of good things, arid the vein will bear working, but we shall not do more than indicate where some of the rich ore lies. It has always struck us that occasional lucu brations of this description are not unpleasing, especially in the varied pages of a monthly journal, " studious of change," and intended to hit the diversity of tastes of the best classes of readers. In the first and second topics, we have drawn from Labruyere, an author who is singularly little known. He is a prose Pope, writing before him, and as we are in duced to think, giving him some capital hints, which the poet worked up with his accustomed skill. Labruyere has as much wit and judgment combined as Horace, after whom he tod sometimes copies He has something of Bishop Earle's humor, and a knowledge of artificial life and man ners, equal to Pope, and Horace, and Eaiie. Pope, in a few passages we have subjoined, appears to have drawn directly from his master ; but the resemblance 148 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. may be accidental, and the imitation unconscious. We will not call it plagiarism, but a singular coincidence of thought and expression ; such as we often see in common life and in ordinary conversation. Yet we are somewhat staggered by these points. R,owe, the poet, Pope's friend, made or pur ports to have made (he possibly sold his name) the trans lation, a capital version, equal, in its way, to Cotton's Trans lation of Montaigne's Essays. Curll, one of Pope's publish ers, brought out the work. But the hardest thing to get over is, the surprising resemblance of the verse to the prose, xvhich certainly preceded it some years. This problem, however, we shall not attempt to solve. SURPRISING COINCIDENCES. " Affectation attends her even in sickness and pain ; she dies in a high head and colored ribbons." Who can forget Pope's lines in the Universal Passion ? " Odious in woollens, 'twould a saint provoke, (Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.) No, let a charming chintz, and Brussels lace, Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face : One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead, And Betty give this cheek a little red." Said to be actually true of Mrs. Oldfield, the celebrated actress. Labruyere has nicely hit off the ignorant book- collectors, not the " doctor sine libris," but " libri sine doc- tore." " I visit this gentleman ; he receives rne at his house, where, at the foot of the stairs, I am struck down with the scent of Russia leather, w r hich- all his books are bound with. In vain he encourages me, by telling me they are gilt on the backs and leaves, of the best editions ; FARRAGO. 149 except a few shelves painted so like books, that the fallacy is not to be discerned." Pope sings : " His study with what authors is it stor'd ? In books, not authors, studious is my lord ; To all their dated backs he turns you round, These Aldus printed ; those De Seuil has bound. Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good, For all his lordship knows, but they are wood!" Here is a thought in Labruyere (of the fashion) which may be found expressed in almost the same language, in the poet's prose miscellanies . "A certain blue flower, which grows spontaneously in ploughed ground ; it checks the corn , spoils the crop, and takes up the room of something better." Labruyere compares a fashionable man to this flower : Pope illustrates more judiciously, by this simile, the injurious use of conceits in a logical discussion. But here is a remarkable paralellism, if not plagiarism. " The colors are all prepared, and cloth strained, but how shall I fix this restless, light and inconstant man, who changes himself into a thousand figures?" " Come then, the colors and the ground prepare 1 Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air : Choose a fine cloud, before it fall, tind in it Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute." Here, too, are the original of several trite remarks : " When a man is excellent in his art, and gives it all the perfection of which it is capable, he is then in some sort above it, and is equal to whatever is most exalted and noble." Sir Joshua Reynolds has the credit of having made this ob servation. Of the opera, thus writes Labruyere, anticipa ting Hazlitt (in his rich essay on the same subject.) " I wonder how 'tis possible the opera, with all its exquisite 150 ' ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. music and almost regal magnificence, should yet so success fully tire me." Is it not Bolingbroke who has the following idea, very prominently brought out, in his Historical Dissertations on Sir Robert Walpole ? " When the fury and division of part ies cease, they are forgotten like almanacs out of date." One more parallelism between Labruyere and Pope : the wit describes an angry man as "in an agony, for a china dish broke in pieces." Pope, who disdained help from no source, praises the female, blessed with fine temper, as "mistress of herself, though china fall" Labruyere's Coquette forms the original of Gibber's pic ture of a " Grandmother without Gray Hairs," and Burke' s " Beautiful Vision of the Queen of France." " Years urith her have not tioelve months, nor add to her age." These passages struck us, at once, in the reading : doubt less, a careful comparison might reveal still more and closer resemblances, if that be possible. Meantime, we pass to another subject. Labruyere asks pertinently enough : " Is there no occa sion of forecast, cunning or skill, to play at ombre or chess ? And if there is, how comes it we see men of weak parts ex cel in it, and others of great ingenuity who can't reach to a moderate ability ; whom, a man to be moved, or card in their hand, perplexes and puts out of countenance." Haz- litt has remarked the same fact, and we have known and are acquainted with men of unquestioned ability, who can't play tolerably well ; while we could point to many more of very ordinary intellectual powers, even dull and weak men FARRAGO. 151 in other things, who at whist and chess are invariably vic torious ; displaying skill, resources, judgment, and temper. This was the case with Napoleon, among the great men of this century, who was readily vanquished by the ladies and triflers at his court, in almost every game. But we do not apply this term to chess ; it is a study, a labor, a discipline : taxing and not relaxing the faculties, bracing and not unbending the mind ; in a word, a matter of vexatious trifling, and a piece of studious impertinence. Lest the reader think we are hasty in our judgment, we quote the advice of one of the wisest wits of the old Eng lish time, Thomas Fuller, the divine and Church historian : the jester, full of sense and feeling. In his Holy State, he advises, (chapter of Recreations,) " Take heed of straiMng thy mind in setting it to a double task, under pretence of giving it a play-day, as in the labyrinth of chess, and other tedious and studious games." And Montaigne, too, speaks of chess, as " this idle and foolish game." From a long pas sage, we extract the following sentences : "I hate and avoid it, because it is not play enough, that it is too grave and serious a diversion, and I am ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon that as would serve to much better uses." Dr. Franklin, in his Morals of Chess, has taken and confirmed the popular view of its utility. If, indeed, skill in this game begets and perfects the good habits of mind he ascribes to it ; then, indeed, (and such we believe is often the case,) it may serve the same ends as the study of mathe matics or logic, with this great difference in favor of the latter, that the subject matter they are employed upon is of far greater intrinsic importance, in the world of matter and of spirit. Chess is commonly made a test of intellectual power and ingenuity ; but we think, after the testimony of 152 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. Labruyere, Fuller, Montaigne, and Hazlitt, we may conclude, without disrespect to those idle weak men who succeed in it, that the victory may be as often gained by some instinc tive knack, (like Zerah CoJburn's computations and arith metical prodigies,) as by the exercise of the faculties that are supposed to be employed. Some of the very stupidest men we have ever met, were miracles of patience and pro lixity, in playing chess or in holding a discussion, which was either not worth the words wasted, as having been settled long since, or as impossible to be determined to the satisfac tion of all parties, if indeed of any one person. In both cases " tlie game icas not worth the candle ! " to use Sir William Temple's familiar illustration, and which might be literally true. AUTHORS Df PRISON. Some of the cosmopolitan classics have been composed in a dreary dungeon : as Tasso's Jerusalem, Don Quixote, Pilgrim's Progress. During the civil wars in England, some of the finest writers of the day were imprisoned for their loyalty, as Howell, who laments his confinement in his Let ters, while Wither sent out from his cell the sweetest strains of his muse, in the well-known passage Lamb and Hazlitt have quoted. At the same epoch, the sagacious and manly Q,uarles, the first devotional poet in point of time, and se cond only to Herbert in point of genius, of the English Church ; the mild and gentle Hammond ; the gallant and poetic knight, Lovelace ; L'Estrange, the virulent pamphle teer, and many more of a similar stamp. Earlier, there are more notable instances, as of Chaucer, in the reign of Edward III. ; Sir Thomas More, and Latimer, and the noble army of martyrs in the reigns of Henry VIII,, and Bloody FAIUtAGO. 153 Q,ueen Mary. In the reign of James L, his pre-eminent names were state prisoners, Bacon and Raleigh. Later, there is Minshull, of whose curious book we have written in Literary Studies ; and Defoe, who also was placed in the pillory, to which he dedicated a burlesque ode; Wycherly, confined seven years for debt ; poor Savage ; accomplished Sir Richard Steele ; we believe also, admirable Henry Fielding, though he afterwards became a police justice ; and a number of the wits and men of letters about town of that time, down to Dr. Podd, executed for forgery; and Leigh Hunt, incarcerated for a harmless piece of political pleasantry, miscalled a libel, upon the Prince Regent. Pictures of prison life abound in the pages of the old novelists, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith, &c., down to Dick ens, their true successor. The spunging-house was, alas ! the refuge of some of the finest writers and most accom plished men, from the reign of Anne and her predecess or, William, down to the commencement of the reign of George IV. We have thought a sermon might be written for pris oners, who are scholars -the best may get within those gloomy walls entitled St. Peter in Prison, (the title of a sermon of Donne's, we believe, which we have never read,) which, besides giving a fuller account of the authors we have mentioned, and many more, might recount the story of the sufferings of the apostles, Peter and Paul in particu lar, and the early Christians. Crowned heads, too, might be included, as Richard of England, Elizabeth, and Charles I., James of Scotland, the Royal Poet of Irving, and Mary, the beautiful and unfortunate, and Louis of France. Among philosophers, the wise Boetius, and the great Galileo. 154 ESSAYS UPON AUTHOKS AND BOOKS. Among the later instances, the Italian poet Pellico, with his friend Maroncelli. Celebrated exiles should he referred to : Ovid and Clar endon, his sovereign, Charles II., Bolinghroke, 'and James II. The French writers, Voltaire and De Stael, are, we believe, the most celebrated of that nation who have suffer ed exile within a century. CELEBRATION OF AUTHORS' BIRTH-DAYS. Why should not the anniversary of the birth day of a great author be kept as a festival, as well as that of a suc cessful general, or able statesman ! Would it not be admi rable to celebrate such annual returns, bringing the most delicious memories with them, as well as the days on which a battle was fought or gained, which must have given pain to a multitude of persons, who could not blame the author of genius for a single pang, but rather bless his name as the creator of more fictitious delight than could be easily gained from the real world under the happiest circumstances ? It seems to us that (to keep themselves in countenance, to preserve a cordial esprit du corps, and to perpetuate the memory of great authors, too easily disturbed by novelty and the distractions of care and sorrow) writers should have annual dinners or suppers, or convivial meetings of some sort, held in honor of the acknowledged master, in their particular departments, from dramatic poetry to the hum blest prose essayists. The novelists might select their Fielding ; one class might choose Marivaux, a third Le Sage, a fourth Scott, a fifth Cervantes, &c. And so of all the rest. FARRAGO. 155 B1STINGUISHED VISITORS. Among those who have crossed the Atlantic to see for themselves the working of our institutions, are many great names ; more have come for the sake of travel and pleas ure ; but most, for some profitable end. Not to include the generous and gallant Frenchmen and Poles who fought for and with us during our revolutionary contest, Lafayette and his brave compeers, Pulaski and Kosciusko, nor ambas sadors or official persons ; we find, in the list, Volney, Cha teaubriand, who wrote his charming Atala and Natchez here in a hut ; Talleyrand ; the late King of France, one of the Murats, Augereau, (if we do not mistake,) and two of Na poleon's nephews. Two English poets only, of repute, (and they Irishmen,) 'Moore and Lover ; among celebrated wri ters of fiction, Captain Maryatt, Dickens and Seatsfield, and one well-known critic and Edinburgh reviewer, Jeffrey, who married here. Dr. Priestley and Cobbett both lived here for some time. Tom Paine became endenizened, and did more, as a pamphleteer, for the Revolution, than any American writer. We carne near having the three great poets of England for our citizens : Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, proposed, in early life, to settle on the banks of the Susquehannah. Howard, the philanthropist, visited the United States in his "circumnavigation of chari ty." De Tocqueville and Chevalier were truly philosophi cal travellers. The mere travellers have been generally, an unworthy importation the Halls, Fidlers, Trollopes, &c. Miss Martineau is the most sensible and Mrs. Jamieson the most pleasing writer of this class. We have had the English stage fairly represented by Cooke, Kean, and Macready, the greatest tragedians since Garrick ; by Matthews, elder and younger, Dowton, Jack 156 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. Reeve, Power, the Kembles, Ellen Tree, Madame Vestris, the Keeleys, Buckstone ; by the fascinating Ellsler; by Malibran, (then Signora Garcia,) and the best English sing ers from Phillips, Incledon and Braham, and Mrs. Wood, to the present day. Founders of sects have established many religious socie ties and communities all over the country. Wesley and Whitfield, the leaders of the Methodists ; Wm. Penn and George Fox, and his first disciples, among the (Quakers ; Zinzendorf and his followers, the Moravians ; Rapp and Owen, with the Socialists and Fourie rites. If we do not mistake, Mother Ann Lee, the Shaker prophet, came over to this country. Religious missionaries had almost colon ized this continent from the beginning. First the Catholic Jesuits, and then, almost contemporaneously, the Pilgrim (Puritan) Fathers, at Plymouth, and the Church of England settlers at Jamestown. OF BOOKS AND LIBRARIES. After all that has been written upon this interminable theme, a vast deal yet remains behind. From Montaigne's charming essay to the delightful papers of Charles Lamb, there have been exquisite morceaux of sentiment, gossip, and the best, the truest, the finest genial criticism. In common with all critical lovers, and readers, and "collectors of books, we have a whim or two of our own with regard to such matters -a fancy, a taste, or what you please. A scholar's collection should be select rather than full ; or it may and ought to be both ; large libraries are for pub lic institutions, even the smallest of which contains very much ordinary matter ; professional arid scientific libraries FARRAGO, 157 may be more comprehensive and less choice ; for facts, statistics, etc., are more requisite with those who use them they are filled chiefly with elementary works, and books of reference. - I dislike complete sets of voluminous authors. Give me rather the choicest works of the best writers. I enter tain an equal aversion for encyclopedoeic collections of tra- vels,.poetry, fiction, and criticism. I do not care to own every one of Sir Walter's historical novels ; (the only reada ble works of that class ;) neither do I like serial (a current phrase) editions of the poets and old dramatists. I prefer to select for myself a volume of poetry, or a poem, one play or more ; a few dramas of Jonson are admirable, and Mar lowe, and Webster, and Dekkar ; but heaven forefend my having all their works thrust down my throat I This ap plies also to Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher, and still more to the later writers of comedy. I may exclude what another might relish ; but I speak for myself. Shelves full of reviews and magazines we like no better. Singly, the last magazine always has an interest. 