r>y
v >. 1
OF
A MANUAL
OF
ENGLISH PEOSE LITEEATUEE
AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITION.
Having received from MESSRS. GINN & COMPANY,
Publishers, of Boston, New York, and Chicago,
payment for the copyright in America of my "Manual
of English Prose Literature," I assign the publishing
rights in that country to them.
W. MlNTO.
UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEBH,
May 1887.
A MANUAL
OF
ENGLISH PROSE LITERATURE
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL
DESIGNED MAINLY TO SHOW
CHARACTERISTICS OF STYLE
BY
WILLIAM MINTO, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND LITERATURE IN TH
UNIVERSITY OF AKEUUEEN
AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITION
BOSTON, U.S.A.:
PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY.
1901
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
THE main design of this book is to assist in directing
students of English composition to the merits and the de-
fects of our principal writers of prose. It is not, however,
merely a collection of received critical opinions. It may
be of some value to the inquirer after general informa-
tion, as well as to readers more advanced than those kept
specially in view.
The characteristics of the work are briefly thesa It
deals with prose alone, assigning books of fiction to the
department of poetry; it endeavours to criticise upon a
methodical plan, fully explained in an Introduction; it
selects certain leading authors for full criticism and exem-
plification ; and it gives unusual prominence to three select
authors of recent data
Little need be said to justify taking up Prose by itself.
In criticising Poetry we are met by very different con-
siderations from those that occur in the other kinds of
composition. What is more, many people not particularly
interested in Poetry are anxious for practical purposes to
have a good knowledge of Prose style; and when Prose
and Poetry are discussed in the same volume, Prose is
generally sacrificed to Poetry.
In excluding Romance or Fiction from a Manual of
Vi PREFACE.
Prose Literature, I follow a division suggested by the late
Professor George Moir, in his treatises on Poetry, Romance,
and Rhetoric. Romance has a closer affinity with Poetry
than with Prose : it is cousin to Prose but sister to Poetry;
it has the Prose features, but the Poetical spirit.
The advantages of criticising upon a methodical plan in
terms previously defined, will be at once apparent. Criti-
cising methodically is like ploughing in straight lines : we
get over the field not only sooner, but to much better pur-
pose ; besides, it is easier to see both what we accomplish
and what we miss. As regards the defining of critical
terms, it was a favourite position with De Quincey that
"before absolute and philosophic criticism can exist, we
must have a good psychology." The present work makes
little ^pretension to be philosophic, much less to be abso-
lute; but it is an attempt to apply in criticism some of
the light thrown upon the analysis of style by the newest
psychology. I am aware that methodical critical dissection
is considered by many a cold disenchanting process. But
however cold and disenchanting, it is indispensable to the
student : it is part of the apprenticeship that every work-
man must submit to. Before learning to put a compli-
cated mechanism together, we must take it to pieces, and
study the parts one by one. If the student goes to work
at random, picking up a hint here and a hint there, he is
completely at the mercy of every pedantry that comes to
him under the sanction of a popular name. The only true
preservative against literary crotchets and affectations, is
a comprehensive view of the principal arts and qualities,
the principal means and ends, of style.
It may be said that criticism on a uniform plan tends
to destroy individuality ; that a book constructed on such
a plan can be nothing but a featureless inventory. This
can happen only if the plan is narrow, and if specific
modes of the various qualities of style are not dis-
tinguished with sufficient delicacy. Uniformity of plan,
PREFACE. Vii
so far from destroying individuality, is really the best way
to bring individual characteristics into clear prominence :
if all are subjected to the same examination, the range of
the questions being sufficiently wide, individualities are
thrown into relief with much greater distinctness than
they possibly could be by any other process. In the
following work, the account of each author contains a
preliminary sketch of his character; the analysis that
follows may be viewed as a means of tracing the outcome
of that character in his style, and of making his peculiar-
ities felt more vividly by bringing him into extended
comparison with others.
The student should be warned emphatically against
such blind guides as declaim against the cramping influ-
ence of rules for composition, and urge us to work out our
own individuality without regard to the precepts of the
schools. Sound principles of composition do not repress
genius, but rather do genius a service by preventing it
from dissipating itself in unprofitable eccentricities. There
is eveiy room for variety within the conditions adopted in
the following work : indeed their chief recommendation is
that they recognise diversity of style according to diver-
sity of subject and purpose. Students often put the ques-
tion, What should we do to acquire a good style ? A
principal aim in this Manual is to make students familiar
with the fact that there are varieties of good style. In-
stead of aiming blindly at the acquisition of " a good style,"
the writer of the speaker should first study his audience,
and consider how he wishes to affect them; and then
inquire how far the rhetorical precepts that he has learnt
will help him to accomplish his purpose, and how far
rhetorical teachers can direct him to the causes of success
in those that have best accomplished the same ends in
the same circumstances.
Regarding the prominence given to the modern authors,
I have only to repeat that the work is intended mainly
viii PEEFACE.
for students, and to say that the most rewarding study for
them, in the first instance at least, lies in the more recent
(which are also the higher) developments of prose style.
With the same eye to the primary destination of the
work, I have said comparatively little about prose writers
anterior to the age of Elizabeth.
The biographies of the various writers are brief; but
every pains has been taken to make them accurate. The
biographies of the three selected modern men will be
found to be more complete than any hitherto published.
January 25, 1872.
. ,:' :
PEEFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
THE alterations that I have made In revising this book
for a second edition have been mainly in one direction.
I have here and there omitted or modified passages that
might have seemed to countenance the idea that goodness
or badness in style might be pronounced upon without
reference to the effect aimed at by the writer. This I
have done to prevent the slightest suspicion that the
criticisms in this book consist in the dogmatic application
of any absolute standard of style. In spite of the toler-
ably plain disclaimer in my first Preface, this absoluteness
of view has been not only suspected, but alleged. It is
true I have not been able, after diligent search, to find
the quotations by which the allegation was supported;
nevertheless, I wish to place the purpose of the book
in this respect beyond the possibility of honest misap-
prehension.
Since the first edition was issued, Mr Trevelyan's
biography of Lord Macaulay has appeared, and Mr " H. A.
Page " has published two volumes on the Life and Writ-
ings of De Quincey. My sketches of Macaulay and De
Quincey can, in consequence, no longer pretend to be
"more complete than any hitherto published."
December 82, I860.
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.
FOR this issue the book has been revised throughout
The chief changes made have been in the short sketch
of the life of Carlyle, which one is able now to treat
with greater freedom as well as fuller knowledge. The
estimate of his character has been allowed to stand, with
only a few verbal alterations. I have to acknowledge
many excellent suggestions for the extension of the work
from critics who have spoken favourably on the whole
of its plan and execution. At another time I may be
able to give effect to some of these suggestions : mean
time, the tolerably rapid sale of a large edition encourages
me to believe that the book is found useful in its present
shape as a contribution to the study of a wide subject.
Nobody can be more sensible than myself that I have
dealt with only a part of the subject.
July 1830,
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
Ml
ELBMENTS OF STYLB, . . . . 8*14
Vocabulary, .... 2
The Sentence, ..... 3
The Paragraph, ...... II
Figures of Speech, . . . . . II
QUALITIES OF STYLE, ...... 14-25
Intellectual Qualities Simplicity and Clearness, . , 15
Emotional Qualities-
Strength, ... 19
Pathos, .... 2O
The Ludicrous, ...... 23
Elegancies of Style Melody, Harmony, Taste, . . 24
KINDS OF COMPOSITION, . . . . 26-28
Description,
Narration,
Exposition,
Persuasion,
26
27
28
28
PART L
DE QUINOEY MACAULAY CAELTLE.
CHAP. I.-THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
Lmt, ! 31
CHARACTER, ........ 38
OPINIONS criticisms, ...... 46
XU CONTENTS.
ELEMENTS OP STYLB
Vocabulary, ....... 49
Sentences, , 50
Paragraphs, ....... 53
Figures of Speech, .... 55
QUALITIES OF STYLB
Simplicity, . , . . . . . 60
Clearness, ....... 62
Strength, .*..... 64
Pathos, ....... 68
Humour, ....... 69
Melody and Harmony, . . . . . 71
Taste, . . . ... . . . 72
KINDS OF COMPOSITION
Description, . . . . . . . 72
Narration, . 74
Exposition, ....... 75
CHAP. H.-THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
LIFE, ........ 77
CHARACTER, . . . .. . . 81
OPINIONS, ........ 85
ELEMENTS OF STYLB
Vocabulary, . . . . . . . 87
Sentences, ....... 87
Paragraphs, ....... 89
Figures of Speech, . . . . . 97
QUALITIES OF STYLE
Simplicity, ....... 104
Clearness, . 107
Strength, ....109
Pathos, ....... 113
The Ludicrous, . . 114
Melody, Harmony, Toate, . . . . . 115
KINDS OF COMPOSITION
Description, . . . . 115
Narration, . . . . Il8
Exposition, . . . . . . . 123
Perauaaian, . . . . . . 124
CHAP. III. THOMAS CABLYLR
LlFB, '3'
CHARACTER, 136
OPINIONS, ... I 4
CONTENTS. Xiil
ELEMENTS OF STYLE
Vocabulary, . , . . . . 147
Sentences, . , , , . . 149
Paragraphs, . . . , , . . 152
Figures of Speech, 152
QUALITIES OF STYLE
Simplicity, . . . . . . . 159
Clearness, 161
Strength, .. 162
Pathos, ....... 163
The Ludicrous, . . . . . . 163
Melody, Harmony, Taste, . . . 167
KINDS OP COMPOSITION
Description, . . . . . . . 169
Narration, 173
Exposition, , . , . , . . 177
Persuasion, ..... 179
PAET II.
PROSE WRITERS IN HISTORICAL ORDER.
CHAP. I. PROSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580.
FOURTEENTH CENTURY (Mandeville, Chaucer, Wicliffe, Trevisa), 183
FIFTEENTH CENTURY (Pecock, Fortescue, Capgrave, Caxton,
Fabyan, &o.), ....... 186
FIRST HALF OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY (Berners, More, Elyot,
Hall, Tyndale, CovenlHle, Latimer, Foxe, &c.), . . 189
THIRD QUARTER OF SIXTKBNTH CEJSTUKY (Ascham, Wilson,
North, Holinshed, &c.), . . . . . 197
CHAP. IL FROM 1580 TO 1610.
BIB PHILIP SIDNEY
Life, ..... . < . 200
Character, ....
Opinions, ...
Elements of Style (Personification), .
Qualities of Style (Pathos, Humour),
Kiiida of Composition, . .
201
203
204
2O7
212
Xlv CONTENTS.
RICHARD HOOKEE
Life, ......;. 213
Character, . . . . . . . 215
Opinions, ....... 217
Elements of Style, . . . . . . 218
Qualities of Style (Confusion, Pathos, Melody), . . 221
. Kinds of Composition, . . . . . 226
JOHN LYLY, ....... 227
Euphuism analysed, ...... 229
OTHEB WRITERS
Church Controversialists (Whitgift, Cartwright, Martin Mar-
prelate, Parsons), . . . . . 232
Chroniclers (Stow, Speed), . . . . . 234
Historians (Hayward, Knolles, Daniel), . . . 234
Antiquaries (Camden, Spelman, Cotton), . . . 235
Maritime Chroniclers (Hakluyt, Purchas, &c.), . 235
Miscellaneous (RALEIGH, Burleigh, Dekker, James I., Overbury), 236
CHAP. III^-FEOM 1610 TO 1640.
FRANCIS BACON
Life, ........ 239
Character, ....... 240
Opinions, ....... 242
Elements of Style, . . . , : . . . . 244
Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Clearness, Strength), . . 248
Kinds of Composition (Narration, Exposition, Persuasion), . 251
OTHER WRITERS
Divines under James (Field, Andrewes, Morton, DONNE), . 255
Divines under Charles /. (Hall, Chilliugwurth, Hales), . 257
Chronicler (Baker), ...... 259
Antiquarians (Usher, Selden), .... 259
Historian (Herbert of CherburyX .... 260
Miscellaneous (Ben Jouson, Wotton, Sandys, Lithgow, Bur-
ton, Butter), ...... 260
CHAP. IV. FBOM 1640 TO 1670.
THOMAS FULLEB
Life, ........ 264
Character, ....... 265
Elements of Style, ...... 266
Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Perspicuity, Pathos, Wit and
Humour), ...... 269
CONTENTS. XV
JIREMT TAYLOR
Life, ..* 274
Cl 1.1 ranter, . . . . . 275
Opinions, ....... 277
Elements of Style (Imagery), ..... 278
Qualities of Style (Pedantry, Strength, Pathos), . . 281
Kinds of Composition (Description, Exposition, Persuasion), . 287
ABRAHAM COWLET
Life, t . . . . . . 289
Character, ....... 290
Elements of Style, ...... 292
Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Strength, "Wit and Humour), 294
OTHER WRITERS
Theology (Sanderson, Pearson, Baxter, Owen, Fox, BUNYAN, &c.), 299
History (CLARENDON, &c.), . . . . . 304
Miscellaneous (Howell, Heylin, Earle, Sam. Butler, Felltham,
BROWNE, More, Wilkins, Digby, Walton, MILTON,
Gauden, HOBBES, Harrington, Sidney, Needliam), . 305
CHAP. V.-FBOM 1670 TO 170O.
SIB WILLIAM TEMPLB
Life, ........ 316
Character, . . . . . . . 318
Opinions, ....... 320
Elements of Style (Sentences and Paragraphs), . . 321
Qualities of Style (Precision, Dignity, Pathos, Wit, Taste), . 327
Kinds of Composition (Narration), . . . . 331
JOHN DKYDEN, ....... 332
OTHER WRITERS
Theology (BARROW, TILLOTSON, Still ingfleet, Sherlock,
SOUTH, Sprat, Burnet, Penn, Barclay, Ellwood), . 336
Philosophy (LocKE, Cudworth, Cumberland), . . 340
History (BeRNET, Mackenzie, Pepys, Evelyn, &c. ), . . 341
Miscellaneous tL' Estrange, Blount, Charleton, Halifax, Boyle,
Newton, Ray), ...... 343
CHAP. VI.-PKOM 1700 TO 1730.
Introductory Remarks, ...... 346
DANIKL DBFOB
Life, .. 347
Character, . . . . . 349
Opinions, ....... 350
Elements of Style, . . . . . 351
XVI CONTENTS.
Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Clearness, Strength, The
Ludicrous), ......
Rinds of Composition (Description, Narration, Exposition), .
JONATHAN SWIBT
Life, ......*.
Character, .......
Opinions, .......
Elements of Style (Similitudes, Allegory, Irony), . .
Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Clearness, Strength, Pathos,
Satire), .......
Kinds of Composition (Persuasion), . . .
JOSEPH ADDISON
Life, ....
Character, .....
Opinions, .......
Elements of Style (Sentences), ....
Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Obscurity, Wit, Melody, Taste),
SIB RICHARD STEELK
Life, >
Character, .......
Pathos, .......
Humour, .......
OTHER WRITERS
Theology (Atterbnry, Hoadley, Clarke, Toland, Collins, Wool-
ston, Tindal, &c.), .....
Philosophy (Mandeville, Wollaston, Shaftesbury, BERKELEY),
History (Echard, Strype, &c. ), ....
Miscellaneous (Bentley, Hughes, Budgell, Arbuthnot, BoL-
INOBROKE, &c. ), . . . . . .
CHAP. VII. FROM 178O TO 176CX
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Life, .
Character, . .
Opinions,
Elements of Style (Sentences
Qualities of Style (Simplicity
Clearness, Strength, Pathos,
Ridicule, and Humour),
Kinds of Composition,
OTHER WRITERS
Theology (Morgan, Chubb, Butler, Warburton, Leland,
Lardner, Foster, Wesley, Whitefield, &c.),
Philosophy (Hutcheson, Hartley, Edwards, HUME), . .
History (Hume, Smollett, Middleton, &c.), . . .
Miscellaneous (Franklin, Mehuotli, &c.), . .
CONTENTS. XV11
CHAP. VIII. FROM 1760 TO 1790.
EDMUND BURKB
Life, .. 440
Character, ....... 443
Opinions, ....... 446
Elements of Style (Figures of Speech), . . . 448
Qualities of Style (Strength, Ridicule, Bad Taste), . . 452
Kinds of Composition (Description, Persuasion), . . 458
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Life, ........ 461
Character, ....... 462
Opinions, ....... 464
Elements of Style (Sentences, Epigram), . . . 465
Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Strength, Pathos, Wit and
Humour), ...... 468
OTHER WRITERS
Theology (Horsley, Porteous, Campbell), . . . 473
Philosophy (Reid, Tucker, Price, Priestley, Beattie, Campbell,
Lord Kames, Blair, Adam Smith), . . . 474
History (Robertson, Gibbon, Boswell), . . . 481
Miscellaneous (Walpole, "Junius" (Francis), Home Tooke,
Lord Monboddo), ..... 486
CHAP. IX. PBOM 1790 TO 1820.
WILLIAM PALBY
Life, ........ 492
Chnracter, ....... 493
Opinions, ....... 494
Elements of Style (Paragraphs), .... 494
Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Perspicuity), . . . 497
Kinds of Composition (Description, Exposition, Persuasion), 499
ROBERT HALL
Life, ........ 504
Character, ....... 505
Opinions, ....... 506
Elements of Style, ...... 507
Qualities of Style (Abstruseness, Clearness, Strength, Pathos), 507
Kinds of Composition (Persuasion), .... 512
OTHER WRITERS
Theology (Simeon, the Milners, Foster, Parr, Watson, Wakefield), 513
Philosophy (Stewart, Brown, Bentham, Coleridge, Malthas,
Ricardo, Alison, Disraeli), .... $16
History (Mitford, Gillies), ..... 520
Miscellaneous (Cobbett, Mackintosh), ... 520
CONTENTS.
SHAP. X. SELECT WRITERS OP THE EARLY PART
OF THIS CENTURY.
Theology (Chalmers), ...... 523
History (James Mill, Hallam, Alison), . . . . 525
I'kilosophy (Hamilton), ...... 530
Uisce/lit.neoiis (Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Lamb, Landor, Hunt,
liazlitt, Wilson, Luckhart), . , . * 532
A MANUAL
ENGLISH PEOSE LITERATURE,
INTRODUCTION.
In the case of the authors chosen for full examination, and to some
extent also in the case of the others, the various peculiarities of
Style are taken up in a fixed order ; and it may help the reader's
memory to state this order at tlie beginning.
The preliminary account of each author's Character is intended
mainly as an introduction to the characteristics of his style ; and
while it gratifies a natural curiosity in repeating what is known of
his appearance or personality, does not profess to be a complete
account of the man in all his relations, public and domestic.
The analysis of the style proceeds upon the following order :
Vocabulary, Sentence and Paragraph, and Figures of Speech, which
may be called the ELEMENTS OF STYLE; Simplicity, Clearness,
Strength, Pathos, Melody, Harmony, and Taste, the QUALITIES OP
STYLE; Description, Narration, Exposition, Persuasion, the KINDS
OF COMPOSITION. Upon each of these subdivisions we shall make
some remarks, endeavouring to justify the arrangement wherever
it seems to be open to objection or misapprehension.
ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
VOCABULARY.
Command of language is the author's first requisite. A good
memory for words is no less indispensable to the author than a
good memory for forms is to the painter. Words are the material
2 INTRODUCTION.
that the author works in, and it is necessary above everything that
he should have a large store at his command.
Probably no man has ever been master of the whole wealth of
the English vocabulary. The extent of each man's mastery can
be ascertained with exactness only by an actual numerical calcu-
lation, such as has been made for the poetry of Shakspeare and
Milton. This has not yet been attempted for any of our great
prose writers ; and until some enthusiast arises with sufficient
industry for such a labour, we must be content with a vague
estimate, formed upon our general impression of freshness and
variety of diction.
The simple fact of holding a place among the leaders of liter-
ature is a proof of extraordinary mastery of language. But can
we, without actual numeration, distinguish degrees of mastery ?
Most probably we can. We could have told from a general im-
pression, without actually counting, that Shakspeare uses a greater
variety of words than Milton. We can perceive, without referring
to the enlargement 'of dictionaries, that our language has increased
in scope and flexibility since the middle of last century. In like
manner we can fix relatively any author's command of words. We
may say with confidence that Defoe is more copious and varied
than Addison, and Burke than Johnson ; and, although our
judgment of modern writers is more liable to error, we may .
venture to say that Dej^jjjncgyj M^caulav. and CarlyJe show.'
a greater command of^xpression than auyi'prose writers of their
generation.
It is interesting, also, to observe on what special subjects an
author's expression is most copious and original. Perhaps no one
has an equal abundance of words for all purposes. From the in-
evitable limitation of human faculties, no man, however " myriad-
minded," can give his attention to everything. Inevitably every
man falls into special tracks of observation, reflection, and im-
agination ; and each man accumulates words, and expresses him-
self with fluency and variety, concerning the subjects that are
oftenest in his thoughts. Were we to apply the test of arithmetic,
we should find that two men using very much the same number of
words upon the whole, have the depths and shallows of their verbal
wealth at very different places.
To mark out fully where a vocabulary is weak and where it is
strong, we should have to anticipate the qualities of style and the
kinds of composition. A man that can wiite freely and eloquently
in one strain or in one species of composition, may be dry and
barren in another strain or another species of composition. Most
writers have some one vein that they peculiarly and obviously
excel in. Thus Addison is rich in the language of melodious and
elegant simplicity, Paley in the language of homely simplicity,
ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 3
the language of elaborate stateliness, Macaulay in
fnguage of brilliant energy.
Here it may be well to point out and the caution is of such
importance that it may have to be repeated that the divisions in
the following analysis are not, in the language of the logicians,
mutually exclusive. Following Professor Bain's Rhetoric we con-
sider style under three different aspects approach it from three
different sides ; but we do not treat of different things. In each
of the divisions the same things are examined, only from different
points of view. Each of these divisions, were our examination to
be ideally thorough, should exhibit every possible excellence and
defect of style. We might take up all the notable points in an
author's style under what we have called the " Elements of Style "
the choice of words, plain and figurative, and the arrangement
of these in sentences and paragraphs. We might, again, take up
everything remarkable under the " Qualities of Style " simplicity,
clearness, and so forth : a style is good or bad according as it pro-
duces, or fails to produce, certain effects. Finally, we might com-
prehend the whole art of style under the " Kinds of Composition " :
every excellence of style is either good description, good narration,
good exposition, good persuasion, or good poetry. The divisions
are far from being mutually exclusiva Were we to say in one
department all that might be said, we should leave nothing for
the others. The sole justification of having three, and not one,
is practical convenience. There must of necessity be occasional
repetitions, but each department has certain arts of style that are
best regarded from its own particular point of view.
THE SENTENCE.
The construction of sentences is an important part of style.
Sometimes, indeed, it is expressed by the word style, as if it con-
stituted the whole art. With a nearer approach to accuracy, it is
sometimes called the mechanical part of style. This designation
may be allowed, if sentence-building is loosely taken to include the
construction of paragraphs and the general method of a discourse.
It is probably true that the construction of sentences and of para-
graphs, in so far as they are intended for the communication of
knowledge, may be subjected to more precise rules than any other
processes of the art of composition. The principles on which these
rules are founded are capable of extension to the method of whole
chapters or essays. But it must be borne in mind that a writer
can benefit from direct precept chiefly as regards the easy, clear, and
complete communication of what is in his thoughts ; for any effect
of style beyond this, precepts are of comparatively little service.
SPECIAL ARTIFICES OP CONSTRUCTION. One may doubt whether
Jit would be practicable to make anything like a comprehensive
4 INTEODUCTION.
collection of all the forms of sentence possible in English. At
any rate, it has not yet been done. Writers on composition have
hitherto attempted nothing more than to distinguish a few well-
marked modes of construction.
I. The Periodic Structure. "A period," says Campbell, "is
a complex sentence, wherein the meaning remains suspended till
the whole is finished. . . . The criterion of a period is this :
If you stop anywhere before the end, the preceding words will not
form a sentence, and therefore cannot convey any determined
sense." This is the common definition of a period, and it is
probably difficult to go farther without committing one's self to
general statements that will not apply to every period. At the
risk of being slightly inaccurate, it might be well to go a little
deeper into the substance of the periodic structure. What exactly
do we imply by saying that the meaning is suspended till the
close ? We imply that the reader's interest is kept in suspense
till the close. And how is this done ? Generally, it may be said,
by bringing on predicates before what they are predicated of, and,
which is virtually a similar process, qualifications before what they
qualify ; letting us know descriptive adjuncts, results, conditions,
alternatives, oratorical contrasts, of subjects, states, or actions, be-
fore we formally know the particular subjects, states, or actions
contemplated by the writer. Thus, in the following sentence
"On whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us is
his invention ; "
the subject in this case the key- word is reserved to the last,
and the adverbial adjuncts of the predicate are stated before the
predicate itself. A statement is made in a form showing that it
has a bearing upon something to follow, and our curiosity is awak-
ened to know what that something is. " On whatever side we con-
template Homer." The next statement, "what principally strikes
us," contracts our curiosity into a more definite field, and thereby
sharpens our interest. Still it points us forward. There is a pro-
gress from the indefinite to the definite, and, in the case of this
particular period, a growing interest, which is not relieved till we
reach the very last word. In a loose structure of sentence, which
may be called the natural or usual structure in English, the pre-
dicate follows the subject, and qualifying adjuncts follow what
they qualify : we know the subject before we know the attribute
predicated of it or annexed to it. In a period, on the other hand,
the writer, stating the predicate or qualifying adjuncts of a word
before the word itself, may be said to circumvent that word to
make (as the Greek periodos signifies) a " circuit " about it, to bring
its predicate or its adjuncts, as the case may be, from behind it and
place them before it
ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 6
Campbell speaks of the period as a " complex " sentence. If
the above view of the period is accepted as substantially correct,
" complexity," in the grammatical sense, must be regarded as an
accident of the period, and not part of its essenca The statements
of other writers on composition warrant us in applying the term
period to sentences that are not complex. Professor Bain simply
says that, " in a periodic sentence, the meaning is suspended until
the close," and makes no mention of a periodic sentence being neces-
sarily complex. And Whately gives, as an example of periodic
structure, the following " simple " sentence : " One of the most cele-
brated of men for wisdom and for prosperity was Solomon."
It would be wett if the application of the term periodic were a
little extended. ^When qualifying adjuncts are brought in before
their exact bearing is known, and in such a way as to stimulate
curiosity, a peculiar effect is produced ; and we should be justified
by the derivation of the word "periodic" in applying it to all
marked cases of such anticipation^ Practically, indeed, the word
is applied in the wider sense. If Campbell's definition were rigor-
ously adhered to, the term periodic could be applied only to sen-
tences that keep the reader in suspense up to the very last word.
But, as a matter of fact, the term is applied much more widely.
We speak of writers as having a periodic style, although their
works contain few complete periods, according to Campbell's
"criterion of a period." Since, therefore, the narrow definition of
the term is practically disregarded, it would be well to come to a
formal understanding of its latitude. fThe term " period " might
still be retained for a periodic sentence, rigorously complete or
nearly so.'NfBut it would probably better suit the prevailing
application ot the term "periodic" to accept it as a name for
such anticipations as I have roughly indicated to call every
style " periodic " where such anticipations habitually occur^ Of
this periodic style, the most eminent of modern masters is De
Quincey.
In the loose sentence in a sentence so constructed as to be
noticeably " loose " qualifying and explanatory adjuncts are
tacked on after the words they refer to. This might be copiously
exemplified from the writings of Carlyle, and, in a less degree,
from Addison.
The effect of the periodic structure is to .keep the mind in a state
of uniform or increasing tension until the denouement. This is the
effect stated in its ultimate and most general form. The effect
that a reader is conscious of receiving varies greatly with the
nature of the subject-matter. "- When the subject is easy and /
familiar, the reader, finding the sentence or clause come to an end
as soon as his expectations are satisfied, receives an agreeable im-
pression of neatness and finish. When the subject-matter is un- 2,
6 INTRODUCTION.
familiar, or when the suspense is unduly prolonged, the periodic
structure is intolerably tedious, or intolerably exasperating, accord
ing to the temper of the reader. In impassioned writing the
period has a moderating effect, the tension of the mind till the
key-word is reached preventing a dissipation of excitement.
Dr Blair says that the periodic style is " the most pompous,
musical, and oratorical manner of composing," and that it " gives
an air of gravity and dignity to composition." The Doctor pro-
bably had in his eye such periodic writers as Hooker, Sir Thomas
Browne, and Johnson. Undoubtedly long periodic sentences give
great scope for pomp, music, gravity, dignity, and such effects, but
these are not necessary attributes of the period. A period, as we
have defined it, need not be long ; and a lively interest may be
sustained as well as a grave interest.
Advantages and disadvantages of the periodic structure. To
some extent we have anticipated these in considering the effect
of the period.
In light subjects, neatness or finish is generally regarded as
an advantaga Yet even in this a caution is needed ; rounded
neatness, if it recurs too frequently, may become tiresome. The
caution can probably be given in no more definite form than
Hamlet's : "Be not too periodic neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor."
In unfamiliar subjects, care must be taken that the considera-
tions kept in suspense be not too numerous or too abstruse. De
Quincey has vividly described " the effect of weariness and repul-
sion Avhich may arise from this single vice of unwieldy compre-
hensiveness in the structure of sentences." " Those who are not
accustomed to watch the effects of composition upon the feelings,
or have had little experience in voluminous reading pursued for
weeks, would scarcely imagine how much of downright physical
exhaustion is produced by what is technically called the periodic
style of writing. It is not the length, the &irepavro\oyla, the par-
alytic flux of words. It is not even the cumbrous involution of
parts within parts, separately considered, that bears so heavily
upon the attention. It is the suspense, the holding on of the
mind until what is called the dir<*Som, or coming round of th
sentence, commences. This it is which wears out the faculty of
attention. A sentence, for example, begins with a series of ifs;
perhaps a dozen lines are occupied with expanding the condi-
tions under which something is affirmed or denied. Here you
cannot dismiss and have done with the ideas as you go along;
for as yet all is hypothetic all is suspended in air. The con-
ditions are not fully to be understood until you are acquainted
with the dependency : you must give a separate attention to each
clause of this complex hypothesis, and yet, having done that by a
ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 7
painful effort, you have done nothing at all ; for you must exercise
a reacting attention through the corresponding latter section, in
order to follow out its relations to all parts of the hypothesis which
sustains it." These remarks point to the abuse rather than to the
use of the periodic style, and were directed against a prevailing
style in newspaper "leaders." It is obviously necessary, for the
avoiding of perplexity, not to bring in too many or too abstruse
considerations before their bearing is made known. A writer with
the least regard for his readers, should see that by so doing he
exacts too severe an effort of attention. It may safely be laid
down that the longer a period is, the simpler should be both the
language and the matter of the suspended clauses. Still more
must this be kept in view when the principle of the periodic
structure is extended to paragraphs or chapters.
Mr Herbert Spencer in his ' Essay on the Philosophy of Style,'
and Professor Bain in his Rhetoric, advocate what we have de-
fined as periodic structure, ou the ground that it enables us to
apprehend the meaning of a complex statement with less risk of
confusion. The advantage of placing qualifying words before the
object that they qualify is briefly stated in Bain's Rhetoric, under
the " order of words."
The legitimate use of the periodic structure in impassioned prose
is best seen in the so-called " prose fantasies " of De Qnipcqy.
II. Sentences studiously Long and studiously Short. No
smali element in the mechanical art of sentence-building is the
adjustment of the length of the sentence. One of the greatest
faults in our early writers is that their sentences are too long.
They did not know when to stop. They seem to have been afraid
to let a sentence out of their hands till they had tacked on all the
more important qualifications of the main statement. They thus
frequently ran on to a most cumbrous length ; and when they did
proceed to a new sentence, frequently took no pains to connect it
with the preceding main statement, but started off in pursuit of
some subordinate idea suggested by one of the qualifying state-
ments. So defective, indeed, were they in sentence-structure, that
it is dangerous for a beginner in composition to spend much time
in their company. And one great part of this deficiency was, that
they did not know when to end a sentence, or, in other words, that
they had not the art of beginning a new sentence at the proper
point
It would be absurd to prescribe a definite limit for the length of
sentences, or even to say in what proportion long and short should
be intermixed. Here, too, discretion is the tutor. Only it must
be borne in mind that a long series either of very short sentences
or of very long sentences is tiresome.
The distinction between the " periodic style " (gtyle periodique)
8 INTRODUCTION.
and the "abrupt style" (style coupe) depends to a great extent
upon the length of the sentences. The Periodic style (as we see
from its description by De Quincey) implies something more than
the use of the periodic structure ; it implies long periods, elabo-
rately constructed, holding " a flock of clauses " in suspense, and
moving with a stately rhythm. So in the Abrupt style, the short
sentence is an important feature, although, as appears in the style
of Macaulay, it is not the only feature. 1
The use of a startling series of short sentences may almost be
said to be a feature of English oratory. We find it in the journals
of the Elizabethan Parliaments ; and, later, in the writings of
Bolingbroke, in the published speeches of Chatham, and in the
speeches and writings of Burke.
The lo^g sentence, formed of several members gradually increas-
ing in length so as to make a climax in sound, would universally
be designated oratorical. It was much affected by Cicero.
III. The Balanced Sentence. " When the different clauses of
a compound sentence are made similar in form, they are said to be
balanced."
The artifice of constructing successive clauses upon the same
plan is said to have been introduced into our language from the
Italian. Wherever it came from, it begins to appear noticeably
about the middle of the sixteenth century. In Elizabeth's reign
it became very fashionable. It was one feature of Lyly's
"Euphuism." It held its ground through the reign of James,
appearing even in booksellers' advertisements and in the titles
of maps. One of John Speed's maps is entitled, 'A new and
accurate map of the world, drawn according to the truest descrip- .
tions, latest discoveries, and best observations, that have been made
by English or strangers.'
The advantages of the balanced structure are pointed out briefly,
but fully, in Bain's Rhetoric. / It is a pleasure in itself j^when not
carried to excess, it is a help to the memory^ and, when the bal-
anced clauses stand in antithesis, it lends emphasis to the opposi-
tion. We find also in practice that it serves as a guide to the
proper arrangement of the important words. Under a natural
sense of effect the important word is often reserved for the last
place, the best position for emphasis. Further, in impassioned
prose, as in Raleigh's invocation to Death, and Jfo Quinsy's imi-
tations the invocations to Opium and to Solitude-^balance has
something of the effect of metre.
1 While speaking of these general distinctions of style, we may note a third,
the Pointed style, consisting in " the profuse employment of the Balanced Sen-
tence, in conjunction with Antithesis, Epigram, and Climax." How far these
distinctions are from being distinctive, in the sense of indicating incompatible
modes of composition, may be judged from the fact that Dr Johnson often em-
ploys all the three "styles" in one paragraph.
ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 9
In the case of balance, much more than in the case of the
periodic structure, it is necessary to beware of going to excess.
There is almost no limit to the means of disguising the periodic
structure. The reader may be entertained with such variety in
the parts of a period, that he enjoys its bracing effects without
knowing the cause. But the balanced structure cannot be so
disguised : it is like metre to disguise it is to destroy it Clauses
are constructed on the same plan, or they are not ; corresponding
words occupy corresponding places in their respective clauses, or
they do not And while the balanced structure is prominent, and
thus apt to fatigue the ear, it is very catching ; it has a great
power of enslaving whoever employs it heedlessly. Several of our
writers, such as Johnson, " Junius," and Macaulav, allowed their
ear to be captivated, and not only employed balanced forms to
excess, but often added tautologous and otherwise questionable
clauses from an irresistible craving for the familiar measure.
IV. The Condensed Sentence. "This is a sentence abbrevi-
ated by a forced and unusual construction."
Anything so violently artificial as this can be used but seldom
without giving offence. It was a favourite artifice with Gibbon.
In the present day, when used at all, it is used chiefly for comic
purposes. Readers of Dickens and his imitators are familiar with
such terms as " drew tears from his eyes and a handkerchief from
his pocket." Occasionally we find it in works of more serious
pretensions, as in Mr Forster's Life of Goldsmith ; but nobody
now uses it for serious purposes so often as Gibbon did.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. I. The Emphatic Places of a
Sentence. " As in an army on the march, the fighting columns
are placed front and rear, and the baggage in the centre, so the
emphatic parts of a sentence should be found either in the be-
ginning or in the end, subordinate and matter-of-course expressions
in the middle."
There is nothing more urgently required for the improvement
of our sentences than a constant study to observe this principle.
The special artifices that we have mentioned are good only for
certain modes of composition and for particular purposes, and
become offensive when too often repeated; but it is difficult to
conceive when there would be an impropriety in placing important
words where the reader naturally expects to find them. The
reader's attention falls easily and naturally upon what stands at
the beginning and what stands at the end, unless obviously in-
troductory in the one case, or obviously rounding off in the other.
The beginning and the end are the natural places for the im-
portant words. This arrangement is conducive both to clearness
and to elegance : it prevents confusion, and is an aid to justness
of emphasis. Aa important words need not occupy absolutely the
10 INTRODUCTION.
first place nor absolutely the last, but at the beginning may be
preceded by qualifying clauses, and at the end may be followed
by unemphatic appendages that are not of a nature to distract
attention, we are not required to make unnatural inversions or
to take unidiomatic liberties of any kind. If a writer finds a
construction stiff and unnatural, he may be sure that he has
not succeeded in throwing the emphasis where it should be
thrown ; if he has not buried the important words in the depths
of the sentence, he has probably dune worse : he has probably
drawn off the reader's attention from the words altogether, and
fixed it where it should seldom or never be fixed upon the
form.
The following out of this principle is not so easy as it appears.
One is safe to assert that it will never be carried out thoroughly
till it is made an important part of school drill. Without some
such long and early training, a scrupulous purist in this respect
might hang as long over his sentences as Lord Tennyson is said
to hang over his lines, and commit blunders after all. In bring-
ing sentences into harmony with this principle of arrangement
alone, there is a field for endless variety of school exercises in
composition.
II. Unity of Sentence. Upon this point it is especially
dangerous to lay down any abstract rule. Irving's statements,
that "a sentence or period ought to express one entire thought
or mental proposition," and that " it is improper to connect in
language things which are separated in reality," are much too
dogmatic and cramping. Separate particulars must often be
brought together in the same sentenca
The only universal caution that can be given is, to beware of
distracting from the effect of the main statement by particulars
not immediately relevant. "Every part should be subservient
to one principal affirmation."
The advice not to overcrowd a sentence may have to yield to a
law of the paragraph concerning the due subordination in form
of whatever is subordinate in meaning. " A statement merely
explanatory or qualifying, put into a sentence apart, acquires a
dangerous prominence."
Most of the faults specified by Blair as breaches of " unity "
occur in connection with other arts of sentence-structure. " Ex-
cess of parenthetical clauses " is an abuse of the periodic structure,
objectionable only in so far as it imposes too severe a strain upon
the retentive powers of the reader. It is a fault often committed
by P Quincey, whose own powers of holding several things in the
mind at once without confusion sometimes betrayed him into for-
getting that all are not equally gifted. The fault of not "bring-
ing the sentence to a full and perfect close " BO flagrant in our
ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 11
early writers is not likely to be committed by any one aware
of the value of the end of a sentence as the place for important
words.
The specialties of the sentence in Narrative and in Description are
examined at length in Bain's Rhetoric (THE SENTENCE, sec. 25).
He says that " the only rule that can be observed in distinguish-
ing the sentences is to choose the larger breaks in the sense."
THE PARAGRAPH.
Professor Bain was the first, so far as I am aware, to consider
how far rules can be laid down for the perspicuous construction of
paragraphs. Other writers on composition, such as Campbell, Lord
Kames, Blair, and Whately, stop short with the sentence.
Dg Quiacev. a close student of the art of composition, felt the
importance^ of looking beyond the arrangement of the parts of a
sentence, and philosophised in a desultory way concerning the
bearing that one sentence should have upon another. " It is use-
less," he says, in one of his uncollected papers, " to judge of an
artist until you have some principles in the art. The two capital
secrets in the art of prose composition are these : ist, The philo-
sophy of transition and connection ; 2dly, The way in which sen-
tences are made to modify each other ; for the most powerful effects
in written eloquence arise out of this reverberation, as it were, from
each other, in a rapid succession of sentences ; and because some
limitation is necessary to the length and complexity of sentences,
in order to make this interdependency felt : hence it is that the
Germans have no eloquence." These "two capital secrets" cor-
respond very much with Professor Bain's two first rules of the
paragraph.
I have examined at considerable length the paragraph arrange-
ment of ..Macajqky. Very few writers in our language seem to
have paid"*inuc'h attention to the construction of paragraphs.
Macaulav is perhaps the most exemplary. Bacon and Temple,
ITorritheir legal and diplomatic education, are much more meth-
odical than the generality. Johnson is also entitled to praise.
But none of them can be recommended as a model
FIGURES OP SPEECH.
In most treatises on composition, the consideration of figurative
language occupies a large space. Of the small portion of Aris-
totle's Rhetoric devoted to composition purely, it constitutes about
one half. So in the works of Campbell, Kames, and Blair, par-
ticularly in Kames's ' Elements of Criticism,' the origin, nature,
limits, minute divisions, the uses and the abuses of figures of
speech, are examined and exemplified at great length. And yet
these later writers profess to be much more concise than " tha
12 INTRODUCTION.
ancient critics and grammarians," and to have discarded many
vexatiously subtle subdivisions.
The chief thing wanted in the ancient divisions and subdivisions
was some broad principle of classification. This is supplied by
referring figures to their origin in the operations of the intellect.
A proper basis for a classification is found in the ultimate analysis
of these operations. When the classes thus instituted Figures of
Similarity, Figures of Contiguity, and Figures of Contrast have
gathered up all the figures that belong to them respectively, very
lew remain unclassified. Some of those that do remain are dis-
tinguished from the others on a different principle. Such figures
as interrogation, exclamation, and apostrophe, are departures from
the ordinary structure of sentences, and thus are distinguished
from such figures as are departures from the ordinary application
of words. According to the distinction of the old grammarians,
they are " figures," as distingushed from " tropes." So much for
the classification of figures. It is not quite complete it leaves
hyperbole, climax, innuendo, and irony unclassified ; but it is a
great improvement upon the old chaos.
The truth is, that the subjects included in books of composition
under the head of Figures of Speech do not admit of a logical
classification. Under that head rhetoricians have gradually ac-
cumulated all artifices of style that do not belong to the choice
of plain words and the structure of sentences. Such an accumula-
tion could hardly be other than heterogeneous. 1
One of the ancient terms it might be well to revive and redefine
in accordance with its derivation and original application namely,
the word " trope." At present, when used at all, it is used loosely
as a kind of general synonym for a figure of speech. By Quintilian
it was defined as an opposite to the term figure designating, as
we have just seen, extraordinary applications of individual words
in contrast to irregular constructions of sentence. Such a distinc-
tion is of no practical value it would be useful to have a special
term for irregular constructions of sentence ; but it would be im-
possible to restrict the word figure to such an application. Apart
from that, the word trope is not treated with much delicacy when
set up as an expression for all " figures of speech " (in the wide
sense), except irregular constructions of sentenca I would propose
to rescue the word from an application so promiscuous, and to settle
it in its original application as a name for a much narrower class
of artifices.
Interpreted by its derivation, trope signifies a word " turned,"
1 Had paragraph structure been sooner recognised, the so-called figure of
speech, ''climax," would probably have been referred to the paragraph as a
special artifice in paragraph construction. Climax is no more a figure of speech
than the periodic, the balanced, or the condensed structure of sentence.
ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 13
diverted from its ordinary application, and pressed, as it were, into
special service. Now only a limited number of figures of speech
consist in this extraordinary use of single words ; it would be con-
venient to have a common designation for them. What could be
more proper than to use for that designation the existing word
trope 1
To vindicate the restriction of a term to a special class of figures,
even wbon that restriction is warranted by the derivation of the
term, we must show that occasions arise for speaking of that clasa
of figures collectively. In this case such a vindication is easy.
There are_writers t such aq J)^Onuicey. who use comparatively few
formal similitudes, and yet use metaphor, personification, synec-
doche, or metonymy, in almost every sentence. On the other
hand there are writers, such as Macaulay, whose diction in its
general texture is plain, but Avho employ a great many formal
similitudes. Both classes of writers are figurative, but the one
class is rich in tropes, the other in similes.
The want of such a word as trope, thus defined, has led to an
abuse of the word metaphor by popular writers. Metaphor has
been taken to supply the want. In strict language, metaphor
means a similitude implied in the use of a single word, without
the formal sign of comparison ; but it is often loosely used as a
common designation for synecdoches and metonymies as well.
The temptation to such an abuse is withdrawn by reviving the
original meaning of the word tropa
The chief points that we shall notice under Figures of Speech,
besides the profusion of any one figure or class of figures, are the
sources of similitudes and compliance with the conditions of effec-
tive comparison. The sources of an author's similitudes are often
peculiarly interesting, as affording a means of measuring the cir-
cumference of his knowledge. We cannot, to be sure, by such
means, take a very accurate measure, but we can tell what books
a man has dipped into, may discover what writers he has plagiar-
ised from, and may be able to guess how his interests are divided
between books and the living world. What casts doubt upon our
conclusions is the fact that so many writers are similitude-hunters,
are very often on the watch for good similitudes ; and the conse-
quent presumption that they utilise a large proportion of their
knowledge. Thomas Fuller is one of the most versatile, as he is
one of the most delightful, masters of allusion. He would seem
to have turned almost every item of his knowledge to account, and
thus has a greater appearance of learning than many men of really
profounder erudition and wider knowledge of the world.
The conditions of effective comparison exhaust all that can be
said in the way of advice concerning the use of figures. When a
similitude is addressed to the understanding is intended merely
14 INTRODUCTION.
to make one's meaning more perspicuous care must be taken that
the point of the comparison be clear, that there be no distracting
circumstances, and that the comparison be more intelligible to
those addressed than the thing compared. When a similitude is
intended to elevate or to debase an object by displaying its high
or its low relations, care must be taken that the comparison be, in
the estimation of those addressed, really higher or (as the case may
be) lower than the object ; farther, that it be not extravagantly and
offensively out of level, and that it be fresh. These are the main
conditions of effective comparison for purposes of exposition, and
for persuasive eulogy or ridicule. In comparisons designed only
for embellishment, the conditions are novelty and harmony, or, as
it might also be called, propriety. As regards the number of
figures employed, every writer must be guided by his own dis-
cretion. The critic of style can only remark, that if writers were
always careful to make their comparisons effective for a purpose of
some kind, the number would be considerably reduced.
In treating of an author's figures, as in treating of his vocabulary,
we might anticipate most of the qualities of his style. Figures
may be simple, or stirring, or grand, or touching, or witty, or
humorous. A full account of a man's figurative language would
display nearly all his characteristics.
As a sort of postscript to the Elements of Style, we may easily
define the mutual relation of two terms often used in contradis-
tinction MANNER and MATTER. As distinguished from matter,
manner includes everything that we h;ive designated by the
general title Elements of Style not only the choice of words
and the structure of the parts of a discourse, but everything
superinduced upon the subject of discourse by way either of com-
parison or of contrast
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
The division of qualities into purity, perspicuity, ornament, pro-
priety, is open to the objection of being too vague. This appears
in amendments of the scheme proposed by different critics. Home
would strike off " propriety " as being common to all the other
qualities. Others, confining propriety to the choice of individual
words, would retain it and strike off " purity " as being a part of pro-
priety thus restricted. Others still would dispense with "ornament "
as a separate division, and discuss ornaments under perspicuity and
propriety. And Blair maintains that "all the qualities of a good
style may be ranged under two heads, perspicuity and ornament."
Such vague fumbling is inevitable so long as qualities of style
are viewed in the abstract, and without reference to their ends.
QUALITIES OF STYLE. 15
Campbell was the first to suggest a substantial principle of classi-
fication by considering style as it affects the mind of the reader.
His analysis is not perfect, but he was upon the right track. " It
appears," he says, "that besides purity, which is a quality entirely
grammatical, the five simple and original qualities of style, con-
sidered as an object to the understanding, the imagination, the pas-
sions, and the ear, are perspicuity, vivacity, elegance, animation,
and music." That so many writers on composition should have
fallen back from this comparatively thorough analysis to bad ver-
sions of the old analysis, is not much to their credit
One of the causes of imperfection in Campbell's analysis was his
desire to separate rigidly between the effects of style or manner,
and the effects of the subject-matter. This cannot be done : the
manner must always be viewed in relation to the matter. In order
to get at qualities of style, we must first make an analysis of the
effects of a composition as a whole matter and manner together ;
not till then are we in a position to consider how far the effect is
due to the manner and how far to the matter. For example, if a
composition is readily intelligible, we consider how far this is due
to the familiarity of the subject-matter, and how far to the author's
treatment, to his choice and arrangement of words, and to his
illustrations. Nothing could be more absurd than Blair's confi-
dent assertion that the difficulty of a subject can never be pleaded
as an excuse for want of perspicuity ; that if an author's ideas are
clear, he should always be able to make them perspicuous to others.
Perspicuous, as Blair understands the word, means easily seen
through ; and it may be doubted whether any powers of style
could make the generalisations of a science easily and immediately
apparent to a mind not familiar with the particulars. Style can
do much, but it has a limit It can never make a subject natu-
rally abstruse as easily understood as a subject naturally simple, a
treatise on Logic as perspicuous as a statement of familiar facts.
So with compositions that address the feelings ; the master of style
cannot but work at a disadvantage when his subject is not natu-
rally impressive.
The chief aim of the following brief remarks on Qualities of
Style is to define prevailing critical terms as closely as may be
with reference to the ultimate analysis here adopted.
INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES OP STYLE-
SIMPLICITY AUD CLEARNESS.
Aristotle recognises but one intellectual quality, clearness. The
first requisite of composition is that it be clear. So Quintilian :
" The first virtue of eloquence is perspicuity." In Campbell's
scheme, also, " the first and most essential of the qualities of style
is perspicuity."
16 INTRODUCTION.
Blair, while he reduced all qualities to perspicuity and ornament,
was led, in his consideration of perspicuity, to another intellectual
quality namely, precision. He described precision as " the high-
est part of the quality denoted by perspicuity," and then made the
following contrast between precision and perspicuity " in a quali-
fied sense." "It appears," he said, "that an author may, in a
qualified sense, be perspicuous, while yet he is far from being pre-
cise. He uses proper words and proper arrangements ; he gives
you the idea as clear as he conceives it himself, and so far he is
perspicuous : but the ideas are not very clear in his own mind ;
they are loose and general, and therefore cannot be expressed with
precision. All subjects do not equally require precision. It is
sufficient, on many occasions, that we have a general view of the
meaning. The subject, perhaps, is of the known and familiar
kind ; and we are in no hazard of mistaking the sense of the author,
though every word which he uses be not precise and exact. Few
authors, for instance, in the English language, are more clear and
perspicuous, on the whole, than Archbishop Tillotson and Sir Wil-
liam Temple ; yet neither of them are remarkable for precision."
The fact is, that if the words are taken in their ordinary senses,
precision is not a mode of perspicuity, but a quality in some meas-
ure antagonistic to perspicuity. Blair might have drawn a line
between perspicuity and precision, and made them two separate
intellectual qualities. The division would not have been the best,
but it would have been a real division, and better than none at all.
Aristotle's single virtue of " clearness " or " perspicuity " needs
to be analysed before we can characterise authors with discrimina-
tion. We need two broad divisions, simplicity and clearness, and
a subdivision of clearness into general clearness and minute clear-
ness. This more exact division I shall briefly explain : it is not
arbitrary dictatorial sequestration of terms to unfamiliar applica-
tions, but a breaking up of such sequestrations, and a reconciliation
of the language of criticism with the language of familiar speech.
When designations of merit are loose and indeterminate, they
may sometimes be cleared up by a reference to designations of de-
merit. It is so in this case. What are the faults of style as a means
of communicating knowledge 1 We at once say abstruseness and
confusion. Keturning, then, to the positive side, we ask ourselves
what are the corresponding merits what are the opposites of
abstruseness and confusion and we have no difficulty in seeing
that the main intellectual "virtues" of style are simplicity and
clearness.
Simplicity and abstruseness are relative terms. Whatever is
hard to understand is not simple, is abstruse, recondite ; and what
is hard for one man may be easy for another. The phraseology of
natural science or of medicine is hard to the unlearned reader, but
QUALITIES OF STYLfl. 17
easy as a primer to the naturalist or the physician. Abstract terms
are generally unpopular, and generally disliked as dry, bookish,
scholastic ; yet they are said to come to Scotchmen more naturally
than the concrete language of common things. Want of simpli-
city is not an absolute fault ; it is a fault only in relation to the
persons addressed. A writer addressing himself purposely to a
learned audience only wastes his strength by beating about the
bush for language universally familiar.
Clearness, as opposed to confusion, is not so much relative to
the capacity of the persons addressed. Ambiguous language
words so arranged as to convey an impression different from what
the writer intends, may mislead learned and unlearned alike. Con-
fused expression is not justifiable under any circumstances, unless,
indeed, it is the writer's deliberate purpose to mislead. The edu-
cated reader will guess the meaning sooner than the uneducated ;
but neither educated nor uneducated should be burdened with the
effort of guessing.
Clearness, as we have said, may conveniently be subdivided into
general clearness and minute clearness minute clearness being
expressed by such words as distinctness, exactness, precision. There
is a marked line of separation between these subdivisions. Accu-
racy in the general outlines is a different thing from accuracy in
the details. In truth, the two are somewhat antagonistic. To
dwell with minute precision on the details tends rather to confuse
our impressions as to the general outlines. After our attention has
been turned to minute distinctions, we find it difficult to grasp the
mutual relations of the parts so distinguished when we endeavour
to conceive them as a whole. Again, minute distinctness is opposed
to simplicity. The general outlines of things can be conveyed in
familiar language ; but when we desire to be exact, we must have
recourse to terms that are technical and unfamiliar. To say that
the earth is " round " is a sufficiently clear description of the form
of the earth in a general way and the word is familiar to every-
body ; but when we are more exact, and describe the earth as " a
sphere flattened at the poles." we remove ourselves from the easy
comprehension of many of our countrymen.
We are now in a better position to discuss the critical and popu-
lar use of the word perspicuity. It is evident, from Campbell's
account of the faults against perspicuity, that he understands by
the term a certain amount of clearness combined with simplicity.
He includes in his list of offences not only confusion of thought,
ambiguity using the same word in different senses and uncer-
tain reference in pronouns and relatives, which are offences against
clearness, but also technical terms and long sentences, which are
offences against simplicity. This is also the popular use of the
term. Such writers as Addison and Macaulay are said to be per-
18 INTRODUCTION.
spicuous, because they are at once simple or easily understood, and
free from obvious confusion. Their ideas are expressed in popular
language, and sufficiently discriminated for popular apprehension.
Popularly, therefore, as well as in some rhetorical treatises, per-
spicuity stands for a clear, unambiguous, unconfused structure of
simple language. But why should the term be confined to a clear
structure of simple language 1 We can easily see how it came to
be so confined. A general reader does not receive clear impres-
sions from a work couched in abstruse language, however perspic-
uous may be the arrangement. The effort of realising the words
is too much, and he lets them slip through his mind vaguely.
For him an abstruse style cannot be perspicuous simplicity is
indispensable to perspicuity. But while we see how the word
came to be so confined, we cannot see why it should be kept so
confined. Johnson's arrangement is clearer and more free from
ambiguity than Addison's or Tillotson's. Why should he not be
called a perspicuous writer ?
But some of our readers will say that Johnson is called a per-
spicuous writer. This is true, but he is not so by Campbell's defi-
nition, for he uses technical terms and long sentences ; nor is he
so by the verdict of those that are loosely called general readers.
He is called perspicuous because his words are apt to his meaning,
and because the general structure of his discourses is clear. His
language is not simple ; he is not perspicuous if simplicity be con-
sidered a part of perspicuity.
Here, therefore, seems to arise a clash between the general
reader and the reader more familiar with abstract and learned
phraseology. But the disagreement is more apparent than real
The general reader applies the term perspicuous to a clear choice
and construction of simple language, of language familiar to him;
the more learned reader applies the term to a clear choice and
structure of language, abstruse perhaps to the generality, but still
familiar to him. In point of fact, the two classes of readers use
the word perspicuous with the same meaning. Both have in view,
not the familiarity of the language or the structure, but the clear-
ness of it, its freedom from ambiguity and confusion. The intel-
lectual qualities of such writers as Tillotson, Locke, Addison,
Macaulay, are not fully distinguished by the single word perspic-
uous the style of such writers is perspicuous and simple. John-
eon and De_Quincey are also perspicuous in their choice of words^
and in their general structure ; but their diction, as a whole, ia
abstruse.
We said a little ago that clearness might be subdivided into
general clearness and minute clearness. At that time we men-
tioned no single word for general clearness. In our consideration
of the word perspicuity, we have seen that, when hunted down to
QUALITIES OF STYLE. 19
its real signification, it proves to be the very word required. Per-
spicuity, or lucidity, will thus stand for general clearness, unam-
biguous, unconfused structure what may loosely be called general
accuracy of outline. For minute accuracy, careful discrimination
of terms demanding from the reader an effort to make sure that
his ideas are not vague, but rigidly defined we have the terms
precision, exactness, and distinctness.
A distinct, exact writer may be perspicuous ; but, as we have
said, he runs a risk of not being so. When a writer is scrupulously
anxious that his readers understand every detail exactly as he con-
ceives it, there is a danger that he put too severe a strain upon
them, and confuse their comprehension of the general aspect of his
theme. jDe Quincey is an example of a writer at once exactan<l
perspicuous j^and tne secret is, that ne is aware of his danger, and
frequently presses upon his reader a general view of what he is
doing.
Precision and simplicity are in a measure antagonistic. When
Socrates began to cross-examine the people of Athens, he found
that they could not define the meaning of words that they were
using every day. They used language in a loose way for purposes
of social intercourse, and did not trouble themselves to be rigidly
exact. The case is not much altered among us. A very exact
writer cannot but be abstruse to the generality.
->j
EMOTIONAL QUALITIES OF STYLE STRENGTH,
PATHOS, THE LUDICROUS.
The emotional qualities of style are not so difficult to distinguish
as the intellectual qualities. Had Campbell not been needlessly
anxious to isolate the style from the subject-matter, he would
never have thought of huddling together all the emotional quali-
ties under the name of vivacity. 1 There are three broadly dis-
tinguished emotional qualities strength, pathos, and the ludi-
crous ; and each of these is a general name for distinct varieties.
Under the general name of Strength are embraced such'varieties
as animation, vivacity, liveliness, rapidity, brilliancy ; nerve,
vigour, force, energy, fervour; dignity, stateliness, splendour,
grandeur, magnificence, loftiness, sublimity.
Between the extremes in the list animation and sublimity
there is a wide difference ; yet sublimity is more appropriately
classed with animation than with any mode of pathos. So with
rapidity and dignity. The contrast between strength and pathos
1 Longinns's celebrated treatise irepi ityovs, mistranslated "On the Sublime"
through the Latin De Sublimitate, falls into the same excess of abstraction.
Hypsos, according to De Quincey, means everything tending to elevate compo-
sition above commonplace.
20 INTRODUCTION.
is as the contrast between motion and rest. The effect of a calm,
sustained motion is nearer to the effect of absolute repose than it
is to the effect of a restless, rapid, abrupt motion ; yet the calm,
sustained motion is considered as a state of motion, and not as a
state of rest. In like manner, an overpowering sense of sublimity
approaches nearer to a sense of depression and melancholy than
it does to animation or vivacity ; yet it is essentially a mode of
strength, and not a mode of pathos.
In the above list I have attempted some kind of subordinate
division, throwing together the terms that seem more nearly syn-
onymous. It would not be possible to define them exactly without
incurring the charge of making one's own feelings the standard for
all men. The terms are used with considerable latitude, partly
because few people take the trouble to weigh their words, but
partly also because different men have different ideals of animation,
different ideals of energy, different ideals of sublimity. All can
understand, upon due reflection, the common bond between these
qualities their common difference from the qualities comprehended
under pathos ; but no amount of explanation can give two men of
different character the same ideas of animation, energy, dignity, or
sublimity. The utmost that explanation can do is to disabuse
their minds of the idea that the one is wrong and the other right,
and to persuade them that they are simply at variance. At the
same time, the application of the terms is not absolutely chaotic.
Take the universal suffrage, and you find a considerable body of
substantial agreement between the loose borders.
One great cause of the licentious abuse of these terms is the
desire of admirers to credit their favourites with every excellence
of style. Could we subtract all the abuses committed under this
impulse, we should find the popular applications of terms very
much at one. All agree in describing Macaulay as animated,
rapid, and brilliant. There is not so much unanimity in accredit-
ing him with dignity at least with dignity of the highest de-
gree ; and he is seldom credited with sublimity. Headers would
probably be no less unanimous in calling Jeremy Taylor fervid,
Dry den energetic, Temple dignified, Defoe nervous, Johnson vigor-
ous, Burke splendid, and De Quincey's " prose fantasies " sublime.
Perhaps none of the above words are so shifting in their appli-
cation as the \vord sublimity. In an account of De Quincey's
character I have tried to distinguish two opposite modes of sub-
limity. No critical term is more in need of definition. De Quin-
cey denies it of Homer, and ascribes it in the highest degree to
Milton, seeming to understand by it the exhibiting of vast power
to adoring contemplation.
Pathos is contrasted with the sentiment of power, and is said to
QUALITIES OF STYLE. 21
be "allied to inaction, repose, and the passive side of our nature."
According to this definition, whatever excites or agitates is not
pathetic.
This distinction, like every attempt at analysis of mental states,
is open to endless dispute. It will be almost unanimously allowed
as regards tender feelings awakened by the representation of
" objects of special affection, displays of active goodness, humane
sentiments, and gentle pleasures." But it may stagger many as
applied to the representations of pain and misery. Are these not
agitating 1 and are they not justly called pathetic?
To answer all conceivable difficulties in the way of understand-
ing the above definition of pathos would be hopeless within our
present limits. It may remove some difficulties to remind the
reader that we have here to do not with tender feeling as awak-
ened by actual objects, but with tender feeling as awakened by
verbal representations. Pathos, as here discussed, is the quality
of a style that awakens tender feelings not another name for
tender feeling as it arises in actual life. I do not mean that the
feelings arising from these two sources differ otherwise than in
degree ; I mean only that the reality is usually more agitating
than the verbal representation. The report of a railway accident
may be read with a certain luxurious horror by a delicate person,
whom the actual sight would throw into fits.
But still the question returns, Are not verbal representations
of pain and misery often agitating 1 The answer to this question
is, that not every representation of pain and misery is pathetic.
To speak technically, there are two different uses of painful
scenes in composition the description of misery is adapted to
two distinct ends. These may be defined, with sufficient accu-
racy, as the persuasive end and the poetic end. When a writer
or a speaker wishes, by a painful description or a painful story,
to persuade to a course of action, he dwells upon the particulars
'that agitate and excite. A pleader wishing to excite pity for
his client, so as to procure acquittal, dwells upon the harrowing
side of the case the destitution of the man's family, and such-
like. He does not cater for the pleasure of the jurors, but does
his best to make them uncomfortable. So the preacher of a
charity sermon, if he wishes to draw contributions from hia
audience, must not throw a sentimental halo over the miseries
of the poor, but must drag into prominence hunger, dirt, and
nakedness, in their most repulsive aspects, horrifying his hearers
with pictures that haunt them until they have done their utmost
*o relieve the sufferers. Very different is ,the end of the poet
His object is to throw his reader into a pleasing melancholy. He
withholds from his picture of distress all disgusting and exciting
circumstances, reconciles us to the pain by dwelling upon its
22 INTEODUCTION.
alleviations, represents misery as the inevitable lot of man, ex-
hibits the authors of misery as visited with condign punishment,
expresses impassioned sympathy with the unfortunate victims.
By some artifice or other I have mentioned only a few for illus-
tration he contrives to make us acquiesce in the existence of the
misery represented. He has failed in his end if he leaves us dis-
satisfied and uncomfortable, because the misery was not relieved
or cannot be relieved now. If we are not reconciled to the ex-
istence of the misery, disposed simply to mourn over it and be
content, the composition is not pathetic, but painful. For this
luxurious treatment of painful things the poet is often heavily
censured by the preacher. Sterne's ' Sentimental Journey ' was
reprobated by Robert Hall ; and in our own day we are familiar
with Carlyle's denunciation of "whining, puling, sickly senti-
mentality."
To this distinction between the painful end of persuasion and
the pathetic end of poetry, we may add a little by way of antici-
pating the more obvious objections.
It will be said that a preacher's object is to persuade people to
action, and yet that sermons are often called pathetic. This fact
need not disturb our definition. For, i, While it is (me of a
preacher's objects to persuade to action, it is not his only object :
the pulpit has also a function of consolation and consolation, the
reconciling of people to their miseries, is by our definition essen-
tially pathetic. 2, Supposing a sermon admirably adapted to set
beneficence in motion supposing it to present a picture of most
harrowing distress the hearers cannot take measures for relief
at once ; and meantime, if not so excited as to be thoroughly
uncomfortable, they may indulge in pathetic dreams of the relief
that they intend to give. 3, The effect of a composition depends
very much upon the recipient a tale of woe that makes one man
uncomfortable for days, may supply another with a luxurious feast
of mournful sentiment. It is chiefly this last consideration that
makes the application of the term pathos shifting that causes tho
difficulty of drawing any "objective" line between pathos and
horror. Few persons skilled in analysing their feelings would
' object to the above definition of pathos, but there would be con-
siderable difference of opinion as to what is agitating or horrible
and what is truly pathetic.
Again, it may be said that a tragic poem is agitating, and yet
that it is pathetic. To which we answer that in a tragedy, while
isolated scenes are tempestuously agitating, the effect may yet be
pathetic on the whole. Tragedy " purifies the mind by pity and
terror ; " the atmosphere is shaken with tempests, only to subside at
the end into a purer and more perfect calm. Painful incidents,
thrilling transports of grief, keep alive our interest in the plot :
QUALITIES OF STYLE. 23
we do not see the pathetic side of these painful representations
till we look back upon them from the repose of the conclusion.
I need not dwell on the terms for varieties of the Ludicrous.
The only nicety is the distinction between wit and humour.
Much has been written on this distinction. One can see, from
the examples quoted, that critics are very much at one, though
they generally fail in definition, owing to the vagueness of their
psychological language. Professor Bain's theory is that humour
is simply the laughable degradation of an object without malice,
in a genial, kindly, good-natured way ; and that vrit is " an in-
genious and unexpected play upon* words." The two qualities
are not opposed, not incompatible. A good deal of the confusion
about them has arisen from viewing them as two contrasted and
inconsistent qualities. Wit may be humorous, or it may be
derisive, malicious. I have somewhere seen it laid down that
humour " involves an element of the subjectiva" When we call
a writer humorous, we have regard to the spirit of his ludicrous
degradation ; we imply that he is good-natured that he bears no
malice. When we call a writer witty, we have regard simply to
the cleverness of his expression ; he may be sarcastic, like Swift
or humorous, like Steele. The proper antithesis to humour is
satire : wit is common to both.
Such is the true definition of humour, but in the actual applica-
tion there may be as much inconstancy as in the application of the
term pathos, and from the same reason. What appears kindly and
good-natured to one man, may not appear so to another. Addison
is generally classed among the humourists ; yet only the other day
his kindliness was described as an affectation put on to sharpen the
sting of his ridicule. Johnson spoke of his "malevolent wit and
humorous sarcasm " ; and the present writer believes that it would
be difficult to find, among all Addison's papers, half-a-dozen in
which the wit may not fairly be characterised as malicious. He
is a humourist to us, but he could hardly have appeared a humour-
ist to his victims.
There is another cause of difference among critics as respects
particular compositions. A reader may refuse to acknowledge a
degradation, however comical. He may view an object too seri-
ously to allow that it should be trifled with. A recent critic
professes himself blind to the humour of De Quincey, and sees
in his playful liberties with distinguished names nothing but
frivolous impertinence. In all such cases, as De Quincey him-
self says, "not to sympathise is not to understand,"
24 INTRODUCTION.
ELEGANCIES OF STYLE-MELODY, HARMONY",
TASTE.
" In the harmony of periods," says Blair, " two things may be
considered. First, agreeable sound, or modulation in general with-
out any particular expression. Next, the sound so ordered as to
become expressive of the sense."
Instead of expressing qualities so different by a single term, it
is better to provide a term for each. In accordance with the
acceptation of melody and harmony in the vocabulary of music,
we may describe " agreeable s_ound or modulation in general " as
Melody, and " the sound so ordered as to become expressive of the
sense " as Harmony. If a single designation is wanted for the two
qualities together, we may, agreeably to Campbell's list of quali-
ties, call them the music of composition.
Under Melody there are two things that we may consider.
First, whether an author conforms to the general laws of melody,
the avoiding of harsh effects ; the alternation of long and short,
emphatic and unemphatic syllables ; the alternation of conson-
ants among themselves, and vowels among themselves; the avoid-
ing of unpleasant alliterations ; the cadence at the close. Second,
what is his prevailing rhythm, tune or strain, and how far this is
varied.
To examine how far an author observes the general rules of
melody would be a good school exercise. It is not easy to give
an idea of an author's favourite strain. The only means open to
us is to produce characteristic specimens. We have as yet no
scheme of nomenclature or notation for describing it technically.
Some writers, perhaps the majority, can impart no characteristic
swing to their language either having no natural preference for a
particular rhythm, or giving their whole attention to the expres-
sion of the meaning, or being overruled by habitual combinations.
Only such as have, first, a decided ear for effects of cadence, and,
secondly, a copious choice of words, can attain to a melody that
shall be either characteristic or effective.
As regards Harmony. There is such a thing as harmony, or
adaptation of sound to sense, even in prose. At the same time,
change of strain or movement to suit change of theme is not so
marked in prose as in poetry, and for a very obvious reason. The
writer of verse can suit himself to variations of feeling by choice
of metre, but the writer of prose has no such fixed steps to help
him to vary his pace. Besides, the prose writer's habits of con-
struction are accommodated to his prevailing rhythm ; the phrases
that most readily occur to him are in pace with this rhythm, so
that, along with a greater difficulty than the verse writer in chang-
ing his pace, owing to the want of a standard metre, he has a
QUALITIES OF STYLE. 25
farther difficulty that besets none but verse writers accustomed
only to one metre.
Accordingly, we find that prose writers having a characteristic
rhythm, can vary it but slightly to harmonise with the subject-
matter.
The word taste is used in two different senses ; and when we
meet with the word, and are disposed to challenge its application,
we do well to make sure in which signification our author employs
it. In its widest sense it is equivalent to artistic sensibility as
Blair defines it, " the power of receiying pleasure from the beauties
of nature and of art." In its narrower sense it may be expressed
as artistic judgment, being identical with what Blair and others
define as " delicacy " and " correctness " of taste. By writers of
the present day the word seems to be generally used in the nar-
rower sense ; and in this sense it is used in the following work.
As regards what artistic judgment is there may be wide differ-
ences of opinion. Many men, many tastes ; one man's liking may
be another man's loathing. Still, when all has been said that can
be said concerning differences of taste, it cannot be denied that
there is a considerable body of agreement To take the elements
of style separately. There is a tolerably unanimous public opinion
against interlarding English composition with foreign words or
idioms, Latin, French, or German; against needless coining of new
words; and against setting up of unidiomatic combinations. No
writer could make an excessive use of any artifice of construction
balanced sentences, short sentences, condensed sentences, abrupt
and startling transitions without incurring general censure. So
as regards figures of speech : a style too ornate, too hyperbolical,
too declamatory, is condemned as such by the critics with very
considerable unanimity. Marked abuses of the elements of style
are very generally recognised as abuses. To be sure, if a writer is
otherwise fresh and vigorous, all read him ; and even fastidious
critics wink at his eccentricities as an agreeable break in the
general monotony of composition ; but few venture to hold up his
eccentricities for general imitation.
Concerning the emotional qualities of style we find much less
agreement. There are always a few of wider literary knowledge
and superior discernment who groan inwardly, some of them out-
wardly, at the judgment of the multitude in the matter of sub-
limity, pathos, and humour. And these apart, writers and their
admirers separate naturally into different schools. Taste " varies
with the emotional constitution, the intellectual tendencies, and
the education of each individual. A person of strong tender feel-
ings is not easily offended by the iteration of pathetic images ; the
sense of the ludicrous and of humour is in many cases entirely
26 INTRODUCTION.
wanting ; and the strength of humane and moral sentiment may
be such as to recoil from inflicting ludicrous degradation. A mind
bent ou the pursuit of truth views with distaste the exaggerations
of th poetL art Each person is by education attached more to
one school or class of writers than to another."
KINDS OF COMPOSITION.
Five " kinds of composition " are set down in Bain's Rhetoric
description, narration, exposition, persuasion, poetry. 1 Each of
these kinds has a special method, a special body of rules. The
student who has mastered everything that has been given under
the " Elements " and the " Qualities " of style, has still something
to learn.
We have already remarked that the three divisions adopted in
this work are distinguished not as separate component parts, but
only as different aspects or different ways of approach. We have
said that under either the "Elements of Style," the " Qualities of
Style," or the " Kinds of Composition," a complete survey might
be taken of all the arts of style. When we come to consider the
kinds of composition, we see that this remark needs a farther
limitation. The kinds of composition may be subdivided, and
under each of the subdivisions might be included a complete survey
of the arts of style. Every precept of style laid down under the
" Elements " and the " Qualities " might be repeated under De-
scription, Narration, and Exposition. Whoever wishes to describe
well, narrate well, and expound well, would be all the better for
knowing every good advice that can be given in the departments
prior in the order of our sketch. Persuasion, again, embraces
everything prior to it There is no precept of style that may not
be useful to the orator or the persuasive writer. " Rhetoric " is
another name for the whole art of composition.
DESCRIPTION, NARRATION, EXPOSITION.
These three kinds of composition may be roughly distinguished *
as follows : Description embraces all the means of representing
in words particular " objects of consciousness," whether external
things or states of mind ; narration, all the means of representing
particular sequences of events ; exposition, all the means of repre-
senting general propositions. These may be taken as rough defi-
nitions of them in their elemental purity ; in actual composition
they are almost always mixed.
For the simplest forms of description, narration, and exposition,
special rules would be of no practical use would be affected and
superfluous. It is only in the more complicated and difficult forms
1 The design of the present work excludes Poetry, both with and without the
accompaniment of metre.
KINDS OF COMPOSITION. , 27
that precepts become of service, and then they may be said to be
indispensable.
The main difficulty in description arises "when we have to
describe a varied scene the array of a battle, a town, a prospect,
the exterior or interior of a building, a piece of machinery, the
geography of a country, the structure of a plant or an animal."
It is to this difficulty that the special rules of description apply.
Burke and Macaulay are often said to possess great descriptive
power. But, as we shall see, this can mean only that they present
with vividness the individual particulars or striking aspects of a
scene. Neither of them possesses great descriptive method. Carlyle
may be said to have raised the standard of descriptive method ;
Alison also, and later Mr Kinglake, are very studied in their
descriptions.
The principles of description, as stated in Bain's Khetoric, are
perhaps the best defined and the least liable to exception of all
precepts relating to composition. No person can describe a com-
plicated scene well without consciously or unconsciously satisfying
these conditions ; and a person with a moderate command of lan-
guage, by adhering to these conditions, will surpass at least as
regards the first essential of drawing a clear picture the undisci-
plined efforts of very high genius.
No such exactness of plan is attainable for the narration of
complicated events. Still, it is possible to point out to the his-
torian his chief liabilities to confusion, and put him so far upon
his guard.
We defined the fundamental idea of narration as being the repre-
sentation of 'particular sequences of events. But History in its
actual development is a much more complex affair. De Quincey
recognises three modes of history : Narrative (a record of public
transactions) ; Scenical (a study of picturesque effects) ; and Philo-
sophical (a reasoned explanation of events). These are real dis-
tinctions, and we are not sure that they might not be multiplied.
Not that extant histories may be divided into these three classes
such a work as Macaulay's ' History of England ' attempts to
combine the three modes but these distinctions point to three
different functions of History. The historian may simply record
public transactions without attempting to explain them or draw
lessons from them, and without any effort to describe splendid
spectacles or interesting incidents. He may give his principal care
to making the record of events instructive, may have a studious
eye to the lessons of political and social wisdom, or he may give
his principal care to making the record of events scenically or
dramatically interesting. Now, without saying that these three
functions should be kept distinct that a history should be either
plainly narrative, or philosophical, or scenical, and should not
28 INTRODUCTION.
aspire to be all three at once there is an advantage in considering
a history under these three aspects separately. We observe first
by what arts the historian makes his narrative simple and per-
spicuous whether he follows the order of events, where and with
what justification he departs from that order, what provision he
makes for keeping distinct in our minds the several concurring
streams of events in complicated transactions, what skill he shows
in the construction of summaries, and other minor points. His
skill in explaining events by general principles, and in deducing
general lessons, forms a separate consideration. And still another
consideration is his scenical and dramatic skill ; his word-painting,
plot-arrangement, and other points of artistic treatment.
Apart from the objects of critical remark thus grouped together
may be placed, as a thing for special consideration, the particular
form of historical chapter or book that undertakes to delineate the
whole social state of a people at some one epoch. The most cele-
brated example of this is the third chapter of Macaulay's History.
For the statement of simple generalities, presenting no difficulty
to the apprehension of the reader, little direction can be given.
The rules of exposition apply only to the more abstruse gener-
alities. The four leading arts of statement and illustration are
iteration, obverse iteration, exemplification, and comparison. The
popular expositor must also study the arts of imparting interest to
dry subjects, and must learn to appreciate the difficulties of the
tyro, and to take every advantage of the previous knowledge of his
readers.
The arts of PERSUASION, rhetoric proper, open up a still wider
field. We have said that all the arts of style are of service to the
orator. There are times, perhaps, when the speaker may choose to
set the precepts of clear expression on one side. Instead of trying
to express himself clearly, he may seek to mislead and cheat his
audience with studied ambiguity; but he will do this all the
better if he is able, upon occasion, to express himself clearly and
attractively.
The principal things to attend to in criticising oratory are the
orator's knowledge and power of adapting himself to the persons
addressed, his verbal ingenuity as shown in happy turns of expres-
sion, his argumentative power, and his skill in playing upon special
emotions.
In the examination of the leading authors, we follow the order
of this introductory sketch. We do not take up, in the case of
every author, every point here mentioned ; we remark only upon
the prominent features in each individual case ; but we take up
the various points in the order of our preliminary analysis.
PART L
DE QUINCEY. MACAULAY.
CARLYLE.
CHAPTER I
THOMAS DE QUINCEY,
17851859.
AMONG the most eminent prose writers of this century is Thomas
de Quincey, best known as The English Opiums-Eater.
The family of De Quiucey, as we learn from this its most famous
modern representative, was originally Norwegian, played a distin-
guished part in the Norman Conquest, and flourished through nine
or ten generations as one of the houses of nobility, until its head,
the Earl of Winchester, was attainted for treason. For more than
a century before the birth of the " Opium-Eater," none .of his name
had borne a title of high rank. His father was an opulent mer-
chant in Manchester, who died young, leaving his widow a fortune
of ;i6oo a-year.
We know the particulars of the earlier part of De Quincey's life
from his ' Confessions of an Opium-Eater,' and his ' Autobiographic
Sketches.' The fifth son of a family of eight, he was born on the
i5th of August 1785, at Greenhay, then an isolated house about a
mile from Manchester. He has recorded his earliest recollections ;
and he was so precocious, that these date from the middle of his
second year. His autobiography contains few incidents that de-
part strikingly from the ordinary course of the world. In his own
record, things that are insignificant as objects of general interest
assume the proportions that all human beings must assign to the
events of their own lifa
His first great affliction was the death of a favourite sister when
he was about six years old. Were we to measure him by the
standard of ordinary children, we should refuse to believe what he
tells us of the profound gloom thrown over him by this bereave-
ment " the night that for him gathered upon that event ran after
32 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
his steps far into life." "Well it was for me at this period," lie
says, " if well it were for me to live at all, that from any continued
contemplation of my misery I was forced to wean myself, and sud-
denly to assume the harness of life."
From these " sickly reveries " he was suddenly withdrawn, and
" introduced to the world of strifa" A " horrid pugilistic brother,"
five or six years older than himself, whose "genius for mischief
amounted to inspiration," returned home from a public school.
The character of this brother is drawn in the Sketches with ex-
quisite humour and fondness. He was a boy of amazing spirits
and volubility. He maintained a constant war with the boys of a
neighbouring factory, and compelled little Thomas to bear a part.
He kept the nursery in a whirl of excitement and wonder with war
bulletins, ghost stories, tragic theatricals, and burlesque lectures
" on all subjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine Articles of
our English Church down to pyrotechnics, legerdemain, magic
both black and white thaumaturgy, and necromancy."
After two years of this excitement, William left Greenhay, and
Thomas, then in his eighth year, relapsed into his quiet life, and
steadily pursued his studies under one of his guardians, finding in
that guardian's family other objects for his precocious sympathy
and meditation. When he was eleven years old his mother removed
to Bath, and placed him at the grammar-school there. He had
made such progress under his guardian's tutorship that at Bath his
Latin verses were paraded by the head-master as an incitement to
the older boys. This distinction led to his removal from the school.
His austere mother was so shocked at the compliments he was
receiving, that, after two years, she sent him to a private school in
Wiltshire, " of which," he says, " the chief recommendation lay iu
the religious character of the master." At Winkfield he remained
but a year. Then came a pleasant interlude in his school life. He
spent the summer travelling in Ireland with Lord Westport, a young
friend of his own age, and on his return stayed for three months at
Laxton, the seat of Lord Carbery, where he studied Greek and
talked theology with the beautiful Lady Carbery. But his pleasures
were again interrupted by the higher powers. His guardians de-
cided that he should go for three years to Manchester grammar-
school before proceeding to Oxford. Some boys would have hailed
the change with pleasure, but young De Quincey, though then but
fifteen and a few months more, was premature in the expansion of
his mind, and had begun to think boyish society intolerable. He
went to Manchester in 1800, but he could not bring himself to be
content with his situation. In the course of two years his health
gave way, and no longer able to endure the restraint, he took his
departure one day without warning. His wanderings did not last
long. He walked straight to Chester ; and, while hanging about
LIFE. 33
hia mother's house trying to get an interview with his sister, was
caught by an easy stratagem. He was not, however, sent back to
school, but remained at his mother's house till his guardians should
decide what was to be done with him.
Soon followed the great adventure of his life, the most interest-
ing part of his Confessions. Obtaining some money from his
mother for a pedestrian tour in Wales, he tired of the mountain
solitudes, and shaped his course to London, in hopes of being able
to borrow two hundred pounds on his expectations. Here he
went through hard experiences. His errand brought him under
the vexatious extortions and delays of a money-lender. He was
reduced to the brink of starvation. On one occasion, indeed, he
might have perished but for the kindness of a companion in mis-
fortune, the poor outcast Anne, whom in happier days he vainly
sought to trace. Fortunately he was discovered and taken home
again. He remained at home about a year ; but being taunted
by his uncle with wasting his time, he undertook to go to Oxford
upon ,sioo of an annual allowance, and proceeded thither in the
October of 1803.
The 'Autobiographic Sketches,' as republished, terminate with
his sudden resolution to go to Oxford. In their original form, as
contributions to ' Tait's Magazine,' three more papers undertake
to describe his life at Oxford, but these consist mostly of rambling
digressions on the idea of an English University, on the Greek
orators, on Paley, and suchlike, and contain very little personal
narrative. This much we may glean, that he lived a hermit kind
of life, and did not conform in the least to the studies of the place.
He " sequestered himself " so completely that (to quote his own
expression), " for the first two years of my residence in Oxford, I
compute that I did not utter one hundred words." He had but
one conversation with his tutor. " It consisted of three sentences,
two of which fell to his share, one to mine." In all senses he
was justified in exclaiming, " Oxford, ancient mother ! hoary with
ancestral honours, time-honoured, and, haply it may be, time-shat-
tered power, I owe thee nothing ! Of thy vast riches I took not a
shilling, though living among multitudes who owed to thee their
daily bread." In the matter of study, he was a law to himself.
He told his tutor in that notable conversation that he was reading
Paley ; but in point of fact he had been " reading and studying
very closely the ' Parmenides.' " As a schoolboy he had attained
to an unusual mastery over the Greek language, " moving through
all the obstacles and resistances of a Greek book with the same
celerity and ease as through those of the French and Latin "-
and he read Greek daily; " but any slight vanity which he might
connect with a power so rarely attained, and which, under ordinary
circumstances, so readily transmutes itseli' into a disproportionate
c
34 TIIOMAS DE QUIXCEY.
admiration of the author, in him was absolutely swallowed up in the
tremendous hold taken of his entire sensibilities at this time by our
own literature."
In his ' Recollections of Coleridge ' he says, " From 1803 to 1808
I was a student at Oxford." This probably means that for those
five years he remained formally on the books of Worcester College.
How much of this time he spent in actual residence is not recorded,
and in all likelihood cannot be ascertained. When we consider his
self-determined habits of study, we see that it matters compara-
tively little to know where he lived. There is a tradition that he
once submitted to the written part of the Final Examination, but
abruptly left Oxford without offering himself for the oral part.
In the intervals of his residence at Oxford, he began to make
occasional visits to London, and to get introductions to literary
society. He had always been especially anxious to see Coleridge
and Wordsworth. When he ran away from school, he would have
gone to the Lake district, had he not scrupled to present himself
in the character of a fugitive schoolboy. About Christmas 1 804-5
he had gone to London with an introduction to Charles Lamb, his
final object being to procure through Lamb an introduction to
Coleridge. His wishes were not gratified till later than this. He
first saw Coleridge at Bristol in the autumn of 1807, and Words-
worth later in the same year, at the poet's cottage in the Vale of
Grasmere.
In the winter of 1808-9 he took up his residence at the Lakes.
Wordsworth had quitted his cottage in Grasmere for the larger
house of Allan Bank, and De Quincey succeeded this illustrious
tenant. He retained this cottage for seven-and-twenty years, and
up to 1829 it was his principal place of residence. "From this
era," he says, " through a period of about twenty years in succes-
sion, I may describe my domicile as being amongst the lakes and
mountains of Westmoreland. It is true, I often made excursions
to London, Bath, and its neighbourhood, or northwards to Edin-
burgh ; and perhaps, on an average, passed one-fourth part of each
year at a distance from this district ; but here only it was that
henceforwards I had a house and small establishment." A good
many interesting particulars about the society of the Lakes, and
his way of passing his time, are given in some papers that have
not been republished ('Tait's Magazine,' 1840).
From the time of his settling at the Lakes, a habit grew upon
him which powerfully influenced his life. Some four years after
he took up his residence at Grasmere, he became a confirmed and
daily opium-eater. The rise and progress of this habit, the pleas-
ures and the pains of the " pernicious drug," and the miseries of
his struggle to leave it off, are related in his Opium Confessions.
He had first tasted opium in 1804, as a cure for toothache. From
LIFE. 35
that date up to 1812 he took opium as an occasional indulgence,
" fixing beforehand how often, within a given time, and when, he
would commit a debauch of opium." It was not till 1813 that
opium became with him an article of daily diet ; in that year he
multiplied the laudanum drams to allay " an appalling irritation of
the stomach." The large doses once begun, he could not break off.
He \vent on from one degree of indulgence to another, till in 1816
he was taking as much as 8000 drops of laudanum per day. Prob-
jil>ly in view of his approaching marriage, he succeeded in reducing
his allowance to 1000 drops. He married towards the close of
1816. Up to the midlle of 1817 he "judges himself to have been
a happy man ; " and he draws a beautiful picture of the interior of
his cottage in a stormy winter night, with "warm hearth-rugs, tea,
a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies
on the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without."
Again he seems to have lapsed into over-indulgence to have suc-
cumbed to the " Circean spells " of opium. The next four years
he spent in a kind of intellectual torpor, utterly incapable of
sustained exertion. " But for misery and suffering," he says, " I
might indeed be said to have existed in a dormant state. I sel-
dom could prevail on myself to write a letter. An answer of a few
words to any that I received was the utmost that I could accom-
plish ; and often that not until<the letter had lain weeks, or even
months, on my writing-table." At length in 1821, with the in-
creasing expenses of his household, his affairs became embarrassed,
and he was called upon by the strongest inducements to shake off
this dead weight upon his energies. He succeeded. Unable wholly
to renounce the use of opium, he yet reduced the amount so far as
to be capable of literary exertion. 1
His first production was the ' Confessions of an English Opium-
Eater.' This appeared in the ' London Magazine ' in the autumn
of 1821, and was reprinted in a separate form in the following
year.
From 1821 to 1825, though he still spent the greater part of his
time at Grasmere, he was often in London, his lodgings being in
York Street, Co vent Garden. During that time he was a frequent
contributor to the ' London Magazine.' He speaks of his " daily
task of writing and producing something for the journals ;" calls
1 The Opium Confessions, as they stand in the final edition, convey the im-
pression, though not in specific words, that he had wholly renounced the use of
opium, and he is usually accused of having pretended to a self-command that he
never absolutely acquired. Had the appendix to the first edition of the Confes-
sions been reprinted, he might have been spared this nccusp.non. He there ex-
plains why, in the narrative as originally written in the ' London Magazine,' he
wished to convey the impression that he had wholly renounced the use of opium ;
and says that in suffering his readers to think of him as a reformed opium-eater,
he left no impressiou but what he shared himself.
36 THOMAS DE QVINCEY.
himself " one of the corps litter air e ; " and says that the follow-
ing writers were in 1821-2-3 "amongst his collaborateurs" in the
' London Magazine ' Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, Allan Cunningham,
Hood, Hamilton, Reynolds, Carey. In his ' Noctes Ambrosianag,'
Christopher North says that the magazine failed because De Quin-
cey's papers were glaringly superior to the other contributions a
whimsical gibe at the other contributors. A performance of his in
the autumn of 1824 may be mentioned as showing how thoroughly
he had identified himself with the literary brotherhood. It was, as
he says, " the most complete literary hoax that ever can have been
perpetrated." A German bookseller had published a novel in Ger-
man under the title of ' Walladmoor,' professing that it was a trans-
lation from Sir Walter Scott. De Quincey reviewed the pseudo-
translation hurriedly, and spoke of it in rather high terms, chance
having directed him to the only tolerable passages in the work.
Thereupon a London firm conceived the idea of translating it, and
employed De Quincey as translator. When he came to go through
the work in detail, he found it, as he says, "such 'almighty' non-
sense (to speak transatlantice) " that translating it was out of the
question ; and accordingly he rewrote the greater part of it. All
the same, his composition was given to the English world as a
translation from the German. His dedication of the performance
to the German forger is a very fine piece of humour. His industry
in London does not seem to have been sufficiently rewarded to
relieve him from his embarrassments. In a letter to Professor
Wilson, dated from London, 1825, he expresses himself as being
in dread of apprehension for debt.
After 1825 his literary activity was directed almost entirely to
Edinburgh. He was probably drawn there by his friendship with
Wilson. In 1826 he began, in ' Blackwood's Magazine,' a series of
papers under the title of " Gallery of German Prose Classics ;" but
opium-eaters, as he said, " though good fellows upon the whole,
never finish anything " and the Gallery never received more than
two celebrities, Lessing and Kant, the series ending with the third
instalment From 1825 to 1849 ne wrote a great deal for 'Black-
wood,' contributing altogether about fifty papers that have been
reprinted, three or four sometimes upon one subject. Among the
most famous of these ' Blackwood ' papers were " Murder con-
sidered as one of the Fine Arts" (1827), "Toilette of a Hebrew
Lady" (1828), " Dr Parr and his Contemporaries, or Whiggism in
its Relations to Literature" (1831), "The Caesars" (1832-3-4),
"The Essenes" (1840), "On Style" (1840-1), "Homer and the
Honaeridaa " (1841), " Coleridge and Opium-Eating " (1845), " Sus-
piria de Profundis" (1845), "The Mail-Coach," and "The Vision
of Sudden Death" (1849).
In 1834 he formed another very fertile literary connection,
LIFE. 37
becoming a contributor to ' Tait's Magazine.' This connection ia
better known than his earlier and longer-continued connection with
Blackwood, because his papers were not anonymous, but bore either
his own name or the well-known alias, " The English Opium-Eater."
He contributed very regularly up to 1841, and again in 1845 and
1846. He sent in altogether nearly fifty separate papers, of which
about two-thirds have been reprinted. The most famous were his
"Sketches of Life and Manners, from the Autobiography of an
English Opium-tEater," contributed at intervals up to 1841. For
some unexplained reason, not more than one-half of these have
been reprinted. About thirty of his contributions to ' Tait ' were
personal reminiscences. These are represented in his collected
works by two volumes 'Autobiographic Sketches' (vol. xiv.)
and ' Recollections of the Lakes ' (vol. ii.) Apart from these, his
best-known papers in ' Tait ' were " A Tory's Account of Toryism,
Whiggism, and Radicalism" (1835-36).
Little seems to be known about his place of residence from 1830
to 1843. Up to 1829 he lived chiefly at Grasmere. He spent the
year 1830 with Professor Wilson in Edinburgh. In 1835 he gave
up his cottage at Grasmere. In 1843 he settled with his family at
Lasswade, a small village near Edinburgh. It is probably to this
interval that we must refer Mr John Hill Burton's somewhat over-
done sketch of his habits and personal appearance in the ' Book-
Hunter,' where De Quincey appears as " Thomas Papaverius," a
" mighty book-hunter."
During 1842-3-4 he sent nothing to 'Tait,' and very little to
'Blackwood'; and in 1844 appeared the only work of his that
first saw the light as an independent book ' The Logic of Political
Economy.' It is not a complete exposition of political economy,
but, as the title imports, of certain first principles the doctrines
of value, market-value, wages, rent, and profits.
As in the case of Macaulay, Carlyle, and others, his scattered
contributions to periodical literature were first republished in
America. The collection was begun by the firm of Ticknor, Reed,
& Fields, Boston, in 1852, without the author's knowledge; but
the publishers generously made him a sharer in the profits of the
publication, and he ultimately gave his assistance to the work of
collecting the scattered papers. The first English edition, "in
fourteen volumes crown 8vo, was published by Messrs Hogg of
Edinburgh, during the eight years 1853-60 ; and all the papers it
contained, with the exception of a few in the last volume, enjoyed
the author's revision and correction."
His last productions were some papers on China, contributed to
' Titan ' (a continuation of ' Hogg's Instructor') in 1856-57. They
are not included in his collected works, but are republished sepa-
rately.
l
38 THOMAS DE QUINCEY,
He died at Edinburgh, December 8, 1859, in his seventy-fifth
year.
We have several descriptions of De Quincey's personal appear-
ance. He was a slender little man, with small, clearly chiselled
features, a large head, and a remarkably high, square forehead.
"In addition," says Professor Masson, "to the general impression
of his diminutiveness and fragility, one was struck with the pecu-
liar beauty of his head and forehead, rising disproportionately high
over his small, wrinkly visage, and gentle, deep-set eyes." There
was a peculiarly high and regular arch in the wrinkles of his brow,
which was also slightly contracted. The lines of his countenance
' .,- fell naturally into an expression of mild suffering, of endurance
sweetened by benevolence, or, according to the fancy of the inter-
preter, of gentle, melancholy sweetness, i, All that met him .seem
to have been struck with the measured, silvery, yet somewhat
hollow and unearthly, tones of his voice, the more impressive that
the flow of his talk was unhesitating and unbroken.
f " Although a man considerably under height and slender of
form, he was capable of undergoing great fatigue, and took con-
stant exercise." His having been the travelling companion of
Christopher North about the English lakes is a sufficient certificate.
The .weak point in his bodily system, as he frequently tells us, was
his stomach. This weakness he often pleads as the justification of
his opium-eating. Opium was " the sole remedy potent enough to
control his distress and irritability." He sometimes humorously
exaggerates his infirmity. " A more worthless body than his own,
the author is free to confess, cannot be. It is his pride to believe
that it is the very ideal of a base, crazy, despicable human system,
that hardly ever could have been meant to be seaworthy for two
days under the ordinary storms and wear and tear of life ; and,
indeed, if that were the creditable way of disposing of human
bodies, he must own that he should almost be ashamed to bequeath
his wretched structure to any respectable dog."
As often happens, 1 the impoverishment of certain bodily organs
was accompanied, if not caused, by an enormous and dispropor-
tionate activity of intellect. It may be doubted whether we have
ever seen in this quarter of the globe a man so completely absorbed
in mental operations, and so far removed from our ordinary way
of looking at the world. He resembled the contemplative sages of
India more than the intellectual men of rough, practical England.
1 " In general," says our author, " a man has reason to think himself well off
In the great lottery of this life if he draws the prize of a healthy stomach with-
out a mind, or the prize of a fine intellect with a crazy stomach ; but that any
man should draw both is truly astonishing, and, I suppose, happens ouly ouc
in a century."
CHARACTER. 39
J-
Of no man can it be absolutely true that he does nothing but ob-
serve, read, meditate, imagine, and communicate the results ; but
this may be affirmed of De Quincey with a nearer approach to truth
than it can be affirmed of any other great name in our literature.
In reading his works, one of the first things that strike us is the
extreme multifariousness of his knowledge. When we compare
him even with writers of a high order, we cannot help being ^^
ustoriished at the force of a memory that could hold so much in t
readiness for immediate use. He was noted for conversational
powers ; and, as he himself explains, one of his peculiar advantages
for conversation was " a prodigious memory " and " an inexhaust-
ible fertility of topics."
In his writings this retentive capacity often makes us pause and
wonder. For some of his most curious freaks of scholarship, in-
deed, his " Toilette of a Hebrew Lady " and his " Casuistry of
Roman Meals," he took most of the materials at second-hand from
the German. Still, if we were to assemble all his digressions,
quotations, notes, and allusions, we should be sufficiently convinced
of the immense and eccentric range of his reading, and at the same
time of his tenacious hold of what he had read. Indeed, if we
were to make such a collection, we should be no less astonished at
the extent of another field of his memory. We should find that
he was a close observer of human character, and that he noted and
remembered characteristic peculiarities and expressions of feeling (
with Boswellian minuteness. In the course of his wanderings he
met persons of all ranks and conditions, and he seldom mentions a
name without giving some characteristic particulars of the person.
Then, as regards the other great intellectual force the power! -,
of recovering analogous circumstances or detecting hidden resem- s
blances De Quincey had a very remarkable, perhaps a still more
remarkable, endowment. Speaking of his conversational powers,
he says that in addition to the advantage of a prodigious memory,
he had " the far greater advantage of a logical instinct for feeling
in a moment the secret analogies or parallelisms that connected
things else apparently remote." And again, writing of his powers
of memory, he says, " I mention this in no spirit of boasting. Far
from it; for, on the contrary, amongst my mortifications have been
compliments to my memory, when, in fact, any compliment that I
had merited was due to the higher faculty of an electric aptitude
for seizing analogies, and, by means of those aerial pontoons, pass-
ing over like lightning from one topic to another." l This power
appears in his writings in several shapes. The quotations and
allusions that show his wide knowledge of books and men are very
obvious signs of the activity of his analogical faculty. His numer-
ous illustrations, and the metaphorical cast of his language, are no
1 Blaekwood's Magazine, April 1845.
40 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
less striking. Less obtrusive evidences of the faculty, but stih
more valuable as being evidences of its strength, are his power of
breaking through routine views, and the ingenious plausibility of
his arguments. He very rarely assumes a traditional view without
some note of exception, and this evidently not from a rough love
of paradox as is sometimes alleged by careless readers but from
his strong and delicate sensibility to the exact relations of things.
Nothing can be more exquisite than his subtlety in distinguishing
wherein things agree and wherein they differ in what respects a
traditional view is warrantable, and in what respects it is errone-
. pus. Equally charming to the lover of intellectual subtlety are
his deliberate arrays of argument in support of a favourite thesis,
as seen in such performances as his paper on the Essenes, or his
attempt to whitewash the character of Judas Iscariot. His skill
in urging every circumstance favourable to his opinion, and in ex-
plaining away everything that bears against it, gives to the Eng-
lish reader an idea of elaborate ingenuity not to be obtained from
any other of our recognised "leaders of literature."
Were De Quincey's writings the outcome of nothing more gen-
erally attractive than profound erudition, intellectual subtlety, and
powers of copious expression, they would not have taken such a
hold of public interest. But he was not an arid philosopher, a
modern Duns Scotus or Thomas Aquinas. He tells us that he
read " German metaphysicians, Latin schoolmen, thaumaturgic
Platonists, and religious Mystics," but he tells us also that at one
time " a tremendous hold was taken of his entire sensibilities by our
own literature." Though he " well knew that his proper vocation
was the exercise of the analytic understanding," he spent perhaps
the greater part of his time in the exercise of the imagination,
taking profound delight in " the sublimer and more passionate
poets," in "the grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the
great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in 'Paradise Regained.' "
He described himself as a Eudaemonist or Hedonist averse to
everything that did not bring him immediate enjoyment ; and this
half-humorous description may be allowed, if we take care not to
forget that his enjoyments were of a peculiar nature. His pleas-
ures were not boisterous not dependent upon a flow of animal
spirits. He was an intellectual Hedonist, or pleasure -seeker.