'But when, they get to be as long lived as the Edinburgh or London, one wants a selection. Many books, as well as many faces, require constant perusal before you have their true value, or catch their spirit arid meaning. To think of the old heroic al romances, for which we have substituted the truer novels ! Two or three served for a summer's reading for the ladies, in their visits to the country. We read of even Johnson, and we think of Chesterfield, wading through these gigantic efforts of absurdity, extrava gance and prolixity. ~ A few words of the size of books : It was a pleasant 158 ESSAYS UPON ATJTHOES AND BOOKS. and shrewd saying of Horace "Walpole, that arch epicure in all intellectual luxuries, that " he preferred hooks infructu rather than in folio." We heartily agree with him, save in the case of journals and maps. Poets and essayists should always be in neat pocket form, if they are to he read ; if merely to he looked at, they may as well be in folio or quarto. Histories, philosophical dissertations, ser mons, &c., read best in octavo ; novels and travels in duo decimo. "We assent to Johnson's judgment, that "books that can be held in the hand, and carried to the fire, are the best after all !" Fine bindings are fit only for centre-table books. Hazlitt, in his modern Pygmalion, has painted the poet and the scholar in a line. All he seeks is " Books, Venus, Books ;" Learning and Love. XXI. THE LITERATURE OF QUAKERISM: THE Society of Friends has been so useful a body of re formers and citizens practical philanthropists and worthy neighbors, after the fashion of the good Samaritan, despite all the satiric sneers, from Hubidras downwards, that their literary character has not been much regarded. Indeed, up to quite a late period, Literature and Quakerism were con sidered by the public as quite incompatible, and, we doubt not, within the penetralia of the sect, the sister arts are still considered vain, worldly, and almost heathenish. We will not recount the great benefit society has received from the zealous labors of some of these true friends of humanity. It were sufficient merely to mention the names of a few ; of Clarkson and Mrs. Fry, and Jonas Hanway. The abolition, of the slave trade ; the apostolic love and charity manifested in the reform of prison discipline ; the abolition of capital punishment these three glorious reforms are sufficient to cast a halo around any sect or society out of which the ad vocates for them have come ; advocates indeed, practically acting upon their doctrines ; men not afraid to promulgate truth, and to execute their own convictions in living up to them. Peace the atmosphere of heaven the gift of that Holy 160 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. Spirit, one of whose noblest attributes it is is the mission (so to speak) of the sect of Quakers ; one which they have unfalteringly upheld, and never once swerved from. These are some of the noble features of this sect the most zeal ous, yet temperate the most reasonable, and yet sincerely Christian (as it appears to us) of any of the numerous sects that have sprung from the Church of England, their common mother. It is unnecessary, and apart from our present subject, to enter into any disquisition of the philosophy of the Quaker doctrine its spirituality and metaphysical character the serious and the ridiculous sides of the subject. All this, and more has been done by Bancroft, in his admirable chapter on the Quakers, in the settlement of Pennsylvania ; for which reason we shall restrict ourselves to the topics which natur ally fall within the province of the present paper. The Quakers are indebted to Charles Lamb for his ex quisite sketches of them, which must be familiar to the readers of Elia. Lamb's correspondence, too, with Bernard Barton, is equally an honorable bequest to the society, and shows him the kindly friend he was, no less than the de lightful humorist. Hazlitt (in one of his essays, in the Round Table,) says, "A Quaker poet would be an anomaly." He must have forgotten the Spleen, whose author, Green, was a Quaker, though he discarded his early faith. The critic, too, proba bly knew nothing of Bernard Barton, and had lost sight of Milton's Quaker friend, Ellwood, who, though he has left (we believe) no verses, was yet "the proximate cause " of Milton's writing Paradise Regained. The anecdote is told in all the Lives, of Milton, and as we are not endeavoring to swell out this sketch, by superfluous quotations, (a common THE LITERATURE OP QUAKERISM. 161 method of making long magazine papers,) we shall merely refer to it. The Howitts had not then commenced their literary partnership, and Whittier had not probably penned a line of verse. The philosophy of Hazlitt's remarks is doubtless correct ; yet there have been exceptions to their general application. The first of these, we believe to have been Green, of whom Hunt has given a pleasant sketch, in his Wit and Humor. The Spleen of this author is a perfect jeu d'esprit, and the sole effort, after Butler's manner, worthy of com parison with Hudibras, in regard to fertility of ideas, wit, facility of rhymes, and sterling sense. The author was troubled with lowness of spirits, and wrote his poem for the same reason that Burton compiled his Anatomy. Like Lamb, he was a clerk in one of the public offices in London, a pleasant companion and a worthy man. This poem is in Aikins' Selections, and, if we are not mistaken, in the Ele gant Extracts. Hazlitt has strangely omitted it. Hunt has selected but a small portion of the rare beauties of this admirable poem. Almost every couplet is as good as the following lines, we write from memory, not having the book by us : And, in -whose gay, red lettcr'd face, We read good living more than grace. Here are a few of his innumerable felicities of language : " A coquet April-weather face." " News, the manna of a day." " Tarantulated by a tune." " Adjust, and set the soul to rights." His remarks on the various remedies for the spleen ; the mode of passing a rainy day agreeably ; and his persuasions 162 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. to cheerfulness and good humor, are as delightful as they are full of true wisdom. Melmoth, the translator and author- of Fitzosborne's letters, used to say, he could not easily find anywhere so many ideas in the same number of lines as in the Spleen. Dr. Aikin has edited a delightful edition of Green's poems, illustrated by Stothard, a gem for the reader and hypochondriac. How happens it this capital poem is so little known ? A lively writer, but by no means a master of his native lit erature, on Green's poem being highly praised, sneeringly exclaimed; "Oh, yes! he is quoted by Rush!" as if the sensible Philadelphia physician gave fame to a sterling Eng lish wit. Barton is a pleasing, religious versifier, with little or no force or character as a poet. Lamb's correspondence with him will probably preserve his name long after his verses are forgotten. The poems of the Howitts fall under the same category as those of Barton, with more of variety, and perhaps more of poetic spirit. It is not probable that they will be long read. But Whittier's is a name that will last, if only for a sin gle poem he has written on a print of Raphael, which is now hanging or did hang, last summer, in a quiet parlor in Newburyport. The verses are in the Estray. If the very finest of our Quaker poet's poetic efforts were selected from the mass of his writings, he would rank much higher than he does at present. This poem, and the fine ballad of the New Wife and the Old, Hampton Beach, Randolph of Roanoke, etc., would, with some score of spirited lyrics, fill a volume of American poetry to last. Like the leaders of THE LITERATURE OP QUAKERISM. 163 his sect, (we do not know if Mr. Whittier still remains within its pale,) our poet has taken a warm interest in the great mo 1 al questions of the day, especially abolition of slavery, aid of capital punishment. He is (judging from his writ ings) an earnest, strong-souled man, and a genuine patriot ; the poet of reform rather than of romance. Yet much of his verse we think cannot live. His early imitations of Scott in narrative, and his latest songs of lahor, which appear mechanical and cold, compared with Barry Cornwall's Weaver's Song, (the palpable model of Whittier's attempts,) or the songs of Burns Gallagher's Laborer, in this department of poetry for the people, (where Elliott is the foremost bard of the present day,) strikes us as superior to anything of Whittier's in the same way. The list of Quaker writers is short. Besides those we have mentioned, whose writings made a part <>f the current popular literature, we may add John ISTeal, a Quaker born and bred, though, doubtless, long since read out of meeting ; Hannah Adams, the worthy spinster ; and Mrs. Opie, if we are not mistaken, excellent in her tales for the young. We do not comprehend under our caption much the largest proportion of Quaker writings, by members of the Society of Friends the piles of controversy and sectarian history. The early writers and founders of Quakerism, Fox and his ablest disciple Penn, and Barclay the Apologist, were voluminous pamphleteers and ready disputants. The his torian, Sewall, (a classic among the Friends, as Neal among the Puritans,) is preferred by Lamb to Southey in his Life of Wesley, an epitome of the History of Methodism. The author of Elia speaks highly of the life of Woolman. But Bancroft is abundantly sufficient for the general reader, in whose single chapter is condensed the marrow of a shelf full 164 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. of Quaker histories, by men who have not yet learned the art of historical narrative and philosophical criticism. In the elder literature, the Quakers meet with but scurvy treatment. The scholar will recollect Tom Brown's famous sermon, and the pungent epigrams of Butler. Dr. South, in his admirable sermon on the Christian Pentecost, has ex pended some of the finest prose satire in the language on the Puritans, which might apply with equal force to the Quak ers, particularly of that day. The character of the duaker has often been caricatured on the stage, where he is generally made out a quack or a hypocrite, or both. As the Quakers neither see nor write plays, this is hardly fair. Among the classic comedies, the Bold Stroke for a Wife contains the liveliest and best drawn character, Simon Pure. The songs and music of Dibdin, with the rich tenor and fine acting of Incledon, has given the opera of the Quaker, in which he performed the part of Steady, a permanent reputation. Seriously, however, Americans should cherish the Quak er. He has founded one of our finest states, and given it a peculiar character. His spirit is seen and kept alive in our wisest reforms, and his own character is such, that if it may not always be refined into that of the polite gentleman or agreeable companion, it is, nevertheless, made of the same material, and shares, as well and as constantly, in the char acters of a true patriot, a zealous friend, an honest philan thropist, and a virtuous citizen. XXII. THE predominant fact in the history of the nineteenth cen tury thus far and there is slight probability of the fact becoming a fiction is unquestionably the importance and elevation of the mass the People, by distinction the tiers- etat of France, the Commons of England. This fact is no less encouraging than novel. Before the era of the French Revolution, and our own antecedent to it, the People, as such, were considered with indifference, if not contempt. They had been regarded much in the same light as the Helots of Sparta, or the servile castes of Russia and Poland. Their rights were never mooted, for they had never been declared ; they were supposed to exist only through the sufferance of the superior nobility and the will of "the sovereign, and their lot was to toil, to suffer, and to pay taxes. This comprised their history, which might have been written in a very concise epitome. But modern science and modern philosophy and, let us add, the silent influence of the true republican spirit of the Gospel gave rise to a new state of things. Respect for the claims of human nature in the abstract, and of the individual in the concrete, begat sympathy for the former and reverence for the latter. Man, as such, was admitted by his brother as a brother, 8* 166 [ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. and his name and title allowed to rank higher (as our ad mirable Channing wrote) than King or President. Hu manity, in her naked magnificence, asserted her inherent privileges, which were as openly acknowledged. Rank, riches, and royal power, lost their hold on the popular ima gination, and Europe saw, at that late date, the sovereign, of an ancient house treated as an usurper and punished more ignominiously than even a usurper merited. Force of character, moral energy, intellectual resources these became wealth in that trying hour, and the weak, the bigoted and wavering, naturally fell the necessary victims of the conqueror. Yet as evil generally precedes good, so out of this chaos of tumult and crime, emerged a benefit, the bow of promise, as from an atmosphere of storms and physical convulsion. This benefit we have already men tioned, and it is this peculiar feature in 1he character of the age, the present position and claims of the people, that has given birth to a new and striking application of poetry to life, which may be expressed in the phrase, Poetry for the People. In its most comprehensive sense, we might call all poetry political ; for all truly inspired verse is the outpour ing of the Spirit of Freedom, and the Spirit of Humanity. A similar love of freedom animates both the Poet and the Patriot, and the latter acts out, what the other in song ex horts all men to act. Music, declamation, arid all the refinements, both of art and learning, flourish in the most servile communities, and under the reign of despots ; only true poetry and vigorous eloquence, (worth all the rest,) decay and wilt away, uncongenial plants in such a soil. All the master-bards, and the vast majority of lesser lights, (so they burn with original lustre,) of necessity are eulogists of POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE. 167 freedom in the abstract, as of the Law of Right, the Law of Truth, and the reverence of the Beautiful ; for, without these, what were poetry but a mere heap of fables and false devices. But that generous code of criticism which fol lowed the trained system of the French classicality, has taught us the infinite worth of Poetry, as a mine of the highest truth and the deepest wisdom, apart from its bene ficial moral tendency, and quite separate from its claims upon us as the sweetest of charmers, " most musical," though byno means "most melancholy." Of all writers, the Poets are the most moral, the most metaphysical, and we may add, the most political. As philosophers, (for the Poet is the right popular phi losopher,) they cannot avoid the propagation of free princi ples and liberal ideas ; if only on the shallow grounds of diplomatic expediency ; and this applies with greater force in a free country and an enlightened epoch. As humanita rians, (since the Poet by his vocation is a philanthropist,) the Poets feel as no other class of men can feel ; for the whole circle of -human necessities, from the lowest animal desires, up to the most elevated spiritual impulses, is included in their sympathies; and, those, too, of the most delicate and intelligent description. The Poet is the brother of his fellow-men and " Creation's heir," with the same fortunes and a similar destiny. The genuine Poet, then, is a patriot ; sometimes, he is a bigot, a satirist, a partizan. Personal gratitude has in clined many a man of political genius to embrace a particu lar side ; the prospect of future fame, or a desire to secure present patronage, has been the motive with many for en listing under the banners and swearing by the shibboleth of party. The Muse is, sometimes, seen in a political livery; 168 ESSAYS UPON AUTHOBS AND BOOKS. though Freedom has been, not inappropriately, styled " the Mountain Nymph." Yet there have been, and still are, authors who unite the poet and the partizan of admirable genius in the former capacity, and of unquestioned integrity in the last. These have been the noblest defenders of true independence, " Lords of the lion heart and eagle eye," as Smollett, a writer of this rare stamp, styles them. Poetry always conveys the truest and most striking features in the countenance of the time. The most accu rate painter of men cannot fail so to portray their master passions, reacting upon contemporary opinions and current modes of thought and action, but that he must needs also depict the contemporary influences by which these, too, are moulded ; and these influences combine what we popularly describe as the Spirit of the Age. The patriarchal period, the splendid hierarchies of the ancient and modern world, chivalry, classic heroism, popular mythology, national tra ditions, legendary superstitions, the maxims even of the court and the mart, all point to peculiar tendencies in the times wherein they flourished. The present epoch of lite rature and popular sentiment must have its mouth-piece also, and this it .finds in Poetry for the People. At this phrase, let not your fine scholar nor your fasti dious gentleman smile ; the people have their political theo ries and representations ; they have their magazines, ency clopedias, lectures and science ; they have their theologians and newspapers, and the active brain of the wise legislator. Universal in its native region, Poetry is restricted within the boundaries of no caste or condition of society, but ranges at will through every department of life, and every grade of rank, till (as at present) it finds its sweet home in the breast of the simple-hearted though humble, and the true POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE. 169 lovers of the divine art, among the popular body. For them, too, the modern historian ransacks the archives of the past to ascertain the starting-point of modern liberty. For them, he turns over the fascinating pages of cowled friars, or the lively chronicles of the courtly historiographer, illuminated no less by the pictures of genius than the colors of the artist, to be enabled to put his finger on precedents of priceless value and concessions of royal bounty, or to paint a Saxon freedman, a Norman knight, a German count, a Romish cardinal, a French king, a Spanish emperor ; to note the democracy of the Romish Church, the republican character of commercial cities, the origin of parliaments and congresses, and to infer, from historical deductions, the dawnings of an intellectual and religious revolution long prior to the appearance of Luther. The writer of prose fiction, (the most popular form of contemporary literature,) addresses himself to the people. Let him address scholars, like Lamb or Landor, and he is read by few else, even if he possesses a degree of mental power that bursts beyond any confined limits of convention alism or taste. Let him, however, write of the past with reverential retrospection, or of the future with gladness and joyful hope ; let him present a faithful mirror of the present time, in his pages, and he is read by all. The substance of his work may happen to be grounded on history or real life, on land or sea, in the walks of busy, or the picturesque variety of common life ; impressed with this spirit, it must be popular, for it is, in effect, a history of the people. Still further to exemplify this universal prevalent popu lar tendency in all our literature, at the present day, take the most abstract and (as vulgarly conceived) the least en tertaining department of it, speculative philosophy, ethical 170 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. or metaphysical. Here we find the appetite as keen as in the regions of fiction. Not only in the lecture-rooms and in the pulpit, but also in books* and even periodicals. Our leading magazines contain essays on these subjects, that would have been seen, in the last age, nowhere but in the volumes of professed writers on philosophy, and those too of the first class. We will not be so invidous as to attempt a comparison in the case of other periodicals, though we might point to papers in this Journal, to which no parallel can be offered in the monthly critical periodicals of the last century. An inquisitive tone of critical speculation is to be seen in the most ephemeral productions of the day, and we need no other test of the growing intelligence of the people than the character of newspaper literature, the excellence of which must continue to advance in proportion to the de mand for it. But it is in poetry especially that we must look for the purest expression of the popular feeling. It is in poetry that (anti-poetical as we are thought to be) the national spirit is most faithfully evolved. Poetry, forsaking the knight in his bower, the baron in his castle, has taken up her abode, " for better for worse," with the artificer and the husbandman, not restricting herself, to be sure, to such society, but including them in her wide province, and watch ing over them with affectionate care. The poor man, up right, sincere, earnest, with deep enthusiasm and vigorous self-reliance, he is the hero of our time. The old fashioned heroes of war and slaughter, one foot on land and one on sea, we are apt to consider with pity for their Quixotism * "We learn from one of the largest publishing houses in this city, that more copies of Abercrombie's Philosophical Compends have been disposed of by them, than of any other work, whether of reality Of fiction. POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE. 171 and contempt for their absurd pretensions, at the same time that we are captivated by their brilliant accomplishments, and charmed by their humanity and knightly grace. The struggle of life, the war with circumstances, that is the great battle to be fought, and one in which different quali^ ties are required from those that bear away the palm in the warfare of blood and the contest for dominion and power. For hypocritical professions of gallantry, the modern poet sings the real happiness of domestic love. The wife has supplanted the mistress, as a social tie ; and marriage has put an end to the frivolities of idle gallantry, in the so called age of chivalry. We say so called, because we conceive true chivalry repudiates most of the current vices which were cloaked beneath the broad mantle of its name ; and because we apprehend a true and accomplished knight to be the ideal of glorious manhood, and far beyond what that character was supposed to represent in the persons of the Templar and the knights of the Hospital. Tournaments are long gone by, the duel is fast becoming extinct, and the contest of rivalry is, now-a-days, limited to a contest of worth and spirit, not a trial of martial skill or physical prowess. A single illustration will express our meaning, and mark distinctly the characteristics of the past and the present ; then they had the trial by battle, now we have the trial by jury. The necessity and dignity of labor, of endurance ; the native nobility of an honest and a brave heart ; the futility of all conventional ' distinctions of rank and wealth, when, opposed to the innate claims of geitius and virtue ; the brotherhood and equality of men, not necessarily a social uniformity, independent of character and education, but the equality of civil rights and political advantages, for even 172 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. actual blood brethren are not necessary equals, in aught beside the accident of their birth ; the cultivation of manly liberality, of charity, in all its forms ; of generosity, in not trenching upon the exactions of intelligent prudence and clear justice ; an honorable poverty and a contented spirit, the richest of gifts these are the favorite topics of the Poet of the People. To attain this title, the poet must be master of his age, its wants and privileges, the traits of his coun trymen, and the general aspect of society. Possessed of this knowledge, with a full heart, a firm hand, the "vision and the faculty divine," the rich resources of his art, and the aims and aspirations of humanity for his theme, what lessons can the poet not read the world in what stirring tones will he not plead for his fellow men ! How indig nantly may he not repel the scorn cast upon them, how vehemently upbraid their oppressors, how manfully exhort and how wisely persuade ! Of all men, he is their dearest friend and strongest champion. No statesman, no patron, no general can effect a tithe of what he may accomplish ; for give a man heart, and true counsel, and warm sympa thy, and you give him what kings have never been able to purchase or capitalists to monopolize. The vocation of such a writer is almost on an equality with the highest office that can be imposed on humanity, and his labors should be met by gratitude and love. The greatest bards of all time would not frown upon the hum ble attempts of the homeliest rhymer, so his verses had a life of their own, and an independent origin. It is not es sential that the Poet for the People should be one of them selves ; but that fact would certainly add weight to his teaching, and lend an energy to his appeals. The personal character arid private life of such a man should be stainless ; POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE. 173 his life one of labor and honorable exertion ; his benevo lence bounded only by his means, which would be something more than merely pecuniary donatives, not neglecting those. With a pen informed by experience, and exercised on the immortal themes of the poet and the philanthropist, with hope in his heart arid love on his tongue, with the fire, the fervor, the frankness of genius, such we would gladly hail, the Poet of the People and the Poet of the Poor. XXIII. .ESTHETICAL FRAGMENTS". I CAN recollect scarcely a single instance, in which, great authors have written after models where they have not imitated writers much inferior to themselves. In the his tory, also, of almost every man of genius, some inferior per son is to be found, to whom the great man once looked up, and from whom he gained something. Thus, Burns imita ted Ferguson ; and Cowper, Vincent Bourne. Hudibras was modeled on a very trivial production of the same class, and Coleridge, at one period, almost adored Hartley. Burke expressed great indebtedness to an obscure clergyman, of the name, (I think,) of Mudge ; and Johnson has left an afiect- ing retrospect of his gratitute for Gilbert Walmsley. The greatest minds disdain not help from any source, and the most original writers are the greatest borrowers. Some of our finest writers, among others, Pope and Gold smith, openly professed imitation, and prided themselves on their skill in copying. All of Washington's eulogists have been equally success ful with all of his painters. None have failed to hit the marked traits of his character, as well as of his countenance. This, of itself, proves the harmonious beauty of his character. .ESTHETICAL FRAGMENTS. 175 To misrepresent a man's story, or repeat a tale differ ently from the way in which it was related, is the next crime to forgery, and may be still more injurious. Belsham has neatly defined character to be ' the sum total of affections and habits.' Certain great works should be read frequently, and at different periods of life, to be thoroughly felt and understood. How often do we make three or four ineffectual attempts to read a book, and each time close the volume in despair ! Accidentally, we take it up, (mood and season fitting,) and finish it with the greatest satisfaction. There are standard works to be read in early life, for the future pleasure of retrospection ; Pilgrim's Progress and the Arabian Nights : and Robinson Crusoe, belong to this de scription of books. Criticism on some books is even better than the books themselves. WIT AND HUMOR. The distinctions between wit and humor are, that wit is intellectual ; humor, sensuous ; wit is artificial ; humor, natural ; that is, wit is employed on artificial objects the follies of fashion ; humor represents real farcical objects, and the traits of less refined society than the world of fashion. A humorist is not, necessarily, a man of humor, but of humors. He cannot describe, or point out humorous pecu liarities in others ; but affords, in himself, a subject for the comic painter. 176 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. Wit is the scholar's quality, and partly acquired ; humor is the quality of genius, and cannot be derived. "Wit is perceptive ; humor, reflective. Learning assists wit ; but rather impedes humor. The best instances of learned wit are, Rabelais, Butler, Swift ; of learned humor, Sterne and Lamb. The finest humorous writers are Cer vantes, Sterne, Smollett, Goldsmith, and Washington Irving. Humor is, in part, constitutional a matter of tempe rament ; wit, rarely so. There is saturnine, gay, delicate, and powerful humor. It ranges from a subtle association to broad burlesque. Wit is exceedingly ' versatile and mul tiform' in its modes, but of one texture always intellect ual. A satiric poet is a wit ; a humorist writes mock- heroic. Wit is bitter ; humor, good-natured. Saturnine humor and sarcastic wit are very opposite. The first is melancholy, concealing tenderness ; the last is brilliancy, pointing malice. In description, humor appeals to the eye ; wit, to the mind. The finest humorous writers have generally been poor talkers, because humor requires a fullness of develop ment and detail too complicated and extended for conversa tion. Wit, merely glancing at a topic, is, for that reason, ad mirably adapted to animated colloquy. There is a marked difference between the styles of humorous and witty wri ters. Humorous writers are more fluent and melodious ; witty authors are generally short and pointed. Humorous thoughts glide into the mind, are sympathetic ; witty ideas, like cold abstractions, dazzle, but never charm. Wit and fancy,, humor and imagination, are correlative. A humorous satirist sympathizes with the object of his ridicule, as Cervantes with his hero; but a witty satirist always despises the subject of his satire. jESTHETICAt FRAGMENTS. 