During a considerable part of his time he was rapt in his favourite
studies, in works of the analytic understanding, of history, and of
imagination. But even in daily life, in intercourse with the world,
his imagination seems to have been preternaturally active. He
was a close observer of character, as we can see both from his
works and from the testimony of those that knew him. But, as
we also know from both sources, his imagination was constantly
active in shaping his surroundings into objects of refined pleasure,
CHARACTER. 41
ranging through many varieties of grave and gay. He applied
this transfiguring process to the incidents of his own life not
inventing romantic or comical incidents, but dwelling upon certain
features of what really took place, and investing them with lofty,
tender, or humorous imagery. So with his friends and casual
acquaintances. He was sufficiently observant of what they really
did and said, was remarkably acute in divining what passed in
their minds, and felt the disagreeable as well as the agreeable
points of their character ; but he had the power of abstracting
from the disagreeable circumstances. He fixed his imagination
upon the agreeable side of an acquaintance, and transmuted the
mixed handiwork of nature into a pure object of aesthetic pleasure. 1
His pleasures, we have said, were not boisterous. He had not
the constitution for hearty enjoyment of life. In his Sketches
he describes himself as being, in his boyhood, " the shiest of
children," " constitutionally touched with pensiveness," " natu-
rally dedicated to despondency." From his repose of manners he
was a privileged visitor to the bedroom of his dying father. He
was passionately fond of peace, had "a perfect craze for being
despised" considering contempt as the only security for un-
molested repose and always tried to hide his precocious accom-
plishments from the curiosity of strangers. All his life through
he retained this shyness. He had splendid conversational powers,
and never was silent from timidity, at least when under the in-
fluence of his favourite opium ; and yet he rather avoided than
courted society. He humorously tells us how he was horrified
at a party in London when he saw a large company of guests
filing in one after the other, and divined from their looks that
they had come to " lionise " the Opium-Eater. Mr Hill Burton
represents the difficulty of getting him out to literary parties in
Edinburgh in spite of his most solemn promises ; and we have
from Professor Masson a pleasant instance of his shyness to
recognise a new acquaintance in the street, and of his nervous-
ness when he found himself the subject of observation.
Such a man often contracts strong special attachments. In
some of the impassioned records of the Confessions and the
'Autobiographic Sketches,' we have evidence of the strength of
De Quincey's affections. In writing of living friends, he usually
practises a delicate reserve, and veils his tenderness under the
mask of humour. Yet even to this there are some exceptions,
such as the touching address to his absent wife in the Opium
Confessions. In writing of departed friends, he pours out his
feelings without reserve. His sister Elizabeth, the outcast Anne,
1 It is not meant that he was so unlike other men as to be doing this con-
stantly ; only that he seized upon and transfigured actual objects into ideals
much more than the generality of intellectual men.
42 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y.
the infant daughter of Wordsworth, and his unfortunate friend
Charles Lloyd, 1 may be mentioned as objects that at different
periods of his life engrossed his affections, and whose loss he
deplores with impassioned sorrow.
He has sometimes been accused of letting his imagination dwell
too favourably upon himself of being especially vain. Now we
call a man vain when he pretends to something that he does not
possess, or when he makes an ostentatious display of his posses-
sions. It has not been alleged that De Quincey was vain in the
first and worst sense ; he has never been accused of exaggerating
for the purpose of extorting admiration. But it is alleged that
he was vain in the second sense ; that he makes a complacently
ostentatious display of his ancestral line, of his aristocratic con-
nections, of his romantic adventures, of his philosophical know-
ledge, of his wonderful dreams. Such a charge could hardly be
made but by a hasty or an undiscriminating reader. In the
'Autobiographic Sketches' we are never complacently invited
to admire. We never think of the writer as a self-glorified
hero, unless we are all the more jealous of being thrown into the
shade. We are taken into his confidence, but he challenges our
sympathy, not our admiration. He often speaks of himself
humorously, but never with ostentatious complacency. He treats
himself with no greater favour than any of the other subjects
of his narrative. The truth seems to be, that he who observed
and speculated upon every human creature that came under his
notice, observed and speculated most of all upon himself as the
human creature that he was best acquainted with. He was too
discerning a genius to be unconscious of his own excellence, and
too little of a humbug to pretend that he was.
As he has been accused of vanity, so he has sometimes been
accused of arrogance, upon a still graver misconception of his
shy, retiring nature, and his humorous self-irony. His dogmatic
judgments of Plato, Cicero, Dr Johnson, and other eminent men,
and his strong expressions of national and political prejudice,
are sometimes quoted as signs of a tendency to domineer. It
may safely be asserted that whoever takes up this view has not
penetrated far into the peculiar personality of De Quincey. What-
ever might be the strength of his expressions, and these were often
exaggerated for comic effect, there have been few men of equal
power more unaffectedly open to reasonable conviction. When
he had made up his mind, he took a pleasure, usually a humorous
pleasure, in putting his opinion as strongly as possible ; but that
was no index as regarded his susceptibility to new light. This
we may reasonably infer from his character as revealed in his
works ; and if we need further evidence, we have it in the words
1 The two last are mentioned in papers that have not been reprinted.
CHARACTER 43
of his personal acquaintance Mr Burton, who speaks of his " gentle
and kindly spirit," and his boyish ardour at making a new dis-
covery. Equally mistaken is the charge of jealousy, which cornea
from some admirers of Wordsworth and Coleridge. He always,
and with obvious sincerity, professed an admiration for the extra-
ordinary qualities of these men, but he knew exactly where their
strength lay ; he knew that both were men of special strength
combined with special infirmity, and in his "Recollections" of
them, while doing all justice to their merits, he did not scruple
to expose their faults. On this ground he is charged with jeal-
ousy. But before we admit a charge so inconsistent with what
we know of his character otherwise, it must be shown that hia
criticisms are unfair, or that they contain anything that can be
construed into an evidence of malice. Had De Quincey been
a jealous, irritable man, instead of being "gentle and kindly"
as he was, the universally attested arrogance and contemptuous
manner of Wordsworth would have driven him to take part with
the ' Edinburgh Review,' and in that case the great poet's reputa-
tion might have been considerably delayed.
I have dwelt at disproportionate length upon two qualities that
are not marked in De Quincey's character, simply for the reason
that unappreciative critics have described them as the ruling
emotions of his personal reminiscences. To discuss them at such
length without a guarding statement would create misconception.
We may say, in loose terms, that two kinds of emotion almost
engrossed his imagination, and that these, in the peculiar form
they assumed in De Quincey, were diametrically antagonistic and
inevitably destructive to emotions so petty as vanity or jealous
egotism. These two ruling emotions may be vaguely described
as humour and sublimity.
Though naturally unfitted for rough merriment, for Teufels-
droeckh laughter, De Quincey had a keen sense of the ridiculous.
None of his papers are without humorous strokes, and some of
them are extravagantly humorous from beginning to end. Chris-
topher North began to take opium, but desisted upon finding, as
he said, that it destroyed his moral sensibilities, and put him into
such a condition of mind that he was ready to laugh at anything,
no matter how venerable. It is sometimes said that opium had a
similar effect upon De Quincey. But, as he would have delighted
to point out, a distinction must be drawn as regards laughter at
things venerable : the laugh may be malicious, designed to bring
a venerable object into contempt, or it may be humorous, revolv-
ing simply upon its own extravagance degradation of the object
being manifestly serious and ill-natured in the one case, and
manifestly whimsical and good-natured in the other. There is
not a trace of malice in De Quincey's laughter. It is, as he
44 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
described it himself, merely "humorous extravagance." He is
a humourist, not a satirist. Sometimes he treats venerable persons
or institutions with playful banter. Sometimes, by a kind of
inverse process, he takes a pleasure in speaking of mean occupa-
tions with expressions of mock dignity. One unique vein of his
humour consists in speaking with affection or admiration, or with
a dry business tone, concerning objects usually regarded with
horror and indignation. Whatever he does, as we shall see when
we come to exemplify his humour, he does all with good-nature.
He seldom applies his banter to living persons, and then in such
a way tliat none but very touchy subjects could take offence.
Indeed, so playful and stingless is his humour, that many profess
themselves unable to see anything to laugh at in his peculiar
extravagances. In humour, of course, everything depends upon
the reader's attitude of mind. De Quincey's own answer to his
censors is complete : " Not to sympathise is not to understand ;
and the playfulness which is not relished, becomes flat and insipid,
I or absolutely without meaning."
r~ ; His genius for the sublime is unquestioned. He was singularly
open to impressions of grandeur. As in his humour, so in his
susceptibility to sublime effects, it is difficult for an energetic
people like us to lower ourselves into this peculiar state of mind.
I say to lower ourselves, for the effort implies a diminution of
our active energies and the intensifying of our passive suscepti-
bilities. One of the best ways of understanding De Quincey in
his sublime moods is to contrast him with Carlyle in his so-called
hero-worship. The attitude of mind in worship, as usually under-
stood, is a passive attitude an attitude of reverential prostration,
of adoring contemplation. If this be so, the term worship is
incorrectly applied to Carlyle's attitude, and applies with much
greater propriety to De Quincey's. Carlyle's state of mind seems
to be a state of exalted activity. A man of force and vigour, he
seems to sympathise with the efforts of his heroes to feel himself,
in thinking of them, exalted to the same pitch of victorious
energy. Now this is not a state of prostration, of adoration,
but the highest possible state of ideal activity the moment of
success in imaginary Titanic effort. On the contrary, De Quin-
cey's attitude is essentially an attitude of adoration, of awe-struck
passivity. He lies still, as it were, remains quiescent ; passively
allows magnificent conceptions to enter his mind and dwell there.
Carlyle's hero-worship is more the intoxication of power than the
worship of power, the sublime of egotism more than the sublime
of adoration. The vision of great manifestations of power seems
to act upon the one as a stimulant, upon the other as A narcotic,
conspiring with the subduing influence of " all-potent opium."
The power that walks in darkness, that leaves for the imagina-
CHARACTER. 45
tion a wide margin of " potentiality," is more impressive than
power with a definite limit Accordingly De Quincey tells us that
"his nature almost demanded mystery."
The pleasing astonishment inspired by visions of grandeur is
nearly allied to awe, and awe passes readily into panic dread.
This De Quincey experienced in his opium-dreams. "Clouds of
gloomy grandeur overhung his dreams at all stages of opium, and,
in the last, grew into the darkest of miseries." His dreams were
tumultuous "with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms."
Sometimes gorgeous spectacles, "such as never yet were beheld
by waking eye," suddenly gave place to " hurrying trepidations."
Sometimes he was filled with apprehensions of frightful disaster,
while kept motionless by " the weight of twenty Atlantics."
As regards the sensuous framework of De Quincey's emotions,
it is interesting to notice his peculiar sensibility to the luxuries
and grandeurs of the ear. He was not insensible to the "pomps
and glories " of the eye, but the ear was his most highly endowed
sense. This is his own analysis. He recognised, he ^aid, his sen-
sibility to music as rising above the common standard by various
tests "by the indispensableness of it to his daily comfort, the
readiness with which he made any sacrifices to obtain a 'grand
debauch' of that nature, &c. &c." He might have mentioned as
a good confirmation that he broke through the traditional expla-
nation of ^Eschylus's "multitudinous laughter of the boundless
ocean," as referring to the visual appearance of the waves, and
asked whether it might not refer to the sounds of the ocean. For
him the image would have had a greater charm if referred to the
ear. One of his favourite pleasures of " imagination " (if we may
use the word in a sense not exactly warranted by its derivation)
was to construct ideal music out of the sounds of nature. " Often
and often," he says, " seating myself on a stone by the side of the
mountain-river Brathay, I have stayed for hours listening to the
same sound to which so often C L and I used to hearken
together with profound emotion and awe the sound of pealing
anthems, as if streaming from the open portals of some illimitable
cathedral ; and many times I have heard it of a quiet night, when
no stranger could have been persuaded to believe it other than the )
sound of choral chanting distant, solemn, saintly."
When we view De Quincey on the active side, we find a great
deficiency, corresponding to his intense occupation with the exercise
of the analytic understanding and the imagination, both in the
study and in the actual world. He was signally wanting in the
pushing activity of the English race. Very characteristic is what
he tells us of his boyhood, that when he was ordered to do a thing,
48 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
instead of forthwith rushing off to do it, or stubbornly refusing
obedience, like an active English child, he first made sure that he
exactly understood the mandate, bothering his superior to express
himself with scrupulous precision of language.
He took little interest in the practical "questions" of the
day. He is said to have written, about 1821, a criticism of Lord
Brougham under the title of " Close Comments on a Straggling
Speech ; " but this, one may guess, was more humorous than
practical. On one occasion he professed to "descend from his
long habits of philosophical speculation to a casual, intercourse
with fugitive and personal politics" namely, in 1835, when he
wrote his " Account of Toryism, Whiggism, and Radicalism " for
'Tait's Magazine.' Here, however, quite as much as elsewhere,
he is still the abstract philosopher, not the man of practice : he
expressly refuses to discuss the policy of the rival parties on any
particular question, and confines himself to an original exposition
of their abstract creeds, their mutual relations to the British Con-
stitution. So little practical interest did he take in the current
business of the nation, that at one time he acknowledges that he
had not read a newspaper for three years. One must almost
suppose that he informed himself of the proceedings of existing
parties with no livelier interest than he took in the proceedings of
parties in ancient Greece or Rome.
His habits seem to have been very irregular. He did not want
steadiness of application to special studies ; he did not roam rest-
lessly from field to field, but set himself down to a subject, and
mastered it, not content till he had read everything that he could
find upon the particular subject But he hated the labour of pro-
ducing, at times with an absolute loathing. He wrote nothing
till forced by pecuniary embarrassment. In the course of some
remarks on Coleridge, he says that it is characteristic of an opium-
eater to finish nothing that he begins ; and his own works to some
extent bear out this humorous principle.
Mr Hill Burton gives an interesting picture of his indifference
to the ordinary ways of human business. " Only immediate crav-
ing necessities could ever extract from him an acknowledgment of
the common vulgar agencies by which men subsist in civilised
society." " Those who knew him a little might call him a loose
man in money matters ; those who knew him closer, laughed at
the idea of coupling any notion of pecuniary or other like respon-
sibility with his nature."
As regards his OPINIONS. He professed himself a Tory in
politics, and spoke with sternness, and even ferocity, concerning
Whigs, Radicals, Republicans, Revolutionists, and " the faction of
Jacobinism through its entire gamut." He objected to the Reform
OPINIONS. 47
Bill of 1832 that it had "ruffianised" Parliament "introduced a
Kentucky element " into an assembly conducted with more than
Roman dignity. Theoretically, he held that both Whigs and
Tories were necessary to the British Constitution, as guiding the
two opposed forces of the nation, the one the democratic, the other
the aristocratic ; that, properly understood, they were as two hemi-
spheres, the one incomplete without the other. In their views of
current questions, one party must be right and the other wrong,
at least so far ; but as regarded their reasons for existing, it was
absurd to ask which was right and which was wrong both must
exist. He belonged himself by birth to the aristocratic party,
and probably in his philosophic way he considered it his duty to
criticise Radicals from the aristocratic point of view, using strong
language without any corresponding strength of feeling.
As a literary critic, his catholicity of spirit and breadth of view
were unique among the men of his time. Rarely indeed, if ever,
has a mind so calm, unprejudiced, and comprehensive, been applied
to the work of criticism. In his own day he was usually numbered
among the " Lakers," or partisans of Wordsworth, Coleridge, #nd
Southey. He was so only in the sense of treating these remark-
able men with justice. He, better than Jeffrey himself, knew the
shortcomings of Wordsworth, condemned his theory of poetic
diction, and made fun of absurdities in " The Excursion " ; but
he felt the shortcomings with calm discrimination, and was not
misled by them into undervaluing the striking originality of
Wordsworth's genius. He was one of the most devout of the
admirers of Shakspeare, and, as we have seen, entered with pas-
sionate rapture- into the majestic harmonies of Milton ; but he had
no part in the common bond of the Lakers their wholesale con-
tempt for Pope. He says, in one of his " uncollected " papers :
"In the literature of every nation, we are naturally disposed to place in
the highest rank those who have produced some great and colossal work a
'Paradise Lost,' a 'Hamlet,' a 'Novum Organum' which presupposes an
effort of intellect, a comprehensive grasp, and a sustaining power, for its
original conception, corresponding in grandeur to that effort, different in
kind, which must preside in its execution. But, after this highest class, in
which the power to conceive and the power to execute are upon the same
scale of grandeur, there comes a second, in which brilliant powers of execu-
tion, applied to conceptions of a very inferior range, are allowed to establish
a classical rank. Every literature possesses, besides its great national gallery,
a cabinet of minor pieces, not "less perfect in their polish, possibly more so.
In reality, the characteristic of this class is elaborate perfection the point
of inferiority is not in the finishing, but in the compass and power of the
original creation, which (however exquisite in its, class) moves within a
Biaiiller sphere. To this class belong, for example, ' The Rape of the Lock,
that finished jewel of English literature ; "The Dunciad' (a still more ex-
quisite gem) ; 'The Vicar of Waketield' (in its earlier part): in German,
48 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
He has been charged with an open depreciation of Keats and
Shelley. But this we cannot reconcile with his papeis on these
poets. Without even giving him the benefit of his plea, that the
papers were "slight impromptus, peremptorily excluding a com-
prehensive view of the subject," and disregarding his statement
when they were reprinted that " in the case of Keats there is
something which (after a lapse of several years) I could wish un-
said, or said more gently," we may take them as they stand. He
charges Keats with " trampling upon his mother-tongue as with
the hoofs of a buffalo," and says of " Endymion " that it exhibits
" the very midsummer madness of affectation, of false vapoury sen-
timent, and of fantastic effeminacy." But this judgment of the
earlier poem did not prevent him from calling the " Hyperion "
" imperishable," and ascribing to it. " the majesty, the austere
beauty, and the simplicity of a Grecian temple enriched with
Grecian sculpture." As for any depreciation of Shelley, that I
have been unable to find. He makes fun, in a kindly spirit, of
Shelley's youthful confidence in waging war against the ruling
powers, but at the same time he praises the youth's sincerity,
pronounces him " the least false of human creatures," and speaks
of "the profound respect due to his exalted powers." The truth
is, that the charges made against De Quincey's criticisms are due
to his unusual comprehensiveness of view and his sensibility to
diversities of gifts. He was, to borrow his own words, " a large
estimator of things as they are of natural gifts, and their infinite
distribution through an infinite scale of degrees, and the com-
pensating accomplishments which take place in so vast a variety
of forms." Hence came numerous misapprehensions. Too many
critics, in his day no less than now, credited their idols with every
excellence of composition, every excellence of head and heart,
every propriety of conduct in their several relations as superiors,
inferiors, and equals. When De Quincey, who was never blind
to a man's genuine claims to superiority, drew these claims into
stronger relief by recording attendant defects, outcries arose on
every hand that he was stealthily undermining established repu-
tations. People refused to understand that a writer " hopelessly
inferior in one talent" could yet be "vastly superior in another."
A word on his estimates of foreign writers. His exposure of
weak points in such universally established names as Homer, Plato,
Cicero, and Goethe, is set down to no higher motive than a love of
paradox, a passion for inspiring wonder. Of this every reader
must judge for himself. Only when we criticise the criticisms of
De Quincey, we must bear in mind the unparalleled extent of his
reading. This unique preparation for valuing literary powers
entitles him to be criticised with reverence and modesty.
In his "Brief Appraisal of the Greek Literature in its foremost
VOCABULARY. 49
pretensions " (which has not been reprinted), he is an unqualified
assertor of the superiority of modern to ancient literature. " It
is," he said, " a pitiable spectacle to any man of sense and feeling,
who happens to be really familiar with the golden treasures of his .
own ancestral literature, and a spectacle which moves alternately
scorn and sorrow, to see young people squandering their time and
painful study upon writers not fit to unloose the shoes' latchets of
many amongst their own compatriots ; making painful and remote
voyages after the drossy refuse, when the pure gold lies neglected
at their feet." " We engage to produce many scores of passages
from Chaucer, not exceeding 50 to 80 lines, which contain more of
picturesque simplicity, more tenderness, more fidelity to nature,
more felicity of sentiment, more animation of narrative, and more
truth of character, than can be matched in all the Iliad or the
Odyssey." Again, "To our Jeremy Taylor, to our Sir Thomas
Browne, there is no approach made in the Greek elequeuce. The
inaugural chapter of the 'Holy Dying,' to say nothing of many
another golden passage ; or the famous passage in the ' Urn
Buriall,' beginning, 'Now, since these bones have rested under
the drums and tramplings of three conquests,' have no parallel in
literature." Finally, " For the intellectual qualities of eloquence,
in fineness of understanding, in depth and in large compass of
thought, Burke far surpasses any orator, ancient or modern."
In another paper, also excluded from his collected works, he
exposes the " dire affectation " of many enthusiastic admirers of
Greek and Latin writers :
"Raised almost to divine honours, never mentioned but with affected
rapture, the classics of Greece and Rome are seldom read most of fhem
never ; are they indeed the closet-companions of any man ? Surely it is t ; me
that these follies were at an end ; that our practice were made to square a
little better with our professions ; and that our pleasures were sincerely
drawn from those sources in which we pretend that they lie."
ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
Vocabulary,
De Quincey ranges with great freedom over the accumulated /
wealth of the language, his capacious memory giving him a pro-
digious command of words. His range is perhaps wider than
either Macaulay's or Carlyle's, as lie is more versatile in the
"pitch" of his style, and does not disdain to use the "slang" of
all classes, from Cockney to Oxonian.
In his diction, taken as a whole, there is a. great preponderance
of words derived from the Latin. Lord Brougham's opinion that
" the Saxon part of our English idiom is to be favoured at the
expense of that part which has so 1'Appily coalesced from the Latin
u
50 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y.
or Greek," he puts aside as " resembling that restraint which some
metrical writers have imposed upon themselves of writing a long
* copy of verses from which some particular letter, or from each line
XI of which some different letter, should be carefully excluded."
/From various causes, he himself makes an excessive use of Latin-
ised phraseology. Eirak-his ear was deeply enamoured of a dig-
nified rhythm ; none but long words of Latin origin were equal
to the lofty march of his periods. Secondly, by the use of Latin-
ised and quasi technical terms, he gained greater precision than
by the use of homely words of looser signification. And thirdly,
it was part of his peculiar humuur to write concerning common
objects in unfamiliar language.
The strong point in his diction is his acquaintance with the
language of the thoughts and feelings, with the subjective side of
the English vocabulary. A writer naturally accumulates words
in the line of his strongest interest ; and De Quincey had a
paramount interest in the characters, thoughts, and affections
of man human nature may be said to have been his constant
study.
A systematic student in none of the sciences, except perhaps
metaphysics and political economy, he nevertheless had gleaned
technical terms from every science. He was indeed ever on the
watch for a good word ; sciences, arts, and even trades, all alike
he laid under greater or less occasional contributions.
Sentences.
Although De Quincey complained of the "weariness and re-
pulsion " of the periodic style, he carried it to excess in his own
composition. His sentences are stately, elaborate, crowded with
qualifying clauses and parenthetical allusions, to a degree unpar-
alleled among modern writers.
In reviewing Whately's Rhetoric, he naturally objected to the
dogma that " elaborate stateliness is always to be regarded as a
worse fault than the slovenliness and languor which accompany a
very loose style." He maintained, and justly, that " stateliness
the most elaborate, in an absolute sense, is no fault at all, though
it may be so in relation to a given subject, or to any subject
under given circumstances." Whether in his own practice he
always conforms to circumstances, is a question that must be left
to individual taste. There is a certain stateliness in his sentences
under almost all circumstances a stateliness arising from his
habitual use of periodic suspensions. To take two examples from
his Sketches :
" Never in any equal number of months had my understanding so much
expanded as during this visit to Laxtou."
SENTENCES. 51
When we throw this out of the elaborately periodic form, we, as
it were, relax the tension of the mind, and destroy the stately
effect. Thus
"My understanding expanded more during this visit to Laxton than
during any three months of my life."
Again
" Equally, in fact, as regarded my physics and my metaphysics ; in short,
upon all lines of advance that interested my ambition, I was going rapidly
ahead."
The statement has a very different effect when the periodic arrange-
ment is reversed.
Criticism of single sentences cannot easily be made convincing,
and the critic is apt to forget the paramount principle that regard
must be had to the context, to the nature of the subject, to the
effect intended by the writer. When a single sentence is put upon
its trial, there are many casuistical considerations that may legiti-
mately be pleaded by the counsel for the defence. Still, if we try
De Quincey by his own rule against " unwieldy comprehensiveness,"
we must convict him of many violations. In almost every page
we find periods that cannot be easily comprehended except by a
mind of more than ordinary grasp ; and in many cases where,
viewed with reference to the average capacity, he cannot be said
to overcrowd, he is yet upon the verge of overcrowding. The
following sentence may be quoted as one that stands upon the
verge. It calls for a considerable effort of attention, and a long
succession of such sentences would be exasperating. He is speak-
ing of his youthful habit of scrupulously making sure of the mean-
ing of an order :
"So far from seeking to ' pettifogulise ' i.e., to find evasions for any
purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction exactly in the
opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found,
in almost everybody's words, an unintentional opening left for double
interpretations. "
In this case the familiarity and the close connection of the ideas
makes the effort of comprehension considerably less. When the
subject-matter is so easy, the interspersion of such periods here
and there cannot be called a fault It is, on the contrary, to most
ears an agreeable relief to the monotony of ordinary forms of
sentence. But for the general reader, for the average capacity of
easy understanding, such sentence-forms are multiplied to an in-
tolerable degree in De Quincey's writing. And he does not always
escape the besetting fault of long and crowded sentences in-
tricacy.
As regards the length and elaboration of De Quincey's sentences,
52 * THOMAS DK QUINCEY.
it is interesting to compare the first edition of the Opium Confes-
sions with the final revision. Many alterations consist in filling
out the sentences ; and, in a good many cases, two sentences are
amalgamated into one. Take the following example, the first few
sentences of the section entitled, "The Pleasures of Opium." In
the original edition this stands
" It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had been a trifling incident
in my life, I might have forgotten its date ; but cardinal events are not to
be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with it, I remember that
it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During that season I was in
London, having come thither for the first time since my entrance at col-
lege. And my introduction to opium arose in the following way. From
an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head in water at least once
a-day," &c.
In the revised edition we read
" It is very long since I first took opium ; so long, that if it had been a
triflinc incident in my life, I might have forgotten its date ; but cardinal
events are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with it, I
remember that this inauguration into the use of opium must be referred to
the spring or to the autumn of 1804, during which seasons I was in London,
having come thither for the first time since my entrance at Oxford. And
this event arose in the following way : From an early age I had been
accustomed," &c.
The four sentences of the original are amalgamated into two,
without any condensation of the original bulk. On the contrary,
additions are made, one for the sake of emphasis, another for the
sake of a more formal connection.
Unity of Sentence. A casuist would find no difficulty in arguing
that De Quincey's sentences are not owr-crowded. None of the
qualifications or parenthetic allusions could be said to be altogether
irrelevant ; and the difficulty of grasping the meaning being set on
one side, it might be pleaded that, as regards the main purpose of
the sentence, and its place among the other sentences of the com-
position, they are all of them indispensable.
De Quincey, however, often offends beyond the possibility of
justification, overloading his sentences in a gossiping kind of way
with particulars that have no relevance whatsoever to the main
statement Of this habit I quote two examples, italicising the
irrelevant clauses, and placing one of them in small capitals as
being an offence of double magnitude, a second irrelevance foisted
in upon the back of the first. The first sentence relates to the ex-
posure of infants in ancient Greece ; the second explains itself.
"And because the ancients had a scruple (no scruple of mercy or of
relenting conscience, but of selfish superstition) as to taking life by vio-
lence from any creature not condemned under some law, the mode of death
must be by exposure on the open hills, where either the night air, or the
fangs of a wolf, oftentimes of the great dogs still preserved in most part*
PARAGRAPHS. 53
of Greece (and traced back to the days of Homer as the public nuisances of
travellers) usually put an end to the unoffending creature's life."
" It is asserted, as a general affection of human nature, that it is impos-
sible to read a book with satisfaction until one has ascertained whether the
author of it be tall or short, corpulent or thin ; and, as to complexion,
whether he be a ' black ' man (which, in the ' Spectator's ' time, was the
absurd expression for a swarthy man), or a fair man, or a sallow man, or
perhaps a green man, which Southey affirmed to be the proper description of
many stout artificers in Birmingham too much given to work in metallic
fumes; ON WHICH ACCOUNT THE NAME OF SOUTHEY is AN ABOMINATION
TO THIS DAY IN CERTAIN FURNACES OF WARWICKSHIRE."
The excrescences on the last sentence might be justified on the
ground that they are humorous, although in severe exposition the
humour would probably be ill-timed ; but the parenthetic informa-
tion in the first is pedantic, and insufferably out of harmony with
the rest of the sentence. Still even for this a casuist might find
something to say, taking the parenthesis in relation to the subject-
matter and De Quincey's pitch of feeling in the treatment of it.
Paragraph.
We have seen in our Introduction that De Quincey studied
" the philosophy of transition and connection." He is scrupu-
lously elaborate, almost too elaborate, in explaining the point of
his statements.
No quotation can be made from De Quincey that does not
exemplify this. Still the analysis of a short passage may help
to put the student upon the proper track for seeing how large
a part of his composition is taken up with phrases of connec-
tion :
"So it will always be. Those who (like Madame Dacier) possess no
accomplishment but Greek, will of necessity set a superhuman value upon
that literature in all its parts, to which their own narrow skill becomes an
available key."
The expressions in italics are all connective. A rapid writer, such
as Macaulay, would have omitted " like Madame Dacier," and in
place of the connective periphrasis at the end, would have said
briefly and pointedly " Greek literature," leaving the reader to
pass on without the labour of formally comprehending the con-
nection. To continue :
" Besides that, over and above this coarse and conscious motive for over-
rating that which reacts with an equal and answerable overrating upon their
own little philological attainments, there is another agency at work, and
quite unconsciously to the subjects of that agency, in disturbing the sanity
of any estimate they may make of a foreign literature."
This sentence is wholly connective, joining together the two in-
54 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
ducements to overrate the value of a foreign literature the
second being stated as follows :
" It is the habit (well known to psychologists) of transferring to anything
ereated by our own skill, or which reflects our own skill, as if it lay causatively
and objectively in the reflecting thing itself, that pleasurable power which in
very truth belongs subjectively to the mind of him who surveys it, from con-
scious success in the exercise of his own energies. Hence it is that we see
daily without surprise young ladies hanging enamoured over the pages of an
Italian author, and calling attention to trivial commonplaces, such as, clothed
in plain mother English, would have been more repulsive to them than the
distinctions of a theologian or the counsels of a great-grandmother. They
mistake for a pleasure yielded by the author what is in fact the pleasure
attending their own success in mastering what was lately an insuperable
difficulty."
This explicitness of connection is the chief merit of De Quincey's
paragraphs. He cannot be said to observe any other principle.
He is carried into violations of all the other rules by his inveter-
ate habit of digression. Often upon a mere casual suggestion he
branches off into a digression of several pages, sometimes even
digressing from the subject of his first digression. The enormity
of these offences is a good deal palliated by his being conscious
that he is digressing, and his taking care to let us know when he
strikes off from the main subject and when he returns. Some of
his papers are professedly " discursive," especially the ' Autobio-
graphic Sketches.'
The following is an example of his way of apologising for a
digression. It illustrates, at the same time, his capital excel-
lence of explicit connection. In a paper professedly on Demos-
thenes, he comes across Lord Brougham's Rectorial Address at
Glasgow, and at once, leaving Demosthenes, proceeds to discuss
several things mentioned in the address. At the close of this
excursus he says :
" I have used my privilege of discursiveness to step aside from Demos-
thenes to another subject, not otherwise connected with the Attic orator than,
first, by the common reference of both subjects to rhetoric ; but, secondly,
by the accident of having been jointly discussed by Lord Brougham in a
paper which (though now forgotten) obtained at the moment most undue
celebrity."
The apology, however, becomes the occasion of another offence.
Before returning to Demosthenes, he throws in a few sentences
of comment on the fact that in England the utterances of eminent
public men on subjects beyond their province and their acquire
ments are received with a deference not accorded to men " speaking
under the known privilege of professional knowledge."
Should these digressions, obviously breaches of strict method,
be imitated or avoided 1 The experienced writer will please him-
self, and consult the effect that he intends to produce. But if he
FIGURES OF SPEECH. 55
digresses after the model of De Quincey, he may rest assured that
he will be accused of affectation, and will offend all that read for
direct information concerning the subject in hand,
Figures of Speech.
De Quincey may be described as a very " tropical " writer (see
INTRODUCTION p. 13). He uses comparatively few formal simili-
tudes, but his pages are thickly strewn with " tropes," with meta- ''
phors, personifications, synecdoches, and metonymies.
His most characteristic and peculiar figure is personification.
He makes a constant practice of applying predicates to names of
inanimate things, and even to abstract nouns, as if they were names
of living agents.
This mannerism pervades all De Quincey's writings, and is so
characteristic that we at once think of him when we find it appear-
ing strongly in another writer. A few examples give but a faint
impression compared with what we receive when we read his vol-
umes and meet with an example in every other sentenca It is
peculiarly striking in the case of abstract nouns above all, when
one abstraction is represented as acting upon another ; thus
"Here I had terminated this chapter as at a natural pause, which, while
shutting out for ever my eldest brother from the reader's sight and from
my own, necessarily at the same moment worked a permanent revolution in
the character of my daily life. Two such changes, and both so abrupt, in-
dicated imperiously the close of one era and the opening of another. The
advantages, indeed, which my brother had over me in years, in physical
activities of every kind, in decision of purpose, and in energy of will all
which, advantages, besides, borrowed a ratification from an obscure sense, on
my part, of duty as incident to what seemed an appointment of Providence
inevitably had controlled, and for years to come would have controlled,
the free spontaneous movements of a dreamer like myself."
This treatment of abstractions as living agents may be studied also
in the following passage, concerning the civilising influence of
Athens through her theatre:
" But if it were a vain and arrogant assumption to illuminate, as regarded
those primal truths which, like the stars, are hung aloft, and shine for all
alike, neither vain nor arrogant was it to fly her falcons at game almost as
high. If not life, yet light ; if not absolute birth, yet moral regeneration
and fructifying warmth these were quickening forces which abundantly
she was able to engraft upon truths else slumbering and inert. Not affect-
ing to teach the new, she could yet vivify the old. Those moral echoes,
so solemn and pathetic, that lingered in the ear from her stately tragedies,
all spoke with the authority of voices from the grave. The great phantoms
that crossed her stage, all pointed with shadowy fingers to shattered dynas-
ties and the ruins of once regal houses, Pelopidse or Labdacidae, as monu-
ments of sufferings in expiation of violated morals, or sometimes which
even more thrilliugly spoke to human sensibilities of guilt too awful to be
56 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
expiated. And in the midst of these appalling records, what is their ulti-
mate solution ? From what key-note does Athenian Tragedy trace the ex-
pansion of its own dark impassioned music? "Tpiy (hybris) the spirit of
outrage coupled with the spirit of insult and arrogant self-assertion in that
temper lurks the original impulse towards wrong ; and to that temper the
Greek drama adapts its monitory legends. The doctrine of the Hebrew
Scriptures as to vicarious retribution is at times discovered secretly moving
through the scenic poetry of Athens. His own crime is seen hunting a
man through five generations, and finding him finally in the persons of hia
innocent descendants."
The tropical applying of abstractions to words expressing move-
ment see in the above passage " lurking," " moving," " hunting,"
&c. is a prominent De Quinceyism. Ideas " lurk under " terms ;
distinctions " move obscurely " in the minds of men ; revolutions
" travel leisurely through their stages ; " " the guardianship of
civilisation suddenly unfolds itself like a banner " over particular
nations ; a danger " approaches and wheels away threatens, but
finally forbears to strike," &c. <kc.
The Sources of his Similitudes. De Quincey's similitudes are
drawn from an immense sphere of reading and observation. With-
"but pretending to be exhaustive, we may mention separately some
! of his principal fields.
r-1' (i.) The characteristics of lower animals. He very often en-
livens an adjective of quality by appending a comparison to some
animal possessing the quality in an extreme form. We are con-
stantly meeting such phrases as " restless as a hyena ; " " rare as a
phoenix ; " " by original constitution strong as one of Meux's dray-
horses ; " " Burke, a hunting leopard, coupled with Schlosser, a
German poodle." In owning himself baffled to find any illustra-
tion of Richter's activity of understanding, he shows how deliber-
ately he ransacked his knowledge in pursuit of similitudes :
"What then is it that I claim? Briefly, an activity of understanding so
restless and indefatigable that all attempts to illustrate, or express it ade-
quately, by images borrowed from the natural world, from the motions of
beasts, birds, insects, &o., from the leaps of tigers or leopards, from the
gambolling and tumbling of kittens, the antics of monkeys, or the running
of antelopes and ostriches, &c., are baffled, confounded, and made ridiculous
by the enormous and overmastering superiority of impression left by the
thing illustrated."
(2.) Works of travel A great reader of books of travel, he
found in the customs and natural phenomena of foreign countries
extreme examples, and thus was able to give to his similes a pecu-
liar finish, and at times an independent value, such as attaches to
some of the similes of Milton. Where for an image of hopeful
change a less accomplished artist would simply make comparison
to the opening of spring, De Quincey is able to cite the opening of
spring in Sweden, and dwells upon a gorgeous picture of the sud-
FIGURES OF SPEECH. 57
den vernal outburst in that country. An unfinished book that
another would compare simply to an unfinished building, he com-
pares to " a Spanish bridge or aqueduct begun upon too great a
scale for the resources of the architect ; " opening up remote col-
lateral reflections to the reader that has time to pause and consider.
Again, illustrating how soon we forget the features of dead or dis-
tant friends, he says
"The faces of infants, though they are divine as flowers on a savanna of
Texas, or as the carolling of birds in a forest, are, like flowers in a savanna
of Texas, or the carolling of birds in a forest, soon overtaken by the pur-
suing darkness that swallows up all things human."
Again
' ' Yes, reader, countless are the mysterious handwritings of grief or joy
which have inscribed themselves successively upon the palimpsest of your
brain ; and like the annual leaves of aboriginal forests, or the undissolving
snows on the Himalaya, or light falling upon light, the endless strata have
covered up each other in forgetfulness.
Once more
". . . 'the anarchy of dreams' presides in German philosophy ; and the
restless elements of opinion, throughout every region of debate, mould them-
selves eternally, like the billowy sands of the desert, as beheld by Bruce,
into towering columns, soar upwards to a giddy altitude, then stalk about
for a minute, all aglow with fiery colour, and finally unniould and 'dis-
limn,' with a collapse as sudden as the motions of that eddying breeze
under which their vapoury architecture had arisen."
This last image was a favourite with him. He first used it in
the article on Dr Parr :
"The brief associations of public carriages or inns are as evanescent as
the sandy columns of the Great Desert, which the caprices of the wind build
up and scatter, shape and unshape, within the brief revolution of a minute."
He used it again in the preface to his ' Political Economy ' :
"... or, like the fantastic architecture which the winds are everlast-
ingly pursuing in the Arabian desert, would exhibit phantom arrays of
fleeting columns and fluctuating edifices, which, under the very breath that
had created them, would be for ever collapsing into dust."
(3.) He very often compares individuals to celebrated person-
ages in literature, by a kind of synecdoche. One specimen must
suffice :
"Here at this time was living Mr Olarkson, that son of thunder, that
Titan, who was, in fact, the one great Atlas that bore up the Slave Trade
Abolition cause now resting from his mighty labours and nerve-shattering
perils."
(4.) The feats of magic furnish him with several expressions of
astonishment. " Thaumaturgic " is a favourite word; he speaks
of the " rhabdomantic " power of Christianity in evoking dormant
58 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
feelings; and he compares the transformation worked by a lady
upon her husband to the achievements of " some mighty caliph or
lamp-bearing Aladdin."
(5.) From music he draws some very favourite metaphors.
Thus : He knows " human despondencies through all their in-
finite gamut." Christopher North at Oxford "enjoyed an unlim-
,j ited favour with an infinite gamut of friends and associates, run-
ning through every key, the diapason closing full in groom, cobbler,
and stable-boy." Ceylon is " a panorganon for modulating through
tJie whole diatonic scale of climates."
(6.) He takes many metaphors from the technical language of
law and trada The question as to the comparative value of an-
cient and modern learning is " the great pending suit between
antiquity and ourselves." "Such as these were the habits and
the reversionary consolations of Pompey." "The other historic
, person on whom I shall probably be charged with assault and
." battery is Josephus." "The Jew did not receive the bribe first
and then perpetrate the treason, but trusted to Roman good faith
at three months after date." Writing of Pope's composing satire at
the instigation of Warburton, he says :
" To enter a house of hatred as a junior partner, and to take the stock of
malice at a valuation (we copy from advertisements), that is an ignoble act, "
These metaphors are very often humorous. Thus
"A Canadian winter for my money ; or a Russian one, where every man
is but a co-proprietor with the north wind, in the. fee-simple of his own
ears. "
(7.) Sometimes he takes a fancy to draw upon mathematics,
medicine, or physical science. Thus
"As to Symmons, he was a Whig ; and his covert purpose was to secure
Milton for his own party, before that party was fully secreted by the new
tendencies beginning to move amongst the partisanships of the age. Until
Dr Sacheverel came, in Queen Anne's reign, the crystallisations of "Whig
and Tory were rudimental and incomplete. Symmoiis, therefore, was under
a bias, and a morbid kind of deflection."
How far he observes the conditions of effective comparison.
De Quincey is a model of exact comparison. To point out with
deliberate some would say with tedious scrupulosity the re-
sembling circumstances in the things compared, peculiarly suits
his subtilising turn of mind. He never seems to be in a hurry,
and does not aspire to hit off a similitude in a few pregnant
words ; his characteristic is punctilious- accuracy, regardless of
expense in the matter of words.
Out of numerous available examples may be quoted his com-
parison of the distribution of men in Ceylon to the distribution
of material in a peach :
FIGURES OF SPEECH. 59
"But strange indeed, where everything seems strange, is the arrange-
ment of the Ceylonese territory and people. Take a peach : what you call
the flesh of the peach, the substance which you eat, is massed orbicularly
round a central stone often as large as a pretty large strawberry. Now,
in Ceylon the central di&trict, answering to this peach-stone, constitutes a
fierce little Lilliputian kingdom, quite independent, through many centuries,
of the lazy belt, the peach-flesh, which swathes and enfolds it, and perfectly
distinct by the character and origin of its population. The peach-stone is
called Kandy, and the people Kandyans."
Seeing that he possessed an extraordinary power of " elevating "
by means of similitudes, it is natural to ask whether he is ever
guilty of undue exaggeration. When this question is put con-
cerning De Quincey, attention turns at once to his Opium Con-
fessions and his 'Autobiographic Sketches.' In these works he
describes his own feelings in metaphors taken from the language
of the great operations of Nature, and draws elaborate comparisons
between momentous epochs in his own life, and such imposing
phenomena as the uncontrollable migrations of the buffalo herds.
Are these similitudes extravagantly hyperbolical ? Do they offend
the reader as rising extravagantly above the dignity of the sub-
ject 1 Much depends upon our point of view. If we view the
autobiographer unsympathetically, from the stand-point of our own
personality if we regard him simply as a unit among the millions
of mankind, a speck upon "the great globe itself," we shall
undoubtedly be shocked at his venturing to compare revolutions
within his own insignificant being to revolutions affecting vast
regions of the earth. But if we view him as he means that
we should view him, sympathetically, from the stand-point of
his personality, we shall not be shocked at the audacity of his
similitudes we shall not consider them extravagant, or out of
keeping with the feelings proper to the occasion. Epochs and
incidents in our own life are more important to us, bulk more
largely in our eyes, than epochs and incidents in the history of
a nation. The violent death of a near and dear relative or friend
touches us more profoundly than an earthquake at Lisbon, a
massacre at Cawnpore, or a revolution in Paris. De Qnincey
says nothing that has not been felt more or less dimly by all
human beings when he says, that on his entering Oxford the
profound public interest concerning the movements of Napoleon
" a little divided with me the else monopolising awe attached to
Hie solemn act of launching myself upon the world,"
Concerning the novelty or originality of his similitudes. He
has never been accused of plagiarising. When he borrows a
figure of speech, he gives a formal acknowledgement ; at least
he does so in some cases, and I have never seen any clandestine
appropriations charged against him. "As I have never allowed
myself," he says, " to covet any man's ox, nor his ass, nor any-
60 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
, thing that is his, still less would it become a philosopher to covet
other people's images or metaphors." And if he had, we might
say, as he said of Coleridge's plagiarisms, that such robbery would
have been an honour to the person robbed. We may be sure,
from the unique finish of his similitudes, that the stolen property
would have improved in value under his hands.
QUALITIES OP STYLE.
Simplicity,
De Quincey cannot be ranked among simple writers. His style
has certain elements of simplicity, but, at the same time, it has,
in a considerable degree, every element of abstruseness specified in
a manual of composition,
(i.) He makes an excessive use of Latinised, scholarly, and
technical terms. Thus
" I myself, who have never been a great wine- drinker, used to find that
half-a-dozen glasses of wine advantageously affected the faculties, brightened
and intensified the consciousness, and gave to the mind a feeling of being
'ponderibus librata suis. ' "
Concerning his ' Logic of Political Economy,' Mr M'Culloch says
" It would have been more popular and successful had it been
less scholastic. It is right to be logical, but not to be perpet-
ually obtruding logical forms and technicalities on the reader's
attention."
(2.) In his choice of subjects he prefers the recondite offering,
in this respect, a. great contrast to Macaulay.
In his Essays " addressed to the understanding as an insulated
faculty," he runs after the most abstruse problems. Take the
examples quoted in his preface to the first volume of his ' Collected
Works.' In the " Essenes," he defends a new speculation on a
puzzling subject with considerations familiar only to archseologic
theologians. In his " Caesars," his purpose is not so much a
condensed narrative as an elucidation of doubtful points. His
" Essay on Cicero " deals with problems of the same nature.
And so with many others of his articles. The volume on ' Leaders
in Literature,' wherever it keeps faithful to its title, is taken up
mainly with the "traditional errors affecting them." Even his
'Autobiographic Sketches' turn aside upon various incidents to
the pursuit of subtle speculations, such as disquisitions on the
possible issues of an action, recondite analysis and conjecture of
motives, consideration of delicate points of taste, nice investiga-
tion of the sources of the influence of a poem or a picture. His
' Logic of Political Economy ' deals with the most puzzling and
abstruse principles of the science.
SIMPLICITY. 61
-N ^
(3.) So far from shirking as is the manner of simple writers
every call to modify a bare assertion, he revels in nice dis-
tinctions and scrupulous qualifications. This is a part of his
exactness.
(4.) We have already noticed his excessive use of abstract terms
and forms of expression. What we exemplified as his favourite
figure is not good for rapid perusal. When a transaction is
represented as taking place, not between living agents, but be-
tween abstract qualities of those agents, a mode of statement so
unfamiliar is not to be comprehended without a considerable effort
of thought.
(5.) His general structure is not simple. Long periods, each ! )
embodying a flock of clauses, are abstruse reading. Even his
explicitness of connection has not its full natural effect of mak-
ing the effort of comprehension easy. He connects his statements
with such exactness that the explicitness becomes a burden.
Certain things may be said iu extenuation of this neglect of the
ordinary means of simplicity.
I. With all his abstruseness he does observe certain points of a
simple style.
(i.) He often repeats in simpler language what he has said with
characteristic abstractness of phrase. Thus, in the case of his
cardinal distinction between the literature of knowledge and the
literature of power
" In that great social organ which, collectively, we call literature, there
may be distinguished two separate offices that may blend, and often do so,
but capable, severally, of a severe insulation, and naturally fitted for re- ^
ciprocal repulsion. There is, first, the literature of knowledge; and secondly, {/
the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach ; the function .
of the second is to move. The first is a rudder ; the second, an oar or u j
8 ail. ^
(2.) In dealing with dates and statistics, he has a commendable
habit of devising helps to the reader's memory by means of familiar ' ^
comparisons. Thus
"ThW'was in 1644, the year of Marston Moor, and the penultimate year
of the Parliamentary war."
Again *
"Glasgow has as many thousands of inhabitants as there are days in the
year. (I so state the population in order to assist the reader's memory.)"
In like manner he helps us to remember the territorial extent
and the population of Ceylon by a comparison with Ireland and
Scotland.
(3.) A characteristic figure with him is a figure taken from
simple movements :
62 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
t\ j
\y "This growth of intellect, outrunning the capacities of the physical
' structure;" "by night he succeeded in reaching the farther end of his
.' duties;" "he walked conscientiously through the services of the day."
" Extraordinary erudition, even though travelling into obscure and sterile
fields, has its own pecultar interest. And about Dr Parr, moreover, there
circled another and far different interest."
It must, however, be admitted that such forms of expression,
though intrinsically simple, are abstruse to the majority from not
being familiar.
II. His technical terms can often justify their existence on the
plea that they give greater precision. Thus
"There was a prodigious ferment in the first half of the seventeenth
rjtnry. In the earlier bisection of the second half there was a general
settling or deposition from this ferment."
So in giving the dimensions of the famous Ceylon pillar
"The pillar measures six feet by six i.e., thirty-six square feet on the
flat quadrangular tablet of its upper horizontal surface. "
Once more, writing of the impossibility of translating certain
words by any single word, he says
"To take an image from the language of eclipses, the correspondence
between the disk of the original word and its translated representative is, in
thousands of instances, not annular; the centres do not coincide ; the words
overlap."
In all these cases there is no denying that the expression ia
superlatively precise, although perhaps all the precision required
under the circumstances might have been given in more familiar
language.
Such are some of the circumstances that compensate his ab-
etruseness. Imitators should see that they make equal compen-
sation. The assertion may be hazarded that writers aiming at
wide popularity are not safe to use so much abstruse language as
De Quincey, whatever may be their powers of compensating.
Clearness.
Perspicuity. To readers that find no difficulty in the abstruse-
ness of his diction, De Quincey is tolerably perspicuous. His
virtues in this respect are summed up in the capital excellence of
his paragraphs, explicitness of connection. If we find his diction
easy, he is so scrupulous in keeping before us the general arrange-
ment of his composition, as well as the bearing of particular state-
ments, and even, as we have seen, of his numerous digressions,
that we are seldom in danger of confusion.
Exactness, however, rather than perspicuity, is his peculiar
merit On this he openly prides himself. In an article on Ceylon,
CLEARNESS. 63
having said that a young officer, marching with a small body of
men through the island, took Kandy in his route, he appends a
footnote to the word " took " :
"This phrase is equivocal ; it bears two senses the traveller's sense and
the soldier's. But we rarely make such errors in the use of words ; the
error is original in the government documents themselves. "
He certainly had reason to glory. None of our writers in
general literature have shown themselves so scrupulously precise.
His works are still the crowning delicacy for lovers of formal,
punctilious exactness. 1
Of this exactness we have already given several illustrations.
We have illustrated the exactness of his comparisons, and the fact
that he often purchases exactness at the price of simplicity. Ref-
erence may also be made to the account of his opinions and the
passage there quoted.
His minuteness in modifying vague general expressions is par-
ticularly worthy of notice, and, when not pushed to a pedantic
extreme, worthy of imitation. He seldom says that a thing is
remarkable without adding in what respects. A man's life is
" notable in two points ; " has " two separate claims upon our
notice : "
"A man of original genius, shown to us as revolving through the leisurely
stages of a biographical memoir, lays open, to readers prepared for such
revelations, two separate theatres of interest ; one in his personal career, the
other in his works and his intellectual development. "
In like manner, " that sanctity which settles on the memory of
a great man, ought, upon a double motive, to be vigilantly sustained
by his countrymen." When he predicates a superlative, he is ex-
emplarily scrupulous to let us know what particulars it applies to.
Aristotle's Ehetoric is " the best, as regards the primary purpose
of the teacher ; though otherwise, for elegance," &c. Jeremy Taylor
and Sir T. Browne are "undoubtedly the richest, the most dazzling,
and, with reference to their matter, the most captivating of all
rhetoricians." When he puts the question, "Was Caesar, upon
the whole, the greatest of men ? " he does not at once pronounce
roundly "Yes" or "No." He first explains in what sense he
means great :
"Was Csesar, upon the whole, the greatest of men? We restrict the
question, of course, to the classes of men great in action; great by the extent
1 With a legitimate feeling of his own innocence, he often censures the lax
practice of other writers. He is angry with Dr Johnson for not further explain-
ing what he meant by calling Pope " the most correct of 'poets " " Correctness,"
he exclaims, "in what? Think of the admirable qualifications for settling the
scale of such critical distinctions which that man must have had who turned out
upon this vast world the single oracular word ' correctness ' to shift for itself,
and explain its own meaning to all generati
64 THOMAS DK QUINCEY.
of their Influence over their social contemporaries ; great by th/owlng open
avenues to extended powers that previously had been closed ; great by mak-
ing obstacles one.) vast to become trivial ; or prizes that once were trivial to
be glorified by expansion."
As an example of this " pettif ogulising " on the larger scale,
we may quote his footnote on the maxim " De mortuis nil nisi
bonum " :
" This famous canon of charity (Concerning the dead, let us have nothing
but what is kind and favourable) has furnished an inevitable occasion for
much doubtful casuistry. The dead, as those pre-eminently unable to defend
themselves, enjoy a natural privilege of indulgence amongst the generous
and considerate ; but not to the extent which this sweeping maxim would
proclaim, since, on this principle, in cases innumerable, tenderness to the
dead would become the ground of cruel injustice to the living : nay, the
maxim would continually counterwork itself ; for too inexorable a forbear-
ance with regard to one dead person would oftentimes effectually close the
door to the vindication of another. In fact, neither history nor biography
is able to move a step without infractions of this rule ; a rule emanating
from the blind kindliness of grandmothers, who, whilst groping in the dark
after one individual darling, forget the collateral or oblique results to others
without end. These evils being perceived, equitable casuists began to revise
the maxim, and in its new form it stood thus ' De mortuis nil nisi verum'
( ' Concerning the dead, let us have nothing but what is true '). Why, certainly,
that is an undeniable right of the dead ; and nobody in his senses would
plead for a small percentage of falsehood. Yet, again, in that shape the
maxim carries with it a disagreeable air of limiting the right to truth. Un-
less it is meant to reserve a small allowance of fiction for the separate use of
the living, why insist upon truth as peculiarly consecrated to the dead ? If
all people, living and dead alike, have a right to the benefits of truth, why
specify one class, as if in silent contradistinction to some other class, less
eminently privileged in that respect ? To me it seems evident that the
human mind has been long groping darkly after some separate right of the
dead in this respect, but which hitherto it has not been able to bring into
reconciliation with the known rights of the living. Some distinct privilege
there should be, if only it could be sharply defined and limited, through
which a special prerogative might be recognised as among the sanctities of
the grave."
Strength.
De Quincey's style, as the reader has doubtless remarked in
preceding extracts, is not animated meaning by animation the
presentation of ideas in rapid succession it stands, in fact, to use
a phrase of his own, in " polar antithesis " to the animated style.
His prevailing characteristic is elaborate stateliness. He finds the
happiest exercise of his powers in sustained nights through the
Ijregion of the sublime.
f~" L Let us first exemplify his elevation of style as applied to the
ordinary subjects of lofty composition, such as men of extra-
ordinary powers, secret machinations, great natural phenomena,
Bcenes of horror and confusion.
STRENGTH. 65
He had not, like Carlyle, a formal gallery of historical heroes. ) <5T
He seldom lends his powers of style to glorifying the great men of "^^L,^
history. His tendency was rather to discover and develop lurking
objects of admiration or astonishment the daring of Zebek Dorchi
against the " mighty behemoth of Muscovy," the energetic hardi- _^
hood of the slave that attempted to assassinate the Emperor Com- Cs
modus, the erection of a statue to the slave ^Esop, and suchlike,
The following is his account of " Walking Stewart," whom almost
anybody else would have passed by as a harebrained enthusiast :
" His mind was a mirror of the sentient universe the whole mighty
vision that had fleeted before his eyes in this world the armies of Hyder
All and his son Tippoo, with oriental and barbaric pageantry ; the civic
grandeur of England ; the great deserts of Asia and America ; the vast
capitals of Europe London, with its eternal agitations, the ceaseless ebb
and flow of its ' mighty heart ' ; Paris, shaken by the fierce torments of rev-
olutionary convulsions ; the silence of Lapland ; and the solitary forests of
Canada ; with the swarming life of the torrid zone ; together with innumer-
able recollections of individual joy and sorrow that he had participated in by
sympathy, lay like a map beneath him, as if eternally co-present to his
view ; so that, in the contemplation of the prodigious whole, he had no 1
leisure to separate the parts or occupy his mind wiih details."
~) ^
The machinations of secret societies had a great charm for him. t ^,
Here is a passage concerning the Hetseria of Greece : *H . *
" It cannot be denied that a secret society, with the grand and almost
awful purposes of the Hetseria, spite of some taint which it had received in
its early stages from the spirit of German mummery, is fitted to lill the im-
agination, and to command homage from the coldest. Whispers circulating
from mouth to mouth of some vast conspiracy mining subterraneonsly
beneath the very feet of their accursed oppressors whispers of a great de-
liverer at hand whose mysterious Labarum, or mighty banner of the Cross,
was already dimly descried throngh northern mists, and whose eagles were
already scenting the carnage and ' savour of death ' from innumerable hosts
of Moslems whispers of a revolution which was again to call, as with the
trumpet of resurrection, from the grave, the land of Timoleon and Epamin-
ondas ; such were the preludings, low and deep, to the tempestuous over-
ture of revolt and patriotic battle which now ran through every nook of \
Greece, and caused every ear to tingle. " /
The following is an example of his description of sublime natural '
phenomena. It occurs as a similitude :
"Has the reader witnessed, or has he heard described, the sudden burst
the explosion, one might say by which a Swedish winter passes into
pring, and spring simultaneously into summer ? The icy sceptre of winter
does not there thaw and melt away by just gradations : it is broken, it is
shattered, in a day, in an hour, and with a violence brought home to every
sense. No second type of resurrection, so mighty or so affecting, is mani-
fested by nature in southern climates. Such is the headlong tumult, such
the ' torrent rapture ' by which life is let loose amongst the air, the earth,
and the waters under the earth. Exactly what this vernal resurrection is in
E
66 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
manifestations of power and life, by comparison with climates that have no
winter; such, and marked with features as distinct, was," &c.
As an example of his power of -depicting horrors, take his
account of the sack of Enniscorthy
"Next came a scene which swallowed up all distinct or separate features
in its frantic confluence of horrors. All the loyalists of Enniscorthy, all the
gentry for miles around who had congregated in that town as a centre of
security, were summoned at that moment, not to an orderly retreat, but to
instant flight. At one end of the street were seen the rebel pikes, and bay-
onets, and fierce faces, already gleaming through the smoke ; at the other
end volumes of fire, surging and billowing from the thatched roofs, and
bla/ing rafters beginning to block up the avenues of escape. Then began
the agony and uttermost conflict of what is worst and what is best in
human nature. Then was to be seen the very delirium of fecr, and the
very delirium of vindictive malice private and ignoble hatred, of ancient
origin, shrouding itself in the mask of patriotic wrath ; the tiger-glare
of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs and the never-to-be-for-
gotten ignominy of stripes and personal degradation ; panic, self-palsied by
its own excess ; flight, eager or stealthy, according to the temper ana the
means ; volleying pursuit ; the very frenzy of agitation, under every mode
of excitement ; and hero and there the desperation of maternal love vic-
torious and supreme above all lower passions. I recapitulate and gather
under general abstractions many an individual anecdote reported by those
who were on that day present in Enniscorthy; for at Ferns, not far off, and
deeply interested in all those transactions, I had private friends, intimate
participators in the trials of that fierce hurricane, and joint sufferers with
those who suffered most."
It is this " recapitulation and gathering under general abstrac-
tions " that raises the passage above those hideous accumulations
of horrible particulars faithfully reported by newspaper correspon-
dents from seats of war. His "Revolt of the Tartars" is a good
example of sustained grandeur of narrative and description ; there
also he abstains from individual horrors, and raises the imagination
to dwell with awe upon the passions raging through the strife.
^ II. Let us now constitute a special section for his peculiar flights
of sublimity, not because they are essentially different from the
preceding, but because they really have, what they claim to have,
^l^t^leme^it^f_rje^uiiarity ; because^ in short, the^are experi-
mentaL '.
It is sometimes said that De Quincey claims to be the originator
of impassioned prose. He makes no such claim. He knew as
well as anybody that impassioned prose had been written long
before his day, by Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, Milton,
Burke, and others. 1 What he did claim was to be the author of
a " mode of_ impassioned prose ranging under no precedents that he
was'aware^f in any literature." Jie speaks of the utter sterility
1 Two, .t least, of his impassioned apostrophes are modelled upon Sir Walter
Raleigh's famous apoctrophe to Death.
SUBLIMITY. 67
of universal literature, not in impassioned prose, but in " one de-
partment of impassioned prose." That department may be de-
scribed with sufficient precision as "impassioned autobiography." '
Why cajl this a special department, and speak of it as a haz-
ardous experiment ? The specialty consists in describing incidents
of purely personal interest in language suited to their magnitude
as they appear in the eyes of the writer ; and the danger is, as we
have had occasion to notice incidentally (p. 59), that readers be
unsympathetic, and refuse to interest themselves in the writer's
personal feelings. The specialty is undoubtedly considerable, and
so is the danger. That De Quincey succeeded was shown by the
popularity of his autobiographical works.
The mere splendour of such a style as De Quincey's would, to
readers prepared to enjoy it, overcome a great amount of distaste-
fulness in the subject. But apart from the mechanical execution,
he showed himself sensible of the chief danger in the treatment of
such themes. That danger is, the intrusion of personal vanity.
" Any expression of personal vanity, intruding upon impassioned
records, is fatal to their effect, as being incompatible with that
absorption of spirit and that self-oblivion in which only deep
passion originates, or can find a genial home." If the autobio-
grapher steps aside from the record of his feelings to compare
them with the feelings of other people, and to make out that he
has been honoured, afflicted, or agitated above other people, every
reader's self-conceit takes the alarm, and forthwith scans the writer
with cynical antipathy. De Quincey is on his guard against mak-
ing such a blunder! He does not, as Mr Tennyson sometimes
jloes, exhibit^ his sufferings in comparison with, th ffflffaripgs o?
"other men, and claim for the incidents of his life an affinity TritE
the most tragical events incident to frail humanity. He represses
every suggestion that he regards the events of his life as other
than commonplace in the eye of an impartial observer. He is
intent upon expounding them simply as they affected him ; con-
scious all the time that to other men the events of their life are
of equal magnitude, and that he must not egotistically challenge
comparison ; knowing, as an artist, that any expression of personal
vanity, any appearance of pluming himself upon his experience,
is fatal to the effect of the composition.
We need not fill up our limited space with quotations from a
book so well known as the Opium Confessions, and now published
at sixpence. One only will be given, and that as having already
been alluded to. The reader will notice that our author is
wholly engrossed with his suffering and his 'sudden resolution,
and endeavours only to make his case vividly intelligible; there
is no trace of boastful comparison with the experience of other
people :
68 THOMAS DE QUINCET.
" But now, at last, came over me, from the mere excess of bodily suffering
and mental disappointments, a frantic and rapturous reagency In tho
United States the case is well known, and many times has been described
by travellers, of that furious instinct which, under a secret call for saline
variations of diet, drives all the tribes of buffaloes for thousands of miles to
the common centre of the 'Salt-licks.' Under such a compulsion does the
locust, under such a compulsion does the leeming, traverse its mysterious
path. They are deaf to danger, deaf to the cry of battle, deaf to the trum-
pets of death. Let the sea cross their path, let armies with artillery bar the
road, even these terrific powers can arrest only by destroying ; and tho
most frightful abysses, up to the very last menace of engulfment, up to the
very instant of absorption, have no power to alter or retard the line of their
inoxomble advance.
"Such an instinct it was, such a rapturous command even so potent,
and, alas! even so blind that, under the whirl of tumultuous indignation
and of new-born hope, suddenly transfigured my whole being. In the
twinkling of an eye, I came to an adamantine resolution not as if issuing
from any act or any choice of my own, but as if positively received fnftn
some dark oracular legislation external to myself.
Pathos.
From the prevailing majesty of his diction, De Quincey's pathos
is rarely of a homely order. In some of his papers, as in the
" Military Nun," there are touching little strokes of half-humorous
tenderness. But his most characteristic pathos is impassioned
regret for departed nobleness ; in which case he blends with his
expressions of sorrow a splendid glorification of the object, so that
the mind is at once saddened and filled with ideas of sublimity.
The impassioned apostrophes of the Opium Confessions are toler-
ably well known. We may therefore choose an example from a
composition less generally known his paper on " Joan of Arc " :
"What is to be thought of her ? What is to be thought of the poor shep-
herd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that like the Hebrew
shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea rose suddenly out of the
quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep
pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more peril-
ous station at the right hand of kings? . . . Pure, innocent, noble-
hearted girl ! whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth
and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for thy truth, that
never once no, not for a moment of weakness didst thou revel in the vision
of coronets and honour from man. Coronets for thee ! Oh no ! Honours, if
they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. Daughter of
Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleep-
ing the sleep of the dead. Call her, king of France, but she will not hear
thee ! Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but
she will be found en contumace. When the thunders of universal France,
as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd
girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have
been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to die, that was thy portion in
this life ; that was thy destiny ; and not for a moment was it hidden from
thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short ; and the sloop which is in the grave is
PATHOS HUMdUR. 69
long. Let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly
dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long. This pure creature
pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she
was pure in senses more obvious never once did this holy- child, as re-
garded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to '
meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death ; she saw
not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators'
without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surg-
ing smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye
that lurked but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth broke
loose from artificial restraints, these might not be apparent through the
mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to death, that
she heard for ever."
As an example of a pathetic apostrophe, in a less touching but
still impressive key, take his reminiscence of Edward Irving, from
one of his unreprinted papers :
" He was the only man of our times who realised one's idea of Paul preach-
ing at Athens, or defending himself before King Agrippa. Terrific meteor !
unhappy son of fervid genius, which mastered thyself even more than the
rapt audiences which at one time hung upon thy lips ! were the cup of life
once again presented to thy lips, wouldst thou drink again ? or wouldst thou
not rather turn away from it with shuddering abomination ? Sleep, Boan-
erges, and let the memory of man settle only upon thy colossal powers,
without a thought of those intellectual aberrations which were more power-
ful for thy own ruin than for the misleading of others 1 "
Humour.
Our authors " Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts," be-
longs to a vein of irony peculiarly his own the humour of bring-
ing the ideas of Fine Art and ordinary business into ludicrous
collision with solemn or horrible transactions. An extract or two
from the beginning of this paper will give an idea of its character.
It is preceded by an " Advertisement of a man morbidly virtuous,"
which begins thus
" Most of us who read books, have probably heard of a society for the
promotion of vice, of the Hell-Fire Club, founded in the last century by Sir
Francis Dashwood, &c. At Brighton, I think it was, that a society was
formed for the suppression of virtue. That society was itself suppressed ;
but I am sorry to say that another exists in London, of a character still more
atrocious. In tendency, it may be denominated a society for the encourage-
ment of murder ; but, according to their own delicate eixpj] /tr fibs, it is styled,
The Society of Connoisseurs in Murder. The}' profess to be curious in homi-
cide ; amateurs and dilettanti in the various modes of carnage ; and, in short,
murder-fanciers. Every fresh atrocity of that class which the police annals
of Europe bring up, they meet and criticise as they would a picture, statue,
or other work of /art. But I need not trouble myself with any attempt to
describe the spirit of their proceedings, as the reader will collect that much
better from one of the monthly lectures read before the society last year.
This has fallen into my hands accidentally, in spite of all the vigilanca
exercised < keep their transactions from the public eye."
70 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
The " morbidly virtuous " advertiser concludes by saying that
he has not yet heard of the society offering prizes for a well-
executed murder, but that " undoubtedly their proceedingsHend
to that." The atrocious lecture thus exposed to the eye of the
public begins as follows :
" GENTLEMEN, I have had the honour to he appointed by your committee
to the trying task of reading the Williams' Lecture on Murder considered as
one of the l ( 'ine Arts, a task which might be easy enough three or four
centuries ago, when the art was little understood, and few great models hail
been exhibited ; but in this age, when masterpieces of excellence have been
.executed by professional men, it must be evident, that in the style of criti-
cism applied to them, the public will look for something of a corresponding
improvement. Practice and theory must advance pari passu. People begin
to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than
two blockheads to kill and be killed a knife a purse and ft dark lane.
Design, gejitlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now
deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature. Mr Williams has exalted
the ideal of murder to all of us ; and to me, therefore, in particular, has
deepened the arduousness of my task. Like ^Eschylus or Milton in poetry,
like Michael Angelo in painting, he has carried his art to a point of colossal
sublimity ; and, as Mr Wordsworth observes, has in a manner ' created the
taste by which he is to be enjoyed.' To sketch the history of the art and to
examine his principles critically, now remains as a duty for the connoisseur,
and for judges of quite another stamp from his Majesty's Judges of Assize."
The humour is kept up through fifty-seven pages. 1
The " Williams' Lecture " is the crowning achievement of his
humour. His works contain many occasional touches, in the same
vein. He is frequently jocular on the subject of death. Thus
" In like manner, I do by no means deny that some truths have been
delivered to the world in regard to opium : thus, it has been repeatedly
affirmed by the learned that opium is a tawny brown in colour and this,
take notice, I grant ; secondly, that it is rather dear, which also I grant for
in my time East India opium has been three guineas a-pound, and Turkey
eight : and, thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most probably you
must do what is disagreeable to any man of regular habits viz., die."
Again, alluding to Savage Landor's contumacy at school :
" ' Roberte the Deville :' see the old metrical romance of that name : it
belongs to the fourteenth century, and was printed some thirty years ago,
with wood engravings of the illuminations. Roberte, however, took the
liberty of murdering his schoolmaster. But could he well do less ? Being
a reigning Duke's son, and after the rebellious schoolmaster had said
' Sir, ye bee too bolde :
And therewith took a rodde hym for to chaste.'
Upon which the meek Robin, without using any bad language as the school-
master had done, simply took out a long dagger ' hym for to chaste,' whicli
he did effectually. The schoolmaster gave no bad language after that. "
1 The paper occurs in vol. iv. of the Collected Edition. This volume, contain,
ing also the " Revolt of the Tartars, "the "Templar's Dialogues," and the "Vision
of Sudden Death," affords good examples of all the qualities of his style.
HUMOUR MELODY AND HARMONY. 71
It must not be supposed that De Quincey's humour consists
aolely in this playing with dread ideas. His works, as we noticed
in sketching his character, overflow with good-natured humour of
every description. It is often of that strongly individual kind-
which only intimate sympathisers can tolerate ; strangers call it
impertinent, flippant, affected. Take, for example, one of his
playful apostrophes to historical names :
" Sam Parr ! I love you. . I said so once before. But per 'stringing, which
was a favoured word of your own, was a no less favoured act. You also in
your lifetime perstringed many people, some of whom perstringed you, Sam,
smartly in return."
"I (said Augustus Csesar) found Rome built of brick ; but I left it built
of marble. Well, my man, we reply, for a wondrously little chap, you did
what in Westmoreland they call a good darroch (day's work) ; and if navvies
had beejt wanted in those days, you should have had outvote to a certainty.
But Caius Julius, even under such a limitation of the comparison, did a
thing as much transcending this," &c.
We must also give a specimen of his humorous " slangy " out-
rages on the dignity of criticism. The following occurs in his
" Brief Appraisal of Greek Literature," which has not been re-
printed :
' ' But all this extent of obligation amongst later poets of Greece to Homer
serves less to argue his opulence than their penury. And if, quitting the
one great blazing jewel, the Urim and Thurnmim of the Iliad" [Achilles],
"you descend to individual passages of poetic effect ; and if amongst these
a fancy should seize you of asking for a specimen of the sublime in particular,
what is it that you are offered by the critics ? Nothing that we remember
beyond one single passage, in which the God Neptune is described in a
steeplechase, and ' making play ' at a terrific pace. And certainly enough
is exhibited of the old boy's hoofs, and their spanking qualities, to warrant
our backing him against .a railroad for a rump and dozen ; but, after all,
there is nothing to grow frisky about, as Longinus does, who gets up the
steam of a bluu-stocking enthusiasm, and boils us a regular gallop of ranting,
in which, like the conceited snipe upon the Liverpool railroad, he thinks
himself to run a match with Sampson ; and whilst affecting to admire Homer,
is manifestly squinting at the reader to see how far he admires his own
nourish of admiration ; and, in the very agony of his frosty raptures, is
quite ( at leisure to look out for a little private traffic of rapture on his own
account. But it won't do ; this old critical posture-master (whom, if Aurelius
hanged, surely he knew what he was about) may as well put up his rapture
pipes, and (as Lear says) ' not squiny ' at us ; for let us ask Master Longinus,
in what earthly respect do these great strides of Neptune exjceed Jack with
his seven-league boots ? Let him answer that, if he can. We hold that
Jack has the advantage."
Melody and Harmony,
The melody of De Quincey's prose is pre-eminently rich and
stately. He takes rank with Milton as one of our greatest mas-
ters of stately cadence, as well as of sublime composition. If one
may trust one's ear for a general impression, Milton's melody ia
72 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
sweeter and more varied ; but for magnificent effects, at least in
prose, the palm must probably be assigned to De Quincey. In
some of De Quincey's grandest passages the language can be com-
pared only to the swell and crash of an orchestra.
It need hardly be added that the harmony between his rhythm
and his subject-matter is most striking in the sublime flights.
Taste.
De Quincey has been accused of crossing the bounds of good
taste in certain respects. I His digressions and footnotes have been
objected to. i- His punctilious precision in the use of terms has been
called pedantic. -*He has been censured for carrying to excess what
we have described as his favourite figure./ But especially he has
been visited with severe condemnation for his offences in the pur-
suit of comic effect more particularly in the use of slang. A
recent critic has gone the length of describing his " slangy" apos-
trophes as " exquisite foolery."
KINDS OP COMPOSITION.
Description.
Though so many of De Quincey's papers are descriptive, and are
properly designated sketches, he has really left us very little de-
, tailed description of external nature. The reason is to be found
in his character. His interest was almost wholly engrossed by
man. The description that he excelled in was description of the
human form, feelings, and manners.
Where he does attempt the description of still life, notwithstand-
ing his natural clearness and order, he is much inferior to Carlyle.
He has one or two good points. He gives right and left in his
pictures, and brings in such touches of precision as " standing on
a different radius of my circular prospect, but at nearly the same
distance:" which is very significant, if not too scholastic. But
if we take even such a studied piece as his description of the valley
of Easedale, at the beginning of his " Kecollections of the Lakes,"
vol. ii., we miss the vividness of a master of the descriptive art
We receive no idea of such a fundamental fact as the size of the
valley : we are, indeed, presented rather with the feelings and
; reflections of a poetically-minded spectator, than with the material
aspects of the scene.
Generally speaking, he describes nature only in its direct or
".figurative relations to man. A scene is interesting as "the very
same spectacle, unaltered in a single feature, which once at the
same hour was beheld by the legionary Roman from his embattled
: ;camp, or by the roving Briton in his ' wolf-skin vest' " A hamlet
DESCRIPTION. 73
of seven cottages clustering together round a lonely highland tarn,
is interesting as suggesting seclusion from the endless tumults and
angry passions of human society ; the declining light of the after-
noon, from its association with the perils and dangers of the
night. Thus it happens that often, instead of describing he
really expounds expounds the thoughts that arise from the
general features of a scene by force of association or of simili-
tude. We see this in hia description of the English Lake
scenery :
" But more even than Anne Radcliffe had the landscape-painters, so many
and so various, contributed to the glorification of the English Lake district ;
drawing out and impressing upon the heart the sanctity of repose in its shy
recesses its Alpine grandeur in such passes as those of Wastdalehead,
Langdalehead, Borrowdale, Kirkstone, Hawsdale, &c., together with the
monastic peace which seems to brood over its peculiar form of pastoral life,
so much nobler (as Wordsworth notices) in its stern simplicity and con-
tinual conflict with danger hidden in the vast draperies of mist overshadow-
ing the hills, and amongst the armies of snow and hail arrayed by fierce
northern winters, than the effeminate shepherd's life in the classical Arcadia, /
or in the flowery pastures of Sicily. "
An indifferent observer of nature, De Quincey was minute and
precise in his observation of human beings. Every face that he
niet he seems to have watched with the vigilant attention of a
Boswell. He has described the persons of many of his contem-
poraries. His most careful portraits are, perhaps, his Lake com-
panions Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Wilson. To these
must be added his delineation of the notorious murderer Williams.
The reader that desires to see how watchful an eye he had for the
smallest particularities of shape, look, and bearing, will do well to_
read his prefatory note on Coleridge, vol. xi
It is in the description of the feelings that he particularly excelsTl
Not only is he deeply learned in the proper vocabulary of the
feelings ; he had acquired by close study, and employs with
exquisite skill, a profound knowledge of the outward manifesta-
tions of feeling in tone, feature, gesture, and conduct. In reading
motives from what he would have called the dumb hieroglyphics
of observed or recorded behaviour, and in tracing the succession
of feelings that must have passed under given circumstances, he
is one of our greatest masters. In this point more perhaps than in
any other, he challenges the closest attention of the student.
A good specimen of his power is the passage in the Marr
murder where he pictures Mary's feelings on her returning to
the door and finding it locked:
" Mary rang, and at the same time very gently knocked. She had no
fear of disturbing her master or mistress ; them she made sure of finding
still up. Her anxiety was for the baby, who, being disturbed, might again
74 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
rob her mistress of a night's rest ; and she well knew that with three people
all anxiously awaiting her return, and by this time, perhaps, seriously un-
easy at her delay, the least audible whisper from herself would in a moment
bring one of them to the door. Yet how is this ? To her astonishment- -
but with the astonishment came creeping over her an icy horror no stir nor
murmur was heard ascending from the kitchen. At this moment came back
upon her, with shuddering anguish, the indistinct image, of the stranger in
the loose dark coat whom she had seen stealing along under the shadowy
lamplight, and too certainly watching her master's motions. Keenly she
now reproached herself that under whatever stress of hurry she had not
acquainted Mr Marr with the suspicious appearances. Poor girl ! she did
not then know that, if this communication could have availed to put Marr
upon his guard, it had reached him from another quarter ; so that her own
omission, which had in reality arisen under her hurry to execute her master's
commission, could not be charged with any bad consequences. But all such
reflections this way or that were swallowed up at this point in overmastering
panic. That her double summons could have been unnoticed this solitary
fart in one moment made a revelation of horror. One person might have
fallen asleep, but two but three that was a mere impossibility. And even
supposing all three together with the baby locked in sleep, still how un-
accountable was this utter, utter silence ! Most naturally at this moment
something like hysterical horror overshadowed the poor girl ; and now, at
last, she rang the bell with the violence that belongs to sickening terror.
This done, she paused. Self-command enough she still retained, though
fast and fast it was slipping away from her, to bethink herself that, if any
overwhelming accident had compelled both Marr and his npprentice-boy to
leave the house in order to summon surgical aid from opposite quarters a
thing barely supposable still, even in that case, Mrs Marr and her infant
would be left, and some murmuring reply, under any extremity, would be
elicited from the poor mother. To pause, therefore, to impose stern silence
upon herself, so as to leave room for the possible answer to this final appeal,
became a duty of spasmodic effort. Listen, therefore, poor trembling heart ;
listen, and for twenty seconds be as still as death. Still as death she was ;
and during that dreadful stillness, when she hushed her breath that she
might listen, occurred an incident of killing fear, that to her dying day
would never cease to renew its echoes in her ear."
Narrative,
De Quincey never attempted any continuous history. Taking
his own division of history into Narrative, Scenical, and Philo-
sophical, we see that he had special qualifications for the two
last modes. But he wanted industry to take up a national history
and pursue it continuously through all its stages. What he might
have done we can guess only from speculations recorded incident-
ally in such papers as his account of the Csesars, or of Cicero, or
Charlemagne, and from the spectacular sketch of the Revolt of
the Tartars.
He wrote several short biographies. In these he has at least
the negative merit of not chronicling unimportant facts. They
can hardly be called narratives ; there is in them as little as
possible of anything that could be called narrative art. They
are, properly speaking, discussions of perplexities that have
EXPOSITION. 75
gathered about the story of the individual life, and descriptions
of the various features of the character.
In his most imaginative tales, such as the "Spanish Military
Nun," the facts are altogether secondary to the poetical embel-
lishments are but the bare cloth on which he works his many-
coloured tapestry of pathos, humour, and soaring rhapsodies.
Exposition.
De Quincey possessed some of the best qualities of an expositor,
coupled with considerable defects.
The great obstacle to his success in exposition was the want of
simplicity. He was, as we have seen, too persistently scholastic
for the ordinary reader, making an almost ostentatious use of
logical forms and scientific technicalities.
As his studious clearness is marred by an unnecessary use of
unfamiliar words and forms of expression, so others of his merits
in exposition must be stated with some abatement.
He was aware of the value of iterating a statement. " A man,''
he says, " who should content himself with a single condensed
enunciation of a perplexed doctrine, would be a madman and a
felo de se, as respected his reliance upon that doctrine." Yet he
considered iteration a departure " from the severities of abstract
discussion." " In the senate, and for the same reason in a news-
paper, it is a virtue to reiterate your meaning : tautology becomes
a merit ; variation of the words, with a substantial identity of the
sense and dilution of the truth, is oftentimes a necessity." But
in a book, he held, repetition is rather a blemish, seeing that
the reader may " return to the past page if anything in the
present depends upon it." In this he was probably unpractical :
doubtless the reader is saved much weariness by judicious re-
petition, although of course less is needed in a book than in a
speech.
He knew also the value of stating the counter-proposition. In
upholding the Bicardian law that the value of a thing is deter-
mined by the quantity of the labour that produces it, he broadly
declares that the mere statement of the doctrine brings the student
not one step nearer the truth, unless he is told what it is designed
to contradict namely, that the value of the thing is not deter-
mined by the value of the producing labour.
When he is thoroughly in earnest, and resolved to make an
abstruse point clear to the meanest capacity, he knows how to
proceed by means of simple examples and illustrations. The mis-
fortune is, that he is not always alive to the abstruseness of the
question he happens to be dealing with, and consequently wears
to many readers an air of repulsive incomprehensibility.
76 ' THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
His power of clothing a dry subject with interest appears ad-
vantageously in his " Templar's Dialogues on Political Economy."
In respect of varied interest, this fragment is equal to the dia-
logues of Plato.
In consequence chiefly of his abstruseness, he cannot be recom-
mended as a model to the popular expositor. Yet his command
of language, his precision, and his power of imparting interest,
make him a profitable study if the student knows what to imitate
and what to avoid.
CHAPTER IL
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY,
I800 1859.
THIS most popular of modern prose writers was born on the 25th
of October 1800, at Kothley Temple in Leicestershire, the residence
of his uncle-in-law and name-father, Thomas Babington.
His father, Zachary Macaulay, was a man of some note, and was
judged worthy of a monument in Westminster Abbey. The son
of a Scotch minister in Dumbartonshire, he made a moderate for-
tune in Jamaica and Sierra Leone, and on his return to England
in 1799, became a principal supporter of the Society for the Aboli-
tion of Slavery. A dry taciturn man, writing a plain terse style,
he bore little outward resemblance to his distinguished son ; but
he had the same untiring powers of work, and the same extraordi-
nary strength of memory. He edited the newspaper of the Aboli-
tionists, and was the great master of the statistics employed for
the agitation of the public mind. The historian's mother, a pupil
of the sisters of Hannah More, was also a person of talent ; to her
he seem* to have owed his buoyant constitution.
Never, to use his own favourite mode of expression, was a child
brought into this world under circumstances more favourable to
the development of literary talent. His parents belonged to a
small sect of earnest and accomplished persons, closely knit to-
gether by a common object, and zealously devoted to their adopted
mission. With the earliest dawn of intelligence he heard imperial
policy discussed at his father's table, and the affairs of the nation
arranged, not by ideal politicians, but by men actively engaged in
public business such men as Henry Thornton, Thomas Babington,
and Wilberforce. He saw his father preparing their printed organ,
and at an early age was taught by that encyclopedic statistician
78 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
the argumentative value of facts. There being the closest inter-
course between the families of the Clapham sect, a boy of promis-
ing abilities met with much attention, and many willing instruc-
tors of his youthful curiosity. Besides, young "Tom," bright and
loquacious, was an especial favourite with Hannah More, " the
high priestess of the brotherhood," and had his fancy quickened
and his ambition fired by her anecdotes of the literary men of last
century.
He was not sent to any of the great public schools. He received
his earliest instruction at a small school in Clapham. " At the
age of twelve he was placed under the care of the Rev. Mr Preston,
first at Shelford, afterwards near Buntingford, in the neighbour-
hood of Cambridge." With Mr Preston he seems to have remained
until ready to enter the University.
In his nineteenth year he began residence at Trinity College,
Cambridge. In after-life he used to mention with regret that at
College he spent very little time on the prevailing study of mathe-
matics; but classics he prosecuted with such success, that in 1821
he gained the high distinction of the Craven scholarship. A large
part of his time was given to pursuits not so strictly academical ;
he was a distinguished orator at the Union, and twice carried
away the Chancellor's medal for English verse in 1819 for a
poem on Pompeii, and in 1821 for a poem on Evening. He took
his degree of B.A. in 1822, and in October 1824 was elected Fellow
of his College.
Very soon after taking his degree, and while waiting in College
for his fellowship, he set himself strenuously to fulfil his ambition
in literature. His first efforts were contributed to ' Knight's Quar-
terly Magazine,' between June 1823 and November 1824. From
these early productions we can see that he did not work at random,
but to some extent pursued definite objects. Thus, in his " Frag-
ments of a Roman Tale," and his " Scenes from Athenian Revels,"
we can discern a purpose a purpose that he often recommends as
the highest aim of the historian, namely, to realise the private
life of the bygone generations. Again, from his studies of Dante,
Petrarch, Cowley, Milton, and the Athenian orators, we may infer
that he worked upon the orthodox plan for literary aspirants, of
making himself familiar with the leading masters of style in dif-
ferent languages. Then we have an indication of a mechanical
plan of working. His contributions appear in pairs a grave com-
position coupled with something lighter. If this was not the
arrangement of the publisher, we may suppose that he sought the
relief of variety, and that from tbe first he worked upon a deliberate
resolve to excel in all kinds of composition.
In 1824 he made his first appearance as a public speaker. At
an Abolitionist meeting in Freemasons' Hall, he seconded one of
LIFE. 79
the resolutions, and his speech is said to have created some talk
among outsiders.
The performance that first brought him conspicuously into notice
was his article on Milton, contributed to the ' Edinburgh Review '
in August 1825. He was called to the bar in 1826 ; but though
he took chambers in the Temple and joined the Northern Circuit,
he probably gave little time to legal business, and he made no
name as a barrister. It was his literary power that found him
patronage. In 1827 he received from Lord Lyndhurst a commis-
eionership of bankrupts. And in 1830, through the influence of
Lord Lansdowne, he was returned for the borough of Calne, and
entered the House of Commons.
In the Reform debates of 1831 and 1832 he was one of the most
effective speakers. He went strongly and unreservedly with the
Whigs. In 1832, as an acknowledgment of his zeal for Reform,
he was returned by the newly enfranchised borough of Leeds.
In the same year he was appointed Secretary to the Board of
Control In the first session of the Reformed Parliament he
spoke against the repeal of the union with Ireland, in favour of
a bill for removing the civil disabilities of the Jews, and in favour
of a bill for depriving the East India Company of their exclusive
trade with China and other commercial privileges. In 1834 he
was made president of a new law commission for India, and a
member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta. In discharge of the
duties of these lucrative offices he spent two years and a half in
India, returning in 1838.
On his return from India he professed himself anxious to with-
draw from politics, and devote his whole time to literature. He
had not ceased, even when in India, to contribute to the ' Edin-
burgh Review ' ; but he wished now to settle down to his great
project, the ' History of England from the Accession of James II.'
This could not be. His party could npt yet dispense with him.
He was requested to stand for Edinburgh, and was elected in 1839,
after very little opposition.
Re-entering Parliament, he was appointed Secretary at War, and
retained the office till the fall of the Melbourne Ministry in 1841.
In the general election of 1841 he was re-elected for Edinburgh
without opposition. On the return of the Whigs to power in
1846, he obtained the office of Paymaster-General, and a seat in
the Cabinet of Lord John RusselL Neither in office nor in opposi-
tion was he a silent member. His voice was heard on all questions
of importance. On all party questions he stood by his party. He
defended the war with China in 1840, assisted 'in beating down the
Chartists, assailed Lord Ellenborough's administration of India,
supported Lord John Russell's motion for an inquiry into the
state of Ireland, and argued against loading slave-grown sugar
80 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
with heavy duties. On questions less strictly matters of party, he
showed Ms natural liberality of spirit supported the increased
Maynooth Grant and the abolition of Theological Tests in the Scot-
tish Universities, and resented in very strong language the attempt
to deprive certain Dissenters of their chapels on the ground that
they did not hold the opinions of the original possessors. In 1841
he carried a change in the laws of copyright In 1846 he sup-
ported an unsuccessful bill for limiting the labour of young persons
in factories to ten hours a-day.
In 1842 he published his ' Lays of Ancient Rome.' Both before
and after this he wrote occasional verses. Though not quite so pop-
ular as his prose, his poetry was very widely read. Yet most people
would gladly forego his Lays for another volume of the History.
In 1844 he wrote the last of his brilliant essays to the 'Edin-
burgh Review.' Ambitious of distinction as an orator and a
statesman, he had never renounced his literary ambition. It was
chiefly on his writings that he depended for durable fame. Even
during his official residence in India Ije found time to write for .
the Review. These periodical contributions were now stopped, not
because he henceforth threw himself into politics with undivided
ardour, but because he was setting in earnest to his projected
History.
In 1846 he was at the height of his political success. In 1847
came a change. He had kept his seat for Edinburgh since 1839.
He had been re-elected in 1841 without opposition. But of late
his conduct had been far from satisfactory to the mass of the elec-
tors. He had given deep offence to churchmen of all sects by the
breadth of his views. He had spoken in most contemptuous terms
of the persecution of Sir David Brewster by the Established clergy ;
he had roused the hatred of the Evangelicals by advocating the
Maynooth Grant, and still more by his derisive mention of the
"bray" of Exeter Hall, and the "prescriptive right" of its fre-
quenters "to talk nonsense." In the general election of 1847,
therefore, he stood third on the poll. This may be considered the
end of his political life. He refused to offer himself for another
seat, and retired to his study and his books. In 1852 the electors
of Edinburgh returned him at their own expense, unasked, and
without putting him to the trouble of a canvass ; but he took
little part in the business of the House. His only memorable
speech was on the exclusion of the Master of the Rolls from the
House of Commons, on which occasion he is said to have turned
the scale by a hundred votes.
In 1849 appeared the first two volumes of his History. Very
few books have been bought with such avidity. There was a
demand for the work such as had not been known since the daya
of Byron and Scott.
LIFE. 81
The second two volumes were not published till 1855. Expec-
tation had been on tiptoe, and the rush was almost greater than
for the first instalment.
While carrying on his History, he turned aside to write for the
' Encyclopedia Britannica ' some biographies that he had more or
less crudely sketched in his ' Essays ' the Lives of " Atterbury "
(1853), "Banyan" (1854), "Goldsmith" (1856), "Johnson"
(1856), and "Pitt" (1859). These works are highly finished,
and are considered by many to be the most favourable specimens
of his style.
Meantime honours were coming in to crown his labours. In
1849 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow,
and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. The year 1857
was especially fruitful of such rewards to successful toil. In tliat
year he was elected a Foreign Member of the French Academy,
and of the Prussian Order of Merit, High Steward of Cam-
bridge ; and in the autumn he was raised to the peerage as Baron
Macaulay of Rothley the first literary man to receive such a
distinction.
He did not long enjoy his honours. His multifarious labours
began to tell upon him. He was threatened with one of the
maladies that too surely follow upon a life of excitement and
overstrained energy derangement of the action of the heart
Latterly lie was prohibited from public speaking : at his instal-
lation as High Steward of Cambridge he simply bowed his ac-
knowledgments, and made no speech. He had drafted and partly
written a fifth volume of his History, but did not live to publish
it. The last composition published during his life was his bio-
graphy of Pitt H e died at his residence, Holly Lodge, Kensington,
on the z8th of December 1859.
We cannot say of Macaulay himself what he said of Johnson
that we are as familiar with his personal appearance as with
the faces that have surrounded us from childhood. The explana-
tion probably is, that there was nothing in his appearance to
draw particular attention. He seems to have been a fair-com-
plexioned, good-looking man, about the middle height, full-bodied,
and with a tolerably firm carriage. He is described as " robust-
looking." Crabb Robinson says that his features were regular,
but that they had not the delicacy one expects to see in men
of genius and fine sensibility. His voice was strong and com-
manding, but its effect was marred by a quick and excited
articulation.
He had a vigorous constitution. He was one of the favoured
few that draw, as De Quincey says, the double prize of a fine
intellect ami a healthy stomach. Had he been more economical
f
82 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
of his strength, he might have lived much longer in full exercise
of his faculties.
It is often said that a man's powers cannot be fairly valued till
several generations after his death ; that his contemporaries and
their immediate posterity can seldom judge with impartiality.
Many persons repeat this dictum in something like the above
form without ever asking themselves, What kind of powers do
we mean ? If power is taken to mean intellectual power as dis-
played in books, the dictum is probably true. We can probably
judge better of the amount of intellect in a book than could have
been done by the writer's contemporaries. But while posterity
may give a juster award as respects the intellectual power shown
in a book, it is much more likely to be unfair in its judgment of
a man's general energy of intellect. Intellect may be thrown into
other things than books, and if a man dazzles the judgment of
his contemporaries, and obtains unmerited praise of his literary
productions, the reason in all likelihood is that literature is not
his only field of intellectual display.
Macaulay's brilliant command of expression, and confident and
plausible deliverances on every subject of human interest, furnish
a sufficient explanation of the extraordinary popularity of his
works. But undoubtedly the popular admiration of the man's
abilities was heightened by the current traditions of his oratory,
his powers of conversation, and his astonishing feats of memory.
Everything combined to convey the impression of amazing ver-
satility. Now, when his books are calmly judged, and his work
estimated by special authorities in the various fields that he
traversed with such confidence, there is a danger that we under-
value his powers, and estimate his whole intellectual force by
the part of it that was spent upon his books. If he wished his
fame to rest upon the quality, and not upon the quantity, of
his literary productions, he should have chosen a more limited
field, and not voraciously aspired to be pre-eminent in three such
departments as poetry, history, and criticism. And if he wished
his fame to rest upon his literary productions alone, whether in
their quantity or in their quality, he should not have dissipated
his energies so profusely in directions that are of little avail for
permanent literary renown. He aspired to eminence not only as a
man of letters, but as an orator and as a legislator. Besides all
this, attested by substantial documents, he spent, if we may credit
circulating traditions, an ordinary man's allowance of energy in
the excitement of conversation, and in the indulgence of an in-
continent appetite for reading. In conversation he did not give
and take like De Quincey : once started on a theme, he ran on
as in a set prelection, without break or pause. As regards his
reading, the report is that besides what he read for his literary
CHARACTER. 83
works, he went through thousands of novels, kept abreast of the
ballad literature of the streets, and attempted such freaks aa
reading the bulky volumes of Chrysostom. With all necessary
allowance for exaggeration, it is evident that his literary per-
formances are far from representing the whole of his dissipated
intellectual force.
Numerous testimonies are on record concerning his extraordinary
powers of memory. The hyperbolical expression that he forgot
nothing, while it goes very far beyond the truth, indicates signifi-
cantly what an impression he made on his contemporaries. It
is the kind of exaggeration that makes heroes out of pre-eminent
men. In his history he often quotes the substance of a document
instead of giving the exact words ; and the reason was, that he
often quoted from memory. Several of his essays, involving
extensive ranges of matter of fact, were written, by his own
statement, at a distance from books. Concerning his conversa-
tion, we have several authentic anecdotes. We learn from the
historian Prescott that he did not go prepared on a particular
subject, and watch his opportunity to bring it forward, but
fluently quoted a profusion of facts and dates on subjects in-
troduced by others. Washington Irving relates that, in historical
combats with Hallam, Macaulay quoted chapter and section as
if he had had the books before him. Another acquaintance tells
us that, being on one occasion convicted of a misquotation from
' Paradise Lost,' he soon after offered himself for examination,
undertaking to quote any passage suggested to him in the whole
poem. Moore's Diary contains several expressions of wonder at
the power of his memory. At one time in particular, says the
poet, " he astonished us by repeating old Irish slang ballads as
glibly as I used to do when a boy."
With such a plenitude of sheer retentiveness, he combined a
large share of the analogical faculty. He ranged freely through
the immense store of particulars that he had accumulated, drawing
parallels, analogies, an 1 figurative comparisons with vivacious
facility. Assert a proposition in art, politics, social science, in-
deed in any department of human knowledge, and without a
moment's hesitation lie would place before you similar propositions
from various authors, and hosts of confirmatory or contradictory
particulars. He would then, perhaps, state a view held by himself,
and support his position by a fertile array of instances, analogies,
and similitudes.
These brilliant powers were not without their natural weak-
nesses. He was so hurried a thinker, he was so enamoured of
mere movement, that he could not rest to analyse minutely, or to
make certain that his instances and comparisons were exactly
to the point. True, he had strong sense, and with his wide
84 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
command of facts was not likely to go far astray on practical
questions. But compare him with a calm, meditative, original
writer like De Quincey, and you become vividly aware of his
peculiar deficiency, as well as his peculiar strength ; you find a
more rapid succession of ideas and greater wealth of illustration,
but you miss the subtle casuistry, the exact and finished simili-
tudes, and the breaking up of routine views. No original opinion
requiring patient consideration or delicate analysis is associated
with the name of Macaulay. It better suited his stirring and
excitable nature to apply his dazzling powers of expression and
illustration to the opinions of others. He was quick to expose
false generalisations by producing contradictory instances, and
he often generalised for himself with the utmost boldness ; but
none of his original generalisations possess any importance. The
life of a misunderstood man like Goldsmith is a good test of a .
writer's power of breaking through false traditions. Macaulay's
Life of Goldsmith repeats many vulgar errors, and contains
nothing new except the opinion that Goldsmith was not an
ill-used man, but might have lived comfortably had he been
provident an opinion resulting from strong unsentimental sense,
coupled with a special eye for plain matters of fact. In his
similitudes and otherwise, he often errs against exact congruity.
Describing Dante's countenance, he places a " sullen and con-
temptuous curve " upon the lip, a " haggard and woful stare "
in the eye sullenness and contempt upon one feature, and hope-
less compassion upon another. Expounding the peculiarities of
Milton's similes, and enlarging especially upon " the extreme re-
moteness of the associations by which he acts upon the reader "
an expression, by the way, somewhat vague he illustrates his
meaning by saying that the poet "strikes the key-note, and
expects his hearers to make out the melody " a feat that v every
schoolboy " knows to be absurdly impossible, there being hundreds
of different melodies starting from the same key-note.
As regards the emotional side of the man. In his writings he
appears buoyant and hopeful, an optimist, looking on the bright
side of things, enthusiastic in his desire of progress, exultingly
sure of its fulfilment in these latter days, confident in his opinions,
warm and open in his expressions of like and dislike ; a man
" radiant," as Carlyle says, " with pepticity," without a trace
of misgiving, despondency, or sourness. His sympathies go all
with the vigorous and hopeful side of human nature ; he ignores
the miseries and difficulties of this life. He would have us believe
that human comfort is rapidly on the increase; that we are rapidly
nearing his millennium, where " employment is always plentiful,
wages always high, food always che;ip, and a large family is con-
OPINIONS. 85
sidered not as an encumbrance but as a blessing." " From the
oppressions of illiterate masters, and the sufferings of a degraded
peasantry," his mind always turns with delight to such concej>-
tions as " the vast magnificent cities, the ports, the arsenals, the
villas, the museums, the libraries, the marts filled with every
article of comfort or luxury, the factories swarming with artisans,
the Apennines covered with rich cultivation up to their very sum-
mits, the Po wafting the harvests of Lombardy to the granaries
of Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the furs of
Siberia to the palaces of Milan."
We spoke of De Quincey as a man of ever-active imagination,
often engaged in transmuting the scenes and characters of his
daily life into food for his aesthetic sensibilities. There does not
seem to have been much of this day-dreaming turn in Macaulay.
His energies were engrossed with actualities, and iu his over-
powering love of movement he hurried eagerly from one thing to
another, without staying to overlay them with superstructures of
the imagination. In his study he did not lie dreaming on a rug
before the fire with a book in his hand, subjecting every new idea
to a mental chemistry of analysis and synthesis, and using it as a
starting-point for speculations of his own, but sat in his chair or
walked through the room reading, writing, and revising with his
whole strength. The chief work of his imagination using the
word in a loose popular sense was to picture the scenes and
personages of ancient times and distant countries as they really
were the work of what may be called the historical imagination.
Of aesthetic imagination imagination properly so called, imagin-
ation as a creative or modifying faculty engaged in building up
objects of Fine Art he had little share. It was, one may say,
pushed aside by other mental activities, and what work it did
was done in a hurry. His warmest admirers cannot claim for him
a high degree of aesthetic culture. He was too much occupied
with facts to have time for it. His ' Lays of Ancient Rome '
are interesting rather historically than aesthetically. They afford
us vivid glimpses of Roman life and Italian scenery. The inci-
dents, the sayings, and the doings are of the garish order that
captivates the inexperienced taste.
Concerning his OPINIONS. In practical politics, as we have
seen, Macaulay adhered to the Whigs; and generally, in ques-
tions not identified with party, showed himself a friend to reli-
gious liberty, and to measures calculated to improve the condition
of the poorer classes. While he supported the Reform Bill, he
was averse to sweeping constitutional changes. The Radical party
was his especial aversion.
Theoretical politics he professed to regard with abhorrence. He
86 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
scoffed at " metaphysical " and "abstract" theories of government,
and treated with scorn the idea that the lawgiver can derive any
light from general principles of human nature. Doubtless he was
prejudiced against political theorists, because the chief theorists in
his day were Radicals. He himself theorised abundantly upon
general principles of human nature as, for example, in his ac-
count of the Italian States in the essay on Machiavelli ; and he
theorised under the disadvantage of not knowing that he did
theorise.
In his historical verdicts, he is accused of allowing his judgment
to be warped by party feeling. Perhaps too much has been made
of this. His attachment to certain ideas was probably stronger
than his attachment to party. He loved liberty, justice, tolera-
tion, and the fair fame of England, with the warmth of an ardent
nature : whoever did violence to these ideas, he hated as if a per-
sonal enemy. He hated Laud as a bigot, and Charles as a tyrant.
He admired Cromwell as the destroyer of a tyranny. He had not
the heart to denounce Cromwell's usurpation, partly because the
usurper used his power with moderation, and did not show a nar-
row partiality for his own sect, but, above all, because during the
Protectorate the name of England was dreaded and respected on
the Continent. He was a most ardent patriot; to be patriotic was
an unfailing passport to his favour : and such as had betrayed their
country were subjected to a jealous valuation, and let off with
scant acknowledgment of their virtues, and a thorough exposure
of their crimes.
He has left comparatively little literary criticism, and that little
is not at all valuable. His deliverance against Pope's " correct-
ness," in his Essay on Byron, is sometimes quoted. That his
pungent analogies drive very wide of the mark, the student will
see by reading the late Mr Conington's Essay on Pope, Oxford
Essays, 1858.
Though in no sense a man of science, he pronounces with his
usual confidence on questions of philosophy. He eulogises modern
science because it does not " disdain the humble office of minister-
ing to the comforts of mankind." But he sees little good in the
Inductive Method. Tt has, he says, " been practised ever since the
beginning of the world by every human being." He overlooks the
all-important fact tliat it has been practised only in simple cases,
and in those imperfectly, and that its sole pretension is to make
available for complicated problems principles that have been acted
upon and established in cases of greater simplicity. The following
is a sharp criticism from the pen of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a
determined enemy of superficial knowledge :
"I have read Maeaulay's article on Lord Bacon in the 'Edinburgh
Review.' It is written iu his usual sparkling, lively, antithetical style,
SENTENCES. 87
and the historical part of it is interesting and amusing. His remarks on
the ancient philosophy are for the most part shallow and ignorant in the
extreme ; his objections to the utility of logic are the stale commonplaces
which all the enemies of accurate knowledge, and the eulogists of coinmuii-
nense, practical men, &c. , have always been setting forth."
ELEMENTS OF STYLE
Vocabulary.
There is little to remark upon in Macaulay's vocabulary except
its copiousness. lie has no eccentricities of diction like J >e Quineey
or Caiiyle ; he employs neither slang nor scholastic technicalities,
and he np.vp.r nyfoig a new word. He "IHlTiflt fe said to use an ex-
cess of Latin words, and he is not a purist in the matter of Saxon.
His command of expression was proportioned to the extraordi-
nary compass of his memory. The copiousness appears not so
much in the Shakspearian form of accumulating synonyms one
upon another, as in a profuse way of repeating a thought in several
different sentences. This is especially noticeable in the opening
passages of some of his Essays. In his review of Southey, for
example, he starts an opinion that the laureate's forte was senti-
ment rather than reason, and luxuriates as if he never would have
done with his voluptuous repetitions of the titillating doctrine.
Sentences.
Macaulay's is a s^ylethj^tjnay .truly _^ e called "artificmlj" from
his excessive use of striking artifices of style balanced sentences,
abrupt transitions, and pointed figures of speech.
The peculiarities TJFuHnnWIISlHHinffTBrSyle are expressed in
such general terms as "abrupt," "pointed," "oratorical." We
shall not attempt to gather together separately all the elements
that justify these epithets ; but, following the order indicated in
the Introduction, the various particulars that go to the making of
the " abruptness " and the " point " will be noticed as we proceed.
His sentences have the compact finish produced by the frequent
occurrence of the periodic arrangement He is not uniformly
periodic ; he often prefers a loose structure, and he very rarely
has recourse to the forced inversions that we find occasionally in
De Quineey. Yet there is a sufficient interspersion of periodic
arrangements to produce an impression of firmness. Taken as a
whole, his style is one of the last that we should call loose.
We here speak of the periodic arrangement or structure as de-
fined in our Introduction (p. 5). If we take the word periodic in
its restricted sense, we cannot describe Macaulay as a composer in
the periodic style. The "periodic style," in its narrower sense,
implies long and heavy-laden sentences, and Macaulay's tendency
is towards the short and light.
88 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
Occasionally he uses the long oratorical climactic period, consist-
ing of a number of clauses in the same construction gradually in-
creasing in length so as to form a climax. Thus
" The energy of Innocent the Third, the zeal of the young orders of Francis
and Dominic, and the ferocity of the Crusaders, whom the priesthood let
loose on an un warlike population, crushed the Albigensiau Churchea. "
Again, in a sketch of the Reformation
' ' The study of the ancient writers, the rapid development of the pcwers
of the modern languages the unprecedented activity which was displayed in
every department of literature, the political state of Europe, the vices of the
Roman Court, the exactions of the Roman Chancery, the jealousy with
which the wealth and privileges of the clergy were naturally regarded by
laymen, the jealousy with which Italian ascendancy was naturally regarded
by men born on our side of the Alps all these things gave to the teachers of
the new theology an advantage which they perfectly understood how to use."
In the last example there are two climaxes in sound.
A large proportion of his sentences contain words and clauses in
formal balance ; but the effect of this would not be so striking were
it not that his composition contains so much antithesis in other
modes. The general predominance of antithesis we shall consider
in its place under Figures of Speech ; here we have to do properly
with balanced forms, whether embodying antithesis or not.
He makes considerable use of conventional balanced phrases for
amplifying the roll of the sentence. Thus " After full inquiry,
and impartial reflection ; " " men who have been tried by equally
strong temptations, and about whose lives we possess equally full
information ; " " no hidden causes to develop, no remote conse-
quences to predict ; " " very pleasing images of paternal tenderness
and filial duty ; " and so forth.
The following is an example of balance without antithesis. It
is valuable as an artificial mode of giving separate emphasis to
two things involved in the same argument a preventive against
confusion :
"Now it does not appear to us to be the first object that people should
al A-ays believe in the established religion, or be attached to the established
government. A religion may be false. A government may be oppressive.
And whatever support governments give to false religions, or religion to
oppressive governments, we consider as a clear evil."
While this mode of statement has undeniably its advantages, it
is obviously too startling an artifice to be often employed. The
two short sentences, interjected without connectives, are examples
of one element of our author's abruptness.
The following passages show balance combined with antithesis:
"Thus the successors of the old Cavaliers had turned demagogues; the
successors of the old Roundheads had turned courtiers. Ynt was it long
PARAGRAPHS. 89
before their mutual animosity began to abate ; for it is the nature of parties to
retain their original enmities far more firmly than their original principles.
During many years, a generation of Whigs, whom Sidney would have
spurned as slaves, continued to wage deadly war with a generation of Tories
whom Jeffreys would have hanged for Republicans."
"With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronicles of the middle
ages. Both readily found what they sought ; and both obstinately refused
to see anything but what they sought. The champions of the Stuarts could
easily point out instances of oppression exercised on the subject. The de-
fenders of the Roundheads could as easily produce instances of determined
and successful Resistance offered to the Crown. The Tories quoted from
ancient writings expressions almost as servile as were heard from the pulpit
of Mai n waring. The Whigs discovered expressions as bold and severe as
any that resounded from the judgment-seat of Bradshaw. One set of writers
adduced numerous instances in which kings had extorted money without the
authority of Parliament. Another set cited cases in which the Parliament
had resumed to itself the power of inflicting punishment on kings. Those
who saw only one half of the evidence would have concluded that the Plan*
tagenets were as absolute as the Sultans of Turkey ; those who saw only
the other half would have concluded that the Plan tagenets had as little real
power as the Doges of Venice ; and both conclusions would have beeii
equally remote from the truth."
It is a pretty general opinion among critics that Macaulay over-
did this artifice of style. Even his apologist in the ' Edinburgh
Review ' admitted that his sentences were sometimes " too curiously
balanced." As he himself said of Tacitus "He tells a fine story
finely, but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He stimulates till
stimulants lose their power." The worst of it is that exact balance
cannot long be kept. up, as in the above passage, without a sacrifice
of strict truth ; both sides are extremely exaggerated to make the
antithesis more telling.
Paragraphs.
i. The striking characteristic of abruptness in Macaulay 's style
is caused chiefly by his peculiar ways of transition and connection.
ile does not conduct us from one statement to another wTtntne
deliberate formality of De Quincey. We are seldom left in doubt
as to the bearing of his statements ; but we are often kept in sus-
pense, and generally we must make out connections for ourselves
without the help of explicit phrases.
Let us, for example, study his way of introducing the general
pioposition italicised in the middle of the following passage :
" The state of society in the Neapolitan dominions, and in some parts of
the Ecclesiastical State, more nearly resembled that which existed in the
great monarchies of Europe. But the governments of Lombardy and Tus-
cany, through all their revolutions, preserved a different character. A people
in/ten assembled in a town is far more formidable to' its rulers than when dis-
persed over a wide extent of country. The most arbitrary of the Cassars found
it necessary to feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at
the expense of the provinces. The citizens of Madrid have more than once
90 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAT.
besieged their sovereign in his own palace, and extorted from him the most
humiliating concessions. The Sultans have often been compelled to pro-
pitiate the furious rabble of Constantinople with the head of an unpopular
vizier. From the same cause there was a certain tinge of democracy in the.
monarchies and aristocracies of Northern Italy."
The general proposition is introduced abruptly. We are expect-
ing a statement about the governments of Lombardy and Tuscany,
when, with a sudden jerk, the circle of our vision is widened, and
we are presented with a general comparison between the govern-
ment natural to cities and the government natural to country
districts. If we are familiar with the subject, and if our attention
is fully awake, we at once have a dim perception of the writer's
drift, and read on till it is distinctly enunciated. But undoubtedly
the sudden transition has an abrupt effect It has not the equable
smoothness of De Quincey's transitions. The artifice is not unlike
the common practice of beginning an essay with a statement that
has no obvious connection with the title. We feel a momentary
astonishment, and we are put upon our mettle to anticipate the
application. To be sure, these unapplied generalities have not
quite so much of an abrupt effect when they come upon us at the
beginning. At the beginning our attention is supposed to be free.
Nothing has gone before to preoccupy us except the title. At any
point in the body of the essay our attention is supposed to be en-
grossed with the particular subject of exposition ; and we start
when the expected flow of the discourse is suddenly checked, and
we are jerked upon a new line. , .
So much for the abrupt introduction of generalities. Any page
of Macaulay will furnish the reader with other examples. The
first sentence of the above passage illustrates another mode of
abrupt transition. The subject of the paragraph is the government
of the States of Lombardy and Tuscany ; but the paragraph opens
with a statement concerning the government of the Neapolitan
dominions. Instead of laying down directly the state of society in
Lombardy and Tuscany, he begins with an independent assertion
about the state of society in the Neapolitan dominions. He has
been describing Lombardy and Tuscany; and the reader is expected
to understand, without any explicit connective, that the assertion
about the Neapolitan States is meant as a contrast The effect is
very much the same as is produced by the sudden introduction of
a generality. We presently see the drift of the statement, yet we
experience a momentary astonishment. This mode of construction
is much in favour with Macaulay. We are constantly being jerked
away from the immediate subject, and jerked back with a " but."
Thus, in a disquisition on the dramatists of the Restoration, he
suddenly opens a new paragraph with the statement
' ' In the old drama there had been much that was reprehcnsibla ''
PARAGRAPHS. 91
This is not, as we might suppose, the opening of a digression on
the old drama. He is merely taking a step out of the subject that
he may return with greater force. The next sentence is
" But whoever compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with
those contained in the volume before us, will see how much the proHigaey
which follows a period of overstrained austerity goes beyond the profligacy
which precedes such a period. "
In the same Essay a paragraph on the morality of Greek writings
proceeds as follows :
"The immoral English writers of the seventeenth century are indeed
much less excusable than those of Greece and Rome. But the worst English
writings of the seventeenth century are decent, compared with much tiiat
has been bequeathed to us by Greece and Rome. Plato, we have little
doubt, was a much better man than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has
written things at which Sir George Etherege would have shuddered."
The effect of these sudden interruptions of continuity is still
more abrupt when the contrasting statement is introduced, as it
were, in fragments. Thus, towards the close of a flowing declama-
tion on the beneficial influence of the Romam Catholic Church in
the dark ages, he staggers us by abruptly declaring
"The sixteenth century was comparatively a time of light."
Of this fragmentary statement we can make nothing. We stumble
on, bewildered, to the next :
"Yet even in the sixteenth century a considerable number of those who
quitted the old religion followed the first confident and plausible guide who
offered himself, and were soon led into errors far more serious than they had
renounced."
Now we can guess at his drift, and pass lightly over a sentence of
examples
"Thus Matthias and Kniperdoling, apostles of lust, robbery, and murder,
were able for a time to rule great cities "
reaching the explicit statement of the idea in the following
sentence :
" In a darker age such false prophets might have founded empires ; and
Christianity might have been distorted into a cruel and licentious supersti-
tion, more noxious not only than Popery, but even than Islamism."
Apart from the abruptness of these sudden and discontinuous
changes of subject, the introduction of generalities, contrasting
statements, qualifications, and suchlike, before we know formally
their bearing upon the subject in hand, has something of the effect
of the periodic structure upon a larger scale : we are, as in an
expanded period, kept in suspense until the application is fully
developed.
92 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
2. The rule of Parallel Construction is that " when several con-
secutive sentences iterate or illustrate the same idea, they should,
as far as possible, be formed alike." Macaulay observes this rule
better perhaps than any of our popular writers. With his natural
sense of perspicuous effect, he felt the advantage of keeping the
principal subject prominent throughout all the sentences of a
paragraph.
He i.s far, indeed, from being perfect. Thus, in the passage
recently quoted concerning the Italian States, the illustrations of
the general principle invert the position of the leading subject.
The general proposition is made concerning the people, and two
of the illustrations are stated as if the subject of discourse had
been the despots and their hardships. Consider, for instance, the
first illustration :
"The most arbitrary of the Caesars found it necessary to feed and divert
the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at the expense of the provinces."
Here the phrase "at the expense of the provinces" is improperly
prominent: who paid the bill is a matter of no importance ; the
point is that the inhabitants of Rome extorted the treat Let us
put it as follows :
"The inhabitants of the unwieldy capital cf the Caesars exac cd expensive
bounties of food and diversion from the most arbitrary of their masters."
Our amendment may be less elegant, but, in that particular con-
nection, it is more perspicuous.
Though open to improvement, Macaulay undoubtedly owes not
a little of his perspicuity to the observance of this rule. Whole
paragraphs might be quoted containing little or nothing to alter ;
particularly when he exerts himself to give a sustained account of
an institution or an individual the Roman Catholic Church or
Hyder AIL When he does not give the leading place to the
principal subject, he awards it to some subject introduced in his
peculiar way for purposes of contrast, and for the time occupying
the foreground in the exposition.
The uses of parallel structure may be studied to advantage in
Macaulay. Usually but slight alterations are required, and no
harm need be done to the variety of his expression. . The follow-
ing is another good case where some slight changes make an
obvious improvement. The passage occurs in an exposition of
the theme that " No men occupy so splendid a place in history as
those who have founded monarchies on the ruins of republican
institutions " :
" In nations broken to the curb, in nations long accustomed to be trans-
ferred from one tyrant to another, a man without eminent qualities may
easily gain supreme power. The defection of a troop of guards, a conspiracy
of eunuchs, a popular tumult, might place an indolent senator or a brutal
PARAGRAPHS. 93
soldier on the throne of the Roman world. Similar revolutions have often
occurred in the despotic States of Asia. But a community which has heard
the voice of truth and experienced the pleasures of liberty, in which the
merits of statesmen and of systems are freely canvassed, in which obedience
is paid not to persons but to laws, in which magistrates are regarded not as
the lords but as the servants of the public, in which the excitement of party
is a necessary of life, in which political warfare is reduced to a system of
tactics ; such a community is not easily reduced to servitude."
The subject being the grandeur of men that have made themselves
absolute over free institutions, it would obviously conduce to per-
spicuity to make that subject prominent throughout, as it is in
the first sentence. The conclusion of the last sentence drops the
usurper altogether, and lets the pervading idea slip out of clear
comprehension into vagueness. Let us try the effect, as regards
clearness, of some such alterations as the following :
" In the Roman world an indolent senator or a brutal soldier might be
placed on the imperial throne by the defection, &c. ; and similar revolutions
have often occurred in the despotic States of Asia. But in a community,
&c. ; in a community thus free and enlightened, only men of rare genius
for command can hope to obtain the mastery."
3. The opening sentence in his paragraphs is not always a clue
to the main subject Of this we have had an example.
One of his great arts of surprise is to occupy the first sentences
of the paragraph with circumstances leading us to expect the op-
posite of what is really the main statement. Very often all the
sentences up to the last are a preparation for the shock of aston-
ishment administered at the close. We are told what ought to
have happened, what was expected to happen, or what happened
in some other age or country under similar circumstances, before
we reach the gist of the paragraph, which is to tell us what really
happened in some particular case. The following paragraph is
constructed on this plan :
" No part of the system of the old Church had been more detested by the
Reformers than the honour paid to celibacy. They held that the doctrine
of Rome on this subject had been prophetically condemned by the apostle
Paul as a doctrine of devils ; and they dwelt much on the crimes and scan-
dals which seemed to prove the justice of this awful denunciation. Luther
had evinced his own opinion in the clearest manner, by espousing a nun.
Rome of the most illustrious bishops and priests who had died by fire during
the reign of Mary had left wives and children. Now, however, it began to
be rumoured that the old monastic spirit had reappeared in the Church of
England ; that there was in high quarters a prejudice agninst married priests ;
that even laymen, who called themselves Protestants, had made resolutions
of celibacy which almost amounted to vows; nay, that a minister of the
established religion had set up a nunnery, in which the psalms were chanted
at midnight by a company of virgins dedicated to God."
Tn such paragraphs, to indicate the drift at the beginning would
alter the character of the composition. But in many cases the.
94 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
delay of the main proposition is purposeless, and serves only to
confuse. Thus, in a paragraph detailing the circumstances that
made it impossible to transfer to the King of England the eccle-
siastical supremacy of the Pope, he begins
"The immediate effect of the Reformation in England was by no means
favourable to political liberty. The authority which had been exercised by
the Popes was transferred almost entire to the King. Two formidable powers
which had often served to check each other were united in a single despot.
If the system on which t,he founders of the Church of England acted could
have been permanent, the Reformation would have been in a politic.il sense
the greatest curse that ever fell on our country. But that system carried
within it the seeds of its own death." (And so on through a long para-
graph. )
We do not catch the drift of the paragraph until we reach the
fourth sentence, and we do not know that it is the key to the sub-
ject till we have read the whole. An ordinary reader, asked to
summarise such a paragraph after a single perusal, would give but
a poor account of it. He would naturally recall the first sentences,
and comparing these with the tenor of the latter part of the para-
graph, would almost to a certainty founder in the attempt to recon-
cile them. It would have been far better to begin with the fourth
sentence. This, though not a direct statement of the substance of
the paragraph, states it by implication. The three first sentences
should be thrown into their natural position of subordination. We
should then have some such opening as follows :
" If the system on which the founders of the Church of England acted
could have been permanent, the Reformation would have been in a political
sense the greatest curse that ever fell on our country. At first, indeed, it
seemed by no means favourable to political liberty. Th authority exercised
by the Popes was transferred almost entire to the King. Two formidable
powers that had often served to check each other were united in a single
despot. But this union could not last ; the appearance of danger soon
vanished."
His paragraphs often begin with one or more short sentences,
recapitulating the previous paragraph. It is a good deal a matter
of taste ; but probably most authorities would prefer that these
short sentences were prefixed to the real substance of the paragraph
in the form of clauses. Thus, take his account of the reaction of
public feeling after the warm reception of William and Mary :
" The ill-humour of the clergy and of the army could not but be noticed
by the most heedless ; for the clergy and the army were distinguished by
obvious peculiarities of garb. ' Black coats and red coats," said a vehement
Whig in the House of Commons, 'are the curses of the nation.' But the
discontent was not confined to the black coats and the red coats."
Now the discontent among the other classes being the subject of
the paragraph, many would prefer to have all the above condensed
into one sentence, in some such way as follows :
PARAGRAPHS. 95
" Although the ill-humour of the clergy and the army could not fail to be
most remarked, distinguished as they were from other classes by their pecu-
liar garb ('black coats and red coats.' said a vehement Whig in the House
of Commons, 'are the curses of the nation'), yet the clergy and the army
were not the only discontented classes. "
4. Dislocation. In delineating a character, or in giving an
account of a town, he would not seem to have bestowed much
attention on the order of the circumstances in his statement.
To take an example from the celebrated third chapter of his
History :
"Norwich was the capital of a large and fruitful province. It was the
residence of a bishop and of a chapter. It was the chief seat of the chief
manufacture of the realm. Some men distinguished by learning and
science had recently dwelt there ; and no place in the kingdom, except the
capital aud the universities, had more attractions for the curious. The
library, the museum, the aviary, and the botanical garden of Sir Thomas
Browne, was thought by the Fellows of the Royal Society well worthy of a
long pilgrimage. Norwich had also a court in miniature."
(Here follows a picturesque account of the mansion of the Dukes
of Norwich ; their state the golden goblets, silver tongs and
shovels, paintings, gems; a picturesque description of the festive
reception of Charles II. in 1671 ; a similar description of the re-
turn of the Duke of Norwich. After this the paragraph closes
abruptly with the statement )
" In the year 1693, the population of Norwich was found, by actual enu-
meration, to be between twenty-eight and twenty-nine thousand souls."
Now here the statement that Norwich was the chief seat of the
chief manufacture of the realm deserved to be made more promi-
nent. Further, there is some confusion in thrusting it in between
the bishop and the literary celebrities ; it has more natural affinity
with the largeness and f ruitf ulness of the province, and, if it is use-
ful to preserve continuity of ideas, should have been placed next
to the first sentence. The number of the population comes in very
abruptly: seeing that he makes the population his first care in this
chapter, and maintains it to be the most important fact, one is sur-
prised that he did not observe on the small scale what he considered
advisable on the great scale.
The paragraphs of this same third chapter are a very good study
upon this point of arrangement, and afford scope for a great deal of
casuistry. If we take the chapter as a whole, the order and pro-
portion of the statements are open to many objections. It may,
indeed, be doubted whether there is in the chapter any principle
either of order or of proportion. One statement seems to suggest
another ; at the end the reader feels that he has passed through a
brilliant muddle ; whether he has obtained the complete Pisgah
96 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
view promised him at the beginning, he cannot say; he is only
sure that he has been highly entertained.
5. Unity. His natural clearness taught him the propriety oi
confining each paragraph to a single subject. He is, however,
open to considerable improvement, as students will have no diffi-
culty in seeing when they take him rigidly to task.
As regards irrelevant digressions, he is singularly correct He
is one of our most consecutive writers perhaps among writers of
popular literature the most consecutive. This makes him a most
profitable study for the distribution of matter into paragraphs:
the general run of his composition being consecutive, slight altera-
tions bring him into conformity with the most rigid rules.
6. Some of the peculiarities already commented on involve a
breach of the sixth rule of the paragraph namely, that subordinate
statements should be kept in their proper place.
His trick of taking an explanatory statement out of the sentence,
and stating it by itself as an independent fact, is a blemish of
this kind. The abrupt defect is due to its unexpected and undue
prominence.
His short sentences often err against the same canon. A number
of examples that should be comprised in one sentence receive a
sentence each. A statement is repeated in two parts, and each
part is honoured with a separate sentence.
These transgressions are seldom of a kind to cause confusion,
and many people who like to be startled by such rattling fireworks
will think the breach of the rule more admirable than the observ-
ance. The student must judge for himself, and be fully persuaded
in his own mind. If he take a paragraph of Macaulay's, he will
find that by slight changes, sometimes by a change of punctuation,
he can moderate the abrupt statements into their fitting harmony
with the main theme ; let him return to the passage after a time,
compare his own version with the original, and judge as impar-
tially as he can which of the two has the most pleasing effect
A wider consideration might be raised under this head. Does
not Macaulay, in the exuberance of his powers of language and
illustration, sometimes dwell longer than necessary on a simple
topic ? Doubtless he does illuminate with superfluous profusion
subjects that stand in no great need of illumination. The fluent
abundance of examples and comparisons, while it puts his meaning
beyond doubt, is often greater than the subject demands. Instance
is piled upon instance and comparison upon comparison, where a
bare statement would be enough to make the meaning clear to the
smallest capacity. For example, in his Essay on Addison, he takes
occasion to controvert Dr Johnson's account of Boileau's views
concerning modern Latin. Boileau, he says, had not an " in-
judicious contempt for modern Latin ; " he only " thought it prob-
FIGURES OF SPEECH. 97
able that in the best modern Latin a writer of the Augustan age
would detect ludicrous improprieties ; " and he was quite right in
thinking so. This, one would think, is tolerably clear without
farther expansion. But Macaulay goes on to cite no less than
three parallel cases of the difficulty of mastering a foreign idiom.
"What modern scholar can honestly declare that he sees the smallest
impurity in the style ol Livy ? Yet is it not certain that in the style of
Livy, Pollio, whose taste had. been formed on the banks of the Tiber, de-
tected the inelegant idiom of the Po ? Has any modern scholar understood
Latin better than Frederic the Great understood French? Yet is it not
notorious that Frederic the Great, after reading, speaking, writing French,
and nothing but French, during more than half a century, after unlearning
his mother tongue in order to leam French, after living familiarly during
many years with French associates, could not, to the last, compose in French,
without imminent risk of committing some mistake which would have
moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris ? "
In like manner, the works of Scott and Eobertson contain Scot-
ticisms "at which a London apprentice would laugh."
This excess of particularity is an error on the right side for
popular success. The multiplication of instances may be over-
done ; but if the language is fresh and varied, general readers will
take a good deal before they complain of a surfeit. The language,
however, must be fresh and varied ; of this condition a writer
should make sure before trying to imitate Macaulay.
If the student wishes to conform his style to the general judg-
ment of critics, he must not imitate Macaulay too absolutely ; he
must endeavour to be more varied in the forms of his sentences, to
aim less frequently at contrasts, to study more carefully the
placing of important words, and, above all, to make a more
moderate use of abrupt transitions.
Figures of Speech.
"Splendour of Imagery" The eulogists of Macaulay's style
rarely fail to include among its beauties great " splendour of
imagery." Now, if under "imagery" may be included compari-
sons and contrasts of every description, as well as every kind of
picturesque circumstances, he is no doubt fully entitled to the
phrase. But if imagery means no more than pictorial similitudes,
then, compared with such writers as Carlyle and Burke, he cannot
be called a master of splendid imagery.
In his earlier essays, he shows an obvious straining after in-
genious conceits. His Essay on Milton is, as he said himself in
later years, "overloaded with gaudy and ungraceful ornament."
In essays written before he was thirty, there are probably twice as
many similes as in all his subsequent writings. His " Milton "
e
98 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
contains as many as any six of his later essays. The History is
studiously plain, so far at least as regards figurative ornament.
Undoubtedly, his similitudes are often brilliantly ingenious, and
expressed with his usual richness and felicity of language. But
they are too artificial and gaudy finery to be worthy of serious
imitation.
Real Comparisons. Out of the resources of his prodigious
memory, Macaulay was able to elucidate a point much more
vividly than by figurative comparisons. Whatever he undertakes
to depict, whether persons, places, or things, he is able to compare
them at all points with other objects of the same kind ; he is able
to make what are technically called " real comparisons " ; and thus
conveys a livelier impression of their salient attributes than if he
compared them with objects having less in common. It is need-
less to multiply examples of what may be found in almost every
page. We take as specimens four from the first few pages of his
History :
" Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordrod, are
mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned, and whose ad-
ventures must be classed with those of Hercules and Romulus."
"What the Olympian chariot-course and the Pythian oracle were to all
the Greek cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her bishop were to
all Christians of the Latin communion, from Calabria to the Hebrides."
"The same atrocities which had attended the victory of the Saxon over
the Celt were now, after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at the hand
of the Dane. "
" The Court of Rouen seems to have been to the Court of Edward the
Confessor what the Court of Versailles long afterwards was to the Court of
Charles the Second. "
Perhaps the most forcible of his comparisons are those intended
to reverse a common prejudice, or drive home an unfamiliar view.
Thus, in the beginning of his History, he falls foul of English
historians for expatiating with exultation on the power and splen-
dour of our French kings :
"This," he says, "is as absurd as it would be in a Haytian negro of our
time to dwell with national pride on the greatness of Lewis the Fourteenth,
and to speak of Blenheim and Ramilies with patriotic regret and shame.
. . . One of the ablest among them, indeed, attempted to win the hearts
of his English subjects by espousing an English princess. But by many of
his barons this marriage was regarded as a marriage between a white planter
and a quadroon girl would now be regarded in Virginia."
So, to illustrate how completely the popular element had been sub-
verted, in the monarchies of the Continent, he says
"The privileges of the States-General, of the States of Brittany, of the
States of Burgundy, are now matters of as little practical importance as the
constitution of the Jewish Sanhedrim or of the Amphictyonic Council."
Very often the comparisons are made in an abbreviated form,
FIGURES OF SPEECH. 99
like the figure of synecdoche, in which an individual stands as the
type of a species. Thus
"Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food were as wretched as those of
the Icelanders of our time, wrote Latin verse with more than the delicacy of
Vida, and made discoveries in science which would have added to the renown
of Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or Napier."
In like manner, but, to speak technically, with more of the
genuine Antonomasia, be says that had Bacon given to Literature
the time that he gave to Law and Politics, "he would have been
not only the Moses but the Joshua of philosophy." William could
have gained the cordial support of the Whigs only " by becom-
ing the most factious man in his kingdom, a Shaftesbury on the
throne."
Further, the greater number of his comparisons are not allega-
tions of similarity. The characteristic Macaulayan comparison is
more a contrast than a parallel is, indeed, the form of secondary
contrast specified as the contrast between the individual members
of a comprehensive class. Thus, take poets : he seems to have
poets and their productions ranged on a scale of merit ; and when
a particular poet or production comes up, he places them above
or below some other, or between some two. Maohiavelli's " Mau-
dragola is superior to the best of Goldoni, and inferior only to the
best of Moliere." Byron's letters from Italy "are less affected
than those of Pope and Walpole ; they have more matter in them
than those of Cowper." Addison's Epistle to Lord Halifax " con-
tains passages as good as the second-rate passages of Pope, and
would have added to the reputation of Parnell or Prior." Again,
"We need not hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some
compositions which do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic
poems hardly equal to ParnelTs, some criticism as superficial as Dr
Blair's, and a tragedy not very much better than Dr Johnson's."
What he does with poets, he does in a greater or less degree with
statesmen, generals, and all sorts and conditions of men that cross
his narratives.
Figures of Contrast. We have already noticed incidentally our
author's lavish use of antithesis. The contrasts are really more
numerous than might be thought at first glance ; the bare frame-
work is so overlaid and disguised by the extraordinary fulne.ss of
expression that many of them escape notice. When we look nar-
rowly, we see that there is a constant play of antithesis. Not only
is word set off against word, clause against clause, and sentence
against sentence. There are contrasts on a more extensive scale;
one group of sentences answers to another, and paragraphs are
balanced against paragraphs. His pages are illuminated not only
by little sparks of antithesis, but by broad flashes.
100 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
Enough has been given in illustration of the minuter play of
antithesis. Pupils in composition may be exercised in referring
examples to the various modes of antithesis, extreme and second-
ary. Here it may not be superfluous to dwell at some length upon
a few of our author's more prominent ways of manufacturing this
stage-lightning in its ampler forms.
He deals very largely in what is technically known as obverse
statement ; and gives it a peculiar abrupt point by denying the
negative before affirming the positive. In explaining his abrupt
transitions \VP called attention to something of this nature : we
remarked on one example (p. 90), that before affirming that a
certain form of government prevailed in one tract of country, he
affirmed that it did not prevail in another. As another example,
take the following passage from a disquisition on the style of
Johnson :
" Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the
manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be
willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke. But a manner-
ism which does.not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on
princi|(le, and whif.li can bo sustained only by constant effort, is always
offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson."
There is a go-id deal of antithetic pungency in thus taking the
obverse first. We expect, from the general tone of his remarks,
that he means to condemn the mannerism of Johnson, and we start
with surprise when he abruptly declares that "mannerism is par-
donable." "What!" flashes across our mind, "Johnson's man-
nerism 1 " We eagerly read on, and are pleasingly reassured when
we see the qualification "when the manner, though vicious, is
natural." Nor is this the only startle we receive in the course of
the short paragraph ; there is another shock in reserve to keep our
attention awake. We have been called away from some minute
particulars about Johnson to this general principle, and the illus-
tration of it from remote quarters. At the end of the paragraph
we are brought abruptly back to Johnson " And such is the man-
nerism of Johnson." Many writers would have executed neither
of these brilliant turns. Many would have begun by saying that
the mannerism of Johnson is unpardonable, and would then have
proceeded to state why it is so, and then, perhaps, by way of coun-
ter-illustration, would have explained when mannerism is pardon-
able. Macaulay's order of statement would thus have been in-
verted, and the contrast, brought in by an equable transition,
wouM have produced a much less flashing effect.
A favourite and characteristic way of getting up an antithesis
is, before narrating an event, to recount all the circumstances that
concurred to make it different from what it ultimately proved to
be. Thus, before narrating Frederick the Great's breach of faith
FIGURES -OF SPEECH. 101
with Maria Theresa, he describes the Pragmatic Sanction, and di-
lates upon the considerations weighing with the various European
Governments to make them observe what they had stipulated. In
like manner, he contrasts the general expectation before an event
with the event itself. A good example of this is his account of
the disbanding of Cromwell's veterans :
" The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men, accustomed
to the profession of arms, were at once thrown on the world ; and experience
seemed to warrant the belief that this change would produce much misery
and crime, that the discharged veterans would be seen begging in every
street, or would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no such result fol-
lowed. In a few months there remained not a trace indicating that the
most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed into the mass of
the community. The Royalists themselves confessed that in every depart-
ment of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other
men ; that none was charged with any theft or robbery ; that none was heard
to ask an alms ; and that, if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted
notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability one of Oliver's
old soldiers."
Another favourite device is in the course of his narrative to
speculate what might have happened had the circumstances been
different He does this at every turning-point in English history.
The struggle between Crown and Parliament might have come on
early in the reign of Elizabeth, had not intestine quarrels been
suspended in the face of a common danger. Had the administra-
tion of James been able and splendid, the Parliament might have
been suppressed, and the Crown become absolute. In like manner,
upon the execution of Charles L, the fall of Richard Cromwell, the
Restoration, and the Revolution, he pauses to imagine what might
have been the course of events had they been directed by men of
different character. The same vein of reflection is continually
cropping up in all his narratives.
Everywhere in his writings we can trace the dominating love of
antithesis. His " celebrated third chapter " sustains the excite-
ment of paradox through more than a hundred pages. In his His-
tory the conflict of opposing parties affords him constant opportu-
nities. What the one party thought of a particular measure is set
off against what the other party thought ; " the temper of the
Whigs " is contrasted with the " temper of the Tories." We are
kept in the seat of judgment till we have heard the historian plead
first on the one side, and then, still more convincingly, on the
other.
In the delineation of characters he finds greater scope for his
favourite effect. In these pictures, the scintillations of antithesis
are almost incessant.
Antithesis is such an undeniable advantage in the statement of
a fact, as a means of awakening us to its full import, that it is hard
102 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
to say in any particular case that Macaulay was at fault in using
an antithetic form of statement That he was not too pointed for
the mass of readers was shown by their eagerness in running after
his productions. That he was too abrupt and startling for refined
judges of composition is no less apparent by the unanimity of their
condemnation. We have seen what the ' Edinburgh Review ' said
about the "too curious balance" of his sentences: the same pre-
sumably partial authority allows that he employed " unnecessary
antithesis to express very simple propositions."
The great objection to the frequent use of antithesis, as already .
observed, is the danger of its betraying a writer into exaggerations,
into deepening the shadow and raising the light. It is not denied
that Macaulay has a tendency to make slight sacrifices of truth to
antithesis. The chapter on the state of society in 1685 has been
convicted of many exaggerated statements by less dazzling anti-
quarians. In his numerous comparisons between different men, he
unquestionably tampers with the realities for the sake of enhancing
the effect. He exaggerates the melancholy of Dante's character on
the one hand, and the cheerfulness of Milton's on the other ; he
puts too strongly the purely illustrative character of Dante's similes
in contradistinction to the purely poetic or ornamental character of
Milton's. So he probably overstates the shallowness and flippancy
of Montesquieu, to heighten by contrast the solidity and stateliness
of Machiavelli.
He seems to have been aware of his turn for exaggeration, and
provides an excuse for it A slightly over-coloured statement rouses
lethargy, and does not leave upon the mind a false impression. The
hurried reader remembers but faintly. The impression carried away
from an exaggerated statement is probably nearer the truth than if
the statement had been literally exact
Such doctrine is, to say the least of it, dangerous. There is,
however, one case where antithetic exaggeration may be useful. A
skilful writing-master, when dealing with pupils that have a ten-
dency to write a cramped hand, trains them to a more flowing pen-
manship by giving them liberty to make extravagant flourishes,
and by encouraging them to exaggerate the final limbs of their mx
and ns. On the same principle, a teacher of composition, dealing
with tame pupils, may train them to a bolder movement by allow-
ing them to exaggerate freely for purposes of antithesis.
JSpigram, Macaulay delights in epigrams. There is a dash of
epigram in his unexpected transitions. His antithesis often takes
an epigrammatic point The arts of surprise being so predominant
in his style, we may quote a few specimens of this the most piquant
of those arts :
" Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of being a heretic only
by arguments which uiudo hiui out to be a murderer."
FIGURES OF SPEECH. 103
" They valued a prayer or a ceremony, not on account of the comfort
which it conveyed to themselves, but on account of the vexation which it
gave to the Roundheads ; and were so far from being disposed to purchase
union by concession, that they objected to concession, chiefly because it
tended to produce union."
" One thing, and one thing only, could make Charles dangerous a violent
death. . . . His subjects began to love his memory as heartily as they
had hated his person ; and posterity has estimated his character from hif
death rather than from his life."
"The great ruling principle of his [Robert Walpole's] public conduct was
indeed a love of peace, but n<>t in the sense in which Archdeacon Coxe uses
the phrase. The peace which Walpole sought was not the peace of the coun-
try, but the peace of his own administration."
" There can be no greater error than to imagine that the device of meeting
the exigencies of the State by loans was imported into our Island by William
the Third. From a period of immemorial antiquity it had been the practice
of every English Government to contract debts. What the Revolution in-
troduced was the practice ol honestly paying them."
"The town of Bedford probably contained more than one politician who,
after contriving to raise an estate by seeking the Lord during the reign of
the saints, contrived to keep what he had got by persecuting the saints dur-
ing the reign of the strumpets ; and more than one priest who, during re-
peated changes in the discipline and doctrines of the Church, had remained
constant to nothing but the benefice."
"The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear,
but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Indeed he generally con-
trived to enjoy the double pleasure of tormenting both spectators and
bear."
The art of the following is essentially epigrammatic. The
piquancy arises from the unexpected deliverance of such incon-
gruities in the same sentence :
" They therefore gave the command to Lord Galway, an experienced
veteran, a man who was in war what Moliere's doctors were in medicine,
who thought it much more honourable to fail according to rule, than to
succeed by innovation, and who would have been very much ashamed of
himself if he had taken Monjuich by means so strange as those which
Peterborough employed. This great commander conducted the campaign
of 1707 in the most scientific manner. On the plain of Almanza he en-
countered the army of the Bourbons. He drew up his troops according to
the methods prescribed by the best writers, and in a few hours lost eighteen
thousand men, a hundred and tioenty standards, att his baggage, and all his
artillery."
Climax. A rhetorician of so decided a turn as Macaulay could
not fail to use the rhetorician's greatest art. In every paragraph
that rises above the ordinary level of feeling, we are conscious of
being led on to a crowning demonstration. ,
His arts of contrast already exemplified have the effect of
making a climax. See particularly the quotations at pp. 93,
101. He seems to pause in the course of his narrative or his
104 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
argument, and go back for a race that will carry him sweepingly
over the next obstacle. As another example of this climactic use
of contrast, take the following about Burke. He is comparing
Bacon and Burke as two men whose later writings are more
ornamented than their earlier :
" In his youth he wrote on the emotions produced by mountains and
cascades, by the masterpieces of painting and sculpture, by the faces and
necks of beautiful women, in the style of a parliamentary report. In his
old age he discussed treaties and tariffs in the most fervid and brilliant
language of romance. It is strange that the ' Essay on the Sublime and
Beautiful, ' and the ' LetteY to a Noble Lord' should be the productions of
one man. But it is tar more strange that the essay should have been a
production of his youth and the letter of his old age."
In stating, as his manner is, the various motives that impel
different parties at particular conjunctures, he is careful to re-
serve the most telling for the end, and artfully prepares the
way for the final resolution.
One of his most studied attempts at climax is the famous
passage about Charles in the Essay on Milton.
The only other Figure of Speech that is a marked ingredient in
Macaulay's style is Hyperbole. An exaggerated turn of expression
is one of the main elements of his animated manner : it will be
fully discussed under the quality of Strength.
QUALITIES OP STYLB.
Simplicity.
Macaulay's composition is as far from being abstruse as printed
matter can well be. One can trace in his writing a constant effort
to make himself intelligible to the meanest capacity. He loves to
dazzle and to argue, but above everything he is anxious to be
understood. His ideal evidently is to turn a subject over on
every side, to place it in all lights, and to address himself to
every variety of prejudice and preoccupation in his audience.
Yet his simplicity is very different from the simplicity of such
writers as Goldsmith and Paley. His is far from being a homely
style. He does not studiously affect Saxon terms. Without
being so scholastic and technical as De Quincey, he is not scrup-
ulous about using words of Latin origin, and admits many terms
that Dean Alford would have excluded from "the Queen's Eng-
lish." Besides, although he were an Anglo-Saxon Pharisee in his
choice of words, his turns of expression are not simple in the sense
of being familiar and easy. His balanced sentences, abrupt tran-
sitions, pointed antitheses, and climactic arrangement, elevate him
SIMPLICITY. 1 05
out of the ranks of homely authors, and constitute him, as we have
said, pre-eminently artificial.
What is it, then, that makes him so easily understood ? For
ojne ^thing, he seldom meddles with abstruse problems. He does
not, like De Quincey, delight to match his ingenuity against
difficulties ; he does not choose a stibject because it has baffled
everybody else : his pleasure is to do brilliantly what everybody
can do in a manner. De Quincey wrote upon Pope and Shak-
speare because perplexities had settled upon their lives. Macaulay
takes up only biographies whose principal incidents are known and
read by all men the lives of Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith,
Johnson, Pitt. He does not covet openings for nice speculation.
When a recondite question crosses his path, he provides an answer
so simple and easy that the cautious reader doubts whether it is
completa He makes Shakspeare the result of the Reformation ;
Wordsworth the result of the French Revolution ; Byron " the
interpreter between Wordsworth and the multitude." In dis-
cussing the life of Bacon, he finds it necessary to give his opinion
of the inductive method. The opinion is very plausible ; but
scientific authorities pronounce it "ignorant and shallow in the
extreme." In his life of Machiavelli, he undertakes to account
for the peculiar state of Italian society in the fourteenth century.
The explanation is most simple : the Italians were given to
commerce and literature ; they employed mercenaries to fight
their battles ; the mercenaries were treacherous, hence they
ceased to depend upon war for effecting their desires : they came
to despise courage and honour intrigue ; to think it contemptible
to do by force what could be done by fraud. With all its simpli-
city, the explanation is far from satisfactory ; it begins at too late
a point. It does not explain why the Italians turned to commerce
and literature, and paid the natives of ruder countries to do their
fighting. If we knew that, we should probably find that the
treachery of the mercenaries encourage), and did not originate,
cowardice and intrigue: a people originally indisposed to fight
their own battles were not likely at any time to excel in the
active virtues. Further, the employment of mercenaries was only
one of many causes tending to encourage the practice and admira-
tion of dishonest dexterity.
In like manner in his History, with all his unexampled know-
ledge of facts, and of every variety of opinion avowed by opposite
parties, he still shows a disposition to put up with pat and easy
explanations of events. For example, he explains the hostility
of the clergy to the Revolution by the fact that it controverted
flatly all their favourite doctrines about non-resistance and passive
obedience. This is a most acceptable theory ; it refers us to a
well-known weakness of human nature: yet who that has read
106 THOMAS BABIKGTON MACAT7LAY.
Macaulay's own picture of the multitude of conflicting interests
then prevalent will believe that this was the sole cause of the
clerical disaffection ?
Another example of his love of simple explanations is seen in
the prominence he everywhere gives to the doctrine of reaction.
The discontent under Cromwell and under William is compared
to the discontent under Moses ; and all such cases are spoken of
as reactions of feeling. So the "appalling outbreak of licentious-
ness " after the Restoration is explained as the natural result of
the Puritan austerity. In all these instances the alleged law ia
a familiar fact of our nature ; and we are willing to accept it as
a full explanation, though it is far from being so.
He is. then, readily understood, because he deals with familiar
subjects; and explains difficulties by a reference to familiar things.
But this is only a small element of his intelligibility. The main
element is hi^elose and constant adherence to the concrete.
The terse abstract statement so familiar to the reader of John-
son, occurs but rarely in Macaulay, and only as a variety of expres-
sion. He discusses ftTerytfring in th,e concrete. When he states
an abstract proposition, unless it is all the more familiar, he
follows it up with a plethora of particular cases. We have seen
(p. 97) that his prodigious knowledge of particulars betrays him
into a superfluity of illustration.
In describing the conduct of individuals, he is not content with
general terms : he does not simply style them brave, or just, or
sagacious ; he compares them with some well-known embodiment
of these qualities, or relates significant circumstances. Thus, in a
passage already referred to, he says that "had the administration
of James been able and splendid, it would probably have been
fatal to our country." Many writers would have been content
with this plain statement, but Macaulay goes on to say :
" Had he been, like Henry the Fourth, like Maurice of Nassau, or like
Gustavus Adolphus, a valiant, active, and politic ruler, had he put himself
nt the head of the Protestants of Europe, had he gained great victories over
Tilly and Spinolu, had he adorned Westminster with the spoils of Bavarian
monasteries and Flemish cathedrals, had he hung Austrian and Castilian
banners in Saint Paul's, and had he found himself, after great achieve-
ments, at the head of fifty thousand troops, brave, well disciplined, and
devotedly attached to his person, the English Parliament would soon have
been nothing more than a uame."
In conveying an idea of the doctrines of the Church of England,
instead of plunging into details and bald generalities, he hits them
off boldly by stating the position of the Church of England rela-
tively to other Churches, and enlivens the comparison with the
names of representative nieu :
CLEARNESS. 107
"To this day the constitution, the doctiines, and the services of the
Church, retain the visible marks of the compromise from which she sprang.
She occupies a middle position between the Churches of Rome and Genera.
Her doctrinal confessions and discourses, composed by Protestants, set lorth
principles of theology in which Calvin or Knox would have found scarcely a
word to disapprove. Her prayers and thanksgivings, derived from the an-
cient liturgies, are very generally such that Bishop Fisher or Cardinal Pole
might have heartily joined in them. A controversialist who puts an Armin-
ian sense on her articles and homilies, will be pronounced by candid men
to be as unreasonable as a controversialist who denies that the doctrine of
baptismal regeneration can be discovered in her liturgy."
In stating quantity or dimension, he adds to the dry unremem-
berable ciphers a comparison with some similar case in the lump.
His " third chapter " is much indebted to this art of relieving the
tedious quotation of figures. Thus
"Cornwall and Wales at present yield annually near fifteen thousand
tons of copper, worth near a million and a half sterling that is to say,
worth about twice as much as the annual produce of all English mines of all
descriptions in the seventeenth century."
In like manner he substitutes familiar ways of reckoning time
in place of the precise notation by dates. Thus, in describing the
amalgamation of races after the Conquest, he says :
"The great-grandsons of those who had fought under William, and the
great-grandsons of those who had fought under Harold, began to draw near
to each other in friendship ; and the fij-st pledge of their reconciliation was
the Great Charter, won by their united exertions and framed for their com-
mon benefit."
His way of dealing with cumbrous qualifications, explanations,
and examples, is not an unmixed gain in the direction of sim-
plicity. His method is, as we have seen, to make all such state-
ments in separate sentences, instead of joining them to the main
statement in the same sentence. So far this is a gain : the mind
is engaged with one thing at a time ; it is asked to take in the
several statements one by one, instead of getting them all at
once along with an indication of their relationships. But this
very severality of statement leads to confusion : the mind having
grasped the separate facts, receives no clue to their mutual bear-
ings, and is placed in danger of bewilderment.
There is a way out of the difficulty namely, to make the quali-
fications and explanations as few as possible. This is hardly legiti-
mate ; yet we have seen that Macaulay is suspected of adopting it.
Clearness.
In the Introduction (p. 17) we mentioned Macaulay as one of
the writers whose style justifies a subdivision of Clearness into
Perspicuity and Precision. He is perspicuous, but not precise.
To say that " not an ambiguous sentence is to be found through-
108 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
oat his works," is attributing a perfection hardly possible for
mortal writer. Doubtless very few of his sentences are ambigu-
ous, even at first glance ; and in several that do mislead on first
inspection, the meaning is not hard to find. His general method
is decidedly perspicuous, although, as we have seen in discussing
his paragraphs, it also comes short of perfection, and is open to
amendment. His numerous examples and comparisons conduce
greatly to perspicuity. And, finally, his extraordinary number of
contrasts is a help in the same direction.
While Macaulay is one of the most perspicuous of English
writers, he has no claim to the merit of being minutely exact.
We have seen that, after stating a general principle, he makes his
meaning perspicuous clear in its leading outlines by a free
quotation of examples. But he quotes his examples roundly and
confidently; he very seldom pauses to take note of casuistical
objections, of special circumstances making a particular case doubt-
ful as an example of his general assertion : Frederick the Great is
a typical .German, and commits blunders in French that would
have moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris ; Sir Walter
Scott is a typical Scotsman, and he perpetrates Scotticisms that a
London apprentice would laugh at ; Ben Jonson was a great man,
Hoole a very small man yet Ben Jonson's verse was rugged, and
Hoole, as coming after Pope, poured out decasyllabic verses in
thousands, " all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other
as the blocks which have passed through Mr Brunei's mill in the
dockyard at Portsmouth." In like manner his comparisons are
perspicuous, are good as broad indications of his general meaning ;
but they have the same defect a defect for certain purposes at
least of not being nicely pointed to the relevant circumstances,
of not entering into exact details. We get but a vague notion of
the doctrines of the Church of England from the statement that
" she occupies a middle position between the Churches of Rome
and Geneva ; " and little distinct information about Addison's
Epistle from the statement that " it contains passages as good as
the second-rate passages of Pope, and would have added to the
reputation of Parnell or Prior." It is not by such rough asser-
tions that accurate knowledge is imparted ; they convey rather the
conceit of knowledge than the reality ; they are simple but vague.
When we insist upon Macaulay's want of minute exactness,
of all pretension to be called an accurate writer, it is but fair to
notice that minute exactness, scrupulous accuracy, did not accord
with the popular design of his works. He wrote for hurried
readers, and more to amuse or interest than to instruct. He
considered that "laborious research and minute investigation"
belonged to authors by profession. We can excuse a want of
exactness in a writer so anxious to make his language perspicu-
STKENGTH. 109
OUB. For his perspicuity he certainly deserves all praise ; and it is
always right to point out that from this very quality his inexact-
ness is easily discovered, and that he passes for shallow in many
quarters where a more shallow and at the same time more obscure
writer would pass for profound. Particularly is he admirable for
his profuseness of exemplification : he often supplies us with the
means of correcting his own indistinct generalities. Even his
comparisons to individuals and specific institutions, though vague,
are seldom misleading : if they convey little substantial knowledge,
they at least convey no error. For such comparisons it may al-
ways be pleaded that they awaken curiosity, and set the inquirer
on the right track ; if we desire fuller information, they direct us
where to look for it In a hasty review of the doctrines of the
Church of England, it is perhaps best to incite the reader to com-
pare them with the doctrines of other Churches ; and where limits
preclude a full discussion, to furnish no more detail than an index
map.
Strength.
In the quality of strength, Macaulay offers a great and obvious
contrast to De Quincey the contrast between brilliant animation
and stately pomp. His movement is more rapid and less dignified.
He does not slowly evolve his periods, " as under some genial in-
stinct of incubation : " he never remits his efforts to dazzle ; and
in his most swelling cadences, he always seems to be perorating
against an imaginary antagonist.
Most of the elements of his peculiar animation have already
been noticed in other connections. We have already commented
upon the varied expression, the abrupt transitions, the constant
play of antithesis, the perspicuous nuthoi, and the lively arr.-iy
of concrete particulars. We have also noticed implicitly the ex-
hilarating pace both of the language and of the thoughts, the
rapidity of the rhythm as determined by shortness of phrase,
clause, and sentence and the quick succession of the ideas,
As regards his animated "objectivity," or concreteness, there is
one thing that might be brought out more fully namely, his art
of enlivening condensed narrative by pictorial, or at least concrete,
circumlocutions. We quote as an example part of his account of
Strafford :
" He had been one of the most distinguished members of the Opposition,
and felt towards those whom he had deserted that peculiar malignity which
has, in all ages, been characteristic of apostates. He perfectly understood the
feelings, the resources, and the policy of the party to which he had lately
belonged, and had formed a vast and deeply meditated scheme which very
nearly confounded even the able tactics of the statesmen by whom, the House of
Commons had been directed. ... His object was to do for England all,
110 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAT.
and more than all, that Richelieu was doing in France ; to make Charles a
rnonarch as absolute as any on the Continent," &c.
These frequent allusions to actual men and things would alone
make the style vivacious ; the rapid succession of particulars is in
itself exhilarating.
He had a great command over the proper vocabulary of strength.
He is very vehement in his epithets. Whole pages might be quoted
that contain hardly a single adjective under the degree of enormous.
One of his favourite themes is the corruption and profligacy of the
Eestoration times. Whenever he has occasion to speak of this, he
seems to fall into a passion, and uses the strongest language that
propriety will allow. And this subject is only one out of many
that provoke his vehemence to an equal degree. On every sub-
ject, indeed, he expresses himself with confidence, and in language
habitually bordering on the extrema
He has been much taken to task for the violence of his invective.
Certainly, when he conceived a dislike to an individual or to an
institution, he expressed his feelings without reserve. And he
disliked a great many characters. He disliked all the English
statesmen of the Eevolution period for their treachery and want
of patriotism. Sir William Temple he pronounces to be " the most
respectable " of them. Yet even Temple, he declares, " was not a
man to his taste"; he " had not sufficient warmth and elevation of
sentiment to deserve the name of a virtuous man." Judge Jeffreys
he regards with the most absolute loathing, and holds up to con-
tempt and hatred with an indignation as cordial as if one of his
own family had been among the bloody monster's many victims.
Concerning this part of the History, Mr Croker said in the ' Quar-
j terly Review" tliat the historian had almost realised Alexander
Chalmers's ' Biographia Flagitiosa ; or, the Lives of Eminent
Scoundrels.' " He hates," said Mr Croker further, " nearly every-
body but Cromwell, William, Whig exiles, and Dissenting parsons."
The last sneer goes perhaps too far ; the insinuation is hardly cor-
rect : Macaulay was much more impartial in his hatred than this
would imply. He hated some of the French Republicans as heart-
ily as he hated any of our English ancestors, whether Whig or
Tory. He has written nothing stronger than his condemnation of
Barrera Barrere " approached nearer than any person mentioned
in history or fiction, whether man or devil, to the idea of consum-
mate and universal depravity." This is very strong, but becomes
stronger still as the historian proceeds. Here he makes Barrere
an approximation to unqualified depravity : a little further, and
he drops the slight reservation. " All the other chiefs of parties
had some good qualities, and Barrere had none." " Barrere had
not a single virtue, nur even tlte semblance of one."
Sometimes, in his contemptuous and derisive moods, he uses a
STRENGTH. Ill
studied meanness of expression that reminds us of the coarse
familiarity of Swift. Thus, speaking of Boswell, he says " If he
had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great
writer." So of Chatham, he says "He was not invited to be-
come a placeman, and he therefore stuck firmly to his old trade of
patriot." This homely order of expression he often employs with
great effect in the way of derisive refutation. Thus, in ridiculing
Southey's sentimental views on questions of political economy, he
says " We might ask how it can be said that there is no limit to
the production of paper money, when a man is hanged if he issues
any in the name of another, and is forced to cash what he issues in
his own ?"
It is difficult to draw the line between such strength of language
and the figure of speech known as hyperbola The italicised ex-
pressions in the following passages are unmistakably hyperbolical.
Such expressions are very common in Macaulay, and, read along
with the context, do not strike us as rising far above the general
level of his- language :
" The house of Bourbon was at the summit of human greatness. England
had been outwitted, and found herself in a situation at once degrading and
perilous. The people of France, not presaging the calamities by which they
were destined to expiate the perfidy of their sovereign, went mad with pride
and delight. Ecery man looked as if a great estate hadj-ust been left him."
" His own reflections, his own energy, were to supply the place of all
Downing Street and Somerset House. . . . The preservation of an em-
pire from a formidable combination of foreign enemies, the construction of
a government in all its parts, were accomplished by him, while every ship
brought out bales of censure from his employers, and while the records of
every consultation vr ere filled with acrimonious minutes by colleagues."
One of his modes of exaggeration is almost a mannerism.
Whatever he happens to be engaged with is in some respect OP
other the most wonderful thing that ever existed. The following
are his two most common forms for expressing such a conviction :
(i.) " No election ever took place under circumstances so favour-
able to the Court." (2.) " Of all the many unpopular steps taken
by the Government, the most unpopular was the publishing of this
declaration."
He is sometimes betrayed into making the same extreme state-
ment about two different persons. Thus he says of Clarendon
" No man ever laboured so hard to make himself despicable and
ludicrous ; " and it is notorious that he makes a like remark about
BoswelL
So much for the animation of Macaulay's manner. As regards
his choice of subjects, it may be said in general that he is careful
to take up only such as have an independent interest to the mass
of English readers. Consequently his charms of style operate at
112 THOMAS BAB1NGTON MACAULAY.
every advantage ; they have no dead weight to overcome ; they
are required only to support the natural interest of the matter.
A History of England, if written with moderate spirit, would
always have an attraction for every Englishman ; written with
Macaulay's glowing patriotism and brilliant style, it proved more
attractive than the most captivating novel. Similarly with hia
Essays. His article on Milton placed him at once in the first rank
of popular favourites; an extraordinary success resulting, not so
much from the display of his literary knowledge, as from the
happy application of his glittering rhetoric to a theme much can-
vassed at the time. All his essays are upon men of first-rate in-
terest : any particulars about Machiavelli, Byron, Johnson, Bacon,
Pitt, or Frederick the Great, are eagerly read, if there is any appear-
ance of novelty in the manner of relating them.
Great men and great events these are the favourite themes of
Macaulay. When such matter is handled in such a manner, no
wonder that the writer is the most popular author of his day.
Animation is our author's distinguishing quality ; but often
from the grandeur of his subject, and of the objects that he brings
into comparison with it from all countries and from all times, his
style takes a loftier tone.
There is something more than animating in his easy manner of
ranging through space and time. To be transported with such
freedom from continent to continent, from dynasty to dynasty,
and from age to age ; to pass judgment on the rival pretensions of
the foremost men and the most august empires that have appeared
in the world, this, unless we have a very frivolous conception of
what we are doing, should elevate us to the highest heights of
sublimity. Macaulay's abrupt manner is sometimes antagonistic
to the finest effects that might be accomplished by these ambitious
surveys. But very often his eloquence is lofty and imposing.
Thus, in advocating with wonted enthusiasm the apotheosis of
Lord Olive :
" From Olive's second visit to India dates the political ascendancy of the
English in that country. His dexterity and resolution realised, in the
course of a few months, more than all the gorgeous visions which had floated
before the imagination of Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated territory,
such an amount of revenue, such a multitude of subjects, was never added
to the dominion of Rome by the most successful proconsul. Nor were such
wealthy spoils ever borne under arches of triumph, down the Sacred Way,
and through the crowded Forum, to the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The
fame of those who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes grows dim when com-
pared witli the splendour of the exploits which the young English adven-
turer achieved at the head of an army not equal in numbers to one hali ol a
Roman legion."
Perhaps his noblest flight of sublimity is his eulogy of the
PATIIOS. 113
Roman Catholic Government This is in every way an admirable
specimen of his style. There is just one break in the sustained
grandeur of the passage. He should not have introduced the nu-
merical comparison between the different creeds a tag of statistics
is very chilling and repulsive amidst the glowing flow of admi-
ration. Macaulay's abundance of hard information often betrays
him into violations of Art
Pathos.
In Macaulay's style, as in his nature, there was more vigour
than tenderness or delicacy. The abruptness and rapidity of tran-
sition, and the unseasonable intrusion of hard matters of fact, which
we have just referred to as being fatal to sustained sublimity, were
no less fatal to sustained pathos. The following account of the
death of Hampden illustrates the beauties and the faults of his
pathetic narration :
"Hampden, with his head drooping, and his hands leaning on his horse's
neck, moved feebly out of the battle. The mansion which had been in-
habited by his father-in-law, and from which in his youth he had carried
home his bride Elizabeth, was in sight There still remains an affecting
tradition that he looked for a moment towards that beloved house, and made
an effort to go thither to die. But the enemy lay in that direction. He
turned his horse towards Thame, where he arrived almost fainting with
agony. The surgeons dressed his wounds. But there was no hope. The
pain which he suffered was most excruciating. But he endured it with
admirable firmness and resignation. His first care was for his country. He
wrote from his bed several letters to London concerning public affairs, and
sent a last pressing message to the headquarters, recommending that the
dispersed forces should be concentrated. AVhen his public duties were per-
formed, he calmly prepared himself to die. He was attended by a clergy-
man of the Church of England, with whom he had lived in habits of
intimacy, and by the chaplain of the Buckinghamshire Green-coats, Dr
Spurton, whom Baxter describes as a famous and excellent divine."
The galloping short sentences in the middle of the passage are
sadly out of harmony with the occasion, and nothing could be
more uncongenial than the ostentatious scrap of antiquarian know-
ledge foisted in at the end.
His reflections on St Peter's Ad Vincula, where Monmouth was
buried, are solemn and touching. He warns us that
" Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and St Paul's,
with genius and virtue, with public veneration, and with imperishable
renown ; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with everything
that is most endearing in social and domestic charities, but with whatever
is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph
of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice
of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame,"
and he then proceeds to record a long line of illustrious and un-
fortunate dead. The art of such a passage is of the simplest
H
114 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
order. To us it is affecting as a vivid representation of the lapse
of time, and of the disasters that wait upon greatness : but to the
narrator it is little more than an exercise of historical memory.
The Ludicrous.
Macaulay's wit and humour are the wit and humour usually
ascribed to " The True-Born Englishman." He has no command
either of biting insinuation or of delicate raillery. His laugh is
hearty and confident ; unsparing contempt, open derision, broad
and boisterous humour. Of each of the three qualities thus
loosely expressed, we shall produce examples : his portrait of
Archbishop Laud, for whom he " entertained a more unmitigated
contempt than for any character in our history ;" a short extract
from his review of Mitford's 'History of Greece'; and the begin-
ning of his review of Nares's ' Life of Lord Burleigh ' :
" Bad as the Archbishop was, however, he was not a traitor within the
statute. Nor wns he by any means so formidable as to be a proper subject
for a retrospective ordinance of the Legislature. His mind had not expan-
sion enough to comprehend a great scheme, good or bad. His oppressive
acts were not, like those of the Earl of Strafford, parts of an extensive sys-
tem. They were the luxuries in which a mean and irritable disposition
indulges itself from day to day, the excesses natural to a little mind in a
great place. The severest punishment which the two Houses could have
inflicted on him would have been to set him at liberty, and send him to
Oxford. There he might have stayed, tortured by his own diabolical
temper hungering for Puritans to pillory and mangle; plaguing the
Cavaliers, for want of somebody else to plague, with his peevishness and
absurdity ; performing grimaces and antics in the Cathedral ; continuing
that incomparable Diary, which we never see without forgetting the vices
of his heart in the imbecility of his intellect, minuting down his dreams,
counting the drops of blood which fell from his nose, watching the direction
of the salt, and listening for the note of the screech-owls. Contemptuous
mercy was the only vengeance which it became the Parliament to take on
such a ridiculous old bigot."
" The principal characteristic of this historian, the origin of his excellences
and his defects, is a love of singularity. He has no notion of going with a
multitude to do either good or evil. An exploded opinion, or an unpopular
person, has an irresistible charm for him. The same perverseness may be
traced in his diction. His style would never have been elegant, but it might
at least have been manly and perspicuous ; and nothing but the most elabor-
ate care could possibly have made it so bad as it is."
"The work of Dr Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to that
which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he landed in Brobdingnag,
and saw corn as high as the oaks in the New Forest, thimbles as large as
buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every
component part of it, is on a gigantic scale. The title is as long as an
ordinary preface ; the prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary
bo.)k ; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library. We
cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous miss of paper which lies before
us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand closely
MELODY, HAEMONY, TASTE DESCKIPTION. 115
printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure,
and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before
the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shalum.
But, unhappily, the life of man is now threescore years and ten ; and we
cannot but think it somewhat unfair in Dr Nares to demand from us so
large a portion of so short an existence.
"Compared with the labour of reading through these volumes, nil other
labour, the labour of thieves on the treadmill, of children in factories, of
negroes in sugar-plantations, is an agreeable recreation," &c.
His masterpieces of broad ridicule are found in his literary
reviews. He makes unmerciful game of Southey's Political
Economy, Robert Montgomery's Poems, and Croker's edition of
BoswelL
Melody, Harmony, Taste.
Macaulay's rhythm is fluent, rarely obstructed by harsh combina-
tions, but it is not rich and musical like De Quincey's. Though
often abrupt and always rapid, at times, as we Lave seen, it swells
into more flowing cadences ; yet, at best, the melody of his sen-
tences is the melody of a fluent and rapid speaker, not the musical
roll of a writer whose ear takes engrossing delight in the luxuries
of sound.
Beyond amplifying the roll of his sentences when he rose to
more stately declamations, he does not appear to have studied
much the adaptation of sound to sense. His rhythm is well
suited to the general vigour of his purposes ; it is not much in
harmony with quiet and delicate touches.
Like De Quincey and Carlyle, he has certain salient manner-
isms. The general voice of persons of cultivated taste is against
his abruptness, his hyperbolical turn of expression, and his need-
less employment of antithesis. In these particulars he has trans-
gressed the general rule of not carrying pungent and striking
artifices to excess. Objection may also be taken to the unmiti-
gated force of his derision and his humour. " There is too much
horse-play in his raillery."
KINDS OF COMPOSITION.
Description.
In one of his earlier essays, Macaulay lays down the opinion
that mere descriptions of scenery are tiresome, and that still life
needs associations with human feeling to make it interesting-
This explains why his writings contain so few descriptions of
natural scenery.
When engaged on his History he made it a point of conscience to
visit and describe from personal observation the scenes of the most
memorable events. He visited the battle-field of Sedgmoor, and
116 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
describes the general appearance of the country at the present day
as seen from the church-tower of Bridgewater. But the description
is rather an analysis of the landscape into its general elements,
mingled with various historical reminiscences, than a composition
of those elements into a definite picture. In like manner he wrote
on the spot a description of the Irish towns round which the
Englishry rallied at the Revolution Kenmare, Enniskillen, and
Londonderry. In describing Kenmare, he simply notes the gen-
eral features of the district " the mountains, the glens, the capea
stretching far into the Atlantic, the crags on which the eagles
build, the rivulets brawling down rocky passes, the lakes over-
hung by groves, in which the wild deer find covert ; " elements,
certainly, of gorgeous scenery, but left to the reader to form into
a coherent landscape. His description of Londonderry is perhaps
his most vivid effort. Yet even this is vague compared with the
luminous word-painting of Carlyle.
In his Essays he neglects many opportunities that a master of
descriptive art would have eagerly seized. Had Carlyle written
an essay on Lord Clive, he would have luxuriated in realising to
English readers the novel aspects of Indian scenery; he would have
put forth alTliis powers of imagery to convey a distinct impression
of the shape and dimensions of the table-lands and the great valleys,
and would have placed vividly before us the exact " lie " of the
hill-fortresses and the magnificent cities of the "plains, the appear-
ance of the surrounding country, and, as far as language can express
such things, even the variations of sky and atmosphere.
But is not Macaulay always spoken of as a great pictorial artist ?
True, he is so ; but in a very different sense from such artists as
Carlyle. The dictum quoted above is the key to his choice of
subjects. What he delights to group and to delineate is not
inanimate things, but the condition, actions, and productions of
man. When he describes a town he is concerned less with its
shape and its position relatively to the surrounding landscape,
than with its political or commercial importance, the number and
character of its population, or the splendour of its buildings. The
description of Benares is a fair specimen of his manner :
" His first design was on Benares, a city which in wealth, population,
dignity, and sanctity, was among the foremost of Asia. It was commonly
believed tliat half a million of human beings was crowded into that labyrinth
of lofty alleys, rich with shrines, and minarets, and balconies, and carved
oriels to which the sacred apes clung by hundreds. The traveller could
scarce make his way through the press of holy mendicants, and not less
holy bulls. The broad and stately nights of steps which descended from
these ewnrming haunts to the bathing-places along the Ganges, were worn
every day by the footsteps of an innumerable multitude of worshippers. The
schools and temples drew crowds of pious Hindoos from every province where
the Bralnniuical faith was known. . . . Commerce had as many pilgrims
DESCRIPTION. 117
ns religion. All along the shores of the venerable stream lay great fleets of
vessels laden with rich merchandise. From the looms of Benares went forth
the most delicate silks that adorned the balls of St James's and of the Petit
Trianon ; and in the bazaars the muslins of Bengal and the sabres of Oude
were mingled with the jewels of Golcouda and the shawls of Cashmere."
There is thus no lack of pictorial matter in Macaulay. The
peculiarity is, that so much of it has a direct connection with
human beings, and that though of a strongly objective turn of
mind, he had no natural bent for the description of still life. It
was vigorous, stirring movejnent " the rush and the roar of prac-
tical life " that chiefly engaged his interest He is nowhere more
in his element than in describing a gorgeous pageant, or the de-
monstrations of an excited mob. He enters with great zest into
the reception of Charles I. at Norwich, the " Progress " of James
II., the procession of William and Mary along the Strand, the
ceremony of the coronation, and suchlike. He describes the
accompanying festivities with gusto ; the illuminations, the bells
ringing, the " conduits spouting wine," the " gutters running with
ale." There is probably no prose passage that has been oftener
committed to memory than his account of the trial of Hastings.
One of his most vivid pictures is his detail of the prolonged excite-
ment of London during the persecution and trial of the seven
Bishops, and the burst of joy upon their acquittal:
"Sir Roger Langley answered 'Not guilty I' As the words passed his
lips, Halifax sprang up and waved his hat. At that signal, benches and
galleries raised a shout. In a moment ten thousand persons, who crowded
the great hall, replied with a still louder shout, which made the old oaken
roof crack ; and in another moment the innumerable throng without set up
a third huzza, which was heard at Temple Bar. The boats which covered
the Thames gave an answering cheer. A peal of gunpowder was heard on
the water, and another, and another ; and so, in a few moments the glad
tilings were flying past the Savoy and the Friars to London Bridge, and to
the forest of masts below. As the news spread, streets and squares, market-
places and coffee-houses, broke forth into acclamations. Yet were the
acclamations less strange than the weeping. For the feelings of men had
been wound up to such a point, that at length the stern English nature, so
little used to outward signs of emotion, gave way, and thousands sobbed
aloud for very joy. Meanwhile, from the outskirts of the multitude, horse-
men were spurring off to bear along all the great roads intelligence of the vic-
tory of our Church and nation, "
As regards the method of such descriptions. They follow very
much the same rules as the description of scenery. The describer
should begin with a comprehensive view of his subject In this
respect Macaulay is, as a rule, exemplary. In his description of
Benares, for instance, the first sentence is a summary introduction
to what follows. Further, the describer should observe a method
in the details ; he should place together all that are connected, and
should give them either in the direct or in the inverse order of
118 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
importance : he should, at least, consider what is the most lumin-
ous method in the particular case. This Macaulay is not sufficiently
careful to do : we saw (p. 95) that his order of statement is some-
times confused. The description of the London rejoicings is of
the nature of a description from the traveller's point of view.
After all, the objective character of our author's style consists
more in the pictorial touches brought in by a side wind than in
the direct description of objects. We have already seen, that
instead of making a plain statement of fact, he states some sug-
gestive circumstance. Instead of saying that nobles and even
princes were proud of a University degree, he says that they
" were proud to receive from a University the privilege of wearing
tJte doctoral scarlet." Instead of saying that the Dutch would
never incur the risk of an invasion, he says that "they would
never incur the risk of seeing an invading army encamped between
Utrecht and Amsterdam" Such concrete circumstances are very
instrumental in keeping up the pictorial air of his pages impart-
ing all the more splendour that, as a rule, they are loud and glar-
ing, rather than quiet and significant
In the important process of describing the feelings, he displays
his usual objectivity. He tells what people said, what they did,
how they looked, what visions passed through their imaginations,
and leaves the particularities of their state of feeling to be inferred
from these material indications. Carlyle represents Johnson "with
his great greedy heart and unspeakable chaos of thoughts ; stalk-
ing mournful on this e irth, eagerly devouring what spiritual thing
he could come at." Macaulay represents him with more of concrete
circumstances : " ransacking his father's shelves," " devouring
hundreds of pnges," "treating the academical authorities with
gross disrespect," standing " under the gate of Pembroke, haran-
guing a circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown
and dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undisputed
ascendancy."
Narrative.
Whatever be the ultimate judgment of able critics regarding the
merits of Macaulay's ' History of England,' viewed as a philoso-
phical history or as a solid narrative of public events, there can
be no doubt that it was and is an eminently popular work. It
gained the popular favour not by slow degrees, but at a leap ; five
editions, numbering in all about 18,000 copies, were sold in six
months. In the following remarks, we cannot profess to analyse
all the ingredients of his extraordinary charm for English readers,
but only to observe how far he fulfils certain conditions of per-
spicuous, instructive, and interesting narrative.
NAERATIVE. 119
The affairs of England during the reigns of James and William
were considerably involved, and without skilful arrangement a his-
tory of that period could hardly fail to be confused. Macaulay's
exhibition of the movements of diffeient parties, the different
aspects of things in the three parts of the kingdom, the compli-
cated relations between James and William, and the intrigues ol
different individuals, is managed with great perspicuity.
He is exemplary in keeping prominent the main action and tho
main actor. After the death of Charles, our interest centres in
James. We are eager to know how the change of monarch was
received in London and through the country, and how James
stood in his relations with France and Rome, with Scotland, and
with the English clergy and the Dissenters. Macaulay follows the
lead of this natural interest, and does not leave James until he is
fairly settled on the throne. James once established, our interest
in him is for the time satisfied, and we desire to know the pro-
ceedings of his baffled opponents. Accordingly, the historian
transports us to the asylum of the Whig refugees on the Continent,
describes them, and keeps their machinations in Holland, and their
successive invasions of Britain, prominent on the stage until the
final collapse of their designs and the execution of their leaders.
That chapter of the History ends with an account of the cruelties
perpetrated on the aiders and abettors of the western insurrection
under Monmouth. Then the scene changes to Ireland, the next
interesting theatre of events. And so on : there were various
critical junctures in the history of the Government, and the events
leading to each are traced separately.
The arrangement is so easy and natural, that one almost won-
ders to see it alleged as a merit. But when we compare it \\ith
Hume's arrangement of the events of the same period, we see that
even a historian of eminence may pursue a less luminous method.
Hume relates, first, all that in his time was known of James's
relations with France; then the various particulars of his adminis-
tration in England, down to the insurrection of Monmouth ; then
the state of affairs in Scotland, including Argyle's invasion and the
conduct of the Parliament. He goes upon the plan of taking up
events in local departments, violating both the order of time and
the order of dependence. Macaulay makes the government of
James the connecting rod or trunk, taking up, one after another,
the difficulties that successively besiege it, and, when necessary,
stepping back to trace the particular difficulty on hand to its ori-
ginal, without regard to locality. By grappling thus boldly with
the complicacy of events, he renders his narrative more continuous,
and avoids the error of making a wide separation between events
that were closely connected or interdependent. He does not, like
Hume, give the descent of Monmouth in one section, and the
120 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
descent of Argyle upon Scotland, an event prior in point of time,
in another and subsequent section. James, after his accession, put
off the meeting of the English Parliament till the inure obsequious
Parliament of Scotland should set a good example. Macaulay
tells us at once James's motive for delaying the meeting of the
English Parliament, and details what happened in Scotland during
the fortnight of delay. In Hume's History, we do not hear of the
proceedings instituted by the Scottish Parliament till after the
execution of Argyle, by which time we are interested in another
chain of events, and do not catch the influence of the proceedings
in Scotland upon the proceedings in England.
In the explanation of events, Macaulay is simple, perspicuous,
and plausible, but does not strike us as being precisely correct.
When he can produce a broad and obvious motive, he does not
refine upon the proportionate influence of minor motives. Upon
this tendency we remarked in treating of the intellectual qualities
of his style. If it does not add to his scientific value, it adds at
least to his popularity.
As compared with the historians of last century Hume, Gibbon,
Robertson Macaulay is superior in the use of summaries, pro-
spective and retrospective, to help our comprehension of details.
As compared with Carlyle, he is inferior in this respect. Before
entering into the detail of an incident, he usually favours us with
a general sketch of its nature, and its bearing on what has been
or what is about to be related ; but he is not so exemplary in pre-
figuring the course of events on the larger scale. You can usually
tell from the beginning of a paragraph the general substance of
what is to follow ; you cannot always tell from the beginning of a
chapter what may be the nature of its contents.
The interest excited by the ' History of England ' on its first
appearance was doubtless due partly to its controversial tone, and
its able support of a popular side. With his hatred of abstract
principles of government, it was not to be supposed that he would
shape his narrative with a view to drawing from the facts any
general political lessons, such as a caution against the evils of
arbitrary government. What he wished to enforce was not an
abstract lesson, but a strongly cherished opinion amounting briefly
to this, that the government of the Stuarts was a curse to the
country, and that the Revolution was a blessing.
The History has been wittily called " The Whig Evangel," and
we have seen it described as "An Epic Poem, of which King
William is the Hero." To the one title it may be objected that
our author shows the Whig statesmen of the Revolution to have
been quite as discreditable as the Tory statesmen ; and to the
other, that the work is more rhetorical and polemic than poetical
NARRATIVE. 121
If we must have a caricature secondary title for the book, it would
perhaps be more accurately described as " A Plea for the Glorious
Memory," or "A short and easy Method with the Stuarts."
One of Macaulay's pet theories, advocated with his usual en-
thusiasm, was his view as to the proper method of writing history.
He was eager for the admission of greater scenical interest. He
loses no opportunity of striking at " the dignity of history," which
would confine the historian to " a detail of public occurrences the
operations of sieges the changes of administrations the treaties
the conspiracies the rebellions." He would "intersperse the
details which are the charm of historical romances." "The per-
fect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an
age is exhibited in miniature." " We should not have to look for
the wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for their
phraseology in ' Old Mortality ' ; for one half of King James in
Hume, and for the other half in the ' Fortunes of Nigel.' "
Following out this theory, he gives to his work a strong tincture
of personal interest. Even in the introductory summary, when
briefly sketching the Commonwealth and the Restoration, he does
not forget his ideal; he brings up the "great characteristics of the
age, the loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the fierce
licentiousness of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose
excesses disgraced the royal cause the austerity of the Presby-
terian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the Independent
preachers in the camp, the precise garb, the severe countenance, the
petty scruples, the affected accent, the absurd names and phrases
which marked the Puritans," and so on. When he enters on the
reign of James IL he turns aside much more from public transac-
tions to the details of private life. He resuscitates all the Court
gossip of the period. He draws the character of every courtier of
any note rakes up their foibles, repeats their choicest strokes of
wit He read thousands of forgotten tracts, sermons, and satires
in order to revive for us the personalities of the age. He devotes
fifteen pages to the last illness and death of Charles II., and forty
to the persecution and trial of the Seven Bishops.
It may well be asked whether with all this infusion of personal
interest he comes near his ideal of presenting a miniature of the
age. If any one had objected to him that he shows us the life of
the courtiers and the clergy rather than the life of the people, he
would probably have pointed to the passage in his History where
he despatches all that he has to say about the people in six pages,
with the remark that so little is known concerning "those who
held the ploughs, who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of
Norwich, and squared the Portland stone for St Paul's."
The interest of personality is not the only interest in his nar-
122 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
rative. He has a natural tendency to give it a dramatic turn.
When he introduces his personages, and explains what part they
are playing, he drops a hint that by-and-by they may be found
playing a very different part. We have already seen how invet-
erate is his habit of deferring an event till he has told us what
ought to have happened or what might have happened. This
bears a strong resemblance to dramatic plotting, and excites very
much the same interest ; it is one of the best recognised means of
raising expectation and keeping it in suspense. In like manner he
expatiates on all the preliminaries of an action till he has awakened
in us something like the excitement of those that are watching
and waiting for the event
Another great charm in Macaulay's narrative is his hopeful tone,
his hearty sympathy with progress, and confident belief in the
fact. He has no faith in the dogma that former times were better
than the present ; he maintains with great variety of eloquence that
mankind is steadily and rapidly moving forward. Sanguine minds
are never weary of quoting the triumphal opening of his History,
and in particular his unhesitating declaration that " the history
of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently
the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement."
For English readers this charm is increased by the historian's
patriotism. The world is advancing, and England is walking in
the van.
Tlvs " celebrated Third Chapter. 1 ' This chapter professes to give
a picture of the social condition of " the England which Charles II.
governed." It is interesting as an elaborate attempt to delineate
a cross section of history.
Many of the details have been challenged. He has been
accused of colouring facts to suit his prejudice in favour of
modern cultivation, and to gratify his favourite passion for an-
tithesis. His accounts of the country squire and the country
clergyman, of Buxton, of the suburbs of London, and of one or
two other things, are said to be greatly exaggerated. He ia
charged with taking the lampoons of the time as documents of
literal fidelity.
Without pronouncing upon the merits of these charges, which
the historian's defenders declare to be trivial, we may enter two
objections to the chapter.
(i.) The information is far from complete; it gives a very
imperfect view of the state of society during the period chosen.
A preference is given to flash and startling facts to the material
that is good for pictures and for dazzling paradoxes. Hardly any-
thing is told us concerning the machinery of commerce, the machi-
nery of government, or the system of ranks ; he says nothing
EXPOSITION. 123
about that important social fact how far it was possible to pass
from one station in life to another. The chapter remains a great
achievement for a historian who was not also a special antiquarian,
and who did not make even history his exclusive work ; but it is
far from being a complete sketch of the period.
(2.) There is, as already noticed, no principle of order no
endeavour to help the reader's memory. When we study the
chapter, we can trace in the succession of subjects a certain train
of association ; but there is slight connection apparent upon the
surface, and one's impression at the end of the whole is not a little
confused. The population leads him to speak of the taxation as
the only reliable means of getting at the population ; the taxation
suggests the public expenditure; the public expenditure the public
resources, agriculture and mining ; agriculture leads to rent ; rent
to the country squire ; the squire to the clergyman, and so on.
On such a method, or rather no-method, there could be nothing
but intricacy and confusion.
Exposition.
We have already seen how far Macaulay possesses the gifts of
an able expositor. /T,With his mastery of language, he can repeat
his statements in great variety of forms.O In his love of antithesis
he often has recourse to the obverse form o ( f , repetition. He has
an incomparable command of examples ancrillustrations. Thus,
of all the four great arts of exposition he is a master.
Yet he cannot rank as an expositor with such a writer as Paley.
This is partly on account of a deduction that must be made from
his powers of accurate exposition. He is too fond of extreme and
" sensational " examples, and of easy concrete illustrations not
restricted to the relevant point. But the great detraction is, that
he did not exhibit his powers, like Paley, on subjects of consider-
able inherent difficulty.
Macaulay's bent was naturally towards subjects of popular in-
terest. Whatever he cared to master he could expound with the
utmost clearness ; but he had little inclination for hard abstract
principles. His 'Notes on the Indian Penal Code' are hardly an
exception. He has to support the provisions of the Code by
general considerations, and his statement of these considerations
is very clear and very interesting. But the subject is not natu-
rally dry and repulsive. There is no greater temptation to make
the Notes abstruse than there is to make a critical essay abstruse.
He makes them interesting and animated by exactly the same
arts of style as give such interest and animation to his essays.
He mixes up the statement of the general principles with particu-
lar cases : sometimes, without stating the principle at all, he merely
suggests it by saying that the particular provision he is defending
124 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
rests on the same principle as some familiar rule of English law.
He finds ample scope for antithesis in contrasting other Penal
Codes with the various provisions of the Code recommended for
India. Not even paradoxes are wanting ; he surprises us at times
by finding unsuspected reasons for departing from some familiar
practice such as the practice of allowing in certain cases an option
between fine and imprisonment.
Persuasion.
Macaulay was a very popular orator. Soon after he entered
Parliament, he spoke in the same debate with the late Lord
Derby ; and Sir James Mackintosh describes their speeches as
"two of the finest speeches ever spoken in Parliament" And
many men still living confess that their prejudices against the
Reform Bill of 1832 were first overcome by his eloquent and per-
spicuous arguments.
His speeches are not the only evidence of his debating power.
He is essentially a controversialist : it is hardly an exaggeration
to say that he never makes a statement without attempting to
prove it. His history is a protracted argument in favour of the
Revolution. The "Third Chapter" is a broadside against the
superiority of former days. When he has no real opponent to
refute, no actual prejudice to overturn, he imagines all sorts of
objections for the purpose of proving them to be groundless.
His ' Notes on the Indian Penal Code ' are defences against
supposed objections. His Essay on Warren Hastings is a plea
under the disguise of a judicial summing up. Not that he
argues solely from the love of argument ; always in earnest, he
is eager to bring others round to his own views ever bent upon
convincing and converting.
This determination to persuade is at the root of his efforts to
make himself understood by everybody, already noticed as the
main cause of his simplicity of style. He is not content to
utter an opiniqn in a form intelligible from his own point of
view : having constantly before him the desire to convince all
classes of minds, he asks how the opinion will be regarded
by people of opposite sentiments, and shapes his statement ac-
cordingly.
Knowledge of those addressed. Macaulay's audience may be
said to have been the whole English-speaking world. That he
knew many favourite maxims and ways of looking at things, is
sufficiently proved by his wide popularity.
He humoured in an especial manner two feelings that are said
to be peculiarly English love of the_ practical as opposed to the
theoretical, and love of material progress. He " distrusts all
general theories of government ; " he was intensely inimical to
PERSUASION. 125
James Mill's Essay on Government He loves gradual changes ;
he professes a horror of revolutions and a contempt for Radicals.
And while a stanch friend to intellectual and moral progress,
he is far from seeing any danger to either in the multiplication
of physical comforts: he exults in the English "public credit
fruitful of marvels ; " and one of the ideals that he " wishes
from his soul " to see realised is, " employment always plentiful,
wages always high, food always cheap, and a large family con-
sidered not as an encumbrance, but as a blessing."
Another thing that could not fail to endear him is his out-
spoken pride of country. By the mixture of races in our island
was formed, he says, "a people inferior to none existing in the
world." Englishmen " were then, as they are still, a brave,
proud, and high-spirited race, unaccustomed to defeat, to shame,
or to servitude."
Means of Persuasion. (i.) Always perfectly master of the
facts of his subject, he displays the highest rhetorical ingenuity
in giving happy turns to opposing arguments. This was one
great secret of his success in the Reforming Parliaments of 1831
and 1832. Hardly an argument could be advanced but he turned
it against the speaker maintaining with all his paradoxical point
that it was precisely the consideration that led him to advocate
Reform. The Reformers were taunted with a leaning to universal
suffrage. " Every argument," returns Macaulay, " which would
induce me to oppose universal suffrage, induces me to support
the plan which is now before us. I am opposed to universal
suffrage because I think that it would produce a destructive
revolution. I support this plan because I am sure that it is
our best security against a revolution." Again, in answer to
the hackneyed appeal to the wisdom of our ancestors, he says,
"We talk of the wisdom of our ancestors; and in one respect,
at least, they were wiser than we. They legislated for their
own times. They looked at the England which was before
them. They did not think it necessary to give twice as many
members to York as they gave to London, because York had
been the capital of Britain in the time of Constantius Chlorus ; "
and so on. Again, " It is precisely because our institutions
are so good that we are not perfectly contented with them ;
for they have educated us into a capacity for enjoying still
better institutions." Once more the promoters of the Anatomy
Bill were accused of trying to make a law to benefit the rich
at the expense of the poor. "Sir," said Macaulay, "the fact
is the direct reverse. This is a bill which- tends especially to
benefit the poor ; " and he proceeded to prove his assertion by
examples.
Another of the devices of his fertile ingenuity and perfect ac-
126 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
quaintance with his subject is to accuse his Conservative opponents
of holding dangerous principles. He carries the war into the
enemy's country. " If," cries the Member for the University of
Oxford " If we pass this law, England will soon be a Republic.
The Reformed House of Commons will, before it has sate ten
years, depose the King and expel the Lords from their House."
"Sir," returns Macaulay. "if my honourable friend could prove this, he
would have succeeded in bringing an argument for democracy infinitely
stronger than any that, is to be found 'in the works of Paine. My honourable
friend's proposition is in fact this : that our monarchical and aristocratical
institutions have no hold en the public mind of England ; that these insti-
tutions are regarded with aversion by a decided majority of the middle class.
. . . Now, sir, if I were convinced that the great body of the mi' Idle class
in England look with aversion on monarchy and aristocracy, I should be
forced, much against my will, to come to this conclusion, that monarchical
and aristocratical institutions are unsuited to my country."
So when they opposed the disfranchisement of the Rotten Bor-
oughs on the ground that it was spoliation of property, Macaulay
warned them of the danger of such a principle :
"You bind up two very different things in the hope that they may stand
together. Take heed that they do not fall together. You tell the people
that it is as unjust to disfranchise a great lord's nomination borough as to
confiscate hi-i estate. Take heed that you do not succeed in convincing weak
and ignorant minds that there is no more injustice in confiscating his estate
than in disfranchising his borough."
(2.) His powers of drawing a strong and vivid picture are of
great service in helping him to make out his case. In arguing on
the Reform Bill, he was at great pains to make a powerful state-
ment of the inequalities of the existing system of representation,
and sketched with his best vigour the following strong example :
" If, sir, I wished to make such a foreigner clearly understand what I con-
sider as the great defects of our system, I would conduct him through that
Immense citv which lies to the north of Great Russell Street and Oxford
Street a city superior in size and in population to the capitals of many
mighty kingdoms ; and probably superior in opulence, intelligence, and
general respectability to any city in the world. I would conduct him through
that interminable succession of streets and squares, all consisting of well-
built and well-furnished houses. I would make him observe the brilliancy
of the shops, and the crowd of well-appointed equipages. I would show 1m::
that magnificent circle of palaces which surrounds the Regent's Park. 1
would tell him that the rental of this district was far greater than that of
the whole kingdom of Scotland at the time of the Union. And then I would
tell him that this was an unrepresented district."
To take another well-known instance. In answer to the common
objection that the Reform Bill would not be final, he argued that
finality was not to be expected that a changed state of society
might again call for a change in the representation. His manner
of putting the possibilities of change was characteristic :
PERSUASION. 127
"Another generation may find in the new representative system defects
such as we find in the old representative system. Civilisation will proceed.
Wealth will increase. Industry and trade will find out new seats. The
same causes which have turned so many villages into great towns, which
have turned so many thousands of square miles of fir and heath into corn-
fields and orchards, will continue to operate. Who can say that a hundred
years hence there may not be, on the shore of some desolate and silent bay in
the Hebrides, another Liverpool with its docks and warehouses and endless
forests of masts t Who can say that the huge chimneys of another Manchester
may not rise in the wilds of Connemara 1 For our children we do not pre-
tend to legislate."
(3.) His great powers of debate appear chiefly in refutation. He
is critical rather than constructive. He takes delight in exposing
false analogies and false generalities, and in showing that anticipa-
tions are not warranted by previous experience.
When he can put a doctrine upon the horns of a dilemma, he
tosses it with great spirit A good instance is his assault on
primogeniture ; which also illustrates his habit of referring all
generalities to the fundamental particulars, and his favourite man-
ner of retorting that the facts prove exactly the opposite of what
is asserted :
" It is evident that this theory, though intended to strengthen the foun-
dations of Government, altogether unsettles them. Did the divine and im-
mutable law of primogeniture admit females or exclude them ? On either
supposition, half the sovereigns of Europe must be usurper* , reisoring in de-
fiance of the commands of heaven, and might be justly dispossessed by the
rightful heirs. These absurd doctrines received no countenance from the
Old Testament ; for in the Old Testament we read that the chosen people
were blamed and punished for desiring a king, and that they were afterwards
commanded to withdraw their allegiance from him. Their whole history,
far from favouring the notion that primogeniture is of divine institution,
would rather seem to indicate that younger brothers are under the special pro-
tection of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob of
Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse, nor Solomon of David. In-
deed, the order of seniority among children is seldom strictly jegarded in
countries where polygamy is practised."
Examples, actual cases, which he lays down in such numbers,
often have the effect of a proof, being the actual foundation of the
general proposition. His illustration in the debate on the Anatomy
Bill of the assertion that the poor suffer more by bad surgery than
the rich, has something of this effect :
"Who suffers by the bad state of the Russian school of surgery? The
Emperor Nicholas f By no means. The whole evil falls on the peasantry.
If the education of a surgeon should become very expensive, if the fees ot
surgeons should consequently rise, if the supply of regular surgeons should
diminish, the sufferers would be, not the rich, but the poor in our country
villages, who would again be left to mountebanks, and barbers, and old
women, and charms, and quack medicines."
Perhaps the best example of his irresistible use of facts to en-
force his views is to be seen in his speeches on the proposals to
128 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAT.
extend Copyright He runs over the principal men in English
literature, and examines how the law would have operated with
them. Would it have induced Dr Johnson to labour more assidu-
ously had he known that a bookseller, whose grandfather had pur-
chased the copyright of his works from his residuary legatee Black
Frank, would be in 1841 drawing large profits from the monopoly ?
Would it have induced him to give one more allegory, one more
life of a poet, one more imitation of Juvenal ?
Very often his concrete comparisons are of the nature of argu-
ments by analogy. His speech on the war with China, defending
the Government from tbe charge of having brought on the war by
mismanagement, abounds in comparisons of this sort. One of the
charges was that the instructions sent to the superintendent were
vague and meagre, to which Macaulay replied that it would be
pernicious meddling to attempt to direct in detail the action of a
functionary fifteen thousand miles off:
"How indeed is it possible that they should send him directions as to the
details of his administration ? Consider in what a state the affairs of this
country would be if they were to be conducted according to directions framed
by the ablest statesman residing in Bengal. A despatch goes hence asking
for instructions while London is illuminating for the peace of Amiens. The
instructions arrive when the French army is encamped at Boulogne, and
when the whole island is up in arms to repel invasion. A despatcli is written
asking for instructions when Buonaparte is at Elba. The instructions come
when he is .it the Tuilleries. A despatch is written asking for instructions
when he is at the Tuilleries. The instructions come wheu he is at St Helena.
It would be just as impossible to govern India in London as to govern Eng-
land at Calcutta. "
Here we have substantially an argument by analogy. Another
of the charges brought against Government was, that they made
no exertion to suppress the opium trade. This Macaulay met with
the assertion that it was impossible, supporting his assertion with
the following plausible parallel :
" In England we have a preventive service which costs us half a million
a-year. We employ more than fifty cruisers to guard our coasts. We have
six thousand effective men whose business is to intercept smugglers. And
yet . . . the quantity of brandy which comes iu without paying duty is
known to be not less than six hundred thousand gallons a-year. Some
people think that the quantity of tobacco which is imported clandestinely
is as great as the quantity which goes through the custom-house. . . .
And all this, observe, has been done in spite of the most effective preventive
service that, I believe, ever existed in the world. . . . If we know any-
thing about the Chinese government, we know this, that its coast-guard is
neither trusty nor efficient ; ami we know that a coast-guard as trusty and
as efficient as our own would not be able to cut off communication between
the merchant longing for silver and the smoker longing for his pipe."
Any attempt at prevention, he says further, would turn the
smugglers into piratea
PERSUASION. 129
" Have not similar causes repeatedly produced similar effects ! Do we not
know that the jealous vigilance with which Spain excluded the ships of other
nations from her transatlantic possessions turned men who would otherwise
have been honest merchant adventurers into buccaneers ? The same causes
which raised up one race of buccaneers in the Gulf of Mexico would soon
have raised up another in the China sea."
The same sense of the effect of dealing with propositions in the
concrete appears in another form. He is anxious to reduce vague
and general charges to a statement of facts, with a view to show
the insufficiency of the real grounds. Thus he reduces Sir James
Graham's charge of Government maladministration in China to
the following:
" The charge against them therefore is this, that they did not give such
copious and particular directions as were sufficient, in every possible emer-
gency, for the guidance of a functionary who was fifteen thousand miles otf."
His habit of immediately looking to the facts when a generality
was asserted, often enabled him to point out that certain circum-
stances had not been taken into account. Thus, in the Reform
debate, a member argued that it was unjust to disfranchise Aid-
borough, because the borough was as populous now as in the days
of Edward III., when it was constituted an elective borough. True,
replied Macaulay, but it ought to be much more populous now than
then, if it would keep its position. Other towns have been grow-
ing enormously, while Aldborough has been standing still.
(4.) Though habitually gladiatorial, and always eager to con-
vince by argument, he shows considerable tact in recommending
his own view to the feelings of the persons addressed.