177 Humor paints directly : wit illustrates indirectly. Wit is never descriptive at length ; it paints miniatures, or sharpens an epigram. Humor is vividly graphic : wit is occupied with analysing character ; humor rather paints manners. Dialogue is the forte of a man of wit ; monologue the property of the humorous writer. IMAGINATION AND FANCY. Imagination is the leading faculty of the mind ; fancy, an accessory quality. The one has a general fusing power, the other is distinct from it and does not assimilate. Ima gination is shown in conception : fancy, in particular illus tration. The first looks to general effect : the last, to special ornament. Imagination may be said to bear the same relation to fancy, as the firmament above us to a bright star. The first is grand and general : the second is fine and minute. The description of Death in Milton is an effort of imagina tion : the picture of Q,ueen Mab in Romeo and Juliet is an instance of sparkling fancy. Milton had a sublime imagination, vast and powerful : Shakspeare was almost, if not entirely, his equal in this respect, and was far more inventive and copious. Milton had not much fancy in his Paradise Lost : but his Comus and earlier poems are full of a fantastic, quaint fancy, en riched by and based upon, a fund of brilliant erudition. His fancy afterwards became more a matter of learning and elaboration. Shakspeare, universally gifted, was blessed with a most luxuriant fancy, rich, romantic, and picturesque. Among contemporary poets, Coleridge had most imagina tion, and Keats the freest fancy. 178 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. A scholastic fancy is the result of subtle association. TASTE AND JUDGMENT. Taste is a finer quality than judgment, but by no means so exact or clear. It has less penetration, and wants the spirit of forecast and prediction. Taste is an instinct. Judgment, an intellectual act. The one is partly a matter of organization ; the other re fers itself solely to the intellect. A man of refined judgment is the better critic on men and characters : a man of delicate taste excels him in cri ticising books, particularly poets and works of art. Taste depends on sensibility : judgment on principle. The first distinguishes the man of genius : the second, the man of talent. Taste is an impulse and a sentiment : judgment, the deduction of reason, and the fruit of experience. Judg ment is sure. Taste is uncertain. The first is a fixed star : the second, a wandering comet. Judgment is the quality of a strong, taste, of a fine intellect. A nice judg ment is the effect of harmony existing between all the faculties of the mind, in a state of calm and collectedness. Repose and quiet alone can give the judgment fair play. Fire and heat bring out other qualities. Passion alone can sometimes arouse the muse : Indignatio facit versos. Taste is much more susceptible of culture than judg ment, since it depends so much on natural and organic sensibility. Judgment once fixed, retains an impassive character. Taste is a positive ; judgment, a negative quality. Taste loves to find beauties ; judgment, rather to detect imper fections. .ESTHETIC.AL FRAGMENTS. 179 We often apply gusto to taste ; never to judgment. Taste is an assimilating faculty. Judgment is solitary. Taste is governed by prepossession. Judgment should be entirely free from any foreign influence. Our choicest tastes may be only delightful prejudices ; our soundest judgments must be determinate conclusions of the reason. The one is affected by its own perceptions ; the other judges without emotion. CONVEBSATIOJT. Conversation is an art. It is neither a lecture, nor a comedy, entirely ; but partakes of the nature of both. It is for instruction ; it is for amusement. But it differs from other instruction, in being the readiest the most familiar. It teaches indirectly ; it amuses agreeably. The satirist and the sentimentalist, the professed censor and the professed moralist, are the pests of conversation. There are two classes of satirists among talkers ; the first, 'bitter bad judges of men :' the second, elegant wits, who can trifle with grace, and ridicule without ill-nature. Conversation may be a war, or a treaty ; a negotiation for peace, or a manifesto of hostilities. Conversation is more dramatic than composition. It is an acted dialogue. There are those who succeed best in argument, or expo sition ; some in new spesulation, more in trite disputations ; one tells a story in a lively manner, or describes with life and spirit. Few excel in retort ; fewer in repartee. Most reasoners, in general conversation, have a few cant phrases and set expressions ; beyond which, they grope in the dark. 180 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. A judicious jest is the rarest thing in. the world,' as rare as an honest man. Most jesting is rudeness, or imperti nence, or coarseness, or frivolity. A jest in which the wit ministers to the wisdom, is a prose epigram and a proverb combined. Many truths may be told in a light jest, that politeness would not allow one to speak out in serious earnest. Satire is almost always ill-humor well expressed. Sat iric wit breaks up free open conversation. People fear and hate it. A certain respect is due to every man's opinion and character, if respectable, and even to his weaknesses. A bitter satirist, (as religionists generally are,) can never claim to be either a gentleman, or a Christian. " We ought never," says Labruyere, " to venture on the most innocent and offensive raillery, or pleasantry, unless it be amongst polite men, or men of wit." Some persons are above jest ; some, below it. It is irreverence to jest with some ; it is cruelty to jest with others. It is the least part of wisdom to speculate on the petty defects of every -day people. I never knew a man entirely destitute of a love of mu sic, and an eye for natural scenery, who was not at bottom hypocritical and insincere. No man can be strongly or ten derly affected by music who wants generosity of sentiment. It is certain there is something in music which goes quicker to the heart than any thing in poetry or painting. It was the voice of nature before language was formed. Some feelings can only be expressed by certain indistinctness of sound, since all language is conventional. That ancient .ESTHETIC AL FRAGMENTS. 181 displayed fine imagination, in his conceptions, who taught the voice is the soul. I never enter a watchmaker's shop without being sen sibly reminded of all the topics enforced by the moralist and preacher. In the midst of these memorials we seem to run an even race with father Time. That tall clock clicking in the corner so orderly, is no more a chronicler of time than myself with my pulse beating its vibrations equally with the pendulum. It seems a catacomb of dead men's pulses reanimated, since nothing but that part of man is represented by them. Their faces are blank surfaces, with figures marking the hours ; our faces are something more than blank surfaces, although in the countenances of some there is no vast difference between the two. XXIV. CORRESPONDENCE OF RICHARDSON. THE Letters of Richardson present a fair reflection of his life. From them -it is easy to imagine his daily habits and moral dispositions. The prominent virtues he possessed) uncon sciously disclose themselves on his pages, as well as his no less prominent foibles. The tastes of the man, and his se lection of companions, mark his own peculiarities as strongly as any limner could draw them. Thus his hospitality and kindness are shown to one in trouble and distress ; his love of discussion and moralizing, with a polemical friend ; his vanity is apparent in an- egotism, badly concealed by a mask of assumed modesty ; his knowledge of the female heart rnay be gathered from his artful manner of composing letters ad dressed to ladies. The early life of .Richardson, as of every man of genius, determined the character of his later years. Born in very humble circumstances, with little opportunity of liberal in struction, bound to a trade, he passed through his seven years of apprenticeship with fidelity and zeal. In these years, he laid the foundation of sober, upright, exact princi ples, and frugal, diligent, methodical habits fairly realizing Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice upon which to rear an after fortune. He obtained, by these means, the sincere re- CORRESPONDENCE OF RICHARDSON. 183 spect of his master, of whose interest he \yas so careful as even to buy the the candles by the light of which he read at night. When a mere boy, he was noted for invention, and was often called upon to exert his peculiar talent for the gratification of his favorite school-mates ; and in later life he always used to boast that he never forgot to add a good moral. Shortly after this period, he beg'an to exhibit his strongest propensities ; a love for letter writing, and for the company of women. The letter was the vehicle by means of which he conducted his narratives to the conclusion, and which, doubtless, became the easiest style for him, from long practice and natural inclination. Being a modest, and per haps rather tirnid, young fellow, he was encouraged, it seems, by the young women of the neighborhood, to read to them some entertaining volume, when they met together for sew ing. From the reader, he became the principal confidant of their love adventures, arid finally, their devoted scribe in all cases of emergency, requiring epistolary skill and the habit of the pen. The little secrets disclosed to him, the varying conflict of duty and desire, the hopes and fears of bashful love, the tenderness and liberal charity of the passion in its most engaging state, these pages of the book of human na ture, the author conned with a careful eye, and thence se cured his richest stores. This was the best part of Rich ardson's education as an author. From one step to another, making the best honest use of opportunities, Richardson gradually became a settled tradesman, of wealth and respect ability. His first published elibrts were prefaces, indexes, and what he called honest dedications, for the printers. Himself a printer and publisher, he became acquainted with some of the first men of the day, though with more of a miuh inferior grade; with Johnson, Young, Warburton, 184 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. Gibber, of the first class ; and such men as Aaron Hill, who stood on a sort of middle ground, between the best and worst. He was very liberal and hospitable to authors and scholars. He assisted Aaron Hill ; he had the honor to bail Doctor Johnson. He was a kind master, laying pieces of money for the first man in the office of a morning. Acci dent led him to a proper appreciation of his powers. At the request of a number of " the trade," he undertook to write a volume of familiar letters for the youth of the lower classes, in which he would not only aim at giving them words for composition, but also infuse his own ethical code of practi cal duties ; thus he meditated directions to young women going out to service ; he intended to give his views of the parental and filial relations, and similar mutual obligations. From a letter of the first sort a mere acorn to the oak, into which it expands sprang the History of Pamela. The way once found, and success attending the novel attempt, he was induced, once and again, to appear in the same character of fictitious writer, embodying, in his second work of Clarissa Harlowe, his idea of a " perfect woman, nobly planned ;" arid in Sir Charles Grandison a sort of male Clarissa the abstraction of a perfect man. We may here after consider the second work of Eichardson with more at tention. At present, we give the brief outline of his literary history, as illustrative of his personal character. How came an illiterate tradesman, who acknowledged that he wrote more than he read who, in a letter to Cave, the bookseller, confesses to having never read all the Spectator, and yet writing a paper for Johnson, which the gross flattery of his admirers set above the Spectators to attain an insight, and reveal powers, yet unseen, in fiction, and to gain the ap plause and acquire the admiration of the wise, the great, the CORRESPONDENCE OF RICHARDSON. 185 happy, and the gay ? The answer is, by a deep study of the human heart, and especially of the female breast, and a consequent power to move it. To look through his corres pondence, selecting merely the chief names, with what a variety of characters was he not connected ! the sensible and grateful, but vain and unfortunate Aaron Hill ; with the sturdy Warburton, who condescended to compliment him and that in an elaborate letter ; with the metaphysi cal Harris, the author of Hermes ; with his companions in. business, Cave and Strahan ; with the fastidious Lord Orre ry ; with the Poet Young ; with Miss Sally Fielding, a re lation of the author of Tom Jones, and who wrote the en gaging tale of David Simple ; with the vivacious veteran, Colley Gibber ; with Miss Highmore, sister to one of the fashionable painters of that day ; with Meeta, the wife of Klopstock ; with Miss Mulso, afterwards the didactic Mrs. Chapone ; with Dr. Delaney, the old name so familiar in the verses of Swift ; with Mrs. Sheridan, the mother of Rich ard Brindsley authoress of Sidney Biddulph and wife of Thomas Sheridan, the actor and elocutionist ; with ladies of quality, of whom Ladies Erskine and Bradshaigh were the most unfortunate ; and with a number of the clerical body, numbering one bishop and several clergymen ; one of whom, a Mr. Skelton, is a hero, after the pattern of Amory's heroes. The characteristic traits of Richardson, were a certain prudence, which was yet warmed by generosity, and a ten derness of feeling, that, nevertheless, was subdued by an austere manner. His character was a good deal formed by circumstances, and undoubtedly much affected by the circle of which he was the centre. " He lived in a kind of flower- garden of ladies," who were at once his models and critics. 186 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. He drew the characters of his heroines from the characters he saw around him, and subjected his writings to the judg ments of that body of his readers, whom he thought best fitted to appreciate them. Women, he thought not always correctly the best judges of female character. Dr. John son gives another reason for his being surrounded by women, that he loved superiority, and hated contradiction ; but he has left out another point, that our author really loved their society for its own sake, and for sympathy. His own nature was somewhat feminine, and like Marmontel, and Hume, and Cowper, he found the society of virtuous women most congenial to his mind. Wordsworth is a rare instance of a man, living for years chiefly in the society of his sister and wife, whose writings exhibit few or no traces of the influ ence of female conversation. Authors, who have honestly enjoyed the delights of a home, and the affections of wife and children, have, in most cases, been apt to express their sincere gratification in lively colors, and to modify their views of life and human nature by the influences a fortunate home can alone exercise. Such passages are read with pleasure in Hunt, and Lamb, and Jean Paul, and Goethe. A variety of slight anecdotes give us sufficient clues to the true character of Richardson : he was fond of children always a good trait and carried sagar-plums and candies about with him for them, as Burchell carried ginger-bread. In proof of his vanity, so much and so severely, as we think, charged against him, there is the story of his giving Speaker Onslow's servants larger vails than ordinary, in order to command their respectful deportment. This tells, at least, as much against their master as against Richardson ; and, after all, may be only an envious exaggeration. He was always a liberal man, and may have been profuse to the ser- CORRESPONDENCE OF RICHARDSON. 