Throughout his History he seeks favour for his own favourites by
representing them as the champions of English glory. His account
of Cromwell may be studied for artful touches of this sort. One
of his most splendid paragraphs is his account of the supremacy of
England during the Protectorate. In equally enthusiastic terms
he celebrates the superiority of Cromwell's pikemen:
"The banished Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride when they saw
a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered by foes and 'abandoned by
allies, drive before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force
a passage into a counterscarp which had just been pronounced impregnable
by the ablest of the marshals of France."
In the Reform debates his principal card was the fear of pro-
voking the people to a revolution. Again and again he reiterated
that there were grounds for such a fear. When Lord John Russell
hinted at the danger of disappointing the expectations of the
nation, he was accused of threatening the House. Macaulay
defended the obnoxious expression as quite " parliamentary and
decorous," and repeated his own belief in the reality of the
dancer :
130 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULA.Y.
" I, sir, do entertain great apprehension for the fate of my country. I
do in my conscience believe that unless the plan proposed, or some similar
plan, be speedily adopted, great and terrible calamities will befall us. En-
tertaining this opinion, I think myself bound to state it, not as a threat, but
as a reason. "
In more than one of the debates he held up the French Revolu-
tion as a warning :
" The French nobles delayed too long any concession to the popular
demands. Because they resisted reform in 1783, they had to resist revolu-
tion in 1789. They would not endure Turgot, and they had to endure
Robespierre. "
In one speech he drew a vivid picture of the destruction of the
nobility, and asked
" Why were they scattered over the face of the earth, their titles abolished,
their escutcheons defaced, their parks wasted, their palaces dismantled, their
heritages given to strangers ? Because they had no sympathy with the
people, no discernment of the signs of their time ; because, in the pride and
narrowness of their hearts, they called those whose warnings might have
saved them theorists and speculators ; because they refused all concession
until the time had arrived when no concession would avail."
CHAPTEE IIL
THOMAS CARLYLE,
1795 1880.
THOMAS CARLYLE, " The Censor of the Age," as he has been
called, was an author by profession. In his famous petition on
the Copyright Bill, written in 1839, he described himself as " a
writer of books."
He was born at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, on the 24th of
December 1795. His father was a mason in that village, after-
wards a peasant farmer near it ; sprung from strong and turbulent
Borderers, himself respected for his uprightness, thoroughness of
industry, and a certain sarcastic energy of speech. Of this cold,
stern, upright father, whose " heart seemed as if walled in," and of
his mother, to whom he was warmly attached, Carlyle has left a vivid
picture in his ' Reminiscences.'
Thomas, the eldest son of a family of nine, received the book
education common to hundreds of young Scotchmen in the same
condition of life. He was taught to read by his mother and the
village schoolmaster ; taught the rudiments of Latin by the minis-
ter of his sect : then, after some training in the higher branches of
learning at the burgh school of Annan, he proceeded to the Univer-
sity of Edinburgh.
When he entered the University, he had not quite completed his
fifteenth year. Some of his professors were men of note : Dunbar,
Professor of Greek ; Leslie, Professor of Mathematics ; Playfair,
Professor of Natural Philosophy ; Thomas Brown, Professor of
Logic and Moral Philosophy. Young Carlyle was a hard student.
He applied himself diligently to classics. To Brown's lectures he
gave little attention, having a strong distaste for the analytic mode
of dealing with mind, but the lectures in science he mastered thor-
132 THOMAS CARLYLE.
oughly : natural liking for the subject, or the professor's enthu
siasm, or accident, led him to make mathematics his principal
study. He prosecuted the high mathematics for a long time with
the greatest ardour. It was in his devotion to this subject that he
first injured his naturally robust health. He became a mathemat-
ical teacher, and at one time was a candidate for the Professorship
of Astronomy in Glasgow. Traces of these studies appear not
only in his figurative allusions, but in an amount of scientific
method far beyond what is generally found in writers of high
imagination.
But it was outside the range of academical studies that the
young student's principal and most profitable work lay. He was
the oracle of a small band of youths, poor like himself, and ambi-
tious of literary distinction, who read extensively in the Univer-
sity library, and discussed what they read with free enthusiasm. All
of them seem to have predicted future greatness for Carlyle. To
one " foolish flattering " prediction of this kind he replied, in his
nineteenth year, in the following characteristic strain : " Think
not, because I talk thus, I am careless of literary fame. No ; hea-
ven knows that, ever since I have been able to form a wish, the
wish of being known has been the foremost. Oh, Fortune ! thou
that givest unto each his portion in this dirty planet, bestow (if
it shall please thee) coronets, and crowns, and principalities, and
purses, and pudding, and powers, upon the great and noble and fat
ones of the earth. Grant me, that with a heart of independence,
unyielding to thy favours and unbending to thy frowns, I may
attain to literary fame ; and though starvation be my lot, I will
smile that I have not been born a king."
Although, thirty years later, Carlyle wrote scornfully about " the
goose goddess which they call Fame! Ach GottJ" this youthful
rhodomontade gives the key to the spirit of his future struggles.
For nearly a quarter of a century he laboured till his ambition was
attained ; but he held to it with fierce energy, even when starva-
tion stared him in the face ; and he obtained fame at last on his
own terms, without any sacrifice of his independence.
It was to teaching that he first turned himself for a livelihood.
In the end of May 1814 he quitted Edinburgh, having gone through
the usual curriculum in arts ; and, by competitive trial at Dum-
fries, got the teachership of mathematics in the burgh school of
Annan, where, as we have mentioned, he had himself been a scholar.
After two years' service in that post, he was, through the recom-
mendation of his Edinburgh professors, offered the teachership of
mathematics and classics in the burgh school of Kirkcaldy, and
held that appointment also for about two years. In Kirkcaldy he
made the intimate acquaintance of Edward Irving, who, like him-
self, hud been a schoolboy at Annan, and who for some years
LIFE. Iblj
was master of a " venture school " in Kirkcaldy, known as " The
Academy."
The time spent by Carlyle in schoolmastering, and its probable
influence on his habits of thought and feeling, have been a little
exaggerated. He nBver liked it, and was barely three-and-twenty
when he gave it up. In the end of 1818 he left Kirkcaldy, and
went across to Edinburgh; with no definite prospects, but with a
vague notion of trying to live by literature. He spent some three
years in Edinburgh, mainly in what he would call " stony-ground
husbandries," the three gloomiest years of his life out of health,
troubled in mind, finding comfort only in a "sacred defiance" of
death as the worst that could happen. His only known literary
\vork during those years was the composition of certain articles for
Brewster's ' Edinburgh Encyclopedia.' During this period also he
resumed his reading in the University library; extended his know-
ledge of Italian, Spanish, and especially German ; and devoured
extraordinary numbers of books on history, poetry (in a moderate
degree), romance, and general information as to all countries, and
all things of popular interest In 1822 he became tutor to Charles
Buller, an appointment that relieved him from a good deal of dis-
tasteful drudgery, and left him time for literary plans.
In 1823 he sent to the 'London Magazine' the first instalment
of his 'Life of Schiller.' In 1824 his publications were numerous;
he finished his ' Life of Schiller,' and produced a translation of
' Legendre's Geometry,' with an original Essay on Proportion, as
well as his first notable work, the translation of ' Wilhelm Meister.'
During the next two years, having broken off his connection with
the Buliers, he laboured at translations from the German, " honest
journey-work, not of his own suggesting or desiring." In 1825 his
Schiller appeared in a separate form.
The most memorable incident in those years was Carlyle's ac-
quaintance with the remarkable woman who afterwards became
his wife, Miss Jane Welsh, only daughter of Dr \Velsh, a lineal
descendant of John Knox. The marriage took place in 1826, after
three years of intellectual courtship, and did not prove a happy one
for the lady. A brilliant, clever, sprightly woman, made much of by
her father as an only child, and humoured by him in her love for
literature, she despised commonplace suitors of her own degree,
and was attracted by the force of Carlyle's unconventional talk in
spite of his rugged exterior. She " married for ambition," as she
afterwards said, and her discernment of Carlyle's power was ultim-
ately fully justified, but she had not calculated rightly the extent
of the bitter sacrifices she had to make for' the companionship.
That her life was not so wholly joyless as might appear from her
published letters, we may well imagine ; but as the household
slave of a man of genius absorbed in his work, habitually gloomy
134 THOMAS CARLYLE.
and irritable, taking all her sacrifices as matters of ordinary duty,
never recognising them as sacrifices, ruthlessly rebuking her weak-
nesses, and making no acknowledgment of her ministrations to his
comfort, her lot was far from cheerful. She did not and could
not understand before actual experience the meaning of "marrying
for ambition " a man with an ambition so hungry and ruthless as
Carlyle's.
For some two years after his marriage Carlyle lived in Edin-
burgh, drudging at literature and casting about for some settled
employment, such as a professorship. Then, in 1828, much against
Mrs Carlyle's wish, finding neither pleasure nor profit in Edin-
burgh society, he retired to Craigenputtoch, a small property
belonging to his wife, situated about a day's journey east of his
native Ecclefechan. At Craigenputtoch he lived about six years.
His manner of life he described in an often-quoted letter to Goethe,
with whom he had been brought into correspondence by his trans-
lation of ' Wilhelm Meister.' He had retired to his own "bit of
earth " to " secure the independence through which he could be
enabled to remain true to himself." "Six miles from any one
likely to visit him," " in the loveliest nook of Scotland," he yet
kept himself informed of what was passing in the literary world ;
he had "piled upon the table of his little Horary a whole cartload of
French, German, American, and English journals and periodicals."
"True to himself" Carlyle undoubtedly was then as at all times,
setting his face with ferocious resolution against imitation of any
style or vein of thought or sentiment that could be called popular,
not merely determined to deliver his message in his own way, but
as yet undecided \\ hat his message was to be, and searching for one
with desperate sighing and groaning. Jeffrey took a warm inter-
est in himself and his wife, and implored, scolded, and argued in
a vain endeavour to persuade him to submit to commonplace taste.
Carlyle would write in his own way and on his own themes or not
at all. The consequence was, that all through those years he was
in constant difficulties with publishers and editors, and in the
direst pecuniary straits, all the more that he gave generous help
to a younger brother, and refused to touch a penny of his wife's
income as long as her mother was alive. The articles reprinted in
the three first volumes of his ' Miscellanies ' were written at this
time. Several literary plans had, to be abandoned because no
publisher would take them up. The idea occurred to him of
taking his own struggle for existence as a theme, and he gave in
' Sartor Itesartus ' his passionate commentary on a world in which
he found it so hard to live in his own way, and which seemed to
him so full of matter for scornful laughter and pity and indigna-
tion. This strangely original work, in which Carlyle was much
more defiantly singular than he had ever been before, was re-
LIFE. 135
jected by several publishers, but at length saw the light as a
series of articles in 'Eraser's Magazine/ 1833-34, and its singular-
ity and force drew upon the author more attention than he had
hitherto received.
In 1834 he removed to the London suburb now associated with
his name. The " Seer of Chelsea" is now as familiar a synonym
as "the glorious Dreamer of Highgate." But when he came to
London, it was almost as a last desperate move. He was known
to the dispensers of literary work only as an obstinately peculiar
and fantastic individual In America he was more quickly ap-
preciated. Emerson and others pressed him to settle there, and his
'Sartor' and his occasional essays were reprinted at Boston in 1836.
His first success in London was as a lecturer. In 1837 he gave to
" a very crowded, yet a select, audience " in London a course of
six public lectures on German literature; in 1838 a course of
twelve " On the History of Literature, or the Successive Periods
of European Culture;" in 1839 a course on "the Revolutions of
Modern Europe;" in 1840 a course on " Heroes, Hero-Worship,
and the Heroic in History." l These lectures made a sensation
in fashionable literary circles; the rugged English, the Scotch
accent, the emphatic sing-song cadence, combined with the lofti-
ness and originality of the matter, drew crowds to hear the new
prophet. " It was," said Leigh Hunt, " as if some Puritan had
come to life again, liberalised by German philosophy and his own
intense reflections and experiences."
Meanwhile his master-works began to appear. During his first
year's residence in London, he had written with fiercely earnest
labour the first volume of a work on the French Revolution.
There is not a more deeply interesting chapter in literary history
than Mr Froude's account of the accidental destruction of this
manuscript, " written as with his heart's blood," and of the almost
unconquerable repugnance and heroic effort with which Carlyle
set himself to do the work over again. At last, in 1837, the
' French Revolution ' appeared, and Carlyle secured the fame for
which he had wrestled so long. Henceforward publishers let him
deliver his message as he liked. In 1838 'Sartor Resurtus,'
"hitherto a mere aggregate of Magazine articles," emerged from
its " bibliopolic difficulties," and became a book. The same year
witnessed the first edition of his ' Miscellanies.' In 1839 he
published, under the title of 'Chartism,' his first attack on the
corruption of modern society, and the futility of all extant projects
of reform. In 1843 he followed up 'Chartism' with 'Past and
Present' In 1845 ne published his 'Cromwell's Letters and
Speeches,' which met with a more rapid sale than any of his pre-
vious works. In 1850 he returned, in his ' Latter-Day Pamphlets,'
' The last course only lias l>een published.
13G THOMAS CARLYLE.
to the condition of society, pouring forth unmeasured contempt on
" The Nigger Question," " The Present Time," " Model Prisons,"
"Downing Street," "The New Downing Street," "Stump Orators,"
"Parliaments," "Hudson's Statue," "Jesuitism." Next year
appeared his ' Biography of John Sterling.' Thereafter he was
occupied exclusively with his great historical work, ' The History
of Frederick II., commonly called The Great.' The two first vol-
umes were published in 1858, other two in 1862, and in 1865 the
work was completed.
In the session of 1865-66 he was elected Lord Rector by the
students of Edinburgh University; and on April 2, 1866, de-
livered to a crowded and enthusiastic audience his famous Instal-
lation Address. He was not suffered long to enjoy the most
affecting public manifestations that have ever honoured his name.
His wife died before his return to London : in the very hour of
his public triumph came the stroke of calamity; and the old
man mourned that " the light of his life was quite gone out"
Not till after her death did he learn how much she had suffered
for him.
He published nothing of importance during the last fifteen years
of his life. Now and then he made his voice heard on questions
of passing interest In 1867 he wrote for ' Macmillan's Magazine'
a very gloomy anticipation of the consequences of the Reform
Bill, with the suggestive title, " Shooting Niagara, and After 1 "
In 1869 he sent to the newspapers a letter on his favourite
" Emigration." During the war between France and Germany,
he wrote to rejoice over the French defeat, and quoted history to
show that it had been well deserved. His last publication was a
series of articles on the Portraits of John Knox and the Early
Kings of Norway, which appeared as a small volume in 1875. He
died at Chelsea, February 5, 1881.
In his Rectorial Address at Edinburgh, being then a patriarch
of seventy, he addressed a kindly warning to his youthful hearers
against the physical dangers of too severe study. His own strong
frame and great constitutional robustness were early impaired by
injudicious closeness of application. During the whole of his later
life he suffered from dyspepsia. It says much for the native energy
of his system that, in spite of this depressing if not debilitating
disorder, he accomplished such an amount of solid work, retain-
ing his powers to old age, and writing with unabated vigour at
the extreme age of seventy. He had sufficient strength of will to
sustain what De Quincey always recognised as the best remedy for
his "appalling stomachic derangement" namely, regular habits
of active exercise.
We spoke of Macaulay as a man whose intellectual energies were
CHARACTER. 137
to some extent dissipated upon various fields of exertion. Carlyle's
energies were concentrated with unparalleled intensity upon liia
books. For nearly half a century he gave the best part of his
working time to literature, pursuing his appointed tasks with fre-
quent fits of strong distaste, but with unalterable steadiness of
aim. Probably more intellectual force has been spent upon the
production of Carlyle's books than upon the productions of any
two .'other writers in general literature.
His powers of memory were not of the same universally and
immediately dazzling order as Macaulay's. Every person that
met Macaulay went away in astonishment at " the stores which
his memory had at instantaneous command." In private society
Carlyle impressed his hearers by talk very much resembling the
general texture of his writings. He had not Macaulay's wide-
ranging readiness of recollection, could not quote with the same
instantaneous fluency, and could not trust his memory so confi-
dently without a written note. Again to compare him in this
particular with De Quincey he does not strike us as possessing
great multifarious knowledge. He makes comparatively few allu-
sions beyond the circle of subjects that he has specially studied.
His scrupulous love of accuracy may have hampered the flowing
display of his knowledge; but within the circles of his special
studies, his memory is pre-eminently wonderful. To hold in mind
the varied materials of his vivid historical pictures was a strain of
retentive force immeasurably greater than was ever required of
either De Quincey or Macaulay for the production of their works.
His memory is singularly catholic as regards the kind of thing
remembered ; he remembers names, dates, scenical groupings, and
the characteristic gestures and expressions of whole societies of
men, to all appearance with equal fidelity.
Carlyle is sometimes loosely spoken of as a great " thinker," but
his power does not lie in the regions of the dry understanding, in
analysis, argument, or practical judgment. In his youth he was
distinguished as a mathematician ; but when he turned to the study
of men, he took fire : on anything connected with man, he felt too
profoundly to reason well His whole nature rose in rebellion
against cold-blooded analysis and matter-of-fact argument In his
works he is never tired of sneering at " Philosophism," the " Dis-
mal Science" of Political Economy, "Attorney Logic," andsuchlika
He had a natural antipathy to such ways of approaching men and
the affairs of men. He was naturally incapable of De Quincey's
pursuit of character or meaning into minute shades, and of Macau-
lay's elaborate refxatations by copious instance and analogy. Take,
for example, his Hero-worship. Instead of analysing, as De Quin-
cey might have done, the elements of greatness in his heroes, or of
producing, as Macaulay might have done, argumentative arrays of
138 THOMAS CAKLYLE.
actual undeniable achievements as the proof of their title to admira
tion, he exercises his ingenuity in representing their greatness under
endless varieties of striking images; the hero is "a flowing light-
fountain of native original insight, of manhood and heroic noble-
ness ; " " at all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him ; "
"a messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown with tidings
to us."
Though deficient as an analyst and as a debater, he shows in
other forms abundance of the elementary intellectual force prin-
cipally concerned in analysis and debate. Had his feelings been
less dominant, he might have developed into a profound professor
of what he calls the Dismal Science, and might even, with unpre-
cedented persuasive skill, have converted the world to the practice
of Malthusianism. But feeling and natural impulses chained his
strong intellect to their service; and instead of scientific analysis
and solid argument, the result is a splendour and originality of
imagery and dramatic grouping that entitle him to rank near
Shakspeare, or with whoever may be placed next to our received
ideal of the incomparable.
A man of feeling and impulse, his feelings and impulses were
very different from what we find in natures constitutionally fitted
for enjoyment, in the born lovers of existence, his own " eupeptic "
men. In his works we encounter something very different from
Macaulay's uniform glow of buoyant hopefulness, hearty belief in
human progress, and confident plausible judgment of men and
events. We find gloomy views of man and his destiny, a stern
gospel of work, judgments passed in strong defiance of conven-
tional standards, and towering egotism under the mask of humour.
In another aspect he strikes us as offering a considerable contrast
to De Quincey. The Opium-Eater, though not by any means a
eupeptic man, was an avowed Eudsemonist, " hated an inhuman
moralise like unboiled opium," and was a lover of repose and of
the softer emotions. In Carlyle, on the contrary, the central and
commanding emotion is Power ; he is all for excitement and energy.
We have already seen the difference in their ways of viewing great
men ; that De Quincey admires them in a passive attitude, while
Carlyle is raised by the thought of their achievements to the
loftiest heights of ideal energy. We have no means of knowing
how Carlyle would have enjoyed the actual control of human
beings as a commander or a civic ruler like Cromwell, Frede-
rick, Mirabeau, or Dr Francia; but he shows a most thorough
enjoyment of commanding authority in the imagination. His
thirst for the ideal enjoyment seem insatiable, and drives him
to exaggerate the influence of his chosen heroes, and to suppress
nnd understate the influence of their coadjutors. "Universal
History, the history of what man has accomp i.shed in this world,
CHARACTER. 139
is at bottom the history of the Great Men who have worked there."
" All things that we see standing accomplished in the world are
properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and
embodiment of thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into
the world : the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be
considered, were the history of these."
A good way of representing the difference between two such
writers is to look through their works, and piece together their
conceptions of the universe in their highest moods of sublimity.
De Quincey sees midsummer moving over the heavens like an
army with banners ; hears cathedral music in the confused noise
of mountain-streams ; loves to contemplate calmly in the mirror
of such minds as "Walking Stewart's" the whole mighty vision of
the sentient universe, oriental pageantry, revolutionary convul-
sions, civic splendour ; and occasionally lifts his mind to travel in
the same calm way through the illimitable grandeurs of astronomi-
cal spaces. Contrast this repose of attitude with the violent ex-
citement of Carlyle's favourite conceptions : the world pictured as
a dark simmering pit of Tophet, wild puddle of muddy infatua
tions, of irreconcilable incoherences, bottomless universal hypoc-
risies, an ungenuine phantasmagory of a world, full of screechings
and gibberings, of foul ravening monsters, of meteor-lights and
Bacchic dances, the wild universe storming in upon man infinite
vague-menacing.
Carlyle's love of powerful excitement finds a magnificent outlet
in his humour and derision. Psychologists tell us that the basis
of laughter is a sudden accession of pleasure in the shape of the
special elation of power and superiority. Carlyle avowedly ap-
proves of laughter sets up hearty laughter as a criterion of
genuine human worth ; and, as we shall see when we come to
his qualities of style, he is self-indulgent, if not intemperate, in
the exercise of his own sense of the ludicrous. His mirth is robust
as he says himself, in describing the Norsemen, " a great broad
Brobdingnag grin of true humour."
His pathos is of the kind that goes naturally with such excessive
indulgence in the excitement of power. Wherever there is a height
there is a corresponding hollow ; the lover of intoxicating excite-
ment too surely pays the penalty in intervals of exhaustion, of
unutterable depression and despondency. With all his fire, his
gospel of work, and his denunciation of unproductive sentimen-
tality, Carlyle has his inevitable fits of the melting mood. We
shall see that at times he is overpowered with sadness at the
thought of human miseries and perplexities, and that he bemoans
with more than Byronic despondency the irresistible movement of
time.
We have already spoken of the amount of intellectual effort
140 THOMAS CARLYLE.
spent upon the production of our author's books. The grand duty
of work that he preaches with such earnestness he was no less
earnest in performing. He gathered his materials not only with
painful labour, but with scrupulous respect for minute fact. This
for him was but a small part of the toil of writing history ; when
the materials were collected, a much larger draught of his impa-
tient energy was spent in filling the dry facts with human interest.
The mere writing was never an easy or happy task for him : he
wrote at white heat, with feverish effort, with all his faculties
intensely concentrated. If we take any page of his ' French
Revolution ' and try to conceive how it was built up, and what
care was expended on the separate elements of it before the
whole waa " flung out of him," as he said, in the final convulsive
effort of composition, we come as near as we can to realising
what labour went to the making of Carlyle's books.
He does not seem to have done his work with the fitful irreg-
ularity of Christopher North, but rather to have acted on the
Virgilian plan of so much manuscript each day. Such work as
his could hardly have been accomplished without the steadiest
concentration of endeavour. It is known that in composing the
' French Revolution ' he set himself daily to produce so much, and
in all probability be composed his other works on the same rigid
method. In this respect he is a much safer model to the general
run of students than the versatile and discursive Macaulay.
OPINIONS. Carlyle's doctrines are the first suggestions of an
earnest man, adhered to with unreasoning tenacity. As a rule,
with no exception that is worth naming, they take account mainly
of one side of a case. He was too impatient of difficulties, and
had too little respect for the wisdom and experience of others, to
submit to be corrected; opposition rather confirmed him in his
own opinion. Most of his practical suggestions had already been
tried and found wanting, or had been made before and judged im-
practicable upon grounds that he did not or would not understand.
His modes of dealing with pauperism and crime were in full opera-
tion under the despotisms of Henry VII. and Henry VIIL His
theory of a hero-king, which means in practice an accidentally
good and able man in a series of indifferent or bad despots, has
been more frequently tried than any other political system : Asia
at this moment contains no government that is not despotic. His
views in other departments of knowledge also, are chiefly deter-
mined by the strength of unreasoning impulses.
This will appear when we state his opinions in some detail We
throw them for convenience into a few familiar divisions.
Psychology. He disclaims the ordinary mental analysis. He
speaks with great con tempt of " motive-grinding." He sat through
OPINIONS. 141
Thomas Brown's lectures with perpetual inward protest, declaring
that he did not want the mind to be taken to pieces in that way.
We need not therefore look in his writings for any large \iews
of the mind, for any enunciation of doctrines of a comprehensive
kind. In his partiality for everything German, he adopts with
unquestioning faith some Kantian and other transcendentalisms
of German origin. His own original views of the mind are frag-
mentary and somewhat fanciful
We may apply the title " Psychological " to some of his doc-
trines about the indissoluble union of certain qualities. For one
example, take his theory of Laughter as the criterion of goodness.
" Readers," he says, " who have any tincture of Psychology, know
. . . that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed
can be altogether irreclaimably bad." Again, " Laughter, also, if
it come from the heart, is a heavenly thing." As another example,
take his doctrine that Intellect is the true measure of worth.
" Human Intellect, if you consider it well, is the exact summary
of Human Worth." " A man of intellect, of real and not sham
intellect, is by the nature of him likewise inevitably a man of
nobleness." " The able man is definable as the born enemy of
Falsity and Anarchy and the born soldier of Truth and Order.'**
Such doctrines are, it is hardly necessary to say, far from clear.
Very bad men often laugh heartily enough, in the ordinary sense
of the words; and very able men, in the ordinary sense of the
word "able," are often very great scoundrels. Carlyle's unre-
served admirers probably bring themselves to accept such dogmas
by laying stress on the saving clauses, " if it comes from the
heart;" "if you consider it well;" and suchlike. But none of
these clauses will save the doctrines if they are taken in the ordi-
nary meaning of their words ; and one may well doubt whether
great writers are to be allowed the privilege of throwing the
ancient boundaries of words into confusion.
Other examples of his habit of attaching laudatory predicates to
what he has a liking for, without much regard to the fitness of the
application, are such as the following : " All deep things are song.
It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song ; as if all
the rest were but wrappings and hulls ;" " You may see how a
man would fight by the way in which he sings;" "'The imagi-
nation that shudders at the hell of Dante,' is not that the same
faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own 1 " " Your genuine
poet is the real Encyclopedist," <fec. <fec. All these involve indif-
ferent psychology, and they are but samples of more of the same
kind.
Ethics. Doctrines in Ethics we shall keep as far as possible dis-
tinct from doctrines in Theology ; although many of our author's
doctrines are two-sided.
142 THOMAS CARLYLE.
(i.) According to Carlyle, the chief end of life is the perform-
ance of Duty. He is full of contempt for the pursuit of happiness,
and pours out his most indignant eloquence against the theory of
life that would make happiness the end. "In all situations out of
the Pit of Tophet, wherein a living man has stood or can stand,
there is actually a prize of quite infinite value placed within his
reach namely, a Duty for him to do : this highest Gospel . . .
forms the basis and worth of all other Gospels whatsoever."
His stern creed allows no collateral support to the discharge of
duty. If men labour in hope of reward, they are still unconverted,
still in darkness. They must recognise that they deserve nothing.
To Methodism, " with its eye for ever turned on its own navel,"
and torturing itself with the questions ' Am I right, am I wrong 1
Shall I be saved, shall I be damned ? ' he gives the lofty advice
" If thou be a man, reconcile thyself " to the fact " that thou art
wrong ; thou art like to be damned;" "then first is the devouring
Universe subdued under thee," and there breaks upon thee "dawn
as of an everlasting morning." On the same principle of acknow-
ledging utter worthlessness, and recognising that nothing too bad
can befall us, we are advised " Fancy that thou deservest to be
hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to 'be only
shot ; fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it
will be a luxury to die in hemp." In short, our only consolation
in life is to be the sense of doing our duty ; as regards everything
else, we must expect nothing, lest we should be disappointed.
(2.) But Duty is an abstraction, an empty Ideal : does Carlyle
recommend any duties in particular ? Yes.
The first great duty is the duty of Work Action, Activity.
This eminent feature in his preaching has been called "The
Gospel of Labour." According to this gospel, all the "peopled,
clothed, articulate - speaking, high - towered, wide - acred World "
has been " made a world for us " by work ; the individual that
does not lend a hand fails in his duty as a denizen of the
Universe. Man's greatest enemy is Disorder ; his most im-
perative and crying duty is to subdue disorder, convert chaos
into order and method ; the able - bodied or able - minded man
that stands idle deserves unspeakable contempt, he is a dastard,
a fool, a simulacrum; he does not fulfil his destiny as a man.
Wherefore, " Do thy little stroke of work ; this is Nature's voice,
and the sum of all the commandments, to each man."
To the question, What is to be done ? he answers peremptorily,
" ' Do the Duty which lies nearest thee,' which thou knowest to
be a duty." "Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest
infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God's name.
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy
might." He never recommends or brings prominently forward
OPINIONS. 143
caie in the choice of a vocation; he is so eager and impetuous
to have something done, that he has no thought of cautioning
against the hasty adoption of unsuitable work. He evidently
considers there is much more danger in idleness. We must " live
and not lie sleeping while it is called to-day." " Something
must be done, and soon." Doubt is removed only by activity.
He upholds the dignity of work at all points. "All true work
is religion." " ' Laborare est orare' work is worship." Tlx>
" Captains of Industry " are the true aristocracy. The great army
of workers, "Ploughers, Spinners, Builders; Prophets, Poets,
Kings ; Brindleys and Goethes, Odins and Arkwrights ; " this
grand host is " noble, every soldier in it ; sacred, and alone
noble." "Two men he honours, and no third" "the toilworn
Craftsman who conquers the x Earth," and " him who is seen
toiling for the spiritually indispensable."
He sets off his own Gospel of Work against other pretended
Gospels. He despatches the Stoics in the person of Epictetus
by telling them that " the end of man is an Action and not a
Thought, though it were the noblest." He taunts those that
make happiness the end of life with the declaration, that " the
night once come, our unhappiness, our happiness it is all
abolished ; vanished, clean gone ; a thing that has been." " But
our work behold, that is not abolished, that has not vanished :
our work, behold, it remains, or the want of it remains ; for
endless Times and Eternities, remains." He is also vigorous
against what he calls sentimeutalism, which he dubs " twin-
sister to Cant" "The barrenest of all mortals is the senti-
mentalist ; " " in the shape of work he can do nothing."
Another great duty is the duty of Obedience. Not only is
obeying the best discipline for governing, and as such extolled
in Abbot Samson, and recommended to the Duke of Logwood,
but " Obedience is our universal duty and destiny ; wherein
whoso will not bend must break." Too early and too thoroughly
we cannot be trained to know that " Would in this world of ours
is as mere zero to Should." Again to the same effect " Obedi-
ence is the primary duty of man. No man but is bound inde-
feasibly with all force of obligation to obey."
There is nothing peculiar upon the face of these precepts, except
their strength ; they might almost stand in the Institutions of the
Jesuits. Here and there throughout his works we meet with
qualifications. He denounces the obedience of the Jesuits
" Obedience to what is wrong and false 1 good heavens ! there
is no name for such a depth of human cowardice and calamity."
It is the heroic, the divine, the true, that he would have us
obey. When the powers set over us are no longer anything
divine, resistance becomes a deeper law of order than obedience
144 THOMAS CARLYLE.
If we ask how we are to know the heroic, the divine, we are
left to understand that it will make itself manifest. The true
King " carries in him an authority from God, or man will never
give it him." "He who is to be my Ruler, whose will is to
be higher than my will, was chosen for me in heaven."
Another duty is the duty of Veracity, of Sincerity as opposed
to Cant, the duty of being Real and not a Sham. On these
virtues and their opposites, on those that observe them and those
that violate them, he expends much eloquenca The ' French
Revolution' is almost a continued sermon on the evils of in-
sincerity, hollowness, quackery, and on the good of the corre-
sponding virtues. And in none of his works can we read far
without encountering some declamation on Truth, Sincerity, Real-
ity, Falsehood, Cant, Puffery, Sham.
On one point his preaching of Truth may mislead. He does
not seem to think that Truth requires a man to make a frank
and open declaration of his beliefs. For his own part, at least,
he is very reticent as to his real opinions, on matters of religion
for instance ; and he praises Goethe's example of wrapping up
opinions in mysterious oracles. The fact would seem to be, that
all his requirements of Veracity, Sincerity, Reality, are satisfied
by one thing, the conscientious performance of one's appointed
work. This, if we look beneath the gorgeous verbal opulence
of the preacher, would seem to be the whole duty of man. If
he engages to cut thistles, let him cut them with all his might
If he engages to review authors, let him read their works con-
scientiously. If he engages to write history, let him diligently
search out its facts.
His characteristic love of reality appears in his preference of
Fact to Fiction, and his condemnation of Fine Art as Dilet-
tantism.
Religion. His religious views are worded obscurely. To extract
definite opinions from his vague declamations on the subject,
would inevitably be to misrepresent him. He intimated plainly
enough that he had departed from the received orthodoxy of this
country ; of this he made no secret He himself gave up study-
ing for the Scottish Church ; and he records his opinion " in flat
reproval " of John Sterling's resolution to take orders in the
English Church. "No man of Sterling's veracity, had he clearly
consulted his own heart, or had his own heart been capable of
clearly responding, and not been dazzled and bewildered by
transient fantasies and theosophic moonshine, could have under-
taken this function." Elsewhere he pities Sterling in this " con-
fused epoch of ours," with "the old spiritual highways and recog-
nised paths to the Eternal, now all torn up and flung in heaps,
submerged in unutterable boiliiig mud-oceans of Hypocrisy and
OPINIONS. 145
Unbelievability, of brutal living Atheism and damnable dead
putrescent Cant" But while he was thus severe alike on In
lidelity and on Orthodoxy, he never said with an approach
to intelligibility what was his own belief. Mr Froude has
rescued a fragment written in 1852, and intended to expound
more fully his thoughts on religion. But Carlyle had not gone
far when he threw the work aside as unsatisfactory, and not
adequately expressing his meaning. John Sterling gives the
following account of the Religion or No-Religion of the Sartor :
" What we find everywhere, with an abundant use of the name of God, is
the conception of a formless Infinite whether in time or space ; of a high
inscrutable Necessity, which it is the chief wisdom and virtue to submit
to, which is the mysterious impersonal base of all Existence shows itself
in the laws of every separate being's nature, and for mau in the shape of
duty."
We may perhaps rank among his religious opinions his accept-
ance of Fichte's idea that the " true literary man " is " the world's
Priest," "continually unfolding the Godlike to men," "sent hither
especially that he may discern for himself, and make manifest to
us, this same Divine Idea." By way of defining the "true" man
of letters, he says that "whoever lives not wholly in this Divine
Idea is ... no Literary Man."
1'olitics. His political views connect themselves partly with his
ideas about Work, Reality, Sincerity, and suchlike ; and partly
with his Hero-King. All the miseries in this life are due to
Idleness, Imposture, Unveracity. This he explicitly declares.
" Quack -ridden ; in that one word lies all misery whatsoever.
Speciosity in all departments usurps the place of reality, thrusts
reality away. . . . The quack is a Falsehood incarnate."
He does indeed say elsewhere that "it is the feeling of injus-
tice that is insupportable to all men ; " but then he explains
that injustice " is another name for disorder, for unveracity,
unreality." This being so, what does he propose as remedies
for imposture, unreality, <fec. 1 We come upon two specific reme-
dies hidden away under masses of declamation emigration and
education : emigration to provide work for industrious men that
can get no employment; education for no stated reason. He
simply recommends that " the mystery of alphabetic letter should
l>e imparted to all human souls in this realm." These are his
only constructive views in politics, and they can hardly be said
to be his. 1 For the rest, through his 'Chartism,' 'Past and Pres-
ent,' ' Latter-Day Pamphlets,' and incidentally through his other
1 Carlyle's chief plans for social reform were anticipated with great exactness
in Sir Thomas Moore's ' Utopia ' (see p. 191). In my ' Characteristics of English
Poets' (p. 51, zd. ed.), T have pointed out the close correspondence between the
social doctrines of Carlyle and the autlior ot ' Piers the Plowman.'
K
146 THOMAS CARLYLE.
works, ho deplores the present state of things, denounces existing
Kings, Aristocracies, Churches, and specially declaims against
modern political movements. We did wrong to emancipate the
negroes ; they find the necessaries of life cheap, work little, and
let the sugar crops rot. We are too lenient with our criminals
(see p. 158). He would take more work out of them. He
ci insiders the transaction of Government business to be in a
wretched state hampered by " blind obstructions, fatal indol-
ences, pedantries, stupidities;" the Colonial Office "a world-wide
jungle of red-tape, inhabited by doleful creatures." He would
have none but men of ability in important posts. He dis-
approves strongly of Parliaments elected by the people ; sneers
at voting and " ballot-boxes " ; asks whether a crew that settled
every movement by voting would be likely to take a ship round
Cape Horn. His ideal of government is to have a king (which
he is constantly deriving from Can through Konig, and constantly
translating " Ableman ") at the head of affairs, and capable,
obedient officials under him through all degrees of importance.
How to realise the ideal he does not show ; and, as we have said,
he takes no account of the endeavours of human communities
towards this ideal, or of the uncontrollable forces that make it an
impossibility.
Criticism. Of literary criticism in the ordinary sense of the
word in the sense of noting faults and merits of style, of showing
what to avoid and what to imitate Carlyle's writings contain
next to nothing. He published, as we have seen, under the title
of ' Critical and Miscellaneous Essays,' remarks on various great
men of letters German, French, and English. But in these
essays he does not occupy himself with style, or with the state-
ment and illustration of critical canons. He deals rather with
life, character, and opinions ; declaims on his favourite topics
Mystery, Reverence, Industry, Veracity ; rails at reviewers, logi-
cians, historical philosophers, sceptical philosophers, atheists, and
other favourite objects of aversion. He ranks authors, not accord-
ing to their literary power, but according as they possess his car-
dinal virtues. Goethe and Johnson he extols above measure as
being men of power, and, at the same time, industrious, veracious,
and reverential towards the mystery of the world. In consideration
of this he passes over in Goethe some minor iniquities that else-
where he condemns in the abstract, and passes over in Johnson
what some writers are pleased to call his intolerant prejudices and
narrow canons of criticism. Voltaire and Diderot he finds indus-
trious and veracious, but terribly wanting in reverence. Accord-
ingly, he refuses to call them great men finds in Voltaire adroit-
ness rather than greatness, and styles him a master of persiflage.
One or two of his precepts may be called literary, though they
VOCABULARY. 147
scarcely belong to minute criticism. He warns writers to beware
of affectation ; to study reality in their style. One of the chief
merits of Burns is his " indisputable air of reality." He further
recommends them to write slowly; points out tlie evils of Sir
Walter Scott's extempore speed, and affirms that no great tiling
was ever done without difficulty. Once more he stands up for a
style that does not show its meaning at once, that becomes intel-
ligible slowly and after much laborious study. ( )n this ground
he praises Goethe and Novalis, saying that no good book or good
thing of any sort shows itself at first. Still another literary notion,
already alluded to, is his idea that, in the present day, men should
write prose and not poetry, and history rather than fiction.
ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
Vocabulary.
His command of words must be pronounced to be of the highest
order. Among the few that stand next to Shakspeare he occupies
a very high place.
As his peculiar feelings are strongly marked, so are the special
regions of his verbal copiousness. As a matter of course, he was
specially awake to, and specially retained, expressions suiting his
peculiar vein of strength, rugged sublimity, and every form of
ridicule and contempt down to the lowest tolerable depths of
coarseness. It would be interesting to collect the various forms
that he uses to express his sense of the confusion, the chaotic dis-
order, of these latter days. An estimate of his abundance on that
or any other of his favourite topics would give the reader the most
vivid idea of his lingual resources.
Having a strong natural bent for the study of character, he is a
consummate master of the requisite phraseology. In the language
needful for describing character, he probably comes nearer Shak-
speare than any other of our great writers. To be convinced of
this, we have only to look at his opulence in bringing out the leading
features of such a man as John Sterling. Between the subjective
and the objective side, the language of feeling and the language of
gesture and action, he is pretty evenly divided a master of both
vocabularies.
In the use of Latinised terms, as against Saxon, he follows the
Shakspearian type of an indifferent mixture. He does not particu-
larly affect either extreme. Often on themes where other writers
would use solemn words of Latin origin, he- prefers what Leigh
Hunt calls a "noble simplicity," which others might call "profane
familiarity " ; but he employs liberally the Latinised vocabulary
when it suits his purpose. His acquaintance with technical namea
148 THOMAS CARLYLE.
is considerable. He makes frequent metaphorical and literal ap-
plication of the language of mathematics and natural philosophy
his favourite studies when a young man. He knew also the
vocabulary of several industries, as well as of the social mechanism
and institutions.
Two circumstances in particular make his command of acknow-
ledged English appear less than it really is. First, revelling in his
immense force of Comparison or Assimilation, he shows a prodigi-
ous luxuriance of the figures of similarity nicknaming personages,
applying old terms to new situations, and suchlike. He often
substitutes metaphorical for real names when the real are quite
sufficient, and perhaps more suitable for the occasion. Now this
habit, not to speak of its lowering the value and freshness of his
genius by over-doing and over-affecting originality of phrase, often
makes it appear as if he did not know the literal and customary
names of things, and were driven to make shift with these allusive
names. Another circumstance produces the same impression. He
is most liberal in his coinage of new words, and even new forms of
syntax. For this he was taken to task by his friend John Sterling, 1
part of whose criticism we quote :
" A good deal of the language is positively barbarous. ' En-
' vironment,' ' vestural,' ' stertorous,' ' visualised,' ' complected,'
1 and others I think to be found in the first thirty pages, are
' words, so far as I know, without any authority ; some of them
' contrary to analogy ; and none repaying by their value the dis-
' advantage of novelty. To these must be added new and errone-
' ous locutions : ' whole other tissues ' for all the other, and similar
' uses of the word whole ; ' orients ' for pearls ; ' lucid ' and
1 ' lucent ' employed as if they were different in meaning ; ' hulls '
'perpetually for coverings, it being a word hardly used, and then
' only for the husk of a nut ; ' to insure a man of misapprehension;'
"talented, 1 a mere newspaper and hustings word, invented, I be-
'lieve, by O'Connell. I must also mention the constant recur-
'rence of some words in a quaint and queer connection, which
'gives a grotesque and somewhat repulsive mannerism to many
'sentences. Of these the commonest offender is 'quite'; which
'appears in almost every page, and gives at first a droll kind of
'emphasis; but soon becomes wearisome. 'Nay,' 'manifold,'
' 'cunning enough significance,' 'faculty' (meaning a man's rational
'or moral power), 'special,' 'not without,' haunt the reader as if
'in some uneasy dream, which does not rise to the dignity of
nightmare."
In this passage, which Carlyle himself has given to the world,
some of his most striking peculiarities of diction are noticed. To
give an adequate view of his verbal eccentricities, would be no
1 Carlyle's Life of Sterling, 276.
SENTENCES. 149
small labour. He extends the admitted licences of the language
in every direction, using one part of speech for another, verbs for
nouns, nouns for verbs, adverbs and adjectives for nouns. His
coinages often take the form of new derivatives " benthamee,"
"amusea" He abuses the licence of giving plurals to abstract
nouns : thus " credibilities," " moralities," " theological philoso-
phies," "transcendentalisms and theologies."
This excess of metaphors, new words, and grammatical licencea
is in favour of the reader's enjoyment, but not so much in favour
of the student's instruction. It belongs to the inimitable, unre-
producible part of the style ; the student cannot take the same
liberties without bearing the charge of copying an individual
manner, instead of deriving from the common fund of the language.
So far it may stimulate to do likewise in one's own independent
sphere ; but close imitation is little better than parody, and imi-
tation of any kind runs some danger of ridicule.
Sentences.
In his essays, particularly in the earlier essays and in his ' Life
of Schiller,' Carlyle shows none of the irregularity of structure
that appears in his matured style. He has an admirable com-
mand of ordinary English, and constructs his sentences to suit the
motion of a massive and rugged, yet musical rhythm.
Even in his essays, though himself writing with great care, he
speaks slightingly of painstaking in the structure of sentences.
What he really objects to is making sentences after an artificial
model, of a particular length, or with a particular cadence, or with
a particular number of members ; but he speaks as if he condemned
all labour in the arrangement of words, and lays himself open to
be quoted by any that would shirk the trouble of making them-
selves as intelligible as possible to their readers.
The sentences of his later manner we can describe in his own
words. Among his editorial remarks on the style of Teufelsdroeckh
is the following :
"Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on
their legs ; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed up by
props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this or the other tag-rag
hanging from them ; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite
brokeu-backed and dismembered."
From this figurative description one would suppose his sentences
to be extremely involved and complicated. As a matter of fact,
they are extremely simple in construction consisting, for the
most part, of two or three co-ordinate statements, or of a short
direct statement, eked out by explanatory clauses either in apposi-
tion or in the " nominative absolute " construction. These apposi-
150 THOMAS CARLYLE.
tion and absolute clauses are the " tag-rags," and it is in the con-
nection of them with the main statement that we find the " dashes
and parentheses." This character of his sentences is so obvious
that few examples will suffice :
' ' Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is pro-
perly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season and to be laid oft
Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is in-
cluded all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been : the whole
External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing ; and the essence of all
Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES."
In this explanation of the Philosophy of Clothes, the sentences
are free from intricacy. The second sentence exemplifies a very
common form with Carlyle in his less irregular moods, although he
sneers at some sentence- makers because they are very curious to
have their sentence consist of three members ; yet he seems to
have been himself a lover of this peculiar cadence.
He very often uses the sentence of two members, one explana-
tory of the other avoiding the error of joining them by a con-
junction. Thus in his description of John Sterling's mother :
"The mother was a woman yf many household virtues ; to a warm affec-
tion for her children, she joined a degree of taste and intelligence which is
of much rarer occurrence."
As examples of his practice of apposition, take the following :
"Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally
pleasant of all things : especially Biography of distinguished individuals."
Speaking of John Sterling, he says :
" To the like effect shone something, a kind of childlike, half-embarrassed
shimmer of expression, on his fine vivid countenance ; curiously mingling
with its ardours and audacities."
The Cruwn - Prince's imprisonment by his father is thus de-
scribed :
" Poor Friedrich meanwhile has had a grim time of it these two months
back ; left alone, in coarse brown prison -dress, within his four bare walls at
Ciistrin ; in uninterrupted, unfathomable colloquy with the Destinies and
the Necessities there."
In the following long sentence abundant use is made both of
participle and of nominative absolute :
" Eminent swill of drinking, with the loud coarse talk supposable, on the
part of Mentzel and consorts, did go on, in this manner, all afternoon ; in
the evening drunk Mentzel came out for air ^ went strutting and staggering
about ; emerging finally on the platform of some rampart, face of him huge
and red as that of the foggiest rising Moon ; and stood, looking over into
the Lorraine Country ; belching out a storm of oaths as to his taking it, as
to his doing this and that ; and was even flourishing his sword by way of
accompaniment; when, lo, whistling slightly thiough the summer air, a
SENTENCES. 151
rifle-ball from some sentry on the French side (writers say, it was a French
drummer, grown impatient, and snatching a sentry's piece) took the brain
of him or the belly of him : and he rushed down at once, a totally collapsed
monster, and mere heap of dead ruin, never to trouble mankind more."
We have seen that Macaulay's style may in an especial degree
be called artificial, inasmuch as he makes prodigal use of special
artifices of composition. Carlyle is artificial in a different sense ;
at least he uses artifices of a different kind. His structure of
sentence is extremely loose is an extravagant antithesis to the
period' 3. His studied ruggedness and careless cumulative method
are incompatible with measured balance of clause or sentence. We
may say, with a rough approximation to truth, that Macaulay's
artificiality lies in departing from ordinary colloquial structure,
Carlyle's in departing from the ordinary structure of written com-
position.
In his ' Life of Schiller,' and in his earlier essays, Carlyle builds
up his composition with elaborate care in the ordinary literary forms.
The following periodic sentences are constructed with Johnsonian
formality, and with more than Johnsonian elaboration :
"Could ambition always choose its own path, and were will in 1 in man
imdertakings always synonymous with faculty, all truly ambitious men
would be men of letters. Certainly, if we examine that love of power,
which enters so largely into most practical calculations nay, which out
Utilitarian friends have recognised as the sole end and origin, both motive
and reward, of all earthly enterprises, animating alike the philanthropist,
the conqueror, the money-changer, and the missionary we shall find that
all other arenas of ambition, compared with this rich and boundless one of
Literature, meaning thereby whatever respects the promulgation of Thought,
are poor, limited, and ineffectual. For dull, unreflective, merely instinctive
as the ordinary man may seem, he has nevertheless, as a quite indispensable
appendage, a head that in some degree considers and computes ; a lamp or
rushlight of understanding has been given him, which, through whatever
dim, besmoked, and strangely diflractive media it may shine, is the ultimate
guiding light of his whole path : and here as well as there, now as at all
times in man's history, Opinion rules the world."
In this earlier style he sometimes also composes elaborate
balanced parallels after the model of Pope's comparison between
Homer and Virgil. We quote a short comparison between Alfieri
and Schiller, where the imitation of Pope is very apparent :
"Alfieri and Schiller were again unconscious competitors in the history
of Mary Stuart. But the works before us give a truer specimen of their
comparative merits. Schiller seems to have the greater genius ; Alfieri the
more commanding character. Alfieri's greatness rests on the stern concen-
tration of fiery passion, under the dominion of an adamantine will : this was
his own make of mind ; and he represents it with strokes in themselves de-
void of charm, but in their union terrible as a prophetic scroll. Schiller's
moral force is commensurate with his intellectual gifts, and nothing more.
The mind of the one is like the ocean, beautiful in its strength, smiling
in the radiance of summer, and washing luxuriant and romantic shores :
152 THOMAS CARLYLE.
that of the other is like some black unfathomable lake placed far amid the
melancholy mountains; bleak, solitary, desolate; but girdled with grim
sky-piercing cliffs, overshadowed with storms, and illuminated only by the
red glare of the lightning. Schiller is magnificent in his expansion, Alfieri
is overpowering in his condensed energy ; the first inspires us with greater
admiration, the last with greater awe."
Paragraphs.
In his more rhapsodical works, such as 'Chartism* and the
' Latter-Day Pamphlets,' he is an indifferent observer of para-
graph method. The reader is bewildered by the introduction of
reflections without any hint of their bearing on the theme in hand.
Some pages remind us of his vivid descriptions of chaotic inunda-
tions that hide or sweep away all guiding-posts. Very seldom can
we gather from the beginning of a paragraph what is to be its
purport. No attempt is made to keep a main subject prominent.
Whenever anything occurs to suggest one of his favourite themes
of declamation, he embraces the opportunity, and lets his main
business drop.
This applies to his "prophetical" utterances, where his great
natural clearness both in matter and in manner seems to be
abandoned. In his history the case is very different There his
arrangement is almost the perfection of clearness. He is at pains
to make everything easy to the reader. When the bearing of a
statement is not apparent, he is careful to make it explicit In
each paragraph the main subject is for the most part kept promi-
nent, his defiance of ordinary syntax giving him great facilities
for a distinct foreground and background. He begins his para-
graphs with some indication of their contents. Further, he is
consecutive, and keeps rigidly to the point.
Figures of Speech.
Teufelsdroeckh is made to say, concerning style, that plain words
are the skeleton, and metaphors l " the muscles and tissues and
living integuments ; " further, that his own style is " not without
an apoplectic tendency."
This might be quoted against Carlyle's own dictum, that " genius
is unconscious of its excellence." His profusion of figurative lan-
guage is perhaps the most striking monument of his originality
and power.
Figures of Similarity. His similitudes, forcibly hunted out from
every region of his knowledge of nature and of books, are not
merely fanciful embellishments most of them go to the making
ot his vivid powers of description. The character, or personal
1 Metaphor is here probably used for "trope," as that word is defined in the
Introduction.
FIGURES OF SPEECH. 153
appearance, or action of an individual ; the character of a nation,
a state of society, a political situation ; the relative position of two
belligerents, everything, in short, that needs describing, lie brings
vividly before us in its leading features by some significant simile
or metaphor.
This wealth of illustration is very noticeable in the description
of character. For every personage of marked character he exerts
himself to find a vivid similitude. " Acrid, corrosive, as the spirit
of sloes and copperas, is Marat, Friend of the People." Lafayette
is "a thin constitutional Pedant; clear, thin, inflexible, as water
turned to thin ice, whom no Queen's heart can love." The Coun-
tess of Darlington, George L's fat mistress, is "a cataract of tallow,
with eyebrows like a cart-wheel, and dim coaly disks for eyes."
She is contrasted with the Duchess of Kendal, the lean mistress,
"poor old anatomy or lean human nailrod."
Every kind of situation, individual or social, is set forth in the
same way. The ' French Revolution ' is a blazing heap of simili-
tudes ; they meet us at every page in twos and threes. They are
often very homely. The following, taken at random, are tolerably
fair specimens :
"Your Revolution, like jelly sufficiently boiled, needs only to be poured
into shapes of Constitution, and 'consolidated' therein."
" Military France is everywhere full of sour inflammatory humour, which
exhales itself fuliginously, this way or that ; a whole continent of smoking
flax, which, blown on here or there by any angry wiud, might so easily start
into a blaze, into a continent of fire."
"Such Patriotism as snarls dangerously and shows teeth, Patrollotism.
shall suppress ; or, far better, Royalty shall soothe down the anger of it by
gentle pattings, and, most effectual of all, by fuller diet."
The History of Friedrich is illuminated no less effectively. He
speaks incidentally of the French Revolution as
" That whirlwind of the universe lights obliterated and the torn wrecks
of Earth and Hell hurled aloft into the Empyrean black whirlwind which
made even apes serious, and drove most of them mad."
The above is a characteristic figure. The following, along
with a characteristic similitude, introduces one of his favourite
personifications :
' ' As the History of Friedrich, in this Ciistrian epoch, and indeed in all
epochs and parts, is still little other than a whirlpool of simmering con-
fusions, dust mainly, and sibylline paper-shreds, in the pages of poor Dryas-
dust, perhaps we cannot do better than snatrh a shred or two (of the partly
legible kind, or capable of being made legible) out, of that hideous caldron ;
pin them down at their proper dates ; and try if the reader can, by such
eans, catch a glimpse of the thing with his own eyes."
His account of old Friedrich's violence to young Friedrich upon
154 THOMAS CARLYLE.
the attempted " desertion," is a fair sample of his figurative man-
ner at its acme :
" Friedrich Wilhelm's conduct, looked at from without, appears that of
a hideous royal ogre, or blind anthropophagous Polyphemus fallen mad.
Looked at from within, where the Polyphemus has his reasons, and a kind
of inner rushlight to enlighten his path, and is not bent on man-eating, but
on discipline in spite of difficulties, it is a wild enough piece of humanity,
not so much ludicrous as tragical. Never was a royal bear so led about
before by a pair of conjuring pipers in the market, or brought to such a pass
iu his dancing for them."
Two other things must be noticed before we have a complete
idea of his employment of similitudes. One is a habit, already
partially alluded to, of keeping up descriptive metaphors, and
using them instead of the literal names, or along with the literal
names as a kind of permanent Homeric epithet. Thus, he never
mentions the Countess of Darlington without designating her as
the " cataract of tallow"; or the Duchess of Kendal without some
thing equivalent to " Maypole or lean human nailrod." The other
noticeable thing is his frequent repetition, with or without varia-
tions, of certain favourite figures. Perhaps the most characteristic
is his stock of metaphors and similes drawn from the great features
of the material world to illustrate the moral ; his " pole-star veiled
by thick clouds," his earthquakes, mad foam-oceans, Noah's deluge,
mud-deluges, cesspools of the Universe, Pythons, Megatheriums,
Chimaeras, Dead-Sea Apes, and suchlike.
He has also certain favourite personifications, which are made to
do a great deal of service. Such are the Destinies, the Necessities,
the dumb Veracities, the Eternal Voices, Fact, Nature, all which
are so many synonyms for the homely phrase, " circumstances
beyond our control." We have seen that when Friedrich was
shut up alone at Custrin, he was left in " colloquy with the Des-
tinies ;md the Necessities there." In another passage he is said
to be " shut out from the babble of fools, and conversing only with
the dumb Veracities, with the huge inarticulate moanings of Des-
tiny, Necessity, and Eternity." When he submits to his father,
he is said to be " loyal to Fact," which means that he yields to
what he cannot overcome. In like manner, Democracy, " the
grand, alarming, imminent, indisputable Reality," is " the inevi-
table Product of the Destinies " : whoever refuses to recognise that
the Avorld has come to this, is "disloyal to Fact." "All thinking
men, and good citizens of their country," " have an ear for the
small still voices and eternal intimations"; in other words, discern
the best course that circumstances will admit of. "The eternal
regulations of the Universe," "the monition of the gods in regard
to our affaire," " which, if a man know, it is well with him," are
other figurative expressions to the same effect.
FIGURES OF SPEECH. 155
One of Carlyle's favourite inferior personages is Dryasdust,
whom we have already introduced. He represents any and every
historian that takes an interest in what our author finds it conve-
nient to pronounce "dry. " He is abused sometimes for knowing
Rymer's ' Foedera ' and India Bills, sometimes for knowing Court
gossip. He is one of Carlyle's standing butts.
Figures of Contiguity. If we apply this designation to every
case of indicating a thing, not by its literal name, but by use of
expressive parts and expressive collaterals, Carlyle luxuriates in
such figures as much as in figures of similarity.
To take an instance : his metonymies for Death are as numer-
ous as Homer's. " The all-hiding earth has received him." " Low
now is Jourdan the Headsman's own head." " So dies a gigantic
Heathen and Titan ; stumbling blindly, undismayed, down to his
rest. . . . His suffering and his working are now ended." " These
also roll their fated journey." Danton "passes to his unknown
home." "Our grim good-night to thee is that " (address to the
German scoundrel upon his execution).
As with similitudes, so with choice circumstances, he has a way
of repeating them, keeping them under the reader's notice, as often
as he mentions the subject Thus, in his pamphlet on " The Nigger
Question," he is perpetually renewing the image of the " beautiful
blacks sitting up to their beautiful muzzles in pumpkins." In the
pamphlet on " The Present Time," he repeatedly presents the re-
forming Pope as " the good Pope with the New Testament in his
hand." In like manner he takes hold of a title or expression that
provokes his mirth, and turns it to ridicule by frequent repetition ;
thus he talks of Parliament as the " Collective wisdom."
Figures of Contrast are not a marked feature in his style. He
has a sense of the effect of explicit contrast, and sometimes em-
ploys it as a means of strength ; but his studied effects are not in
the direction of sharp antithetical point.
He makes considerable use of the telling oratorical contrast, the
juxtaposition of strikingly incongruous circumstances. In his Essay
on Voltaire he contrasts the blazing glory of Tamerlane with the
humble industry of Johannes Faust, the inventor of movable types ;
pointing out that the humble man's influence was in the end much
the more powerful of the two. So he contrasts the loud trium-
phant proclamation of the Champs de Mars Federation with the
signing of the Scottish Solemn League and Covenant in a dingy
close of the Edinburgh High Street, and with " the frugal supper
of thirteen mean-dressed men in a mean Jewish dwelling." The
'French Revolution ' is peculiarly rich in such contrasts. He
makes a fine thing of Robespierre's resigning a judgeship in his
younger days because he could not bear to sentence a human
creature to death. The sad end of Marie Antoinette is contrasted
156 THOMAS CARLYLE.
with her prosperous days ; the tragic heroism of Charlotte Corday
is made more touching by a fine description of her personal beauty.
And in the "sports of fickle fortune" with many of the leading
revolutionists, he finds the utmost scope for Rembrandt lights and
shadows.
Epigram is not much in his way. He occasionally indulges in
word-play, but it is hardly epigrammatic ; it has more of an affinity
with punning. His oft-repented derivation of king "Kon-ning,
Can-ning, or Man that is Able " is a mixture of philology
fanciful philology and pun. Some of his puns are less doubtful.
Thus, " Certain Heathen Physical-Force Ultra-Chartists, ' Danes '
as they were then called, coming into his territory with their ' five
points,' or rather with their five-and-twenty thousand points and
edges too of pikes, namely, and battle-axes," &c. So he says
that the Lancashire and Yorkshire factories are a monument to
Richard Arkwright, "a true pyramid ory/awie-mountain."
Minor Figures and Figures Proper. Hyperhole. Our author's
hyperboles consist partly in the use of exaggerating similitudes,
partly in unrestrained torrents of extreme epithets. His exagger-
ations as to the confusion and dishonesty of these " latter days,"
the general tumble-down and degradation of the whole system of
modern society, are the most familiar specimens. " Days of end-
less calamity, disruption, dislocation, confusion worse confounded."
" Bankruptcy everywhere ; foul ignominy, and the abomination of
desolation, in all high places." Social affairs in a state of the
frightfulest embroilment, and as it were of inextricable final bank-
ruptcy, unutterable \\elter of tumbling ruins." "Never till now,
I think, did the sun look down on such a jumble of human non-
senses." He is conscious of this hyperbolic turn, as, indeed, he
shows himself conscious of most of his peculiarities. He speaks of
Teufelsdroeckh's having " unconscionable habits of exaggeration
in speech."
When strong epithets, metaphors, similes, and contrasts, put in
plain forms of speech, come short of the intensity of his feelings,
he avails himself to an unprecedented degree of the bolder licences
of style. Much of his peculiar manner is made up of the special
figures of Interrogation, Exclamation, and Apostrophe.
Interrogation is ;i large element in his mannerism. It is not
merely an occasional means of special emphasis ; it is a habitual
mode of transition, used by Carlyle almost universally for the vivid
introduction of new agents and new events. Thus
"But on the whole, Paris, we may see, will have little to devise ; will
only have to borrow and apply. And then, as to the day, what day of all
the calendar is fit, if the BustiHe Anniversary be not ? "
After the Queen's execution, he asks, " Whom next, O Tiuville ?"
FIGURES OF SPEECH. 157
In like manner, recounting some of the proceedings in the Par-
liamentary war, he says
" Basing is black ashes, then : and Langford is ours, the Garrison ' to
march forth to-morrow at twelve of the clock, l>eing the 18th instant.' And
now the question is, Shall we attack Dennington or not ?"
With these vivid epic interrogations, there is usually, as in the
above examples, a mixture of something like the figure called
Vision. He supposes himself present at the deliberation of a
scheme, the preparation of a great event, and suggests ideas as an
interested spectator. Thus, after representing how Louis deliber-
ated whether he should try to conciliate the people, or canvass for
foreign assistance, he asks " Nay, are the two hopes inconsistent?"
Again, he apostrophises the National Assembly expecting a visit
from the King, with
"Think therefore, Messieurs, what it may mean ; especially how ye will
get the Hall decorated a little. . . . Some fraction of velvet carpet, can-
iiot that be spread in front of the chair, where the Secretaries usually sit ?"
One or two instances give but a faint impression of what is so
prominent in his style.
Exclamation occurs in every mood. Sometimes in wonder and
elation : sometimes in derision and contempt ; sometimes in pity,
sometimes in fun, sometimes in real admiration and affection. An
example or two may be quoted. Thus " How thou fermentest
and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an
Atmosphere, of a World, Nature ! " Many such exclamations of
wonder occur in his Sartor. His exclamations of derision are ad-
dressed, not to individuals, but to imaginary personages, as when
he addresses Dryasdust, "Surely at least you might have made
an index for these books ; " or to collective masses, as when he ex-
claims of duellists " Deuce on it, the little spitfires ! " Towards
individuals he seldom if ever expresses either reverential wonder
on the one hand, or contempt on the other. The scenes of the
French Revolution often call forth exclamations of pity and horror.
" Miserable De Launay ! " " Hapless Deshuttes and Varigny ! "
such expressions are frequent. At times, also, we come across
such exclamations as " Horrible, in lauds that had known equal
justice ! " As an instance of a humorous touch, take his exclama-
tion on one of the Kaisers "Poor soul, he had six-and-twenty
children by one wife ; and felt that there was need of appanages 1 "
His expressions of admiration for his heroes are numerous. On
Mirabeau he exclaims " Rare union : this man can live self-suffic-
ing yet lives also in the lives of other men ; can make men love
him, work with him ; a born king of men ! " Of Sterling he eays
" A beautiful childlike soul ! " Oliver and Friedrich he frequently
salutes with expressions of sympathising admiration. Sometirius.
158 THOMAS CAKLYLE.
as he has a habit of doing with all his strong effects in a kind of
deprecating way he puts the exclamations into the mouths of
other people " ' Admirable feat of strategy ! What a general, this
Prince Carl ! ' exclaimed mankind." " ' Magnanimous ! ' exclaim
Noailles and the paralysed French gentleman : ' Most magnanimous
behaviour on his Prussian Majesty's part ! ' own they."
Apostrophe. The apostrophising habit is perhaps the greatest
notability of his mannerism. His make of mind impels him to
adopt this art of style, apart from his consciousness of the power
it gives him as a literary artist. It provides one outlet among
others for his deep-seated dramatic tendency. Farther, it suits
his active turn of mind and favourite mode of the enjoyment of
power ; it gives scope for his daring familiarity with personages,
whether for admiration or for humour, and meets with no check
from any regard for offended conventionalities. Not so frequently
does he address in tones of pity ; still, in the moving scenes of the
French Revolution, and elsewhere, some of his apostrophes are very
touching.
His style in its final development affords innumerable examples.
The 'French Revolution' is particularly full of dramatic apos-
trophes, as indeed of the irregular figures generally. The author
sees everything with his own eyes, and addresses the actors in
warning, exhortation, reproof, or whatever their actions call for.
Usher Maillard is shown crossing the Bastille ditch on a plank,
and warned " Deftly, thou shifty Usher : one man already fell ;
and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry ! " When
De Launay is massacred, the revolutionists are reproved with
" Brothers, your wrath is cruel ! " " Up and be doing ! " " Cour-
age ! " " Quick, then ! " Such ejaculations are frequent ; to
every movement, in fact, he contributes the cries of an excited
bystander.
As an example of his more declamatory apostrophes, take the
following, which is indeed an imaginary speech :
"Away, yon ! begone swiftly, ye regiments of the line! in the name of
God and of His poor struggling servants, sore put to it to live in these Iwnl
days, I mean to rid myself of you with some degree of brevity. To teed yon
in palaers, to hire captains, and schoolmasters, and the choicest spiritual
and material artificers to expend their industries on you, No, by the
Eternal ! . . . Mark it, my diabolic friends, I mean to lay leather on
the backs of you," &c.
The following is an example of his pathetic apostrophes. In
the destruction of the Bastille a prisoner's letter was discovered
with a passionate inquiry after his wife, to which Carlyle re-
plies :
"Poor prisoner, who naniest thyself Quiret- Dlmery, and hast no other
history, she is dead, that dear wile of thiue, and thou art dead I "Tis fifty
SIMPLICITY. 159
rears since thy breaking heart put this question ; to be heard now first, and
long heard, in the hearts of men."
His characteristic manner of drawing the attention of the hearer
with an imperative, is a mode of apostrophe
"Now, therefore, judge if our patriot artists are busy ; taking deep coun-
sel how to make the scene worthy of a look from the universe. "
It will have been noted that many of the above-quoted apos-
trophes are of the nature of the figure called Vision. Carlyle's
histories are, indeed, prolonged ^visions ; throughout he treats the
past as present, and makes us, as it were, actual spectators of the
events related.
His irony is a department in itself. It often turns up in such
passing touches as "Our Nell Gwyn defender-of-the-faith ;"
" Christ's crown soldered on Charles Stuart's ; " " most Christian
kingship, and most Talleyrand bishopship ; " Shakspeare, " whom
Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the
treadmill." In his treatment of modern society, irony is often
kept up through long passages; thus "The Nigger Question" is
full of irony. It is to be noted that his irony can always be known
as such. He has none of the De Foe irony that runs a danger
of being mistaken for earnest. The following is a short specimen,
on the New Poor-Law, from ' Chartism ' :
"To read the reports of the Poor- Law Commissioners, if one had faith
enough, would be a pleasure to the friend of humanity. One sole recipe
seems to have been needful for the woes of England 'refusal of outdoor
relief. ' England lay in sick discontent, writhing powerless on its fever-bed,
dark, nigh desperate, in wastefulness, want, improvidence, and eating care,
till, like Hyperion down l the eastern steeps, the Poor- Law Commissioners
arose, and said, Let there be workhouses, and bread of affliction and water
of affliction there ! It was a simple invention ; as all truly great inventions
are. And see, in any quarter, instantly as the walls of the workhouse arise,
misery and necessity fly away, out of sight, out of being, as is fondly hoped,
dissolve into the* inane ; industry, frugality, fertility, rise of wages, peace
on earth and goodwill towards men do, in the Poor-Law Commissioners'
reports, infallibly, rapidly or not so rapidly, to the joy of all parties, super-
vene."
QUALITIES OP STYLE.
Simplicity.
(i.) Our author, as we remarked in speaking of his vocabulary,
uses a fair admixture of homely words. When hard to under-
stand, he is so not from the use of technical and scholastic terms,
but from the use of words of his own coining. A reader of Carlvle,
not knowing Latin, has often to consult a dictionary, and consults
it in vain. It is a jest about him that he aspires to the honour
1 " Down " is a small blunder ; it should be up.
160 THOMAS CARLYLE.
conferred upon Jean Paul Richter, of having a dictionary written
for himself.
As regards his similitudes, we have already seen that many of
them are homely and graphic, while the few stock figures con-
nected with his fanciful conception of the universe, the action of
the Destinies, Eternal Voices, and suchlike, rather perplex than
render comprehension easy. It should, however, be noticed, that
to those once initiated into the circle of these figures they present
a really simple, because very undiscriminating, way of expressing
complicated circumstances. " Loyalty to facts " becomes a very
glib figure to those that have once mastered its meaning.
His sentence-structure is favourable to simplicity, being free
from involution and intricacy. The want of concatenation and
consecutiveness mars, as has been said, the intelligibility of his
rhapsodical ' Pamphlets ' and his ' French Revolution.' These
drawbacks do not occur so much in the FriedricL
(2.) His subjects are far from abstruse, being narratives and
familiar questions of practice. The difficulty of the ' Sartor Resar-
tus ' is due, not so much to the nature of the subject, as to the in-
tentional mystification, and the substitution of allusions and figures
for plain statements. If it were stript of its gorgeous imagery and
" boiled down," the residuum would probably be more intelligible
than interesting.
(3.) Occasionally, for the sake of effects of comprehensive
strength, he uses abstract expressions ; but his diction is upon the
whole concrete to a degree rarely found among writers of prose.
Even when he uses abstractions, he violates grammar (p. 149) to
give them plurals, and thereby treat them as class names ; he vivi-
fies some of them further (p. 154) by treating them as personalities.
His love of the concrete often appears in his repeating a number of
suggestive particulars or circumstances instead of one general desig-
nation. Tims, in his ' Chartism,' when discussing the discontent of
the working classes, he refers to it again and again by mentioning
significant symptoms " Glasgow Thuggery, Chartist torch-meet-
ings, Birmingham riots, Swing conflagrations ; " or again, " Chart-
ism with its pikes, Swing with his tinder-box." When he has to
state his conviction that much misery is caused by poor Irish labour-
ers finding no work in Ireland, and coming to England in search of
it, he does so in very picturesque terms :
" But the thing we had to state here was our inference from that mourn-
ful fact of the third Sanspotatoe, coupled with this other well-known fact,
that the Irish speak a partially intelligible dialect of English, and their fare
across hy steam is font-pence sterling ! Crowds of miserable Irish darken all
our towns. The wild Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness,
unreason, misery, ami mockery, salute you on all highways and byways.
The English coachman, as he whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his whip,
curses him with his tongue : the Milesian is holding out ais hat to beg."
CLEARNESS. 1C1
When he desires a more comprehensive effect, he personifies this
influx of Irish destitution under the name of the Irish giant Despair,
and thus describes him :
"I notice him in Piccadilly, blue-visaged, thatched in rags, a blue
child on each arm ; hunger-driven, wide-mouthed, seeking whom he may
devour."
With regard to this picturesque statement, the remark may be
made that, while each particular is immediately and easily under-
stood, it may be doubted whether the meaning that the writer pro-
fessedly wishes to convey is so easily apprehended as it would be
in the driest general statement. Upon the whole, this excess of
concreteness is perhaps not in favour of our understanding the gen-
eral drift, but the reverse. Most readers complain that Carlyle is
bewildering in his prophetical utterances. The excess of figures
and the absence of plain generalities is perhaps partly the cause.
Let any reader of ordinary analytic power try, after reading ' Chart-
ism,' to recall the train of argument, and he will find his confused
recollection of individually vivid figures rather against than in
favour of the effort
Clearness.
Perspicuity. In his expressly didactic or prophetic works, he
shows, as we have seen, little concern to impart his views without
confusion. Nor are his essays so perspicuous as the essays of
Macaulay. The History of Friedrich is, however (see p. 120), a
clearer narrative than the ' History of England;' it lifts us more
above the confusion of details by means of comprehensive sum-
maries and divisions with descriptive titles, and it brings leading
events into stronger relief by assigning to subordinate events a
subordinate place in the narrative.
Precision. He is not an exact writer. Hating close analysis,
his aim always is to give the broad general features rather than the
minute details. He has little of the hair-splitting, dividing and
distinguishing mania of De Quincey ; no desire to sift his opinions
on a topic, and say distinctly what they are and what they are not
Some idea of the difference between them in this respect is obtained
by comparing Carlyle's various lucubrations on Jean Paul Kichter
with De Quincey 's article on the same subject. But we see the
utter antagonism of manner as regards precision at its height when
we reflect how De Quincey would have treated such a subject as
the discontent of the working classes. If Carlyle had been at pains
to reduce his political views to distinct heads as De Quincey would
have done, one would have been better able to judge of their uni-
versally alleged poverty.
162 THOMAS CABLYLE.
Strength.
We liave already touched on a good many of the peculiarities of
Carlyle's singular force of style. The language that Sterling calls
"positively barbarous" the rugged derivatives and quaint sole-
cisms is very stimulating when it is intelligible. Among his
figures of speech we meet with many elements of strength power-
ful and original similitudes, bold metaphors, vivid handling of
abstractions, choice of telling circumstances, sensational contrasts,
habitual exaggeration of language, and daring liberties with ordi-
nary forms of speech. Here we have for the production of telling
literary effects a catalogue of instrumentalities that will hardly be
paralleled from any writer after Shakspeare. And this is not all.
The comprehensive summaries, already mentioned as his principal
instruments of perspicuity, embracing as they do a great range of
particulars, more than any other of his arts, lift up and dilate the
mind with a feeling of extended power.
The crowning feat of strength is the combination of circum-
stances in effective groups the imagination of impressive situa-
tions. Carlyle's power in this respect is nearly, if not quite, equal
to Shakspeare' s equal, that is, in degree, though not perhaps in
kind. It was first revealed in his ' Sartor Resartus ' ; and none of
bis later works surpass this first great production in the imagina-
tion of rugged grandeur. Take, for example, his picture of " Teu-
felsdroeckh at the North Pole " :
" More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdroeckh's appearance
and emergence (we know not well whence) in the solitude of the North Cape,
on that June Midnight. He has a ' light-blue Spanish cloak ' hanging
round him, as his ' most commodious, principal, indeed sole upper-gar-
ment ; ' and stands there on the World-promontory, looking over the infinite
Urine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now motionless indeed, yet
ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes.
"'Silence as of death,' writes he; 'for Midnight, even in the Arctic
latitudes, has its character : nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the
peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost
North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet
is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold ; yet does his light
stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting down-
wards to the abyss, and hide itself under my feet. In such moments, Soli-
tude also is invaluable ; for who would speak, or be looked on, when be-
hiii't him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen ; and
before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our
Sun is but a porch- lamp f ' "
Another fair specimen of bis combining power is seen in Teu-
felsdroeckh's "own ideas with respect to duels." This also shows
a spice of cynicism :
"Few things, in this so surprising world, strike me with more surpiise.
STRENGTH. 1C3
Two little visual Spectra of men, hovering with insecure cohesion in tlie
midst of the UNFATHOMATCLK, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very
soon, make pause at the distance of twelve pnres asunder; whirl round;
and, simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into
Dissolution; and off-hand become Air. and N on -extant! Deuce on it
(verdammt), the little spitfires ! Nay, I think with old Hugo von Trim-
berg : ' God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see His
wondrous Manikins here below 1 ' "
In one of his later Miscellanies, iv. 315, there is a "Fragment
on Duelling" (of date 1850), where the actual fights are described
with startling spirit, and the surroundings drawn with almost in-
comparable power. This also is a good specimen of his style.
Let us take a brief glance at the principal themes or occasions
that excite his powers of gorgeous expression, (i.) He puts forth
all his powers to extol his favourite recipes for clearing the world
of confusion. One or two fragments of such eloquence have been
already given. Above all, he is ever on the watch for an oppor-
tunity of enforcing his gospel of Work, the panacea which alone
brings order out of confusion, cosmos out of chaos. Such passages
as the following may be described as " bracing." The general
effect of such a gospel is to exalt the sense of active vigour, to
disturb, if not dispel, the indolent mood compatible with adoring
reverence or tender sentiment :
"Any law, however well meant as a law, which has become a bounty on
tinthrift, idleness, bastardy, and beer-drinking, must l>e put an end to. In
all ways it needs, especially in these times, to be proclaimed aloud that for
the idle man there is no place in this England of ours. He that will not
work, and save according to his means, let him go elsewhither ; let him
know that for him the Law has made no soft provision, but a hard and
stern one ; that, by the Law of Nature, which the law of England would
vainly contend against in the long-run, he is doomed either to quit these
habits, or miserably be extruded from this earth, which is made on principles
different from these. ... A day is ever struggling forward, a day will
arrive in some approximate degree, when he who has no work to do, by
whatever name he may be named, will not find it good to show himself in
our quarter of the solar system. "
His eulogy of the heroes, the men that he pronounces to have
done genuine work in the world, has the same bracing tona Pros-
trate adoration, as we have seen, does not suit his temperament ;
he " fraternises " with the heroes, holds up them and their works
as patterns to all men of the heroic mould. True, he commands
the multitude to worship, and declaims against them if they refuse;
but he is rarely found in the adoring attitude himself.
(2.) Perhaps his richest vein is his unmeasured invective against
everything that defeats the hero's efforts to redress the universal
confusion, and his overcharged pictures of that confusion. He does
164 THOMAS CAULYLE.
not assail individuals for single acts that would have a narrow
and rancorous effect. When an offender crosses his path, he
denounces him not personally, but as one of "the Devil's Regi-
ment," as adding his little contribution to the " bellowing chaos,"
" the wide weltering confusion." Most of his stormy warfare of
wor.ls is directed against the evils of this life gathered up under
Abstractions familiar to the most incidental reader of his books
Shams, Unveracities, Speciosities, Phantasms, and suchlike. We
must be content for examples with fragments already quoted.
(See pp. 142, 154).
(3.) He describes with surpassing power the grand operations of
Nature in her terrible aspects. He is not insensible to beneficent
grandeurs, but his temperament inclines him more to the gloomy
side to the " tropical tornado " more than to the " rainbow and
orient colours." At times he represents that a God, an Order, a
Justice, presides over the " wild incoherent waste "; that to a man
understanding the Sphinx riddle (another variety for the " eternal
regulations of the Universe"), Nature is "of womanly celestial
loveliness and tenderness;" that "Nature, Universe, Destiny,
Existence, however we name this grand unnameable fact in the
midst of which we live and struggle, is as a heavenly bride and con-
quest to the wise and brave." But on this aspect of Nature he
dwells less than on the opposite. More often " the wild Universe
storms in on Man infinite, vague-menacing." It is on this aspect
of the Universe that he has accumulated his " Titanic " grandeurs
of expression.
As an example of his luxurious revelling in " sulphur, smoke, and
flame," may be quoted the following from his ' Chartism ' :
" It is in Glasgow among that class of operatives that ' Number 60,' in
his dark room, pays down the price of blood. Be it with reason or with un-
reason, too surely they do in verity find the time all out of joint ; this
world for them no home, but a dingy prison-house, of reckless unthrift,
rebellion, rancour, indignation against themselves and against all men. Is
it a green flowery world, with azure everlasting sky stretched over it, the
work and government of a God ; or a murky, simmering Tophet, of cop-
peras-fumes, cotton-fuz, gin-riot, wrath and toil, created by a Demon,
governed by a, Demon ? The sum of their wretchedness, merited and un-
merited, welters, huge, dark, and baleful, like a Dantean Hell, visible there
in the statistics of Gin ; Gin, justly named the most authentic incarnation
of the Infernal Principle in our times, too indisputably an incarnation ;
Gin, the black throat into which wretchedness of every sort, consummating
itself by calling on Delirium to help it, whirls down ; abdication of the
power to think or resolve, as too painful now, on the part of men whose lot
of all others would require thought and resolution : liquid Madness sold at
tenpence the quartern, all the products of which are and must be, like its
origin, mad, miserable, ruinous, and that only ! If from this black, un-
luminous, unheeded inferno, and prison-house of souls in pain, there do
flaxh up from time to time some dismal widespread glare of Chartism or tha
like, uotuble to all, claiming remedy from all," &c.
PATHOS THE LUDICROUS. 165
Pathos.
Carlyle's writings are not without gleams of pathos, all the more
touching from the surrounding ruggedness. A man of strong
special affections, he dwells with most moving tenderness on the
life and character of his friends Edward Irving and John Sterling.
To his heroes Mirabeau, Cromwell, Friedrich, Burns he seems
to have been bound by something of the same personal attach-
ment ; and he records their death as with the deep sorrow of a
surviving friend.
He often waxes wroth with "puking and sprawling Senti-
mentalism ; " and the thought of human misery seems usually to
rouse his indignation against idleness as the cause of misery, and
to excite him to a more vehement enforcement of his panacea, the
gospel of Work. Yet sometimes the thought of human misery
does unnerve him, and throw him into the melting mood. Thus,
when he stands with Teufelsdroeckh in the porch of the " Sanc-
tuary of Sorrow," he cries :
" Poor, wandering, wayward man ! Art thou not tried, and beaten with
stripes, even as I am ? Ever, whether thou bear the royal mantle or the
beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden ? and thy Bed
of Rest is but a Grave. my Brother, my Brother 1 why cannot I shelter
thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes ? "
His most characteristic pathos is his subdued sorrow at the
irresistible progress of time. The tired labourer mourns wearily
that he can do so little, that time is so short This weary feeling
often crosses his page. " Agamemnon, the many Againenmons,
Pericleses, and their Greece ; all is gone now to some ruined
fragments dumb, mournful wrecks and blocks." Jocelin of
Brakelond is " one other of those vanished existences whose
work is not yet vanished; almost a pathetic phenomenon, were
not the whole world full of such ! " So (to give one more
example) he moralises as follows on the glimpse of Cromwell's
cousin in one of the Letters:
"Mrs St John came down to breakfast every morning in that summer
visit of the year 1638, and Sir William said grave grace, and they spake
polite devout things to one another ; and they are vanished, they and
their things and speeches, all silent, like the echoes of the old nightin-
gales that sang that season, like the blossoms of the old roses. Death !
O Time I "
The Ludicrous.
His sense of the ludicrous runs riot; it may be said to be
present everywhere in his writings. When not absolutely pre-
dominant, it makes itself felt as a condiment, adding a grotesque
flavour even to his serious declamations. A few modes of the
quality may be specified :
166 THOMAS CAELYLE.
(i.) His cynicism. While he often dilates on the grandeurs of
human destiny, he not unfrequently sneers at mankind with dry
contempt. It is not the fierce cynicism of Timon ; he is too
magnanimous for that. He surveys mankind from an Olympian
height, and is tickled by their doings. See the " little spitfires "
and "manikins" in the passage on duels, p. 163. Compare also
this godlike cynicism with the despondency of Hamlet To Ham-
let the world is "a sterile promontory," "a pestilent congregation
of vapours " ; to Teufelsdroeckh in certain moments the world
seems " a paltry dog's cage."
(2.) His derision is, however, usually more boisterous, less
notably dry. He is not personal and rancorous ; he does not rail
against individuals. His favourite butts are certain abstractions,
institutions, and opinions ; a whole pandemonium of Shams,
sham Authorities, sham secretaries of the Pedant species, <fec.
"vile age of Pinchbeck," "wild Anarchy and Phallus- Worship ;"
the Church, Parliament, Downing Street, galvanised Catholicism,
Kings, Aristocracy; Reform movements, Exeter Hall Philan-
thropic movements, Puseyism, Logic, Political Economy, Benth-
amee Radicalism, Leading Articles. In truth, he seems to dislike
all existing institutions and all existing opinions, with the excep-
tion of one set. He has thus absolutely unlimited scope for his
riotous derisive humour ; his field is the world. And it cannot
be denied that he turns his position to the best account
One of his most characteristic proceedings is to heap contemp-
tuous nicknames upon the object of his dislike. His command
of language here stands him in good stead. See his " Nigger
Question," "The Dismal Science," "Pig-Philosophy," "Horse-
hair and Bombazeen Procedure." Any page of his declamations
on modern society will give abundance of examples. Another
favourite device is to set up representative men with ridiculous
names, as M'Croudy, the Right Honourable Zero, the Hon.
Hickory Buckskin, the Duke of Trumps, and many others, not
to mention the unquenchable Dryasdust.
It is to be observed that whether his ridicule be qniet or
boisterous, the absence of personal spleen makes it essentially
humorous, not vindictive, bitter, rancorous. The man places
himself at such a height above other mortals, and is so sublimely
confident in his views, that difference of opinion rather amuses
than provokes him, and leaves him free to turn his opponent into
ridicule " without any ill feeling."
(3.) In his apostrophes we have seen what humorous liberties
he takes with individuals. In all these ludicrous degradations
there is a redeeming touch of kindness. The kindness is always
there, whatever be the form of it whether grim, grotesque,
whimsical, or playfully affectionate. Even towards scoundrels
MELODY HAEMONY TASTE. 167
of easy morality, like WUhelmus Sacrista in ' Past and Present,'
he shows some relenting when they come before him in their
personality as individuals. Poor William, given to "libations
and tacenda," is deposed by Abbot Sauison, and, in spite of all
his idleness, gets from our author the following kindly parting :
" Whether the poor Wilhelmus did not still, by secret channels, occa-
sionally get some slight wetting of vinous or alcoholic liquor, now grown,
in a manner, indispensable to the poor man ? Jocelin hints not ; one
knows not how to hope, what to hope ! But if he did, it was in silence
and darkness ; with an ever-present feeling that teetotalism was his only
true course."
His nicknames for individuals are moderated to the same kindly
tone of humour. Karl August is very objectionable in the ab-
stract ; yet Carlyle gives him no harder nickname than " August
the Physically Strong " ; and in his older days, " August the
Dilapidated-Strong."
(4.) In his ' Sartor Resartus,' and elsewhere, he shows himself
capable of the humour of driving fun at himself. The chapter
on Editorial Difficulties is a sample. The humour is much more
self-asserting than De Quincey's ; it amounts in substance to this,
that he fathers his most extravagant eccentricities upon a feigned
name, and criticises them from an ordinary point of view a
device for stating, without the appearance of extravagance, opin-
ions that the general public might think bombastic were they
delivered in the author's own person.
(5.) In a writer of such brilliant execution as Carlyle, the
quality of the humour is much enhanced by the pleasure arising
from the freshness of the language. When the ludicrous over-
throw of dignitaries would otherwise be apt to raise serious feel-
ings, the enjoyment of the language is conciliating, and disposes
the reader to laugh rather than be angry. %
Melody Harmony Taste.
As respects the melodious combination of words, Carlyle, though
not below average, is by no means a model. He despises all study
to avoid harsh successions; he considers such art to be mere
trifling in the present age. In his own attempts to " sing "
that is, to write verses before he fully discovered that his strength
lay in prose the rhythm is conspicuously bad.
Still his prose has a peculiar strain a characteristic movement
From such passages as have been given, the reader with an ear for
cadence will have no difficulty in making it out. It corresponded
to the emphatic sing-song intonation of his yoice ; a stately sort of
rhythm, after a fashion of stateliness that differs from De Quincey's
in the rugged unmelodious flow, and the frequent recurrence of
emphasis.
163 THOMAS CARLYLE.
As regards Harmony between the rhythm and the sense, with
Carlyle, as with other impassioned writers, the agreement is most
perfect when he is writing at full swing in his favourite mood.
He has an ostensible and paraded contempt for the idea of art,
or of composition intended to please. Himself nothing if not
artistical, he insists on being supposed to wear no garb but the
mantle of the prophet. Though thus formally disavowing art, he
really does, consciously or unconsciously, sacrifice even truth to be
artisticaL Not to review him as an artist, is to do him an injus-
tice. As an artist, he errs chiefly in carrying his favourite effects
to excess.
In the pursuit of strength, he sometimes intrudes expressions
that approach the confines of rant Thus, in the following extract
he ruins a passage of real pathos with one of his extravagantly
sensational mannerisms :
"For twenty generations here was the earthly arena where powerful
living men worked out tlieir life-wrestle, looked at by Earth, Heaven,
and Hell. Bells tolled to prayers ; and men, of many humours, various
thoughts, chanted vesprrs, matins ; and round the little islet of their life
rolled for ever (as round our.s still rolls, though we are blind and deaf) the
illimitable Ocean, tinting all things with its eternal hues and reflexes; mak-
ing strange prophetic music ! How silent now ! all departed, clean gone.
The World-Dramaturgist has written, Exeunt. The devouring Time-Demons
have mad away with it all : and in its stead, there is either nothing ; or
what is worse, ollVnsive universal dust-clouds, and grey eclipse of Earth ani
Heaven, from 'dry rubbish shot here.'"
From this passage, which opens with such beauty, common taste
would probably banish the World -Dramaturgist and the Time-
Demons ; and the concluding expression would generally be re-
garded as unseasonable buffoonery. One class of his offences,
then, may be set down to the temporary dulling of the artistic
sensej by over-excitement
Farther, his humour betrays him into violations of taste. This
is done deliberately, in cold blood, not from over-excitement. A
humorous turn is given to a declamation on a grave subject
such a subject as overwhelms the ordinary mind with seriousness.
The conclusion of the passage on duelling is an example. If an
explanation of this is sought, probably none will be found except
the pleasure, natural to strong nerves, of treating with levity whafc
weaker brethren cannot help treating with gravity. Partly to the
same motive may be referred his humorous treatment of the more
serious outbreaks of the elder Friedrich. On this have been passed
some of the severest comments that our author has received in the
course of his career as a writer. His humour causes him to offend
on another side. Some of his fun is quite as broad as the taste
of the period will allow. In such figures as "owl-droppings," and
"the ostrich turning its broad end to heaven," he goes beyond the
DESCRIPTION. 1G9
standing limits of this century. In 'Sartor Resartus,' the name
" Teufelsdroeckh " and the " Nobleman's Epitaph " would hardly
be tolerated if rendered in the vernacular.
Under errors in Taste might also be reckoned his barbarisms
and solecisms of language. Farther, almost universally he is
charged with abusing his vast figurative resources, with carrying
his figurative manner to excess. He would seem to have bi-cn
conscious of his liability to this charge before it was made : in a
passage already quoted from the Sartor, he speaks of labouring
under figurative plethora. At the same time, it is undoubtedly to
the freshness and opulence of his imagery that he owes a great
part of bis reputation.
KINDS OP COMPOSITION.
Description.
In Carlyle's powers of description lies one of his most indisput-
able claims to high literary rank. He seems to have studied the
art most elaborately. We can gather from his various books that
all his life long he had watched human beings and natural scenery
with an eye to the rendering of their peculiarities into language.
Especially in his later writings he describes with incomparable
felicity.
In the delineation of external nature, " his peculiarities are to
bring forward in strong relief the comprehensive aspects, to im-
press these by iteration and by picturesque comparisons, to use
the language of the associated feelings, and in the shape of har-
monious groupings to introduce some of the elements of poetry."
The following, from the last volume of ' Friedrich,' exemplifies
his statement, repetition, and illustration of the general features
of a scene :
"Torgan itself stands near Elbe; on the shoulder, eastern or Elbeward
shoulder, of a big mass of Knoll, or broad Height, called of Siptitz, the main
eminence of tbe Gau. Shoulder, I called it, 1 of this Height, of Siptitz ; hut
more properly it 1 is on a continuation, or lower ulterior height dipping
into Elbe itself, that Torgau stands. Siptitz Height, nearly a mile from
Elbe, dips down into a straggle of ponds ; after which, on a second or final
rise, comes Torgau dipping into Elbe. Not a shoulder strict!} 7 , but rather
a cheek, with neck intervening ; neck goitry for that matter, or quaggy with
ponds ! The old Town stands high enough, but is enlaced on the western
and southern side by a set of lakes and quagmires, some of which are still
extensive and undrained. The course of the waters hereabouts, and of Elbe
itself, has had its intricacies ; close to north-west, Torgau is bordered, in a
straggling way, by what they call Old Elbe ; which is not now a fluent entity,
but a stagnant congeries of dirty waters and morasses. The Hill of Siptits
1 The two its with different references are awkward. In place of " I called it,*
he should have used some such expression as " I said," without the it.
170 THOMAS CARLYLE.
abuts in that aqueous or quaggy manner ; its fore-feet being, as it were, at
or in Elbe River, and its sides, to the south and to the north for some dis-
tance each way, considerably enveloped in ponds and boggy difficulties."
The following, from his article on Dr Francia, illustrates his
dexterity in making a description vivid by imagining the feelings
of a spectator :
"Few things in late war, according to General Miller, have been more
noteworthy than this march. The long straggling line of soldiers, six
thousand and odd, with their quadrupeds and baggage, winding through
the heart of the Andes, breaking for a brief moment the old abysmal soli-
tudes ! For you fare along, on some narrow roadway, through stony laby-
rinths ; huge rock-mountains hanging over your head on this hand, and
under your feet on that ; the roar of mountain-cataracts, horror of hottomless
chasms ; the very winds and echoes howling on you in an almost preter-
natural manner. Towering rock-barriers rise sky-high before you, and behind
you, and around you ; intricate the outgate ! The roadway is narrow ; foot-
ing none of the best. Sharp turns there are, where it will behove you to
mind your paces ; one false step, and you will need no second ; in the gloomy
jaws of the abyss you vanish, and the spectral winds howl requiem. Some-
what better are the suspension-bridges, made of bamboo and leather, though
they swing like see-saws : men are stationed with lassos, to gin you dexter-
ously, and fish you up from the torrent, if you trip there."
This passage is also a good example of a description where the
particulars support each other : along with towering rocks and a
narrow roadway we naturally expect huge abysses and roaring
waters. The mention of the hollow winds shows his sensibility
to harmonious poetical effects.
"A description is more easily and fully realised when made
individual that is, presented under all the conditions of a par-
ticular moment of time." Our author fully understands this : it
is one of his cardinal arts. His works abound in picturesque
allusions to seasons and times, to temporary attitudes of things
and persons. Thus, in his ' Life of Sterling ' :
" One day in the spring of 1836, 1 can still recollect, Sterling had proposed
to me, liy way of wide ramble, useful for various ends, that I should walk
with him to Eltharn and back, to see this Edgeworth, whom I also knew a
little. We went accordingly together ; walking rapidly, as was Sterling's
wont, and, no doubt., talking extensively. It probably was in the end of
February ; / can remember leafless hedges, grey driving clouds, procession of
boar ding -scJiool girls in some quiet part of the route. "
Again
"At length some select friends were occasionally admitted ; signs of im-
provement began to appear ; and, in the brigJd twilight, Kensington Gardens
were green, and sky and earth were hopeful, as one went to make inquiry.
Tlie summer brilliancy was abroad over tlie world before we fairly saw Ster-
ling again sub dto."
Iii his account of Walter Raleigh's execution one sentence is
DESCRIPTION. 17!
"A cold hoar-frosty morning." Such touches as the following are
pretty frequent :
"The Scots delivered their fire with such constancy and swiftness, it was
as if the whole air had become an element of fire in the ancient summer
gloaming there."
In describing the tumults after the capture of the Bastile, he sud-
denly breaks in
" evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on renpers
amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages ; on ships
far out in the silent main ; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where
high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now dancing with double-jacketed
Hussar-officers, and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a H6tel-de- Ville ! "
One of his most effective groupings is the bivouac of the army
that we have just seen described in their passage over the Andes
" What an entity, one of those night-leaguers of San Martin ; all steadily
snoring there in the heart of the Andes under the eternal stars I Wayworn
sentries with difficulty keep themselves awake ; tired mules chew barley
rations, or doze on three legs ; the feeble watch-tire will hardly kindle a
cigar ; Canopus and the Southern Cross glitter down ; and all snore steadily,
begirt by granite deserts, looked on by the Constellations in that manner.' 1
His narratives are eminently pictorial. At every step in the
succession of events we are stopped to look at some posture of the
actors or their surroundings. This is one of the most striking
features in the ' French Revolution ' ; it may be called a historic
word-tapestry, a series of significant word-pictures ; it rather de-
scribes events in order than relates the order of events. A short
example can give but a faint idea of the character of such a work ;
the following specimen is taken at random. It describes the storm-
ing of the palace of Versailles by a mob :
"Woe now to all body-guards, mercy is none for them ! Miomandre de
Sainte-Marie pleads with soft words, on the grand staircase, 'descending
four steps' to the roaring tornado. His^comrades snatch him up, by the
skirts and belts ; literally from the jaws of Destruction ; and slam-to their
door. This also will stand few instants ; the panels shivering in, like pot-
sherds. Barricading serves not : fly fast, ye body-guards ! rabid Insurrection,
like the Hellhound Chase, uproaring at your heels !
' ' The terror-struck body-guards fly, bolting and barricading ; it follows.
Whitherward ? Through hall on hall : woe, now ! towards the Queen's suite
of rooms, in the furthest room of which the Queen is now asleep. Five sen-
tinels rush through that long suite ; they are in the ante-room knocking
loud: 'Save the Queen!' Trembling women fall at their feet with tears:
are answered : ' Yes, we will die ; save ye the Queen ! '
" Tremble not, women, but haste: for, lo, another voice shouts far through
the outermost door, ' Save the Queen ! ' and the door is shut. It is brave
Miomandre's voice that shouts this second warning'. He has stormed across
imminent death to do it ; fronts imminent death, having done it. Brave
Tardivet du Repaire, bent on the same desperate service, was borne down
with pikes ; his comrades hardly snatched him in again ulive. Miomaudre
172 THOMAS CARLYLE.
and Tardivet : let the names of these two Body-guards, as the names of brave
men should, livp long.
" Trembling Maids of Honour, one of whom from afar caught glimpse of
Miomandre, as well as heard him, hastily wrap up the Queen ; not in robes
of state. She flies for her life, across the (Eil-de-Bceuf ; against the main-
door of which, too, Insurrection batters. She is in the King's apartment,
in the King's arms ; she clasps her children amid a faithful few. The
imperial-hearted hursts into mother's tears : ' my friends, save me and my
children ! mes amis, sauvez moi et mesenfans ! ' The battering of Insur-
rectionary axes clangs audible across the CEil-de-Bceuf. What an hour ! "
We might institute a comparison between Macaulay and Carlyle
as regards the description of human beings. Take equal portions
of their historical works and you find a greater abundance of con-
crete circumstances in Carlyle than in Macaulay. As a pictorial
artist Carlyle is of the two the most studied and elaborate. Hardly
an individual crosses Carlyle's page that is not made to appear in
some characteristic attitude, or under some significant image : a
much greater proportion of Macaulay's personages are mere names
and functionaries. But let us take any individual that plays a
prominent part in the narrative, and we shall probably find that
Macaulay, in his diffuse way, records the greater number of facts
concerning him. We have seen that it is so in the case of John-
son (p. 1 1 8). Macaulay's narrative contains fewer concrete cir-
cumstances upon the whole, but more concerning any prominent
individual.
This difference between our two authors connects itself with a
deeper difference. Carlyle is more subjective than Macaulay : he
systematically attempts to picture the inner man. Partly as a
consequence of this, he gives fewer circumstances: the diffuse
Macaulay, taking no trouble to group circumstances about a few
leading qualities of mind, gives freely out of the abundance of his
memory ; but Carlyle gives only circumstances that he sees to be
characteristic, that he is able to read into consistency with his
ideas of the man's nature. Macaulay gives numerous outward
particulars, sayings, and doings gathered with confident hand from
all manner of anecdotes and reminiscences, and leaves readers
very much to their own inferences as to the thoughts and feelings
that passed underneath these appearances. He is pre-eminently
objective, and his record of circumstances is given in an easy ex-
cursive way. Carlyle, on the other hand, laboriously masters the
sharacters of the leading personages in the events that he relates,
and struggles to conceive and to represent how they felt and how
they expressed their feelings in the various situations touched
upon in his narrative : he is too intensely concentrated upon the
immediately relevant situations to go gossiping away into previous
incidents in the lives of the personages concerned.