187 vants from no other feelings than those of generosity. It is true Richardson liked attention, as who does not, who de serves it. It is true his correspondents indulge freely in compliments, and sometimes in extravagant praises. His works generally formed the subject of conversation, when he was present. But then we are to consider the novelty of the form of writing he originated, its unprecedented suc cess, that it was to women he devoted his talent, and from women expected his praises ; that his great and general reputation threw a lustre over his private life ; that he was, moreover, a man of acute sensibility, and such men are gen erally both vain and generous, the two passions appearing to take their rise in a complexional temperament, and peculiar intellectual constitution, and finally running very much into each other. Richardson always had about him a number of young women, whom he treated as daughters, and whom he ap pears to have been more attached to than to his children. His girls, he called them. They were at one period Miss Mulso, afterwards Mrs. Chapone : Miss Highmore, sister to the painter, and afterwards Mrs. Duncomb, marrying a gentleman she met at Richardson's ; a niece to Seeker, the Bishop, to whom Pope gave " a heart ;" Miss Pres- cott ; Miss Fielding ; Miss Collier. These ladies constituted a sort of virtuous harem, where the main business done, was listening to the letters fresh from the pen of Richard son, and proceeding in their criticisms as he read. When we consider the way of life of Richardson, in the midst of his admiring coterie, and contrast it with a Turk's seraglio, we are at once reminded of the lines of Congreve's two , jvers, one of whom thus addresses the other ; 188 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. You take her body, I her mind "Which has the better bargain ? Richardson seems to have resolved this question for him self, by choosing the latter. An odious feature, we had almost forgotten to remark, in Richardson, and which we will dismiss now very briefly, is his mean jealousies of his rivals, Fielding and Sterne ; of both he speaks with great, and, we hope, ignorant contempt. He speaks of that " brat," Tom Jones ; of its run being over " with us ;" xf its not being tolerated in France ; of almost every character in it, with scornful disdain. Amelia comes off little better. He can read only the first volume. It is all so low. Parson Adams he appears to regard as a pure burlesque. He allows Fielding low humor, but nothing else. He can see nothing but indelicacies and irreligion in Sterne : to his finest strokes he is wholly indifferent. The correspondence of Richardson forms a voluminous collection, to the entire perusal of which we would, by no means, invite the reader, but would particularly urge a reading of the very interesting biographical account of Mrs. Barbauld ; a discriminating production. The fullest portion is the correspondence of Mrs. Bradshaigh, the history of which contains a strange mixture of absurdity and romance. She wrote, for a long time, under the assumed name of Mrs. Belfour, entirely a stranger to Richardson, and after reveal ing her name, and making an appointment to meet our au thor in the Park ; to enable her to recognise him, he sent her a minute description of his gait, and personal appear ance, and manner in the street. She several limes disap pointed him. He, an old man, with a large family, patrolled the public walks daily to see her, with all the ardor of a CORRESPONDENCE OF RICHARDSON. 189 out hfial lover ; which anxiety she, with a coquetry natural to the sex, kept in suspense for some time. Her letters, and his answers, turn either almost wholly on a discussion of the characters in his novels, or of topics incidentally touched upon. The very best, and most attractive, correspondence, to our minds, in the whole collection, is that of Klopstock's wife, of which the least praise we can give it, is, that it is worthy of a wile ef a poet. It seems she was first attract ed to Richardson by his novels, then, and we believe still, very popular with the Germans. She gives him a history of her engagement with Klopstock, how she first became attached to hirn, how he won upon her by his noble aspira tions and purity, how she, venerated him then a mere youth, how she lived so happily ; her thoughts of him during his ahsence, and her continual joy in his presence. All this is told in a charming style, a natural vein of simple tenderness, which a crude critic will be sure to call lackadaiscal, but which a genuine critic will read with pleasure.. She calls upon Richardson, ia what certainly reads a little extrava gantly, to paint an Angel, since he has done all that can be done for humanity. From the characters of the writers, generally, we may gather the tenor of their letters. Those of Richardson himself, have a very unpleasant formality about them. He is somewhat, it must be confessed, of a proser, and if not writing to those who solicited his corres pondence, would have been regarded as no great accession to a list of letter-writing friends. He has sense, but no vivacity : his lively attempts are very awkward. He is a clumsy humorist, and by no means a refined sentimental writer. The sources and occasions of his sympathy are al ways palpable, and meagrely expressed. His style is loose 9* 190 s ESSAYS TJPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. and bald, and nowhere shows the close thinker, nor accu rate author. Thus much of Richardson, the familiar correspondent ; we hope to be able to say more of the author of Clarissa Harlowe, XXV. THOMAS MOORE. THE present century has produced many able writers, some brilliant critics and essayists, careful and scrutinizing authors on history and philosophy, a few men of real wit, one or two true humorists, many sweet, lively versifiers, and, fewest of all, a band of genuine Poets. But in the list which in cludes Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, posterity will not place the name of Moore, who, at the pres ent moment enjoys, perhaps, a more varied and general, not to say enviable and exalted reputation, than any of the poets just mentioned. In the end, the permanence and character of an author's reputation must solely rest on the character and merit of his works. The epic seldom read, if a really great work, is sure of immortality ; the collection of songs, however popular, unless equally admirable in their way, must give place to the next new fashion of the hour. It must not be thought we underrate the song because it is brief, and offers less pretensions. It was the earliest form of poetry, and is consecrated by the numberless gems, the bright thoughts, the dork fancies, the glittering conceits of poets of every age arid country. Of songs the earliest are the best, for the above reason, they were fresher, had the advantage of coming first, were 192 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. unhackneyed. We, therefore, greatly prefer the early song writers, and agree sincerely with Tzaalc "Walton, who is speaking of a similar kind of poetry, such as Raleigh, Mar lowe, and Walton wrote : " They wrote old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good ; I think much better than the strong lines now in fashion, in this critical age." Moore is essentially a song writer. It affords the best scope for his genius, which flags beyond a limited distance, yet a song writer of a different stamp from the old masters of the lyric art, as we shall have occasion to show. Mr. Moore is a parlor-poet. We have all known parlor- orators : old gentlemen, who would descant with all the flourishes of rhetoric, on some topic of business, or politics, or family history. But here we have a bard, whose best audience is a fashionable company, whose best position is sitting at the piano and whispering one of his own melodies into the charmed ears of school-girls and the titled dames of English society. You would never have caught Milton ex hibiting himself in this fashion. He knew how to preserve the dignity of the poetic character, which was the ruling character in him. Moore is rather a man of fashion ; writ ing verses for his own amusement, and singing them for the entertainment of others. His fancy is of proper dimensions to suit a drawing-room ; he may flutter amongst china orna ments, gilded vases, and or-molu clocks ; rustling behind the curtains, or burying himself, with Rabelais, in his easy chair of luxurious construction. In the open air of the world, on the broad stage of society at large, he is lost. He wants ballast to support him, so light and volatile is his genius. He has no energy to prope] him onward. He has no weight of sentiment ; no force of thought. What, then, has he ? A lively wit, a vein of glittering THOMAS MOORE, 193 conceits, cold and hard, in proportion to their polish, great power of language, running into mere verbosity, and a fatal facility of turning off any given quantity of rhyme, at the shortest possible notice. His muse is always on the alert, "coming," "coming," like the* tapster at a popular inn. He has not the slightest pretension to the three great requisites of a great poet. He has no lofty imagina tion, no deep sentiment, no curious felicity of expression. His fancy is a tricksy sprite, smart and epigrammatic, capable of doing justice to a political satire, or well-bred courtly scandal. It conducts him easily and pleasantly through the mazes of a comic song, and even enlightens the honest heartiness of his patriotic effusions. But in senti mental pieces, it becomes mere affectation. His serious notes are mere grimacings of sensibility. The feeling of his songs is such as his fashionable readers can appreciate, but so hollow and superficial, with a very few exceptions, as to be appreciable by no other class. One reason of the popu larity of the Melodies, is the sweet music to which many of them have been married, and the sweet voices we have heard sing them. Mrs. Wood gave a new lustre to the treble part of " Love's Young Dream." " Oft in the stilly night," has called forth the sweetest tones of the finest tenor; "The Soldier's Farewell" has been answered, by many a heart. Peculiar circumstances have given reputation to some of the songs : as the history of the song, " She is far from the land where her young lover sleeps." There are, perhaps, ten really natural expressions of feeling in the collection of Melo dies, but we doubt if more. The rest of the sentimental songs are sad stuff. The Orator Puff's are much better, and the " Two-penny Post Bag," a separate satirical poem, the best of all Moore's attempts. 194 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS ANT) BOOKS. Moore's Lalla Rookh is an instance of palpable failure. We know, nowhere, more elaborate, voluptuous description, and complicated, fanciful illustrations, so entirely thrown away as here, except in the versified form of the Epicurean, properly a rich, oriental prose poem, but, as translated into verse, a meaningless desert of poetical common-places. The Anacreon of this author is not so good as Cowley's version ; which proves that the very airiest poetry must have a basis of powerful sense, as the hardest marble takes the finest polish, and the loftiest pillars are crowned with the lightest chaplets of Corinthian grace. Ben Jonson, whose finest lyric, " Drink to me only with thine eyes," is contin ually ascribed to Moore, affords one instance among many others, of stern, rugged, vigorous sense, lightened and re lieved by delicate and graceful fancy. The majestic old tragedians, Marlowe, Webster, and Shakspeare, and the rest, exhibited this refinement. But mere fancy, without vigor of understanding, fails to give momentum and passion to poetic flights. An excess of levity is visible in such poetry, which, on grave themes, is converted into as intole rable dullness. The imitations of Moore are among the best tests of the real want of excellence of his poetry. His copyists are mawkish ballad-mongers, or else libertine philosophers, as they may affect real feeling, or a perfect indifference to it. These gentlemen substitute the French wines for Byron's gin, and if not as furious and terrible as the followers of Don Juan, are more light-hearted and skeptical. There is an unhandsome notion lurking in the commu nity, that the quantity of wine a poet can drink, and its effects upon him, exhibit the measure of his powers. Willis, himself, has lately fallen in with this absurdity, by which THOMAS MOORE. 195 proof he attempts to make out Wordsworth to be a dull fellow, but Barry Cornwall a " glorious" poet. Procter has certainly written some spirited songs, but the general tone of his poetry is feeble eleganee, with occasional delicacy. The sentimental songs of this school may be generally classed with Pope's Song by a person of duality, and are filled with an equal number of senseless epithets, and in expressive expressions. The next generation will probably hear of Moore as a lively political wit, an accomplished diner-out, an agreeable companion at the summer fetes of the great, in the country, and the admired of all admirers at the crowded routes of wealth and fashion in town. His songs will be sung most of the good ones are now threadbare until a new Haynes Bayly springs up, when he will be forgotten. His scholar ship, being kept to himself, will be matter of tradition. Lalla Rookh is now a dead letter ; the History of Ireland is a dull book, though it may run an even race with Mr. Grattan's History of the Netherlands, which is another dull book. In a word, Moore's reputation iz- mosUy personal, and will die with him, like that of the ISedleys and Kille- grews of a past age. Having written no such songs as Burns, like him he cannot live, nor emulate the fame of the truly great poets of this period, since his most elaborate attempt is a failure. XXVI. LITERARY PORTRAITS. MACA0LAY.* MACAULAY, the Edinburgh reviewer, is, probably, the most brilliant writer of English prose now living, the last remaining member of that glorious band of wits, critics, and fine thinkers, who constituted the force of the Edinburgh in its prime Jeffrey, Macintosh, Hazlitt, Brougham, Carlyle, Stephens, and himself; uniting also the fame of a success ful politician to that of a splendid periodical writer, he has obtained an accumulation of honors rarely to be met in the person of a single individual. Review writing has now be come an art, and one, too, in which very few succeed even respectable arid in which innumerably, failures occur quar* terly. It is methodized into a system. It has its rules, and canons, and peculiar style. It must be exhaustive and thorough in its analysis ; the writing must be neat and clean ; the wit, bright and ' palpable ; the logic, close and ingenious ; the rhetoric, elaborate and dazzling. The style must never lag behind the story. There must be animation, at all events, even with error, (for the sake of piquancy,) * From review of Home's New Spirit of the Age. Democratic Review, July, 1844. LITERARY PORTRAITS. 197 rather than dullness, however just and sincere. A flat re view, however accurate and true, must fail ; a true story does not answer the purpose of a lively reviewer, while a clever conjecture passes for more than an acknowledged truth, which wants the stimulus of novelty. This, surely, is not as it ought to be. Is it as we represent ? You have only to read Macaulay to become satisfied as to the correct ness of the criticism. Macaulay's reviews are the very Iliad and Odyssey of criticism models of that kind of wri ting. Abler men and deeper scholars have written review articles, yet without that mastery of the art. Hazlitt had a more copious fancy, a richer vein, and was altogether a more original thinker and critic, yet his reviews lie buried under a mass of duller matter. We doubt whether Mac aulay could have written the Surrey Lectures, but that is travelling out of the record. Macaulay's articles are not to be mistaken. It is like love at first sight, you may always know his hand. He wants, to be sure, the solidity of Burke, the rich philosophy of that poetic thinker ; yet even Burke could not have hit the mark with greater nicity. He would have carried too much metal. Macaulay is essentially a critical essayist ; not a mere critic, not an original judge, not a lecturer, but that rare union of critic and miscellaneous writer a critical essayist. Probably, in no other form of composition could he have succeeded to such a degree of excellence. He could not compress himself into a monthly or weekly essayist He must have a wider range. He wants, moreover, fineness and delicacy, for purely elegant writing. He paints on too broad a canvass, and aims too much at striking colors and at effects, to elaborate ingenious beauties, and perfect the almost perfect beauties of nature, in his style. Then, again, in a long work he would soon 198 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. tire : his genius would droop when he got beyond his hundred pages. Pamphleteering would, perhaps, better suit Macaulay's genius than review writing, for he is a par- tizan in everything he writes. In his capacity of critic, he too often allows his political bias to influence his judgment the cabinet minister is sometimes a mere smart, inge nious paragraphist, by no means so intent on the truth as he should be. We remarked this particularly in two con secutive papers, the one on Southey's Colloquies, the other on Moore's Byron. The first writer is treated as a tory : the second as a whig. Contrast, also, the papers on Milton and on Boswell. Once understood, this partiality does no harm, but rather gives an edge to his style. History, no less than Letters, has been vividly illustrated by Macaulay, and many of his articles, in themselves, preserve the essence of books of great size but not equal value. Portrait paint ing and finished declamation have been carried to perfection in his articles, in which we find, besides, a treasury of fine and ingenious thoughts, richly illustrated and admirably employed. He is so much, in a word, the opposite of Car- lyle, that a characteristic sketch of the latter will not fail to include all the qualities opposed to his own, that we have omitted in the above notice. CAELYLE.* Thomas Carlyle is a name to be treated with respect, for, notwithstanding all his absurdity and pretension, he is undeniably so vigorous, and even sometimes so profound a writer, so sincere and genial a critic, and when warmed * From review of Home's New Spirit of the Age. Democratic Review, July, 1844- LITERARY PORTRAITS. 199 and in earnest, so powerful, that it would argue a deficiency, both of acuteness and candor, to deny his very great merits ; at the same time, there .is so much in the writer to excite a quite contrary feeling, that we hope to be pardoned for indulging in a free censure that may not seem warranted by the idolaters of his genius. Carlyle has distinguished himself in several lines of excellence ; let us glance at his proficiency in each. As the biographer of Schiller, his first attempt at criticism and narrative, he has surpassed all his future efforts, except in his translations, his admirable Sartor Resartus, and his later endeavors in behalf of sincere and intelligent Reform. In the light in which he is most fre quently considered, that of a mere speculative reformer, we do not rate him so highly by no means as we do regard him in certain other characters. He insists, in a right manly strain, on the nobleness, the necessity, of those great vir tues, truth, sincerity, perseverance. He preaches many an old text with new life and vigor, but we cannot think that he is eminently original, if, indeed, he has any pretensions that way at all. We do not ask for novelty; it is some thing to make the most of what we have, a truth very few, either moralists or legislators, seem to consider. But when a great outcry of discovery is made, we do certainly expect something more than Carlyle furnishes by way of substitute. "With Rob Roy, our author may unite in declaring that, " Of old things, all are now old, Of good things, none are good enough." and, in effect, he makes the same vaunt : " We'll show that we cau keep to frame A world of other stuff." Yet, after all, we stand where we stood before ; the 200 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. world has not moved a jot, we mean as to practical, per ceptible benefits. It is undeniable that Carlyle's writings have done great good, if only by making men think, and suggesting an appreciation of the terrible evils that hang, like a thunder-cloud, (ready to burst on our heads,) over the mass of society. The political atmosphere, charged (as in England and France) with the groans of the oppressed, the sighs of suffering, and the curses of outraged humanity, must needs be furnished with some safe conductor to protect the miscreants in power and place, who thus goad on their fellows, by misery to crime. An awful doom awaits the merciless legislators of England, if they cease not to ob struct the path of freedom, nor lay heavy burthens on the back of the much wronged poor and working-classes of that country. Carlyle's practical suggestions of education, emi gration, and the like, are not sufficient. They are highly useful, but much more is needed, and which ought to come from the landholders and manufacturers themselves, else others may work in vain. To regard the writer, however, purely as such. He is a singular mixture of Scotch shrewd ness with German scholarship and fancies. The races in him are mixed. He is best as critic and of German authors, whom he has translated with equal force, fidelity, and spirit. The German romances, in his hands, are very different things from the common translations of the Sorrows of Werter, or Kotzebue's tragedies, or Klopstock's Messiah. His papers, too, on Novalis, &c., are excellent; that on Richter, (his favorite and model,) is a masterpiece. Some of his papers on English literature are almost as good. The noble criticisms on Burns and Johnson must be familiar to every one. The critic's strictures on systems and politics we do not so much admire. His merely speculative inquiries LITERARY PORTRAITS. 201 do not amount to much. The critic has acuteness and force, but hardly equal subtlety and power of concentration. His* tory, in the hands of Carlyle, is descriptive arid illustrative, rather than purely narrative. He is much more of the critic of constitutions, measures and men, than the relater of events. He is picturesque and dramatic, but true history is epical and legendary. The (so called) history of the Re volution in France, is rather a gallery of portraits and scenes of civil war. It is wild and fitful, (like the blasts of winter howling over a desolate heath,) rather than a sustained elegy or a grand triumphal Ode to Freedom. It is, in a word, melo-dramatic. Compared with it, the classic historians are tame and insipid. The style is curt and jerking, and like a careering horse, too often unseats the sober judgment of the historian. Sartor Resartus is the master work of its author, (indeed, such, every clever writer can point to, some one superior thing which he could never surpass.) It is close, ingenious, profound, and earnest ; full of a deep sati rical humor that, like all true humor, conceals deep thought and feeling, striking scenes instinct with knowledge of life. It is, in fact, a philosophical picture of the inner life of a real man in the world ; a magnificent piece of autobiography, satire, sentiment, and speculation. It contains the portrait of the true scholar, the genuine human being, and not the mere pedant or outside man, whom it cuttingly exposes. It is brimful of admirable sense, the better for being good com mon sense, so much rarer than any other faculty. We feel warranted in calling this Carlyle's best work ; the one genially meditated, most earnestly worked out; yet (we can't help discovering it) the work which first records that tortuous style of writing, which we cannot avoid thinking a vile form of aflectatiori, itself one of the most disagreeable of the 202 ESSAYS tTPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. venial sins of authorship. "When we compare the early and later styles of this same writer, the difference is more obvious. The- life of Schiller is a model of pure English, while some of Carlyle's later works are horrible distortions of the language. > The cause of this great change is to us clear : some have conjectured it to result from confusion of ideas, the common ' apology for a dark style, but we believe it to arise from a perverse imitation of the worst parts of certain German au thors. Carlyle is utterly destitute of genuine wit, though his admirers claim that for him, as well as partial genius. He sometimes discovers a streak of surly humor, as it were, such as Q,uin, the actor, was said to possess. Of light, pleaSant raillery, he has not a particle. His jests are as awkward as the gambols of the elephant, in Milton. His wit to copy an expression of his own, is a sort of small- beer faculty. Carlyle's favorite characters are rough, hardy Saxon men somewhat in his own vein, as Knox, Luther, Johnson and Burns ; and daring revolutionists preserving the parallel, as Napoleon, Danton, Mirabeau. Force of cha racter and sincerity furnish his requisites for a hero. Car lyle paints with a bold hand firm and free uses strong colors without much grace or art, and with no elegance or taste. Still he has a certain peculiarity, that is very strik ing. Among painters our critic , would rank with Hans Holbein the court painter of Henry VIII., and a friend of Erasmus. His descriptions have something of Salvator Rosa in them, as wild and savage. He is no Vandyke, no Sir Joshua Reynolds, no Sir Thomas Lawrence. He has no hand for depicting female grace ; he paints men, heroes. Among artists of the last age, he woAld rank with Fuseli, LITERARY PORTRAITS. 203 Like him he succeeds in strong characters and tumultuous scenes. HAZLITT.* William Hazlitt we regard, all things considered, as the first of the regular critics in this nineteenth century, sur passed by several in some one particular quality or acquisi tion, but superior to them all, in general force, originality, and independence. With less scholarship considerably than Hunt or Southey, he has more substance than cither ; with less of Lamb's fineness and nothing of his subtle humor, he has a wider grasp and altogether a more manly cast of in tellect. He has less liveliness and more smartness than Jeffrey, but a far profourider insight into the mysteries of poesy, arid apparently a more genial sympathy with common life. Then, too, what freshness in all his writings, "wild wit, invention ever new:" for although he disclaims having any imagination, he certainly possessed creative talent and fine ingenuity. Most of his essays are, as has been well re marked, " original creations," not mere homilies or didactic theses, so much as a new illustration from experience and observation of great truths colored and set off by all the brilliant aids of eloquence, fancy, and the choicest stores of accumulation. It is not our purpose, at present, to draw an elaborate portrait of this great critic. We have Bulwer's and Talfourd's fine critical sketches too much in our eye and memory, to feel quite sure that we should not unconsciously borrow criticisms so well thought and finely expressed as the critical opinions in their respective papers We can only present a faint miniature of one who deserves to be painted From article on Critics and Criticisms of the XIX Century. August No. 1844, of Democratic Review. 204 ESSAYS tJPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. in the same brilliant Titian hues, in which he himself de picted his early friends, the idols of his youthful admiration. As a literary critic, we think Hazlitt may be placed rather among the independent judges of original power, than among the trained critics of education and acquirements. He re* lies almost entirely on individual impressions and personal feeling, thus giving a charrn to his writings, quite apart from, and independent of, their purely critical excellencies. Though he has never published an autobiography,* yet all of his works are, in a certain sense, confessions. He pours out his feelings on a theme of interest to him, and treats the impulses of his heart and the movements of his mind as historical and philosophical data. Though he almost in variably trusts himself, he is almost as invariably in the right. For, as some are born poets, so he too, was born a critic, with no small infusion of the poetic character. Ana lytic judgment, (of the very finest and rarest kind,) and poetic fancy, naturally rich, and rendered still more copious and brilliant by the golden associations of his life, early in tercourse with honorable poets, and a most appreciative sym pathy with the master-pieces of poesy. Admirable as a genial critic on books and men, of manners and character, of philosophical systems and theories of taste and art, yet he is more especially the genuine critic in his favorite walks of art and poesy ; politics and the true literature of real life the domestic novels, the drama and the belles lettres. We shall not now stop to enumerate in detail the distinctive traits of this master, beyond a mere mention of his most striking qualities as a writer. As a descriptive writer, in his best passages, he ranks with Burke and Rousseau, in * The Liber Amoris can hardly be called an exceptio n. LITERARY PORTRAITS. 205 delineation of sentiment, and in a rich rhetorical vein, he has whole pages worthy of Taylor or Lord Bacon. There is nothing in Macaulay, for profound gorgeous declamation, superior to the character of Coleridge, or of Milton, or of Burke, or of a score of men of genius whose portraits he has painted with love and with power. In pure criticism who has done so much for the novelists, the essayists, writers of. comedy ; for the old dramatists and elder poets ? Lamb's fine notes are mere notes Coleridge's improvised criticisms are merely fragmentary, while if Hazlitt has bor rowed their opinions in some cases, he has made much more of them than they could have done themselves. Coleridge was a poet ; Lamb, an humorist. To neither of these charac ters had Hazlitt any fair pretensions, for with all his fancy he had a metaphysical understanding (a bad ground for the tender plant of poesy to flourish in,) and to wit and humor he laid no claim, being too much in earnest to indulge in pleasantry and jesting though he has satiric wit at will and the very keenest sarcasm. Many of his papers are prose satires, while in others there are to be found exquisite jeux d 1 esprit, delicate banter and the purest intellectual re finements upon works of wit and humor. In all, however, the critical quality predominates, be the form that of essay, criticism, sketch, biography, or even travels. To account for Hazlitt' s comparative unpopularity, se veral causes are obvious. To say nothing of his strong political and personal prejudices, he is often too fair and just to be a zealous partizan, and has hence secured no political party of admirers. His egotism, to some so offensive, inas much as it mortifies their own weak vanity, is to us one of his most attractive qualities ; at least it implies openness and strong sympathies. To inspire affection, to a certain 10 206 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. extent the most disinterested man must be a self- lover. How or why else should he be so powerfully affected by the most stirring incidents of life and reality, if he himself, the centre of that real world (every man is such to himself) if his mind, the axis upon which all turns that really concerns him.be quite indifferent to all surrounding phenomena? Can he be said to take an interest in anything who does not lend himself to the illusions of life ? To express an interest in anything, is to make a personal revelation, and this is egotism not to evince the highest regard for oneself, so much as to display the deep feeling one may entertain for any person, thing, doctrine or dogma. Perhaps the unfortunate state of his private circum stances, in pecuniary matters as well as in his domestic re lations an unfortunate attachment, the rebuffs of half- friends, the ridicule of contemptible opponents, no less than an irritable temperament and an organization partaking more largely of the poet than the peasant, singly and united, should serve as ample apologies for the waywardness of the writer and the imprudence of the man. Those who knew Hazlitt best, spoke most highly of him, as his friends Hunt and Lamb, and his admirers, Talfourd, and Knowles, and Bulwer. The influence of the critic, too, is clearly percep tible in the periodical literature of the day. The best critics now living in England and in this country belong, emphati cally, to the school of Hazlitt. Milnes is a true Poet for the People, though not of them. He is a scholar, a gentleman, and a Tory of the Coleridgian school. A late Quarterly Review, in a notice of his poetry, speaks of him as a leading pupil of that school, which em- LITERARY PORTRAITS. 