Take as a faint illustration one particular case. Macaulay'a
NARRATIVE. 173
account of the English Revolution is much less pictorial upon the
whole than Carlyle's Trench Revolution.' But Macaulay gives
us a great many more particulars concerning the principal states-
men at the Court of Charles II. than Carlyle gives us concerning
the principal statesmen at the Court of Louis XV. Carlyle takes
up a particular moment, the illness of Louis XV., and dramatically
represents how this fact was regarded by various personages and
classes throughout Paris according to their several characters : the
abundant pictorial matter is given chiefly in illustration of char-
acteristic thoughts and feelings.
Narrative.
As already incidentally remarked (p. 161), Carlyle's narrative
method is seen to most advantage in his ' Friedrich.' In the
* French Revolution ' there are many defects afterwards overcome.
The introduction of new personages is there less carefully attended
to. There also he errs greatly iu the excess of his moralisiugs and
preachings, which perpetually interrupt the narrative.
In the ' Friedrich,' through his intense desire to be lucid, to put
Himself in the reader's place, and appreciate difficulties, the minor
arts of narrative are carefully observed. His ordinary narrative
paragraph, although never absolutely perfect, is seldom perplexed
by the confusion of the persons acting. He always notices the
appearance or disappearance of important agents, and, knowing
ttie difficulties of description, does not unguardedly shift the
scenes. His long introduction to the history of Friedrich's reign,
extending through two volumes, is exemplary in these respects :
whatever may be said of the wild phantasmagoric or pantomimic
character of the narrative, it certainly has the merit of making us
distinctly aware when new figures appear, and when they depart,
and of not only bringing but keeping under our attention the
place and the circumstances. He also understands well the neces-
sity of supporting the main story in its place of prominence, of
indicating collateral and dependent events in their proper char-
acter, and of making all his transitions broad and apparent Hia
imaginary authorities, Dryasdust and Sauerteig, and " the well-
known hand" that contributes subordinate narratives, have this
to be said as a justification of their existence, that they do help to
keep separate what the author considers of inferior from what he
considers of superior importance. Dryasdust gives numerous par-
ticulars of small consequence about the private life of the prince,
and does such dry business as " A peep into the Nosti-Grumkow
Correspondence caught up in St Mary Axe : " Sauerteig gives wild
views about the proper persons to write history, and does the un-
palatable work of defending old Friedrich's character in the loftiest
174 THOMAS CARLYLE.
Carlylian manner ; the " well-known hand " gives us in small print
Prince Karl's operations on the Rhine, the account of Skipper
Jenkins, the life of Voltaire, and suchlike particulars subsidiary to
the main narrative.
One great help to the lucidity of his narrative is the titular
summaries, or labels, as he calls them. They lighten the heavy
body of the narrative, giving the reader a natural break or stop,
an opportunity for looking back and forward. Every book has
its descriptive heading " Double-Marriage Project, and Crown
Prince, going adrift under the Storm-winds, 1727-1730:" "Fear-
fu' Shipwreck of the Double-Marriage Project, February Novem-
l'i 1730:" "Crown-Prince Retrieved; Life at Ciistrin, Novem-
ber 1730 February 1732." By these more comprehensive head-
ings, we are enabled to run over the general succession of events
without confusion. Then, the books are subdivided into chapters,
each with a descriptive "label"; and within the chapters there
are divisions of still smaller compass. Thus, the leading subject
of one chapter is "Death of George L:" as a minor subject we
have " His Prussian Majesty falls into one of his Hypochondria-
cal Fits." The leading title of another chapter is " Visit to
Dresden ;" tlie minor " labels " are " The Physically strong pays
his Counter Visit ;" and " Of Princess Wilhelmina's Four Kings
and other Ineffectual Suitors." With this care in dividing and
subdividing, the table of Contents becomes a vertebrate skeleton
of the work, instead of being merely an analysis without any dis-
crimination of degrees of importance. *
Upon the whole it may safely be affirmed that by one means
or another, ordinary and extraordinary, he makes his narratives
the most lucid productions of their kind. It may be a question
whether he has not made sacrifices to distinctness, and whether
he might not have been equally lucid without being offensively
eccentric.
In the Explanation of Events, he proceeds with his natural per-
spicacity, though he grumbles a good deal at being obliged to
explain. Thus, he enters at considerable length into the sources
and the progress of the quarrel between old Friedrich and George
II., enumerating separately five causes. His manner of explana-
tion is thoroughly his own. Dry analysis being distasteful to him,
he proceeds dramatically, disclosing the moving springs of events
in supposed soliloquies, and personal communications oral and
verbal between the leading agents, himself being usually present,
and putting in his word after the fashion of a Greek chorus.
How different his manner is from the ordinary way of writing his-
tory, need hardly be pointed out.
Two short passages from his account of the above-mentioned
NARRATIVE. 175
quarrel "between the Britannic and Prussian Majesties" are all we
have room for :
"'My Brother the ComSdiant' (George II.) 'quietly put his Father's
Will iu his pocket, I have heard ; and paid no regard to it (except what he
was compelled to pay, by Chesterfield and others). Will he do the like
with his poor Mother s Will ? ' Patience, your Majesty : he is not a covet-
ous man, but a self-willed and a proud, always conscious to himself that he
is the soul of honour, this poor brother King."
" Very soon after George's accession there began clouds to rise ; the per-
fectly accomplished little George assuming a severe and high air towards his
rustic Brother-in-law. 'We cannot stand these Prussian enlistments and
encroachments ; rectify these in a high and severe manner ! ' says George to
his Hanover officials. George is not warm on his throne till there comes in,
accordingly, from the Hanover officials, a complaint to that effect, and even
a List of Hanoverian subjects, who are, owing to various injustices, now
serving in the Prussian ranks. ' Your Prussian Majesty is requested to re-
turn us these men ! '
" This List is dated 22d January 1728 ; George only a few months old in
his new authority as yet. The Prussian Majesty grumbles painfully respon-
sive : ' Will, with eagerness, do whatever is just ; most surely ! But is his
Britannic Majesty aware ? Hanover officials are quite misinformed as to the
circumstances ;' and does not return any of the men. Merely a pacific
grumble, and nothing done in regard to the complaints. Then there is the
meadow of Clanrei which we spoke of : ' That belongs to Brandenburg you
say? Nevertheless, the contiguous parts of Hanover have rights upon it.'
Some ' eight cartloads of hay,' worth, say, almost $1. or loZ. sterling : who
s to mow that grass I wonder ?
"Friedrich Wilhelm feels that all this is a pettifogging, vexatious course
of procedure ; and that his little cousin, the Comodiant, is not treating him
very like a gentleman. ' Is he, your Majesty 1 ' suggests the Smoking Par-
liament."
His deep-seated dramatic tendency leads him to such forms,
when he does condescend to " motive-grinding." Explanation on
the larger scale he scouts ; he has no patience with " philosophi-
cal " histories. He does not want to have great events traced to
their chief causes ; he prefers that they should remain in mystery.
He lays his ban on all attempts to give reasons for the ' French
Revolution.'
" To gauge and measure this immeasurable Thing, and what is called
account for it, and reduce it to a dead logic-formula, attempt not ! . . .
As an actually existing Son of Time, look with unspeakable manifold inter-
est, oftenest in silence," &c.
Yet in the dramatic form, he does, as a matter of fact, give the
commonplace explanation, that the masses found the yoke of their
superiors intolerable.
Carlyle has his doubts about the propriety of making History a
schoolmistress. " Before Philosophy can teach by Experience," he
says, " the Philosophy has to be in readiness, the Experience must
176 THOMAS CARLYLE.
be gathered and intelligibly recorded." Yet, like most other his-
torians, he makes use of history to illustrate his peculiar doctrines,
ethical, religious, and political Not that he is, like Macaulay,
continually building up arguments in support of his views. He
does not argue, he declaims. He sets up certain men, Oliver
Cromwell and the two Friedrichs, as shining examples of Duty,
Veracity, and Justice, and upon every colourable opportunity ex-
tols them for their exercise of these, his favourite virtues. He ia
drawn to the Great Rebellion, because it affords " the last glimpse
of the Godlike vanishing from this England ; conviction and vera-
city giving place to hollow cant and formulism." He loves and
praises old Friedrich in spite of his ungovernable temper, because
" he went about suppressing platitudes, ripping off futilities, turn-
ing deceptions inside out;" because "the realm of Disorder, which
is Unveracity, Unreality, what we call Chaos, has no fiercer enemy."
He writes the history of young Friedrich, although " to the last a
questionable hero," because he was an able ruler, and " had noth-
ing whatever of the Hypocrite or Phantasm." In every case he
takes for granted the excellence of his favourite virtues; more than
that, he tacitly assumes and maintains that they atone for every
other immorality. His excuses of old Friedrich's severities on the
score of justice, have called out loud expressions of indignation
from the reviewers of his History.
Farther, he has not escaped the imputation of colouring charac-
ters and garbling facts under the bias of his narrow standard of
morality. In the opinion of a distinguished French critic, he has
misconceived and distorted the history of the French Revolution
from a habitual effort to vilify whoever has a different theory of
life from himself.
For such as are not repelled by his many eccentricities and
arrogant judgments, Carlyle's histories possess an intense charm.
Without recurring to the elements of power in his style, we here
glance briefly at his use of the opportunities peculiar to narrative.
The interest of his narrative is very largely personal. Scenery
and military movements he describes with the most graphic power ;
but he is constantly at the right hand of individuals rejoicing in
their strength as the prime movers of great transactions. He
records public transactions, but he keeps his heroes in the fore-
ground or stays with them in the background as the centres of
power. In our small quotations to show his mode of explaining
events, this appears incidentally ; but no illustration could bring
out fully what is so pervading a character of all his histories. He
gives the prominence to individuals on principle : assigning to
"great men," "heroes," a prodigious influence on the affairs of
the world, he carries this so far as to think their sayings and
EXPOSITION. 177
doings alone worthy of permanent record. Tittle-tattle about
inferior personages, Acts of Parliament, and suchlike, he makes
over to Dryasdust ; and certainly his intensely personal method
has the advantage in point of sensational interest His exaltation
of heroes, if not the most accurate way of representing human
transactions, is doubtless the most artistic: every drama requires
a central figure.
With his strong sense of dramatic effect Carlyle's plot would be
almost as absorbing as a sensational novel, were we not generally
aware beforehand from other sources what is to be the upshot.
Judge by reading, for example, his account of the Crown-Prince's
attempted flight from the cruelties of old Friedrich. Note also,
generally, his art of introducing a name with some such phrase as
"Mark this man well; we shall perhaps hear of him again."
The interest in the progress of mankind, so notable in Macaulay,
is greatly wanting in Carlyle. There could hardly be a greater
contrast than between the glowing optimist and the despairing
prophet ; between the hopeful opening of the ' History of England '
and the doleful opening of the ' Letters and Speeches of Oliver
CromwelL' In Carlyle's histories, the absorbing interest of suc-
cession, of gradual development, is not wanting ; but it is the
interest of plot, of suspended expectation, not the cheering inter-
est of increase in human wellbeing. To the patriotic Prussian,
indeed, his ' History of Friedricii ' would be exhilarating, as show-
ing the gradual advance of the House of Brandenburg : and even
the philanthropist might rejoice to see the people prospering under
the rule of Friedrich. But little encouragement to jubilation of
any kind is given by the sardonic historian. His eye is rather on
the Phantasms that remain, than on the Phantasms that have been
trodden under foot.
Exposition.
From Carlyle the student will learn no delicate arts of exposition.
In considering the intellectual qualities of his style, simplicity and
clearness, we saw what he does to make himself readily and dis-
tinctly intelligible. With his immense command of words he is
able to repeat his doctrines in great variety of forms. He is most
profuse in similitudes. The two great drawbacks to his powers of
exposition are, (i) that he deliberately prefers imperfect hints and
figurative sayings to complete and plain expression ; and (2) that
his examples are not typical cases, but selected for stage effect.
His character-drawing is one of his chief distinctions. It is
elaborately studied, and in many points the execution is admir-
able. His sketch of the outward man seldom fails to be felici-
tous; not groping about confusedly in minor details of feature ot
M
178 THOMAS CARLYLE.
of figure, but dashing off the general likeness with bold compre-
hensive strokes. See his description of George's two mistresses
(p. 153), and Mentzel (p. 150). His description of Leibnitz is
also good as regards the externals, though perhaps it would bear
filling out in other respects : " Sage Leibnitz, a rather weak, but
hugely ingenious old gentleman, with bright eyes and long nose,
with vast black peruke and bandy legs." These are but slender
specimens of his art, probably far from being the best that could
be produced ; but the reader will have no difficulty in finding
others ; he describes every person that crosses his pages.
As a rule, he is satisfied with a few suggestive strokes ; but
occasionally he fills in the picture. When he does so, he gives the
general view first, and then tells of particular after particular,
deliberately, and with some similitude or collateral circumstance
to fix each particular distinctly in the mind. His description of
Friedrich in the two first pages of his history, is one of his most
finished delineations.
He carries the same art of clear broad touches into his descrip-
tion of character. He is not perverted by likes or dislikes from
trying to give the broad outlines truly ; as a rule, he looks at a
character only with the eye of an artist : and as a rule, his vigor-
ous portraiture of the general temperament is true to nature. An
example or two will show how he always aims at comprehensive
general views. We take them at random :
"This Jocelin, as we can discern well, was an ingenious and ingenuous, a
cheery-hearted, innocent, yet withal shrewd noticing quick-witted man ; and
from under his monk's cowl has looked out on that narrow section of the
world in a really human manner ; not in any simial, canine, ovine, or other-
wise inhuman manner," &c.
" The eupeptic, right-thinking nature of the man ; his sanguineous temper,
with its vivacity and sociality, an ever-busy ingenuity, rather small perhaps,
but prompt, hopeful, useful, always with a good dash, too, of Scotch shrewd-
ness, Scotch canniness ; and then a loquacity, free, fervid, yet judicious,
canny, in a word, natural vehemence, wholesomely covered over and tem-
pered (as Sancho has it) in 'three inches of old Chris tian/a/' all these
fitted Baillie to be a leader in General Assemblies," &c.
In these short dashing portraitures, perhaps the only thing worth
objecting to is a certain want of order. It is when we come to the
minute detail of character that we become conscious of a weakness
in the scientific foundations. Carlyle's failure should warn all of
the danger of despising psychological analysis, and at the same
time producing an analysis made out by common-sense with the
assistance of capricious fancy. De Quincey had too clear an insight
to fall into such a blunder ; he had no hope even of criticism,
unless it was to be based on accurate psychology. Contempt for
psychology usually implies bad psychology ; contempt for analysis,
PERSUASION. 179
bad analysis. Emphatically is it so with Carlyla Avowing a
contempt for analysis, he rushes with analytic assertions into
regions where the ablest analyst treads with caution, and commits
blunders that the poorest analyst would be ashamed of. We had
occasion to note (p. 141) his view about the association of intellect
with moral worth, and of a sense of the ridiculous with moral
worth. Take this other statement of his favourite doctrine :
" The thinking and the moral nature, distinguished by the necessities of
speech, have no such distinction in themselves ; but rightly examined, ex-
hibit in every case the strictest sympathy and correspondence; are, indeed,
but different phases of the same indissoluble unity a living mind."
Now, here the division into thinking nature and moral nature
is an analysis, just as the division into intellect and worth and
a faculty of laughter is an analysis. These are distinguished, he
says, by the necessities of speech ; but does he suppose that the
psychologist makes any other than a verbal distinction ? The
difference is this: the scientific analyst distinguishes with care,
common speech distinguishes without care. To prefer the com-
mon-speech analysis to the scientific, is to prefer unskilled labour
to skilled labour ; amateur analysis is not likely to be much more
valuable than amateur shoemaking.
Persuasion.
Carlyle's way of making converts is, as we have seen, the way
of the declaiming prophet, not of the supple plausible debater, or
of the solid logician. He appeals almost exclusively to the feel-
ings, not to the reason ; and issues his lamentations and denuncia-
tions, his Jeremiads and Isaiads, without the slightest attempt to
conciliate opponents.
His oratory is employed partly on political, partly on moral
subjects. His political influence has been insignificant, smaller
perhaps than has been exercised by any political adviser of mod-
erate ability ; his moral influence has been considerable.
What chiefly cripples his influence, is the arrogant tone of his
assertions, his total disregard for the feelings and cherished opin-
ions of those addressed. A prophet after this strain can win over
at first only the few accidentally predisposed to agree with him.
With these few all his grandeur and copiousness is overwhelming ;
they become at once his intense admirers and adherents.
For bringing over such as are not prepared to jump to his con-
clusions, he exerts little influence, except the intrinsic attractions
of his style. A reader is disposed to view with favour opinions
clothed in a vesture so brilliant : in admiring the fresh original
diction, the gorgeous figures, the soaring declamations, the vivid
powers of description and narration, one is in danger of being made
180 THOMAS CARLYLE.
captive to the doctrines. With those that do not admire the style,
whose teeth are set on edge by the outrages on propriety of ex-
pression, the prophet's force tells the other way. To many, also,
his vituperative eloquence, in spite of its undercurrent of geniality,
is offensive. With readers so disposed he is far from gaining
ground ; every fresh effusion widens the breach.
One of the most amiable features in his preaching is the consol-
ing of the humble worker under difficulties. He has many ingeni-
ous turns of thought and expression for coining good out of evil,
and beguiling the miserable out of their distresses. He comforts
the feeble by assuring them with his utmost grandeur of language
that in the end right becomes might ; that justice, however long
delayed, will at length visit the oppressor. He contends with
Plato that the victim of wrong suffers less than the wrong-doer;
and talks of " only suffering inhumanity not being it or doing it"
If a man has genius, "he is admitted into the West-End of tJie
Universe." " Man's unhappiness comes of his greatness." Had
we " half a universe," " there would still be a dark spot in our
sunshine." He sets the performance of Duty high above every
other consideration. He often declaims against conventional stand-
ards of respectability ; and cheers the poverty-stricken with such
"wine and oil" as the following :
" And now what is thy property ? That parchment title-deed, that purse
thou buttonest in thy breeches-pocket ? Is that thy valuable property ?
Unhappy brother, most poor insolvent brother, I without parchment at all,
with purse oftenest in the flaccid state, imponderous, which will not fling
against the wind, have quite other property than that ! I have the mirac
breath of Life in me, breathed into my nostrils by Almighty God."
PART IL
ENGLISH PROSE WRITERS IN
HISTORICAL ORDER.
CHAPTER L
PROSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580.
FOUBTEENTH CENTTJBY.
Sir John Mandeville, 1300-1371. The earliest book of prose able
to take for itself a place in our literature, was a book of Travels
by Sir John Mandeville.
In the various manuscript collections of Early English composi-
tions are to be found prose fragments written before Mandeville's
work. Some of these have been printed by the Early English
Text Society namely, Homilies of the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Centuries ; the Ayenbyte of Inwyt, illustrating the Kentish dialect
in 1340; also, from a MS. of the fifteenth century, some fragment*
by the ascetic Yorkshire preacher, Richard Rolle de Hampole,
who died in 1349. But these fragments are inconsiderable ; and
seeing that they had not vitality enough to keep themselves alive,
they must not be allowed to take away from Mandeville the
honour of being the Father of English Prose. Mr Henry Morley
calls him "our first prose writer in formed English," and says
" that with him and Wiclif begins, at the close of the period of the
Formation of the Language, the true modern history of English
Prose."
Mandeville professes to write what he had seen and heard in the
course of thirty-four years of travel in the East. Nearly all that
is known of his life may be given in his own words :
"I, John Matmdevylle, knyght, alle be it I be not worthi, that was born
in Englond, in the Town of Seynt Alboues, passed the See in the Zeer of our
Lord Jesu Crist MCCCXXII., in the day of Seynt Michelle ; and hidre to
have ben longe tyme over the See, and have seyn and gon thorghe inanye
dyverse Londes, and many Provynces and Kingdomes, and lies, and have
184 PROSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580.
passed thorglie Tartarye, Percye, Ermonye the litylle and the grete ; thorghe
Lybye, (JaMee, and a gret partie of Ethiope ; thorghe Amazoyne, Inde the
iasse and the more, a gret partie ; and thorghe out many othere lies, that
ben abouten Inde ; where dwellen many dyverse Folkes, and of dyverae
Maneres and Lawes, aud of dyverse Schappes of Men."
Besides this, we know that before leaving England he studied
physic, a branch of knowledge that the traveller would find service-
able wherever he went. He is said to have returned to England
in 1356, and to have then written his book in Latin, in French,
and in English :
"And zee schulle undirstonde, that I have put this Boke out of Latyn
into Frensche, and translated it azen out of Frensche into Englyssche, that
every man of my Nacioun may undirstonde it."
His book completed, he seems to have been again seized with
his passion for travel. He is said to have died at Liege in 1371.
There being no printing-press in England till the last quarter of
the fifteenth century, Mandeville's book of Travels was not printed
till more than a century after his death ; but immediately upon its
composition, it began to circulate widely in manuscript It was
translated into Italian by Pietro de Cornero, and printed at Milan
in 1480. It was first printed in England in 1499, when an edition
was issued by Wynkyn de Worde.
Geoffrey Chaucer, 1328-1400. Of the ' Canterbury Tales ' two
are in prose the "Parson's Tale" and the "Tale of Melibceus."
The " Parson's Tale " is a long and somewhat tedious discourse on
the Seven Deadly Sins ; the " Tale of Meliboeus " (and his wife
Prudence) is an allegory, closely translated from a French treatise.
Neither of them has the spirit of Chaucer's verse, and they would
hardly have been preserved had they appeared in less illustrious
company.
Besides these tales, he wrote in prose a translation of the ' De
Consolattone Philosophise ' of Boethius, date unknown ; and a
' Treatise on the Astrolabe,' addressed to his son Lewis, conjectured
date 1391.
John de Wycliffe, Wicliffe, or Wyclif, the Reformer, 1324-1384,
although he wrote mostly in Latin, and probably wrote little in
English till near the close of his life, was the most eminent and
influential writer of English prose in the fourteenth century. Mr
Shirley's conjecture is that he did not begin to use the vernacular
in controversy till after the great Western Schism under the anti-
pope Clement in 1378. In his opinion "half the English religious
tracts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been assigned
to him in the absence of all external, and in defiance of all internal
evidence." The reader maybe referred to Mr Arnold's 'Select
English Works of Wyclif ' for examples of what may reasonably be
JOHN DE WYCLIFFE, WICLIFFE, OR WYCLIF. 185
ascribed to the pen of the great reformer, when every allowance
is made for the extreme difficulty of identifying works that have
remained in manuscript till within recent years. Mr Matthew's
edition for the English Text Society of certain other writings may
also be recommended, as well for the interest of the subjects, as
for the careful and thorough introductory biography.
In the account of Wycliffe's life, prefixed to his edition of the
1 Fasciculi Zizaniorum,' Mr Shirley argued strongly against several
traditional views. One of his chief points was that Wycliffe has
been confounded with another man of the same name, and that it
was this other Wycliffe whose appointment to the Wardenship of
Canterbury Hall in 1365 was disputed, and finally set aside by
the Pope. This theory, however, has by no means been unani-
mously adopted. Mr Matthew follows Lechler in rejecting it
Many of the incidents in Wycliffe's life are still matter of dis-
pute. He was a Yorkshireman, born in 1324 at Spreswell or
Ipswell, near Wyclif. He studied at Oxford ; but no particulars
of his life are known till 1361, when he appears as Master of
Balliol. In this year he was presented to the rectory of Fyling-
ham in Lincolnshire, and shortly after went there to reside. In
1363, having taken a doctor's degree, he used the privilege of
lecturing in divinity at Oxford. At this date he broached no
doctrinal heresy, but assailed abuses in Church government, especi-
ally recommending himself to the Court by his attacks on the tem-
poral power of the Pope, and by defending Parliament's refusal to
recognise the Pope's claim for arrears of tribute. In 1368, to be
nearer Oxford, he obtained the living of Ludgershall in Bucking-
hamshire. In 1374 he was one of a legation sent by Edward III.
to arrange some difficulties with the Pope. On his return he was
presented to the living of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, which
was his home for the remainder of his life. From 1378 Mr Shirley
dates a new stage in the reformer's career. He then became more
exclusively theological. At what date he began his great enter-
prise of translating the Bible into English is not ascertained. So
long as he attacked only the pretensions of Church dignitaries, he
was supported by the Court against their attempts at revenge.
But when in 1380 he began to attack the doctrines of the Church,
and proclaimed his heresy on transubstantiation, the Court dared
no longer support him. He was banished from Oxford ; and
nothing but his death in 1384 could have saved him from further
persecutions.
That it should be difficult to identify Wycliffe's writings is not
to be wondered at, when we remember that in those days tracts
and books circulated only in manuscript. Wycliffe towering so
high above other theologians of the time, his name could not fail
to become a nucleus for all writings of a reforming tenor. His
186 PROSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580.
translation of the Bible, completed in 1383, and used as the basia
for subsequent versions, was not printed for centuries. His New
Testament first .appeared in 1731, and the Old Testament was
never printed till so late as 1850.
The whole of the New Testament is said to be by Wycliffe's own
hand. It can be conveniently seen and compared with other early
versions in Bagster's ' English Hexapla.' Energy and graphic
vigour are the characteristics of his controversial prose.
The only other name usually mentioned among the prose writers
of the fourteenth century is John de Trevisa, who in 1387 trans-
lated Higden's ' Polychronicon.' The translation was printed in
1482 by Caxton, who took upon him "to change the rude and
old English " an evidence of the rapid growth of the language.
Trevisa is said to have made other translations from the Latin.
Of a translation of the Scriptures said to have been executed by
him nothing is now known.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Prose writers in this century are not numerous, and their works
contain little to tempt anybody but the antiquary. Indeed, up to
the last quarter of this century there was little inducement to cul-
tivate the vernacular. A work, as we have said, circulated only
in manuscript ; and the learned, chiefly clergymen, addressed their
brethren in Latin. The following are the most famous of those
that wr"ote in the mother tongue.
Reynold Pecock, 1390-1460. The Bishop of Chichester followed
Wycliffe in denying the infallibility of the Pope, and in upholding
the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith. He also questioned the
doctrine of transubstantiation. He opposed the persecution of
the Lollards; urged that the Church should reason them out of
their heresy, not burn them ; and set an example of this more
humane way in a work entitled ' Represser of overmuch blaming
of the Clergy.' This curious work is reprinted in the Rolls series,
edited by Mr Babington. The prose style is much more formal
and less homely than Wycliffe's, being elaborately periodic. When
taken to task for his heterodoxies, he recanted ; and thus escaping
martyrdom, was imprisoned for the rest of his life in Thoruey
Abbey.
Sir John Fortescue, 1395-1483. Legal and political writer,
author of a Latin work, ' De Laudibus Legum Anglise ' (concern-
ing the excellence of the laws of England), and an English work,
' The Difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, as
it more particularly regards the English Constitution.' These are
perhaps the first works that avow in their title the strong English
JOHN CAPGKAVE. WILLIAM CAXTON. 187
pride of country. The one extols the English upon the ground of
their civil law, and the other sets forth the superiority of the Eng-
lish people to the French.
In his 'De Laudibus,' Fortescue calls himself Cancellarius
Anglice, Chancellor of England ; but this title seems to have been
no better than the titles conferred by James VIII. at St Germains.
He was Chief-Justice of the King's Bench in the reign of Henry
VI., fled with that prince after the battle of Towton, was probably
made Chancellor when in exile, returned with Margaret and Prince
Edward, was taken prisoner at Tewkesbury in 1471, made his sub-
mission to Edward IV., and spent the close of his life in retirement
at Ebrington in Gloucestershire.
His 'Monarchy' was first printed in 1714 by his descendant,
Baron Fortescue, the friend of Pope. The ' De Laudibus ' is more
famous; it was translated into English in 1516, and subsequently
annotated by Selden, the antiquary.
John Oapgrave, 1393, born at Lynne, educated probably at
Cambridge, made Provincial of the Order of Austin Friars in Eng-
land, was one of the most learned men of his time, a voluminous
author in Latin, and wrote a biography and a chronicle in English.
The 'Chronicle of England' is reprinted in the Master of the Rolls
series of Chronicles. It begins with the Creation, and is distin-
guished by -its conciseness.
William Caxton, the Printer, 1420-1492. Printing was intro-
duced into England not by scholars, but by an enterprising English
merchant, who had lived for more than thirty years in Bruges, then
the capital of the Duke of Burgundy, and a great centre of literary
activity as well as trade. Caxton settled in Bruges as a merchant,
after serving his apprenticeship to an eminent mercer in London :
rose in time to be " Governor of the English Nation," or English
Consul, at Bruges; and on the marriage of Edward IV. 's sister,
Margaret, with Charles of Burgundy, in 1468, entered her service,
probably as her business agent Book-collecting and book-making
had been for years, and more particularly under Philip the Good,
an ardent fashion at the Court of Burgundy. Caxton caught the
enthusiasm, and translated into English a version of the ' History
of Troy,' made by Le Fevre, one of the royal chaplains. His ver-
sion was admired. He was asked for copies of the work. This
turned his attention to the art of printing introduced about that
time into Bruges by Colard Mansion, an ingenious member of the
craft of book-copying. It occurred to him apparently that it would
be a good speculation to set up a printing-press in London. The
first book issued by Caxton that bears the Westminster imprint,
was a translation of ' The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers'
" enprynted at Westmestre," 1477. But Mr Blades, the great
authority on the subject, puts it eighth in the list of books printed
188 PROSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580.
by Caxton the ' History of Troy,' and six others, having probably
been printed by him abroad before his resettlement in his native
country.
Caxton's printing-press gave an immense impulse to writing in
the English tongue. In the first ten years after its establishment,
probably more English was written for publication than had been
written in the two preceding centuries. His press gave to the
world no less than sixty-four books, nearly all in English.
His publications were mostly translations from French and
Latin, many of them made by himself. They include religious
books of a popular cast ' Pilgrimage of the Soul,' ' The Golden
Legend ' (Lives of the Saints), ' The Life of St Catherine of Sens : '
books of romance Malory's ' Mort d'Artur, 1 ' Godfrey of Boloyn,'
* The Book of the Order of Chivalry,' The History of the Noble,
Right Valiant, and Right Worthy Knight Paris, and of the Fair
Vienne : ' and some of the works of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate.
Caxton's books are a good index to the taste of the time, because
he published as a man of business, not for the learned, but for the
general reader and book-buyer. He was a fluent translator him-
self, not careful of his style, like Bishop Pecock, for example, but
rough and ready, following his French originals in idiom. He
spoke with quite a courtly air about the rude old English of the
previous century, and was sharply taken to task by Skelton for his
presumption. His own English differs somewhat in diction, but
not so much in the words used as in the greater copiousness of ex-
pression and greater abundance of French idiom.
Robert Fabyan, or Fabian, who died in 1512, is usually counted
among the authors of this century. His ' Concordaynce of Stories,'
generally known as Fabyan's Chronicle, is the first attempt to write
history in English prose. An alderman and a sheriff of London,
he seems to have pursued literature to the damage of his business ;
for in 1502 he withdrew from office on the ground of poverty. In
all likelihood he had composed his Chronicle after his retirement
from the cares of official life.
The Concordance, compiled from older sources, as the name
indicates, narrates the history of Britain from the landing of
Brutus the Trojan down to 1485. It is most minute in the detail
of facts and fictions, making no attempt to distinguish between
great events and small. One of its most authentic records is a
full and particular account of the successive Lord Mayors of Lon-
don. The book was not published till 1516, four years after the
author's death.
One or two other names of this century have been preserved.
Juliana Berners (of uncertain date, supposed 1390-1460} deserves
mention as the first of her sex to publish a book in English. She
JOHN BOURCHIER. SIR THOMAS MORE. 189
was prioress of Sopewell Nunnery, near St Albans, was like the
gentlewomen of the period fond of hawking and hunting, and
wrote a treatise on these sports. Sir Thomas Malory (fl. 1470)
is known as the translator and compiler of the ' History of King
Arthur,' printed by Caxton in 1485. To this century belong also
translations of various romances from the French, occupied chiefly
with the acts of the Round Table Knights and the Seer Merlin;
also the Paston Letters, supposed date, 1422.
PIBST HALF OP SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
With the sixteenth century our prose literature begins a new
era, though the writers are still far from being of any use as models
of style. In spite of the encouragement given to English writing
by the establishment of printing, some of the most distinguished
authors of the time wrote chiefly in Latin, being ambitious of a
wider audience than the English-reading public. The high-minded
Bishop FISHER, who in 1535, at the age of seventy-five, was put
to death for denying the king's ecclesiastical supremacy, wrote
copiously in Latin in defence of the Catholic tenets, and left only
a few sermons in English. Bishop BALE, a generation later (1495-
1563), a champion on the Protestant side, is known chiefly by his
1 Lives of Eminent English Writers, from Japhet down to 1559,' a
work written in Latin. He wrote in English some bitter contro-
versial tracts, and an account of the examination and death of the
Protestant martyr Sir John Oldcastle. Sir Thomas More wrote
his ' Utopia ' in Latin. Still, this century begins with a greatly
increased activity in the production of original English works.
John Bourchier, Lord Berners, 1474-1532, is known chiefly as
the translator of ' Froissart's Chronicles.' He was Chancellor of
the Exchequer and Governor of Calais, and undertook the transla-
tion, which was published in 1523, at the request of the king. It
was reprinted in 1812 in the series of English Chronicles. Ber-
ners made one or two other translations from French and Spanish.
As an educated man and a courtier, he wrote without pedantry the
best English of the time ; and by that time, chiefly under Italian
influence, a much more ornate, balanced, and compact style began
to come into use. If we compare any of Caxton's translations
with Berners's Froissart, we are struck at once with a decided ad-
vance in point of form. By the end of Henry VIIL's reign, we
can distinctly see, the stylistic tendency which reached an extrava-
gant height in the prose of John Lyly.
Sir Thomas More, 1480-1535, first layman Chancellor of Eng-
land, author of ' Utopia,' is perhaps the first 6f our writers whose
prose displays any genius ; and his ' Life of Edward V.' is pro-
nounced by Mr Hallam to be " the first example of good English
L90 PKOSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580.
language, pure and perspicuous, well chosen, without vulgarisms
or pedantry."
More's life is well known ; he ranks with Sir Philip Sidney as
one of the most popular characters in our history. His father was
Sir John More, a judge of the Court of King's Bench. Admitted
as a page to the household of Cardinal Morton at the age of fifteen,
he was sent thence to Oxford, where he made the acquaintance of
Erasmus. Under his pleasant exterior there was a vein of gravity
and asceticism ; and after leaving Oxford he had thoughts of be-
coming a monk. This desire passed away ; he settled down to the
practice of the law, soon rose to distinction, was made under-
sheriff of London, and obtained a seat in Parliament in 1504. He
offended Henry VII. by opposing a subsidy ; and, retiring from
public life, probably busied himself with his ' Life of Edward V.,'
till the accession of Henry VIII. let him resume his profession.
With Henry he became a great favourite, and in 1529, on the fall
of Wolsey, was made Chancellor. A stanch adherent to the Church
of Rome, he is said to have practised in his chancellorship severities
against the Reformers very inconsistent with the theory of the
4 Utopia.' When Henry broke with Rome, the Chancellor would
not follow him, and suffered death rather than take an oath affirm-
ing the validity of the King's marriage with Anne Boleyn. He
was beheaded in 1535, acting up to his Utopian precept that a
man should meet death with cheerfulness.
The ' Utopia,' written, as we have said, in Latin, was first
printed in 1516 at Louvain. His principal English work is the
' Life and Reign of Edward V. and of his Brother, and of Richard
III.,' our first prose composition worthy of the title of history.
He was also a voluminous writer of controversy, publishing more
than 1000 pages folio against Tyndale; and a letter to his wife
that has chanced to be preserved is often quoted.
The ' Utopia,' though written in Latin, is always reckoned as
an English work, and is the chief support of More's place in Eng-
lish literature. The dramatic setting of the work is done with
great ingenuity and humorous circumstantiality. More professes
to be only a transcriber ; he simply writes down what he remem-
bers of a conversation with a restless traveller, Raphael Hythloday.
Ralph had met in his travels with the commonwealth of Utopia
(Nowhere), and More draws him out to give an account of it.
Ralph is thus an earlier Teufelsdroeckh, as Utopia is an earlier
Weissnichtwo. Under the dramatic guise, disclaiming all respon-
sibility for the opinions, More utters freely political advice that
might have been unpalatable but for its witty accompaniments of
time, place, and circumstance.
The work is full of graphic personal descriptions, and of humour
that has a freshness almost unique after such a lapse of time. As
SIR THOMAS MORE. 191
a small sample of his picturesque description, take the first appear
ance of Hythloday. On leaving church at Antwerp one day,
sauntering out
" I chanced to espy this foresaid Peter (Giles) talking with a certain
stranger, a man well stricken in age, with a black sunburnt face, a long
beard, and a cloak cast homely about his shoulders, whom by his favour and
apparel forthwith I judged to be a mariner."
A fair specimen of his humour is his pretended difficulties in
finding out exactly where Utopia lay. He let off Raphael without
minute questioning, so occupied was he with the peculiarities of
the place ; then he wrote to his friend Giles, who found the travel-
ler, and asked the particulars of latitude and longitude ; but un-
fortunately at the critical moment a servant came and whispered
Raphael, and when the story was taken up again after this inter-
ruption, some person in the room had a fit of coughing, so that
Giles lost " certain of the words." Throughout Robinson's trans-
lation of the ' Utopia,' the translator is so full of admiration that
he cannot refrain from marginal remarks, such as, " O wittie head,"
" a prettie fiction and a wittie," " mark this well."
Of late years the ' Utopia ' has been sometimes quoted as con-
taining lessons for the present day. As a matter of fact, More
gives us no lesson that we do not get from living preachers in
forms more directly adapted to our time the main pleasure in
reading him apart from his humour and picturesqueness is the
surprise of finding in the 'Utopia' doctrines that have been
preached in these latter days and considered novel. Curiously
enough, the chief author of our time anticipated by the " merry,
jocund, and pleasant" More, is the grimly humorous, vehement,
and defiant "Seer of Chelsea," Mr Carlyle. The difference of
manner makes the coincidence of matter all the more striking.
We find realised in the 'Utopia' Mr Carlyle's main political
doctrines : his hatred of idleness and love of steady industry, his
model aristocracy, his " Captains of Industry," his treatment of
malefactors, and his grand specific for an overcrowded country
emigration. The Utopians are a sober, industrious, thrifty people ;
jewellery and fine clothes they put away with childhood; they
have no idle rich, they leave hunting to the butchers ; the chief
duty of their magistrates the Syphogrants is, "to see and take
heed that no man sit idle ; " they enslave their malefactors, give
them a peculiar dress, cut off the tips of their ears, hire them out
to work, and punish desertion with death : when their children
become too numerous, they found a colony.
All this is a curious anticipation of the ' Latter-Day Pamphlets ' ;
and in More we meet with many other things that we are accus-
tomed to think peculiarly modern. He makes some pleasant play
192 PKOSE WEITERS BEFORE 1580.
on the pedantic worship of antiquity, and the over-honoured " wis-
dom of our ancestors." He brings against the capital punishment of
theft the same argument that Macaulay, in the Indian Penal Code,
urged against the capital punishment of rape. Some years ago we
heard much about the depopulation of the Highlands of Scotland
to make deer-parks : More has a similar complaint to make ; in
his day the high price of English wool tempted landlords to eject
husbandmen, and turn arable land into sheep-pastures.
The 'Utopia' was first translated by Ralph Robinson in 1551.
It was again translated by Bishop Burnet in 1684. Both trans-
lations have often been reprinted, and others have been made.
Robinson's translation is included in Arber's series of 'English
Reprints,' 1869.
If we compare Robinson's translation with the original or with
Burnet's translation, we are struck with a peculiarity characteristic
of our literature up to and including the age of Elizabeth. Robin-
son seldom translates an epithet with a single word ; he repeats
two or even three words that are nearly synonymous. It would
seem as if he distrusted the expressiveness of the new language,
and sought to convey the Latin meaning by showing it in as many
aspects as our language permitted. " Plain, simple, and homely,"
"merry, jocund, and pleasant," "disposition or conveyance" of
the matter, might be explained in this way. But the greater num-
ber of the tautologies are the incontinence arising from want of
art ; couples are often used where the meaning of one would be
amply apparent : thus " I grant and confess," " I reckon and
account," " tell and declare," " win and get," and so forth.
Sir Thomas Elyot, 1487-1546, a man of admired integrity and
of a genial didactic turn, who was employed by Henry VIII. on
two of his most important embassies, was a miscellaneous writer
of considerable range. His most famous work is ' The Governor,'
which deals chiefly with the subject of education. Besides this he
wrote a medical and dietetic work, ' The Castle of Health,' com-
posed ' Bibliotbeca Eliotae' (probably a work on the choice of
books), and pretended to translate from the Greek a work called
* The Image of Governance.'
With More and Elyot may be mentioned their friend, though
considerably their junior, John Leland (1506-1552), scholar and
antiquary, author of ' The Itinerary.'
Edward Hall, 1500-1547, is often coupled with Fabyan as one
of the two beginners of English prose history. The title of his
work is ' The Union of the two Noble and Illustrious Families of
Lancaster and Yorke.' There is no particular reason for coupling
him with Fabyan. More comes between them as a historian with
his Edward V. Hall was a, man of better education than Fabyan ;
studied at Cambridge, went to the bar, and rose to be one of tho
GEORGE CAVENDISH. WILLIAM TYNDALE. 193
judges of the sheriff's court His style is not equal to More's, and
better than Fabyan's.
Sir Roger Ascham says that in " Hall's Chronicle much good
matter is quite marred with indenture English and . . . strange
and inkhorn terms."
The work was reprinted among the English Chronicles in 1809.
George Cavendish, 1495(?)-1562 (?), gentleman-usher to Cardinal
Wolsey, and after Wolsey's death to Henry VilL, wrote a biography
of the Cardinal, which is reprinted in Wordsworth's ' Ecclesiastical
Biography ' as a standard authority. Apart from its own worth,
it is interesting as having furnished Shakspeare with particulars
for his ' Henry VIIL'
An edition, published by Mr Singer in 1825, was accompanied
with a proof that the author was George Cavendish, and not Wil-
liam, as commonly reported.
John Bellenden, Ballenden,or Ballentyne, Archrlean of Moray,
is the first Scotch writer of prose. He translated Boece's ' History
of Scotland' (1536) and the first five books of Livy. His diction
is very little different from the ordinary English diction of that
time.
Translators of the Bible. Between 1537 and 1539 appeared
in rapid succession four translations of the Bible Tyndale's, Cover-
dale's, Matthew's, and Cranmer's.
William Tyndale, 1484-1536. Translation of New Testament,
published at Antwerp, 1526. Little is known of Tyndale's family.
He was a native of Gloucestershire, his birthplace probably North
Nibley. He was educated at Oxford, and continued there prob-
ably as a tutor till 1519. Thereafter, being tutor in the family of
Sir John Walsh, of Little Sodbury, in his native county, his anti-
Popish views became known, exposed him to threats of censure,
and finally made England too hot for him, and drove him to
Hamburg, 1523-24. Here he laboured at his translation of the
Scriptures, holding, with the reformers of Germany and Switzer-
land, that the Bible should be in every hand, not in the exclusive
keeping of the Church. In 1524-25 he printed two editions of the
New Testament by snatches at different places, subject to vexatious
interruptions. In 1526 an edition was deliberately printed at
Antwerp, and every endeavour used to smuggle it into England.
Turning next to the Old Testament, he translated the five books
of Moses, which he published in 1530. He revised his New Testa-
ment in 1534. Hitherto he had escaped the agents sent to hunt
him out and apprehend him. At last, in 1535, an emissary of the
English Popish faction tracked him to Antwerp, obtained a war-
rant from the Emperor, and lodged him in prison. In 1536 he
was led to the stake at Antwerp, strangled, and burnt At that
very time, the change having come in Henry's relations with the
N
194 PROSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580.
Pope, the King's printer in London was printing the first English
edition of his New Testament.
" Tyndale's translation of the New Testament is the most im-
" portant philological monument of the first half of the sixteenth
" century, perhaps, I should say, of the whole period between
" Chaucer and Shakspeare, both as a historical relic and as having
' more than anything else contributed to shape and fix the sacred
' dialect, and establish the form which the Bible must permanently
' assume in an English dress. The best features of the translation
'of 1611 are derived from the version of Tyndale, and thus that
' remarkable work has exerted, directly and indirectly, a more
' powerful influence on the English language than any other single
' production between the ages of Kichard IL and Queen Elizabeth."
(Marsh's 'Lectures on the English Language.')
Miles Coverdale, 1488-1569, published a translation of the whole
Bible in 1537. His life was more prosperous than Tyndale's.
Hardly any mention is made of him before the date of his transla-
tion : he would seem to have worked in silence, until the times
became favourable to open activity in the cause of the Reformed
faith. He was made Bishop of Exeter in 1551. During the reign
of Mary he prudently retired to the Continent, returning on the
accession of Elizabeth to his former dignity. He is said to have
been a native of Yorkshire. His version of the New Testament
differs but slightly from Tyndale's. He also wrote several tracts,
now much in request among book-hunters.
Matthew's Bible, so called from the name on the title-page, was
issued under the superintendence of John Rogers, the proto-martyr
of the reign of Mary. It is not a new translation, but a revised
edition of Tyndale's Pentateuch and New Testament, with an
amended version of Coverdale's translation for the rest of the
Bible. Rogers was a native of Warwickshire, was educated at
Cambridge, and became the disciple and friend of Tyndale at
Antwerp, where he was chaplain to the English merchants. He
married a German wife, and left ten children.
Cranmer's Bible (1540) took its name from the celebrated Arch-
bishop Cranmer, 1489-1556. It is substantially a new edition of
Matthew's, revised by collation with the original Hebrew and
Greek.
Hugh Latimer, 1491-1555, one of the foremost champions of
the Reformation, burnt by Queen Mary at Oxford, along with
Cranmer and Ridley. He was born at Thurcaston in Leicester-
shire, the son of a well-to-do yeoman. In 1505 he was sent to
Cambridge, where in due course he became a resident Fellow.
Always vehement and enthusiastic, he distinguished himself, like
another Paul, by his strong attachment to the prevailing faith and
his denunciations of the new light. About 1521 he was converted
HUGH LATIMER. 195
by a priest whom he calls " Little Bilney," and immediately made
himself obnoxious to "divers Papists in the University" by the
new direction of his zealous and powerful eloquence. He was
brought before Wolsey, but the Cardinal found nothing amiss in
his preaching, and sent him away in triumph. When Henry
wished to invalidate his marriage with Catherine, Latimer sat
upon the question as one of a University Commission, and decided
in the King's favour. Soon thereafter, in 1530, he was invited to
Count, made a royal chaplain, and in 1535, on the elevation of
Cranmer to the see of Canterbury, Bishop of Worcester. Never
inclined to look at the world on its favourable side, he signalised
his preferment by denouncing, with characteristic vehemence, the
abuses of the time, declaring that " bishops, abbots, priors, parsons,
canons resident, priests and all, were strong thieves yea, dukes,
lords, and all ; " and that " bishops, abbots, with such other," should
" keep hospitality to feed the needy people, not jolly fellows with
golden chains and velvet gowns." In 1539 he got into trouble for
refusing to sign the six Romanistic articles, resigned his bishopric,
sought to retire into private life, but was seized, put in the Tower,
and "commanded to silence." His voice is not heard again till
the reign of Edward VI., when he blazes out as the most stirring
of the Reforming preachers, and a man of importance at Court.
When Edward died, everything was changed, and Latimer, with
other conspicuous Protestants, suffered the last extreme of perse-
cution.
Latimer's sermons are still read with interest They present an
extraordinary contrast to modern sermons. In those days the
ministers of the Word did not confine themselves to exegesis and
morality in the abstract ; they addressed hearers by name, and
singling out particular classes, told them with some minuteness
how to regulate their lives. Latimer took the utmost advantage
of this licence of the pulpit, told my Lord Chancellor of certain
cases that he should attend to personally ; warned the King
against having too many horses, too many wives, or too much
silver and gold ; and admonished bishops and judges of their duty
in the plainest terms. This was not all : in the matter he prob-
ably did not go beyond the time ; in the manner, he was led by
his excess of energy into eccentricities of diction and illustration
rendered tolerable only by the power and freshness of his genius.
His contemporaries looked upon him much as the present genera-
tion looks on Thomas Carlyle. Many could not endure his open
defiance of conventionality, and could not speak of him with
patience. These he outraged still more by replying to them from
the pulpit He says
"When I was in trouble, it was objected and said unto me that I was
singular, that 110 man thought as I thought, that I loved a singularity in
196 PEOSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580.
all that I did, and that I took a way contrary to the King and the whole
Parliament, and that I was travailed with them that had better wits than
I ; that 1 was contrary to them all. "
He then goes on to compare his case with Christ's, and draws
a humorous ironical parallel between himself and Isaiah, with a
quaint drollery, almost buffoonery, not likely to conciliate those
already offended by his eccentric power.
He is often praised for his " vigorous Saxon." It is undoubtedly
vigorous, and his illustrations have the stamp of genius. But to
his cultivated hearers, the homely turns must have sounded like
Yorkshire or broad Scotch in a modern discourse. It is not to be
supposed that the Court of Edward VI. heard the following with-
out a srnile :
"In the VII. of Jhon the Priests sent out certain of the Jews to bring
Christ unto them violently. When they came into the temple and heard
Him preach, they were so moved with His preaching that they returned
home again and said to them that sent them, Nunquam sic locutiis est homo
ut hie homo. There was never man spake like this man. Then answered
the Pharisees, Num et vos seducti estia ? What, ye brain-sick fools, ye hoddy
peck*, ye doddy polls, ye huddes, do ye believe Run ? Are you seduced also ? "
Or the following :
" Germany was visited XX. years with God's Word, but they did not
earnestly embrace it, and in life follow it, but made a mingle-mangle and a
hotch-potch of it.
" I cannot tell what, partly Popery, partly true religion, mingled together.
They say in my country when they call their hogs to the swine trough :
' Come to thy mingle-mangle ; come pyr, come pyr,' even so they made
mingle-mangle of it."
Latimer's " Sermon on the Plougher," and his " Seven Sermons
before Edward VI.," are in Arber's series of English Reprints.
Several editions of his sermons were issued in the sixteenth
century.
John Foxe, 1517-1587, author of the 'Book of Martyrs,' a
native of Lincolnshire. Having studied at Oxford and gained
a fellowship, he became openly Protestant, and was expelled in
1545. After various distresses, he had been but a short time
comfortably settled as tutor to the Earl of Surrey when Mary as-
cended the throne, and he had to flee to the Continent and support
himself by correcting proofs. After Mary's death he returned and
was made a prebendary. His ' Book of Martyrs ' is an interesting
record, reprinted by various religious societies : the facts are not
much to be relied on, being based upon popular report, evidently
little sifted.
Sir John Cheke, 1514-1557, Professor of Greek at Cambridge,
is best known by the impulse he gave to the study of Greek. His
life was troubled; he had difficulties with Gardiner about certain
THOMAS WILSON. ROGER ASCHAM. 197
innovations in the pronunciation of Greek, and on the accession of
Mary had to flee the country for his religion. After some years'
precarious wandering, he was caught at Antwerp and brought
back ; was offered the alternative of recantation or death ; re-
canted, and soon after died of shame and grief.
His only English work is written against the insurrection of Ket
the Tanner. Its title is, ' The Hurt of Sedition, how grievous it is
to a Commonwealth.'
THIRD QUARTER OP SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
About the beginning of this period we find a marked develop-
ment of prose style. It begins to be more generally a subject
of special study. Teachers in high places begin to theorise on
the essentials of polite writing.
Thomas Wilson, d. 1581, published an 'Art of Logic' in 1552,
an ' Art of Rhetoric ' in 1553. The latter is the first treatise on
English composition. Wilson was a man of position, said to have
been Dean of Durham, and to have held offices of state under Eliza-
beth. He was not a dry and formal writer, but aimed at conveying
instruction in an easy, familiar, and courtly style, expressly eschew-
ing the terms of the schools. In this respect he often reminds
us of Addison and the polite writers of Queen Anne's time. His
' Rhetoric ' embraces much more than the mere art of composi-
tion. It is a familiar treatise on the lines of Quintilian's rhetoric,
such as might be written for the instruction of a young nobleman
preparing to take a part in public life, the didactic being relieved
by witty anecdotes. It deals with a good style among other
requisites of oratorical success. Wilson made a stand for the
purity of the " King's English." l He ridiculed fops and scholars
for talking Chaucer, and for larding their speech with French-
English, with Italianated terms, with inkhorn terms, with " far-
fetched colours of gay antiquity." "The unlearned or foolish
fantastical . . . will so Latin their tongues that the simple
. . . think surely they speak by some revelation."
Roger Ascham, 1515-1568, is one of the best-known men of hia
century. He was more fortunate in his life than More, Latimer, or
Cheka He enjoyed a pension under Henry and Edward, had his
pension not only continued but increased by Mary, was made her
Latin Secretary ; after her death became a favourite with Elizabeth,
continued to enjoy pension and secretaryship, taught Latin and
Greek to the learned Queen, and lived to write that, " in our fore-
fathers' time, Papistry as a standing pool covered and overflowed
all England." The secret of his success was, that he held no
strong opinions in religion, or, at any rate, kept them to himself.
When at Cambridge he nearly lost his fellowship by indiscreetly
1 He is, so far as we are aware, the first writer to use this expression.
198 PROSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580.
speaking against the Pope. Escaping shipwreck that time, he was
careful never to offend again by an obtrusive profession of his
faith. A Yorkshireman, son of Lord Scroop's steward, he had
little of the Yorkshire vigour ; a man of delicate constitution, of
gentle and polished manners ; noted for his fine penmanship and
elegant scholarly acquirements, and having not a little of the
dexterity of the courtier.
The "Toxophilus ' (1545) is a dialogue on archery, sustained by
Philologus and Toxophilus Lover of the Book, and Lover of the
Bow. It gives the history of the bow, compares archery with
other recreations, recommends it as an exercise for the student,
tells the best kind of wood for the bow, discusses the art of shoot-
ing, &c. ; above all, it declares what England owes to the bow, and
urges every Englishman to practise the national weapon. Upon
the merits of this side of the treatise he received his pension from
Henry. The 'Schoolmaster' (published in 1570, after his death)
discusses the readiest means of acquiring a knowledge of Latin,
and criticises the style of Varro, Sallust, Cicero, and Caesar. In
both ' Toxophilus ' and the ' Schoolmaster ' he takes great liberty
of digression, but does little to redeem his promise of great things
under modest titles. He announced a ' Book of the Cockpit,' in
defence of his frequenting that place of amusement, but the work
was never published. His chief service to English prose is the
example he sets, as a scholar and a courtier, of writing in the
vernacular. This service is acknowledged by Dr Nathan Drake.
Thomas Fuller says of him " He was an honest man, and a good
shooter. Archery was his pastime in youth, which, in his old age,
he exchanged for cock-fighting. His ' Toxophilus ' is a good book
for young men ; his ' Schoolmaster ' for old ; his ' Epistles ' for ail
men."
A collected edition of his English works was published in 1761.
Another reprint in 1815 is modernised, not only in the spelling but
in the language.
Sir Thomas North, a collateral ancestor of the Guilford family,
issued in 1579 an English version of ' Plutarch's Lives,' rendered
from the French translation by Amyot. The work was very
popular, until superseded by Dryden's translatioa It is closely
followed by Shakspeare in ' Coriolanus,' 'Julius Caesar,' and ' An-
tony and Cleopatra.' An earlier work of his the ' Dial of
Princes,' a translation of Guevara's ' El Libro de Marco Aurelio,'
published in 1557 is still more interesting for the history of
prose style. It throws strong light on the derivation of Lyly's
Euphuism (see p. 229). There are passages in it that might pass
for Lyly's.
Holinshed's 'Chronicle,' published about 1580, is known to
many readers only from its being utilised by Shakspeare, who
HOLINSHED. 199
made Holinshed's translation of Boece the basis of ' Macbeth.'
In the composition of his ' Chronicles,' which profess to be a com-
plete history of Great Britain and Ireland, Holinshed, himself a
man of uncertain biography, had several assistants, whose lives are
equally obscure. The prefatory account of England in the six-
teenth century, the most valuable part of the work, was written
by William Harrison ; the history and description of Ireland by
Richard Stanihurst. John Hooker, the Chamberlain of Exeter,
and uncle of " the judicious Hooker," is also said to have given
aome assistance.
CHAPTER II.
FROM 1580 TO 1 6 10.
SIB PHILIP SIDNEY,
I554I586.
IN the prose works of Sir Philip Sidney we discern an advance on
the style of all preceding writers. The advance is not perhaps
great : we are not to suppose that prose style departed from the
usual law of gradual progress : still, whatever the difference may
be in the ultimate analysis, undeniably his prose is nearer the
present style of English than any prose of anterior date. His
style has a flow and elevation not to be found in any prose work
before his tima On that ground, although he is " a warbler of
poetic prose," his literary fame resting chiefly on a romance, it is
desirable to analyse his style simply as a prose style at some length.
As the " Hero of Zutphen," Sidney is one of the most popular
characters in English history; and in his own day, at a very early
age, was celebrated all over Europe for his discretion, courage, and
accomplishments. It is said that he was mooted as a candidate
for the throne of Poland, and that Elizabeth put her veto on the
rising negotiation, because she could not part with " the jewel of
her time." He was born at Pensliurst in Kent; son of Sir Henry
Sidney a knight who became a favourite with Elizabeth, and was
famed as an administrator of Ireland ; and nephew to the Earl of
Leicester. He was educated at Shrewsbury, and at Christ Church,
Oxford. In 1572, at the age of seventeen, he set out with three
years' leave of absence to travel on the Continent ; was in Paris
during the massacre of St Bartholomew, and went thence to
Frankfort, Vienna, and the chief cities of Italy. During these
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 201
travels, unlike most travellers of his rank, he associated with
scholars and statesmen, making an earnest study of European
politics. Introduced at Court in 1575, his mixed courtesy and
gravity at once made him a favourite. In 1577, at the age of
twenty-two, being sent as ambassador in great state to congratu-
late the new Emperor of Germany, and discover as far as possible
his tendencies, he met William the Silent of Orange, who pro-
nounced him one of the ripest statesmen in Europe. During the
eight following years, he had no public employment, and lived
chiefly at Court In 1578 he wrote his masque 'The Lady of
the May,' performed at Elizabeth's reception by his uncle the
Earl of Leicester. Probably about the same time he began his
sonnets to ' Stella,' the daughter of the Earl of Essex, afterwards
married to Lord Rich. In the same year he had Spenser living
with him at Penshurst In 1580 he wrote the 'Arcadia,' dedi-
cated to his celebrated sister, the Countess of Pembroke. In
the following year he is supposed to have written the ' Apologie
for Poetrie.' After this he became too much engaged in politics
to have time for literature. As a statesman, he devoted himself
to the policy of humbling the power of Spain. He had boldly
written to Elizabeth in 1580, dissuading her from the marriage
with Anjou, and now he was eager that the Queen should take
active part with the Continental Protestants. This not being done,
he impatiently planned with Drake a secret expedition to strike at
the Spanish colonies in America, but was interdicted just at
starting. At last Elizabeth resolved to stir, and in the fall of
1585 sent him to the Netherlands as Governor of Flushing along
with an army under Leicester. Commencing operations in spring,
Sidney showed great enterprise and skill, but was mortally wounded
in a rencounter at Zutphen, and died Oct. 17, 1586. The touch-
ing incident that has endeared his memory, and made him known,
to every schoolboy, occurred as he rode wounded from the battle.
Though he was well known as a writer, and widely esteemed as
a patron of literary men during his life, none of his works were
published till after his death. The ' Arcadia ' was first printed
in 1590, the ' Apologie for Poetrie' in 1595.
In personal appearance Sidney was tall and handsome, with
clear complexion, and hair of a dark amber colour. By Spenser's
testimony he excelled in athletic sports " in wrestling nimble,
and in running swift; in shooting steady, and in swimming strong;
well made to strike, to throw, to leap, to lift." He was of such
prowess in the tournament, that on the occasion of a great festival
he was selected as one of four champions to keep the lists .in hon-
our of England against all comers.
It is not often that we find in union with such physical prowess
any remarkable powers of mind. In Elizabeth's Court there were
202 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
many able men both physically and mentally, but none of those
that were a match for Sidney in the tournament could have
written the ' Arcadia ' or the ' Apology for Poetry.' Even in his
healthy active boyhood Sidney was remarkably studious ; " his
talk," says his schoolfellow Fulke Greville, " ever of knowledge,
and his very play tending to enrich the mind." When he grew to
manhood, his sagacity in practical affairs soon won him golden
opinions from more than one veteran statesman. If we look to
his writings, we find abundant proofs of intellectual vigour. Hia
diction is copious and felicitous, unmistakably significant of mental
quickness and force. In his ' Arcadia ' we are constantly struck
with the extreme volatility and subtlety of his fancy. In the
Apology, along with a similar sprightliness, we meet with pas-
sages suggestive of more solid power. In defending poetry against
the Puritans, it shows considerable rhetorical perspicacity to
claim the Psalms of David as " divine poems." And there is no
small discernment in his maintaining that a poem might be writ-
ten in prose ; that " verse is but an ornament and no cause to
poetry." Taken all in all, his works bear evidence of versatile,
fresh, and vigorous intellect, and support what is recorded of his
adroit courtesy and sagacious observation of affairs.
As regards his emotional character, were we to judge solely from
his writings, we should take him to have been a man of ebullient
spirits, tempered by extraordinary sweetness and warmth of dis-
position. This is the impression left by the soft exuberant humour
of the Apology, and its strong expressions of delight in the
works of the poet. He seems to have been a pleasant companion,
although not of the rollicking, pleasure-loving temper that per-
petually craves for society. Gay with the gay among his boon
companions, he could also be serious with the serious. He loved
to exchange thoughts in private colloquy with such men as Languet
and Spenser. At times he courted solitude, and would even seem
to have undergone fits of melancholy and despondency, as when,
before leaving England for the last time, he expressed a presenti-
ment that he should never return. To the creations of art he
turned with ever fresh delight. He was not an optimist ; he did
not find enduring satisfaction, abundant means of enjoyment, in
the actual world ; he took refuge from facts in the regions of
imagination " Nature's world," he said, " is brazen, the poet's
only golden." The ruling emotion in his creative efforts, as we
shall see when we come to analyse the qualities of his style, is
tenderness not the wild passionate tenderness of the Celtic nature,
but a soft and courtly phase of the emotion. His imagination did
not dwell sadly upon the sorrowful side of life, but joyfully spent
itself in playful humour, in graceful fancies, in pictures of beautiful
women and beautiful scenery, and in deeds of romantic devotion.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 203
The 'Arcadia' gives little evidence of delight in tlie mere excite-
ment of power. It contains great variety of incidents and char-
acters ; but everything is transfigured by the all-pervading sweet-
ness and warmth everything is seen through this atmosphere.
His heroes young men of irresistible prowess are beautiful as
gods. In recounting their most valiant achievements, he never
suffers us to forget that they are in love ; either they are fighting
to rescue their fair ladies, or the ladies are listening with admira-
tion to the story of their brave adventures. If he enters with
spirit into the description of a storm, a battle, a tournament, a
duel, a popular tumult, or the speeches at a trial, not only does
he mingle pretty fancies with his description or narrative, but he
seldom keeps long out of view the tender interests at stake.
Men so lavishly endowed otherwise as Sidney, with such capaci-
ties and self-contained means of enjoyment, are often indifferent
to the aims of ambition, and even rash and imprudently generous.
A less bountiful natural outfit is more serviceable for rising and
remaining high in the world. He did not push for favour and
office at Court : a slight rebuff drove him to the country ; and he
might have spent his life in retirement had not his foreign friend
Languet impressed him with the gravity of the political situation
in Europe, and urged him to take a part. Once resolved upon a
course of action, he moved with fearlessness and vigour. Few
men would have ventured on his bold remonstrance to Elizabeth
against the French marriage. Naturally sweet-tempered, he was
haughty and imperious when provoked, and ready to put out his
hand to execute his will : witness his giving the lie to the Earl of
Oxford, his challenge to the unknown asperser of his uncle Leices-
ter, and his threatening to " thrust his dagger into " poor secretary
Molyneux, whom he suspected of tampering with his letters. He
owed his death to an impulse of romantic generosity. The Lord
Marshal happening to enter the field of Zutphen without greaves,
Sidney cast off his also, to put his life in the same peril, and so
exposed himself to the fatal shot
The opinions of the Apology call for some notice. It is a light
humorous production, with here and there flashes of lofty beauty;
but beneath all this, there is a foundation of serious doctrine. The
author is full of humour and eloquence in behalf of the delights of
poetry, but he shows also a serious interest in the cause, a genuine
zeal to convince and convert. Very much contrary to the modern
theory that makes the " interpretation of nature " the poet's chief
end, is the saying above quoted, that " nature's world is brazen,
the poet's only golden." " Nature never set forth the earth in
so rich tapestry as divers poets have done, neither with pleasant
rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else
204 FKOM 1580 TO 1610.
may make the too much loved earth more lovely." He eloquently
defends the usefulness of poetry : it furnishes speaking pictures of
virtue more perfect than even history can show ; to make vice
attractive is the abuse and not the use of poetry. To those that
accuse poets of lying, he ingeniously answers that they affirm
nothing as true, and therefore cannot lie.
His criticisms of existing English poetry show a fine tasta He
objects to outrageous infraction of the unities (see p. 212); to
violent mixture of serious and comic " your mongrel tragi-
comedy;" and to making ridicule of human weakness, of "an
extreme show of doltishness," or of " strangers because they speak
not English as we do." He objects also to Lyly's surfeit of simil-
itudes, accusing him of " rifling up all Herbarists, all stories of
Beasts, Fowls, and Fishes," which, he says, is " an absurd surfeit
to the ears," "rather overswaying the memory than any whit
informing the judgment."
ELEMENTS OP STYIA
Vocabulary. "It is marvellous," says Mr William Stigant,
author of an essay on Sidney in the ' Cambridge Essays ' for 1858,
"with what a delicate tact he had divined the capacity of the
English language for prose composition, and how few obsolete
words he has made use of, writing in advance of the great Eliza-
bethan epoch. He reads indeed more modern than any author of
that century." Sidney escapes free from Thomas Wilson's cen-
sure ; his terms are neither French, nor Italianate, nor inkhorn
words of Latin origin. The idiom, too, is purely English : he
differs but seldom from modern idiom, and then from using Eng-
lish idioms that have become obsolete, not from any affectation of
foreign syntax.
As a master of the living English of his time, he must rank
among the highest. Even to modern readers his diction is rich
and varied ; the fitting word is chosen with an apparent ease that
implies a great power over the language.
Sentences. Nathan Drake's criticisms of Sidney's style as
"nerveless and incompact," can apply only to the sentences. The
component clauses are framed with great versatility, sometimes
with a rich long-drawn melody, sometimes with pointed neatness,
sometimes with proverbial conciseness. In putting the clauses
together, he is certainly careless. He does not, like Jeremy Taylor,
pour them out breathlessly without any syntax whatever, but he
rambles on without much regard to unity or to the symmetrical
distribution of his matter. In our various quotations, the reader
will see his ordinary sentences ; the following is a specimen of his
worst form :
SIB PHILIP SIDNEY. 205
" The country Arcadia among all the provinces of Greece, hath ever been
had in singular reputation ; partly for the sweetness of the air, and other
natural benefits, but principally for the well-tempered minds of the people,
who (finding that the shining title of glory, so much affected by other
nations, doth indeed help little to the happiness of life) are the only people,
which, as by their justice and providence give neither cause nor hope to
their neighbours to annoy ; so are they not stirred with false praise to trouble
others' quiet, thinking it a small reward for the wasting of their own lives
in ravening, that their posterity should long after say, they had done so."
Paragraphs. Our author's paragraph arrangement is very irre-
gular, though not worse than the average of his time. Sometimes,
when he ought to begin a new paragraph, he does not even begin
a new sentence. The following passage is an example of his want
of strict method :
" Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his
word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring
forth : to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture : with this end, to teach
and delight ; of this have been three several kinds. The chief, both in
antiquity and excellency, were they that did imitate the inconceivable excel-
lencies of God. Such were David in his Psalms ; Solomon in his Song of
Songs, in his Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs ; Moses and Deborah in their
hymns, and the writer of Job ; which, beside other, the learned Emanuel
Tremilius and Franciscus Junius do entitle the poetical part of the Scripture.
Against these none will speak that hath the Holy Ghost in due holy
reverence.
" In this kind, though in a wrong divinity, were Orpheus, Amphion,
Homer in his hymns, and many other, both Greeks and Romans ; and this
Poesy must be used, by whosoever will follow S. James his counsel, in sing-
ing Psalms when they are merry ; and I know is used with the fruit of com-
fort by some, when in sorrowful pangs of their death-bringing sins, they
find the consolation of the never-leaving goodness.
"The second kind is of them that deal with matters philosophical ; either
moral, as, &c. : . . . which who mislike, the fault is in their judg-
ments quite out of taste, and not in the sweet food of sweetly uttered know-
ledge. But because this second sort is wrapped within the fold of the pro-
posed subject, and takes not the course of his own invention, whether they
be properly Poets or no, let Grammarians dispute : and go to the third,
indeed right Poets, of whom," &c.
Minor niceties, of course, we need not look for. It is, however,
interesting to meet the following example of a set comparison,
where the order of the balance is better kept than in some of the
celebrated later efforts after the same plan. He is describing
" the two daughters of King Basilius, so beyond measure excellent
in all the gifts allotted to reasonable creatures, that we may think
they were born to show that nature is no step-mother to that sex,
how much soever some men (sharp-witted only in evil-speaking)
have sought to disgrace them : "
"The elder is named Pamela; by many men not deemed inferior to her
sister : for my part, when I marked them both, methought there was ^if at
206 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
least such perfections may receive the name of more) more sweetness in
Philoclea, but more majesty in Pamela. Methought love played in Philoclea's
eyes, and threatened in Pamela's : methought Philoclea's beauty only per-
suaded, but so persuaded as all hearts must yield. Pamela's beauty used
violence, and such violence as no heart could resist. And it seems that
such proportion is between their minds ; PhUodea so bashful, as if her
excellencies had stolen into her before she was aware ; so humble that she
will put all pride out of countenance ; in sum, such proceeding as will stir
hope, but teach hope good manners. Pamela of high thoughts, who avoids
not pride with not knowing her excellencies, but by making that one of her
excellencies to be void of pride ; her mother's wisdom, greatness, nobility,
but (if I guess aright) knit with a more constant temper."
Figures. Sidney is wholly free from what he condemns in Lyly
excess of similes and parallels. He makes comparatively few
formal similitudes. Some of those that he does make are singularly
apt. The saying that Chevy Chase " moved him like the sound
of a trumpet," is as familiar as any of Shakspeare's. Another
similitude borrowed or stolen from him is scarcely less famous. A
combat between two of his heroes he describes as being like a
battle between a Spanish galleon and an English man-of-war. The
figure is well known as applied by Fuller to Ben Jonson and
Shakspeare.
'While comparatively free from gaudy and fantastic embellish-
ments, one of the worst vices of the Elizabethan style, he is not a
plain writer. He shows that he was bred in the same school of
prose as the Euphuist Lyly. His peculiar affectation consists in
an excessive use of fanciful personifications and fanciful antitheses ;
fancies usually sweet and graceful, and palling only from overmuch
repetition. We touched on this in the brief account of his char-
acter ; we shall find abundant examples in the quotations that
follow. When the subject-matter is beautiful and pleasing, these
graceful fancies are an additional charm ; when the subject ia
grave or lofty, they are inharmonious and out of place.
Perhaps the most pleasing use of his personifications is in the
description of nature. He often expresses the time of the day
euphemistically. For example : " About the time that the candles
began to inherit the sun's office ; " " seeing the day begin to dis-
close her comfortable beauties ; " " as soon as the morning had
took a full possession of the element ; " and suchlike. In describ-
ing landscape he follows no descriptive method ; merely over-
laying the various particulars of a scene with his " flowers of
poetry," "sugared" epithets and pleasing figurative conceits.
Thus he describes how Musidorus and Clitophon came to " a
pleasant valley, on either side of which high hills lifted up their
beetle brows, as if they would overlook t/te pleasantness of the under
prospect." And how " they laid them down hard by the murmur-
ing music of certain waters, which spouted out of the side of the
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 207
hills, and In the bottom of the valley made of many springs a
pretty brook, like a commonwealth of many families."
The following longer passage is really an example of his
favourite figures, rather than an illustration of any descriptive
art :
" It was indeed a place of delight ; for through the midst of it there ran
a sweet brook, which did both hold the eye open with her azure streams,
and yet seek to close the eye with the purling noise it made upon the pebble
stones it ran over : the field itself being set in some places with roses, and
in all the rest constantly preserving a flourishing green : the roses added
such a ruddy show unto it, as though the field were bashful at its own
beauty : about it, as if it had been to enclose a theatre, grew such sort of
trees, as either excellency of fruit, stateliness of growth, continual green-
ness, or poetical fancies, have made at any time famous. In most part of
which there had been framed by art such pleasant arbours, that, one answer-
ing another, they became a gallery aloft from tree to tree almost round
about, which below gave a perfect shadow ; a pleasant refuge then from the
choleric look of Phoebus."
QUALITIES OP STYLE.
Simplicity and Clearness. Sidney's style, as we have said, is free
alike from the " inkhorn " technical words of the learned pedant,
and from the French and " Italianate " words of the travelled man
of fashion. His meaning is also less cumbered and interrupted
with superfluous quotations than was common at the time.
The order of topics in the Apology shows little sense of the
value of good arrangement. There is a kind of rough method on
the large scale. He first sets out the true nature and value of
poetry, then answers objections, and concludes with a criticism of
existing poetry. But within these divisions he jumps from one
thing to another without restraint.
Precision in the use of words was little attended to till much
later in the history of our language.
Strength. The 'Arcadia' being a 'chivalrous romance, is an
excellent field for a powerful style. In the imagination of thrill-
ing adventures, reckless braving of danger, exploits of super-
human heroism, our author shows a keen enjoyment of vigorous
action. Musidorus and Pyrocles perform the most wonderful
achievements leading armies, quelling tumults, fighting single
combats, passing from chains and imprisonment to victorious com-
mand, achievements well fitted to exercise the highest powers of
vigorous narrative and description.
We have seen (p. 202) how this stirring and imposing activity
is qualified and softened down. Partly there is a large admixture
of gentler elements in the plot, the exploits . being for the most
part either done at the instigation of love, or recited to gratify the
curiosity of fair hearers. But what we are concerned with here ia
208 FROM 1580 TO KilO-
not so much the subject-matter as the manner of presentation. As
already noted incidentally, Sidney's style is deliberately the reverse
of exciting or elevating. Whether he is reciting grim deeds of
battle, or describing the most terrific phenomena of nature, he
tempers the account with soft and humorous fancies. He wrote
the 'Arcadia' more to amuse himself and his sister than to set
forth thrilling and heroic incidents in their appropriate language.
The following are two examples of his treatment of exciting
themes. The manner as a whole would not be tolerated in the
present age, and even as a relic of antiquity will hardly be en-
joyed if read as a serious effort We must keep in mind that the
youthful knight wrote for the entertainment of his sister and her
lady friends ; and that, with all his softness and courtesy, he took
pleasure in occasionally shocking his gentle readers with somewhat
grim humour :
" But by this time there had been a furious meeting of either side : where
after the terrible salutation of warlike noise, the shaking of hands was with
sharp weapons ; some lances, according to the metal they met and skill of
the guider, did stain themselves in blood ; some flew up in pieces, as if they
would threaten heaven because they failed on earth. But their office was
quickly inherited, either by (the prince of weapons) the sword, or by some
heavy mace, or biting axe ; which hunting still the weakest chace, sought
ever to light there where smallest resistance might worse prevent mischief.
The clashing of armour, and crushing of staves, the jostling of bodies, the
resounding of blows, was the first part of that ill-agreeing musick, which was
beautified with the grisliness of wounds, the rising of dust, the hideous falls
and the groans of the dying. The very horses angry in their master's anger,
with love and obedience, brought forth the effects of hate and resistance, and
with minds of servitude did as if they affected glory. Some lay dead under
their dead masters, whom unknightly wounds had unjustly punished for a
faithful duty. Some lay upon their lords by like accident, and in death had
the honour to be borne by them, whom in life they had borne. Some hav-
ing lost their commanding burthens, ran scattered about the field, abashed
with the madness of mankind. .The earth itself (wont to be a burial of men)
was now, as it were, buried with men : so was the face thereof hidden with
dead bodies, to whom death had come masked in divers manners. In ona
place lay disinherited heads dispossessed of their natural seignories ; in
another, whole bodies to see to, but that their hearts wont to be bound all
over so close, were now, with deadly violence, opened : in others, fouler
deaths had uglily displayed their trailing guts. There lay arms, whose
fingers yet moved, as if they would feel for him that made them feel ; and
legs which, contrary to common reason, by being discharged of their burthen,
were grown heavier. But no sword payed so large a tribute of souls to the
eternal kingdom as that of Amphialus ; who, like a tiger from whom a com-
pany of wolves did seek to ravish a new-gotten prey, so he (remembering
they came to take away Philodea) did labour to make valour, strength,
choler, and hatred to answer the proportion of his love, which was infinite."
"But by that the next morning began a little to make a gilded show of a
good meaning, there nrose even with the sun, avail of dark clouds before his
face, which shortly, like ink poured into water, had blacked over all thefaco
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 209
of heaven ; preparing as it were a mournful stage for a tragedy to be played
on. For forthwith the winds began to speak louder, and as in a tumultuous
kingdom, to think themselves fittest instruments of commandment ; and
blowing whole storms of hail and rain upon them, they were sooner in
danger than they could almost bethink themselves of change. For then the
traitorous sea began to swell in pride against the afflicted navy, under which,
while the heaven favoured them, it had lain so calmly, making mountains
of itself, over which the tossed and tottering ship should climb, to be
straight carried down again to a pit of hellish darkness ; with such cruel
blows against the sides of the ship that, which way soever it went, was still
in his malice that there was left neither power to stay, nor way to escnpe.
. . . But in the ship wherein the princes were, now left as much alone
as proud lords be when fortune fails them, though they employed all in-
dustry to save themselves, yet what they did was rather for duty to nature
than hope to escape so ugly a darkness as if it would prevent the night's
coming, usurped the day's right : which accompanied sometimes with
thunders, always with horrible noises of the chasing winds, made the
masters and pilots so astonished that they knew not how to direct ; and if
they knew they could scarcely, when they directed, hear their own whistle.
For the sea strove with the winds which should be louder, and the shrouds
of the ship, with a ghastful noise to them that were in it, witnessed, that
their ruin was the wager of the other's contention, and the heaven roaring
out thunder the more amazed them as having those powers for enemies.
There was to be seen the divers manner of minds in distress ; some sat upon
the top of the poop weeping and wailing, till the sea swallowed them ; some
one more able to abide death than the fear of death, cut his own throat to
prevent drowning ; some prayed ; and there wanted not of them which
cursed, as if the heavens could not be more angry than they were."
Pathos. In the ' Arcadia ' there are very few passages to gratify
the taste for the pathos of tender regret Pitiable incidents occur
very often, but they serve to keep alive the stir of the plot, and do
not invite us to shut the book and indulge in melancholy tender-
ness. The misery of the sufferers is too intense to be pathetic.
They suffer from the pangs of despised love, from the agony of
bereavement, from the rage of remorse ; they are not resigned to
their fata
The following are two exceptions to the above general statement
two pitiful incidents that have no influence on the plot, and are
good subjects for pathetic treatment. One is the death of young
Agenor, related with genuine pathos. Had the death of the gay
youth been wilful, it would have moved us with horror ; being an
accident, it touches us with sorrow as for an unavoidable and
irremediable misfortune :
" His name was Agenor, of all that army the most beautiful ; who having
ridden in sportful conversation among the foremost, all armed, saving that
his beaver was up, to have his breath at more freedom, seeing Amphialus
come a pretty way before his company, neither stayipg the commandment
of his captain, nor reckoning whether his face were armed or no, set spurs
to his horse, and with youthful bravery casting his staff about his head, put
it then in his rest, as careful of comely carrying it as if the mark had been
but a ring and the lookers-on ladies. But Amphiahis's lance was already
o
210 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
come to the last of his descending line, and began to make ths full point of
death against the head of this young gentleman ; when Amphialus, per-
ceiving his youth and beauty, compassion so rebated the edge of choler that
he spared that fair nakedness, and let his staff fall to Agenor's vampalt : so
as both with brave breaking should hurtlessly have performed that match,
but that the pitiless lance of Amphialus (angry with being broken) with an
unlucky counterbuff, full of unsparing splinters, lighted upon that face, far
fitter for the combats of Venus ; giving not only a sudden but a foul death,
leaving scarcely any tokens of his former beauty ; but his hands abandoning
the reins and his thighs the saddle, he fell sideward from the horse. "
The other is the death of Parthenia a lady who, when her
husband was slain, put on armour, challenged his victor, and
perished in the fight. Sidney overlays this painful subject with
his favourite figures. It is difficult to feel in what mood such an
incident could appear a suitable ground for such embroidery :
" But the head-piece was no sooner off, but that there fell about the
shoulders of the overcome knight the treasure of fair golden hair, which
with the face (soon known by the badge of excellency) witnessed that it was
Parthenia, the unfortunately virtuous wife of Argalus ; her beauty then,
even in despite of the passed sorrow, or coming death, assuring all beholders
that it was nothing short of perfection. For her exceeding fair eyes, hav-
ing with continual weeping gotten a little redness about them, her round
sweetly-swelling lips a little trembling, as though they kissed their neigh-
bour death ; in her cheeks the whiteness striving by little and little to get
upon the rosiness of them; her neck, a neck indeed of alabaster, displaying
the wound, which with most dainty blood laboured to drown his own beau-
ties ; so as here was a river of purest red, there an island of perfectest white,
each giving lustre to the other, with the sweet countenance, God knows,
full of an unaffected languishing : though these things to a grossly conceiv-
ing sense might seem disgraces, yet indeed were they but apparelling beauty
in a new fashion, which all looked upon through the spectacles of pity, did
even increase the lines of her natural fairness ; so as Ampkialus was aston-
ished with grief, compassion, and shame, detesting his fortune that made
him unfortunate in victory."
Sidney's true pathos lies chiefly in pictures of beauty and
devotedness. With such subjects his fancies are more in keep-
ing. We have seen (p. 206) with what sweetness he can describe
natural scenery. In his descriptions of female beauty, he is some-
times a little more sensuous than the taste of our period thinks
becoming. But there is much of his description that none need
hesitate to read. The following hyperbolical passage contains
what is possibly the original of one of Shakspeare's sweetest
fancies :
" Her breath is more sweet than a gentle south-west wind, which comes
creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat of
summer ; and yet is nothing compared to the honey-flowing speech that
breath doth carry ; no more all that our eyes can see of her (though when
they have seen her, what else they shall ever see is but dry stubble after
clover-grass) is to be matched with the flock of unspeakable virtues, laid up
delightfully in that best-builded fold."
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 211
His personifications appear to advantage in such passages as
this :
" And as the ladies played there in the water, sometimes striking it with
their hands, the water (making lines cm his face) .sremed to smile at such
beating, and, with twenty bubbles, not to be content to have the picture of
their face in large upon him, but he would in each of those bubbles set forth
the miniature of them. "
The ' Arcadia ' is brimful of chivalrous devotion. Every per-
sonage is one of a pair of lovers Pyrocles and Philoclea, Musi-
dorus and Pamela, Helen and Amphialus, Amphialus and Pamela,
Argalus and Parthenia, Phalantus and Artesia, tkc. The friend-
ship of Pyrocles and Musidorus is like the friendship of Pylades
and Orestes. When the one is supposed to be drowned, the other
is restrained only by force from casting himself into the sea.
When the one is seized and threatened with death, the other insists
upon taking his place. It would indeed be difficult to make any
alteration in the plot that should bring out more numerous or
more striking acts of devotedness.
Humour. Sidney's humour is hearty, joyous bordering some-
times upon farce, but usually refined by the wit of the expression.
In the ' Arcadia ' he has one or two humorous characters, notably
Dametas and Mopsa; 1 and describes some exquisitely ludicrous
scenes, such as the fight between the two cowards Dametas and
Clinias, and Mopsa in the wishing-tree. The following passage,
occurring in the description of a riot, is very farcical, without
much wit to give it refinement :
" Yet among the rebels there was a dapper fellow, a tailor by occupation,
who fetching his courage only from their going back, began to bow his knees,
and very fencer-like to draw near to Zelmane. But as he came within her
distance, turning his sword very nicely about his crown, Basilius struck off
his nose. He (being suitor to a seamstress's daughter, and therefore not
a little grieved for such a disgrace) he stooped down, because he had heard
that if it were fresh put to, it would cleave on again. But as his hand waa
on the ground to bring his nose to his head, Zelmane with a blow sent his
head to his nose."
There is a boyish freshness and simplicity about the humour
of the Apology. In the beginning, by way of anticipating the
criticism that he is a prejudiced enthusiast in favour of poetry he
tells a humorous story to bring out that " self-love is better than
any gilding to make that seem gorgeous wherein ourselves are
parties." He tells us how he and a friend took lessons of a riding-
master in Vienna, and that this gentleman, " according to the
fertileness of the Italian wit, did not only afford us the demonstra-
tion of his practice, but sought to enrich our minds with the con-
templations therein, which he thought most precious." He then
* Mopsa is borrowed by Shakspeare.
212 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
recounts some of Pugliano's bravuras about the value of horseman-
ship " skill of government was but a pedanteria in comparison "
and repeats some of his eloquent praises of the horse :
" The only serviceable courtier without flattery, the beast of most beauty,
faithfulness, courage, and such more, that if 1 had not been a piece of a
logician before I came to him, / think he would have persuaded me to have
wished myself a horse."
His argument for the unities is enlivened by a similar spirit of
boisterous mockery:
"For where the stage should always represent but one place, and the
uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotle's precept and
common reason, but one day : there is both many days and many places,
inartilicially imagined. But if it be so in Gorboduc, how much more in all
the rest ? Where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Afric of the other,
and so many other under-kingdoms that the Player, when he cometh in,
must ever begin with telling where he is : or else the tale will not be con-
ceived. Now ye shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we
must believe the stage to be a Garden. By-and-by we hear news of shipwreck
in the same place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a Rock.
" Upon the back of that, conies out a hideous monster with fire and
smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it lor a Cave.
While in the meantime, two armies Hy in, represented with four swords and
bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field ?
Now, of time they are much more liberal, for ordinary it is that two princes
fall in love. After many traverses she is got with child, delivered of a fair
boy, he is lost, groweth a man, falls in love, and is ready to get another
child, and all this in two hours space : which how absurd it is in sense," &c.
This must have been very amusing ridicule x of the stage as it
existed in Sidney's time, though from the change of circumstances
it has not the same effect for us. The mock-heroic close of the
Apology has not yet lost its force, though even it is perhaps too
exuberant for modern taste :
"Thus doing, your name shall flourish in the Printer's shops ; thus doing,
you shall be of kin to many a poetical preface ; thus doing, you shall be most
fair, most rich, most wise, most all, you shall dwell upon superlatives. . . .
But if (fie of such a But) you be borne so near the dull-making Cataphract
of Nilus that you cannot hear the Planet-like Music of Poetiy, if you have
so earth-creeping a mind, that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of
Poetry ; or rather, by a certain rustical disdain will become such a Mome,
as to be a Momus of Poetry : then, though I will not wish unto you the
Ass's ears of Midas, nor to 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 thus much curse I must send you, in the behalf of all Poets, that while
you live, you live in love, and never get favour, for lacking skill of a Sonnet ;
and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an Epitaph. "
Melody. Harmony. We have already remarked (Sentences, p.
204) that Sidney is versatile in the movement of his language.
* It may have suggested the incomparable fun of the play before Theseus in
' Midsummer Night's Dream.'
RICHARD HOOKER. 213
Every reader must notice how readily he adapts his rhythm to
pointed wit or flowing declamation. Few of our writers surpass
him in soaring and bringing out a full melodious cadence. The
last-quoted sentence is as measured and stately in its movement as
could well be found. In some of the tender passages, the music of
the language is such as can hardly be imitated under present laws
of taste as regards epithets. The following is an instance " the
nightingales one with the other striving which could in most dainty
variety recount t/teir wrong-caused sorrow. 1 '
It is needless to review Sidney's style at length under the kinds
of composition. We have seen that he has no descriptive method
that the only merit of his description lies in the graces of his
style. As a Narrator, he relates events with clearness ; but the
different lines of events are so numerous and interwoven that it is
difficult to avoid getting confused among them. To those that do
not enjoy the beauties of his language, the numerous speeches and
meditations must appear a tedious impediment to the action. As
regards Exposition, all has been said under the intellectual quali-
ties. In the way of Persuasion, his Apology would tell partly by
its clear and ingenious arguments, partly by its winning playful-
ness of manner and impetuous exuberance of spirits.
RICHARD HOOKER, 15C3-1600.
The following estimate of Hooker by the author of the ' Intro-
duction to the Literature of Europe,' is often quoted : " So stately
' and graceful is the march of his periods, so various the fall of his
' musical cadences upon the ear, so rich in images, so condensed in
' sentences, so grave and noble his diction, so little is there of vul-
' garity in his racy idiom, of pedantry in his learned phrase, that
' 1 know not whether any later writer has more admirably dis-
' played the capacities of our language, or produced passages more
' worthy of comparison with the splendid monuments of antiquity."
Though this eloquent panegyric is an extreme exaggeration, and
could never have been written by any person keeping his eye on
the facts, the ' Ecclesiastical Polity ' does undoubtedly, as is often
said, " mark an era in English prose." In some respects superior,
in some inferior to Sidney's, Hooker's style is the first specimen of
good prose applied to the weightier purposes of literature.
According to Izaak Walton, in one of his well-known " Lives,"
Hooker was born at Heavitree, in or near Exeter. His parents
were poor, but of respectable family ; his uncle John was Chamber-
lain of Exeter. His father designed to apprentice him to a trade ;
but his schoolmaster, seeing the boy's abilities, was solicitous that
he should get learning, and spoke to the chamberlain uncle. The
uncle spoke to Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, who examined the young
214 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
prodigy, found him all that the good schoolmaster represented, gave
him a pension, and in 1567 got him admitted as a Clerk (sizar, ser-
vitor, or bursar) to Corpus Christi, Oxford. In 1571 his patron
died, and Hooker was greatly dejected, and even in tears, about his
future subsistence. From this he was relieved by the President of
the College, who promised to be his friend ; and some nine months
after, through the recommendation of his late patron, he got as a
pupil Edwin, son of Bishop Sandys, whose influence was afterwards
of great service to him. For some ten years after this, he remained
at Oxford, being admitted Fellow of his College in 1577, appointed
to read Hebrew lectures in 1579, and in the same year tempo-
rarily expelled along with Reynolds for some reason now unknown.
During this time he was an industrious reader, " enriching," says
Walton, " his quiet and capacious soul with the precious learning
of the philosophers, casuists, and schoolmen ; and with them the
foundation and reason of all laws, both sacred and civil ; and in-
deed with such other learning as lay most remote from the track
of common studies." In 1581, going to preach in London, he was
led to make an unhappy marriage ; and about the same time set-
tled with his wife in the living of Drayton Beauchamp, in Bucking-
hamshire. In 1584-85, at the recommendation of Sandys, whose
son had seen and pitied the unhappiness of his old tutor's married
life, Hooker was taken in hand by Archbishop Whitgift, and through
his influence appointed Master of the Temple, in the Episcopal in-
terest, and against a Presbyterian champion of the name of Travers,
Here began Hooker's labours in defence of Episcopacy. Travers,
a bold preacher, with a popular manner, was Afternoon Lecturer
in the Temple, and maintained in the pulpit Presbyterian views of
Church government Hooker preaching in the forenoon, " the pul-
pit," as Fuller said, "spake pure Canterbury in the morning, and
Geneva in the afternoon." Travers, silenced by Whitgift on the
ground of insufficient ordination, continued the war in print ; Hooker
replied but, unfit for the worry of controversy, begged from his
patron some quiet post in the country, and in 1591 removed to the
living of Boscombe, near Salisbury. Here in peace and privacy he
meditated his ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' and published the first four
Books in 1594. Translated in 1595 to the better living of Bishops-
borne, near Canterbury, he sent a fifth Book to the press in 1597.
He died in 1600, leaving three more Books of the Polity. The
genuineness of these later books is doubted by Walton. On his
and other evidence it is contended that the Sixth Book was muti-
lated by the Presbyterian friends of Hooker's wife, and interpo-
lated with other matter taken from Hooker's papers ; also that the
Seventh and the Eighth received a bias from Presbyterian hands.
The evidence of fraud, though not improbable, is scarcely conclusive.
The good faith of Hooker's Episcopal friends is shown by their pub-
RICHARD HOOKER. 215
lishiug what they believed to be mutilated copies. The Sixth and
Eighth Books were first published in 1651, the Seventh in 1662.
From Walton we have a circumstantial description of Hooker as
" a man in poor clothes, his loins usually girt in a coarse gown or
canonical coat ; of a mean stature, and stooping, and yet more
lowly in the thought of his soul ; his body worn out, not with age,
but study and holy mortifications ; his face full of heat-pimples,
begot by his inactivity and sedentary life." This account of his
poor physique is borne out by other authorities. Dr Spenser says
that his body was spent with study, and Fuller that his voice was
low and his stature little. To complete his bodily infirmities,
"though not purblind, he was short or weak sighted."
Impartial critics will not join the devoted admirers of Hooker in
placing him among the greatest intellects of the nation. All his
life through he was a most industrious student, and his acquisi-
tions as a scholar were undeniably profound. But his original
force, whether as a thinker or as an expositor, was not great As
a champion of Episcopacy, he added little or nothing to the argu-
ments of Jewel and Whitgift. Even his high flights of eloquence
are not always original ; in many cases the ideas and the images are
borrowed, the diction only being his own. In the application of
his scholarship he is often very ingenious. His great fault, and it
is fatal to the high pretensions set up for him, is a want of coher-
ence. He seems incapable of the effort of closely concatenating
his thoughts. As he writes, a quotation occurs to him having
some dim application to his present subject ; he puts down the
quotation, but leaves its bearing vague and indistinct. Something
like this is admitted, as it must be admitted, by his warmest eulo-
gists. The explanation probably lies in his constitutional languor.
What his intellect might have done in a more vigorous constitution
of body, can be only a matter of speculation. One thing may be
noted by way of parenthesis. If in controversy his constitutional
feebleness interfered with the clear and telling application of his
scholarship, in another respect it gave him a great advantage over
his opponents. It left him free from the impulses of vehement
attachment ; no impetuosity of conviction hurried him into un-
reason ; he could always approach his subject with judicial calm-
ness, and take a, circumspect survey of his ground. This dispas-
sionate habit strikes us in every sentence ; it is Hooker's chief
distinction amidst the fiery partisanship of the time. Whether his
judgment was sound or unsound, he was eminently free from vehe-
ment prejudice, "or mist of passionate affection."
Perhaps the chief cause of the over-estimation of Hooker's intel-
lectual force is the extraordinary musical richness of his language.
Most of us are more influenced by mere pomp of sound than we
216 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
might be willing to allow ; and the melody of Hooker's periods is
of the richest order. Like De Quincey, he was extremely suscep-
tible t<> the " luxuries of tlie ear." This we can see from his own
account of how music affected him : " We are at the hearing of
some more inclined unto sorrow and heaviness, of some more molli-
fied and softened in mind ; one kind apter to stay and settle us,
another to move and stir our affections ; there is that draweth to a
marvellous grave and sober mediocrity ; there is also that carrieth,
as it were, into ecstasies^ filling the mind with a heavenly joy, and
for the time in a manner severing it from the body."
Though the Polity is professedly an argumentative work, and
does contain some very solid dispassionate argument, his mind was
perhaps more poetical than scientific. Special emotions do not
assert themselves in marked individual luxuriance. The poverty
of his nature in vital power was not favourable to the growth of
emotion. We meet in the Polity neither rancorous invective nor
passionate sentimental philanthropy, neither hero-worship nor exu-
berant self-confident vivacity. The work is as utterly deficient in
these more obtrusive forms of emotion as could well be conceived.
The basis of the peculiar poetic vein of the work is his intense fear
of every mode of confusion, strife, agitation; his passionate longing
for quiet and tranquillity. He dilates with an approach to rapture
on " the glorious inhabitants of those sacred palaces, where nothing
but light and blessed immortality, no shadow of matter for tears,
discontentments, griefs, and uncomfortable passions to work upon,
but all joy, tranquillity, and peace, even for ever and ever doth
dwell" In the spirit of this craving for peace, and weary impa-
tience of conflict and excitement, he dwells upon the prevalence
of order throughout nature, upon the blessings of regularity and
authority wherever they exist ; and passionately deprecates every
.appearance of insubordination. He is earnest with all dissenters
from the established faith, worship, or government, to give up
" private discretion," " private fancies," which can lead only to
anarchy, disturbance, tumult He would have them mature their
views, submit these to constituted authority, and abide by the
decision. Meantime let them obey in silence.
What we know of his demeanour and active habits confirms the
view of his character that one naturally forms from reading his
works. " God and nature," says Izaak Walton, " blest him with
so blessed a bashfulness, that as in his younger days his pupils
might easily look him out of countenance ; so neither then, nor in
his age, did he ever look any man in the face ; and was of so mild
and humble a nature, that his poor parish clerk and he did never
talk but with both their hats on, or both off, at the same time "
All circumstances show Hooker to have been an unusually shy,
sensitive, feeble little man, with very little activity, and very low
RICHARD HOOKER. 217
constitutional power. He entered the controversies of his time
unwittingly and, after a short experience, begged for " peace and
privacy." When forced to vindicate what he had said in his ser-
mons, he did so, not with the heat of a strongly persuaded man of
energy, but with the meekness and charity of a retiring nature.
How much he leant upon others appears in the narrative of his
college life so different from the sturdy self-reliance of Johnson.
Still more does this come out in Walton's well-known account of
his visit to the " Shunemite's House " in London, when he went
up from Oxford to preach. Reaching London on the l>ack of a
horse that would not or could not run, wet, weary, weather-beaten,
numb with wind and rain, he bitterly refused to be persua led that
he could preach within two days; but the Shunemite, Mrs Church-
man, by cosy nursing, " enabled him to perform the office of the
day," and having given him such a taste of the comfort of womanly
ministration, persuaded him that he needed a wife, drew from the
unresisting man in his gratitude a commission to procure one,
and provided him with her own daughter. There is hardly to
be found in history a more extreme instance of a man wanting
in self-will, and submitting himself passively to the disposal of
others. 1
Opinions. One of the many eulogistic sayings concerning
Hooker is that, "should the English Constitution in Churcii
and State be unhappily ruined, . . . the book " (' Ecclesi-
astical Polity') "probably contains materials sufficient for repair-
ing and rebuilding the shattered fabric." A less glowing admirer
represents him as " the one adequate exponent of the religious
ideas and policy of the age and reign of Elizabeth." Even this
needs an explanation. Hooker was not, as this would imply, an
impartial chronicler of all existing views of Church doctrine,
ritual, and government He was the champion of a religious
party of the adherents to Episcopacy. He expounded their
views, and with such acceptance, that for more than 250 years
he has been honoured as a main bulwark of the Church of Eng-
land. Certainly he has a good claim to his title " the judicious
Hooker ! " The profound scholarship of the work, its " earnest
1 The story is doubted by Mr Keble, who also, by way of exalting Hooker'8
virtue, maintains that his meekness and patience under his wife was not consti-
tutional, but a painfully acquired self-command. Had old Izaak Walton's ideal
of virtue been the same as Mr Keble's, we should probably never have heard of
Hooker's passive obedience in domestic life ; hut if we doubt this fact, we must
doubt manj- others that confirm it. In Walton's Biography and it is our only
external authority Hooker appears as an inactive mau of feelile constitution,
yielding willingly to the guidance of others. That he should show signs of an
irrital'le temper in his writings is hardly to the purpose; if it could be established.
Self-assertion upon paper and self-assertion hi an actual preseuce are two very
different things.