207 braces some of the most intelligent politicians and best in structed of the nobility of England. They are aristocrats of the more liberal tone ; high-minded, pure, generous and hu mane. Their aim is not to remove, but keep up, in their original brightness, now sadly obscured, the best portions of the ancient institutions of the realm ; the high-toned doctrines of Church and State, the fine feeling for loyalty, a poetic at tachment to the great names of the past, and a philosophic reverence for the eternal and immutable truths of morality and religion. In their veneration for antiquity they are apt to overlook abuses rendered venerable by time, and to shut their eyes, dreading horrible innovations, on the glorious vista of future improvement. And yet as a class they are the wisest of the conservatives, by far the most attached to the people, and what they are apt to suppose their true in terests, of all the conservative party. With their master, the great poet, they seek to ennoble the condition of human ity, to dignify the daily life of ordinary men, and to purify, strengthen and elevate the moral impulses of the mass. To such aspirations, worthily realized in living verse, our author brings a copious and varied scholarship, and a fruitful expe rience, the result of a high culture, wide reading and intelli gent travel. He is, in general, a meditative rather than a descriptive writer ; though he has fine passages of pictur esque beauty. He has a ready facility of imitation, and his poems are conceived in the spirit and executed in the man ner of Wordsworth : a single stanza will decide this. It occurs in a poem, the Barren Hill : " Before my home, a long straight hill Extends its barren bound, And all who travel that way will, Must travel miles arouud ; 208 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. Tet not the loveliest face of earth To living man can be A treasury of more precious worth Than that bare hill to me." There are rhymes soft, flowing and pure, that remind the reader of Campbell, and occasionally of Halleck. There is a charming song on page 100 of the first or second vol ume, we forget which, of the late London edition of Milnes's Poems of Many Years, that reads like the capital translation of a fine poem by Goethe. And there are heroic ballads, worthy of the bards of old. It is not difficult hence to per ceive that Milnes is rather a tasteful artist than a great original poet. Yet he has originality, if not much force or any very great scope of invention. He has all the feeling and simplicity of a poet, with a taste of delicate beauty. He has the genuine religious sentiment of a true poet, which is continually displaying itself, though in a most unostenta tious manner. The historical incident relating to Charle magne, so admirably versified, is a striking proof of this. Connected with this religious sentiment, or rather arising from it, a natural growth, is the loving sympathy with na ture and man, the fresh sources of all poetry, and the un failing test of the poetic faculty. In these requisite sciences of the poet, Milnes is deeply learned. Had we the volumes by us, we might readily turn to several striking instances. We can recall two of special merit ; the Violet Girl, for its intense humanity worthy of Wordsworth, and the Patience of the Poor, with the entire series of Poetry for the People. He aims in verse at much the same thing that Cnanning's pamphlets in prose aim at effecting popular appeals to na tional sentiment, to the individual conscience, and to the universal aspirations of society. Indeed, our author, in these LITERARY PORTRAITS. 209 Poems for the People, realizes the'idea of a poetic Charming, with more, to be sure, of a rigid conservatism, and less of the purely democratic spirit, in its best form, of our Ameri can philanthropist ; yet essentially a friend to and lover of his race, and a willing helper. The ideal we have referred to, has been struck out by a fine writer, an American and contemporary critic. Milnes, we have admitted, does not belong to the first class of poets, but he is " eldest appren tice in the school of art." He is a wise poetic teacher, one of that rare class so much needed to educate the public feel ing and direct the energies of popular impulse. Such writ ers form the best practical moralists, and are the most pop ular. The few great poets soar too high and dive too deep fot the mass of readers of whatever class. These hit the in tellect of the people just between wind and water ; being sufficiently above their audience to speak with authority, and far enough in advance to be the best fitted for leaders. We may add, though it may be considered somewhat irrelevant, that Milnes is besides a poet for the scholar. He has fine antique imaginations of the past, and reverence for the memorials and monuments of national and personal greatness, that cannot fail to awaken the sympathies of the retired student, who knows nothing of political distinctions, but worships all of the remnants of ever faded glory. Our poet has a fine chivalry of nature, that by no means unfits him for the advocacy of the rights of his fellows : yet which adds an additional grace to the manliness of his thoughts and style, rendering him an attractive author to those who might be repulsed by the homeliness of one class of his pro ductions. XXVII. LORD BOLINGBROKE. THE reputation of Bolingbroke is now almost wholly a matter of tradition. The courted and caressed minion of fortune, the " all-accomplished St. John," the petted dar ling of fashion, the favorite son of genius, is, at the present day, a name and little else. The personal qualities of a brilliant manner and polished address, which, together with copiousness of language, both in writing and speaking, a certain elegance of air, and a superficial stock of showy erudition, conspired to render the name of Bolingbroke a talisman of magic power in his own day. have all now given place to an oblivion, rightly merited, by an absence of the chief virtues of the heart, and of all the really ad mirable qualities of the head the only sure antidotes to mortality. We find in the history of Bolingbroke, a lesson to those who would elevate the character of a friend into that of a demigod ; who judge too much from personal feeling, and make little allowance for the just, because ut terly impartial, verdict of posterity. If we gather our opinion of the genius of Bolingbioke from the reports of private friendship, we would place him on the pinnacle of fame ; if we judge from his personal history, and from his own writings, we come to a quite op- LORD BOLINGBROKE. 211 posite conclusion. The writers of his day seemed to have conspired to raise him to the heights of renown ; but he had not the internal force to make good their endeavors. Rest ing on his own merits, he soon sank to his proper level of" inferiority and general obscurity. The praises bestowed on Bolingbroke fall little short of adulation. Pope's strain is always that of extravagant eulogium. Swift was not far behind in this respect. Later writers have kept up the ball. Bulwer, and the younger D'Israeli, in their early novels, painted him the hero of the boudoir and the saloon of fashion. The latest professed eulogy we have read of Bolingbroke, is from the pen of Lord Mahon, in his history who coincides with the vulgar idea of a past school of criticism, in the opinion that Bo lingbroke was, perhaps, the finest of English writers. "Writing chiefly either on political, and hence purely ephemeral topics, or on moral and religious, and hence per manent themes, Bolingbroke is to be judged as a pamphlet eer, and as a philosopher. In the first character, he was eminently successful ; his tenets were those of a strong par- tizan, and defended with animation and considerable force of declamation. Sometimes he rose into eloquence ; but generally, his declamation was as cold and artificial as his reasoning was specious and shallow. Pitt, to be sure, used to say, the Letter to Sir William Wyndam was the most masterly composition in the English Language, but his wretched literary taste is well known. It suited his own style of political eloquence, being wordy, full and musical. The moral essays of Bolingbroke are equally worthless for the thought and the style. Some of his religious specula tions were close on the verge of atheism ; he adopted the French cant of freedom from prejudice, and denied the 212 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. I genuineness of certain parts of the Bible. His platonic as pirations have the appearance of utter insincerity ; and his mouthing rants about patriotism and public good, can de ceive only the most credulous of his readers. In a word, we look on Bolingbroke as a literary charlatan ; and concur entirely with Blair who, for once, forgot his formality and indifference, when he told his pupils, that for profit, no English writer could be read with so little advantage as BolingbFoke. His style, however meretricious, has the merit of copiousness and harmony. In the best passages, we are sometimes reminded of Cowley and Sir William Temple, among his predecessors ; and in the present day, we see a revival of the same power of amplification in a nobler spirit, in the works of Chan- rung and Macaulay. As an orator, Bolingbroke was rated very high by his contemporaries. His successors in public life, (Pitt and Brougham,) have estimated him the very first of English orators. Lord Chesterfield thought him superior to the an cients. But, in his printed works, he is infinitely beneath Burke who, singularly enough, commenced his career by an imitation of Bolingbroke which proved superior to the original. We can imagine him, however, a very popular speaker. He had all the arts of oratory, and a fine person. He was quick, brilliant, energetic, fiery ; his manners soft, elegant, refined ; his scholarship, dazzling and deceptive. He was also, when necessary, untiring in business ; and, perhaps, the best negotiator and diplomat among the Eng lish statesmen of his time. The personal character of this "brilliant knave" was, in early life, grossly sensual ; he was a sort of Marquis of Waterford : only rivalling him in reckless licentiousness. LORD BOLINGBROKE. 213 He kept the most expensive mistress in the kingdom, and boasted of being able to drink more than any other man could bear. He once ran a race naked through HydeTark. His lordship's ambition, when a collegian, and until the age ef near thirty, was wholly of the puerile sort that distin guishes rich young men of fashion of the present day. As he advanced toward maturity, he became the states man and political leader. After the loss of power and influence, he turned philosopher. It may look like want of charity, but we confess we suspect it to be too true, that philosophy was the last resort of Bolingbroke, as patriotism has been said to be " the last resort of a scoundrel." And it is astonishing how men are allowed to conduct the affairs of the nation, whose private business is entirely neglected, and whose personal character is highly valued, at the very smallest premium. Religion, Bolingbroke repelled with disdain, but rested firm in the consolations of philosophy. He died at an ad vanced age, and holding the same doctrines to the very last. There must have been in the company and private character of this celebrated man, more than appears in his writings and public conduct, else how were the best men of his time so duped by his fascinating qualities. The stern sense of Swift, the acute satire of Pope, the comic subtlety of Gay, had pierced the hollow surface of pretence, and lashed the age ; yet they united in one chorus of applause to the genius, the patriotism, the purity of Bolingbroke. It is a curious problem. "We cannot close this slight notice without paying a tri bute of just compliment to the enterprising publishers. The work is printed with great neatness ; the portrait admirably engraved. It is a cause of regret with us, that the subject 10* 214 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS, matter, at this time, is not more worthy of the execution. How many far superior works lie mouldering in the rubbish of ancient libraries. St. John may be popular at the south. He inculcates a lax morality ; and the style rnay suit the Virginia idea of eloquence frothy and high sounding. But here, in these middle states, and at the east, we know better what true eloquence and sound philosophy mean, and have living models of both. The editor deserves some notice, but wholly by way of censure. In a pert, pragmatical preface, he speaks slight ingly of the elegant compilation of Goldsmith, who has sifted the facts cleanly, and given the gist of the matter. It is a common criticism to speak of the indolenee of Gold smith, who, however, left a goodly number of volumes be hind him, and wrote as no other man of his day could write. A similar vulgar error prevails with regard to Irving, (our Goldsmith,) who has written his shelf full of choice classics. With all his pretension, the editor has only contrived to make an unsightly piece of patchwork from Goldsmith, and some review articles. He employs the text of Goldsmith without remark, even after his scornful criticism ; which reminds us of a similar spirit in the Wild Tartar, mentioned by Hudibras, who When he spies A man that's handsome, valiant, wise, If, he can kill him, thinks t' inherit, His wit, his beauty, and his spirit: As if just so much he enjoy 1 d, As in another is destroyed. XXVIII. THE LITERATURE OF THE PROFESSIONS * IN this cursory sketch, we merely suggest the inquiry (which we shall not attempt to settle) of the comparative literary r ank of the three learned professions : the genius exhibited in elegant letters, of professional men. And each may ap pear, from the statement of a partial advocate, to take the lead. The lawyer may claim, to draw upon English litera ture alone, Shakspeare, who alone would outweigh all the clever authors among physicians, we can muster, by any diligence of research. The advocate may claim, too, Burke, the finest of political orators, and almost the first of English prose writers, putting out of view his later political princi ples ; the long array of statesmen and able debaters and po litical essayists (one of the glories of England) are lawyers, almost to a man ; and in literature, properly so styled, from the essays of Bacon to the Ion of Talfourd, we conceive no doubts can be raised, no question advanced, that they are not first among the first. Of the great dramatists, from Shak speare down, excluding the professional poets and actors, which of the faculties compete with the Law ? The fame of historical skill is pretty equally divided. The Bar boast- * From an article on Literary Physicians : Democratic Review, Dec. 1843. '-- 216 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. ing its More and Bacon and Clarendon and Hallam ; and the Church its Fuller and Burnet and Lingard and Arnold. We recollect no classical history by a physician. In the field of fiction, or the page of the manners-painting novelist, the lawyers can point to their Fielding, the prose Homer of human nature, and the Ariosto of the North Scott him self : the divines may boast of their Swift and Sterne, (though they are a little shy of both,) and the doctors have -among them four capital humorous painters, Arbuthnot, and Goldsmith, and Smollett, and Moore. The divines bear away the palm in serious eloquence and in moral reasoning, as might be naturally expected : almost the single excep tion to this criticism occurs in Sir Thomas Browne. The minor forms of literature, from biography down, are better represented by briefless barristers than by well beneficed divines or physicians in full practice. The poets are of every class and condition, though we think the best, in general, have followed literature alone. Neat, agreeable verses have been written by doctors, as by Garth, Arm strong, Grainger, Wolcot ; and at home by Drake and Holmes, who, as genuine poets, rank above any of these ; but the best poet among them, Goldsmith, was, essentially, an author by profession, as also were Akenside, and Smol lett, and Darwin. Mere learning, as distinct from elegant literature, may at one period have been confined to the profession of physic : natural science, always the most popular species of knowledge, falls naturally within the scope of their studies, and certainly they have been great discoverers in natural philosophy : but in a higher philoso phy, that of the government of men and the advancement of the race, the legal and political inquirer has greatly distanced these ; whilst in the highest philosophy, that of THE LITERATURE OF THE PROFESSIONS. 