218 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
longing desire to see things brought to a peaceable end," its
entire freedom from partisan heat, and consequent appearance
of impartiality, go a long way to account for his extraordinary
popularity as a doctrinal writer.
Another cause may have helped in some small degree. We have
already mentioned his occasional vagueness, his hazy application
of general principles and parallel citations. This dimness of ex-
pression has had curious results. Men of diametrically opposite
opinions have sought to strengthen their cause with his authority.
James II. was wont to say that Hooker's Polity converted him to
Romanism. Bishop Hoadley, a Church polemic of Queen Anne's
reign, cited Hooker in confirmation of his views, tnat the form of
Church government is a matter of Christian expediency. In ex-
treme opposition to this, the High Church party re-edited Hooker
as a main instrument in keeping the Anglican Church " near to
primitive truth and apostolical order," as upholding the divine
right of Episcopacy, and the doctrine of apostolical succession.
Had Hooker expressed himself with greater distinctness, his repu-
tation might have been less universal.
ELEMENTS OF STYLK.
Vocabulary. Hooker's diction is not so modern as Sidney's.
A glossary to Hooker would be at least ten times as large as a
glossary to an equal amount of writing by Sidney. In great
measure, of course, this is due to the difference of subject. By
Swift he is con j tied with Parsons the Jesuit as writing a purer
style than other theologians of his time. He did not coin words
like Jeremy Taylor, nor employ them in meanings warranted by
derivation but not by usage very common errors among his more
pedantic contemporaries. His usages are not peculiar and eccen-
tric. Some of his words such as " civil " for civilised, " regi-
ment " for regimen or government, " put in ure " for put in use or
practice are now obsolete, but they were good current English in
his day. His command of words is good, but he has not the rich
variety of Sidney, much less of Bacon.
Sentences. Hooker affords our first example of an elaborate
high-sounding "periodic style." His sentences, in their general
character, are long and involved an extreme contrast to the light
and pointed style of John Lyly, though of their kind they are
quite as finished. With all their excellences, they are not good
models for English periods. In writing our first elaborate theo-
logical treatise, his fine ear was irresistibly caught by the rhythm
of Latin models ; and while he learned from them a more even
proportion of sentence, he learned also to build an elaborate rhythm
RICHARD HOOKER. 219
at the expense of native idiom. 1 The following example of his
" elaborate collocation " is quoted by Dr Drake :
"Though for no other cause, yet for this, that posterity may know we
have not loosely, through silence, permitted things to pass away as in a
dream, there shall be for men's information, extant this much concerning
the present state of the Church of God established amongst us, and their
careful endeavours which would have upheld the same."
Here the last clause is very awkwardly placed. In the following
sentence the first clause is still more awkward, and towards the
end the influence of Latin models is still more apparent :
"And beyond seas, of them which fled in the days of Queen Mary, some
contenting themselves abroad with the use of their own service-book at home
authorised before their departure out of the realm, others liking better the
Common Prayer-book of the Church of Geneva translated, those smaller con-
tentions before begun -were by this means somewhat increased."
In the parts italicised the violation of English idiom and order
is peculiarly marked. As at least one-half of the Polity is written
in this style, Hallam must have been thinking of very select pas-
sages when he spoke of Hooker's " racy idiom."
Sometimes, in his more animated moments, he surprises us with
a run of shorter sentences. These occur but rarely, and are not
long sustained. The following is an example :
" But wise men are men, and the truth is truth. That which Calvin did
for establishment of his discipline, seemeth more commendable than that
which he taught for the countenancing of it established. Nature worketh
in us all a love to our own counsels. The contradiction of others is a fan to
inflame that love. Our love set on fire to maintain th;it which once we have
done, sharpeneth the wit to dispute, to argue, and by all means to reason for
it. Wherefore a marvel it were if a man of so great capacity," &c.
Here he returns to his usual length of sentence. Occasionally
we meet with balanced passages. In such cases, from aiming at
point, he is more idiomatic and also less intricate. The follow-
ing comes much nearer the modern standard than our previous
extracts :
"These men in whose mouths at the first sounded nothing but mortifica-
tion of the flesh, were come at the length to think they might lawfully have
their six or seven wives apiece ; they which at the first thought judgment
and justice itself to be merciless cruelty, accounted at the length their own
hands sanctified with being imbrued in Christian blood ; they who at the
1 We have seen Hallam's conception of our author's sentences. Dr Drake's is
more moderate, and nearer the facts : " Though the words for the most part are
well chosen and pure, the arrangement of them into sentences is intricate and
harsh, and formed almost exclusively on the idiom and construction of tlie Latin.
Much strength and vigour are derived from this adoption; but perspicuity,
sweetness, and ease are too generally sacrificed."
220 FROM 15SO TO 1610.
first were wont to beat down all dominion, and to urge against poor coir
stables 'kings of nations'; had at the le.ngth both consuls and kings of their
own erection amongst themselves : finally, they which could not brook at
the first that any man should seek, no not by law, the recovery of goods
injuriously tnken or withheld from him, were grown at the last to think
they could not offer unto God more acceptable sacrifice, than by turning
their adversaries clean out of house and home, and by enriching themselves
with all kind of spoil and pillage ; which thing being laid to their charge,
they had in a readiness their answer, that now the time was come, when
according to the Saviour's promise 'the meek ones must inherit tlie earth ' ;
and that their title hereunto was the same which the righteous Israelites
had unto the g 'ods of the wicked Egyptians."
His inversions sometimes have the effect of putting the emphatic
words in the emphatic places ; for example, in the following harsh
construction :
" That which by wisdom he saw to be requisite for that people, was by as
great wisdom compassed."
Now quite as good emphasis might be had without such a
sacrifice of euphony and idiom. But apart from this, the theory
that all Ms inversions have this object is not tenable. His con-
struction is ruled chiefly by fascination for the rhythm that goes
with the Latin idiom. Thus, in a sentence quoted at p. 216, he
weakens the emphasis by reserving the verb " doth dwell " to the
end, after the fashion of the Latin, and that, too, when English
idiom permitted the inversion. "Wherein doth dwell nothing but
light and blessed immortality," <fea, would have been perfectly
good English idiom, and would have given better emphasis. But
Hooker's ear was tuned to a foreign rhythm. A close examination
of almost any passage would show great room for improvement in
the way of emphasis. In no era of English style has much regard
been paid to the placing of words except for rhythm.
In the distribution of his matter into sentences, Hooker is more
correct than Sidney is in the Apology. He observes much better
the requirements of unity ; his aiming at the period prevented
rambling. In this respect he will bear comparison with any
writer of the seventeenth century ; it helps greatly to give him a
modern air.
Paragraphs. Attention to clearness and simplicity in the struc-
ture of paragraphs was a thing unknown in the age of Elizabeth,
and Hooker was in this respect neither better nor worse than the
good writers of his time. Sometimes when he is dealing con-
fusedly with an obscure subject, the connection between one sen-
tence and another becomes very difficult to trace. Every sentence
stands on its own bottom. It would be hard to find a more hope-
lessly perplexed paragraph than the following. After close scru-
tiny, we find that each sentence contains a different idea from its
predecessor :
EICHAIJD HOOKER. 221
" Wherefore to return to our former intent of discovering the natural way,
whereby rules have been found out concerning that goodness wherewith the
Will of man ought to lie moved in human actions ; as every thing natural! v
and necessarily doth desire the utmost good and ereatest perfection win-roof
Nature hath made it capable, even so man. Our felicity therefore being
the object and accomplishment of our desire, we cannot choose but wish
and covet it. All particular things which are subject unto action, the
Wjll doth so far incline unto, as Reason judgeth them the better for us,
and consequently the more available to our bliss. If Reason err, we fall
into evil, and are so far forth deprived of the general perfection we seek.
Seeing therefore that for the framing of men's actions the knowledge if
good from evil is necessary, it only resteth that we search how this may be
had. Neither must we suppose that there needeth one rule to know the
good and another the evil by. For he that knoweth what is straight doth
even thereby discern what is crooked, because the absence of straightness in
bodies capable thereof is crookedness. Goodness in actions is like unto
straightness ; wherefore that which is done well we term right. For as the
straight way is most acceptable to him that travelleth, because by it ho
cometh soonest to his journey's end ; so in action, that which doth lie ihe
eveuest between us and the end we desire must needs be the fittest for our
use. Besides which fitness for use, there is also in rectitude, beauty ;
as contrariwise in obliquity, deformity. And that which 4s good in the
actions of men, doth not only delight as profitable, biit as amiable also.
In which consideration the Grecians most divinely have given to the
active perfection of men a name expressing both beauty and goodness,
because goodness in ordinary speech is for the most part applied only
to that which is beneficial. But we in the name of goodness do here
imply both."
Figures of Speech. So far from being, as Hallam says, " rich in
figures," Hooker is for his age singularly devoid of ornament As
among the great Elizabethan writers his languid vitality is a
marked contrast to the general plenitude of life, so his unadorned
gravity of style is a contrast to the general figurative exuberance.
Similitudes might be quoted from him some very apposite, and
some very pleasing ; but the vein is neither abundant nor original.
His habitual personification of nature is the manner of the time.
If we regard law in its strict scientific meaning as an express com-
mand sanctioned by threat of punishment, Hooker's extension of
the term to the order of nature, the angelic manner of life, and
suchlike, is metaphorical; but the metaphor neither began nor
ended with Hooker.
QUALITIES OP STYLE.
Simplicity. In this as in other respects Hooker is very unequal
Taken all in all, and compared with the best English standards,
his style is not readily intelligible to a modern reader : apart from
obsolete words, which might soon be mastered, the unfamiliar
Latin idiom, and the elaborate accumulation of clauses, make it
Btiff and perplexing. This is the general character of his style ;
222 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
occasional passages are more flowing and idiomatic v and may be
read almost as fluently as good modern prose.
As compared with the average of his contemporaries, he appears
to advantage. He is nearly, if not quite, free from some of their
prevailing vices ; he has few, if any, pedantic barbarisms ; and
his pages are not encumbered with superfluous quotation and
illustration.
Clearness. Speaking of Sidney, we remarked that in English
literature, as in every other, exact expression is a thing of later
growth. In such subjects as occupied our earliest writers, nar-
ratives, practical treatises on hawking, chess, shooting sermons
on moral duties, and the like, precision is not so much a requisite ;
there is little risk of confusion. It needs obscure and complicated
subjects to test powers of expression. Not till we come to con-
troversial books on Church doctrine do we feel the want of clear-
ness, and impatiently consider how many tedious folio pages might
have been anticipated by a little rigorous definition of terms at
the beginning, and a strict adherence to the definitions throughout.
The war of creeds and forms having been waged for the most part
in the universal Church Latin, Hooker's ' Ecclesiastical Polity ' is
the first English work that makes us painfully aware of the con-
fused thinking and confused expression of the time.
On an easy subject Hooker is clear and orderly. In expounding
a given body of opinions, he is comprehensive and lucid : witness
his account of the doctrines of the Anabaptists. Under a severe
strain of thought, he breaks down; he is incapable of reducing
confusion into order. His Puritan opponents, Cartwright and
Travers, were prejudiced in favour of narrow principles that his
calmer mind readily felt to be narrow. But when he tried to rest
his practical doctrines on broader principles, he only made con-
fusion worse confounded. His opponents made their meaning
unmistakable ; Hooker's real meaning remains somewhat of a
problem to this day. They held that Scripture is the only rule of
human conduct, and that Scripture lays down the Presbyterian
form of Church government. Hooker's purpose seemingly was to
maintain that Scripture is not the only rule of human conduct ;
but this he does so vaguely that not many years ago this purpose
was triumphantly produced as "the key to the philosophy" of his
book. Had we not happened to know from history what were the
doctrines he sought to refute, the exact drift of the First Book
would have remained a puzzle to all generations. In various
places he declares his design, but in very perplexing language :
" Lest therefore any man should marvel whereunto all these things tend,
the drift and purpose of all is this, even to show in what manner, as every
good and perfect gift, so this very gift of good and perfect laws is derived
from the Father ot lights ; to teach men a reason why just and reasonable
RICHARD HOOKER. 223
laws ate of so great force, of so great use in the world ; and to inform their
minds with some method of reducing the laws whereof there is present con-
troversy unto their first original causes, that so it maybe in every particular
ordinance thereby the better discerned, whether the same be reasonable,
just, and righteous, or no."
In another place he declares his purpose to be to show that
" Scripture is not the only law whereby God has opened His will
touching all things that may be done." Some study enables us
to reconcile in some sort the two declarations of purpose ; but
in the book itself he loses all sight of this purpose, and frames
it as what he elsewhere declares it to be an introduction to
solve " a number of doubts and questions about the nature, kinds,
and qualities of laws in general."
This confusion of expression is a thing apart from any confu-
sion of thought ; on that we do not enter here. A farther evidence
of Hooker's imperfect expression is seen in the opposite theories that
are fathered upon him. That so many should take shelter under
his authority is a proof of their respect, but not of his clearness.
The emotional qualities of Hooker's style may be dismissed
briefly. He is for the most part intent upon quiet argument,
quoting authorities and expounding principles. It is in the First
Book chiefly that we find occasional passages having a poetical
glow.
Strength. Viewed as a definition and exposition f the various
modes of law, this First Book drew from the scrupulously clear
and exact John Austin the strong epithet of " fustian " ; but what-
ever be its value in a scientific point of view, undoubtedly several
parts are written in a highly poetical strain of subdued grandeur,
in admirable harmony with the sonorous dignity of the rhythm.
The exciting causes of these warmer passages are the author's ad-
miration of beneficent cosmic power, and his dread of what might
happen were this power withdrawn. He shrinks with his whole
heart from every form of jarring irregularity, from everything
that disturbs and agitates ; he worships whatever keeps these
horrors in subjection, and admires warmly whatever follows a quiet
and peaceable course. His conception of the operations of nature
would be very impressive and poetical were it not so familiar by
repetition :
" Although we are not of opinion, therefore, as some are, that nature
in working hath before her certain exemplary draughts or patterns, which
subsisting in the bosom of the Highest, and being thence discovered, she
fixeth her eye upon them, as travellers by sea upon the pole-star of the
world, and that according thereunto she guideth .her hand to work by
imitation : although we rather embrace the oracle of Hippocrates, that
' each thing, both in small and in great, fulfilleth the task which destiny
hath set down ;' . . . nevertheless, forasmuch as the works of nature
224 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
are no less exact than if she did both behold and study how to express some
absolute shape or mirror always present before her ; yea, such her dexterity
and skill appeareth, that no intellectual creature in the world were able
by capacity to do that which nature doth without capacity and knowledge.
It cannot be but nature hath some director of infinite knowledge to guide
her in all her ways."
In the above, the glow of his admiration for order is chilled by
his being compelled to own that nature is an unconscious instru-
ment. He finds more congenial scope in admiring the perfect
obedience of the " huge, mighty, and royal armies " of angels.
His apprehension of a collapse of the order of nature contains
some good expressions ; but the conclusion, as a piece of art, ia
very lame and ineffectual indeed, an anti-climax :
"Now if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though
it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws ; if those principal
and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are
made, should lose the qualities which now they have ; if the frame of that
heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself ; if
celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volu-
bility turn themselves any way as it might happen ; if the prince of the
lights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course,
should, as it were, through a languishing faintness, begin to stand and to
rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times
and seasons of the year blend themselves by disordered and confused mix-
ture, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth
be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine way as chil-
dren at the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yield them
relief ; what would become of man himself, whom these things now do all
serve? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of
nature is the stay of the whole world?" 1
Pathos. In nearly every exhibition of feeling in Hooker's works
there is a tinge of pathos. His craving for rest, quiet, and order
is perpetually appearing. When, in his office at the Temple, he
conceived the design of writing a final defence of Episcopacy, and
had read many books, he made the following pathetic appeal to
Whitgift :
" But, my lord, I shall never be able to finish what 1 have begun, unless
I be removed into some quiet country parsonage, where I may see God'a
blessings spring out of my mother earth, and eat mine own bread iu peace
and privacy. "
Throughout his Polity we trace the working of the same spirit
There is a large mixture of pathos in the examples that we have
quoted of his loftier flights. The rhapsody on law, which was so
1 This passage is an instance of Hooker's want of originality and native power.
The imagined contusion of the world is translated particular for particular from
Arnobius, an unacknowledged plagiarism pointed out by Keble. Besides the
noble rhythm, no part of the vigorous conception is Hooker's except the conclud-
ing particular. Arnobius supposes the earth to be too dry for seeds to germin-
ate ; Hooker too dry to " yield relief to her fruits."
RICHARD HOOKER, 225
distasteful scientifically to John Austin, we regard with a kindlier
feeling when we keep in mind the character of the man. We see
a feeble, dependent soul clinging with ecstasy to an idea that gives
him comfort and strength :
"Of law, there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the
bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven
and earth do her homage ; the very least as feeling her care, and the
greatest as not exempted from her power. Botli angels and men, and
creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner,
yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and .
ioy."
Another favourite subject in a similar vein is the desirability of
peace and unity between Puritan and Prelatist
"Far more comfort it were for us (so small is the joy we take in these
strifes) . . . to be joined with you in bonds of indissoluble love and
amity, to live as if our persons being many our souls are but one, rather
than in such dismembered sort to spend our few and wretched days in a
tedious prosecuting of wearisome contentions."
The Ludicrous. Such a genuine lover of peace as Hooker was
not likely to exasperate by keen sarcasm. And, on the other
hand, a man of his feeble constitution was not likely to have a
genial flow of humour, or a broad, hearty sense of the ludicrous.
Such humour as he has is very faint, and takes a sarcastic, ironical
turn. In answering the Puritans, he states their doctrines gravely,
very seldom allowing any trace of ridicule to cross his statement,
and even then making the ridicule apparent, not by epithets, but
by bringing ludicrous incongruities to the surface in his exposi-
tion. His manner was very different from the boisterous wit of
Tom Nash, a champion on the same side. We have seen one
example of his irony (pp. 219-20). Here is another:
"Where they found men in diet, attire, furniture of house, or any other
way, observers of civility and decent order, such they reproved as being
carnally-minded. Every word otherwise than severely and sadly uttered
seemed to pierce like a sword through them. If any man were pleasant,
their manner was presently with deep sighs to repeat those words of our
Saviour Christ, 'Woe be to you which now laugh, for ye shall lament.'
So great was their delight to be always in trouble, that such as did quietly
lead their lives, they judged of all other men to be in most dangerous case."
To quote one or two passages like this without any of the con-
text would give an exaggerated idea of the power of Hooker's
irony. Read with the grave body of context, they strike us as
but a very slight departure from the general gravity. In the
above, which is a favourable example, the point is not brought
out with equal force in all the sentences.
Melody. The general movement of Hooker's language is stiff,
cumbrous, but richly musical. Here and there, as we have seen,
p
226 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
his stiffness relaxes, and he warms into flowing strains of solemn
melody. The majority of our quotations are favourable examples
of his rhythm. The opening sentence of the Polity (p. 219)
" Though for no other cause, yet for this," ttc. is a tine example
of a crescendo effect The first sentence of his paragraph on the
angels " But now that we may lift up our eyes (as it were) from
the footstool to the throne of God," <fec. has something of the
movement of the sentence in Sir Thomas Browne's ' Hydriotaphia '
that drew such exclamations of delight from De Quincey.
The great cause of clumsiness in his general rhythm is an exces-
sive use of heavy relative constructions :
"That which hitherto we have set down is (t hope) sufficient to show
their brutishness which imagine that religion and virtue are only as men,
will account of them."
"Of what account the Master of Sentences was in the Church of Rome,
the same and more amongst the preachers of Reformed Churches Calvin had
purchased ; so that the perfectest divines were judged they which were skil-
fullest in Calvin's writings. . . . Till at length the discipline, which
was at the first so weak, that without the staff of their approbation, who were
not subject unto it themselves, it had not brought others under subjection,
began now to challenge universal obedience, and to enter into open conflict
with those very churches, which in desperate extremity had been relievers
of it." ^
Even these passages are not without a certain musical charm,
especially if we disregard the meaning and attend only to the
succession of the syllables.
KINDS OF COMPOSITION.
Exposition. Hooker's powers of exposition are tested by the
book on Law, his most abstruse subject. Viewed simply as a
piece of exposition, this book contains little to profit the student
In this particular respect, it is bad even by the standard of the
time. Its main faults have been specified under the Paragraph
and the quality of Clearness. The paragraph on the discovery of
rules of action, quoted to illustrate his worst, is a piece of very
confused writing. On a subject requiring closeness of thought,
he has not the qualities that made up for bad method in some of
his contemporaries ; he has neither felicity nor variety of expres-
sion, nor fulness of example and illustration. These remarks
apply chiefly to the First Book : his imperfect expression is most
apparent there. In his arguments on ritual and doctrine he is
more on beaten ground, and proceeds with less confusion.
Persuasion. The 'Ecclesiastical Polity' is said to have had
great influence. It is a good example to show how much in per-
BURsion depends upon the manner. Hooker added little or nothing
to what Whitgift had urged against the Presbyterian champion,
JOHN LYLV. 227
Cartwright ; and in clearness, terseness of expression, and logical
force, is far inferior to his patron. His main contribution is his
elaborate and (in a logical point of view) clumsy attempt to prove
what Whitgift had simply asserted or taken for granted, that not
everything required for the conduct of human affairs is to be found
in Scripture. His arguments in the fa'rst two Books had little
weight with the Piiritans. Once they saw his drift, they admitted
the general propositions, but questioned his implied conclusions.
Law was a good thing, and should be obeyed, but not bad law ;
not everything was found in Scripture but the Presbyterian gov-
ernment, and their views about liturgies, vestments, and sacra-
ments, were found in Scripture. While Hooker's arguments were
neither new nor convincing, his moderation, singular in that age,
gained him a hearing, and his earnest advocacy of the blessings of
union and order was like oil on the troubled waters. Whitgift'a
strenuous hostility and unsparing rigour of argument set his
opponents on edge, and steeled them against conviction ; Hooker's
mild and occasionally hazy statement of the same arguments won
the doubtful at once, and by degrees made friends out of decided
enemies.
JOHN LYLY or LILLEE, 1554-1606.
This ingenious writer deserves a place of minor prominence in a
history of prose partly from the intrinsic merits of his style, and
partly from the voluminous controversy that has been raised upon
it He is generally known as " The Euphuist," and his style is
called Euphuism. We shall analyse this Euphuism, and try to
make out what it is, where its elements came from, and what
influence it had upon its age as a model of composition.
Few particulars of Lyly's life are on record. We know only
that he was born in Kent, that he was a student at Magdalen,
Oxford, that he was patronised by Lord Burghley, and that from
1577 to 1593 he was a hanger-on at Court and wrote plays. Hia
plays had no small reputation, coming immediately before Shak-
speare. Ben Jonson gives him honourable mention ; and, in a
bookseller's puff of the next generation, he is described as " the
only rare poet of that time, the witty, comical, facetiously quick
and unparalleled John Lilly, Master of Arts." His chief work in
prose, apart from prose dramas and some assistance to Tom Nash
in the Marprelate controversy, is a moral romance known as
'Euphues' (whence his name Euphuist). It is in two parts,
'Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit' (1579), and 'Euphues and his
England' (1580). Euphues, a gay young Athenian of good family,
travels in the first part to Naples, in the seco'nd part to England ;
the plot is subservient to the development of the young man's
U'oral nature, and gives occasion for discourses on religion, educa-
228 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
tion, friendship, and other virtues, with a great many love-passages.
The book suited the taste of the time, and was popular : according
to Blount the bookseller, " all our Ladies were then his Scholars ;
and that Beauty in Court which could not parley Euphuism was
as little regarded as she which now" (1632) "speaks not French."
With all his popularity the ingenious, gentle, humorous little man
received no solid patronage. There are extant two petitions of his
to the Queen complaining of his deferred hopes of favour. He
had hung on for thirteen years in hopes of getting the Mastership
of the Revels; and in his second petition (1593), despairing of
this, he begs
"Some land, some good fines, or forfeitures that should fall hy the just
fall of these most i'alse traitors, that seeing nothing will come by the Revels,
I may prey upon the Rebels. Thirteen years your Highness" servant, but
yet nothing. Twenty friends that though they say they will be sure I find
them sure to be slow. A thousand hopes but all nothing ; a hundred pro-
mises but y<-t nothing. Thus casting up the inventory of my friends, hopes,
promises, and times, the summn totalis amounteth to just nothing. My
last will is shorter than mine invention : but three legacies, patience to my
creditors, melancholy without measure to my friends, and beggary without
shame to my family."
What were his fortunes after this, whether Elizabeth heard his
petition, is not known. Probably the frugal Queen gave him
some relief. His admiring bookseller says, though without express
reference to the petition, that he was " heard, graced, and re-
warded." He died at the comparatively early age of fifty-two.
The interest in Lyly was revived in this century by Sir Walter
Scott's attempt to reproduce a Euphuist in the person of Sir
Piercie Shafton. In the heat of attacking and defending Lyly
and his style, of arguing as to whether he invented Euphuism or
only fell in with a ruling taste, whether he vitiated our language
or caught a taint, the disputants have not always kept in view
what peculiarly belongs to Lyly's mannerism and what does not.
His style lias good points and bad points, peculiar affectations
and affectations common to the age. A discussion on Euphuism
becomes hopelessly tangled and complicated unless the leading
elements of his manner are kept distinct Here it may be well,
without pretending to give an exhaustive analysis, to distinguish
some particulars that should not be confused. Three or four may
be specified.
(i.) Neatness and finish of sentence. Lyly's sentences are re-
markably free from intricacy and inversion, much shorter, more
pithy and direct than was usual. We must come down at least a
century before we find a structure so lucid. To be sure, his matter
was not heavy, and did not tempt him to use either weighty
sentences or learned terms : still, credit to \vhom credit is due ;
JOHN LYLY. 229
his sentences, as sentences, though not in perfect modern form,
are the most smooth and finished of that time. His chief fault is
the want of variety, " an eternal affectation of sententiousness,"
says an old critic, " keeps to such a formal measure of his periods
as soon grows tiresome, and so by confining himself to shape his
sense so frequently into one artificial cadence, however ingenious
or harmonious, abridges that variety which the style should be
admired for."
(2.) Fanciful antithesis and word-play. The passage above
quoted from his petition to Elizabeth is an extreme example. In
the ' Euj times ' there are few passages so fantastically antithetical ;
the antithesis of the ' Euphues ' is more a kind of balance in the
clauses, with or without opposition in the matter. Thus, when
young Euphues is counselled by aged Philautus, he replies :
' ' Father and friend (your age showeth the one, your honesty the other),
I am neither so suspicious to mistrust your goodwill, nor so sottish to mis-
like your good counsel. As I am therefore to thank you for the first, so it
stands upon me to think better on the latter. I mean not to cavil with you
as one loving sophistry: neither to control you, as one having superiority;
the one would bring my talk into the suspicion of fraud, the other convince
me of folly."
When Euphues rejects the good advice, Lyly moralises thus :
"Here ye may behold, Gentlemen, how lewdly wit standeth in his own
light, how he deemeth no penny good silver but his own, preferring the
blossom before the fruit, the bud before the flower, the green blade before
the ripe ear of com, his own wit before all men's wisdoms. Neither is that
reason, seeing for the most part it is proper to all those of sharp capacity to
esteem of themselves as most proper: if one be hard in conceiving, they
pronounce him a dolt ; if given to study, they proclaim him a duuce : if
merry, a jester : if sad, a saint : if full of words, a sot : if without speech, a
cipher. If one argue with them boldly, then he is impudent : if coldly, an
innocent : if there be reasoning of divinity, they cry, Quce supra nos, nihil
ad nos ; if of humanity, seittentias loquitur caniifex."
Lyly did not invent this measured balance : like Johnson, he only
took up, trimmed, and carried to excess a structure that others
used in a rougher form and less frequently. A more measured,
neat, pointed, and ornate style of prose was imported from Italy
in Henry VIIL's reign by scholars and travelled men of fashion
(p. 189). It appears in our literature long before Lyly. It would
seem to have been encouraged by Elizabeth. 1 We see how Lyly
strained his wit to gain her favour; and in 1567, a quarter of a
1 An ahle monograph by Heir F. Landmann (Der Euphuismv*, Giefsen,
Keller, 1881) traces Lyly's ' Euphuism ' back to Antonio de Guevara's ' Golden
Book of Marcus Aurelius ' (see ante, p. 198). Of this Spanish prose romance
Herr Landmann regards ' Euphues ' as an imitation both in matter and in manner.
This is so far true : still Lyly's " Euphuism " has distinction enough to deserve
credit as something more than an imitation as a marked variety in a peculiar
kind.
230 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
century before, we find Roger Ascham exerting himself as follows.
The letter is addressed to Elizabeth, though she is in the third
person, and it has the same object as Lyly's petition :
"I wrote once a little book of shooting: King HENRY, her most nobla
father, did so well like and allow it, as he gave me a living for it ; when he
lost his life I lost my living ; but noble King Edward again did first revive
it by his goodness, then did increase it by his liberality ; thirdly, did con-
firm it by liis authority under the great seal of England, which patent all
this time was both a great pleasure and profit to me, saving that one un-
pleasant word in that patent, called ' during pleasure," turned ine after to
great displeasure ; for when King EDWARD went, his pleasure went with
him, and my whole living went away with them both."
Here we have the same striving at verbal conceits differing from
Lyly's only in being less ingenious and polished. Lyly, it is clear,
cannot be charged either with inventing this affectation or with
introducing it to Court.
(3.) Excess of similitudes, parallels, and instances. This is the
most striking part of Lyly's mannerism. It is for this that he is
censured by Sidney, and accused of " rifling up all Herbarists, all
stories of beasts, fowls, and fishes." To the same effect he is
attacked by Michael Drayton : while Sidney is praised because
he
" Did first reduce
Our tongue from Lillie's writing then in use ;
Talking of stories, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,
Playing with words, and idle similies. "
Not only does Lyly ransack natural history for comparisons, he
even goes the length of inventing natural history ; at least, whether
he is the inventor or not, many of his comparisons refer to fabu-
lous properties. The following are examples. Take first " Euphues
to the Gentlemen Scholars of Athens."
" The merchant that travelleth for gain, the husbandman that toileth for
increase, the lawyer that pleadeth for gold, the craftsman that seeketh to
live by his labour all these, after they have fatted themselves with suffi-
cient, either take their ease, or less pain than they were accustomed.
llippmnofiies ceased to run when he had gotten the goal. Hercules to labour
when he had obtained the victory. Mercury to pipe when he had cast
Argils in a slumber. The ant, though she toil in summer, yet in winter
she leaveth to travail. The bee, though she delight to suck the fair flower,
yet is she at last cloyed with honey. The spider that weaveth the finest
thread ceaseth at the last when she hath finished her web. But in the
action and study of the mind (Gentlemen) it is far otherwise, for he that
tasteth the sweet of learning endureth all the sour of labour. He that
seeketh the depth of knowledge, is as it were in a Labyrinth, in the which
the farther he goeth, the farther he is from the end : or like the bird in
the lime-bush, which, the more she striveth to get out, the faster she
sticketh in. And certainly it may be said of learning as it was feigned
of Nrctar, the drink of the Gods, the which the more it was drunk, the
more it would overflow t)> biim of the cup; neither is it far unlike the
JOHN LYLT. 231
stone that groweth in the river of Caria, the which the more it is cut tha
more it increaseth. And it fareth with him that followeth it as with
him that hath the dropsy," &c.
Euphues having been rather sharply reproached with inconsis-
tency by his friend Philautus, makes the following reply :
" The admonition of a true friend should be like the practice of a wise
physician, who wrappeth his sharp pills in fine sugar ; or the cunning Chir-
urgeon, who lancing a wound with an iron, immediately applieth to it
soft lint ; or as mothers deal with their children for worms, who put their
bitter seeds into sweet raisins. If this order had been observed in thy
discourse, that interlacing sour taunts with sugared counsel, bearing as
well a gentle rein as using a hard snaffle, thou miyhtest have done more
with the whisk of a wand, than now thou canst with the prick of the spur,
and avoid that which now thou mayest not, extreme unkindness. But
thou art like that kind judge which Propertius noteth, who condemning
his friend, caused him for the more ease to be hanged with a silken twist.
And thou like a friend cuttest my throat with a razor, not with a hatchet,
for my more honour. But why should I set down the office of a friend,
when thou, like our Athenians," &c.
The following is what we may suppose to have been imitated by
the gallants of the Court :
" For as the hop, the pole being never so high, groweth to the end, or
as the dry beech kindled at the root never leaveth until it come to the
top : or as one drop of poison disperseth itself into every vein, so affec-
tion having caught hold of my heart, and the sparkles of love kindled
my liver, will suddenly, though secretly, flame up into my head, and
spread itself into every sinew.'
" What cruelty more unfit for so comely a lady than to spur him that
galloped, or to let him blood in the heart, whose vein she should have
staunched in the liver f But it fared with me as with the herb basil, the
which the more it is crushed, the sooner it springeth ; or the rue, which
the oftener it is cut the better it groweth ; or the poppy, which the more
it is trodden with the feet, the more it flourisheth. "
It serves no good purpose to apply the term Euphuism to any-
thing but the tricks of style characteristic of Lyly, the author of
' Euphues.' We only make confusion when we apply the name
to quaint punning and antithesis, or to superabundance of illustra-
tion and exemplification. These faults, such as they were, Lyly
shared with his time. His peculiarity lay not so much in hosts of
parallels and instances, as in the sententious pointed way of ex-
pressing them. That is the Euphuistic form: the Euphuistic
substance is the copious illustration of everything pertaining to
man from animals, plants, and minerals, real or fabulous. The
form and substance taken together constitute Euphuism proper,
the real invention of Lyly, and, it would appear, for some short
time the fashionable affectation at Court.
If by Euphuism we understand, as seems most reasonable, tlie
peculiar manner of the author of ' Euphues,' we cannot accept Mr
232 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
Marsh's statement that " the quality of style called Euphuism has
more or less prevailed in all later periods of English literature."
It is quite true that ingenious playing upon words has been a
favourite practice "in all later periods of English literature."
But Lyly's style had very little influence on literature, either for
evil or for good. All sorts of antithetical pranks with words
prevailed before he wrote, especially in the language of gallantry,
ridiculed in 'Love's Labour Lost.' To this affectation he pro-
bably added nothing but greater polish of form. His similitudes
from nature, whether simple, far-fetched, or spurious, were so
overdone that the evil wrought its own cure. There were pro-
bably Euphuists in private circles and among inferior writers ;
but in higher, and even in middling literature, the a.ffectation was
too excessive to last, too characteristic to be imitated. Further,
even the good points were not imitated. Mannerists like John-
son, Macaulay, or Carlyle, have an influence for good on many
that do not adopt their most startling peculiarities. But Lyly's
example carried no weight ; his lucid neatness of sentence, and
orderly way of producing instances, perished with his worthless
affectations. English style immediately after him was not less
prolix and intricate, nor less overburdened with clumsy quota-
tions, than it was before him.
It is hardly necessary to say that the style of Scott's " Piercie
Shat'ton " is far from being a reproduction of Euphuism as it is in
Lyly. Perhaps the nearest prototype of Shafton is Sidney's cari-
cature of a pedantic schoolmaster " Rhombus " in ' The Lady of
the May.' 1
OTHER WRITERS.
CHURCH CONTROVERSIALISTS 1580-1600.
Some of the writers now to be mentioned wrote before the year
1580; all of them wrote after it. The struggle between the two
Church parties passed through a crisis in the latter part of Eliza-
beth's reign. Hooker, as we have seen, was the chief literary
champion of Episcopacy: in their capacity as writers, the others
may be clustered round him.
John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1530-1604, did prob-
ably more than any one man to, establish the Church of England.
He was born in Lincolnshire, and studied at Cambridge. During
the first half of Elizabeth's reign he rose to distinction, filling im-
portant offices in the University. He was made Archbishop of
Canterbury in 1583, and distinguished himself by his rigorous
1 Lyly's ' Euphues ' is issued in Mr Arber's series of English Reprints, with
a useful Introduction, containing several notices of Euphuism at different dates.
Mrs Humphrey Ward has made a careful study of Lyly for the ' Encyclopaedia
Uritannica.'
CHURCH CONTROVERSIALISTS. 233
policy against the Presbyterians. His ' Defence of his Answer to
Cartwright's Admonition,' first published in 1574, is reprinted by
the Parker Society. A strenuous, sagacious man, he writes a vig-
orous, straightforward, and clear style, seasoned with open personal
invective and ridicule. His sentences, without being made after
any peculiar form, are short and simple : he keeps too close a grasp
on the argument, and is too eagerly bent upon refuting, to have
time for the elaboration of periods.
Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603), "the incarnation of Presbyte-
rianism," and for some time a thorn in the side of Whitgift, was
born in Hertfordshire. He encountered Whitgift at Cambridge,
and was worsted, being deprived of the Lady Margaret Professor-
ship and of his fellowship in Trinity, and thus driven from the
University in 1572. After spending some years as English Chap-
lain at Antwerp, he returned, got into trouble with the Church,
and was imprisoned. In his later years he seems to have been
conciliated by Whitgift, and to have made a less violent opposi-
tion. His works are 'An Admonition to Parliament,' 1572 ; 'An
Admonition to the People of England,' 1589 ; 'A Brief Apology,'
1596 ; also ' A Directory of Church Government,' and 'A Body of
Divinity,' published after his death. Cartwright was a very poj>-
ular preacher. He writes with great fervour, but his style is much
more involved and antiquated than Whitgift's, and he has much
less argumentative force.
Martin Marprelate wrote some virulent, coarsely humorous
personal tracts on the Puritan side about the time of the Spanish
Armada (1588). Martin's real name is a greater mystery than
Junius ; the latest conjecture is that he was a Jesuit At one
time he was identified with John Penry, who seems to have been
a mild, much-suffering Puritan Welshman, quite incapable of any-
thing so boisterous. The titles of the tracts are such as "The
Epitome," " The Supplication," " Hay any Work for a Cooper ? "
Martin was. answered in an equally personal strain by " witty TOM
NASH," who chose such titles as "An Almond for a Parrot" (equi-
valent to " A sop for Cerberus "), and " Pap with a Hatchet " l (an
expression for doing a kind thing in an unkind way).
Robert Parsons or Persons (1546-1610), the daring and skilful
pioneer of the Jesuits in England, is praised by Swift for the
purity and vigour of his English style. A native of Somersetshire,
he was educated at Oxford, and became a celebrated tutor. Being
expelled from his College in 1574 (according to Fuller, for em-
bezzlement of College money), he joined the Jesuits, and was the
moving spirit of the Popish plots against Elizabeth before the
Spanish Armada. In his later years he presided over the English
College at Roma
1 Sometimes ascribed to Lyly, the Euphuist.
234 FEOM 1580 TO 1610.
CHRONICLES, HISTORY, ANTIQUITIES.
The series of Chroniclers is continued in this period by John
Stow (1525-1605) and John Speed (1552-1629), both tailors by
trade. Stow, a genial industrious creature, after publishing a
'Summary of English Chronicles' in 1565, became ambitious to
write a great chronicle of England that should surpass every other
in number and accuracy of facts, quitted his tailor's board, and
walked through England searching for documents that had been
dispersed by the suppression of the monasteries. His great work
was never published, but in 1598 he brought out a 'Survey of
London,' which was the basis of subsequent accounts of the
metropolis, and in 1600 ' Flores Historiarum,' The Flowers of the
Histories (of England). In his last years he received from King
James a recommendation to the charity of the public, and stood in
churches to receive alms so ill was his humble industry rewarded.
With all his diligence he is said to have been able to add little to
the stock of chronicled facts. Speed seems to have lived more
comfortably, and, working with equal industry, to have been more
discriminating in his choice of authorities. 1 He published a ' His-
tory of Great Britain' in 1614. Previously, in 1606, he had pub-
lished a Collection of Maps, including maps of the English shires,
each map curiously bordered with drawings of inhabitants, towns,
notable buildings, &c. The balanced structure of his titles is char-
acteristic of the time. His Map of the World is " drawn according
to the truest descriptions, latest discoveries, and best observations
that have been made by English or strangers ; " the outlines of the
Great Southern Continent " rather show there is a land, than descry
either land, people, or commodities."
Three writers, who pretend to a weightier style than Stow or
Speed, may be called HISTORIANS. Sir John Hayward (1560-
1627), LL.D. of Cambridge, was patronised by Essex, imprisoned
by Elizabeth, knighted by James, and made one of the two histori-
ographers of the abortive Chelsea College. He wrote'a ' Life and
Reign of Henry IV.' (1599); 'Lives of the three Norman Kings
of England' (1613); and a 'Complete History of Edward IV.,'
with ' Certain Years of Queen Elizabeth's lieign,' published in
1630, after his death. Hayward was the subject of one of Bacon's
apothegms. Elizabeth, much incensed at his history, asked
"Whether there were no treason contained in it?" "No, ma-
dam," answered Bacon, "for treason, I cannot deliver opinion that
there is any, but very much felony." "How and wherein?"
1 Speed's superior accuracy and rejection of fables is no doubt partly due to
his having had the advice of Sir Robert Cotton (1570-1631), a man of property
and good position, who made it his hobby to collect every sort of document re-
lating' to the history of England.
CHRONICLERS. 235
" Because he has stolen many of his sentences and conceits out nf
Cornelius Tacitus." Jeremy Taylor in return did Hay ward the
honour to steal some ideas from his ' Sanctuary of a Troubled
Soul.' Richard Knolles (1549-1610), Fellow of Lincoln, Oxford,
and Master of the Free School at Sandwich, wrote a ' History of
the Turks,' and other works relating to the Ottoman Empire.
Johnson, who read Knolles for his ' Irene,' in a paper on History
('Rambler,' 122), says: "None of our writers" (of history) "can,
in my opinion, justly contest the superiority of Knolles, who, in
his 'History of the Turks,' has displayed all the excellencies that
narration can admit. His style, though somewhat obscured by
time, and sometimes vitiated by false wit, is pure, nervous, elevated,
and clear. A wonderful multiplicity of events is so artfully arranged,
and so distinctly explained, that each facilitates the knowledge of
the next. Whenever a new personage is introduced, the reader is
prepared by his character for his actions ; when a nation is first
attacked, or city besieged, he is made acquainted with its history
or situation ; so that a great part of the world is brought into
view." The estimate is excessive, even as made in Johnson's tima
The distinctness of arrangement, and the geographical sketches,
were due more to the character of the subject than to any superi-
ority of method : these " excellencies " were easy in narrating the
steps of a conquest through a foreign country. Knolles's sentences
are long and rambling prolonged by successive relative clauses
starting each from the one that goes before. Samuel Daniel
(1562-1619), the poet, wrote a ' History of England from the Con-
quest to the Accession of Henry VII.' It is praised by Hallam for
its purity of diction, being written in the current English of the
Court, and free from scholarly stiffness and pedantry. The struc-
ture of the sentences is easy to the extent of negligence.
Two or three ANTIQUARIES are usually mentioned among the
prose writers of this period; perhaps because, though they wrote
chiefly in Latin themselves, they furnished materials for the Eng-
lish prose of other writers. William Camden (1551-1623), Head-
master of Westminster School, wrote the ' Britannia,' and founded
a Chair of History in Oxford. Sir Henry Spelman (1562-1604),
Sheriff of Norfolk, a legal and ecclesiastical antiquary, is famed as
a restorer of Saxon literature, having founded a Saxon Professor-
ship at Cambridge. Sir Robert Cotton has been already men-
tioned as a collector of historical documents ; he is not said to have
written anything.
CHRONICLERS OF MARITIME DISCOVERY. The enterprising naval
worthies in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, if they had no poet,
were not without their chroniclers. Many , of their voyages to
"descry new lands" in America, or in the Southern Continent,
have been put on record. The chief of this department of history
236 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
is Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616), Lecturer on Cosmography at
Oxford, and an nctive correspondent with the foreign geographers,
Ortelius and Mereator. In 1598, 1599, and 1600, he published
' The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries
of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the Remote
and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth, within the compass of
these 1500 years.' Very interesting reading for persons with the
proper taste for their subject-matter, Hakluyt's narratives have no
charms of style. The same may be said of Samuel Purchas (1577-
1628), ' Hackluytns Posthumus,' B.D. of Cambridge, who continued
Hackluyt, and wrote 'Purchas his Pilgrimage,' containing an account
of all the religions of the world.
Some of the hardy mariners told their own story as John Davia
(of Davis Straits, an early searcher for the North- West Passage),
and Sir Richard Hawkins, who went in quest of land to the south.
Sir Walter Raleigh, the " discoverer of Guiana," will be mentioned
presently.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The versatile Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) wrote some of the
most flowing and modern-looking prose of this period ; and had his
subject-matter been less antiquated, we should have gone over his
peculiarities at some length. He is, perhaps, the most dazzling
figure of his time : his high position at the Court of Elizabeth,
gained not by birth, but by personal charms and merits ; his con-
duct against the Armada and at Cadiz ; his American enterprises ;
his two new imports, tobacco and the potato ; his unjust imprison-
ment by King James, made him to the people of London the
most wonderful of living men ; and he still holds the highest rank
among our traditional heroes. His principal writings are ' The
Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana,'
published in 1596, and his ' History of the World,' composed dur-
ing his imprisonment. The ' Discovery' is a matter-of-fact record
of his own voyage, his dealings with the natives, and his impres-
sions of the scenery. It was much ridiculed at the time by his
jealous enemies, but there is nothing incredible in what he pro-
fesses to have seen, though he was too sanguine in his beliefs as
to the splendour of the parts of the empire that he had not seen.
As regards the style, he " neither studied phrase, form, nor
fashion ; " yet at times he shows his natural power of graphic
description. The following is perhaps his best ; he describes the
" overfalls of the river of Carol i, which roared so far off":
" When we ran to the tops of the first hills of the plains adjoining to the
river, we beheld that wonderful breach of waters, which ran down Caroli ;
and might from that mountain see the river how it ran in three parts, above
twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in sight,
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 237
every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury,
that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had been covered all ovor
with a great shower of rain ; and in some places we took it at the first for a
smoke that had risen over some great town."
The ' History of the World ' is a work of erudition rather than
a narrative going off into general dissertations on the origin of
government, the nature, use, and abuse of magic, &c. ; comparing
the personages of Scripture with the personages of heathen myth-
ology ; discussing at great length such vexed questions as the site
of Paradise, the place where the ark rested, the local dispersion
of the sons of Noah, &c. ; and in tlie classical history criticising
accounts of battles and campaigns with the sagacity of a practical
man. The only parts of the book that any modern reader would
care to peruse are some parts of the Greek, Macedonian, and Roman
history where his estimates of events in war and in policy are
entitled to respect ; the preface to the work ; and the conclusion.
Only the preface and the conclusion have much literary value ;
they are among the finest remains of Elizabethan prose. Critics
often incautiously speak as if the whole work were written in the
same strain. A grave melancholy runs through them, the natural
mood of an ambitious spirit and a strong confident wit chastened
but not broken by slander and imprisonment, writing in " the
evening of a tempestuous life." Especially remarkable are the
passages on Death. In the preface he says :
" But let every man value his own wisdom, as he pleaseth. Let the rich
man think all fools, that cannot equal his abundance ; the Revenger esteem
all negligent that have not trodden down their opposites ; the Politician, all
gross that cannot merchandise their faith : Yet when we once come in sight
of the Port of death, to which all winds drive us, and when by letting fall
that fatal Anchor, which can never be weighed again, the navigation of this
life takes end : Then it is, I say, that our own cogitations (those sad and
severe cogitations, formerly beaten from us by our health and felicity) re-
turn again, and pay us to the uttermost for all the pleasing passages of our
life past."
In the same strain he concludes his history :
" It is therefore death alone that can suddenly make man to know him-
self. He tells the proud and insolent that they are but Abjects, and humbles
them at the instant ; makes them cry, complain, and repent ; yea, even to
hate their forepassed happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and
proves him a beggar ; a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing, but
in the gravel that fills his month. He holds a Glass before the eyes of the
most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness ;
and they acknowledge it.
" O eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! whom none could advise, thou
hast persuaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the
world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised ;
thou hast drawn together all the tar-stretched greatness, all the pride,
cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two
narrow words, Hie jacet."
238 FROM 1580 TO 1610.
Raleigh's other works are a treatise on Ship-building, ' Maxims
of State,' the ' Cabinet Council,' the 'Sceptic,' and ' Advice to his
Son.' In worlHly wisdom, this last is equal to Bacon's Essays,
though the subjects of advice are more commonplace.
William Cecil, Lord Burleigh (1522-1598), like Raleigh, wrote
advice for his son under the title ' Precepts or Directions for the
Well-ordering and Carriage of a Man's Life,' a digest of common-
place advice on the choice of a wife, the management of a house-
hold, the danger of suretiship, and suchlike.
Thomas Dekker, the dramatist, an antagonist of Ben Jonson's,
wrote ' Seven Deadly Sins of London ' (1606), ' The Gull's Horn-
book ' (1609), and other ephemeral productions burlesque satires
of the extreme fashionable world, of the bucks and girls of the
period.
King James I. had a literary turn : he wrote ' A Counterblast
to Tobacco,' and a work on ' Demonology.' Neither of these
pedantic compositions would have survived had they been written
by a less distinguished personage.
The unfortunate Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613), who, after
figuring brilliantly at the Court of James as the favourite of the
King's favourite, Robert Carr, was mysteriously cut off by slow
poison, in consequence of his opposing Carr's marriage with the
Countess of Essex, wrote ' Characters of Witty Descriptions of
the Properties of Sundry Persons.' Fanciful word-play, we have
seen, existed at Court before Lyly's ' Euphuism ' : the sermons of
the King's admired preachers are one evidence that it continued
when the temporary fashion of Euphuism was gone ; Overbury's
characters are another and a stronger. Take as a sample his de-
scription of a tinker :
" He seems to be very devout, for his life is a continual pilgrimage ; and
sometimes in humility goes barefoot, therein making necessity a virtue. His
house is as ancient as Tubal-Cain's, and so is a renegade by antiquity ; yet
he proves himself a gallant, for he carries all his wealth upon his back ; or
a philosopher, tor he hears all his substance about him. . . . So marches
he all over England with his bag and baggage; his conversation is irreprov-
able, tor he is ever mending. He observes truly the statutes, and therefore
had rather steal than beg, in which he is irremovably constant, in spite of
whips or imprisonment. . . . Some would take him to be a coward,
but, believe it, he is a lad of mettle. . . . He is very provident, for he
will fight with but one at once, and then also he had rather submit than be
counted obstinate."
CHAPTER IIL
FROM l6lO TO 16401.
PKANCIS BACOTT.
1561 1626.
WERE we to place authors strictly according to age, we should
include Bacon in the same generation with Sidney and Hooker.
But we have an eye rather to the dates of the composition of their
works; and most of Bacon's works were written after 1610.
As the " founder of Inductive Philosophy," his great reputation
is literary rather than scientific ; he advanced Science as an advo-
cate, not as a labourer in the field. He recalled men from specu-
lation, and urged them to study facts. He was an eager and acute
observer, whenever he found time ; but only a fraction of his time
was devoted to Science. His service lay not so much in what he
did himself, as in the grand impulse he gave to others.
The merits of his style, as of every other style in that age, are
variously estimated. Addison praises his grace, Hume calls him
stiff and rigid, and many persons would be unable to see that
either of these criticisms has any peculiar application. But all
admit that he is one of the greatest writers of prose during the
reigns of Elizabeth and James.
His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was Elizabeth's Lord Keeper ;
his mother, Anne Cooke, a woman of Lady Jane Grey accomplish-
ments, translated Bishop Jewel's 'Apology ' in 1564. Born at his
father's house in London, Francis was sent at the age of twelve to
Trinity College, Cambridge, and remained there for two years and
a half under the care of Whitgift, then Master of Trinity. Of
these early days little is known, except that he was an exceed-
ingly grave and precocious child, and was called by Elizabeth her
240 FROM 1610 TO 1640.
" young Lord Keeper " ; it is said, also, that before he left Cam-
bridge he had begun to dislike Aristotle as being barren of prac-
tical fruit. Previous to his father's death in 1579, he had spent
more than two years in laris with the English ambassador there.
His ideal at this time seems to have been to make statecraft his
profession, and reserve a considerable part of his time for study.
But his father's death leaving him without adequate provision,
and his uncle Burleigh refusing to find him a sinecure, he was
compelled to take up the profession of law. He was admitted as
an utter barrister in 1582 ; and thenceforth his time was distril>-
uted between the practice of law, public business, and his great
literary projects. Under Elizabeth his promotion was not rapid :
the Queen thought him " showy and not deep " in law ; he had
enemies at Court in his uncle and cousin ; and his generous patron,
Essex, did him more harm than good by indiscreet urgency. He
got nothing but the reversion of the Clerkship of the Star-Chamber,
which did not fall in for twenty years ; he applied in vain for the
Attorney-Generalship, the Solicitor-Generalship, and the Master-
ship of the Rolls. Under James, he became Solicitor-General in
1607, Attorney-General in 1613, Lord Chancellor in 1617. In
1620 appeared the ' Novum Organum.' In 1621 he underwent
the well-known censure of Parliament, being fined and deprived of
the Great Seal. The remainder of his life was passed in studious
retirement, during which he composed the greater part of his
literary works. In the spring of 1626 he caught a chill when
experimenting with snow, and died on Easter-day, April 9.
His chief English works are the ' Essays,' the ' Advancement of
Learning,' the 'History of Henry VIL,' the 'New Atlantis,' and
' Sylva Sylvarum.' Of the Essays there were three different issues :
ten essays in 15 97, under the title 'Essays, Religious Meditations,
Places of persuasion and dissuasion ;' thirty-eight in 1612, entitled
' The Essays of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, the King's Solicitor-
General;' fifty-eight in 1625, entitled 'The Essays or Counsels,
Civil and Moral, of,' &<x The ' Advancement of Learning ' (which
he translated into Latin, and enlarged during his retirement, call-
ing it 'De Augmentis Scientiarum') was published in 1605. The
' History of Henry VII.' was his first work after he was banished
from Court. The 'New Atlantis' was written about the same
time ; it is a romance somewhat after the manner of More's
' Utopia,' the design being to describe a college fully equipped for
the study of Nature on the inductive method ' Sylva Sylvarum '
or the ' Natural History,' a collection of facts touching the
qualities of bodies, made partly from observation, partly from
books was the last work of his life.
Bacon seems to have been in person a little, broad, square-
FRANCIS BACON. 241
shouldered, brown man, thin and nervous-looking. He had a
large head and small features.
It would be presumptuous to attempt anything like an exact
valuation of Bacon's intellectual power. We state only what lie>.
upon the surface when we say that the character &nd products ol
his intellect are very often as much over-estimated upon one side
as they are under-estimated upon another. He is frequently praised
as if he had originated and established the inductive method, as if
he had laid down the canons appealed to in modern science as tho
ultimate conditions of sound induction. This is going too far.
Bacon was an orator, not a worker ; a Tyrtaeus, not a Miltiades.
He rendered a great service by urging recourse to observation and
experiment rather than to speculation ; but neither by precept nor
by example did he show koto to observe and experiment well, or
so as to arrive at substantial conclusions. Not by precept for if
modern inductive method were no better than Bacon's inductive
method, Macaulay's caricature of the process would not be so very
unlike the reality. Nor by example ; for the majority of his own
generalisations are loose to a degree. To call Bacon the founder of
scientific method is to mistake the character of his mind, and to
do him an injustice by resting his fame upon a false foundation.
Unwearied activity, inexhaustible constructiveness that, and not
scientific patience or accuracy, was his characteristic. He had
what Peter Heylin calls " a chymical brain " ; every group of facts
that entered his inind he restlessly threw into new combinations.
We over-estimate the man upon one side when we give him credit
for scientific rigour ; his contemporary Gilbert, who wrote upon
the magnet, probably had more scientific caution and accuracy
than he. And we under-estimate him upon another side when we
speak as if the Inductive Philosophy had been the only outcome of
his ever-active brain. His projects of reform in Law were almost
as vast as his projects of reform in Philosophy. In Politics he
drew up opinions on every question of importance during the
forty years of his public life, and was often employed by the
Queen and Lord Burleigh to write papers of State. All this was
done in addition to his practical work as a lawyer. And yet hia
multiplex labours do not seem to have used up his mental vigour ;
his schemes always outran human powers of performance. His
ambition was not to make one great finished effort and then rest ;
his intellectual appetite seemed almost insatiable. 1
1 It is a curious problem to make out why an intellect so acute and active
revolted from the subtleties of the schoolmen, and did not rather turn to them
as its most congenial element. Part of the explanation i's doubtless to be found
in the high development of his senses, in the strong arrest of his mind upon the
outer world. A meditative man will walk for miles through the country, and
be unable to describe minutely any one object tLat he has seen. Bacon's ey
242 FROM 1610 TO 1640.
In a man with such prodigious activity of intellect, and such a
bent towards analysing and classifying dry facts, we do not look
for much warmth of feeling. He is not likely to spend much of
his time either in imagining objects of tender affection or in doting
upon actual objects. The world has not yet seen the intellect of a
Bacon combined with the sentimentality of a Sterne, or the phil-
anthropy of a Howard. The works of Bacon afford very little food
for ordinary human feelings. All the pleasure we gain from them
is founded upon their intellectual excellences. Even the similitudes
are intellectual rather than emotional, ingenious rather than touch-
ing or poetical. To adapt an image of Ben Jonson's the wine of
Bacon's writings is a dry wine. As we read, we experience the
pleasure of surmounting obstacles ; we are electrified by unexpected
analogies, and the sudden revelations of new aspects in familiar
things ; and we sympathise more or less with the boundless ex-
hilaration of a mind that pierces with ease and swiftness through
barriers that reduce other minds to torpor and stagnancy.
Our author says of himself that he was not born " under Jupiter
that loveth business " ; " the contemplative planet carried him
away solely." He had not the physical constitution needed to
bear the worry and fatigue of the actual direction of affairs not
to say that he was so engrossed with his intellectual projects that
practical drudgery was intolerably irksome. As Lord Chancellor,
he cleared off a large accumulation of unheard cases with great
despatch ; but he proved unequal to the minuter duties of the
office, and allowed subordinates to do as they pleased. 1
Opinions. The following is a bare outline of Bacon's great
philosophical project : " The ' Instau ratio ' is to be divided into
probably drank in everything as he went along ; or, if not everything, at least
enough to keep him thinking about external things.
1 So much has been made * certain specific charges of moral delinquency on
the part of Bacon, that we cannot pass them over without some notice. Atten-
tive readers will have anticipated our explanation. Take the case of Essex.
Essex warmly patronised Bacon, pleaded with the Queen for his preferment, and
made him a present of an estate. Yet when Essex was charged with treasonable
practices, Bacon, as one of the Queen's Counsel, took part in the impeachment.
We cannot enter here into minute casuistry ; but it is easy to see that the im-
pulsive Essex forced his patronage and his favours upon Bacon, and that Bacon,
while he feared to discourage such a man's friendship, was acutely aware of its
inconveniences. A man of high honour would have firmly declined Essex's
services ; a generous man, who had accepted such services, would have felt
bound to stand by Essex to the last ; and yet it would have been imprudent to
have acted otherwise than as Bacon acted. His conduct in the Chancellorship is
a plainer case. The faults that have been proved against him were faults of
omission, not of commission. He was engrossed with his ' Novum Organum ' and
other projects, and closed his eyes to the doings of subordinates. He may even
have received bribe-money from them without being at pains to inquire into the
particulars. We can quite believe his declaration that he never gave judgment
" with a bribe in his eye." He broke faith, uot with justice, but with the givet
ol the bribe.
FRANCIS BACON. 243
six portions, of which the first is to contain a general survey of
the present state of knowledge. In the second, men are to be
taught how to use their understanding aright in the investigation
of nature. In the third, all the phenomena of the universe are to
be stored up as in a treasure-house, as the materials on which the
new method is to be employed, in the fourth, examples are to be
given of its operation and of the results to which it leads. The
fifth is to contain what Bacon had accomplished in natural philo-
sophy without the aid of his own method, but merely " by what
may be called common reason. In the sixth part " will be set
forth the new philosophy the result of the application of the new
method to all the phenomena of the universe."
No sketch can here be attempted of his methods of induction.
They possess little or no scientific value. He had no conception
of valid proof. His own speculations are as rash as anything to
be found in the schoolmen. Thus, among his ' Prerogative In-
stances ' he lays down that precious stones, diamonds and rubies,
are fine exudations of stone, just as the gum of trees is a fine
straining through the wood and bark. He repeats this theory
in the ' Sylva Sylvarum.' Of the thousand paragraphs in the
' Sylva ' touching natural phenomena and their causes, there is
hardly one that does not contain some speculation equally fanciful.
The opinions contained in his Essays 1 observations and pre-
cepts on man and society are perhaps the most permanent evi-
dence of his sagacity. In this field he was thoroughly at home ;
the study of mankind occupied the largest part of his time. The
Essays treat of a great variety of subjects Truth, Death, Dis-
simulation, Superstition, Plantations, Masks and Triumphs, Beauty,
Deformity, Vicissitudes of Things. To give any general idea of
the contents of so many closely-packed pages of solid observation,
is impossible within our limits. It may be said that to men wish-
ing to rise in the world by politic management of their fellow-
men, Bacon's Essays are the best handbook hitherto published.
His own worldly wisdom was clenched by the significant aphorism,
" By indignities men come to dignities."
His opinions in religion have been disputed. We know that
his mother considered him remiss in the matter of family prayers,
and in this respect not a pattern to his elder brother. But there
is nothing in his writings at variance with the orthodox faith. It
has been doubted whether a work called ' The Christian Para-
doxes ' was written by him ; but if it was, it is only what it pro-
fesses to be a paradoxical expression of orthodoxy. He did not,
as is sometimes stated, deny the argument from final causes. He
1 The second part of the title "Counsels Civil and Moral" is much more
descriptive of the book, but it has been dropped, anil would be difficult to re-
vive. The original ten essays con tallied almost nothing but maxims of prudence.
244 FROM 1610 TO 1640.
only maintained that looking for final causes is a distraction from
the invesdgation of physical causes. He would seem to have held
that theology can be founded only on the Bible, and that whatever
is affirmed there must be believed implicitly.
ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
Vocabulary. Bacon's range of subjects was wide, and his com-
mand of words within that range as great as any man could have
acquired. He took pains to keep his vocabulary rich. From
some private notes that have been preserved, we see that he had a
habit of jotting down and refreshing his memory with varieties of
expression on all subjects that were likely to occur for discussion.
He uses a great many more obsolete words than either Hooker
or Sidney. To be sure, the language of the feelings and the
language of theology have changed less than the language of
science. But in his narrative and in his Essays, as well as in
his scientific writings, Bacon shows a decided preference now
and then for " inkhorn terms." In his ' History of King Henry
VII.' we meet with such words as " habilitate " for qualified,
"the brocage of an usurper" for the baits or panderings of an
usurper, " impatronise himself of " for make himself patron of,
"difficile to" for slow to or unwilling to, and suchlike. How
archaic the scientific style is may be seen in the following pas-
sage from the ' Sylva Sylvarum ' perhaps an extreme case.
It is headed, "Experiment Solitary touching Change of Aliments
and Medicines : "
" It helpeth both in medicine and aliment, to change and not to continue
the same medicine and aliment still. The cause is, for that nature, by
continual use of anything, groweth to a satiety and dullness, either of
appetite or working. And we see that as.suetude of things hurtful doth
make them lose their force to hurt ; as poison which with use some have
brought themselves to brook. And therefore it is no marvel though things
helpful, by custom, lose their force to help. I count intermission almost
the same thing with change ; for that that hath been intermitted is after a
sort new."
The phrase " for that " in place of inasmuch as is used so often
by Bacon as almost to be a mannerism. The frequent use corre-
sponds to his habit of accounting for things.
Sentences. His general structure of sentence, as shown in his
'Advancement of Learning,' his History, and his occasional dis-
courses, is less elaborate but more modern than in Hooker's
average style. His sentences are shorter and more pointed ; and
being comparatively free from pedantic inversions, have a more
modern flow. In the placing of qualifying clauses he is less
awkward. The following period, from his " Discourse in praise of
FRANCIS BACON. 245
Elizabeth," if somewhat intricate, is well built, and graduated to
a climax :
"The benefits of Almighty God upon this land, since the time that in
His singular providence He led as it were by the hand, and placed in the
kingdom, His servant, our Queen Elizabeth, are such, as not in boast-
ing or in confidence of ourselves, but in praise of His- holy name, are
worthy to be both considered and confessed, yea, and registered in perpetual
memory. "
The next, from the ' Advancement of Learning,' is an average
specimen of his long sentence :
" And for matter of policy and government, that learning should rather
hurt than enable thereunto, is a thing very improbable : we see it is ac-
counted an error to commit a natural body to empiric physicians, which
commonly have a few pleasing receipts whereupon they are confident and
adventurous, but know neither the causes of diseases, nor the complexions
of patients, nor peril of accidents, nor the true method of cures : we see it
is a like error to rely upon advocates or lawyers, which are only men of
practice and not grounded in their books, who are many times easily sur-
prised when matter falleth out besides their experience, to the prejudice of
the causes they handle : so by like reason it cannot be but a matter of doubt-
ful consequence if states be managed by empiric statesmen, not well mingled
with men grounded in learning."
The Essays, particularly the earlier ones, are full of balance and
point, suiting their character as emphatic aphoristic precepts. The
Essay on Studies, the first of the original ten, is more than usually
balanced :
" Bead not to contradict and confute ; nor to believe and take for granted ;
nor to find talk and discourse ; but to weigh and consider. Some books are
to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and
digested ; that is, some books are to be read only in parts ; others to be
read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with dili-
gence and attention. . . . Reading maketh a full man ; conference a
ready man ; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write
little, he had need have a .great memory ; if he confer little, he had need
have a present wit ; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning,
to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise ; poets witty ;
the mathematics subtile ; natural philosophy deep ; moral grave ; logic and
rhetoric able to contend."
The following is from his sagacious Essay "Of Negotiat-
ing":
"It is generally better to deal by speech than by letter. Letters are
good, when a man would draw an answer by letter back again ; or when it
may serve for a man's justification afterwards to produce his own letter ; or
where it may be danger to be interrupted or heard by pieces. To deal in
person is good, when a man's face breed eth regard, as commonly with in-
feriors ; or in tender cases, where a man's eye upon the countenance of him
with whom he speaketh may give him a direction hew far to go ; and gen-
erally, when a man will reserve to himself liberty either to disavow or to
expound."
246 FEOM 1610 TO 1640.
Again
" All practice is to discover or to work. Men discover themselves in
trust, in passion, at unawares, and of necessity, when they would have
somewhat done and cannot tind an apt pretext. If you would work any
man, you must either know Ids nature and fashions, and so lead him ; or
his ends, and so 'persuade him ; or his weakness and disadvantages, and so
awe him ; or those that have interest in him, and so govern him."
Paragraphs. In connection with the paragraph may be noticed
a peculiarity in the composition of the Essays. As a rule, Bacon's
paragraphs are, comparatively, very good ; he has a sense of
method and good arrangement In the ' Advancement of Learn-
ing ' he adheres to a simple scheme ; and the sentences of separate
paragraphs are not inconsecutive nor complicated, as Hooker's
sometimes are. But the Essays are of a peculiar structure.
They are not, nor are they intended to be, consecutive exposi-
tions ; each is a string of detached reflections and maxims bear-
ing upon the same subject. The author's intention is more
apparent in his first edition ; he there distinguishes the transitions
by the obsolete mark IT. Thus, in the passage quoted from the
Essay on Studies, there are four such marks, one at the head of
each of the four different tacks showing that he changed his tack
advisedly, and not from confusion.
Figures of Speech Similitudes. Bacon's pages are very thickly
strewn with similitudes. The first edition of the Essays is less
figurative than the latest edition ; the enlargements of the original
ten often consist of additional figures.
That his earlier writings should be less figurative, accords with
the character of his figures. They are not elaborated like the
figures of Jeremy Taylor or Curly le : his first care was the plain
expression of his meaning ; he made little effort to obtain simili-
tudes, but took them rather when they came of themselves. He
is sometimes spoken of as an imaginative writer; but this is not
accurate if imagination is held to imply poetical feeling : his
imagery is not evoked to gratify any poetical feeling refined or
unrefined, but partly for purposes of illustration, and partly in the
exercise of his incontinent quickness to discover analogy. This
appears the moment we look at any number of his similitudes
together. They are taken almost exclusively from familiar objects
and operations in nature and human life. In his narrative their
number is more within bounds, and they are usually very graphic;
in the Essays they are often superfluous.
We shall exemplify his similitudes at some length, as the best
way of showing that they are taken from familiar things, and that
they are more illustrative than poetical :
"For Pope Alexander, finding himself pent and locked up by a league
Mid association of the principal States of Italy, that he could not make his
FRANCIS BACON. 247
way for the advancement of his own house (which he immoderately thirsted
after), was desirous to trouble the waters in Italy, that he might fish the
better. "
When Henry was threatened with a Scotch war, a Cornish
insurrection, and the pretender Perkin Warbeck all at once, he
judged it
"His hest and surest way to keep his strength together in the seat and
centre of his kingdom ; according to the ancient Indian emblem in such a
swelling season, to hold his hand upon the middle of the bladder tliut no side
might rise."
After recounting Henry's fine calculations regarding the action
of Continental powers, he says :
" But those things were too fine to be fortunate and succeed in all parts ;
for that great affairs are commonly too rough and stubborn to be wrought upon
by the finer edges or points of wit. "
The following is the opening sentence of the fragment on Henry
"After the decease of that wise and fortunate king, King Henry the
Seventh, who died in the height of his prosperity, there followed (as nsetb.
to do when the sun setteth so exceeding clear) oue of the fairest mornings of
a kingdom that hath been known in this land or anywhere else. "
He very often uses these metaphors taken from the phenomena
of the weather. At the outset of his reign, Henry, in liis account
of peace and calms, " did much overcast his fortunes, which proved
for many years together full of broken seas, tides, and tempests."
When the King has passed through any of his troubles, it is " fair
weather" again. The news of Perkin Warbeck's claims "comes
thundering and blazing" from abroad. So in the Essay on
Seditions he says that " as there are certain hollow blasts of
wind, and secret swellings of seas before tempests, so are there
in States." Perhaps his most favourite figures are those taken
from medicine and surgery : he is fond of likening individuals
and societies to a body, and supposing them subject to disease,
or operated on by a physician or surgeon. Thus
" The King of Scotland laboured under the same disease that King Henry
did (though more mortal, as it afterwards appeared), that is, discontented
subjects, apt to rise and raise tumult."
So with King Henry, insurrection was " almost a fever that took
him every year." In his punishment of treason, Henry "com-
monly drew blood (as physicians do), rather to save life than to
spill it" A good many figures of this kind might be picked from
the Essays. Thus
" It were too long to go over all the particular remedies which learning
doth minister to all the diseases of the mind sometimes purging the ill
humours, sometimes opening the obstructions, sometimes helping the diges-
248 FROM 1610 TO 1640.
tion, sometimes increasing appetite, sometimes healing the wounds and
ulcerations thereof, and the like."
Again, regarding seditions, he says :
"To give moderate liberty for griefs and discontentments to evaporate (so
it be without too great insolence or bravery) is a safe way. For he that
turncth the humours back, and maketh the wound bleed inwards, endan-
gereth malign ulcers and pernicious imposthumations."
His well-known figure concerning Truth has a more poetical tone
than his figures usually have :
"This same Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the
masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily
as caudle-lights."
This was written after his fall. It is worth noticing that, in these
latest Essays, both the subjects and the illustrations show a grow-
ing sense of the pleasures of retirement.
Other figures than similitudes occur in Bacon's writing. A
" corrective spice " of antithesis runs through all his works ; some-
times conducing to clearness and force, sometimes amusing with
its ingenuity. It is illustrated in extracts under various heads.
Of the abrupt figures he makes very little use ; his style is too
grave and sober. At the same time he knows their effect in
declamation, and introduces them upon occasion. See an instance
at p. 251.
QUALITIES OP STYLE.
Simplicity. The best evidence of the general intelligibility of
Bacon's style is that so little has been said about it. He is neither
markedly Latinised nor markedly familiar ; he is perhaps less
affected than any of his contemporaries. In his ' Advancement of
Learning,' addressed to King James, he seems to humour the
perl an try of the monarch, and introduces not a few Latin quota-
tions without translating them. In his other works there is less
of this ; there is little obstruction to our getting at his meaning,
except an occasional technical term. And through all his writings
the numerous homely and pointed illustrations make his meaning
abundantly luminous.
Clearness. In perspicuity of arrangement, he is much superior
to any of the Elizabethan writers. To quote the arrangement of
his ' Novum Organum ' (see p. 243) is hardly pertinent, seeing
that it was written in Latin ; still, it may be referred to as an
example of his orderly and simple method. The order of topics in
the ' Advancement of Learning' is also both simple and free from
confusion. His classification of the sciences, though deficient as
a scientific classification for modern purposes, being superseded by
FRANCIS BACON. 249
the vast enlargement of the subjects of human knowledge in re-
cent times, is a very lucid division so far as it goes, and as "a
small globe of the intellectual world " was very serviceable in its
day. The divisions are so clear, and proceed upon distinctions
so familiar, that though the subdivision is carried to the eighth
degree, there is not the least perplexity to any mind of ordinary
education.
We cannot concede to him the praise of scientific precision ; in-
deed he often affirms fundamental resemblance where the resem-
blance is only slender and superficial Distinctness in the use of
words was no part of his scheme of philosophical reformation ; the
confusion of ambiguous terms in science could not begin to be felt
until science was more advanced.
Still, in one of the subjects that his practical life brought him
to consider, we find him aware of the danger of loosely applying
the same term to things not precisely alike. With reference to the
religious disputes of the time, he objected to the term priest for a
clergyman ; minister, he said, or j/resbyter, would be better, and
the term priest should be reserved for the sacrificing priests under
the old law.
Apart from rigid exactness, Bacon has in an eminent degree
what is called incisiveness of style ; his words and figures go
straight to the point. His remarks on Studies are a good example
of making a statement clear by giving counter-statements. This
art of style appears in all his writings. True, he often uses the
" but " of contrast where there is no real opposition, and merely
to indicate a fresh start : nevertheless he does make frequent and
effective use of contrast for purposes of exact expression. Thus
" There followed this year, being the second of the King's reign, a strange
accident of state, whereof the relations which we have are so naked, as they
leave it scarce credible ; not for the nature of it (for it hath fallen out oft),
but for the manner and circumstance of it, especially in the beginnings."
Here we have, in a less finished form, the scrupulosity of qualifi-
cation that is so marked a feature in the style of De Quincey.
The following sentence, which is more finished, contains a vividly
incisive use of contrast :
" Neither was the King's nature and customs greatly fit to disperse uch
mists, but contrariwise he had a fashion rather to create doubts than assur-
ance. "
The passages italicised in the two following contain ingenious
distinctions clearly expressed :
" For the opinion of plenty is amongst the causes of want, and the great
quantity of books maketh a show rather of superfluity than lack ; which
surcharge nevertheless is not to be remedied by making no more books, but by
making more good books, which, as the serpent of Moses, might devour the
serpents of the enchanters."
250 FKOM 1610 TO 1640.
Towards removing all hindrances to the pursuit of knowledge, he
"The endeavours of a private man may be but as an image in a cross-
way, that may point at the way, but cannot go it. "
Strength. The quality of strength in his style is intellectual
rather than emotional. In his narrative there is very little expres-
sion of feeling : the strength conies chiefly from conciseness, secured
by comprehensive statement, pregnant metaphor, and occasional
strokes of epigrammatic condensation. The following is a lair
specimen of his way of relating events ; in disentangling a variety
of motives or exhibiting negotiations, he allows himself greater
amplitude :
" At York there came fresh and more certain advertisement that the Lord
Lovell was at hand with a great power of men, and that the Staffords were
in arms in Worcestershire, and had made their approaches to the city of
Worcester to assail it. The King, as a prince of great and profound judg-
ment, was not much moved with it, for that he thought it was but a rag or
remnant of Bosworth Field, and had nothing in it of the main party of the
house of York. But he was more doubtful of the raising of forces to resist
the rebels than of the resistance itself, for that he was in a core of people
whose affections he suspected. But the action enduring no delay, he did
speedily levy and send against the Lord Lovell to the number of three thou-
sand men, ill armed, but well assured (being taken some few out of his own
train, and the rest out of the tenants and follower! of such as were safe to
be trusted), under the conduct of the Duke of Bedford. And as Ms manner
was to send his pardons rather before the sword than after, he gave commis-
sion to the Duke to proclaim pardon to all that would come in, which the
Duke, upon his approach to the Lord Lovell's camp, did perform. And it
fell out as the King expected; the heralds were the great ordnance."
The effect of the vigorous expression is enhanced by the pene-
trating ingenuity and freshness of the thought. We spoke of this
in our survey of his character. The pleasure of reading him is
almost purely dependent upon the exercise of the intellect How
little gratification he affords to ordinary human feeling will be
made apparent by a single example. Contrast the following with
Hooker's manner of approaching a similar theme ; Bacon's subtlety
is at work to discover arguments where Hooker is lost in adora-
tion :
"First, therefore, let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype or
first platfonn, which is in the attributes and acts of God, as far as they are
revealed to man, and may be observed with sobriety ; wherein we may not
seek it by the name of learning ; for all learning is knowledge acquired,
and all knowledge in God is original ; and therefore we must luok for it by
another name, that of wisdom or sapience, as the Scriptures call it.
" It is so, then, that in the work of the creation we see a double emanation
of virtue from God ; the one referring more properly to power, the other to
wisdom ; the one expressed in making the subsistence of the matter, and
the other in disposing the beauty of the form. This being supposed, it is to
be observed that for anything which appeareth in the history of the cre/ation,
FRANCIS BACON. 251
the confused mass and matter of heaven and earth was made in a moment ;
and the order and disposition of that chaos or mass was the work of six
days; such a note of difference it pleased God to ]>ut upon the works of
power and the works of wisdom ; wherewith concurreth that in the former
it is not set down that God said, Let there be heaven and eartii, as it is set
down of the works following, but actually that God made heaven and earth :
the one carrying the style of a manufacture, and the other of a law, decree,
or counsel.
" To proceed to that which is next in order from God to spirits ; we find
s far as credit is to be given to the celestial hierarchy of that supposed
Dionysius, the senator of Athens, the first jiJace or degree is given to the
angels of love, which are termed seraphim ; the second to the angels of
light, which are termed cherubim ; and the third, and so following places,
to thrones, principalities, and the rest, which are all angels of power and
ministry, so as the angels of knowledge and illumination are placed before
the angels of office and domination."
Though not naturally inclined to address the feelings so much
as the reason, Bacon knew, and upon occasion practised, the arts
of elevation. The chief English specimen of his more ambitious
rhetoric is a discourse in praise of the Queen, written when he was
about thirty. It is a very good example of artificial strength. In
the following sample, the strength is gained chiefly by figures of
speech proper, by declamatory departure from the ordinary forms
of speech :
"To speak of her fortune, that which I did reserve for a garland of her
honour ; and that is that she liveth a virgin, and hath no children ; so it is
that which maketh all her other virtues ami acts more sacred, more august,
more divine. Let them leave children that leave no other memory in their
times. Brutorum cetemitas, soboles. Revolve in histories the memoiies of
happy men, and you shall not find any of rare felicity, but either he died
childless, or his line spent soon after his death, or else was unfortunate in
his children. Should a man have them to be slain by his vassals, as the
posthumus of Alexander the Great was ? or to call them his impostliuines, as
Augustus Caesar called his ? Peruse the catalogue Cornelius Sylla, Julius
Caesar, Flavius Vespasianus, Severus, Constautiuus the Great, and manj
more."
It is interesting to compare this forced declamation with the
ingenious antithetic conceits on the same theme in his Essay on
Parents and Children :
" The perpetuity by generation is common to beasts ; but memory, merit,
and noble works are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest
works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have
sought to express the images of their minds where those ot their bodies Jiavfl
failed. So the care of posterity is most in them that have no posterity. "
KINDS OF COMPOSITION.
Narrative. Bacon's ' History of Henry VII.' was written upon
a principle enounced in his ' Advancement of Learning.' After
saying that history is of three kinds according as " it representetb
252 FROM 1610 TO 1640.
a time, or a person, or an action," and that " the first we call
chronicles, the second lives, and the third narrations or relations,"
he goes on
" Of these, although the first be the most complete and absolute kind of
history, and hath most estimation aiul glory, yet the second excelleth it in
profit and use, and the third in verity and sincerity. For the history of
times representeth the magnitude of actions, and the public faces and
deportments of persons, and passeth over in silence the smaller passages and
motions of men and matters. But such being the workmanship of God,
as He doth hang the greatest weight upon the smallest wires, maxima e
minimis suspendens, it comes therefore to pass that such histories do rul/isr
net forth the pomp of business than Die true and inward resorts thereof. I'.ut
lives, if they be well written, propounding to themselves a person to repre-
sent, in whom actions both greater and smaller, public and private, have
a commixture, must of necessity contain a more true, native, and lively
representation. "
This ideal of history bears some resemblance to Carlyle's anti-
Dryasdnst views. Bacon, a more acute and dispassionate observer
than the historian of Friedrich, and practically acquainted with
the ends and expedients of kings, has left us what is probably the
very best history of its kind. He wrote it in a few months,
taking his facts from the Chroniclers, and having access to few, if
any, original documents ; and consequently its peculiar merit is
not accuracy : still, even if it is taken on that ground, his sagacity
and knowledge of state affairs proved so true a guide, that his
views of the main actions have not been set aside by more patient
investigators. Considered on its own claims as an explanation of
events by reference to the feelings and purposes of the chief actor,
it is perhaps a better model than any history that has been pub-
lished since. " He gives," says Bishop Nicholson, "as sprightly a
view of the secrets of Henry's Council as if he had been President
of it"
In one .respect Bacon's History is in strong contrast to Macau-
lay's. In relating the schemes and actions of such a king as
Henry, Macaulay would Lave overlaid the narrative with strong
expressions of approval or disapproval. Bacon writes calmly,
narrating facts and motives without any comment of a moral
nature. Sometimes, indeed, he criticises, but it is from the point
of view of a politician, not of a moralist ; a piece of cruelty or
perfidy is either censured only as being injudicious, or not com-
mented upon at all. On this ground he is visited with a sonorous
declamation by Sir James Mackintosh as if his not improving
the occasion were a sign that he approved of what had been done.
Bacon wrote upon a principle that is beginning to be pretty
widely accepted as regards personal histories claiming to be im-
partial namely, that " it is the true office of history to represent
the events themselves together with the counsels, and to leave the
FRANCIS BACON. 253
observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty
of every man's judgment" He does not seek to seal up historical
facts from the useful office of "pointing a moral"; he only held
that the moralising should not interfere with the narrative.
Exposition. We have said that the modern expositor has not
much to learn from earlier writers. An exception in one respect
may be claimed for Bacon. Though all his scientific matter has
been superseded, and his style is now antiquated, the ' Advance-
ment of Learning' might still be read as a general tonic for inci-
sive expression and perspicuous method. At the same time, it
would be a mistake for the student to go to Bacon before he had
in some degree mastered the style of modern exposition. To read
the productions of Bacon's vigorous and subtle intellect has a
bracing influence, but we must first be confirmed against the
affectation of trying to imitate.
The 'Sylva Sylvarum' lias little value as regards expository
style, being merely a record of experiments and observations, with
speculations thereupon. The following on "the goodness and
choice of waters " is an example of the style ; it also illustrates the
scientific worthlessness of many of his statements :
"It is a tiling of very good use to discover the goodness of waters. The
taste, to those that drink water only, is somewhat : but other experiments
are more sure. First, try waters by weight ; wherein you may find some
difference, though not much ; and the lighter you may account the
better. . . .
"Sixthly, you may make a judgment of waters according to the place
whence they spring or come. The rain-water is by the physicians esteemed
the finest and the best ; but yet it is said to putrefy soonest, which is likely
because of tho fineness of the spirit ; and in conservatories of rain-water
(such as they have in Venice, &c.) they are found not so choice waters ; the
worse perhaps because they are covered aloft, and kept from the sun.
Snow-water is held unwholesome ; insomuch as the people that dwell at
the foot of the snow-mountains or otherwise upon the ascent (especially the
women), by drinking of snow-water, have great bags under their throats.
Well-water, except it be upon chalk, or a very plentiful spring, maketh
meat red, which is an ill sign. Springs on the top of high hills ;ire the
best ; for both they seem to have a lightness and appetite of mounting ;
and besides, they are most pure and unmingled ; and again are more per-
colated through a great space of earth. For waters in valleys join in effect
underground with all waters of the same level ; whereas springs on the tops
of hills pass through a great deal of pure earth with less mixture of other
waters. "
Persuasion. His power as an orator is attested by two eminent
authorities. Sir Walter Raleigh says that he surpassed other men
in speaking as much as he did in writing ; and Ben Jonson, in his
4 Discoveries,' affirms that " His hearers could not cough or look
aside from him without loss. He commanded when he spoke, and
had his judges angry or pleased at his devotion. No man had
their affections more in his power." Making every allowance for
254 FROM 1610 TO 1640.
grateful exaggeration in Ben Jonson's eulogy, we can still believe
that Bacon was indeed a very convincing speaker. He was not a
aeclaiiner ; he would not seem to have spoken with heat and fer-
vour : if we raise upon Ben Jonson's description a picture of a
hushed audience listening to a glowing orator, we shall be very far
from the probable reality. A studied orator, he affected gravity
and weight; speaking "leisurely, and rather drawingly than
hastily," on the principle that "a slow speech confirmeth the
memory, addeth a conceit of wisdom to the hearers, besides a
seemliness of speech and countenance." From all that we know,
it seems unmistakable that he addressed chiefly the self-interest
and confirmed passions of his audience. The main study of his
life was how to " work " men.
His verbal ingenuity was great, and carefully cultivated. Under
the title of ' Promus of Formularies and Elegancies,' Mr Spedding
has published some specimens of his store of happy expressions,
repartees, epigrams, quotations from all scources, laid up for use
upon fitting occasions. His collection of apothegms was another
part of the same elaborate preparation. In his preface he says :
" Certainly they are of excellent use. They are mucrones verborum,
pointed speeches. Cicero prettily calls them salinas, salt-pits ; that
you may extract salt out of, and sprinkle it where you will. They
serve to be interlaced in continued speech. They serve to be re-
cited upon occasion of themselves. They serve if you take out
the kernel of them, and make them your own."
Another of his studies for Persuasion appears in a fragment first
published in 1597, entitled 'Of the Colours of Good and Evil,' or,
more fully, ' A Table of Colours or Appearances of Good and Evil,
and their Degrees, as places of Persuasion and Dissuasion, and
their several Fallaxes and the Blenches of them.' In the begin-
ning he says that " the persuader's labour is to make things appear
good or evil, and that in higher or lower degree ; which as it may
be performed by true and solid reasons, so it may be represented
also by colours, popularities, and circumstances, which are of such
force, as they sway the ordinary judgment either of a weak man,
or of a wise man not fully and considerately attending and ponder-
ing the matter. One of these " Colours " may be quoted as an
example of his ingenuity : he himself would probably have been
prepared to use and enforce either side according as he found it
necessary :
' ' That course which keeps the matter in a man's power is good ; that which
leaves him without retreat is bad ; for to have no means of retreating is to be
in a sort powerless ; and power is a good thing.
" Appertaining to this persuasion, the forms are, you shall engage yourself ;
on the other side, tantum quantum voles suines cxfortuna, &c. you sliall
DIVINES UNDER JAMES. 255
kei> the matter in your own hands. The reprehension of it is, that proceed-
intf and resolving in all actions is necessary ; for as he saith well, not to
resolve i-i to resolve; and many times it breeds as many necessities, and
engageth as far in some other sort, as to resolve.
" So it is but the covetous man's disease translated into power ; for the
covetous man will enjoy nothing, because he will have his full store and
possibility to enjoy more ; so by this reason a man should execute nothing,
because he should be still indifferent and at liberty to execute anything.
Besides necessity and this same jacta est alea " ["the die is cast "] " hath
many times an advantage, because it awaketh the powers of the mind, and
ttrengtheneth endeavour. "
OTHER WRITERS.
DIVINES UNDER JAMES. During the reign of James the Puri-
tans gave little trouble. Forbearing open controversy, they gained
ground among the people by their exemplary lives, and left the
literary champions of conformity to other employment. Richard
Field, 1561-1616, celebrated at Oxford as a disputant, and a fa-
vourite royal chaplain under James, wrote a treatise to prove that
the English Church was the Church of early Christianity, and that
the Roman Catholic peculiarities were of modern origin. His style
is periodic and sonorous, without containing unidiomatie inver-
sions. He argues with considerable vigour, and occasionally
warms into impressive declamation. Lancelot Andrewes, 1555-
1626, Bishop of Winchester, and a Privy Councillor, was a man of
greater vivacity. He was a favourite with Bacon, who records
some of his witty apothegms. As a bishop he was hospitable
and munificent He was celebrated for his knowledge of lan-
guages. The fact that he was the most popular preacher at
Court, both with Elizabeth and with James, shows us whence the
fashions of cumbrously superfluous quotation and fanciful word-play
-came into the sermon -writing of this and the following period.
In redundant display of learning he goes beyond even Jeremy
Taylor ; and his word-play is after the manner we have illustrated
from Ascham and Lyly. Bishop Morton, 1564-1659, a descendant
from Cardinal Morton, was a voluminous author, chiefly of con-
troversial works ; but the length, abstemiousness, and kindly
generosity of his life, and the troubles of his later years, will do
more to preserve his memory than genius either in thought or
expression. John Donne, 1573-1631, the founder of the "Meta-
physical " school of poetry, having ruined his prospects of advance-
ment in secular office by an imprudent marriage, after some ten
years' uneasy waiting for employment, was urged by King James
to enter the Church, and was ordained in 1616. As compared with
Andrewes, Donne has the same characteristic^ of excessive quo-
tation and fanciful wit ; still the two are very different. For one
thing, though that is not so striking, they draw their quotations
256 FROM 1610 TO 1640.
from different sources : Donne is specially read in the Latin
classics. They differ chiefly in force of intellect. Donne is more
powerful and original ; divides and distinguishes with greater
subtlety, and fetches his images from a greater distance. Jn
Donne's sermons, an intellectual epicure not too fastidious to read
sermons will find a delicious feast. Whether these sermons can
be taken as patterns by the modern preacher is another affair. It
will not be contended that any congregation is equal to the effort
of following his subtleties. In short, as exercises in abstract
subtlety, fanciful ingenuity, and scholarship, the sermons are
admirable. Judged by the first rule of popular exposition, the
style is bad a bewildering maze to the ordinary reader, much
more to the ordinary hearer. In the specimens that we quote
there is no want of distinct order, but the expression is in the
highest degree abstract and subtle. They are taken from a sermon
on St Paul at Malta, the text being, " They changed their minds,
and said that he was a god " :
"The first words of our text carry us necessarily so far back as to see
from what they changed ; and their periods are easily seen : their terminus
a quo and their terminus ad quern, were these ; first that he was a murderer,
then that he was a god. An error in morality ; they censure deeply upon
light evidence : an error in divinity ; they transfer the name and estimation
of a god upon an unknown man. Place both the errors in divinity (so you
may justly do) ; and then there is an error in charity, a hasty and incon-
siderate condemning ; and an error in faith, a superstitious creating of an
imaginary god. Now upon these two general considerations will this exer-
cise consist; first that it is natural loic, an argumentation naturally im-
printed in man, to argue, and conclude thus: Great calamities are inflicted,
therefore God is greatly provoked. These men of Malta were but natural
men, but barbarians (as S. Luke calls them), and yet they argue and con-
clude so : Here is a judgment executed, therefore here is evidence that God
is displeased. And so far they kept within the limits of humanity and
piety too. But when they descended hastily and inconsiderately to partic-
ular and personal applications, This judgment upon this man is an evi-
dence of his guiltiness in this offeuce, then they transgressed the bounds of
charity ; that because a viper had seized Paul's hand, therefore Paul must
needs be a murderer.
" So that for this doctrine " (the natural " argumentation " above spoken
of) " a man needs not be preached unto, a man needs not be catechised ; a
man needs not read the fathers, nor the councils, nor the schoolmen, nor
the ecclesiastical story, nor summists, nor casuists, nor canonists ; no nor
the Bible itself for this doctrine ; for this doctrine, that when God strikes
He is angry, and when He is angry He strikes, the natural man hath as lull
a library in his bosom as the Christian.
" The same author of ours, Moses, tells us, ' The Lord our God is Lord of
lords, and God of gods, and regardeth no man's person.' The natural man
hath his author too, that tells him, Semper viryinm furice, the furies (they
whom they conceive to execute revenge upon malefnctors) are always virgins,
that is, not to be corrupted by any solicitations. That no dignity shelters a
DIVINES UNDER CHARLES L 257
man from the justice of God, is a natural conclusion, as well as a divine.
We have a sweet singer of Israel that tells us, A'o?i dimidiabit dies, 'The
bloody and deceitful man shall not live out half his days ' ; and the natural
man hath his sweet singer too, a learned poet, that tells him, that seldom
any enormous malefactor enjoys siccam mortem (as he calls it), a dry, an un-
bloody death. That blood requires blood is a natural conclusion as well as
a divine. Our sweet sin^i-r tells us again, that if he fly to the farthest ends
of the earth, or to the sea, or to heaven, or to hell, he shall find God there ;
and the natural man hath his author that tells him, Quifugit, non effugit, he
that runs away from God does not scape God. That there is no sanctuary,
no privileged place, against which God's Quo Warranto does not lie, is a
natural conclusion as well as a divine. Sanguis Abel, is our proverb, that
Abel's blood cries for revenge ; and Sanguis ^Esopi is the natural man's
proverb, that Esop's blood cries for revenge ; for Esop's blood," &c.
Besides his Sermons, Donne's most famous prose work is
4 Biathanatos,' a treatise on Suicide.
DIVINES UNDEB CHARLES L Joseph Hall, 1574-1656, is illus-
trious in the Church history of England chiefly through his efforts
to reconcile Dissenters with the Established Church. Though
professedly anxious for religious union, he was a stanch adherent
to Episcopacy, and wrote in its defence against both Presbyterian-
ism and Romanism. His literary career extends through nearly
sixty years. His first work consisted of three books of ' Satires,'
published in 1597, and other three published the following year
performances which are praised even by such an authority as Pope.
In 1608-11 he published his 'Epistles.' 1 His best-known prose
works are his ' Contemplations ' on Scripture, often quoted in
popular commentaries, and his ' Occasional Meditations,' one of
his latest productions. Both as a writer and as a preacher his
reputation stands high. With less scholarship and wit than An-
drewes, and less original power than Donne or Taylor, he writes
with great fluency and energy, and with much better taste than
any of these writers. Some have called him the best preachei
of that century no small honour among such giants ; and un-
doubtedly, for pulpit oratory, his strong feelings and fluent ex
pression, guided by superior taste, would be more effective thai*
the undisciplined profusion and originality of his great rivals.
Certainly, though he had not the genius of Donne or Taylor, he is
a man of great mark in the history of our literature. The variety
as well as the power of his writings challenges attention. Over
and above his voluminous works connected with religion, he claims
to be the first English Satirist, the first English writer of Epistles^
1 These Epistles are sometimes said to be the first collection of " letters " in
the English language. Such a statement involves a slight confusion of names.
Hall's Epistles are not " letters " at all in the sense of correspondence on pass-
ing events, but are really moral and religious discussions in the epistolary form.
To prevent confusion, they had better be allowed to keep their title of ' Epistles.'
B
208 FROM 1610 TO 1640.
and his ' Mundus Alter et Idem ' (Another World yet the Same) ia
said (though that is disputed) to have furnished Swift with the
idea of ' Gulliver's Travels.' l
The character and opinions of the " immortal Chillingwortb,"
1602-1644, attract interest ; his style is as finished, clear, and
vigorous as any that was written in his day ; and he argues with
great force. He was a distinguished student at Oxford, a versatile
scholar, eminent both in mathematics and in poetry, and noted for
the confident independence of his views, and fearlessness in assert-
ing and acting up to them. His patron was Laud, and it needed
no little policy to keep so erratic and independent a genius in the
orthodox track. He was first gained over by the Roman Catholics ;
and when regained, he refused to sign the Church formulas, con-
senting only when it was urged that they were merely bonds of
peace and union, .and that subscription did not imply belief of the
whole At the siege of Gloucester, he showed his versatility by
proposing certain siege engines on a Roman model. Before the
King at Oxford, he boldly attacked the vices of the Cavaliers.
His chief work is ' The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Sal-
vation,' &c., 1637. It is a remarkably bold and liberal book. He is
not tied down to his own Church ; by the " religion of Protestants "
he understands neither "the doctrine of Luther, or Calvin, or
Melanchthon ; nor the Confession of Augusta, or Geneva ; nor the
Catechism of Heidelberg, nor the Articles of the Church of Eng-
land no, nor the harmony of Protestant Confessions," but " the
Bible, and THE BIBLE ONLY." His work is undoubtedly the germ
of Taylor's ' Liberty of Prophesying,' published ten years later ;
and it breathes a still bolder and wider spirit of tolerance :
" I see plainly, and with mine own eyes, that there are Popes against
Popes, councils against councils, some fathers against others, the same
fathers against themselves, a consent of fathers of one age against a consent
of fathers of another age, the Church of one age against the Church of
another age. ... In a word, there is no sufficient certainty but of
Scripture only for any considering man to build upon. . . . Projx>se
me anything out of this Book, and require whether I believe or no, and
seem it never so incomprehensible to human reason, I will subscribe it
with hand and heart, as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than
this. God hath said so, therefore it is true. In other things I will take
no man's liberty of judgment from him ; neither shall any man take mine
from me. 1 will think no man the worse man nor the worse Christian :
I will love no man the less for differing in opinion from me. . . .
I am fully assured that God does not, and therefore that men ought not
to require any more of any man than this, to believe the Scripture to be
1 Like other writers of the time, he has his pedantic nickname. Sir Henry
Wotton called him the English Seneca, probably because he wrote Satires,
Epistles, and Moral Essays. Fuller says " He was commonly called our
English Seueca, for the pureness, plainness, and fulness of his style ; not ill at
controversies, more happy at comments, very good in characters, best of alJ in
meditations.
HISTORY. 259
God's Word, to endeavour to find the true sense of it, and to live according
to it."
The " ever-memorable John Hales," 1584-1656, was before even
Chillingworth in advocating tolerance. In his tract on " Schism
and Schismatics," published in 1628, he boldly asserted that
" Church authority is none." The chief public incident in his
life was his attendance at the Synod of Dort, 1618-19; his letters
written at the time contain perhaps the best account of its pro-
ceedings. He wrote little : some of his sermons and tracts were
collected into a volume in 1659, after his death. He was a little
man with "a most ingenuous countenance, sanguine, cheerful, and
full of air" He had a high reputation for learning, wit, and
courteous manner. His style is simple and felicitous. '
HISTORY.
This period very nearly saw the end of the last of the Chron-
iclers, Sir Richard Baker, 1568-1645, whose work, ' A Chronicle
of the Kings of England, from the Time of the Romans' Gov-
ernment unto the Death of King James,' was published in 1641.
Baker's name, though not his fame, has been kept alive by his
connection with Sir Roger de Coverley in the ' Spectator ' :
Addison, ridiculing the simple ignorance of the Tory squires in
the person of Sir Roger, makes him quote Sir Richard Baker as
a great authority. Poor Sir Richard is visited quite as bitterly
as his rustic admirer :
"The glorious names of Henry the Fifth and Queen Elizabeth gave the
Knight great opportunities of shining, and of doing justice to Sir Richard
Baker, who, as our Knight observed with some surprise, had a great 'many
kings in him whose monuments he had not seen in the Abbey. "
Baker's popularity with country gentlemen was probably due
to his style, which is praised by such an authority as Sir Henry
Wotton " full of sweet raptures and researching conceits, nothing
borrowed, nothing vulgar, and yet all glowing with a certain equal
facility."
Two antiquaries survived from the illustrious knot of King
James's reign through the whole of this generation and far into
the next James Usher or Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh,
1581-1656, and John Selden, lawyer and politician, Keeper of
the Records in the Tower, 1584-1654, were intimate with Camden,
Spelman, and Cotton. Both were men of some fortune : Usher
inherited a good estate, but retained only a competency, resigning
the rest to his brother ; and Selden, having a lucrative practice as
a consulting lawyer and a conveyancer, possessed, as Fuller said,
" a number of coins of the Roman Emperors, and a good many
more of the later English Kings." Their principal antiquarian
260 FROM 1610 TO 1640.
works are in Latin. Usher is an authority in chronological
matters: his ' Annales ' (1650-54) settles the Chronology of
Ancient History from the Creation to the Dispersion of the
Jews. He wrote also voluminously on Church Antiquities.