217 the moral nature, aims, capacity, and sympathies of man, the individual, as contrasted with and distinct from man, the citizen, or political unit, the first class of divines, from Jeremy Taylor to our own Channing, deserve the highest place. Lawyers have at all times done their full share in ad vancing the interests of society, and their memory should be preserved with reverence. The profession of the law has produced the greatest statesmen and most brilliant ora tors of modern times ; some of the ablest divines have been originally lawyers, and have brought to the high topics of theology, an acute, logical head, as well as an ardent ima gination and a pure heart. The greatest writers of the present century, for instance, from Sir Walter Scott down to a lively newspaper critic, as those of the London Ex aminer, and the best monthly and quarterly journals, have been lawyers. From the law has the world received the blessings of that profound and admirable philosophy, so conducive to public interest, and so well adapted to private happiness, which we read in the pages of Bacon, of Burke, and of Bentham. The sharpness and transparency of in tellect that legal studies and legal practice afford, go far toward the general improvement of the faculties of obser vation and comparison. Hence, we find lawyers such mas ters of real life, and the JbesJ society (intellectually con sidered) of any place you may enter. In the country, the judge is the first man, and the principal advocate stands next highest. In the city, even in this commercial mart, the profession of the law, as a profession, stands unquestion ably the highest. At least six out of ten of our most dis tinguished public characters and persons of eminent private worth, have come out from the law. The most sagacious 218 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. foreign critic of our government and its working, has most justly demonstrated the bar to be the bulwark of our poli tical liberties, the intelligent and fearless defender of our rights. Though law itself is unromantic enough in its study, let Eunomus and Lord Bolingbroke, Sir James Mac intosh and Dr. Warren, say what they may to the contrary, yet it is very far from being a dull pursuit to a successful lawyer. The most unexpected incidents and turns daily arise, the rarest characters are to be met with, the most open reference to the human heart is often made by the able law yer, in a free and diversified practice. We are very far from thinking the legal life, as it is, comparable to that of the true man of letters, as it might be ; still, where there is much to praise, it is churlish to remain silent. Finally, as a class of men for general intelligence, clearness of mind, temperance of opinion, real force of character, polished amenity of manner, we can find no class of men superior to the best class of lawyers ; the old senatorial band of judges and counsellors of long standing, or the new and fresher army of smart, young attorneys. Having offered our humble tribute to the profession of the law, we should not omit to pay due respect to genius and virtue, as it is embodied in the Christian Church. As the noblest portion of that noble body, we shall glance merely at the general character of the standard old English divines, the Donnes, Halls, Taylors, Barrows, Souths, Mores, Earles, Fullers, Tillotsons, and Berkeleys. These great old masters form a choice collection in a select library of old English literature. It has been said, that a com plete library could be formed from their works, and that, too, a most valuable one. For though divines, they were THE LITERATURE OP THE PROFESSIONS. 219 none the less wits, historians, scholars, poets, orators, and moralists. Uunlike the French clergy, the ornaments of which have been, either mere declaimers, or else scholastic controversialists, the English divines wrote books of moral essays, satires, descriptions of characters, works on men and manners. They had wit and humor, as well as fancy and sentiment. They were not merely the spiritual guides, but also the popular writers of their day. As mere scholars, their acquisitions were wonderful : as thinkers, the richness of their matter is fully equivalent to its gorgeous setting. As men, where shall we look for a more primitive piety and holiness of character comparable to that of the heavenly George Herbert : what Christian, at once so simple and so learned, so wise and yet so humble as Hooker : whose de votional raptures (in our own day) equal the enthusiastic fancies of Crashaw : whose keen satire rivals that of Hall or Eachard : what later martyr to principle outshines the apostolic Latirner : whose golden eloquence casts the fancy and the imagination of Taylor or South into the shade ? We should be glad to learn if ever there existed a more copious, exact, and comprehensive reasoner than Barrow, or a finer model of the true Christian gentleman than Berkeley. Later metaphysicians have not yet obscured the fame of Clarke and Butler. We might run on with these glorious old names, and fill many a page. With these tributes to the Law and Divinity, sincerely offered, and riot introduced merely for the sake of a display of impartiality, we come at last to the Faculty of Medicine. And, in the outset, we may quote the opinion of Johnson, gained from a wide and intimate experience on his part of the skill arid benevolence of physicians, the most eminent of whom, in his day, took pleasure in prolonging the life, 220 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. and alleviating the poignant diseases under which this great man suffered, not only without fee or reward, but with a readiness, a patience, and an affectionate zeal that could not be remunerated by any merely pecuniary returns ; ser vices to be commanded neither by the patronage of the titled, nor the applause of the famous. A strong feeling of personal attachment existed between Dr. Johnson and several of the first medical men of England in his time, and a mutual esteem honorable to both sides. In his case, too, the willingness to accept gratuitous services, discovered as much liberality of spirit, (for a man of such manly in dependence of character,) as the eager offer on their part to proffer them. In Bos well's life, the commendations of the faculty oc cur in several places, but we have reference more particu larly to a passage in the life of Sir Samuel Garth, which reads as follows : " Whether what Temple says be true, that physicians have had more learning than the other faculties, I will not stay to inquire, but I believe, every man has found in physicians, just liberality and dignity of sentiment, very prompt effusion of beneficence and willing ness to exert a lucrative art where there is no hope of lucre." Though we most readily assent to Johnson's own dictum in the matter, we are far from being governed to any great degree by the dictum of Temple, who has been shown to have been a very superficial scholar, and hence no safe critic. Besides, the period was not very distant from the age in which Temple lived, when the physician held not his present position, but ranked with the apothe cary, or rather the two professions were more generally merged into one ; when the chirurgeon was generally the barber, and his operations few and simple. A similar THE LITERATURE OF THE PROFESSION 221 analogy holds in regard to other offices ; the chancellor of Great Britain is now always a layman, but up to the time of Sir Thomas More, in the reign of Henry VIII., the office was invariably held by the primate, and the Court of Equity was considered the just province of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In point of erudition, we have little doubt that physi cians formerly, and perhaps still, have surpassed lawyers, though we suspect not the clergy, who have an intermina ble professional literature of their own. But in regard to natural genius, with the exception of the choice instances we have collected, we are inclined to suspect the Faculty will not be able to sustain a fair parallel with the Bar or the Pulpit. This is, however, a point we are by no means solicitous to decide. Most physicians have too rare an op portunity of leisure to employ much of it in writing, and then we do not so naturally look to them as authors, as we desire to regard them as friends, companions, counsellors, acquaintance. "We entertain for them rather a personal attachment, than an abstract literary admiration. We are touched by their kindness : excited to gratitude by their skill and successful endeavors, and rendered trusting by the confidential intercourse that so naturally springs up between doctor and patient. It appears to us, therefore, no matter of wonder that the doctor should aim to excel in conversation more than in composition and should seek professional rather than literary fame. To become skilful and discriminating in his art ; agreeable and gentlemanly in his address ; to perform well the character of a judicious yet kind friend, and enter tain by all allowable arts the dull hours of the invalid : to 222 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. act the part of the philanthropist and the good Samaritan ; these surely are honors sufficient for the ambition of any reasonable human creature, and require the exercise- of vir tues that make men akin to the angels. XXIX. THE PROFESSION OF AN ACTOR. THE life of an actor is a severe trial of humanity. His temptations are many ; his fortitude, too often, ineffectual ; his success precarious. If he be resolute, uncontaminated by the society of his associates, and a genuine artist besides, he is worthy not only of the praise of the moralist, but also deserving the admiration of the critic. The prejudice against the profession, like most prevailing prejudices, is founded on general truth ; but it is frequently absurd and baseless. The dissolute lives of actors, even in the majority of cases, may be supposed to result at least as often from failure in their attempts to please, and ill treatment from the world, as from any other reasons. The very best men have sometimes been driven into vice, as well as seduced and insinuated into it. And how shall we dare to speak of the comparatively light vices of the actor without pity and tenderness, when we allow odious vices of the heart to go ' unwhipt of justice ?' The sins of the flesh are visited in the flesh, and often end there. But the sins of the mind, the vices of the heart, are of a more incorrigible nature, are deeper dyed with guilt, the cancerous sores of the soul. There is this also to be considered there are professional vices. Now we would venture to declare, that there is no more of dissipation, no 224 ESSAYS UPON AUTHORS AND BOOKS. more looseness of living among actors, than there is pettifog ging among lawyers, or quackery among physicians. We mean to write no apology for the actor ; the worthy members of the profession need none, and as for the less de serving, or even the criminal, we deem it without our prov ince to lay open the sores of the beggar, whose follies have induced them. It lies beyond our limits to lash the back already waled by the stripes of a cruel fortune. Ah ! is not poverty, is not scorn, is not the solitude of their lives, is not the estragement of the virtuous part of mankind from them, hard enough to bear without our adding to the mountain of abuse which has crushed many a human creature ? Ye grave censors, who would crush the poor actor, thus over borne, are ye free from all weakness, not to say impurity ? Do ye array yourselves in no borrowed vestments of virtue, to conceal therewith the detestable meanness, the intolerable corruption of your ignoble spirits ? Can a line be drawn separating the righteous from the profane ? Is one man perfectly good, and another perfectly bad ? Are we not all nearer an equality ? A man may, in his frenzy, or in a diabolical spirit, (little short of it,) commit murder a crime neither you nor I, considerate reader, have committed and yet he may have done much that we have left undone. May not the final account disclose an average of evil and goodness, muq. Edgar S. Vanwinkle, Esq. W. Coventry H. Waddell, Ego, LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS, W. D. Waddington, Esq. Rev. Jon a. M. Wainwright, D, D. Joseph Walker, Esq. Col. Elijah Ward. S. L. 11. Ward, Esq. George G. Waters, Esq. W. T. Webbe, Ksq. Thomas L. Wells, Esq. Harvey A. Weed, Esq. J. A. Weeks, Esq. J. H. Weeks, Esq. R. D. Weeks, Fsq. H. C. Westervelt, Esq. J. C. White, Esq. E. M. Willet, Esq. G. W. Wright, Esq. Rev. William R. Williams, D. D, James W. Wilson, Esq. Wm. H. Wilson, Esq. C. Zabriskie, Jr., Esq. Amid a diversity of judgments, the writer has decided to print the above list ; though to satisfy those vfho think it inexpedient, the pages are so slightly attached that they can be readrly removed without im pairing the integrity of the volume. For his own part, the writer is proud to exhibit an array of names, such as is rarely to B"d found in any similar catalogue ; nor does he wish to be considered invidious or ungrateful, if while he acknowledges his personal indebtedness to every subscriber, he especially prides himself upon the cordial support of his old New-York friends, and those of his Father ; and, in particular, of the members of the Bar, who, in fact constitute a large proportion of them. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. FE8 1 4 1954 MAU 190$ Form L9 15m-10, '48(81039)444 LOS ANGELES LIBRARY UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY F AA 000033197 5 PS 2151 J728 E8