Further, he was a royalist, and wrote a denunciation of armed
resistance to the King; this was not published till after his
death. Sermons and Letters were also published posthumously.
Selden was an antiquary of more varied accomplishments,
writing on the administration of Britain, international law, the
legal antiquities of the Jews, the gods of Syria, the Arundel
Marbles, old English Ballads, &c. In politics, both of State
and of Church, he was opposed to Usher ; his legal learning
and skill are said to have been of service in the protestation
against James, and in the Petition of Right against Charles.
A cautious man, he held back from public business when hia
party went to an extreme. Selden's learning, prudence, and
polite affable manner, made him perhaps the most generally
respected man of his time respected alike by Royalist and by
Puritan. As a writer of English, he is known by his ' History
of Tithes' (1618), which otl'ended the clergy by denying their
divine right to such revenue ; but chiefly by his ' Table-Talk,'
published after his death. The style of his writings is harsh,
obscure, and antiquated ; in conversation he seems to have been
more felicitous, dealing in pointed sententious aphorisms and
witty turns. The ' Table-Talk ' is full of worldly wisdom and
sarcasms against clerical bigotry.
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 1581-1648, a high-minded diplo-
matist, known in philosophy as the author of a Latin deistical
treatise, ' De Veritate,' wrote a history of the Life and Reign
of King Henry V1IL Those that differ from Lord Herbert most
widely, join in admiring the dignity and earnestness of his char-
acter. His history may be put side by side with Lord Bacon's
' History of Henry VII.,' as one of the best historical works
published before 1660. His style is not so clear, flowing, and
pointed as Bacon's, but the idiom is purer. His sagacity in the
explanation of affairs is no less remarkable, and he is at greater
pains to make sure of the facts.
MISCELLANEOUS.
"Rare" Ben Jonson (1574-1637), wrote a prose work entitled
'Timber; or, Discoveries made on Man and Matter' a series
of random jottings on various subjects, containing some very
sensible literary criticism. He does not affect the abrupt dis-
continuous style of Bacon's Essays ; he writes rather in a free
and easy conversational style. The following are specimens of
his literary notes :
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 261
" And as it is fit to read the best authors to youth first, so let them be of
the opeuest and clearest. As Livy before Sallust, Sidney before Donne :
and beware of letting them taste Gower or Chaucer at first, lest falling too
much in love with antiquity, and not apprehending the weight, they grow
rough and barren in language only."
" Periods are beautiful when they are not too long : for so they have their
strength too, as in a pike or javelin."
The following is partly an anticipation of Carlyle's metaphor
about a plethoric style :
"We say it is a fleshy style when there is much periphrasis and circuit
of words : and when with more than enough, it grows fat and corpulent. It
hath blood and juice when the words are proper and apt, their sound sweet,
and the phrase neat and packed."
His criticism of Shakspeare is often quoted, almost always
without the qualification, and too often as an evidence of Ben's
jealousy :
41 1 remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shak-
speare, that, in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a
line. My answer has always been, Would he had blotted out a thousand.
Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but
for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend
by, wherein he most faulted ; and to justify mine own candour : for I
loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry, as much
as any."
In the * Reliquiae Wottonianae,' the remains of Sir Henry
Wotton (1568-1639), a wit of more polish than Overbury,
King James's favourite diplomatist, and author of the definition
of an ambassador as " an honest man sent to lie abroad for the
good of his country " we find a weighty balance of sentence
almost as finished as Johnson's. The following is a sample :
" Sometimes the possibility of preferment prevailing with the credulous,
expectation of less expense with the covetous, opinion of ease with the
fond, and assurance of remoteness with the unkind parents, Lave moved
them, without discretion, to engage their children in adventures of learn-
ing, by whose return they have received but small contentment : but they
who are deceived in their first designs deserve less to be condemned, as
such who, after sufficient trial, persist in their wilfulness are noway to be
pitied. "
The use of the abstract noun makes the resemblance to the
Johnsonian structure all the more complete. Here is another
specimen :
"The fashion of commending our friends' abilities before they come to
trial sometimes takes good effect with the common sort, who, building their
belief on authority, strive to follow the conceit of their betters ; but usually,
amongst men of independent judgments, this bespeaking of opinion breeds
a purpose of stricter examination, and if the report be answered, procures
only a bare acknowledgment, whereas," &c.
262 FROM 1610 TO 1640.
Among the miscellaneous writers of the period may be men-
tioned two travellers : George Sandys (1577-1643), son of Arch-
bishop Sandys, translator of Ovid, and author of a book of
'Travels in the East' (1615); and William Lithgow (d. 1640), a
Scotsman, who, during the reign of James, spent nineteen years
in walking through " the most famous kingdoms in Europe, Asia,
and Africa." Sandys was an accomplished traveller, with a con-
stant eye to literary effect ; his ' Travels ' went through many
editions. Lithgow seems to have walked more for adventure,
and for the pleasure of boasting how many places he had visited,
and how many miles he had walked on foot.
We must also mention the author of the 'Anatomy of Melan-
choly,' the recluse student of Christ Church, Oxford, Robert Bur-
ton (1576-1640). A grave dyspeptic man, and a great reader
" confusedly tumbling over divers authors in our libraries, with
small profit for want of art, order, memory, judgment " he was
eccentric and original, and picked out of various authors an enor-
mous mass of quotations suiting his peculiar moods. With an
immense parade of divisions and subdivisions, there is no method
in his book ; the heading of a section is little clue to its contents.
His enumeration of the acts characteristic of different forms of
melancholy is wide enough to include every son of Adam in the
category of gloom. The leading features of his style, if style it
may be called, are profuse quotation several authorities being
quoted for the most trivial remark and long strings of particular
words by way of exhausting a general subject, poured out in suc-
cessive sentences without break. Part of his account of himself
may be quoted as a sample :
"I am not poor, I am not rich ; nihil , nihil deeat, I have nothing, I
want nothing : all my treasure is in Minerva's tower. Greater preferment
as I could never get, so am 1 not in debt for it, I have a competence (laits
Deo) from my noble and munificent patrons, though I live still a collegia! e
student, as Democritus in his garden, and lead a monastic life, ipse mild
theatrum, sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world, Et tnn-
quam in specula positus (as he said) in some high place above you all, like
Stoictis Sapiens, omnia ssecula, prseterita prsesentiaque videns, uno vciut
intuitu. ... A mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures,
and how they act their parts, which methinks are diversely presented unto
me as from a common theatre or scene. I hear new news every day, and
those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders,
massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken,
cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, &c., daily mus-
ters and preparations and suchlike, which these tempestuous times afford,
battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks," &e.
The enumeration would stretch on through one of our pages.
To the modern writer Burton is of use only as a quarry, and to
this purpose he has been turned by many. Sterne is not the only
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 263
writer that has used the ' Anatomy of Melancholy ' as raw material.
The passage we have quoted is probably the germ of Steele and
Addison's ' Spectator.'
Nathaniel Butter, bookseller and pamphleteer, is a personage
of some importance, as being the father of newspapers. It used
to be supposed that the ' English Mercury' of 1588 was the first
of English printed newspapers, but it is proved to have been a
forgery of later date. During the reign of Elizabeth annual sum-
maries of the chief events upon the Continent were printed under
the title of ' Gallo-Belgici.' The proceedings of Continental powers
were always interesting, and letters from friends in London con-
taining the latest news were eagerly passed from hand to hand.
When the Thirty Years' War broke out, this interest may be sup-
posed to have greatly increased ; and express news-letters, written
by booksellers and others to their customers in the provinces, were
much in request. These occasional productions may sometimes
have been printed. Butter is the first known author of a regular
series of such printed papers of news; in 1622 he began the
' Weekly News,' which he " purposed to continue weekly by God's
assistance, from the best and most certain intelligence." "Who-
soever," he said, " will be cunning in the places and persons of
Germany, and understand her wars, let him not despise my Goran-
toes." His " corantoes," or courants, however, were despised, and
that intensely, by the wits of the period. There may have been
no guile in Nathaniel himself, but his imitators and rivals, who
soon became numerous, seem to have published letters from " an
eminent Jew merchant in Germany," and other correspondents of
doubtful authenticity. And Ben Jonson did not scruple to declare
that their pamphlets of news were " made all at home, and no
syllable of truth in them." The unfortunate name of Butter made
him an inviting butt Jonson called him the "butter-box," de-
scribed his news as " rank Irish butter " ; and Fletcher made one
of his characters say that " the spirit of Butter shall look as if
butter would not melt in his mouth." The hostility of the stage
may have been partly roused by the dramatic criticisms of these
embryonic journalists. Despite his name, Butter seems to have
been an industrious and veracious man, and not by any means the
fantastic liar that has been represented by the dramatists. 1
See Cornhill Magazine, July 1868.
CHAPTER IV.
FROM 1640 TO 1670.
THOMAS FTJLIiEB,
1608 1661.
IK the exciting days of the first Charles and of the Common-
wealth, the life even of a clergyman was subject to danger and
adventure, if he happened to be a partisan. Fuller, the son of
the Rector of All Winkle, in Northamptonshire, bred up in the
usual course of school and college education, and appointed pre-
bend of Salisbury and vicar of Broad Windsor at the age of twenty-
three, spent the first thirty-three years of his life in the greatest
imaginable freedom from care. Up to 1640 he was unmolested in
his quiet existence varying his parish duties with the literary
plans that served to fill his hours of leisure. But by 1640 the
political atmosphere became troubled ; and Fuller was called from
his retreat to uphold in the pulpits of the metropolis the duty of
obedience to the King. He spent a year with the royal forces in
the character of chaplain to Lord Hopton. Growing weary of this
irregular life, in 1644 he withdrew to Exeter, and busied himself
with his compositions. On the capitulation of Exeter, he removed
to London. In 1655 he received from the Protector special per-
mission to preach. He lived to see the Restoration, but did not
long enjoy the reward given to his loyalty, dying on the I5th of
August 1 66 1.
His ' Holy War,' the first of his works, was written in the quiet
of the parsonage at Broad Windsor. His other works l he com-
1 The list of his principal works is as follow : ' History of the Holy War,'
1640; 'Tl ie Holy State,' 1642 ; 'Good Thought* in Had Times," 1644-45 ; 'The
Profane Mute,' 1648 ; 'Good Thoughts ill Worse Times,' 1649; 'A Pi.sgtli Sight
THOMAS FULLER. 265
posed when his life was more unsettled ; though during the excite-
ment of the Civil War his energies were so far from being absorbed
in the struggle, that he was quietly occupied in collecting materials
for his ' Worthies,' and in laying up a heterogeneous store of
anecdotes.
In person 1 Fuller seems to have been rather over the middle
height, full-bodied, with light curling hair, florid complexion, and
clear blue eyes. He had an erect easy carriage, as was natural in
a man of confident good spirits. He was careless in his dress.
He had an astonishing memory. The anecdotes of his powers
are probably, like all anecdotes of the kind, not a little over-
coloured ; still they show what an impression he made on those
that knew him. " It is said that he could repeat five hundred
strange words after twice hearing, and could make use of a sermon
verbatim if he once heard it He undertook once, in passing to
and fro from Temple Bar to the furthest point of Cheapside, to tell
at his return every sign as it stood in order on both sides of the
way, repeating them either backwards or forwards ; and he did it
exactly." His quickness in discovering resemblance was no less
remarkable. This power, however, was not exercised on subjects
that test intellectual strength ; he did not strain his intellect like
a great rhetorician to find telling arguments, nor like a great poet
to find harmonious images. He wandered at will over the great
stores accumulated by his memory, and amused himself in picking
out incongruities, playing upon names, making odd comparisons,
and suchlike ingenious freaks.
The chief destination of his scholarship is to tickle the sense of
the ludicrous ; no writer in our literature, except perhaps Burton,
applies so much scholarship to so singular a purpose. "Wit,"
Coleridge said, "was the stuff and substance of Fuller's intellect."
His outward appearance was, to use a phrase of his own, " hung
out as a sign " of his disposition ; the cheerful, careless, confident
nature of the man was legible in his countenance. Though he
lived in times of fierce excitement, and was violently thrust out
from his quiet home by the Puritans, and not permitted to take
even his books with him, yet he shows no stronger feeling towards
the triumphant party than sly humorous ridicule of individual
sectaries. His attachment to his friends was equally moderate ;
he probably had a bias for the Church of England, but he does
of Palestine,' 1650; 'Abel Redivivus* (a Martyrology), 1651 ; 'Church History
of Britain,' 1656 ; ' Mixed Contemplations in Better Times,' 1660 ; ' Worthies of
England' (posthumous), 1662. Fuller may be said to have been the first " writer
of books " by profession. He acknowledges that one of his objects in writing
was " to get some honest profit to himself."
1 It is difficult to make out the personal appearance of some eminent English
divines. Even their good looks are overrated by one party and underrated by
another.
266 FKOM 1640 TO 1670.
not uphold the fame of her champions with anything approaching
jealous impatience of contradiction. His eye seems to have been
ever open to the comic aspects both of friend and of foe. He
made a habit of looking at the world through a humorous me-
dium. He conveys abundance of solid information, but his infor-
mation has the oddest possible frame of witty nonsense.
Confident and careless careless in the sense of rising humor-
ously superior to care Fuller was not an idle man, disposed, like
one of Charles Lamb's genial borrowing fellows, to live upon the
generosity of his friends. He took no earnest part in the fierce
contest of his times, but the list of his works is ample proof of his
capacity for honest industry. He puts comical wrappages about
his information, but it is unimpeachably substantial, and could not
have been procured without steady application.
He was born a Churchman, and continued a Churchman ; yet so
moderate were his sentiments, that he was suspected of a leaning
to Puritanism. Before the outbreak of the Civil War he preached
in London, and offended the party of the Parliament by advising
submission to royal authority. When the rupture came, he fled to
the king at Oxford, and there offended the royalists by advising
conciliation.
ELEMENTS OF STYLE,
Vocabulary. A good many archaisms occur in Fuller, though
upon the whole he writes with a more modern phrase than any
clergyman and scholar of the time. In his easy manner he would
probably use the first word that came to hand. We meet with
such obsolete words as " authenticalness," " cowardness " (coward-
liness), " diurnal " (journal), " extempory " (extemporary), " dunci-
cal" (stupid), "jocularly" (jocular), "farced" (stu/ed), "misoclere"
(hater of the clergy), " un-understood," " volant " (volatile). Such
of his words as " minutary " (analogous to momentary), and " order-
able," in the sense of submissive to orders, might with advantage
have passed into general use.
In Fuller's time English had not yet settled down to the present
form of inflections. He is not at all uniform in his mode of in-
flecting sometimes he uses the modern forms, sometimes there
stray across his page such forms as " took " for taken, " bleeded "
(bled), " understanden," " understanded " (understood), " strick,"
" stroke," " strook " (struck), " sprongen " (sprung), " sungen "
(sung). Sometimes he uses " his " instead of the possessive affix,
" King James his reign." On one occasion he gives whole a com-
parative " wholler."
He mingled so much with the world, holding intercourse with
all classes, and being a good listener to every form of garrulity,
THOMAS FULLER. 267
that he uses a larger admixture of Saxon than his more recluse
contemporaries. Besides, as we shall see, the use of very homely
words is one of his instruments of ridicule.
Sentences. His sentences are not involved and intricate; In
this respect he is much superior to Hooker, Taylor, or any theo-
logical writer of his time. The following, in his Church History,
on the plan taken by James L to reduce the power of the English
nobility, is rather an exception ; he has comparatively few so loose
and involved as this :
" But following the counsel of his English secretary there present, he
soon found a way to abate the formidable greatness of the English nobility,
by conferring honour upon many persons ; whereby nobility was spread so
broad, that it became very thin, which much lessened the ancient esteem
thereof."
It must be allowed, however, that in a full statement, or in an
argument pursued at any length, he is not so much more skilled
in avoiding intricacies than his contemporaries. He is orderly
chiefly because he is brief usually trying to despatch a statement
of fact or an argument as succinctly as possible. He is seldom
drawn into complicated statements by a desire of saying too much.
That he studied expressly to avoid the cumbrous effect of for-
mally indicating connection and dependence, may be inferred from
his Prefaces, where he is put upon his mettle, and writes with
more care. Thus
" Seamen observe, that the water is the more troubled the nearer they
draw on to the land, because broken by repercussion from the shore. I am
sensible of the same danger, the nearer I approach our times, and the end of
this History. "
Most writers before the Restoration would have thrown these
two sentences into one.
He is a great master of short pointed sentences. His pages are
strewn with pithy sayings, that stick in the mind like proverbs.
Almost every paragraph is preceded by a short sentence giving the
pith of the whole. Thus in his Essay on Tombs, he has the follow-
ing aphorisms : " Tombs are the clothes of the dead. A grave is
but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered."
" Tombs ought in some sort to be proportioned, not to the wealth,
but deserts of the party interred." " The shortest, plainest, and
truest epitaphs are the best." " To want a grave is the cruelty
of the living, not the misery of the dead." " A good memory is
the best monument."
Paragraphs. He often digresses to tell an anecdote, but is sen-
sible of his digression. Sometimes he apologises, and tries to
make out a connection ; at other times he throws himself on the
reader's forbearance. Thus " Reader, whether smiling or frown-
ing, forgive the digression."
2fi8 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
But there is this to be said for Fuller's digressions, they never
confuse. He lightens his subject by numerous paragraph breaks,
made with considerable though not perfect accuracy, and which
is his main preventive of confusion with every considerable
change of subject, he gives a summary italic heading, and makes a
fresh start
Figures of Speech, His style is thickly interspersed with in-
genious similitudes. " The chief diseases of the fancy," he says
himself, "are either that it is too wild and high-soaring, or else
too low and grovelling, or else too desultory and over-voluble."
The last is his own " disease." Ingenious as is the play of his
fancy, it is much more luxuriant than would be tolerated now, and
did not escape censure even in his own day.
His figures, like Bacon's, are taken largely from his own obser-
vations of common life only, unlike Bacon's, they are nearly all,
in accordance with the author's ruling tendency, calculated to
make the reader laugh or smile. So far from exalting the object
they are applied to, their purpose is to set it in a whimsical light ;
the most serious subjects are set off with odd similitudes, and the
reader is tempted to laugh where propriety requires him to be
grave. The following are one or two examples. Of the good
bishop, he says :
"He is careful and happy in suppressing of heresies and schisms. He
distinguisheth of schismatics as physicians do of leprous people : some are
infectious, others not ; some are active to seduce others, others quietly enjoy
their opinions in their own consciences. . . . To use force before people
are fairly taught the truth, is to knock a nail into a board without wimbling
a hole lor it, which then either not enters, or turns crooked, or splits the
wood it pierceth."
Again
' ' Let us be careful to provide rest for our souls, and our bodies will pro-
ride rest for themselves. And let us not be herein like unto gentlewomen,
who care not to keep the inside of the orange, but candy and preserve only
the outside. "
And, condemning the use of high-flown language with inferior
matter, he says
'Some men's speeches are like the high mountains in Ireland, having a
dirty bog in the top of them. "
He advises the young writer to take advice of a faithful
friend :
" When thou pennest an oration, let him have the power of the ' Indez
Expurgatorius ' to expunge what he pleaseth ; and do not thou, like a fond
mother, cry if the child of thy brain be corrected for playing the war ton."
Fuller himself " plays the wanton " in similitudes so often that
we see a touch of the ludicrous in nearly every comparison that he
THOMAS FULLER. 269
makes, just as in conversation we are tickled by every word that
falls from an acknowledged wit.
A great many of his comparisons are historical parallels, or
ingenious figurative applications of historical facts. The following
is an instance. Writing of one of his worthies, he says :
" He obtained a plentiful estate, and thereof gave wellnigh three thousand
pounds to Sidney College. Now as it is reported of Ulysses, returning from
his long travel in foreign lands, that all his family had forgot him ; so when
the news of this legacy first arrived at the College, none then extant therein
ever heard of his name (so much may the sponge of forty years blot out in
this kind) ; only the written register of the College faithfully retained his
name therein.
"This his gift was a gift ndeed, purely bestowed on the College, as
loaded with no detrimental conditions, in the acceptance thereof. We read
in the Prophet, ' Thou hast increased the nation, and not multiplied their
joy.' In proportion whereunto, we know it is possible that the comfortable
condition of a College may not be increased, though the number of the
fellows and scholars therein be augmented, superadded branches sucking out
the sap of the root ; whereas the legacy of this worthy knight ponebatur in
lucro, being pure gain and improvement to the College. "
Here we see the same whimsical vein, the same tendency to make
ludicrous comparisons of small things with great, and great things
with small. The following, from his ' Mixt Contemplations,' is a
sample of his elaborate similitudes ; it also illustrates the ludicrous
meanness of comparison that grave divines have pronounced un-
pardonable levity :
" I have observed that children when they first put on new shoes, are very
curious to keep them clean. Scarce will they set their feet on the ground
for fear to dirt the soles of their shoes. Yea, rather they will wipe the
leather clean with their coats ; and yet, perchance, the next day they will
trample with the same shoes in the mire up to the ankles. Alas, children's
play is our earnest ! On that day wherein we receive the sacrament, we are
often over-precise, scrupling to say or do those things which lawfully we
may. But we, who are more than curious that day, are not so much as care-
fulthe next; and too often (what shall I say I) go on in sin up to the ankles:
yea, our sins go over our heads."
While the great majority of Fuller's similitudes have a whimsical
turn, he often employs them to convey sound practical advice.
Thus
"Parents who cross the current of their children's genius (if running in
no vicious channels), tempt them to take worse courses themselves."
QUALITIES OP STYLE.
Simplicity. The drawback to Fuller's simplicity is the vice of
his age the parade of learned terms and unnecessary allusions.
Expressions are quoted with chapter and verse when the quotation
serves no purpose of illustration, and can excite in the reader only
270 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
a pedantic pleasure that he has seen it before, or a whimsical
surprise at seeing brought together two cases that have no material
resemblance. It is, however, but just to say that he is much less
pedantic than Taylor or Browne, and immeasurably less so than
Burton. Only now and then do we come across such a passage as
occurs in the following Dedication to Douse Fuller :
" I cannot say certainly of you, as Naomi did of Boaz, * He is near of kin
unto us,' Ruth ii. 20 ; having no assurance, though great probability, of
alliance unto you. However, sir, if you shall be pleased in courtesy to
account me your kinsman, I will endeavour that (as it will be an honour to
me) it may be to you no disgrace."
Or such as the following, where the homeliest Saxon rubs shoulders
with canonical Latin :
"First, soundly infix in thy mind what thou desirest to remember. What,
wonder is it if agitation of business jog that out of thy head which was there
tacked rather than fastened ? whereas those notions which get in by videnta
possessio, will abide there till ejectio firma, sickness, or extreme age, dispos-
sess them. It is best knocking in the nail over-night, and clinching it in
the next morning."
Perspicuity. One thing that helps largely to make Fuller's
style so remarkably easy reading is his perspicuous arrangement
" Method," he says himself, " is the mother of memory." In all
his works he follows a simple plan : there is consequently no con-
fusion, no perplexity ; we are not irritated by searching for a fact,
and finding it out of its proper connection ; we can find what we
want in a moment. Take, for instance, his ' Worthies.' He there
gives an account of the notabilities of England county by county,
proceeding in each county after a fixed order, which he explains at
the beginning of the book. How highly he valued the principle
of order appears in his anxiety to show how well he had observed
it. In an introductory chapter designed to anticipate objections to
the " style and matter of the author," divided into heads and num-
bered, as is his manner with every subject, he supposes " Exception
1 6 " to be as follows :
" You lay down certain rules for the better regulating your work, and
directing the reader, promising to confine yourself to the observation thereof,
and break them often yourself. For instance, you restrain the topic of
lawyers to capital judges and writers of the law ; yet under that head insert
Judge Paston and others, who were only puny judges in their respective
courts. . . . Why did you break such rules, when knowing you made
them ? Why did yon make such rules, when minding to break them ? "
To this he returns the following
"Answer. 1 never intended to tie myself up so close, without reserving
lawful liberty to myself upon just oo.-asion. . . . I resolved to keep the
key in my own hamls, to enlarge myself when I apprehended a just cause
thereof. However, I have iiot made use of this key to recede from my first
THOMAS FULLER. 271
limitations, save where I crave leave of and render a reason to the reader ;
such anomalous persons being men of high merit, under those heads where
they are inserted."
In giving an account of arguments, he states the two sides separ-
ately, often printing them in parallel columns. The reasonings of
opposite parties in the Church are exhibited on this handy method.
80 when he argues himself, he analyses the positions of his adver-
sary, and replies to them one by one, numbering each position, and
labelling the argument and the answer with an italic heading to
prevent every possibility of confusion, and to let the reader know
where he is at a glance.
The ' Holy State ' and the c Profane State ' are models of simple
arrangement. In the ' Holy State ' he describes a number of good
characters, first an ideal unfolded in a number of maxims, then an
example to correspond. Thus, for " the good servant " he lays
down seven maxims "(i) He doth not dispute his master's will,
but doth it ; " " (2) He loves to go about his business with cheer-
fulness ; " " (3) He despatches his business with quickness and ex-
pedition," and so on. This is followed up by the life of Eliezer,
the steward of Abraham's household. The ' Profane State' is the
counterpart of the ' Holy State,' dealing with bad characters, the
Harlot, the Heretic, the Traitor, &c. One of the books of the
' Holy State ' deals with virtues and vices in the abstract, plenti-
fully illustrated and embellished with anecdotes and fancies.
Strength Under this head little need be said of Fuller. His
style has the vigour of brief statement and well-chosen words ; but
he never attempts to soar, and when he does, is soon tempted back
to his homely level by some oddity of comparison.
Brevity is a very conspicuous feature in his style. In none of
Fuller's works could we read three sentences on end without being
reminded of the saying that "Brevity is the soul of wit."
Pathos, His genius was more inclined to pathos than to
strength : but his expression of tenderness is seldom direct ; it is
to be found in the disguise of humour, lurking in some droll con-
ceit. There is a quaint kindliness in his conclusion of the ' Life
of Philemon Holland,' the translator of Camden's 'Britannia.'
" This venerable translator was translated to heaven in the year
16 ."
But how little he could resist the attraction of comical allusions,
even in the most pitiful circumstances, is seen in his account of an
accident that happened to a Catholic congregation :
"The sermon began to incline to the middle, the day to the end thereof;
when on a sudden the floor fell down whereon they were assembled. It gave
no charitable warning groan beforehand, but cracked, 'broke, and fell, all in
an instant Many were killed, more bruised, all frighted. Sad sight, to
behold the flesh and blood of different persons mingled together, aud the
272 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
brains of one on the head of another ! One lacked a leg ; another an arm ;
a third whole and entire, wanting nothing but breath, stifled in the rains.""
As we noted in the case of Macaulay, his interest in unimport-
ant facts overbears his interest in the tragic aspects of a scene.
His account of the death of Charles is very matter-of-fact, and
shows the antiquary predominating over the man. True, one or
two of the facts are suggestive. Even the conclusion, the most
dryasdust of the whole, will set some on the track of a reflection
or a moral :
" On the Wednesday se'nnight after, (February 7th), his corpse, em-
balmed and coffined in lead, was delivered to the care of two of his
servants, to be buried in Windsor; the one Anthony Mildmay, who for-
merly had been his sewer, as I take it ; the other John Joyner, bred first
in his Majesty's kitchen, afterwards a parliament-captain, since by them
deputed (when the Scots surrendered his person) cook to his Majesty.
This night they brought the corpse to Windsor, and digged a grave for it in
St George r s Chapel, on the south side of the communion-table."
But certainly there is no superfluous sentiment on the part of the
author. It might, indeed, have been dangerous to moralise under
the circumstances ; we could, however, have dispensed with the
gossip about his Majesty's cook.
Wit and Humour. The chief part of our author's reputation is
based on his wit A pleasant vein runs through everything he
wrote, no matter what the subject, dignified or undignified, grave
or gay. His very sermons are full of the same quaint humour.
By some of his contemporaries, as we have said, he was frowned
upon for treating solemn things in a tone of levity ; but there is
no better evidence of the power of wit to disarm resentment than
the fact remarked by his recent editor, that Fuller " was permitted
to give utterance to some strong sentiments, which less favoured
individuals durst scarcely own to have found a lodgment within
their breasts."
His wit is genial and good-natured ; sometimes he burlesques
the conduct of a sectary with considerable rudeness ; but in general
his laugh is kindly.
Nearly all Barrow's varieties of wit might be illustrated copi-
ously from Fuller ; indeed, he may have written his remarks on
wit with Fuller's pages open before him. We have seen examples
of the " odd similitude " and the " pat allusion to a known story."
The "seasonable application of sayings," and the "forging of
apposite tales," are of the same kind, and need not be farther
illustrated. A large part of the wit consists in " playing in words
and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense
or the affinity of their sound." Laud is "a man of low stature,
but of high parts ; " I)r Field is " that learned divine whoso
memory smelleth like a Field the Lord hath blessed ; " Nicholas
THOMAS FULLER. 273
Sanders, being an enemy of tlie Church, is "more truly Slanders."
Fuller never misses an opportunity of punning. Sometimes the
puns are very elaborate, as in the following. Take first the
seventh item in the character of the good widow :
"If she speaks little good of him" (her dead husband) "she speaks but
little of him. So handsomely folding up her discourse, that his virtues are
shown outwards, and his vices wrajit up in silence ; as counting it barbarism
to throw dirt on his memory who hath moulds cast on his body."
Take next an item in the character of the good master :
" The wages he contracts for he duly and truly pays to his servants. The
same word in the Greek, Us, signifies ' rust ' and ' poison ' ; and some
strong poison is made of the rust of metals ; but none more venomous tlism
the rust of money in the rich man's purse unjustly detained from the
labourer, which will poison and infect his whole estate."
He is fond of constructing opportunities for droll rejoinders.
In the introductory chapters to his ' Worthies,' already mentioned,
he imagines and deals as follows with
" Exception 9. ' Haste makes waste.' You have huddled your book too
soon to the press, for a subject of such a nature. . . .
-K 'onumque preinatur in annum.
" Eight years digest what you have rudely hinted,
And in the ninth year let the same be printed.
"Answer. That ninth year might happen eight years after my death,
&c.
The following is an unexpectedly conclusive evidence. By
the beginning one is prepared only for some slight doubt of the
suspicion :
"The suspicion of making it" (something in the way of Church con-
troversy) " fell on Gregory Martin : one probable enough for such a prank
(as being Divinity Professor at Rheim.s) did not his epitaph there ensure me
he was dead and buried two years before."
In the following he whimsically imagines, and objects to a
strictness of literal interpretation that few would think of con-
tending for :
" St Paul saith, ' Let not the sun go down on your wrath,' to carry news
to the antipodes in another world of thy revengeful nature. Yet let us
take the apostle's meaning rather than his words, with all possible speed to
dispose our passions ; not understanding him so literally that we may take
leave to be angry till sunset ; then mi^ht our wrath lengthen with the days,
nd men in Greenland, where day lasts above a quarter of a year, have
plentiful scope of revenge."
Wit is not the only comical seasoning of Fuller's amusing pro-
ductions. Throughout his ' Church History ' and his ' Worthies,'
we are kept in a perpetual suiiie by the purposely undignified
familiarity of his language. Sometimes this becomes open
s
274 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
burlesque, as in his account of Brown, the founder of the
" Brownists " :
" Some years after Brown went over into Zealand, to purchase himself
more reputation from foreign parts. For a smack of travel gives a high
taste to strange opinions, making them better relish to the licorish lovers
of novelty. Home he returns with a full cry against the Church of England,
as, having so much of Koine, she had nothing of Christ in her discipline.
Norfolk was the first place whereon Brown (new-flown home out of the Low
Countries) perched himself, and therein," &c.
As another instance of this, note how he speaks of the Round
Table legends :
" As for his Round Table, with his knights about it, the tale whereof hath
trundled so smoothly along for many ages, it never met with much belief
among the judicious."
The strict method of his works, so far from being a shackle to
his wit, furnishes him with additional opportunities for quaint
turns. Thus he concludes his account of Brown by saying :
"Thus to make our story of the troublesome man the more entire, we
have trespassed on the two following years, yet without discomposing our
chronology in the margin."
Again, writing of Bishop Barnes and Bernard Gil pin, he says :
"Seeing they were loving in their lives, in my book their memories
shall not be divided, though I confess the latter died some three years
before."
No other quality of Fuller's style calls for special illustration.
Brevity, point, simplicity, and wit, are his conspicuous character-
istics. In the examples quoted, the reader will have noticed that
he is fond of alliteration, an almost unconscious habit with nearly
every writer of point. Taste is not a merit of Fuller's ; he is an
eccentric writer, setting good taste at defiance in the pursuit of
his favourite effect. An historian and an antiquary in name, he
is too easy and superficial to rank high in that species of composi-
tion : he has in his favour simplicity of language, and almost
unique attention to arrangement; but the subject-matter of his
works is only a field for the exercise of his extraordinary memory
and his irrepressible wit.
JEREMY TAYLOR, 1613-1667.
A man of genius, the most distinguished prose writer of this
period. He has been called " the Shakspeare of English prose,"
ami "the Chrysostom of the English Pulpit": and the designa-
tions are less fanciful than such designations often are.
Of his private life few particulars uro known ; he id said to
JEREMY TAYLOR. 275
have written an autobiography, but it has perished. Even the
main dates in his public career have been traced with some
difficulty. We know in general that he suffered in the temporary
eclipse of the Episcopalian party, and Chat he lived to be rewarded
at the Restoration.
He was born in Cambridge, of humble parentage ; and educated
there at the Grammar School and at Caius College. When only
twenty years of age, he preached before Archbishop Laud, and his
eloquence and youthful beauty made such an impression that the
prelate at once took him under patronage, placed him at All Souls
in Oxford, procured him a fellowship, and appointed him one of
his own chaplains. In 1637-38, he was presented by the Bishop
of London to the rectory of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire. At the
breaking out of the Civil War, he repaid the favour of his patrons
by a work in defence of Episcopacy ; for this the king made him
D.D., while the Presbyterians, then rapidly gaining strength,
sequestrated his rectory.
About 1643 ne retired to the residence of his mother-in-law in
Wales, but before he had been long there, the tide of war rolling
in that direction, he was taken prisoner by the forces of the Parlia-
ment, and kept for some time in confinement. On his release he
supported himself by keeping a school, and during that time com-
posed his ' Liberty of Prophesying.' Thereafter he found a patron
in the Earl of Carbery, and lived for some years at that nobleman'3
seat, Golden Grove. There he wrote his ' Life of Christ,' and a
work named after the place, 'Golden Grove.' An attack upon the
Puritans in the 'Golden Grove' offended Cromwell; in 1654 he
was apprehended, and during three or four years more than once
suffered imprisonment. In 1658 he obtained from his friends an
alternate lectureship at Lisburne, in the north of Ireland, where
he remained till the Restoration. By Charles IL he was made
Bishop of Down and Connor, and subsequently of Dromore. He
died at Portmore, on the 3d of August 1667.
Most of his works were written during his virtual exile in Wales.
The exceptions were strictly professional works : ' Episcopacy
Asserted,' published in 1642 ; ' Discourse of Confirmation,' in
1663, after his elevation to the bishopric; and 'Dissuasive from
Popery,' in 1664. His 'Liberty of Prophesying,' 'Life of Christ,'
' Holy Living and Holy Dying,' and ' Ductor Dubitantium,' were
all composed during his seclusion, the last work being completed
at Lisburne. His treatise on ' Repentance ' was written between
1654 and 1658, during his imprisonments.
Taylor was a very handsome man, rather above the middle
height, with a dark sparkling eye, and features almost feminine in
their delicacy.
The characteristic of his intellect is luxuriant activity and pro-
276 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
duetiveness rather than accuracy or taste. 1 For one that wrote so
much and was not merely an unproductive dungeon of learning,
his scholarship was enormous : but he does not seem to have veri-
fied his references with much care, and he has been detected iu
some ludicrously bad translations. Comparatively few items of
his learning were allowed to sleep ; all his works, whether techni-
cal, controversial, or practical, are crowded with superfluous quota-
tions and allusions. As an evidence of his intellectual activity,
consider what he wrote during his residence in Wales, the variety
of subjects that he entertained ; compare him in this respect with
the "judicious" Hooker, a more careful scholar, but a much less
active producer. The same characteristic appears in his impas-
sioned flights ; he is, says De Quincey, " restless, fervid, aspiring,
scattering abroad a prodigality of life." He abandons himself
without reserve to the inspiration of the moment, eagerly accumu-
lating circumstances and similitudes, his free flight trammelled by
no punctilious care to frame the particulars into a harmonious
whole. In the filling out of his opulent pictures, he is equally
unimpeded by a scrupulous regard for facts ; in his telling illustra-
tions of the decay of human splendour, he takes upon trust the
most outrageous fables.
With all his scholarship and ingenuity, he had, if we may judge
from his writings, a youthful freshness of sentiment When thrust
from his living by the great Rebellion, he did not acquiesce in
silence, but, trusting probably to his distance from the centre of
power and to the protection of Lord Carbery, he denounced the
new Government as " disgracing the articles of religion, and pol-
luting public assemblies," and stigmatised the new preachers as
"impertinent and ignorant," fruitless "crabstocks." Thus warm
in his expressions of dislike, he was no less warm in his expressions
of affection : with all his learning, a vain, warm-hearted, childlike
man. It seems strange that there should ever have been among
biographers a dispute whether or not he was a woman-hater. Ten-
derness would seem to have been his ruling emotion. " There is
nothing," he says, "can please a man without love." His works
contain many passages of demonstrative affection. He expatiates
with peculiar fondness upon children, and upon the delights of the
i We made a somewhat similar remark about Bacon, and as the two minds are
so different in their general figure, in their appearance as wholes, it may be well
to mention the more important analysed elements of difference. One vast dif-
ference lies in this, that Bacon was more original and constructive : Bacon, as
his chaplain says, " never was a plodder upon books," and had comparatively
little scholarship ; Taylor's scholarship is a standing subject of wonder and ad-
miration. Bacon had very little poetical feeling ; Taylor had all the gifts of a
pcjt except metre. The two men resemble each other in their enormous powers
of intellectual work ; they diifer immeasurably in the quality and direction of
thvt work.
JEREMY TAYLOR. 277
*' sanctuary and refectory " of the domestic circle, " his gardens of
sweetness and chaste refreshment"
In a writer of casuistical morality, profoundly versed in the
interminable dusty volumes of the schoolmen, we should not ex-
?2ct much sensibility to the beauties and grandeurs of nature,
et Taylor shows this sensibility in rich abundance. He was not
a dry, unmoved observer like Bacon. He had a profound suscep-
tibility to the luxuries of the eye. In our illustrations of his style,
we shall quote many evidences of his delighted contemplation of
external life. It probably was the charm derived from this
source that commended his writings so powerfully to the nature-
poets of this century. Not only was he alive to beauties of form
and colour, and to tender associations : he looked with delight
upon the grandeurs of nature, upon the exciting phenomena
of storms and tempests. Rarely indeed do we find such scholar-
ship and subtlety combined with so fresh an interest in the outer
world.
Of gentle disposition and ingratiating manners, he had not the
hardihood required for the stir and bustle of practical life. He
showed none of the political capacity of Whitgift or of Laud. His
eloquence and personal grace made him a favourite : his learning
and his services as a literary champion sanctioned his promotion
to a bishopric. Warm in his expressions of resentment, he had
not the courage of a martyr. When imprisoned for his outburst
against the Puritans, he was not obdurate in his recriminations ;
he did not spend his imprisonment in the refractory occupation of
composing further invectives, but quietly turned to his books, and
wrote his treatise on Repentance.
The most generally celebrated of Taylor's opinions are those
contained in his ' Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying.' It is
an elaborate argument for religious toleration. It does not recom-
mend absolute freedom of opinion ; it makes a stand upon the
Apostles' Creed, and urges that no person subscribing to this
should be denied communion by any Christian sect It even
allows difference of opinion as to the clause regarding Christ's
descent into hell. The argument of the work is not abstract, a
priori : he does not uphold freedom to differ as a " natural right " ;
this idea was of later growth. He reasons from experience ;
pointing out the difficulty of ascertaining the real truth ; dilating
upon, and, after his wont, copiously exemplifying, the fallibility
of all human interpreters of Scripture Popes, Councils, Fathers,
or Writers Ecclesiastical The work is not, as is sometimes stated,
the first direct argument for toleration. It arose naturally at a
time when difference of opinion, prolific of bitter dissensions for
almost a century, had culminated in the distraction of civil war.
278 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
While Taylor deserves and will ever receive all honour for his
spirit of moderation, it would be unjust to Grindall, Hales, Chil-
lingworth, and other tolerant Churchmen of former generations, to
represent him as the first advocate of religious liberality.
His opinions on original sin made greater noise in his own day
than his toleration. He was accused of being Pelagian, and seems
to have held that original sin is " an effect or condition of nature,
but no sin properly," that it cannot be repented of, in the proper
sense of the word repent, and that no person shall be visited with
eternal damnation for original sin only.
His ' Ductor Dubitantium ' (Guide to the Scrupulous) a work
filling two closely-printed large octavo volumes, in Mr Eden's
revision of Heber's edition occupies a middle position between
the casuistry of the schoolmen and the moral philosophy of such
writers as Tucker and Paley. He deals more with the exposition
of general principles than the scholastic casuists, and exhibits a
larger number of cases and a greater subtlety in distinguishing
degrees of guilt than Paley.
ELEMENTS OP STYLE.
Vocabulary. The pedantic bookish element is very conspicuous
in Taylor's language. He coins extensively both from Latin and
from Greek. He uses " deturpated " for deformed, " clancularly "
for secretly, " immorigerous " for disobedient, " intenerate " for
render soft, "paranymph" for lady's-maid. In like manner he
applies words according to their Latin etymology, and contrary to
the growing usage " insolent " in the sense of unusual, " extant
figures " (figures in relief), an " excellent " pain (surpassing, ex-
treme).
He has, besides, some few mannerisms. He goes beyond the
extreme idiomatic licence in the way of forming plurals to abstract
nouns " aversenesses," "dissolutions," "prudencies," "strengths,"
"tolerations." Also, he uses abstract nouns in the same construc-
tion with concrete nouns, and where the construction is unidio-
matic for abstract nouns. This occurs very often, and appears in
several of our quotations. As an example for the present take the
following : " The despised drops were grown into an artificial
river and an intolerable mischief ; " " the rivulet swelling into
rivers and a vastness ; " " the sea shall descend into hollowness and
a prodigious drought." Another usage has been noted, the com-
parative employed to express a degree short of the extreme ; but
this is not so peculiar. Examples are '* The Libyan lion drawn
from his wilder foragings ; " "a sad arrest of the looseness and
wilder feasts of the French Court."
These " pedanterias " aside, Taylor has a powerful command
JEREMY TAYLOR. 279
of the language. There was no greater master of English in
his day.
Sentences. He is very careless in the structure of his sentences.
In few passages even of his driest works is the syntax grammatical
in six sentences upon end ; and when he warms to his subject, he
adds clause to clause as it were in a breath, without stopping to
look back and see whether the accumulation has resulted in a
coherent sentence. Inasmuch as he always writes with verve, this
characteristic meets us in every page, indeed very often in the first
sentence. As an example, take the first sentence in his ' Contem-
plations on Time,' where the connection of the clauses and the
sequence of the tenses are alike irregular :
"All philosophers which have thotight of the nature of time, and which
with much subtlety have disputed what it was, at length come to conclude,
That they knew not what it is ; the most they can reach unto is, That no
time is long ; and that can only be called time which is present, the which
is but a moment ; and how can that be said to be, since the only cause why
it is, is because it shall not be, but is to pass into t\w preterit, so as we can-
not affirm it to have a being ? "
Very often his sentence is a string of statements bearing on the
same subject, each joined to the preceding by the conjunction
"and." The following is of unusual length, but otherwise is a
fair specimen :
"But when Christian religion was planted, and had taken root, and had
filled all lands, then all the nature of things, the whole creation, became
servant to the kingdom of grace ; and the head of the religion is also the
head of the creatures, and ministers all the things of the world in order to
the spirit of grace : and now ' angels are ministering spirits sent forth to
minister for the good of them that fear the Lord ; ' and all the violences of
men, and things of nature, and choice, are forced into subjection and
lowest ministries, and to co-operate as with an united design, to verify all
the promises of the Gospel, and to secure and advantage all the children of
the kingdom : and now he that is made poor by chance or persecution, is
made rich by religion ; and he that hath nothing," and so on.
One thing his sentences are free from ; they are very rarely
made intricate by elaborate involutions and suspensions such as
we find in Hooker. He has many classical idioms and superfluous
connectives, but the structure is simple.
Artificial condensations are pretty frequent The peculiar use
of the abstract noun (p. 278) is a mode of condensation. In many
cases the condensation is more marked than in those quoted, as,
for example, in the following :
"And what can we complain of the weakness of our strengths, or the
pressure of diseases, when we see a poor soldier stand in a breach almost
starved with cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be relieved only by the heats
of anger, a fever, or a fired musket, and his hunger slacked by a greater pain
and a huge fear 1 This man shall stand in his arms, and wounds, patiens
280 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
luminls atque solis, pale and faint, weary and watchful ; and at night shall
have a bullet )>ull?,d out of his flesh, and shivers from his bones, and endure
his mouth to be sewed up from a violent rent to its own dimension."
Figures of Speech. Taylor's style is richly embellished with
metaphors and similes taken from numerous sources, from famil-
iar operations of life, from nature, and from books. 1 These need
not be specially illustrated. On the figures taken from books, the
remark may be made that they are often absurdly learned. Thia
belongs to the parade of scholarship already mentioned as being
fostered in English sermons by the taste of the Court Taylor
carries this pedantry to an extrema Any of his contemporaries
or predecessors might have said that " Nero might be called Most
Clement with as much reason as some princes are styled Most
Magnificent ; " but perhaps none of them would have ventured
to speak in their sermons of "the tender lard of the Apulian
swine," or "garments stained with the Tyrian fish," or "garments
made of the Calabrian fleece, and stained with the blood of the
murex."
His most notable and characteristic figures are the elaborate
similitudes from nature. In these he does not confine himself to
the features of strict resemblance, but makes each similitude a
complete picture in a single sentence, the circumstances being
accumulated in the opulent irregular manner already described.
The following are instances ; others occur in the illustration of hia
pathos :
" So we sometimes espy a bright cloud formed into an irregular figure ;
when it is observed by unskilful and fantastic travellers, it looks like a
centaur to some, and as a castle to others ; some tell that they saw an army
with banners, and it signifies war; but another wiser than this fellow, says
it looks for all the world like a flock of sheep, and foretells plenty ; and all
the while it is nothing but a shining cloud, by its own mobility and the
activity of a wind cast into a contingent and inartificial shape ; so it is in
this great mystery of our religion, in which some espy strange things which
God intended not, and others see not what God has plainly told."
" For so have I known the boisterous north wind pass through the yield-
ing air which opened its bosom, and appeased its violence by entertaining it
with easy compliance in all the regions of its reception : but when the same
breath of heaven hath been checked with the stiffness of a tower, or the
united strength of a wood, it grew mighty and dwelt there, and made the
1 The fanciful conceits of the time appear in considerable numbers. Even
Euphuism, in the restricted sense of similitudes from fabulous natural history,
shows itself now and again. Thus, "No creature among beasts, but being
smitten, will fall upon the way to relieve itself, except a blind incogitant sinner.
Such as have written upon their sagacity in that kind, tell us that the fishes in
the fresh water, being struck with a tool of iron, will rub themselves upon the
glutinous skin of the tench to be cured. The hart wounded with an arrow runs
to the herb dittany to bite it, that the shaft may fall out that stuck in his body.
The swallow will seek out the green tetterwort to recover the eyes of her young
ones when they are blinded. Only a stupid sinner 1'orgets," &c.
JEREMY TAYLOR. 281
highest branches stoop, and make a smooth path for it on the top of all its
glories. So is sickness, and so is the grace of God. " (In reference to the
subduing power of sickness and the evils of impatience.)
" For so doth the humble ivy creep at the foot of the oak, and leans npon
its lowest base, and begs shade and protection, and leave to grow under its
branches, and pay a friendly influence for its mighty patronage ; and they
grow and dwell together, and are the most remarkable of friends and married
pairs of all the leafy nation." (An illustration of the connection between
Church and State.)
In these similitudes, as the reader will notice, he throws aside
the purpose of close and pointed illustration, and luxuriates in fill-
ing up the picture for its own sake. Another instance shows a still
more rapturous plenitude of picturesque details :
" For thus the sun is the eye of the world ; and he is indifferent to the
negro or the cold Russian, to them that dwell under the Hue, and them that
stand near the tropics, the scalded Indian, or the poor boy that shakes at
the foot of the Riphean hills; but the flexures of the heaven and the earth,
the conveniency of abode, and the approaches to the north or south, respec-
tively change the emanations of his beams ; not that they do not pass always
from him, but that they are not equally received below, but by periods and
chauges, by little inlets and reflections ; they receive what they can, and
some have only a dark day and a long night from him ; snows and white
cattle, a miserable life, and a perpetual harvest of catarrhs and consump-
tions, apoplexies and dead palsies ; but some have splendid fires and aromatic
spices, rich wiues and well-digested fruits, great wit and great courage, be-
cause they dwell in his eye, and look in his face, and are the courtiers of the
sun, and wait upon him in his chambers of the east."
A great many such outbursts into gorgeous imagery occur in
Taylor's writings ; but the reader must not expect to find them in
every page.
QUALITIES OP STYLE.
Simplicity. Taylor's style, though not to be called simple, is
not stiff, nor stately, nor Latinised ; he uses more familiar lan-
guage than either Hooker, or Milton, or Sir Thomas Browne. He
introduces, as we have seen, many pedantic terms and bookish
illustrations : further, in his sermons, and still more in his formal
treatises, he carries to an extreme the then prevailing fashion of
backing the most obvious statements with superfluous hosts of
authorities, quoting scraps of Latin and Greek, sometimes with
translations, sometimes without The ' Ductor Dubitantium ' is
especially loaded with this cumbersome scholarship. Take as an
example part of his exposition of the "rule" that "the virtual
and interpretative consent of the will is imputed to Good or
Evil " :
" I. This rule is intended to explicate the nature of social crimes, in
which a man's will is deeper than his hand, though the action of the will id
ofteu indirect and collateral, consequent or distant ; but it by any means it
282 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
hath a portion into the effect, it is entire in the guilt And this happens
many ways.
"2. (l) By ratihabition and confirmation.
" ' In maleficio ratihabitio mandato comparatur,' saith the law : To com-
mand another to do violence is imputed to him that commands it more than
to him that does it. So Ulpian, interpreting the interdict ' Unde tu ilium
vi dejeci.iti,' affirms 'eum quoqne dejicere qui alteri mandavit vel jussit:'
and therefore Ptolemy was guilty of the blood of Pompey, when he sent
Photinus to kill him
1 Hie factum domino prestitit.' MARTIAL.
Now because ratihabition is, by presumption of law, esteemed as a com-
mandment, therefore Ulpian affirms of both alike, ' Dejicit et qui mandat,
et dejicit qui ratum habet : ' ' He that commands and he that consents after
it is done, are equally responsible.' Now, though the law particularly affirms
this only ' in maleficio,' in criminal and injurious actions, yet, in the edition
of Holoander, that clause is not inserted, and it is also certain," &c.
The above is the beginning of a section in the ' Ductor Dubitan-
tium,' and is a fair specimen of the beginnings of all the sections
in that work.
The subjects discussed in the ' Ductor ' are of the most abstruse
kind, at least in their scholastic guise as problems regarding the
Conscience and the Will ; and were the book written throughout
in the above style it would be still less read than it is. The above,
however, though a fair sample of the beginning, is not a fair
sample of the body of a section ; having stated the problem in the
above abstruse fashion, he proceeds to give copious exemplifica-
tions. Thus, to a reader once made acquainted with the peculiar
psychology and the technical distinctions, the work is not so hope-
lessly perplexing. Still, with every allowance, it is a very abstruse
production, never tempting the general reader, and perused only
now and then by an antiquarian student of ethics ; its principal
use to the student of composition being to furnish an idea of the
bad expository method of the schoolmen.
In works upon more familiar subjects in his sermons and in
his ' Holy Living and Holy Dying, ' he reiterates so much, and
presents his statements so much " dressed up in circumstances,"
that the heavy effect of his abstract language and Latin quota-
tions is less felt : it is felt, but more as an encumbrance than as a
source of perplexity. The general run of his language is simpla
His sermons are much more easily followed than Donne's.
In respect of simple arrangement he is far from being equal to
Fuller. Compare, for example, the ' Holy Living ' with Fuller's
' Holy Stata' Fuller is less pretentious : he takes up severally
different ranks and conditions of men, Servants, Masters, Hus-
bands, Bishops, &c. and lays down maxims for the guidance of
each : and besides this, discusses certain virtues one after another
in an easy way, with no attempt at classification. Taylor is more
JEREMY TAYLOR. 283
ambitious of a complete system of ethics. Tie takes a general
view of the subject, maps it out into three divisions Christian
Sobriety, Christian Justice, and Christian Religion (corresponding
to the common division Duty to ourselves, Duty to others, Duty
to God). Having mapped out the subject, he proceeds to consider
various virtues Modesty, Humility, Obedience to superiors, Faith,
fec. in minute detail But while more complete and exhaustive
than Fuller, he is much less easy to apprehend and remember ; he
multiplies subdivisions with extravagant minuteness. For ex-
ample, he gives " Twenty-three JRules for employing our Time ;"
and the following is his analysis of " Section IV. of Humility " :
41 Nine arguments against Pride, by way of Consideration.
Nineteen Acts or Offices of Humility.
Fourteen Means and Exercises of obtaining and increasing the Grace
of Humility.
Seventeen Signs of Humility. "
With reference to the above, under the head of Clearness, it is
to be observed that the want of simplicity in this tedious sub-
dividing is not compensated by a gain of precision. On the con-
trary, both in the larger and in the smaller divisions, there is
much overlapping and confusion. He is too hurried and careless
to be either easy to understand or accurate in his divisions and
classifications. Speed is everything with him : he seems to have
written on impetuously, recording his first thoughts, and instead
of obliterating what he saw to be incorrect, trying rather to square
it with the truth by qualifications a fertile source of intricacy and
confusion.
Strength. We have seen that our author's style has not the
vigour of conciseness, precision, finished aptness of expression.
His strength lies in quite an opposite direction : the style is
animated and exhilarating from its rapidity and opulence of
words and circumstances ; not from succinct and telling brevity,
but from prodigal profusion.
In every passage that we have quoted this has been conspicu-
ously evident. Even in his technical works the unresting forward
movement carries the reader away as on a rapid stream. Where
the subject is hard and the thought difficult to follow, this irregular
profusion grows bewildering ; but upon an easy theme, the speed
and fulness of the tide is exhilarating.
His design being usually didactic, it is chiefly in the illustrations
and examples that he finds the greatest scope for the exhibition of
his peculiar strength. 1 We shall see that in the choice of these
1 With reference to this, De Qnincey ranks Taylor among the princes of
rhetoric as opposed to eloquence rhetoric beinj; the art of presenting a subject
in its most imposing aspects, eloquence the utterance of deep feeling ou a subject
of intrinsically-absorbing interest.
284 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
extrinsic subjects he is ruled chiefly by the sentiment of tender-
ness : as regards the sentiment of power, he inclines rather to the
agitation and excitement of horror than to calm grandeur, or even
to any form of might unattended with turbulence and danger. I
speak only of ruling tendencies. I am aware that many examples
of the telling description of beneficent powers might be quoted
from his voluminous works. But, as a rule, in describing the
operations of man or of nature, he chooses either objects of tender-"
ness, or objects of horror, or movements of the "wilder" character.
Some examples may be quoted. For one of the " wilder " sort,
we may refer to his animated description of the " boisterous north
wind " (p. 280). As an instance of his piling up of circumstances
of horror, take the following :
" Apollodorus was a traitor and a tyrant, and the world wondered to see
so bad a man have so good a fortune, but knew not that he nourished scor-
pions in his breast, and that his liver and his heart were eaten up with
spectres and images of death ; his thoughts were full of interruptions, his
dreams of illusions : his fancy was abused with real troubles and fantastic
images, imagining that he saw the Scythians flaying him alive, his daugh-
ters like pillars of fire, dancing round about a cauldron in which himself
was boiling, and that his heart accused itself to be the cause of all those
evils."
" Nature hath given us one harvest every year, but death hath two : and
the spring and the autumn sends throngs of men and women to charnel-
houses : and all the summer long men are recovering from their evils of the
spring, till the dog-days come, and then the Syrian star makes the summer
deadly ; and the fruits of autumn are laid up for all the year's provision, and
the man that gathers them eats and surfeits, and dies and needs them not,
and himself is laid up for eternity ; and he that escapes till winter only stays
for another opportunity, which the distempers of that quarter minister to
him with great variety. Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time.
The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter's cold
turns them imo sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our
hearse, and the summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our
graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and agues, are the four quarters of the
year, and all minister to death ; and you can go no whither but you tread
upon a dead man's bones. "
In the description of the Day of Judgment, his imagination
revels in elements of terror :
" Then all the beasts and creeping things, the monsters and the usual in-
habitants of the sea, shall be gathered together, and make fearful noises to
distract mankind : the birds shall mourn and change their song into threnes
and sad accents ; rivers of fire shall rise from east to west, and the stars shall
be rent into threads of light, and scatter like the beards of comets ; then
shall be fearful earthquakes, and the rocks shall rend iu pieces, the tree:
shall distil blood, and the mountains and fairest structures shall return intt
their primitive dust ; the wild beasts shall leave their dens, and shall conic
into the companies of men, so that you shall hnrdly tell how to call them,
herds of men or congregations of boasts ; then shall the graves open an.
give up their dead, aiid those which are alive iu nature and dead in leai
JEREMY TAYLOR. 285
shall be forced from the rocks whither they went to hide them, and from
caverns of the earth where they would fain have been concealed; because
their retirements are dismantled and their rocks are broken into wilder rup-
tures, and admit a strange light into their secret bowels ; and the men being
forced abroad into the theatre of mighty horrors, shall run up and down dis-
tracted, and at their wits' end ; and then some shall die, and some shall be
changed ; and by this time the elect shall be gathered together from the four
quarters of the world, and Christ shall come along with them to judgment."
Pathos. Tenderness is the ruling quality of Taylor's style
tenderness of a peculiar kind. Restless and hurried, he has little
of the tranquil melancholy of Sir Thomas Browne. He is quick
and versatile, hurrying from circumstance to circumstance, and
from mood to mood. In accordance with this impetuosity, his
expression of pity, affection, and charmed sense of beauty is, as it
were, demonstrative and voluble. At times he shows the most
exquisite delicacy of feeling, at other times he dwells too long
upon disgusting details, though seldom without some redeeming
touches ; but whatever be the mode of the feeling, the expression
is always eager and impetuous, never lingering upon one circum-
stance, but always hurrying off to another.
The following is a fair specimen of his versatile habit, and
exemplifies the episodes of rare beauty that diversify passages of
general gloom :
" It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and it
is visible to us who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightfulness of youth
and the fair cheeks and the full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness
and strong flexure of the joints of five-and-twenty, to the hollowness and
dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial, and
we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange. But
so I have seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of his hood, and at
first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's
fleece : but when a rude breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and
dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on dark-
ness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age ; it bowed
the head, and broke its stalk, and at night, having lost some of its leaves
and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces. The
same is the portion of every man and every woman ; the heritage of worms
and serpents, rottenness and cold dishonour, and our beauty so changed,
that our acquaintance quickly know us not ; and that change mingled with
so much horror, or else meets so with our fears and weak discoursings, that
they who six hours ago tended upon us, either with charitable or ambitious
services, cannot without some regret stay in the room alone where the body
lies stript of its life and honour. I have read of a fair young German gentle-
man, who, living, often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity
of his friends' desire by giving way that after a few days' burial they might
send a painter to his vault, and if they saw cause for it, draw the image of
his death unto the life. They did so, and found his face half eaten, and his
midriff and backbone full of serpents; and so he stands pictured amongst
his armed ancestors. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as
bad with you and me ; and then, what servants shall we have to wait upon
us in the grave f what friends to visit us ! what ollicious people to cleanse
286 FROM 1G40 TO 1670.
away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the
sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funeral ?"
The 'Holy Dying,' which sets forth all the miseries of the
human lot as an inducement l " to look somewhere else for an
abiding city," is full of touching pity. The two following ex-
amples are among the best passages, being less disfigured with
horrors than others that might be quoted; in both we mark the
volubility already spoken of :
"The wild fellow in Petronius that escaped upon a broken table from the
furies of a shipwreck, as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore,
espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves, ballasted with sand in
the folds of his garment, and carried by his civil enemy the sea towards the
shore to find a grave : and it cast him into some sad thoughts : Ttiat per-
adventure this man's wife in some part of the continent, safe and warm,
looks next month for the good man's safe return : or it may be his son
knows nothing of the tempest ; or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss
which still is warm upon the good old man's cheek ever since he took a kind
farewell, and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall he when his
beloved boy returns into the circle of his father's arms. These are the
thoughts of mortals, this the end and sum of all their designs : a dark
night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, a hard rock
ami a rough wind dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole family, and they
that shall weep loudest for the accident are not yet entered into the storm^
and yet have suffered shipwreck."
" A man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that over man
preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of kings. In the same
Escurial where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, and decree
war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery where their ashes and
their glory shall sleep till time shall be no more ; and where our kings
have been crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over
their grandsire's head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal
seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roof's
to arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men. There is enough to
cool the flame of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch ot
covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful,
artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, and
the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes mingle
their dust and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the wo^ld
that, when we die, our ashes shall be equal to kings', and our accounts
easier, and our pains for our crowns shall be less."
Much of his pathos is not mournful, but consists of the ex-
pression of tenderness for objects of beauty and affection. Most
of his natural similitudes are of this character. He has a keen
sense of the bright fresh pleasure of the eye. " The young man
dances like a bubble empty and gay, and shines like a dove's
neck, or the image of a rainbow ; " drizzling rain-drops are " the
descending pearls of a misty morning." In like manner he
speaks with delight of " the beauty of the peacock's train, or
the ostrich-plume," and of children " making garlands of useless
1 See p. 288.
JEREMY TAYLOR. 287
daisies." In a passage already quoted he compares a procession
of clouds to "an army with banners." His love for bright young
children, and fresh but fragile natural things, is a kindred vein of
sentiment :
"Every little thing can blast an infant blossom ; and the breath of the
south can shake the little rings of the vine when first they b*gin to curl like
the locks of a new-weaned boy : but when by age and consolidation they
stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have, by the warm embraces of the
sun and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure
the storms of the north and the loud noises of a tempest and yet never be
broken. "
" For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring up-
wards, singing as he rises and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the
clouds ; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an
eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending
more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the libration
and frequent weighing of his wings ; till the little creature was forced to sit
down and pant, and stay till the storm was over ; and then it made a pros-
perous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it Jiad learned music and motion
from an angel, as he passed sometimes through, the air, about his ministriet
here below."
KINDS OP COMPOSITION.
Description. Taylor never attempts the formal description of
landscape ; and, we can suppose, from what we know of hia
irregular genius, that, if he had done so, his method would have
been the reverse of perspicuous. It is well, however, in consider-
ing his style as applied to special modes of composition, to bear in
mind his peculiar turn for accumulating picturesque circumstances.
He possessed the love of nature that prompts to description, and
had descriptive style been developed in his day, would probably
have been among its masters.
Exposition, Nothing need be added to what we have said in
explaining his want of simplicity and clearness. He repeats a
proposition again and again in an irregular fashion, in his own
words and in the words of favourite authorities, intermingling hia
repeated statements with copious exemplification and illustration.
His fault is the want of method ; he is wastefully copious in all
the means of exposition, if only he could have employed them on
a better plan.
Persuasion. As a moral orator he is not by any means effective.
Be Quincey, as we have said, considers that Taylor has carried off
the highest honours of rhetoric ; and he defines his peculiar mean-
ing of rhetoric by saying that where conviction begins, the province
of rhetoric ends, implying that the object of what he understands by
rhetoric is to excite admiration rather than conviction. Whatever
may be thought of the restriction of the term rhetoric to so narrow
a signification, this is a good way of expressing the effect of Tay-
288 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
lor's professed treatises on practical ethics. In the ' Holy Dying '
we never tire of admiring the wide-ranging scholarship and the
dazzling accumulation of instances, imagery, and circumstances;
but the application is almost lost in the general blaze.
The truth is, that in these professedly practical treatises our
author handles the subject moro as a poet than as a moral
preacher.
In the representation of misery, the end of the moral preacher
is not only different from the end of the poet, but positively
antagonistic. The preacher's vocation is to rouse our activities,
to excite strenuous endeavour ; the vocation of the poet is to
gratify our feelings, rather to make us weep over misery than to
make us anxious for the relief of actual sufferers.
Now the effect of Taylor's representation of misery is poetical
rather than practical Dilating on the vanity and shortness of
man's life, he represents " the thousand thousands of accidents in
this world, and every contingency to every man and every crea-
ture." The reader asks whether this is not practical 1 whether it
is not the most powerful means of urging us to improve our time 1
True, it might be so applied ; but the application is not made by
Taylor. He pictures the contingencies of the human lot in such
a way as to put us into a brooding melancholy. He presents
an array of unavoidable fatal possibilities disease, shipwreck,
unforeseen accident ; l and by presenting them as unavoidable, at
once quenches every motive to action. The effect upon readers
that should give themselves up to the spirit of the preacher would
be despair and horror, were it not that he mingles the dismal
catalogue with expressions of pity, moves our tender feelings by
painting the sorrow of friends over the unfortunate dead, and
dwells upon the consolation of another and a better world. To
be sure, he professes to " reduce these considerations " (of uni-
versal fatality) " to practice ; " but the section that undertakes
to do so is, in fact, another tale of possible misfortunes, the same
" scene of change and sorrow a little more dressed up in circum-
stances." 2 He has formal heads of practical rules and considera-
tions ; but how far these exhortations are from being stimulating
and practical, and what exquisite touches of poetry they contain,
may be seen in the following example :
" 2. Let no man extend his thoughts, or let its hopes wander towards
future and far-distant events and accidental contingencies. This clay is
mine and yours, but ye know not what shall be on the morrow ; and every
morning creeps out of a dark cloud, leaving behind it an ignorance and
silence deep as midnight, and undiscerned as are the phantasms that make
a crysome child to smile ; so that we cannot discern what comes hereafter,
unless we had a light from heaven brighter than the vision of an angel, even
1 See p. 284. * See p. 285.
ABRAHAM COWLEY. 289
the spirit of prophecy. Without revelation we cannot tell whether we shall
eat to-morrow, or whether a squinancy shall choke us : and it is written in
the uurevealed folds of divine predestination, that many who are this day
alive shall to-morrow be laid upou the cold earth, and the women shall weep
over their shroud, and dress them for their funeral."
Such passages are certainly not the considerations that brace the
moral energies. They tend rather to lower the moral tone, to
throw the mind into a despondency ; a mournfully pleasing
state, perhaps, but undoubtedly enervating. From the point of
view of the poet, the above would be admirable if it were weeded
of the coarse expression about the squinancy ; from the point of
view of the moral preacher, 1 it is not only useless, but positively
harmful.
ABRAHAM COWLEY, 1618-1667.
Cowley holds perhaps a higher rank among prose writers than
among poets. His Essays, written for the most part after the
Restoration, mark an advance in the art of prose composition.
The construction of the sentences is often stumbling and awkward,
but the diction shows an increasing command over the language.
No previous writer, not even Fuller, is so felicitous as .Cowley in
the combination of words. His prose has none of the extravagance
of his poetry. "No author," says Johnson, "ever kept his verse
and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts
are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which
has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-
sought or hard-laboured ; but all is easy without feebleness, and
familiar without grossness."
Perhaps part of the explanation of this is, that for ten years he
conducted the correspondence of the exiled royal family a kind
of experience likely to purify his language both from bookish
terms and from poetical ornaments. Whatever be the reason, his
combinations and turns of expression are remarkably modern ;
here and there short passages might be quoted that we should
not be surprised to find in 'Blackwood' or in the 'Saturday
Review.'
He was born in London, the son of a grocer ("his parents
citizens of a virtuous life and sufficient estate "), and educated at
Westminster school and at Trinity College, Cambridge. At the
age of fifteen he had published a volume of poems ; and while yet
an undergraduate, he wrote two or three comedies, and the greater
part of his ' Davideis.' When he had been seven years at Cam-
1 Throughout the above we have used the word preacher as a preacher of moral
conduct. It is not implied that moral preaching is the sole function of the
pulpit. Another function is to console the wretched under their load of misei*-
les. As a preacher of consolation our author L perhaps unrivalled.
T
290 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
bridge, and had proceeded to the degree of M.A., he wns, in 1643,
at the age of twenty-five, ejected from that university by the
Puritan visitors, and took refuge in Oxford. "About the time
when Oxford was surrendered to the Parliament, he followed the
Queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the Lord Jermyn,
afterwards Earl of St Albans, and was employed in such corre-
spondence as the royal cause required, and particularly in cipher-
ing and deciphering the letters that passed between the King and
Queen an employment of the highest confidence and honour. So
wide was the province of his intelligence, that for several years it
filled all his days and two or three nights in the week." In 1656
he returned to England, was arrested, liberated on bail, studied
medicine, and took out a degree in 1657. He remained in London
till Cromwell's death, suspected of being in secret communication
with the exiled family. At the Restoration he was rewarded with
a free lease of certain lands, yielding a rental of ^300, and went
to reside at Chertsea.
He found country life very different from his Arcadian ideal ;
but that he was positively unhappy in his solitude, we have no
reason to believe. The letter to Dr Sprat that Johnson produces
with a malicious chuckle, " for the consideration of all that may
hereafter pant for solitude," is really a humorous caricature of his
sufferings, evidently written in high spirits.
His prose remains are few ; he considered " a little tomb of
marble a better monument than a vast heap of stones and rub-
bish." Two prefaces, a short " Proposition for the Advancement
of Experimental Philosophy," a " Discourse by way of Vision,
concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell," and eleven
Essays, are the sum-total, and they are contained in a small
volume.
We get no fair idea of Cowley's intellectual powers from read-
ing merely his prose. There we are struck only by his singular
ease in choosing apt words, and by the freshness and spirit of the
combinations. In his poetry he is more " extravagant and Pin-
darical " ; the predominating veins of sentiment are the same as
we find in the Essays and the Discourse on Cromwell, but he gives
a fuller licence to his ingenuity. Describing the style of the
" metaphysical poets," Johnson says " The most heterogeneous
ideas are yoked by violence together ; nature and art are ransacked
for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions ; their learning in-
structs, and their subtilty surprises : " and among the metaphysical
poets he considers Cowl ey to be "undoubtedly the best." This
implies no mean powers of intellect ; yet we should not think of
placing such a light horseman among the intellectual giants. He
is entitled to the palm of fantastic breadth, swiftness, and subtlety
s>f wit ; and this was probably all the distinction that he coveted.
ABRAHAM COWLEY. 291
Indeed the soft easy nature of the man indisposed him to severe
labour, whether of body or of mind. "Whatever was his subject,
he seems to have been carried by a kind of destiny to the light
and the familiar, or to conceits which require still more ignoble
epithets." Even in his emotions he was easy and averse to excite-
ment. He was not of an overflowing sociability, like Thomaa
Fuller ; his ideal was to enjoy the company of a few friends in
some " gentle cool retreat from all the immoderate heat in which
the frantic world does burn and sweat." He never married; and
his poems express no depth of affection : the only genuine pathos
in his writings flows from his luxurious love of solitude and repose.
Neither his prose nor his poetry gives evidence of strong anti-
pathies : we shall quote some sharp invective, but it is not personal,
it is directed against abstractions. He Joved to contemplate, in
a soft indolent attitude, the spectacle of great power ; royalist as
he was, he could not refrain from admiring CromwelL At the
same time he would not, like Carlyle, have put himself to the
trouble of searching the world for heroes ; only when a hero conies
across his path, he is not impervious to astonishment. Even in
his admiration of Cromwell there is no depth of feeling ; the rich
and elevated language of the Discourse on that hero is dashed
with touches of humour. He has none of Taylor's fresh delight
in natural things : as Johnson says, he does not present pictures
to the mind ; he " gives inferences instead of images, and shows
not what may be supposed to have been seen, but what thoughts
the sight might have suggested."
In his younger days he wrote what he calls " a shrewd prophecy
against himself " :
" Thou neither great at court, nor in the" war,
Nor at the exchange shall be, nor at the wrangling bar."
The prophecy was shrewd enough ; such a born epicurean was not
likely to succeed in any mode of active life. As a royal secretary
he probably discharged his duty sufficiently well, having the mate-
rial furnished him, and experiencing none of the worry of contriv-
ing ; but that he was not a particularly zealous and active servant
is probably shown by the comparatively slender reward settled
upon him at the Kesto ration. Of his natural indolence we have a
very pretty evidence in his Essays. When he retired to the coun-
try, he says there was nothing he coveted so much as a small house
and a large garden, where he might work and study nature ; yet
he confesses, " I stick still in the inn of a hired house and garden,
among weeds and rubbish, and without that pleasantest work of
human industry, the improvement of something which we call (not
very properly, but yet we call) our own."
(Jowley being neither a man of action, nor a moralist, nor a
292 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
critic, nor an original student of science, 1 his opinions are not of
consequence ; in his humorous railing at ambition and advocacy of
retirement, he is moved entirely by constitutional sentiment The
popularity of his Essays is a great tribute to the intrinsic power
of style, of manner as opposed to matter. It also indicates that
style can operate to most advantage when neither reader nor writer
is impeded by difficulties in the matter.
ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
Vocabulary. In his prose writings, the extent of his vocabulary
is shown rather by skilful choice of words than by Shakspearian
profusion. When we turn to his poetry, we see that his command
of words, though great, is rather inferior for a writer of such
reputation. The exertion of procuring variety would seem to have
been too much for his easy temperament ; and his range of emotion
being so limited, he did not accumulate great stores of language
except in the region of the light and familiar.
We have already said that his diction is noticeably less archaic
than the diction of any preceding writer.
Sentences. In his lighter compositions the sentence-structure is
easy and careless, and has no marked rhythm. But in his serious
writings the rhythm is more even. The preface to his poems
published in 1656, and the Discourse on Cromwell, are written
with a more even measure than any compositions prior to this
date.
In Cowley we first notice very markedly the habit of adding to
the simple -statement an obverse or inverse statement, for the pur-
pose of filling out the cadence. Thus, as an example of the obverse
filling out :
' The Church of Rome, with all her arrogance, and her wide pretences of
certainty in all truths, and exemption from all errors, does not clap on this
enchanted armour of infallibility upon all her particular subjects, nor is
offended at the reproof of her greatest doctors."
As an example of the inverse filling out :
" A cowardly ranting soldier, an ignorant charlatanical doctor, a foolish
cheating lawyer, a silly pedantical scholar, have always been, and still are,
the principal subjects of all comedies, without any scandal given to those
honourable professions, or even taken by their severest professors."
These are not perhaps the best examples that might be selected,
but they illustrate what is meant ; other cases will appear in sub-
sequent quotations.
While in Cowley we see the first extensive use of balanced yet
idiomatic periods, and the first habitual practice of the chief arts
1 His "Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy" is
merely a plan of a college and school, and contains nothing remarkable.
ABRAHAM COWLEY. 293
of rhythmical balance, we must observe that measured structure
and point are employed by him much more sparingly than by their
great cultivator, Samuel Johnson. His rhythm is more varied, in
this respect approaching nearer to the modern standard. Apart
from an occasional weakness in the syntax, and a certain archaism
in the phrase and in the thought, the following reads not unlike a
good article in the ' Saturday Review ' 1 :
" As for all other objections, which have been or may be made against the
invention or elocution, or anything else which comes under the critical juris-
diction ; let it stand or fall as it can answer for itself, for I do not lay the
great stress of my reputation upon a structure of this nature, much less upon
the slight reparations only of an old and unfashionable building. There is
n writer but may fail sometimes in point of wit ; and it is no less frequent
for the auditors to fail in point of judgment. I perceive plainly, by daily
experience, that Fortune is mistress of the theatre, as Tully says it is of all
popular assemblies. No man can tell sometimes from whence the invisible
winds rise that move them. There are a multitude of people, who are truly
and only spectators at a play, without any use of their understanding; and
these carry it sometimes by the strength of their numbers. There are others
who use their understandings too much ; who think it a sign of weakness
and stupidity to let anything pass by them unattacked, and that the honour
of their judgments (as some bnitals imagine of their courage) consists in
quarrelling with everything. We are therefore wonderful wise men, and
have a fine business of it, we who spend our time in poetry : I do sometimes
laugh, and am often angry with myself when I think on it ; and if I had a
son inclined by nature to the same folly, I believe I should bind him from
it by the strictest conjurations of a paternal blessing. For what can be
more ridiculous, than to labour to give men delight, whilst they labour, on
their part, more earnestly to take offence ? To expose one's self voluntarily
and frankly to all the dangers of that narrow passage to unprofitable fame,
which is defended by rude multitudes of the ignorant, and by armed troops
of the malicious ? If we do ill, many discover it, and all despise us ; if we
do well, but few men find it out, and fewer entertain it kindly. If we com-
mit errors, there is no pardon ; if we could do wonders, there would be but
little thanks, and that, too, extorted from unwilling givers."
The Paragraph structure, in the lighter essays, where there are
no natural divisions in the subject-matter, is loose and rambling.
In the Prefaces, when he has distinct topics to handle, such as
different books of poetry, he naturally places them in separate
paragraphs ; but when there is no such marked guide, he is not
more orderly than the looser sort of his predecessors, and often
mixes up several subjects in the same paragraph. In the 'Crom-
well,' the natural pausetfcjn the flow of his declamation suggest
paragraph breaks, and ^roe sense % pf oratorical effect prevents
rambling.
Figures of Speech. Fantastic similitudes are almost the essence
of Cowley's poetry ; in his prose he is .less exuberant. His prose,
yndeed, is less ornate than any fine writing of the century, prior, at
least, to his own date ; the similitudes are not quite so numerous,
i From the Preface to 'The Cutter of Coleman Street.'
294 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
and they are not far-fetched, but seem to come easily to hand.
Examples will be seen in the quotations that follow. In the
Essays, which are familiar productions, he admits more embel-
lishment than in the Prefaces or the Discourse ; in the serious com-
positions, he gives his care to elaborate the plain statement of
striking circumstances.
In declamatory passages he makes abundant use of the figures
Exclamation and Interrogation. These will be exemplified under
the head of Strength.
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
Simplicity. The subjects of the Essays are easy. Upon ambi-
tion, obscurity, procrastination, and suchlike, a writer can hardly
produce new ideas ; all his powers may be given to producing new
turns of expression, illustrative anecdotes, historical allusions. If
he is abstruse, the abstruseness must be wholly in the expression.
Cowley's treatment of his subjects is gay rather than grave, and
the expression is easy and sprightly. He quotes a good deal of
Latin, but he makes his quotations with a grace, and, apologising
for " the pedantry of a heap of Latin sentences," provides us in
most cases with fluent translations. The following on the Danger
of Procrastination is a fair specimen :
' ' A gentleman in our late civil wars, when his quarters were beaten up by
the enemy, was taken prisoner, and lost his life afterwards, only by staying
to put on a band, and adjust his periwig ; he would escape like a person of
quality or not at all, and died the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility.
I think your counsel of ' Festina leute ' 1 is as ill to a man who is Hying
from the world, as it would have been to that unfortunate well-bred gentle-
man, who was so cautious as not to fly undeceutly from his enemies; and
therefore I prefer Horace's advice before yours
Sapere aude,
Incipe a
Begin ; the getting out of doors is the greatest part of the journey. Varro
teaches us that Latin proverb : . . . but to return to Horace-
Begin ; be bold, and venture to be wise ;
He who defers this work from day to day,
Does on a river's bank expecting stay,
Till the whole stream, which stopt him, should be gone,
That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on.
Csesar (the man of expedition above all others) was so far from this folly,
that whensoever, in a journey, he was to cross any river, he never went
one foot out of his way for a bridge, or a ford, or a ferry; but flung him-
self into it immediately, and swam over : and this is the course we ought
to imitate, if we meet with any stops in our way to happiness. Stay, till the
waters are low; stay, till some boats come by to transport you ; stay, till a
bridge be built for you : you had even as good stay, till the river be quite
'"Take it easy ; " lit. " Hasten slowly."]
" Have the courage to be wise, begin, *
ABRAHAM COWLEY. 295
past. Persius (who, you use to say, you do not know whether he be a
food poet or no, because you cannot understand him, and whom, therefore,
say, I know to be not a good poet) has an odd expression of these pro-
crastinators, which, methinks, is lull of fancy
.
Our yesterday's to-morrow now is gone,
And still a new to-morrow does come on;
We by to-morrows draw up all our store,
Till the exhausted well can yield no more.
" And now, I think, I am even with you, for your ' Otium cum dignitate,'
and ' Festina lente,' and three or four other more of your new Latin sen-
tences ; if I should draw upon you all my forces out of Seneca and Plutarch
upon this subject, I should overwhelm you ; but I leave those, as Triarii,
for your next charge. I shall only give you now a light skirmish out of an
epigrammatist, your special good friend ; and so, vale."
The above exemplifies the simple style of his familiar essays ;
we shall see that even in his most ambitious declamations there is
a peculiar lightness and ease, a singular absence of stiffness and
constraint
Strength. The passage just quoted from the Essays is an example
of our author's sprightliness and animation. The passage quoted
before to show how modern his expression is, exemplifies animation
in a more serious vein, the animation of finished brevity and point.
In some parts of his Prefaces, and throughout the Discourse on
Cromwell, he assumes a loftier tone of declamation. Some of
these declamatory passages are highly finished. One of the finest
of them, the summary of the striking paradoxes in the career of
Cromwell, is quoted and analysed in Bain's ' Rhetoric.' In some
remarks upon the ' Davideis,' he presents the fortunes of David in
the same striking form, though the contrasts are not portrayed at
the same length :
"What worthier subject could have been chosen, among all the treasuries
of past times, than the life of this young prince, who from so small begin-
nings, through such infinite troubles and oppositions, by such miraculous
virtues and excellencies, and with such incomparable variety of wonderful
actions and accidents, became the greatest monarch that ever sat on the
most famous throne of the whole earth I "
His plea for dramatising the characters and incidents of the Old
Testament, being an apology for his own practice, is written with
all his powers of style. After enumerating the dramatic elements
in the life of David, he continues :
"What can we imagine more proper for the ornaments of wit or learning
in the story of Deucalion, than in that of Noah ? Why will not the actions
of Sampson afford as plentiful matter as the labours of Hercules ? Why is
not Jeplitha's daughter as good a woman as Iphigenia? and the friendship
of David and Jonathan more worthy celebration than that of Theseus and
Pirithous ? Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy
Land yield incomparably more poetical variety than the voyages of Ulysses
<r ^Eneas ? Are the obsolete threadbare tales of Thebes and Troy half so
296 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
Btored with great, heroical, and supernatural actions (since verse will needs
find or make such) as the wars of Joshua, of the Judges, of David, and divera
others ? Can all the transformations of the gods give such copious hints to
flourish and expatiate on, as the true miracles of Christ, or of His prophets
an J apostles ? Why do 1 instance in these few particulars ? All the books
of the Bible are either already most admirable and exalted pieces of pisy,
or are the best materials in the world for it."
Perhaps the most effective piece of rhetoric in all his composition
is the passage beginning with the simile of " Jack in the clock-
house." The melodious solemnity of the rhythm, the vigour and
propriety of the language, the fine similes, and the imposing
examples, exhibit probably the utmost stretch of the author's
power :
"I have often observed (with all submission and resignation of spirit to
the inscrutable mysteries of Eternal Providence) that, when the fulness and
maturity of time is come, that produces the great confusions and changes hi
the world, it usually pleases God to make it appear, by the manner of them,
that they are not the effects of human force or policy, but of the divine
justice and predestination ; and, though we see a man, like that which we
call Jack of the clock-house, striking, as it were, the hour of that fulness of
time, yet our reason must needs be convinced that his hand is moved by
some secret, and, to us who stand without, invisible direction. And the
stream of the current is then so violent, that the strongest men in the world
cannot draw up against it; and none are so weak but they may sail down
with it. These are the spring-tides of public affairs, which we see often
happen, but seek in vain to discover any certain causes. And one man
then, by maliciously opening all the sluices that he can come at, can never
be the sole author of all this (though he may be as guilty as if really he
were by intending and imagining to be so) ; but it is God that breaks up
the flood-gates of so general a deluge, and all the art then, and industry of
mankind, is not sufficient to raise up dikes and ramparts against it. In
such a time, it was, as this, that not all the wisdom and power of the Roman
senate, nor the wit and eloquence of Cicero, nor the courage and virtue of
Brutus, was able to defend their country, or themselves, against the unex-
perienced rashness of a beardless boy, and the loose rage of a voluptuous
madman. The valour, and prudent counsels, on the one side, are made
fruitless, and the errors, and cowardice, on the other, harmless, by unex-
pected accidents. The one general saves his life and gains the whole world,
by a very dream ; and the other loses both at once, by a little mistake of
the shortness of his sight. And though this be not always so, for we see
that, in the translation of the great monarchies from one to another, it
pleased God to make choice of the most eminent men in nature, as Cyrus,
Alexander, Scipio, and his contemporaries, for his chief instruments, ami
actors, in so admirable a work (the end of this being, not only to destroy or
punish one nation, which may be done by the worst of mankind, but to
exalt and bless another, which is only to be effected by great and virtuous
persons) ; yet, when God only intends the temporary chastisement of a
people, he does not raise up his servant Cyrus (as he himself is pleased to
call him), or an Alexander (who had as many virtues to do good, as vices to
do harm) ; but he makes the Massaniellos, and the Johns of Leyden, the
instruments of his vengeance, that the power of the Almighty might be
more evident by the weakness of the means which he chooses to demonstrate
it. He did not assemble the serpents, and the monsters of Afric, to correct
ABRAHAM COWLEY. 297
the pride of the Egyptians ; but called for his armies of locusts out of Ethi-
opia, and formed new ones of vermin out of the very dust ; and, because
you see a whole country destroyed by these, will you argue from thence
they must needs have had both the craft of foxes, and the courage of
lions ! "
Wit and Humour. Wit and humour are undoubtedly the ruling
features of Cowley's prose. His ridicule is for the most part gay
and genial Here and there we meet with passages of keen satire ;
but there is nothing approaching to personal spleen in his sar-
casms. In his bitterest shots at Cromwell, he keeps in view
rather what he supposed to be Cromwell's vices tyrannous am-
bition and hypocrisy. The man himself he admits to be an extra-
ordinary person, and professes to look upon him with no greater
animosity than upon Marius or Sylla. Besides, the invective is
supposed to be delivered in a dream, and to the face of a terrible
angel professing to be an admirer of the late Lord Protector. The
circumstances are managed with a kind of comic effect ; and, keep-
ing in mind the situation, we see the most bitter invective through
a humorous medium.
As an example of his powers of sarcastic irony, take the follow-
ing ludicrously unexpected banter by the terrible apparition, the
"North-West Principality." Cowley had been proceeding in a
full tide of denunciation, accusing Cromwell of tyranny, craft,
and other crimes:
"Here I stopt ; and my pretended protector, who, I expected, should
have been very angry, fell a-laughiug ; it seems at the simplicity of my dis-
course, for thus he replied : ' You seem to pretend extremely to the old
obsolete rules of virtue and conscience, which makes me doubt very much,
whether, from this vast prospect of three kingdoms, you can show me any
acres of your own. But these are so far from making you a prince, that I
am afraid your friends will never have the contentment to see you so much
as a justice of peace in your own country. For this, I perceive, which you
call virtue, is nothing else but either the forwardness of a Cynic, or the
laziness of an Epicurean. I am glad you allow me at least artful dissimula-
tion, and unwearied diligence in my hero ; and I assure you that he, whose
life is constantly drawn by these two, shall never be misled out of the way
of greatness. But I see you are a pedant, and Platonical statesman, a theo-
retical commonwealth's-man, an Utopian dreamer. Was ever riches gotten
by your golden mediocrities ? or the supreme place attained to by virtues
that must not stir out of the middle ? Do you study Aristotle's politics,
and write, if you please, comments upon them ; and let another but practise
Machiavel : and let us see, then, which of you two will come to the greatest
preferments. If the desire of rule and superiority,' " &c.
The satire of the Essays is never long kept up; some good-
Lumoured familiarity of expression comes in after a short passage
of keener language, and puts us into a humorous mood by reveal-
ing the easy unexcited temper of the satirist. Thus, in the Essay
on Obscurity :
298 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
" If we engnge into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set
open our gates to the invaders of most of our time : we expose our life to a
quotidian ogne of frigid impertinencies, which would make a wise man
tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight and pointed
at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that : whatsoever it be,
every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more
than the lord chief justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature
and art, if it be any ways extraordinary. It was as often said, ' This is that
15ueephalus,' or 'This is that Iiicitatus,' when they were led prancing
through the streets, as 'This is that Alexander,' or 'This is that Doiui-
tian ; ' and truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more
honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship, than
he the empire."
He can be humorous at his own expense, as in the description
of his country experiences :
"One would think that all mankind had bound themselves by an oath
to do all the wickedness they can ; that they had all (as the Scripture
speaks) sold themselves to sin: the difference only is, that some are a little
more crafty (and but a little, God knows) in making of the bargain. I
thought, when I went first to dwell in the country, that, without doubt, I
should have met there with the simplicity of the old poetical golden age ; I
thought to have found no inhabitants there, but such as the shepherds of
Sir Philip Sidney in Arcadia, or of Monsieur d'Urfe, upon the banks of
Lignon ; and began to consider with myself, which way I might recommend
no less to posterity the happiness and innocence of the men of Chertsea ;
but to confess the truth, I perceived quickly, by infallible demonstrations,
that I was still in Old England, and not in Arcadia, or La Forrest ; that,
if I could not content myself with anything less than exact fidelity in human
conversation, I had almost as good go back and seek for it in the Court, or
the Exchange, or Westminster-hall. I ask again then, whither shall we fly,
or what shall we do I"
The Essay on Agriculture is written in his happiest vein. He
searches out the authorities for the dignity of agricultural life
with great pleasantry :
" From Homer, we must not expect much concerning our affairs. He
was blind, and could neither work in the country, nor enjoy the pleasures
of it ; his helpless poverty was likeliest to be sustained in the richest places;
lie was to delight the Grecians with fine tales of the wars and adventures of
their ancestors ; his subject removed him from all commerce with us, and
yet, methinks, he made a shift to show his goodwill a little. For though
he could do us no honour in the person of his hero Ulysses (much less of
Achilles), because his whole time was consumed in wars and voyages ; yet
he makes his father Laertes a gardener all that while, and seeking his con-
solation for the absence of his son in the pleasure of planting, and even
dunging his own grounds. Ye see, he did not contemn us peasants ; nay,
so far was he from that insolence, that he always styles Eumaeus, who kept
the hogs, with wonderful respect, Slav v<j>opl3oi>, the divine swine-herd : he
could have done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon."
OTHER WRITERS.
The justification of departing from the usual chronological
arrangement, which dates a period from the Restoration, is that
THEOLOGY. 299
by the present arrangement we get a more compact grouping of
our authors relatively to the great Rebellion. By annexing to
the period of the Commonwealth the first ten years of the reign
of Charles II., we bind together those that wrote during the
agitation of the political storm, and those whose literary activity
was greatest, indeed, when that storm was laid, but whose thoughts
and style were powerfully influenced by the experience of their
early manhood, and who belong in every way to the generation of
the Commonwealth.
The writers of the Commonwealth and they are remarkably
numerous may, indeed, be divided into three classes : recluse
or easy-tempered students, like Thomas Browne and Fuller, who
were hardly influenced at all by the surrounding excitement ;
men of bold speech, like Milton, who made their voices heard in
the strife; and men, like Cowley, who composed their works
when the agitation had subsided. The division is more a loose
help to the understanding and the memory than one that can
be marked out with sharp and clear lines : it makes an interesting
distribution of a few great men, and it is so far a clue to their
character ; but it cannot be made a principle of classification for
the mass of writers without leading to unprofitable refinements.
We here follow the same plan as for the other periods.
THEOLOGY.
Hall, Hales, and Chillingworth, all survived into this period.
The Church of England boasted also two of her most famous
divines, Robert Sanderson (1587-1663), and John Pearson (1613-
1686). At the outbreak of the Civil War, Sanderson was Regius
Professor of Divinity at Oxford, Canon of Christ Church, and a
royal chaplain. Upon the Restoration he was appointed Bishop
of Lincoln, and he was one of the commissioners at the Savoy
Conference in 1661. His principal work in English is 'Niue
Casts of Conscience.' He is the chief of Protestant casuists.
Pearson, who after the Restoration succeeded Dr Wilkins in the
Mastership of Trinity and in the see of Chester, published in 1659
an 'Exposition of the Creed,' which still holds its ground as a
standard production. The work is laborious, calm, and acute,
written in simple and clear language ; it follows the easy arrange-
ment of taking each word in order. He was profoundly versed in
patristic literature ; and in that department criticised with such
acuteness that Bentley said " his very dross was gold."
The most eminent of the Nonconforming divines of this gene-
ration was Richard Baxter (1615-1691). He was ordained in the
Church of England, and at the beginning of the Civil War was
pastor of Kidderminster. He sided with the Parliament, was
300 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
attached as chaplain to a regiment, and saw some active service
but his health failing, he returned to his pastoral charge, and
buried himself in study. In this retirement he wrote the 'Saint's
Everlasting Rest,' a volume of pious thoughts that have a peculiar
interest when we view them as the aspirations of an infirm man
turning wearily from the distractions of a time so utterly out of
joint. The violent breaking to pieces of the old monarchy and
the usurpation of Cromwell were painful things to a man thirsting
for quiet and security ; and in a celebrated interview with the
Protector he had the courage to remonstrate. After the Restora-
tion he was offered a bishopric, but declined the offer. Subse-
quently, when penal enactments were passed against Dissenters,
his quiet ministrations in London were interfered with, and he
was exposed to considerable hardships. At last, in 1685, he was
thrown into prison, taken before the infamous Judge Jeffreys, and
shamefully bullied : he was released by the special intervention of
the King. All his life through he was an indefatigable writer : of
his multitudinous works, numbering in all 168, only the 'Saint's
flest ' and the ' Call to the Unconverted ' have had a durable popu-
larity. His autobiography ' Memorable Passages of my Life and
Times' affords an interesting picture of an ardent impulsive
nature tamed down by rude experience and infirm health to
greater sobriety of judgment and closeness of observation. In the
following passage he frankly owns that had his works been less
numerous, their fame might have been more durable :
"Concerning almost all my writings, I must confess that my judgment
is, that fewer, well studied and polished, had heen better ; but the reader
who can safely censure the books, is not fit to censure the author, unless he
had been upon the place, and acquainted with all the occasions and circum-
stances. Indeed, for the 'Saint's Rest,' I had four months' vacancy to
write it, but in the midst of continual languishing and medicine ; but, for
the rest, I wrote them in the crowd of all my other employments, which
would allow me no great leisure for polishing and exactness, or any orna-
ment ; so that I scarce ever wrote one sheet twice over, nor stayed to make
any blots or interlining, but was fain to let it go as it was first conceived ;
and when my own desire was rather to stay upon one thing long than run
over many, some sudden occasions or other extorted almost all my writings
from me. "
Another eminent Dissenter was John Owen (1616-1683), first a
Presbyterian, thereafter an Independent. He was a man of singular
moderation and sweetness of temper. He was a special favourite
with Cromwell, who took him to Ireland to organise the College
of Dublin, and subsequently to Scotland. After the Restoration,
Clarendon offered him preferment in the Church if he would con-
form, and Charles himself desired his acquaintance. His volu-
minous writings are exclusively on religious subjects. The style
is bad. " I can't think how you like Dr Owen," said Robert Hall
JOHN BUNYAN. 301
"I can't read him with patience ; I never read a page of Dr Owen,
sir, without finding some confusion in his thoughts, either a truism
or a contradiction in terms.' " Sir, he is a double Dutchman,
floundering in a continent of mud."
Less accommodating and pliable, less sweet if not less enlight-
ened, was George Fox (1624-1690), the Founder of the Society of
Friends, an illegitimate son of the Church in a time of religions
excitement, one of the most extraordinary men of genius in this
eccentric generation. He was a grave, sober, reflective man, with
no outgoings of volatile imagination, buoyant egotism, or healthy
energy in any shape; as passive, unexcited, vacuous, as Bunyan
was active, excitable, teeming with creative energy, not pouring
out force, but letting the world flow in upon him, judging and
measuring the traditions and opinions floating about him, and
striving in a calm way to reduce the bewildering mass to consistent
clearness. Probably the more he pondered, the more he entangled
himself in perplexing mazes, and he finally ceased to ponder, and
took refuge in a set of arbitrary dogmas. He originated the promi-
nent ideas of Quakerism, the use of " thou," the objection to un-
cover the head before dignitaries, the objection to oaths, the aver-
sion to war, the doctrine that inner light and not the Bible is the
rule of life. Like Bunyan he was an illiterate artisan of an in-
ferior craft, a cobbler or shoe-mender holding to the shoemaker
the same relation that the tinker holds to the brazier. His style
is more compact, and has greater graphic felicity of plain language,
than Bunyan's, but it has none of the Pilgrim's figurative richness.
Another character of the time, of wider reputation than George
Fox, was the man just mentioned, John Bunyan (1628-1688), " the
wicked tinker of Elstow." We need not dwell upon the incidents
of his early life and conversion, minutely and vividly related in his
autobiographic 'Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.' His
later biographers accuse himself and his early biographers of exag-
gerating his youthful enormities by way of magnifying the divine
grace. He says himself that " he did still let loose the reins of
his lust, and delighted in all transgressions against the law of God ;
so that until he came to the state of marriage, he was the very
ringleader in all manner of vice and ungodliness." The only sina
that he specifically confesses to are Sabbath-breaking and swear-
ing. From another sin pretty plainly stated in the above passage,
Southey, followed by Macaulay, exculpates him on the ground of
a subsequent specific denial exculpates him somewhat hastily ;
for though the natural interpretation of one plain-spoken sentence
is that the denial covers his whole life, yet, when we reflect and
look closely, we see that the charge was pointed at his conduct
after conversion and marriage, and that, in the course of his in-
dignant denial, he brings in the qualifying clause, u from my first
302 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
conversion until now," and so does not contradict his previous
confession that he was not better than he should have been before
lie "came to the state of marriage." "After he had been about
five or six years awakened," " he was desired, and that with much
earnestness, that he would be willing at sometimes to take in hand,
in one of the meetings, to speak a word of exhortation unto them;"
and with much private irresolution, he consented to their request,
and " discovered his gift amongst them " with such effect that
after a time he " was more particularly called forth, and appointed
to a more ordinary and public preaching of the Word." Five
years after his ordination, in 1660, he was apprehended under the
Conventicle Act of the restored Government, taken before the
quarter-sessions, and " indicted for an upholder and maintainer of
unlawful assemblies and conventicles, and for not conforming to
the national worship of the Church of England ; and after some
conference there with the justices, they, taking his plain-dealing
with them for a confession, as they termed it, of the indictment,
did sentence him to a perpetual banishment, because he refused to
conform. So being again delivered up to the gaoler's hands, he
was had home to prison, and there lay complete twelve years,
waiting to see what God would suffer those men to do with him."
During this long imprisonment, the latter half of which was
very lenient and virtually no imprisonment at all, he began the
' Pilgrim's Progress.' After he was set at liberty, he was chosen
pastor of the Dissenters at Bedford, and lived there for the most
part, preaching by stealth and visiting the dwellings of his flock.
When in 1687 the penal laws against Dissenters were relaxed, a
church was built for him at Bedford, and attended by multitudes
from all parts of the neighbourhood. He was particularly noted
for his tact in reconciling differences, and often was called long
journeys for that purpose. One of those benevolent errands was
the indirect cause of his death ; he caught cold from exposure, and
died of fever on the izth of August 1688. His principal work,
besides the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' and ' Grace Abounding,' is the
* Holy War,' an account of the fall and redemption of mankind
under figure of a war waged by Satan for the possession of the
town of MansouL His immense popularity was not posthumous ;
he rose into fame before his death. " The ' Pilgrim's Progress,' "
says Macaulay, " stole silently into the world. Not a single copy
of the first edition is known to be in existence. The year of pub-
lication has not been ascertained. It is probable that during some
months the little volume circulated only among poor and obscure
sectaries. . . . In 1678 came forth a second edition with
additions ; and then the demand became immense. In the four
following years the book was reprinted six times. The eighth
* tition, which contains the last improvements made by the author
JOHN BUN VAN. 303
was published in 1682, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685." In
learned circles doubts were expressed whether a poor ignorant
tinker could be the author of such a work; which doubts he re-
futed by publishing the second part in 1684. In his metrical
preface to the ' Holy War,' which followed soon after, he strongly
asserted his originality declaring that " None in all the world,
without a lie, can say that this is mine, excepting L" The char-
acter of such a man is an interesting study. Many of his pecu-
liarities lie upon the surface. He was naturally of vehement,
ardent temper ; we need not the evidence of his early habits to
assure us that his temper was one that an oath gave a natural
relief to. He was often conscious of an uncontrollable impulse to
blaspheme and imprecate. The imagination that reared the won-
derful fabric of his allegories rendered his youth miserable by its
ungovernable activity in creating images of fear ; at times he was
as full of terrible apprehensions as a horse in a forest at midnight.
It was part of the impulsive nature of the man that he could not
refrain from acting upon his fancies with the force of belief ; he
would turn aside from a house under the strength of a sudden
apprehension that it would fall upon him. Not until he had
obtained assurance of God's favour was this imaginative energy
turned into more profitable channels. Once released from his
fearful anticipations of the wrath of God, his active mind found
employment in new directions. We are apt to view him too ex-
clusively as the author of the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' and to search
there, and there only, for the signs of his intellectual power. In
addition to the abundant evidence therein exhibited of his power
of entering into the thoughts and feelings of men in different cir-
cumstances, we may glean significant particulars here and there
in the records of his life. There is a telling hint of his restless
versatility in the catalogue of " abominations " that to the last he
" found in his heart " ; in the " inclining to unbelief," in the
" wanderings and., coldness in prayer," and in the being " apt to
murmur because he had no more, and yet ready to abuse what he
had." And what better testimony could there be to penetration
and address than his fame in later life as a mediator in family
quarrels 1 Imaginative power and knowledge of men (which may
be said to be different aspects of the constructive faculty) are the
main secrets of his success as a writer. Perhaps too much has
been made of his style, viewed merely as written composition.
His language is simple and often forcible, and, particularly in
4 Grace Abounding,' has a soft melodious flow. The most pleasing
element is the graphic force of the similitudes. And this is almost
all that can be said. Macaulay's estimate is expressed with char-
acteristic slap-dash extravagance : " No writer has said more
exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for
304 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose
of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect the
dialect of plain working men was perfectly sufficient. There is
no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the
fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book which shows
so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and
how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed."
Even the assertion that " the vocabulary is the vocabulary of the
common people " is inconsiderate and erroneous. The language
is homely, indeed, but it is not the everyday speech of hinds and
tinkers ; it is the language of the Church, of the Bible, of Foxe's
' Book of Martyrs,' and whatever other literature Bunyan was in
the habit of perusing. As for the " old unpolluted English lan-
guage," it needs no microscopical eye to detect in the ' Pilgrim's
Progress ' a considerable sprinkling of vulgar provincialisms, and
even of such Latin idioms as are to be found in his favourite
old martyrologist Foxe.
Two other devotional writers of this period retain their hold
on pious readers, especially among the lower orders : Samuel
Rutherford (1600-1661), a Scotch minister (author of the 'Trial
and Triumph of Faith ') ; and Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676), an
English judge (author of ' Contemplations, Moral and Divine').
HISTORY.
The great historian of the period was Edward Hyde, Lord
Clarendon (1609-1674), who had some share in making material
for the history that he wrote. The son of a country gentleman,
he was bred to the law and in 1640 began his public career in
Parliament. He supported the moderate opposition to the arbi-
trary measures of the King ; but when Parliament raised its tone
and demanded the abolition of Episcopacy, he went over to the
King's party. He accompanied the Prince and the Queen-mother
to France. After the Restoration, which was brought about chiefly
by his skilful management, he was appointed Chancellor ; but in
the course of a few years he became unpopular both with the King
and with the people, and in 1667 he was impeached of high treason
by the Commons, ordered by the King to quit the kingdom, and
pursued by the Lords with a bill of banishment. He was never
permitted to return ; he spent four years of his exile at Montpel-
lier, and the remaining three years at Rouen. It was during his
two periods of exile that he composed his various works. His
' History of the Grand Rebellion ' was begun at Jersey his first
place of refuge on the failure of the King's cause and completed
during his final banishment. His ' Life and Continuation of the
History' was published from his manuscripts in 1759. He wrote,
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 305
besides, several brief works now fallen into neglect. He seems to
have been a man of great practical sagacity and singular tenacity
of purpose a hard, austere, and, on the whole, upright man ; too
unyielding and too little disposed to regard the feelings of others.
His manner was reserved and dictatorial He comments upon tin
transactions of the time from his own point of view, animadvert
ing severely upon the enemies of the King ; but it is universally
allowed that he wrote with a high-principled regard for truth : he
was probably too magnanimous, too loftily convinced of the ri^ht
of his own cause, to seek to pervert the facts. His style is dry
and rather prolix. In the history our interest is drawn chiefly to
the judgments of men and measures; the veteran politician was a
penetrating observer, and his estimates of character and motive
will always attract readers to his work.
Two minor historians deserve a passing mention. Thomas May
(15951650) commended by Dr Johnson as one of the earliest
English writers of Latin verse able " to contest the palm with any
other of the lettered nations " was secretary to the Parliament,
and published in 1647 ' T^ 6 History of the Parliament of England
which began November 3, 1640.' Arthur Wilson (15%- 1652),
secretary to the Parliamentary General Essex, left a work on ' The
Life and Reign of James I.'
The two chief antiquaries were Sir William Dugdale (1605-
1686), and his son-in-law Elias Ashmole (1617-1692).
MISCELLANEOUS.
James Howell (1596-1666), a versatile writer of dictionaries,
grammars, histories, biographies, poems, and political pamphlets,
is now known chiefly as the author of the first volume ot ' Familiar
Letters ' in our language. Howell had something of the versatile
activity of Defoe : like Defoe he travelled on the Continent for
commercial purposes, and like Defoe he was often employed on
political missions. Only, Howell had less power than the later
adventurer, and was less intensely political, observing men good-
humouredly, and recording his observations with sparkling live-
liness. As an example of the purposely familiar strain of his let-
ters, take his account of the rise of the Presbyterians, in a letter
written from the Fleet prison to a grave inquirer :
"The first broacher of the presbyterian religion, and who made it differ
from that of Rome and Luther, was Calvin ; who being once banished
Geneva was revoked, at which time, he no less petulantly than profanely
applied to himself that text of the holy prophet which was meaned of Christ,
The stone which the builders refuted, is made the headstone of the corner, <L-c.
Thus Geneva lake swallowed up the episcopal sea, and church lands were
made secular; which was the white they levelled at. This Geneva bird flew
thence to France, and hatched the Hugonots, which make about the tenth
part of that people. It took wing also to Bohemia and Germany high and
U
306 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
low, as the Palatinate, the land of Hesse, and the confederate province" of
the states of Holland, whence it took flight to Scotland and England. It
took first footing in Scotland, when King James was a child in his cradle ;
but when he came to understand himself, and was manumitted from
Buchanan, he grew cold in it ; and being come to England, he utterly dis-
claimed it, terming it in a public speech of his to the |>arliainent a sect,
rather than a religion. To this sect may be imputed all the sidssures that
have happened in Christianity, with most of the wars that have lacerated
poor Europe ever since ; and it may be called the source of the civil distrac-
tions that now afflict this poor island. "
Howell, as is evident from the above, was a royalist : and when
he wrote it, he lay in prison by order of the Parliament.
When Fuller's ' Church History ' was published, it was attacked
by a somewhat flippant and self-confident controversialist, Peter
Heylin (1600-1662), author of a ' History of the Reformation in
England.' Heylin began to write at an early age, publishing
* Microcosmus ; or, a Description of the World,' a popular geo-
graphical work, in 1621 ; and to the end of his life he continued
a prolific and varied writer. In 1625 he published an account of
a six weeks' tour in France a very flippant aud superficial affair,
with occasional dashes of clever expression. . In his history he is
a bitter partisan on the royalist side. He was in holy orders, and
is said to have died partly of chagrin at not being recognised after
the Restoration.
John Earle (1601-1665), chaplain and tutor to Prince Charles IL,
appointed at the Restoration Bishop of Worcester, and subsequently
promoted to Salisbury, followed in the wake of Overbury, Dekker,
and others, as a writer of essays and characters. His ' Microcos-
mography; or, a Piece of the World discovered in Essays and
Characters,' was published about 1628, and became popular. An
eleventh edition was printed in 1811. The characters are such as
an Antiquary, a Carrier, a Country Fellow, a University Dun.
He writes in the same punning antithetical strain as Overbury,
but caricatures more, and has a much less delicate fancy.
Long after the death of Samuel Butler, author of ' Hudibras '
(1612-1680), in 1759, appeared his 'Genuine Remains in Prose.'
The principal of them are " Characters " in the style of Overbury
and Earle. Butler belongs to this generation through his satires
on the Puritans. His prose has something of the coarse satiric
vigour of his poetry; the wit has a much stronger flavour than
either Overbury' a or Earle's.
Owen Felltham (1608-1677?) put forth in 1628 a second edition
of a work called 'Resolves' (that is, "Solutions"); 'Divine,
Moral, and Political,' consisting of essays on the model of
Bacon's. The work made little noise at the time, but being re-
printed in 1707, it went through twelve editions in less than two
years. The thoughts are commonplace, the method bad, being the
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 3l)7
disjointed method of Bacon's essays without the natural clearness ;
and there is a constant straining after imagery. Their popularity
in Queen Anne's reign is accounted for by their high moral tone,
and their occasionally felicitous application of Baconian imagery
to common themes, such as moderation in grief, evil-speaking, in-
dustry, and meditation.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). Were this book intended aa
a guide to the intellectual epicure, it should give a large space to
the works of Sir Thomas Browne, the curiously learned, meditative,
and humorous physician of Norwich. 1 Born in London the son of
a rich merchant, he lost his father early, and was defrauded by one
of his guardians, but was taken up by his step-father and sent to
Winchester school, and thence to Oxford. He studied medicine,
practised for some time near Oxford, travelled on the Continent,
received M.D. at Leyden in 1633, returned to England, practised
for a short time near Halifax, settled in Norwich, and there spent
the remainder of his life. His first work, ' Religio Medici,' The
Keligion of a Physician published in 1643,* made an immediate
sensation, was translated into Latin, and " very eagerly read in
England, France, Italy, Belgium, and Germany." It is remark-
able for its equanimity and tranquil warmth of sentiment ; he
avows himself an orthodox believer in the English Church, yet
he loves the symbols of Catholic worship ; he is elevated in spirit
at hearing " the Ave-Mary bell," and is moved to tears at sight of
a solemn procession; when others, "blind with opposition and
prejudice, fall into an excess of scorn and laughter," he " cannot
laugh at but rather pities " the asceticism of pilgrims and friars,
because there is in it "something of devotion." He did not like
to hear that the Anglican religion began with Henry VIIL he
desired for it a longer antiquity; and he disapproved of the
"popular scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs at the Bishop of
Rome" "though he call me heretic, I will not return to him
the name of antichrist, man of sin, or whore of Babylon." For
all his moderation the book was placed on the ' Index Expurga-
torius.' 3 His other works made less immediate noise, though they
contain equally fine passages ; their themes are less exciting, run
counter to no vested interests. The 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica,'
or 'Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors,' 1646, deals with
physical, not moral, errors : false beliefs concerning the proper-
ties of gems, of plants, of animals, of men j mistakes in popular
1 See p. 95.
a A surreptitious copy, published in 1642, he disowned as imperfect.
8 The fate of his refined moderation is a warning. Hating nobody, he was
hated and attacked by the extreme adherents of all parties ; denounced as an
atheist, as a Papist, and as a Presbyterian. On the other hand, a certain Quaker
was hopeful of bringing him over to the Society of Friends, because he disliked
otrit'e, and with all his love of symbolic acts, would not lift hi* hat to a ci ucilix.
308 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
pictures (the conventional dolphin, pelican, &c., the conventional
temptation of Eve, sacrifice of Isaac, &c.) ; cosmographical and
geographical errors (concerning the seasons, the river Nilus, the
blackness of Negroes, &c.) ; historical errors, chiefly touching
Scripture (that a man hath one rib less than a woman, that John
the Evangelist should not die, &c.) 'The Garden of Cyrus, or
the Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients,
artificially, naturally, mystically considered,' 1658, is a fanciful
search through nature for his favourite figure the Quincunx : he
finds, says Coleridge, "quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes
in earth below, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in
tones, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in everything."
' Hydriotaphia,' Urn-burial, published along with the ' Garden of
Cyrus,' is a discourse upon the ancient practice of cremation,
occasioned by the discovery of certain urns in Norfolk ; in the
concluding chapter, the solemn impassioned rhetoric on the short-
ness of life, and of posthumous memory, is considered his finest
effort.
Browne's character is drawn by De Quincey in its points of
contrast with the character of Jeremy Taylor. He is " deep, tran-
quil, and majestic as Milton, silently premeditating and 'disclos-
ing his golden couplets,' as under some genial instinct of incuba-
tion." The reference to Milton is not so happy : Browne had not
the passionate fervour of Milton ; grave, solemn, meditative, with-
out fire or freshness of sentiment, he would have shrunk from
Milton's vituperative scorn, and could never have conceived the
tender and graceful fancies of Milton's smaller poems. The pre-
vailing characteristic of his style is tranquil elaboration. He
abounds in carefully constructed periods, intermixed with shurt
pointed sentences that have a singularly Johnsonian sound, from
the fulness of the rhythm. His sentence - structure is more
" formed " than in any previous writer, perhaps more so than in
any writer anterior to Johnson. His figures are original, ingeni-
ous, and peculiarly apt ; he does not err in excess of similitudea
Felicitous and complete expression, comparatively free from tautol-
ogy, inspires a general feeling of vigour ; and here and there we
are carried away by flights of high and solemn elevation. The
great drawback for the modern reader is his excessive use of words
coined from the Latin. Even Johnson condemns him on this
sen re. His Latinised diction is all the more remarkable because
he expressly condemns Latin quotations, saying that " if elegancy
still proceedeth, and English pens maintain that stream we have
observed to flow from many, we shall within few years be fain to
learn Latin to understand English, and a work will prove of equal
facility in either." His offences have probably been exaggerated,
extreme passages being tendered as fair examples : still in every
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 309
page thei are at least two words that have not been naturalised
iatproperations, amit, depilous, manuduction, and suchlike.
Another recluse, more sensitive and egotistic, and less full of
power than the tranquil sage of Norwich, was Dr Henry More
(1614-1687), Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He was
obstinately attached to the cloister : he might have had a bishop-
ric ; and he refused even the Mastership of his College. His
favourite meditations were mystical speculations about the soul,
first evolved in his poem ' Psychozoia,' or " the first part of the
song of the Soul, containing a Christiauo-Platonical display of
life." He was an admirer of Descartes. He and a few congenial
spirits formed in the reign of Charles IL a school known as the
Plutonising or Latitudinarian Divines.
Bishop Wilkins (1614-1672) is known as the author of an " Essay
towards a real Character, and Philosophical Language." He was
one of our earliest physical speculators : he contended that the
moon was inhabited (' Discovery of a New World,' 1638) ; and in
a work published in 1640, one of the earliest systematic defences
of the Copernican system, he maintained that the earth is probably
one of the planets. During the Civil War and the Protectorate
he sided with the Parliament, and in 1656 married a widowed
sister of Oliver CromwelL He was appointed Warden of Wadhain,
Oxford, and afterwards Master of Trinity, Cambridge. From this
preferment he was degraded at the Restoration, -but he afterwards
regained the royal favour, and was elevated to the bench. He
is illustrious as one of the fount! ers of the Royal Society : the
scientific enthusiasts afterwards incorporated with this institution
held their first meetings in the lodgings of Dr Wilkins. In the
Church he was an eminent member of the Latitudinarian school.
But his name is most widely known in connection with his " dis-
course concerning the possibility of a passage to the moon."
Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) deserves a word among the half-
mystic, half-scientific men of his time. He was a strange com-
pound of dashing soldier, accomplished courtier, successful lover,
and occult philosopher. There are passages in his treatise ' Of
Bodies and Man's Soul ' hardly surpassed in Sir Thomas Browne.
He was one of the original Council of the Royal Society.
Izaak Walton (1593-1683), already mentioned as the biographer
of Hooker, was another quiet and peaceable man in an age of ex-
citement. He wrote also the lives of Donne, Sir Henry Wotton,
George Herbert, and Bishop Sanderson : the respective dates of
publication being, "Donne," 1640; "Wotton," 1651; "Hooker,"
1662; "Herbert," 1670; "Sanderson," 1678. But the work
usually coupled with his name is 'The Complete Angler' (1653),
still read by the followers of "the gentle craft" for its in forma-
tion, and interesting to the general reader as disclosing the char-
310 FEOM 1640 TO 1670.
acter of the writer quiet, humorous, and enamoured of fresh
pastoral scenery. Walton was a retired London linen-draper ; he
had married into a clerical family, and spent the greater part of
his retirement at the houses of country clergymen.
John Milton (1608-1674) wrote a good many works in prose,
although, as he said, " in this manner of writing, knowing myself
inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another
task, I have the use, as I may account it, but of my left hand."
His first appearance was on the Puritan side, in a treatise entitled
4 Of Reformation,' 1641. In the same year he put forth a treatise
S 0f Prelatical Episcopacy,' as his contribution in the warfare
raised by Joseph Hall's ' Humble Remonstrance ' in favour of
Episcopacy. This work he had to back up with two tracts :
"Animadversions on a ' Defence ' of the Remonstrance;" and " An
Apology for Smectymnuus," in reply to a criticism of the Animad-
versions. In 1642 he came forward with a larger work 'The
Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy.' This
was for the time his last word on the Church government contro-
versy. In 1644 he wrote his ' Areopagitica, a Speech for the
Liberty of Unlicensed Printing,' the first formal plea for the free-
dom of the press. In 1645 ^ e wr te his famous works advocating
greater freedom of Divorce ' Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,'
' Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce,' ' Tetrachordon,'
and ' Colasterion.' After the exertion of writing these works
" I imagined," he says, " that I was about to enjoy an interval of unin-
terrupted ease, and turned my thoughts to a continued history of my country,
from the earliest times to the present period. I had already finished four
books ; when after the subversion of the monarchy, and the establishment
of a republic, I was surprised by an invitation from the Council of State,
who desired my services in the office for foreign affairs. A book appeared
soon after, which was ascribed to the King, and contained the most invidious
charges against the Parliament. I was ordered to answer it, and opposed
the ' Eikouoclastes ' to the * Eikon." "
This was in the end of 1649. Before this, in the beginning of
the year, immediately after the King's execution, he published his
' Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.' Thereafter he engaged in a
Latin controversy with Salmasius, a rhetorical Leyden Professor,
said to have been hired to defend the memory of the King, and
asperse his executioners ; the titles of Milton's works were, ' A
Defence of the People of England ' (1651), and ' A Second Defence '
(1654). An earnest champion up to the last moments of the dis-
solving Commonwealth, he wrote in 1659 ' A Treatise of Civil
Power in Ecclesiastical Causes,' ' Considerations towards the like
liest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church,' and ' A Letter
to a Friend concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth.' Next
year he addressed a letter to Monk ' The present means and brief
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 311
declaration of a free Commonwealth, easy to be put in practice,
and without delay.' When the fatal moment came nearer, he
issued a last appeal ' The ready and easy way to establish a free
Commonwealth, and the excellence thereof compared with the
inconvenience and dangers of readmitting kingship in this nation.
The author J. M.' Immediately after the Restoration he was busy
with his ' Paradise Lost.' His remaining works in prose are a
' History of Britain, down to the Norman Conquest' (1670); a
treatise ' Of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what
best Means may be used against the growth of Popery ; ' and a
' Brief History of Muscovia, and of other less known Countries
lying eastward of Russia, as far as Cathay.' He wrote also in
Latin a ' Treatise on Logic ; ' published a collection of Latin
Familiar Letters ; spent several years on an extensive Latin Dic-
tionary ; and left at his death a system of Christian Doctrine, the
discovery of which, in 1823, and its publication by royal order,
gave an opportunity for Macaulay's celebrated Essay.
Concerning Milton's style the most diverse opinions have been
pronounced. Everything depends upon the point of view. Rich
and powerful it is undeniably, coming from such a master of
words, and yields in the highest degree the pleasure of luxurious
expression. But the student need hardly be warned that Milton's
prose is to be enjoyed without being imitated : for modern pur-
poses the language and idiom are too stiffly Latinised, and the
imagery too fantastic. Further, for a work of controversy the
style is too ornate, too unmethodical, and too coarsely vituperative
to have much convincing or converting power. In Milton still
more than in Taylor the application is lost in the gorgeous splen-
dour of words and imagery, and all but decided adherents are
repelled by the unmeasured discharge of abuse and ridicule.
The author of ' Eikon Basilike ; or the Portraiture of his Most
Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings,' was Bishop
Gauden (1605-1662). 1 Purporting to be written by Charles him-
self, and published a few days after his execution, this work had a
prodigious effect, fifty editions being sold within the year. There
is nothing in the style deserving notice ; it professes to be a simple
record of the King's meditations.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), " the philosopher of Malmesbury,"
is notorious for his views of human nature, and of the relations
between the governing power and the subject His long life covers
three generations. The works that have immortalised his name
were written between 1640 and 1660: the dates of publication
being 'De Give,' privately circulated in 1642, published with
notes in 1647, an ^ translated into English in 1650; 'Treatise on
1 The authorship of the ' Eikon Basilike ' was the great literary puzzle of the
seventeenth century, as ' Junius ' was of the eighteenth.
312 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
Human Nature,' 1650; 'De Corpore Politico,' a concise summary
in English of his main political views, 1650 ; ' Leviathan, or the
Matter, Power, and Form of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and
Civil,' 1651 ; ' De Corpore,' the fundamental work of his philo-
sophical system, 1655, done into English 1656.
Malmesbury was the place of his birth. It is said that hia
mother, overpowered by the national excitement at the coming of
the Armada, brought him forth prematurely. He mentions this
himself to account for a certain constitutional timidity that never
left him. He was a precocious child. He graduated at Oxford in
1608; and being almost immediately appointed half tutor, half
companion to the son of the first Earl of Devonshire, he spent the
next twenty years of his life in ease, travelling on the Continent,
and at home forming the acquaintance of the most eminent men of
the time, Bacon, Lord Herbert, Ben Jonsori, and others. His pupil
and patron died in 1628, and in that year he made his first publi-
cation, a translation of Thucydides, undertaken to show the evils
of popular rule. From 1631 to 1637 he was tutor to the third
Earl of Devonshire, a boy ; and travelling in that capacity, made
the acquaintance of Galileo, Mersenne, and other eminent men,
in whose company he had his thoughts turned towards physical
science. For eleven years, from 1640 to 1651, he sought shelter
in Paris from the apprehended hostility of the Long Parliament,
having by this time become known as a political thinker, and was
active, as we have said, in the composition of his leading works.
In 1651, fearing persecution at Paris in consequence of his obnox-
ious opinions, he ventured back to England, and lived unmolested
with the Devonshire family through the remainder of the Com-
monwealth, and the first nineteen years of the restored monarchy.
Though free from material discomfort, his old age was not a little
troubled. He was assailed by swarms of hostile critics for his
obnoxious views of human nature and politics, and his works were
formally censured by Parliament in 1666. To add to this vexation,
he ha- 1 provoked a quarrel with mathematicians, Dr Wallis and
others, maintaining that he had discovered the quadrature of the
circle, and defying the whole race of geometers and natural philo-
sophers with acrimonious contempt. In extreme old age he " wrote
in Latin metre a history of the Romish Church and an autobiogra-
phy ; and in his eighty-sixth year, amid other occupations, trans-
lated the ' Odyssey ' and ' Iliad ' into vigorous, if not elegant,
English verse." After his death was published his last work,
entitled ' Behemoth ; or a History of the Civil Wars from 1640
to 1660.'
The merits ascribed to his style are brevity, simplicity, and pre-
cision. These merits are sometimes extravagantly overrated. Sir
James Mackintosh says :
MISCELLANEOUS V7E1TEKS. 313
"A permanent foundation of his fame remains in his admirable style,
which seems to be the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear,
precise, pithy, his language never has more than one meaning, which it
never requires a second thought to take. By the help of his exact method,
it takes so firm a hold on the mind that it will not allow attention to
slacken."
This is mere reckless hyperbole. The words put in italics describe
an ideal that every expositor should try to attain, but which no
expositor can hope to reach. Undoubtedly Hobbes took great
pains to be simple and precise. He makes an effort to express
himself in familiar words, explains his general positions by exam-
ples, and his order of exposition is such as can be easily followed.
Having a deep sense of the evils of ambiguous language, he is care-
ful to define his terms. Further, he has great powers of terse and
vigorous statement, his figures are studied and apt, and his didactic
strain is enlivened by ingenious and occasionally sarcastic point.
Yet he is far from being a perfect expositor, as he is by no means
always a consistent thinker. When he enters upon details, he is
often perplexed, does not keep his main subject prominent, and
introduces statements out of their proper order. There are pas-
sages in his works that Sir James could not have taken up at finst
sight without a superhuman quickness of apprehension. The truth
is, that Hobbes owes his reputation for simplicity and clearness in
a very large measure to the simplicity of his leading ideas. The
plain language and exact method would not have made the style
so famous had not the matter been simple to the degree of slurring
over difficulties. Both upon mind and upon politics he superin-
duces simple and plausible theories, assembles the facts that sup-
port them, and says nothing about the facts that they do not ex-
plain. That there is an external world and a mental experience ;
that thought consists merely in a continuance of movements com-
municated to the organs of sense by the external world ; that man's
motives are originally selfish ; that the aboriginal men lived in war
and anarchy ; that government arose when they came to an under-
standing, and entered into a contract to observe certain rules ; that
these rules constitute right, and must at all risks be obeyed, such
doctrines are simple, immediately and clearly intelligible, but their
simplicity is gained by glossing over the complicacy of the actual
problems. Not that Hobbes had any conscious desire to skip over
difficulties. The inaccurate simplicity of his doctrines is to be
attributed to his strong feeling of the vagueness of previous specu-
lations, his endeavour to attain greater certainty by applying the
method of mathematics, and his failure to verify his results by an
appeal to actual life.
Along with Hobbes may be mentioned, as a political speculator,
James Harrington (1611-1677), author of ,'Oceana' (published
314 FROM 1640 TO 1670.
1656), an ideal republic. In his review of the literatuie of the
period, Hume has the following:
" Harrington's 'Oceana' was well adapted to that age, when the plans of
imaginary republics were the daily subjects of debate and conversation, and
even in our time it is justly admired as a work of genius and invention.
The style of this author wants ease and fluency, but the good matter which
liis work contains makes compensation."
Another republican, a more fiery man of action than Harrington,
was Algernon Sidney (1622-1683), author of a ' Discourse on Gov-
ernment.' Sidney inherited headstrong blood from both parents.
His father was Robert, Earl of Leicester, and his mother a daughter
of Percy, Earl of Northumberland. He was a most determined foe
to monarchy ; engaged vehemently on the side of the Parliament,
refused to take office under the usurpation of Cromwell, and fled
to the Continent at the Restoration, refusing the mediation of his
friends with the restored monarch. Obtaining permission to re-
turn in 1677, he threw himself into the opposition to the Govern-
ment, and in his furious zeal for the accomplishment of his aims,
engaged, if the papers of the French Ambassador are to be trusted,
in unscrupulous intrigues with France. In 1 683 he was condemned.
on very partial evidence, upon the charge of conspiring to assassi-
nate the King, and was executed on Tower-hill. He is regarded
as a martyr to republican principles. His ' Discourse ' was first
published in 1698.
Marchinont Needham (1620-1678) is the chief representative ot
journalism in this generation. Public events favoured the growth
of newspapers : the Thirty Years' War on the Continent was not
concluded when topics of more powerful interest arose at home
with the outbreak of the Civil War. Many sheets, with every
variety of piquant title, started into existence to meet the public
thirst for intelligence. On the ist of January 1642 the ' Mercurius
Aulicus' was issued from Oxford, avowedly as the organ of the
King's party. It was edited by one Birkenhead, then a Fellow of
All-Souls, and for a short time Professor of Moral Philosophy.
He was appointed licenser of the press after the Restoration. In
1643, Needham, another Oxonian, appeared with an opposition
" Mercury," entitled ' Mercurius Britannicus.' His paper was ex-
ceedingly popular; but the Puritans were stern censors of the
press, and the gay and restless Needham, after serving them for
four years, went over to the King, and turned his wit against his
former masters. He stood by the King to the last, and was im-
prisoned and condemned to death ; but Toeing offered his life by the
Independents upon condition of giving them his services against
the Presbyterians, he accepted the offer, and remained " Parlia-
mentary intelligencer" until the Restoration. Both Birkenhead
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 315
and Needham are abused for raillery, buffoonery, and want of
principle ; but facts do not show them to have differed much from
their contemporaries, except in a clever faculty of gaining the
popular ear. 1 Needham's changes of party are explicable without
the supposition that he was worse than other men. He seems to
have been a gay, versatile creature, and is mentioned by Anthony
4 Wood as possessing considerable humour and convivial qualities
1 Cornlull Magazine, July 1868.
CHAPTER V.
FEOM 1670 TO I7<XX
BIB WILLIAM TEMPLE,
1628 1699.
DIPLOMATIST, statesman, and miscellaneous writer, one of the
most remarkable men under the reign of Charles IL Swift, not
given to over-praising, said: "it is generally believed that this
author has advanced our English tongue to as great a perfection
as it can well bear." And Johnson is reported to have laid down
in conversation that " Sir William Temple was the first writer
who gave cadence to English prose. Before this time they were
careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence
ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with
what part of speech it was concluded." Spoken in the hurry of
conversation, this dictum asserts several merits. Usually the first
part is quoted and the second passed over, although the second is
the higher compliment. Better general method, and greater atten-
tion to details of expression, are more valuable improvements than
superior regularity of cadence.
To the family of Temple belong some of the most eminent
names in our political history. The late Lord Palmerston was
descended from a brother of Sir William's. In last century
three Privy Councillors Sir Richard Temple, Baron Cobham ;
Earl Temple ; and Lord Grenville came from another branch of
the same family. " There were times," says Macaulay, " when
the cousinhood, as it was once nicknamed, would of itself have
furnished almost all the materials necessary for the construction
of an efficient Cabinet." The lineal descendants of Sir William
SIK WILLIAM TEMPLE. 317
himself ended with the third generation. The family has been
continued chiefly through the female line.
Our author's ancestors did not rise to the highest offices of
state, yet they were men of considerable mark It is interesting
to know that his grandfather was the chosen companion of Sir
Philip Sidney during the Flemish war, and was present at that
hero's untimely death. His father was made Master of the Rolls
of Ireland by Charles L, and retained the office, with a short
interval, throughout the Commonwealth, dying in 1677, of the
same age as the century.
Sir William was born in London. His tutor at Cambridge,
where he resided two years, was the learned Cudworth. From
1648 to 1654 he travelled on the Continent, making himself
master of French and Spanish. His first public employment was
as a member of the Irish Convention in 1660: there he gained
distinction by taking the lead against an exorbitant tax proposed
by the new and popular Government. In 1665 began his career
as a diplomatist In that year he displayed such address as envoy
to the Bishop of Munster that he was appointed Resident at the
viceregal Spanish Court of Brussels. In 1668 he accomplished
with unparalleled speed the famous negotiation usually coupled
with his name, the Triple Alliance between England, Holland,
and Sweden. Immediately after this he was made Ambassador
at the Hague, and completed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. In
1670, in consequence of the King's dishonest intrigues with France,
he was recalled, and spent three years in retirement at Sheen. In
1673 he concluded the peace that followed upon Charles's second
war with Holland ; and, declining an offer of the embassy to Spain,
and also the Secretaryship of State, was again, in June 1674, ap-
pointed Ambassador at the Hague. He had the credit of bringing
about during that embassy the marriage between William of Orange
and the Princess Mary. In 1678 he represented England in an
endeavour to settle the complicated relations of Continental powers;
but his efforts to uphold the dignity of our Government as an ar-
bitrating power were baffled by the distractingly crooked policy of
the King and his Ministers. He maintained his integrity by refus-
ing to sign the treaty of Nimeguen. In 1679 he was summoned
from Holland to take office as Secretary of State, but ingeniously
contrived to evade the hazardous dignity. His only other public
service was the plan of a Privy Council of thirty to renew the
confidence of the nation in King Charles. When this scheme
worked ill from the multiplicity of intrigue at the Court, he retired
altogether from public business. He was frequently consulted dur-
ing his retirement by Charles II., James II., and William ; but
nothing could induce him to resume office. No man, he sa/d,
should be in public business after fifty ; and ten years before this
318 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
he had declared that he knew enough of Courts to see " that they
were not made for one another." Having purchased Moor Park,
near Farnham iu Surrey, he went there in 1686, and amused him-
self with literature, architecture, Dutch gardening, and other em-
ployments of retired leisure. At the Revolution he was much
pressed to take office, but steadfastly refused, and lived in retire-
ment at Moor Park till his death in 1699.
The various works he has left us were composed in his periods
of retirement During his temporary seclusion, between 1670
and 1673, he wrote his ' Observations on the United Provinces,'
and some miscellaneous pieces. In his final retirement he selected
and prepared for the press his public correspondence during the
years of his active life. He also wrote ' Memoirs of the Treaty of
Nimeguen,' with an account of the difficulties that this Treaty was
designed to solve. To complete his record of what passed during
his public employment, he wrote other Memoirs, " from the peace
concluded 1679, to the time of the author's retirement from public
business." He wrote also various Miscellanies " Upon the Gar-
dens of Epicurus;" "Of Heroic Virtue;" "Of Poetry;" "On
the Cure of the Gout by Moxa," kc.
" Sir William Temple's person," says the nameless writer of " a
short character" prefixed to his works, "is best known by his
pictures and prints. He was rather tall than low ; his shape,
when young, very exact ; his hair a dark brown, and curled
naturally, and, whilst that was esteemed a beauty, nobody had
it in greater perfection ; his eyes grey, but lively ; and his body
lean, but extreme active, so that none acquitted themselves better
at all sorts of exercise."
What principally strikes us in Temple's intellect is its singular
measure, solidity, sagacity. In negotiating he timed his move-
ments with admirable skill ; he succeeded in whatever he under-
took ; he was the author of the most famous alliance in that
generation, and nobody has detected a flaw in his plans, or proved
that in his diplomacy he should have acted otherwise than he did.
The same sagacity appears in his political speculations ; he keeps
fllose to the facts, and does not begin to speculate till he has
mastered them. Such he was as a man of practice and a thinker,
attempting comparatively little, and doing what he attempted with
thoroughness. When we view him on the aesthetic side, we see
the same characteristic appearing in the shape of refined taste.
He did not attempt works of the imagination, but he studied the
beauties of order and finished rhythm, and even in his most
didactic compositions the language and the similitudes have a
refined elevation.
He seems to have been a man of deep tenderness and strong
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 319
personal feelings, a great favourite with children, a passionate
lover, a fond husband, a constant friend. As his likes were strong,
so were his dislikes ; he had such an aversion for some men as to
be impatient of their conversation.
But however strong his feelings might be, he kept the expres-
sion of them under control. He was not extravagant in his
professions of attachment, but sprightly and humorous; and he
had, as even Macaulay admits, a good command of his naturally
irritable temper. So with his love of power; he did not rush
actively into the struggle of ambition, and he would not seem to
have occupied his imagination with ambitious dreams. He was
equally moderate in his admiration of power: he could admire;
he was not an envious disappointed man ; but he admired with a
just appreciation of the actors and the circumstances. Unprinci-
pled, egotistic ambition he could not admire; his sympathies and
general human kindliness were too predominant for that. In his
political treatises, his personality comes little to the surface ; he is
grave and dignified as becomes his subject, and criticises in the
impersonal spirit of a statesman warmly interested in humanity,
but elevated above party or national feeling by the comprehen-
siveness of his views. In the Preface to the ' Observations on the
United Provinces,' he states how far he looks upon History as a
field of scenic interest. 1 His published letters abound in graceful
compliments and strokes of wit. But in nearly all his formal
essays he has an eye to instruction rather than pleasure : " I can
truly say, that, of all the paper I have blotted, which has been a
great deal in my time, I have never written anything for the
public without the intention of some public good."
In the discharge of public business he showed the measure that
seems to us his most striking characteristic. That he could act
with vigour and decision upon an emergency was proved in more
than one trying situation. He ascribed the failure of his constitu-
tion in middle life partly to "unnecessary diligences in his em-
ployments abroad ; " and doubtless one-half of his success as a
diplomatist was due to his promptitude in seizing the favourable
moment. But he kept his energies strictly in hand ; he lived
temperately, he was distinguished for his frankness and truthful-
ness, and showed no propensity to grasp momentary advantages
by unscrupulous craft. He refrained immovably from affairs that
he knew to be beyond his power. When the Court was in confu-
sion from the intrigues of unscrupulous rivals and the unpatriotic
policy of the King, nothing could induce him to accept office. He
joined neither the unprincipled struggle for power, nor the hope-
less endeavours under the name of patriotism. He boldly lectured
the King on the duties of his position, and steadily wound himself
1 See p. 322.
320 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
out of the imbroglio. He could act with vigour, but action was
not a necessity of his nature. After his fixed resolution " never
more to meddle with any public employment," he busied himself
with his garden and his books, " taking no more notice of what
passed upon the public scene than an old man uses to do of what
is acted on a theatre, where he gets as easy a seat as he can, enter-
tains himself with what passes on the stage, not caring who the
actors are, nor what the plot, nor whether he goes out before the
play be done."
In practical politics the most important of Temple's views are
those regarding England's best Continental policy in the then
existing situation. The Triple Alliance, between England, Hol-
land, and Sweden, is a clear and easily remembered index As
Sidney and Raleigh had to urge the growing power of Spain upon
the Government of Elizabeth, so Temple had to urge the growing
power of France upon the Government of Charles. He advocated
alliance with Holland in opposition both to commercial jealousy
and to the French proclivities of the Court As a speculator upon
the ' Original and Nature of Government,' he writes with charac-
teristic sagacity. Concerning the origin of government, his lead-
ing views coincide with what is now generally accepted. He dis-
misses the theory of an original contract, and treats political com-
munities as an expansion of the family system. The existence of
aristocracies he ascribes in most cases to an incoming of conquerors.
As regards the best form of government, he holds that there are
but two leading forms, the rule of one and the rule of several ; that
experience gives little light as to the best system in detail He
lays down the seeming truism that " those are generally the best
governments where the best men govern." But farther, he consid-
ers that all government rests ultimately on the will of the people,
however propitiated, and that the most stable government is the
pyramidal, the government that rests on the widest basis of popu-
lar confidence. He is not misled into overrating the importance
of Greek and Roman history to the political student ; he regards
the classical governments as short-lived political failures, and con-
siders the more stable institutions of China, of the Ottomans, of
the Goths, and of Peru, as at least equally deserving of attention.
His Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning maintains that the
ancient literature is superior to the modern. We must remember
that it was written before 1688. He was not the originator of the
comparison ; it was a favourite theme among members of the
French Academy and of the English Royal Society. Our author
dwells chiefly on general considerations. He rebuts the argument
that the moderns must be better than the ancients because intel-
lects are very much the same in all ages and countries, and because
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 321
the moderns have always the advantage of the experience of their
predecessors. He argues that the Greeks had before them the
wisdom of the Egyptians and the Hindus ; that " many circum-
stances concur to one production that do not to any other, in one
or many ages ;" and that in recent times learning had been discour-
aged by ecclesiastical disputes, civil dissensions, want of royal
patronage, and general contempt of scholarship, owing to the ex-
cessive pedantry of some scholars. He considers Sidney, Bacon,
and Selden the three greatest " wits" among the English moderns:
he does not mention Shakspeara
ELEMENTS OP 8TYLR
Vocabulary. In Temple we meet with very few words that are
not to be found in good modern prose. But some of the phrases
and combinations are rather old-fashioned, such as, " I am not in
pain " for / am under no alarm; " wits possessed of the vogue ; "
" it is all a case " for it is all one; "the bottom and reach of the
design," where a modern writer would probably say " the founda-
tion and object of the plot (or of the conspiracy) ; " " these spirits
were fed and heightened " for " this state of feeling was inflamed
(or encouraged)." Any reader comparing Temple's diction with
ordinary modern diction cannot fail to notice in how many cases
Saxon expressions have been superseded by Latin.
His style is sometimes decried as being tainted with Gallicisms.
The accusation should be limited. In his ' Memoirs ' he uses a
good many French terms and turns such as, " with all the secret
imaginable " (for secrecy), " resentment of kindness shown me " (for
gratitude), " this testimony is justly due to all that practised him "
(for all that had much intercourse with him). As Swift tells us, he
used these expressions unconsciously, being led into them natu-
rally from carrying on diplomacy in French. But when the fault
was pointed out to him, he took pains to correct it, and, except in
his ' Memoirs,' there are few traces either of French terms or of
French idiom.
Sentences. Comparing Temple's composition with any publica-
tion of anterior date, we remark that the placing of words is better
attended to ; the cadence being more regularly filled out, and the
balance of the clauses more neatly finished. In especial, we remark
a peculiar finish of pointed balance greater pains to bring two
opposed words or phrases into corresponding places in the syntax
of two successive clauses, and so more pointedly direct attention to
the antithesis.
We must not suppose from Johnson's panegyric that Temple
was the inventor of rhythmical balance and point. It has been
seen that these arts of style were practised under Elizabeth ; every
x
322 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
age, indeed, can produce at least one representative of the pointed
style. Temple's merit lies in improving and perfecting. In his
composition the recurrence of clauses formed after the same model
is more measured and regular. After reading a part of any of his
highly finished passages, our ear comes to expect something more
or less pointed in every sentence, and we are seldom disappointed.
Were the subject-matter trifling, this would soon become tiresome ;
but as the matter is usually weighty, and the language dignified
and varied, the play of antithesis is rather an agreeable addition.
To illustrate the superior dignity and finish of his pointed sen-
tences, one or two passages may be quoted. Our quotations under
this head are longer than usual, because this is really the chief
distinction of the author's style.
The following is from the Preface to his ' Observations on the
United Provinces.' He is upholding the dignity of History :
"Nor are we to think Princes themselves losers, or less entertained,
when we see them employ their time and their thoughts in so useful specu-
lations, and to so glorious ends : but that rather thereby they attain their
true prerogative of being happier, as well as greater, than subjects can be.
For all the pleasures of sense that any man can enjoy, are within the reach
of a private fortune and ordinary contrivance ; grow fainter with age, and
duller with use ; must be revived with intermissions, and wait upon the
returns of appetite, which are no more at call of the rich than the poor.
The flashes of wit and good-humour that rise from the vapours of wine, are
little different from those that proceed from the heats of blood in the first'
approaches of fevers or frenzies, and are to be valued, but as (indeed) they
are, the effects of distemper. But the pleasures of imagination, as they
heighten and refine the very pleasures of sense, so they are of larger extent
and longer duration ; and if the most sensual man will confess there is a
pleasure in pleasing, he must likewise allow there is good to a man's self in
doing good to others : and the further this extends the higher it rises, and
the longer it lasts. Besides, there is beauty in order, and there are charms
in well-deserved praise : and both are the greater by how much greater the
subject ; as the first appearing in a well-framed and well-governed state, and
the other arising from noble and generous actions. Nor can any veins of
good-humour be greater than those that swell by the success of wise counsels,
and by the fortunate events of public affairs ; since a man that takes pleasure
in doing good to ten thousand, must needs have more than he that takes
none but in doing good to himself."
Our next passage is from the " Original and Nature of Govern-
ment," expounding why the country population is less democratic
than the town :
"The contrary of all this happens in countries thin inhabited, and espe-
cially in vast Campanias, such as are extended through Asia and Afric,
where there are few cities besides what grow by the residence of the kings
or their governors. The people are poorer, and having little to lose, have
little to care for, and are less exposed to the designs of power or violence.
The assembling of persons, deputed from people at great distances one from
another, is trouble to them that are sent, and charge to them that seud^
And, where ambition and avarice have made no entrance, the desire of leisure
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 323
is much more natural than of business and care ; besides, men conversing all
their lives with the woods, and the fields, and the herds, more than with
one another, come to know as little as they desire ; use their senses a 'great
deal more than their reasons ; examine not the nature or the tenure of
power and authority ; find only they are tit to obey, because they are not
fit to govern ; and so come to submit to the will of him they found in
power, as they do to the will of heaven, and consider all changes of con-
ditions that happen to them under good or bad Princes, like good or ill
seasons, that happen in the weather and the air. "
His letter of consolation to the Countess of Essex is one of his
most finished productions. The following paragraph illustrates at
once the rhythmical finish of his style and the soundness of his
judgment :
" But, Madam, though religion were no party in your case, and that for
so violent and injurious a grief, you had nothing to answer to God, but only
to the world and yourself ; yet, I very much doubt, how you would be
acquitted. We bring into the world with us a poor, needy, uncertain life,
short at the longest, and unquiet at the best ; all the imaginations of the
witty and the wise have been perpetually busied to find out the ways how
to revive it with pleasures, or relieve it with diversions ; how to compose it
with ease, and settle it with safety. To some of these ends have been em-
ployed the institutions of lawgivers, the reasonings of philosophers, the
inventions of poets, the pains of labouring, and the extravagances of volup-
tuous men. All the world is perpetually at work about nothing else, but
only that our poor mortal lives should pass the easier and happier for that
little time we possess them, or else end the better when we lose them. Upon
this occasion, riches came to be coveted, honours to be esteemed, friendship
and love to be pursued, and virtues themselves to be admired in the world.
Now, Madam, is it not to bid defiance to all mankind, to condemn their
universal opinions and designs ; if, instead of passing your life as well and
easily, you resolve to pass it as ill and miserably as you can ? You grow
insensible to the conveniences of riches, the delights of honour and praise,
the charms of kindness or friend-hip, nay to the observance or applause of
virtues themselves ; for who can you expect, in these excesses of passion,
will allow you to show either temperance or fortitude, to be either prudent or
just ? and for your friends, I suppose you reckon upon losing their kindness,
when you have sufficiently convinced them, they can never hope for any of
yours, since you have none left for yourself or anything else. You declare
upon all occasions, you are incapable of receiving any comfort or pleasure in
anything that is left in this world ; and, I assure you, Madam, none can ever
love you that can have no hopes ever to please you."
The following is a balanced comparison between Homer and
Virgil; the order is well kept up:
" Homer was, without dispute, the most universal genius that has been
known in the world, and Virgil the most accomplished. To the first must
be allowed the most fertile invention, the richest vein, the most general
knowledge, and the most lively expression ; to the last, the noblest ideas,
the justest institution, the wisest conduct, and the choicest elocution. To
speak in the painter's terms, we find, in the works of Homer, the most spirit,
force, and life ; in those of Virgil, the best design, the truest proportions,
and the greatest grace ; the colouring in both seems equal, and indeed is in
both admirable. Homer had more tire and rapture, Virgil more light and
324 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
wiftness ; or at least the poetical fire was more raging in one, but clearer in
the other, which makes the first more amazing, and the latter more agreeable.
The ore was richer in one, but in the other more refined, and better allayed
to make up excellent work. Upon the whole, I think it must be confessed,
that Homer was of the two, and perhaps of all others, the vastest, the
sublitnest, and the most wonderful genius ; and that he has been generally
so esteemed, there cannot be a greater testimony given, than what has been
by some observed, that not only the greatest masters have found in his works
the best and truest principles of all their sciences or arts, but that the
noblest nations have derived from them the original of their several races,
though it be hardly yet agreed whether his story be true or a fiction. In
short, these two immortal poets must be allowed to have so much excelled
in their kinds, as to have exceeded all comparison, to have even extin-
guished emulation, and in a manner confined true poetry, not only to their
two languages, but to their very persons."
We have noticed only the merits of Temple's sentences. These
are not uniformly sustained. The sentence- structure of his ' Mem-
oirs ' is not so good. Our quotations are fair specimens of his
general style, and even they have not the grammatical accuracy
and finish that Johnson introduced into the language. In his
' Memoirs ' he aims at Thucydidean compactness and brevity, and
BO fails into the error of condensations that are too forced, and
sentences that are deficient in unity. I shall quote the most faulty
condensation that I Lave observed :
"This, I suppose, gave the occasion for reflections upon what had passed
in the course of my former embassies in Holland and at Aix ; and his
Majesty, and his ministers, the resolution to send for me out of my private
retreat, where I hail passed two years (as I intended to do the rest of my
life), and to engage me in going over into Holland, to make the separate
peace with that State."
Paragraphs. Our author has a certain apprehension, however
faint, of paragraph method. If we except Fuller, he makes his
paragraphs more orderly and consecutive than any writer before
Johnson. His Essay on the 'Original and Nature of Govern-
ment ' is a favourable example of his method. He has five large
breaks, at each of which he introduces a new proposition. But
the passages between the breaks are far from being perfectly con-
secutive, or strictly confined to the subject enounced in the first
proposition ; although, to do them justice, they are quite as orderly
as many compositions of much later date. As an example of the
minuter paragraph arrangement, may be quoted one of these larger
divisions. It will be seen that the first paragraph is not a com-
plete introduction, and that towards the end the arrangement be-
comes more confused :
"Authority arises from the opinion of wisdom, goodness, and valour In
the persons who possess it.
" Wisdom is that which makes men judge what are the best ends, and
what tint best means to attain them ; and gives a man advantage among the
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 325
weak and the ignorant ; as sight among the blind, which is that of counsel
and direction; this gives authority to age among the younger, till these
begin at certain years to change their opinion of the old and of themselves.
This gives it more absolute to a pilot at sea, whom all the passengers suffer
to steer them as he pleases.
' ' Goodness is that which makes men prefer their duty and their promise,
before their passions or their interest ; and is properly the object of trust :
in our language it goes rather by the name of honesty ; though what we call
an honest man, the Romans call a good man ; and honesty in their language,
as well as in French, rather signifies a composition of those qualities which
generally acquire honour and esteem to those who possess them.
" Valour, as it gives awe, and promises protection to those who want either
heart or strength to defend themselves : this makes the authority of men
among women ; and that of a master-buck in a numerous herd, though per-
haps not strong enough for any two of them ; but the impression of single
fear holds when they are all together by the ignorance of uniting.
" Eloquence, as it passes for a mark of wisdom ; beauty of goodness, and
nobility of valour (which was its original) have likewise ever some effect
upon the opinion of the people ; but a very great one, when they are really
joined with the qualities they promise or resemble.
" There is yet another source from which usually springs greater authority
than from all the rest ; which is the opinion of divine favour, or designation
of the persons or of the races that govern. This made the kings among the
heathens ever derive themselves, or their ancestors, from some god ; passing
thereby for heroes that is, persons issued from the mixture of divine and
human race, and of a middle nature between gods and men ; others joined
the mitre to the crown, and thereby the reverence of divine, to the respect
of civil power.
" This made the Caliphs of Persia and Egypt, &c.
" Piety, as it is thought a way to the favour of God, and fortune, as it
looks like the effect either of that, or at least of prudence and courage, beget
authority. As likewise splendour of living in great palaoes, with numerous
attendance, much observance, and rich habits differing from common men :
both as it seems to be the reward of those virtues already named, or the effect
of fortune ; or as it is a mark of being obeyed by many.
" From all these authority arises, but is by nothing so much strengthened
and confirmed as by custom," &c.
Figures of Speech Similitudes. Temple and Cowley did much
to confirm the reaction against the indiscriminate figurative pro-
fusion of the preceding generations. Neither can be called ornate.
But while they agree in using similitudes \\ith moderation, they
differ widely in another respect. Temple's similitudes are much
more apt and striking than Cowley's, and have not the same
appearance of being fetched from a distance. They are not light
ornaments, but substantial additions, having usually both an illus-
trative and an emotional force.
One or two examples may be quoted. Remarking on the in-
terest attaching to the United Provinces, he says :
"And such a revolution as has since happened there, though it may hava
made these discourses a little important to his Majesty or his council ; yet it
will not have rendered them less agreeable to common eyes, who, like men
326 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
that lire near the sea, will run out upon the cliffs to gaze at it in a storm,
though they would not look out of their window to see it in a calm."
" I knew and esteemed a person abroad, who used to say, a man must ha
a mean wretch that desired to live after threescore years old. But so much,
I doubt, is certain, that, in life, as in wine, he that will drink it good, must
not draw it to the dregs. "
" I hare said that the excellency of genius must be native, because it can
never grow to any great height if it be only acquired or affected : but it must
be ennobled by birth to give it more lustre, esteem, and authority ; it must
be cultivated by education and instruction, to improve its growth, and direct
its end and application ; and it must be assisted by fortune, to preserve it
to maturity. . . . Now, since so many stars go to the making up of
this constellation, 'tis no wonder it has so seldom appeared in the world ; nor
that when it does, it is received and followed with so much gazing, and so
much veneration."
Contrast. We have seen that Temple makes abundant use of
antithesis, and that he studies how to give antithesis effective point.
In this place we may quote some examples where the antithesis is
more paradoxical and epigram matic. His antitheses very often
have an epigrammatic turn :
" The subsidies from France bore no proportion to the charge of our fleets ;
and our strength at sea seemed rather lessened than increased by the con-
junction of theirs : our seamen fought without heart, and were more afraid
of their friends than their enemies ; and our discontents were so great at
land, that the assembling of our militia to defend our coasts was thought as
dangerous as an invasion."
Concerning the Cabal, he drily remarks "And thus, instead
of making so great a king as they pretended by this Dutch War
and French Alliance, they had the honour of making only four
great subjects."
The Dutch having inundated their country to check the French
invasion, he says that " they found no way of saving their country
but by losing it"
"Some ages produce many great men and few great occasions; other
times, on the contrary, raise great occasions but few or no great men."
"Following this uncertain course, they succeeded, as such counsels must
ever do : instead of pleasing all, they pleased none ; and, aiming to leave no
enemies to their settlement of Ireland, they left it no friends."
Climax. Our author's grave composed style is as far as possible
opposed to abrupt and startling figures of speech, exclamation,
apostrophe, and suchlike. It is all the more compatible with the
careful building up of climaxes. The reader will notice a steady
graduation and culmination in every passage where the subject
calls 1'or more than iu>ual stateliness. See under Strength, p. 329.
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 32'|
QUALITIES OF STYLB.
Simplicity. This quality is incompatible with the dignity and
elevation of Temple's style. His diction is very different from the
light familiar diction of Cowley.
In one respect he is more simple than Cowley. He is thoroughly _
free from the pedantry of superfluous Latin quotations. This does
credit to his taste ; he was a scholar, and might have quoted.
Dryden quotes a little, and probably would have quoted more had
he possessed the requisite scholarship. No scholarly writer before
Johnson makes so few Latin quotations as Templa
In the choice and treatment of subjects, he departs from the
easy and familiar tracks. An Essay on the " Original and Nature
of Government " cannot be made so light and entertaining as an
essay on Ambition. On subjects not naturally abstruse in the
' Memoirs ' of his diplomacy and in his ' Observations on the United
Provinces,' he writes with two aims more or less antagonistic to
popular treatment a desire to be thorough and a desire to be
brief. He is not content with mentioning the chief and obvious
circumstances that concur to an event ; while his compact pages
want the easy diffuseness of picturesque details. In this last
respect particularly he differs from the popular historians and
essayists of our century : he condenses both narrative and exposi-
tion at least three times as much.
Clearness is a distinguishing quality of our author's style. He
is both perspicuous and precise. We have spoken of the com-
paratively good order of his paragraphs. His precision, for one
whose works are not upon technical subjects, is no less remarkable.
Writing with leisure and composure, he calmly chooses the aptest
words and similitudes ; sober and sagacious, he seldom leaves his
meaning open to doubt.
We have already, remarked the propriety of his similitudes.
That he squared the circumstances of a comparison deliberately
and not by accident, would appear from the following manipu-
lation of a commonplace:
" The comparison between a State and a ship has been so illustrated by
poets and orators that 'tis hard to find any point wherein they ditt'er ; and
yet they seem to do it in this, that, in great storms and rough seas, if all
the men and lading roll to one side, the ship will be in danger of oversetting
by their weight : but, on the contrary, in the storms of State, if the body of
the people, witli the bulk of estates, roll on one way, the nation will be safe.'
For the rest, the similitude holds."
He shows great steadiness in keeping close to facts, rising above
verbal quibbling, and calmly setting aside misleading associations.
His rejection of the factitious simplicity of the scholastic division
328 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
of governments into Monarchies, Aristocracies, and Democracies,
showed no small power of looking beneath the surface to the un-
derlying distinctions : his more accurate division was unheeded
until revived and made precise by recent authorities. Many
examples might be quoted of his steady superiority to plausible
appearances and irrelevant disputes. The beginning of his essay
on Poetry is not perhaps the best, but here it is :
" The two common shrines, to which most offer up the application of their
thoughts and their lives, are profit and pleasure ; and by their devotions to
either of these they are vulgarly distinguished into two sects, and called
either busy or idle men. Whether these terms differ in meaning err only
in sound, I know very well may be disputed, and with appearance enough,
since the covetous man takes perhaps as much pleasure in his gains as the
voluptuous does in his luxury, and would not pursue his business, unless he
were pleased with it, upon the last account of what he most wishes and de-
sires, nor would care for the increase of his fortunes, unless he thereby pro-
posed that of his pleasures too, in one kind or other ; so that pleasure may
be said to be his end, whether he will allow to find it in his pursuit or no.
Much ado there has been, many words spent, or (to speak with more respect
to the ancient philosophers) many disputes have been raised upon this argu-
ment, I think to little purpose, and that all has been rather an exercise of
wit, than enquiry after truth ; and all controversies, that can never end, had
better perhaps never begin. The best perhaps is to take words as they are
most commonly spoken and meant, like coin, as it most currently passes,
without raising scruples upon the weight of the alloy, unless the cheat or
the defect be gross and evident. Few things in the world, or none, will bear
too much refining ; a thread too fine spun will easily break, and the point of
a needle too finely filed. The usual acceptation takes profit and pleasure
for two different things, and not only calls the followers or votaries of them
by several names of busy and of idle men, but distinguishes the faculties of
the mind that are conversant about them, calling the operations of the first
wisdom, and of the other wit. ... To the first of these are attributed
the inventions or productions of things generally esteemed the most neces-
sary, useful, or profitable to human life, either in private possessions or
public institutions : to the other, those writings or discourses which are the
most pleasing or entertaining to all that read or hear them. "
The following passage may be contrasted with Carlyle's theory
of laughter :
"If it" (laughter) "were always an expression of good-humom or being
pleased, we should have reason to value ourselves more upon it; but 'tis
moved by such different and contrary objects and affections, that it has
gained little esteem, since we laugh at folly as well as wit, at accidents that
vex us sometimes, as well as others that pli-ase us, and at the malice of apes,
as well as the innocence of children ; and the things that please us most, are
apt to make other sorts of motions both in our faces and hearts, and very
different from those of laughter."
Strength. Our author's style has a certain animation, arising
chiefly from brevity and point. This is less felt in the severely
didactic works, partly because the reader's attention is more
heavily taxed, and partly because the writer, having an eye to
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 329
the main object of presenting the facts, is less able to attend to
charms of expression. It is more decidedly pleasing in hia
Letters, and in the lively essay on the " Cure of the Gout,"
which also is in the form of a letter.
Not animation, however, but dignity, is the ruling character-
istic. Of the general composure and elevation of his tone, the
reader will judge best from passages quoted without an eye to this
particular quality. When the subject requires a more intense or
a loftier tone, he answers easily to the call, providing harnioni-
oxis language and imagery without any appearance of straining.
Thus
"I have sometimes thought, how it should have come to pass, that the
infinite swarm of that vast northern hive, which so often shook the world
like a great tempest, and overtlowed it like a torrent ; changing names, and
customs, and government, and language, and the very face of nature, wher-
ever they seated themselves; which, upon record of story, under the name
of Gauls, pierced into Greece and Italy, sacking Rome, and besieging the
Capitol in Camillus's time ; under that of the Cimbers, marched through
France to the very confines of Italy, defended by Alarms ; under that of Huns
or Lombards, Visigoths, Goths, and Vandals, conquered the whole forces of
the Roman empire, sacked Rome thrice in a small compass of years, seated
three kingdoms in Spain and Afric, as well as Loml>ardy ; and under that
of Danes or Normans, possessed themselves of England, a great part of
France, and even of Naples and Sicily: how (I say) these nations, which
seemed to spawn in every age, and at some intervals of time discharged their
own native countries of so vast numbers, and with such terror to the world,
should, about seven or eight hundred years ago, leave off the use of these
furious expeditions, as if on a sudden they should have grown barren, or
tame, or better contented with their own ill climates."
Again, describing the spread of Mohammedanism :
" To be short, this contagion was so violent, that it spread from Arabia
into Egypt and Syria, and his power increased with such a sudden growth
as well as his doctrine, that he lived to see them overspread both those coun-
tries, and a great part of Persia ; the decline of the old Roman empire mak-
ing easy way for the powerful ascent of this new comet, that appeared with
such wonder and terror in the world, and with a flaming sword, made way
wherever it came, or laid all desolate that opposed it."
The following long sentence may be quoted as an example of
sustained strength. No ordinary resources of language are needed
to prevent a break-down in the conclusion of what opens with
such grandeur. He is moralising on the victorious invasion of
the Netherlands by Louis XIV. :
" When we consider such a power and wealth, as was related in the last
chapter, to have fallen in a manner prostrate within the space of one month ;
BO many frontier towns, renowned in the sieges and actions of the Spanish
wars, entered like open villages by the French troops, without defence or
almost denial ; most of them without any blows at all, and all of them with
BO few ; their great rivers that were esteemed an invincible security to the
l>roviu:us of Holland and Utrecht, passed with as much ease, and as small
330 FKOM 1670 TO 1700.
resistance, as little fords ; and in short, the very heart of a nation, ao valiant
of old against Rome, so obstinate against Spain, now subdued, and in a
manner abandoning all before their danger appeared : we may justly have
our recourse to the secret nnd fixed periods of all human greatness, for
the account of such a revolution ; or rather to the unsearchable decrees
and irresistible force of divine Providence ; though it seems not more
impious to question it, than to measure it by our scale ; or reduce the
issues and motions of that eternal will and power to a conformity with
what is esteemed just, or wise, or good, by the usual consent or the narrow
comprehension of poor mortal men."
Pathos. In his grave treatises he is too composed and stately
for the lively expression of affection, sorrow, or a fresh sense of
beauty. Yet he never passes by a touching occasion without
some sign of feeling. The mood of the writer appears in the
temperate and refined mournfulness of the language. Thus
"The noblest spirit of genius in the world, if it falls, though never so
bravely, in its first enterprises, cannot deserve enough of mankind to pre-
tend to so great a reward as the esteem of heroic virtue. And yet perhaps
many a person has died in the first battle or adventure he achieved, and
lies buried in silence and oblivion ; who, had he outlived as many dangers
as Alexander did, might have shiued as bright in honour and fame."
" When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a
froward ehi'd, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it
quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."
Wit. As under Strength passages may be singled out where
the grave vigour and dignity of his style gains the ascendancy,
and soars into a loftier strain, so under Wit we may single out
passages where his pointed animation gains the ascendancy, and
becomes keener and more sparkling.
He is too grave and temperate to turn anybody or anything into
violent ridicule. The fine flavour of polished wit is always upper-
most. The following is an example :
"A man that tells me my opinions are absurd or ridiculous, impertinent
or unreasonable, because they differ from his, seems to intend a quarrel in-
stead of a dispute, and calls me fool or madman with a little more circum-
stance, though, perhaps, I pass for one as well in my senses as he, aa
pertinent in talk, and as prudent in life ; yet these are the common civili-
ties, in religious argument, of sufficient and conceited men, who talk much
of right reason, and mean always their own ; and make their private imag-
ination the measure of general truth. But such language determines all
between us, and the dispute conies to end in three words at last, which it
might as well have ended in at first, That he is in the right, and I am iu
the wrong."
Examples of his more genial point are to be found chiefly in
his letters. The essay on the "Cure of the Gout" is written
in a sprightly vein. For example :
" All these things put together, with what a great physician writes of
cures by whipping with rods, and another with holly, and by other cruel-
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 331
ties of cutting and burning, made me certainly conclude, that the gout was
a companion that ought, to he treated like an enemy, and by no means like
a friend, and that grew troublesome chiefly by good usage ; and this was
confirmed to me by considering that it haunted usually the easy and the
rich, the nice and the lazy, who grow to endure much, because they can
endure little ; that make much of it as soon as it comes, and yet leave not
making much of themselves too ; that take care to carry it presently to bed,
and keep it safe and warm, and indeed lay up the gout for two or three
Months, while they give out that the gout lays up them. On the other
side it hanlly approaches the rough and the poor, such as labour for meat,
and eat only for hunger ; that drink water, either pure or but discoloured
with malt ; that know no use of wine, but for a cordial, as it is, and per-
haps was only intended : or if such men happen by their native constitu-
tions to fall into the gout, either they mind it not at all, having no leisure
to be sick ; or they use it like a dog, they walk on, or they toil and work as
they did before, they keep it wet and cold ; or if they are laid up, they are
perhaps forced by that to fast more than before, and if it lasts, they grow
impatient, and fall to beat it, or whip it, or cut it, or burn it; and all this
while, perhaps, never know the very name of gout. "
Taste. As might be inferred from his character, our author's
style is very highly refined. Affectation of terms or phrases,
abruptness, extravagance, maudlin sentimentality, coarse invec-
tive, are as foreign as may be to his characteristic manner. If
the standard of a good English style is the style that shall please
the majority of educated Englishmen, he errs on the side of too
great refinement. In many respects he is a contrast to Macaulay,
still more to Carlyle.
t
KINDS OP COMPOSITION,
Narrative. In a preface to the third part of Temple's ' Mem-
oirs,' Swift claims lain as the first Englishman " (at least of
any consequence) who ever attempted that manner of writing.",
Though it is a personal record, the style, as already noticed, is not
gossipping and diffuse, but on the contrary compact and brief to
the verge of abstruseness. As the principal actor in some of the
transactions, he had exceptional advantages for knowing the hid.
den springs of events.
At one time he intended to write a History of England, having
often felt the want of a good general history, and being far from
satisfied with the Chroniclers. Obliged by pressure of other em-
ployments to abandon this design, he completed an 'Introduction
to the History of England,' " from the first originals, as far as he
tould find any ground of probable story, or of fair conjecture,"
'' through the great and memorable changes of names, people,
customs, and laws that passed here, until the end of the first
Norman reign." The work is instructive, abounding in sagacious
criticism of social and political institutions. It is interesting to
contrast his views of history with Macaulay's : .j
332 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
" I have likewise omitted the accounts and remarks wherein some writers
have busied their pens, of strange comets, inclemencies of seasons, raging
diseases, or deplorable tires that are said to have happened in this age and
kingdom ; and are represented by some as judgments of God upon the king's
reign, because I rather esteem them accidents of time or chance, such as
happen in one part or other of the world, perhaps every age, at some periods
of time, or from some influence of stars, or by the conspiring of some natu-
ral or casual circumstances, and neither argue the virtues or vices of princes,
nor serve for example or instruction to posterity, which are the great ends
of history, and ought to be the chief care of all historians."
His ' Observations upon the United Provinces of the Nether-
lands ' is an example of a conspectus, or general view of a state of
society in all its parts at a particular time. It is a model of pains-
taking observation and search, and is full of sagacious remarks.
After recounting the rise and progress of the Federation, he
delineates their condition towards 1672 under six heads : their
Government, their Situation, their People and Dispositions, their
Religion, their Trade, their Forces and Revenues. The perform-
ance is very different from the third chapter of Macaulay's
History. It is as severely didactic and thorough as Macaulay'a
is pictorial and superficial.
JOHN DBYDEN, 1631-1700.
From the beginning to the end of his poetical career, Dryden,
not content to leave his works to the chances of criticism, loved
to defend in prose his principles of composition, and issued hardly
anything without an apologetic or explanatory preface or dedica-
tion. In this casual form he has left some ingenious special
pleading for his own practice, as well as many valuable remarks
on his predecessors, and interesting comparisons of the most
eminent names. Besides these stray pieces, he published, in
1668, a formal 'Essay of Dramatic Poesy' "a little discourse
in dialogue, for the most part borrowed from the observations
of others " which, says Johnson, " was the first regular and
valuable treatise on the art of writing." It is now interesting
chiefly for its defence of rhyming in tragedies a style abandoned
in the author's later works. It also contains some clever argu-
ment in favour of the superiority of modern to ancient play-
writers.
After his conversion to the Catholic Church, he was employed
by James II. to defend against Stillingfleet a paper found in the
strong-box of the deceased king, purporting to be written by the
Duchess of York in explanation of her departure from the Pro-
testant faith. In this controversy there was- little that could be
called argument on either side it was very much like other con-
troversies of that time, a pitched battle of abuse ; and Dryden, in
JOHN PRYDEN. 833
the exuberant and careless " horseplay " of his raillery, laid himself
fatally open to the cool retorts of his antagonist.
In the list of his prose works are included two translations from
the French Bouhours' 'Life of Francis Xavier' (1687), and Du
Fresnoy's 'Art of Painting' (1695). He also wrute the life of
Plutarch prefixed to what is known as ' Dryden's Translation ' of
Plutarch's Lives. But the only prose works of his that are now
read are his Prefaces and the ' Essay of Dramatic Poesy.'
The fact that these are still worth reading has been fixed in om
minds by Byron's happy doggerel lines
" Read all the Prefaces of Dryden,
For these the critics much confide in,
Though only writ at first for filling,
To raise the volume's price a shilling."
Dryden's prose, as well as Temple's, is a marked improvement
on the prose of the Commonwealth generation. His expressions
have not the curious felicity of Cowley's ; but the sentences are
much more flowing. He displays to some extent what Dr Blair
considered such a beauty in Temple's composition the " har-
monious pause," the measured sentence of several members. He
aims very much at antithetic point, reserving emphatic statements
for the close of the sentence, and practising occasionally the abrupt
introduction of a general statement before its application is known.
The peculiarities of his sentence-structure may be studied in the
following extract from his Preface to ' Absalom and Achitophel,'
published in 1681 : in it we see the rudiments of certain abrupt
arts of style more fully developed by Johnson and Macaulay :
"It is not my intention to make an apology for my poem : some will
think it needs no excuse, and others will receive none. The design, I am
sure, is honest ; but he who draws his pen for one party must expect to
make enemies of the other: for wit and fool are consequents of Whig and
Tory ; and every man is a knave or an ass to the contrary side. There is a
treasury of merit in the Fanatic church, as well as in the Popish, and a
pennyworth to be had of saintship, honesty, and poetry, for the lewd, the
factious, and the blockheads : but the longest chapter in Deuteronomy has
not curses enough for an Anti-Bromingham. My comfort is, their manifest
prejudice to my cause will render their judgment of less authority against
me. Yet if a poem have genius, it will force its own reception in the world ;
for there is a sweetness in good verse which tickles even while it hurts; and
no man can be heartily angry with him who pleases him against his will.
The commendation of adversaries is the greatest triumph of a writer, be-
cause it never comes unless extorted. But I can be satisfied on more easy
terms : if I happen to please the more moderate sort, I shall be sure of an,
honest party, and in all probability of the best judges ; for the least con-
cerned are probably the least corrupt. And I confess I have laid in for
those, by rebating the satire (where justice would allow it) from carrying
too sharp an edge. They who can criticise so weakly as to imagine I have
done my worst, may be convinced, at their own cost, that I can write
severely with more ease than I can gently. I have but laughed at some
334 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
men's follies, where I could have declaimed against their vices ; and other
men's virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes.
. . . The violent on both sides will condemn the character of Absalom,
as either too favourably or too hardly drawn : but they are not the violent
whom I desire to please. The fault, on the other hand, is to extenuate,
palliate, and indulge ; and, to confess freely, I have endeavoured to commit
it. Besides the respect which I owe his birth, I have a greater for his heroic
virtues ; and David himself could not be more tender of the young man's
life than I would be of his reputation. But since the most excellent natures
are always the most easy, and, as being such, are the soonest perverted by ill
counsels, especially when baited with fame and glory, it is no more a wonder
that he withstood not the temptations of Achitophel, than it was for Adam
not to have resisted the two devils, the serpent and the woman. The con-
clusion of the story I purposely forbore to prosecute, because I could nor,
obtain from myself to show Absalom unfortunate. The frame of it was cut
out but for a picture to the waist, and if the draught be so fnr true, it is as
much as I designed.
"Were I the inventor, who am only the historian, I should certainly
conclude the piece with the reconcilement of Absalom to David ; and who
knows but this may come to pass ; things were not brought to an extremity
where I left the story ; there seems yet to be room left for a composure, here-
after there may be only for pity. I have not so much as au uncharitable
wish against Achitophel, but am content to be accused of a good-natured
error, and to hope, with Origen, that the devil himself may at last be saved ;
for which reason, in this poem, he is neither brought to set his house in
order, nor to dispose of his person afterwards as he in wisdom shall think
fit"
Dryden had no idea of observing paragraph law ; his genius was
the reverse of methodical. He rambles on, making a point here
and a point there, and dashing heartily away from his immediate
subject whenever he sees an opening for his vigorous wit. His
prose has something of the irregular zigzag lightning vigour and
splendour of his verse. Any one reading his prose fragments
for the strokes of comprehensive terseness, brilliant epigram, and
happy aptness of expression, should be on their guard against the
infection of his negligent manner ; none should take it for granted
that their genius is, like his, sufficient to hide any number of
irregularities.
The following remarks on Laughter, from his ' Parallel between
Poetry and Painting/ prefixed to the translation of Du Fresnoy,
exemplify his rather incoherent agglomeration of vigorous sen-
tences :
"Laughter is indeed the propriety of a man, but just enough to distin-
guish him from his elder brother with four legs. It is a kind of bastard
pleasure too, taken in at the eyes of the vulgar gazers, and at the ears of the
beastly audience. Church painters use it to divert the honest countryman
at public prayers, and keep his eyes open at a heavy sermon ; and farce
scribblers make use of the same noble invention, to entertain citizens,
country-gentlemen, and Covent Garden fops. If they are merry all goes
well on the poet's side. The better sort go thither too, but in despair ot
Beuse and the just images of nature, which are the adequate pleasures of the
JOHN DRYDEN. 335
rutnd ; but the author can give the stage no better than what wns given him
by nature ; and the actors must represent such things as they are capable to
pi-rlbnn, and by which both they and the scribbler may get their living.
After all, it is a good thing to laugh at any rate ; and if a straw can tickle
a man, it is an instrument of happiness. Beasts can weep when they suffer,
but they cannot latigh."
His remarks on Invention are more to the purpose :
"The principal parts of painting and poetry next follow. Invention is
the first part, and absolutely necessary to them both ; yet no rule ever \va>
or ever can lie given, how to compass it. A happy genius is the gift of
nature : it depends on the influence of the stars, say the astrologers ; on the
organs of the body, say the naturalists ; it is the particular gift of heaven,
say the divines, both Christians and heathens. How to improve it, many
books can teach us ; how to obtain it, none ; that nothing can be done with-
out it, all agree
TV nihU invita dices faciesve Minerva.
Without invention, a painter is but a copier, and a poet but a plagiary of
others. Both are allowed sometimes to copy, and translate ; but as our
author tells you, that is not the best part of their reputation. 'Imitators
are but a servile kind of cattle,' says the poet ; or at best, the keepers of
cattle for other men : they have nothing which is properly their own : that
is a sufficient mortification for me, while I am translating Virgil. But to
copy the best author, is a kind of praise, if I perform it as I ought ; as a
copy after Rafiaelle is more to be commended than an original of any indif-
ferent painter."
And yet, on principle, he was opposed to unnecessary digressions
on the larger scale :
"As in the composition of a picture the painter is to take care that
nothing enter into it which is not proper or convenient to the subject, so
likewise is the poet'to reject all incidents which are foreign to his poem and
are naturally no parts of it ; they are wens and other excrescences, which
belong not to the body, but deform it. No person, no incident in the piece
or in the play, but must be of use to carry on the main design. All things
else are like six fingers to the hand, when nature, which is superfluous in
nothing, can do her work with five. A painter must reject all trifling orna-
ments, so must a poet refuse all tedious and unnecessary descriptions. A
role which is too heavy is less an ornament than a burthen. "
We might expect to find the prose diction of a poet highly
coloured, and profusely embellished with imagery. Dryden's is
the reverse of this familiar, clear, vigorous, and full of epigram-
matic point " I have endeavoured," he says, " to write English
as near as I could distinguish it from the tongue of pedants and
that of affected travellers." He expressly apologises for the
" poetical expressions " in his translation of Du Fresnoy ; he
" dares not promise that some of them are not fustian, or at least
highly metaphorical," but the fault lay with the original.
There is little geniality in his style ; he knew as well as any-
body where his power lay, and he said of himself that " he could
write severely with more ease than he could write gently." When
336 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
he girds on his sword for a sarcastic onslaught, he goes to work
with all his heart. In the controversy with Stillingfleet, his in-
tense feeling sometimes betrays him into bare unadorned abuse ;
he calls his adversary, by comparison with " the meekness, devo-
tion, and sincerity" of the pious lady's declaration, "disingenuous,
foul-mouthed, and shuffling." But this is a passage of exceptional
heat ; most of the sarcasm is clothed in fresh and splendid lan-
guage, and takes the form of rough but brilliant wit, throwing his
tamer rival into the shade : indeed, had his cause not been so hope-
lessly unpopular, the attack would have been overwhelming.
OTHER WRITERS.
THEOLOGY.
The most eminent divine in the early part of this period was
Isaac Barrow (1630-1677), a man of extremely fertile and versatile
talents. He was the son of a linen-draper in London. In 1649 he
was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and for some
time thereafter studied medicine. In 1652 he was a candidate for
the Greek Professorship, but was disappointed. He then spent
some years in travelling along the shores of the Mediterranean.
In 1660 he again tried for the same post, and was successful. He
had been but two years Professor of Greek when he discovered
his preference for mathematics by accepting the Professorship
of Geometry in Gresham College. In 1663 he was apnoii.^cd
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in Cambridge. In 1669,
having not yet found his life-work, he vacated his professorship
in favour of his pupil Isaac Newton, and thereafter devoted
himself exclusively to divinity. In 1670 he was made D.D. by
royal mandate, receiving at the time a high compliment from the
lips of the King. In 1672 he was nominated to the Mastership of
Trinity. He published several mathematical works in Latin.
His English writings are all theological, consisting of seventy-
seven Sermons ; Expositions of the Apostles' Creed, The Lord's
Prayer, The Decalogue, &c. ; a ' Treatise on the Pope's Suprem-
acy;' and a 'Discourse concerning the Unity of the Church.'
" He was in person of the lesser size, and lean ; of extraordinary
strength, of a fair and calm complexion, a thin skin, very sensible
of the cold ; his eyes grey, clear, and somewhat short-sighted ; his
hair of a light auburn, very fine and curling." He was abstracted
in his manner, and of slovenly habits. Anecdotes are told of his
personal courage and presence of mind. He was a great smoker,
and an immoderate eater of fruit. He died of fever, to which he
was subject. The most striking things in his sermons are the
extraordinary copiousness and vigour of the language, and the ex-
THEOLOGY. 337
haustiveness and subtlety of the thought He is a perfect mine
of varied and vigorous expression. His sentences are thrown up
with a rough careless vigour ; an extreme antithesis to the polished
flow of language and ideas in Addison. In his love of scrupulous
definitions and qualifications we discover the mathematician ; he
divides and subdivides with Baconian minuteness, and in drawing
parallels adjusts the compared particulars with acute exactness.
The simple and felicitous diction of John Tillotson, Archbishop
of Canterbury (1630-1694), was praised by Dryden and by Addison,
and long held up as a model. 1 Born in Yorkshire, of Puritan
parents, he was educated at Cambridge, submitted to the Act of
Uniformity in 1662, and entered the Church. Going to London
in 1663, his preaching soon drew attention, and he was rapidly
promoted. At the Revolution he was made Dean of St Paul's,
and in 1691 was raised to the supreme height of ecclesiastical dig-
nity. He was a man of great moderation and good sense, without
excitability or enthusiasm, " loving neither tne ceremony nor the
trouble of a great place." Though he received preferment in the
reign of Charles, he was not an extravagant royalist : his wife was
the niece of Oliver Cromwell, and daughter-in-law of Bishop Wil-
kins. Ready to serve his friends, he was literary executor to
Wilkins and to Barrow, gave an opinion on Burnet's ' History of
the Reformation ' before it was published, and edited the ' Dis-
courses ' of Dr Hezekiah Burton. A good, easy, clear-headed
man, with not a little of the character of Paley. The merits of
his style are simplicity, and a happy fluency in the choice and
combination of words. He probably had no small influence in
forming the style of Addison. The defects are considerable. In
his easy way he lingers upon an idea, and gives two or three
expressions where one would serve the purpose ; passing on, he
rambles back again, and presents the idea in several other differ-
ent aspects. The result is an enfeebling tautology and want of
method. Taken individually, the expressions are admirably easy
and felicitous ; but there are too many of them, and they are ill
arranged.
Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699), made Bishop of Worcester in
1689, was much before the public as a controversialist during this
period. He fought against Atheists, Unitarians, Papists, and Dis-
senters, and rendered distinguished service to his causa His best-
known engagements were with Dryden and Locke. Against Dry-
den, though far inferior in style, he had the best of the argument ,
1 Dryden is said to have " owned with pleasure that if he had sny talent for
English prose it was owing to his having often read the writings of Archbishop
Tillotson." This is but a random compliment; Dryden showed his talent for
English prose before Tillotson had published a line, and long before he became
famous.
338 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
but in the encounter with Locke he sustained a defeat so signal and
humiliating that it was said to have hastened his death. He wrote
with great vigour, but his expressions are neither original nor fe-
licitous. To a modern reader his manner seems too arrogant and
personal to be persuasive. Although Clarendon professes himself
" exceedingly delighted with the softness, gentleness, and civility
of his language," this word-praise is not borne out by facts ; there
is no evidence that he had Tillotson's power of bringing over
opponents.
William Sherlock (1641-1707), who succeeded Tillotson as Dean
of St Paul's, was another champion of the Church against dissent
and infidelity, and wrote a 'Vindication of the Trinity' in 1691 ;
but he is now known only by his devotional works. His ' Dis-
course concerning Death' is a standing article in second-hand
book-stalls. This continued popularity is due more to the matter
than to the manner. His son Thomas was more distinguished than
himself.
Sherlock's ' Vindication ' was attacked with great wit and fury
by a man far his superior in literary genius, Robert South (1633-
1716). South, a brilliant Oxonian scholar, the son of a London
merchant, was an ultra-royalist, appointed at the Restoration Pub-
lic Orator of his University, and chaplain to the Earl of Clarendon.
He accompanied Lawrence Hyde to Poland in 1676. On his re-
turn he was presented to the rectory of Islip, and, having some
private fortune, steadily declined further preferment. He haa
been called the last of the great English divines of the century.
A quick and powerful intellect, solid erudition, a superlative com-
mand of homely racy English, and wit of unsurpassed brilliancy,
make a combination that, in a literary point of view, places the
possessor at least on a level with Taylor and Barrow. Doubtless
his fame would have been equal to his powers had he not mistaken
his vocation. He shows little religious earnestness, and without
that, devotional, and even controversial, religious works can hardly
pretend to the first rank. He was an earnest Churchman, but not
an earnest Christian. Against sectaries his abuse was hearty and
hot " villanous arts," " venomous gibberish," " treacherous cant,"
" a pack of designing hypocrites," are samples of his phrases.
Satirical wit is his distinguishing quality. Even his sermons are
brilliantly lighted up with flashes of ingenious mockery; he was
always glad to have a victim.
Thomas Sprat, D.D. (1636-1713), Fellow of Wadham, Bishop of
Rochester, friend and biographer of Cowley. Besides his ' Life of
Cowley,' he wrote a ' History of the Royal Society,' of which he
was a member, as well as sermons and political tracts. He is
praised by Macaulay as " a great master of our language, and pos-
sessed at once of the eloquence of the orator, of the controversialist,
THEOLOGY. 339
and of the historian." He also received a high tribute from John-
son. There is indeed a certain flow and rotund finish about his
diction. Some of his sentences would pass for Johnson's. Had
the matter been more substantial, he might have taken a higher
place in our literature ; but he was a good genial fellow, rather
fond of the bottle, and his lubricated eloquence perished with
him.
Thomas Burnet (1635-1715), Master of the Charter -house, is
known in literature by his ' Sacred Theory of the Earth ' (pub. in
Latin 1680, in English 1691). It is the outcome of a poetic mind
excited by the gathering interest in physical science. The theory
is merely a framework for extravagant sublimities of description.
He represents the antediluvian globe as disposed in regular con-
centric belts, the heavy solid parts in the centre, then the liquid,
then on the top of the liquid a floating crust of solidified oily mat-
ter, "even and uniform all over," without rocks or mountains,
"wrinkle, scar, or fracture." On this smooth surface, fresh, fruit-
ful, overhung by a calm and serene atmosphere, men lived till the
Flood ; that calamity was caused by the generation of steam in the
subterraneous water and the rupture of the crust, when " the whole
fabric broke," and tumbled in fragments into the abyss. The
accounts of the Flood and of the final conflagration of the existing
earth are given in language worthy of such bold and spacious con-
ceptions.
Of little importance in literature, but of considerable importance
in the history of opinion, are the two chief literary defenders of
the Quaker faith, William Penn (1644-1718), and Robert Barclay
(1648-1690), both men of good position by birth. Penn, the son of
an admiral, imbibed the proscribed views at Oxford, and was ex-
pelled the University. A course of travel on the Continent made
him a fine gentleman again ; the Plague reconverted him ; a trip
to Ireland restored him to fashionable circles ; a sermon from an
old master converted him a third time. This last conversion was
in 1668 : from that date he remained Quaker for life. In 1669 he
was imprisoned for eight months. For some years thereafter his
life was prosperous. He was reconciled to his father, who left him
a good estate, and some claims on the Government, in liquidation
of which he received a grant of Pennsylvania in America. In the
later years of Charles and under James he was a great favourite at
Court : his conduct there is assailed by Macaulay and warmly de-
fended by Paget and others. The remaining thirty years of his
life were spent in private, not a little imbittered by personal griefs
and losses. Barclay was a Scotsman, of the family of Barclay of
Ury. He several times suffered imprisonment His works are,
'Truth Cleared of Calumnies,' 1670; and 'An Apology for the
People called in scorn Quakers.' Neither Penn nor Barclay has
340 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
any special grace or vigour of style. Penn is lively and pointed,
Barclay grave and argumentative.
Thomas Ellwood (1639-1713), another of the Quakers, a meek,
industrious man, of a feeble constitution, is interesting, not from
his style, but from his intercourse with Milton. He was one of
the blind poet's readers. He wrote an autobiography, and contro-
versial and devotional treatises.
PHILOSOPHY.
John Locke (1632-1704). The famous author of the Essay on
the Human Understanding' (pub. 1690) was the son of a small
proprietor in the west of England. He took the degree of B.A. at
Oxford in 1655, and was elected a student of Christ Church. His
chief studies were medicine and physical science, on which subjects
he became an authority. His approbation of Sydenham's theory
of acute diseases was considered worth boasting of by this " father
of English medicine " ; and he signified a desire to succeed, in the
event of a vacancy, to the Physic Professorship at Gresham Col-
lege. His chief patron was the Earl of Shaftesbury. He divided
his time between Oxford and London, living in the most cultivated
society. He spent four years in France. When Shaftesbury's
fortunes declined, Locke also fell into difficulties with the Govern-
ment, and had to take refuge in Holland. While there he wrote
in Latin his famous 'Letter on Toleration.' After the Revolution,
having recommended himself by his liberal principles, he was re-
warded with the Commissionership of Stamps ; and also held for five
years a more lucrative office as one of the Commissioners of Trade.
His ' Two Treatises on Government,' opposing the divine right of
kings, and advancing the ideas of a social compact and of the
natural rights of man, appeared in 1690. In the same year were
published the Essay, and the 'Treatise on Education.' The 'Con-
duct of the Understanding ' was not published till after his death.
Locke's health was never robust ; an elder brother died young of
consumption, and he himself, in spite of the utmost care, died of a
decline. He was an agreeable, well-bred man, a sprightly talker,
and fond of company chiefly for the pleasures of talking. At col-
lege he associated with the lively and agreeable in preference to
the scholarly. He was frugal, and regular in his habits. His
sagacity and powers of expression were very great. All the works
above mentioned drew immediate attention, and are still read by
everybody professing an acquaintance with their topics. He is
one of the most simple of philosophical writers. Authorities com-
plain that this popular simplicity is bought at the expense of ex-
actness ; that his use of terms is vacillating ; and that his notions
are ill defined.
HISTORY. 34 1
The learned Ralph Cndworth (1617-1688), a student of Cam-
bridge, and Professor of Hebrew there from 1645 to 1675, pub-
lished in 1678 his 'Intellectual System of the Universe.' He
seems to have been a shy, retiring man, with something of Hooker's
disposition ; like Hooker, also, an industrious and profound scholar.
He was not of a controversial turn, but was pressed by his friends
to take the field against Hobbes, atheism, and every form of
heterodoxy. He stated the opinions of his opponents at such
length and with such candour that his sincerity was suspected ;
and he was so alarmed at the outcry raised by his honourable and
ingenious fashion of polemic, that he refrained from further publi-
cation. His ' Treatise of Eternal and Immutable Morality ' was
not published till 1731.
Another opponent of Hobbes was Richard Cumberland (1632-
1718), Bishop of Peterborough, author of a work on the ' Laws of
Nature.' His doctrines have an independent place in the history
of philosophy ; but as he wrote in Latin, he has but a quasi-legiti-
mate standing in the history of English literature.
HISTORY.
Gilbert Bnrnet (1643-1715), Bishop of Salisbury, an active poli-
tician, and author of several religious and other works known only
to antiquarians, received the thanks of Parliament for his ' History
of the Reformation' in 1676, and earned a durable fame by his
posthumous ' History of my own Times, from the restoration of
Charles II. to the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace at Utrecht, in
the Reign of Queen Anne.' He belonged to an ancient Aberdeen-
shire family, and was educated at Mariscbal College, Aberdeen.
At the age of twenty-six (1669) he was made Professor of Divinity
in Glasgow, and before he was thirty he was twice offered a Scot-
tish bishopric. About 1673 he resigned his professorial chair and
went to London, where his powers as a preacher, no less than as a
sagacious observer of politics, soon made him conspicuous. During
the reign of James, he thought it prudent to retire to the Con-
tinent, and received a flattering invitation to the Hague. He
came back with the Prince of Orange, and in 1689 was appointed
Bishop of Sarum. He was a shrewd, sagacious Scotchman, and
throughout life acted with a prudence that was disturbed neither
by impetuosity nor by strong feeling. Yet he displayed at times
a steady courageous sincerity where many of the sneerers at his
prudence would have kept discreetly in the background. He had
a peculiar power of reading character, and of insinuating himself
into the confidence of the great. A tall, well-built, fine-looking
man, with extraordinary powers of extempore address, he was one
of the most popular preachers of the metropolis : he "was often,"
342 FEOM 1670 TO 1700.
says Macaulay, " interrupted by the doep hum of his audience ;
and when, after preaching out the hour-glass, he held it up in hia
hand, the congregation clamorously encouraged him to go on til'
the sand had run off once more." Natural temper and varied
education concurred to make his views anti-despotic ; he was a
steady supporter of the Revolution; by his considerate behaviour
he made himself extremely popular among the clergy of his diocese.
We have evidence that he was careful about his written style, pur-
posely aiming at " aptness of words and justness of figures," and
striving to avoid " the fulsome pedantry under which the English
language laboured long ago, the trifling way of dark and unin-
telligible wit that came after that, the coarse extravagance of
canting that succeeded this, and the sublime pitch of a strong but
false rhetoric, which had much corrupted not only the stage but
even the pulpit, but was almost worn out" when he wrote. 1 He
may be said to have realised this ideal ; his words are generally
well chosen, his illustrations appropriate, and his diction copious
without being in any way extravagant ; but his dry correctness is
not made up for by fluent melody or by happy originality of com-
bination. The great charms of his ' History of my own Times ' lie
in the gossip from behind the scenes, and the skilful delineation
of character. He had something of Bos well's faculty for noting
characteristic incidents, besides the power of showing them briefly
in a connected portraiture. None of our historians surpass, if any
equal him, in this respect When we compare his vivid delinea-
tions of the men of the Revolution with Macaulay's jumble of
characteristic traits and high-flown moral commonplaces, we at
once recognise the hand of a natural master of the art.
Along with Burnet may be mentioned Sir George Mackenzie
(1636-1691), Lord Advocate under Charles II. and James II., author
of ' Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, from the Restoration of
Charles II.,' not printed till 1821. Mackenzie was familiar with
Dryden and the literary society of the time, and wrote several
lively miscellaneous essays : " The Virtuoso or Stoic," " Moral Gal-
lantry," " The Moral History of Frugality," &c. A composition in
praise of Solitude led to a friendly passage of arms with John
Evelyn, who entered the lists in defence of active life.
Two famous DIARISTS are usually reckoned in this generation
Samuel Pepys (1632-1703) and John Evelyn (1620-1706). Pepys
was Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and
James IL His Diary, which extends from 1660 to 1669, was
written in shorthand, and was deciphered by Lord Braybrooke in
1825. This delightful book of gossip is one of the most interest-
ing memorials of the domestic life of the time. Evelyn's Diary is
1 Preface to hia translation of More's ' Utopia,' 1684.
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 343
the work of a more accomplished man (though a less interesting
and instructive gossip), and extends through a longer period. It
is, indeed, an autobiography extending from 1620 to 1706. From
1641 he was in the habit of setting down with considerable detail
everything that interested him. Only extracts of so voluminous
a work have been published. Evelyn is now known chiefly by his
Diary. In his own day he was called "Sylva" Evelyn, from a
' Discourse on Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in his
Majesty's Dominions,' published in 1664. He was a man of inde-
pendent fortune, and held public employment under Charles and
James.
Among the chief ANTIQUARIES of the period were Anthony a
Wood (1632-1695), the great authority on the antiquities of Oxford
(Athence Oxanienses, 1691), and John Aubrey (1626-1700), a fellow-
labourer with Dugdale and Wood, and an authority on popular
superstitions. Thomas Rymer (1638-1714), compiler of Carlyle's
favourite butt, Rymer's l Fcedera,' also flourished in this period.
He began life as a tragic poet and dramatic critic. Appointed
historiographer-royal in 1692, he was employed to prepare a
collection of the liocuments of our public transactions with foreign
powers. He lived to publish seventeen folio volumes of the series,
the first appearing in 1703.
MISCELLANEOUa
Sir Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704), was the leading newspaper
writer throughout the reigns of Charles and James. An enterpris-
ing royalist soldier, who had suffered not a little in the cause, he
was appointed licenser or censor of the press in 1663, and at the
same time received a monopoly of public intelligence in favour of
his own newspaper, ' The Public Intelligencer.' He worked hard
to make his paper a thorough repertory of news, and to extend its
circulation ; and it was a great discouragement to the growth of
newspapers when in 1665 his monopoly and his censorship were
taken from him and given to a duller rival in Court favour. The
disgrace did not extinguish his loyalty. He continued to support
the Court with various effusions; and in his ' Qbservator,' which
appeared in 1681, rendered valuable service in defending the royal
family from the charge of Popery. He excelled in the coarse
derision and invective the rough give-and-take of the time ; so
much so, that he has been, absurdly enough, accused of corrupting
the Knglish language. He earned the hatred of lovers of freedom
by his opposition to the emancipation of the press (which was
accomplished in 1604), and by his rude exercise of authority while
344 FROM 1670 TO 1700.
he was himself censor ; but these offences may fairly enough be
considered the accidents of his time and his position.
Charles Blount (1654-1693), son of Sir Henry Blount, a Hert-
fordshire gentleman, author of Travels and various poetical pieces,
came more than once into collision with L' Estrange. He rendered
himself notorious by various deistical publications among others,
a history of opinions concerning the soul, and an exposition of his
own views, under the title of ' Religio Laici.' A trick that he
played on the licenser of books in 1693, led to the abolition of all
restrictions on the freedom of the press. He committed suicide
because the sister of his deceased wife, to whom he was passion-
ately attached, would not marry him without the consent of the
Church, and that was not to be obtained.
Walter Charleton (1619-1707), physician to Charles II., and a
friend of Hobbes, besides several works on Theology, Natural
History, Natural Philosophy, Medicine, and Antiquities, wrote
' A Brief Discourse concerning the Different Wits of Men ' (1675).
Traces of Hobbes's materialism appear in the work. He ascribes
differences in character to differences in the form, size, and quality
of the brain. His style is rather pedantic, chiefly from a peculiar
habit of beginning his sentence with the predicate adjective
("Somewhat slow they are" "Barren they are not," &c.); but
he writes with vigour, clearness, and wit.
The witty, sagacious, and versatile George Saville, Marquis of
Halifax (1630-1695), in the course of his active public life wrote
some short treatises that show him to have been an easy master of
the best English of the time. His ' Character of a Trimmer ' (a
humorous defence of moderate courses) is the most famous of these
productions.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691), " the father of chemistry, and brother
to the Earl of Cork," is the author of six quarto volumes of
scientific observations and religious advices and meditations. He
was one of the most active of the original members of the Royal
Society. His favourite subjects were chemistry and pneumatics.
His religious musings are very commonplace : it was to get clear
of the annoyance of reading them aloud to a lady admirer that
Swift wrote his famous parody, 'Meditation on a Broomstick.'
His style is prolix and unmethodical
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the most distinguished of English
mathematicians, inventor of the method of fluxions, and discoverer
of gravitation and the dispersion of light, need only be mentioned
here. He was born in Lincolnshire ; like Hobbes, a premature
and sickly child. His mechanical and mathematical powers wen;
si >on conspicuous. In 1669 he succeeded Barrow as Lucasian
Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. In recognition of his
services to science, he was appointed Warden of the Mint in 1695,
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 345
and Master in 1699. In 1703 he was elected President of the
Royal Society, to which he had early been admitted as a member.
In 1705 he received the honour of knighthood. His best-known
mathematical work, the ' Principia,' or Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy, published in 1687, was written in Latin. In
addition to his mathematical labours, he turned his ingenuity to
thorny questions in Scripture, writing ' Observations on the Pro-
phecies;' the 'Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms.;' and 'An His-
torical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture ; '
which works were published after his death. His style is plain
and clear. 1
John Ray (1628-1705), the son of a blacksmith in Essex, was
the great English naturalist of the century, and is regarded as
one of the founders of botany. A work published in 1691, 'The
Wisdom of God, manifested in the Works of the Creation,' was
exceedingly popular until superseded by Paley's ' Natural The-
ology.' It is written with considerable neatness and spirit.
1 A vexed question in the life of Newton is whether or not his mind was
deranged about the year 1693. Sir David Brewster, in his 'Life of Newton,'
inclines to think that it was but a temporary excitement. In one of his letters
Newton complains of not having slept "an hour a-night for a fortnight together,
and for five days together not a wink." About this time he wrote some inco-
herent letters, on which principally is founded the story of his madness.
CHAPTER YL
FROM 1700 TO 1730.
THROUGHOUT last century this period was venerated as the Angus-
tan Age in English Literature, the idea being that it had reached
a crowning pitch of refinement in the arts of composition, and that
in this respect the Augustan Age was its prototype. The present
century has not sanctioned the venerable title : our critics will not
allow that Pope, Swift, and Addison are equal in literary power
either to their great predecessors of the age of Elizabeth, or to
their great successors of more recent times ; and on that ground
refuse them the dignified appellation of Augustan. We may agree
with the criticism of this century and yet leave the Queen Anne
celebrities in possession of their coveted title. In the quality of
careful finish the Queen Anne men were undoubtedly as much
superior to their predecessors as the Augustan men were to their
predecessors. In other and more universally impressive qualities
the Shakspeare period and the Byron period surpass both Queen
Anne and Augustus rising, if not " above all Greek," certainly
"above all Roman fame."
We have here to do only with prose ; and, in that department,
even the doctrine that the Queen Anne men are superior to their
predecessors in elaborate finish may be assailed with plausible, if
not destructive casuistry. Defoe was probably as careless and
hurried in composition as any author that ever lifted pen in the
Elizabethan or in any other age. Addison probably committed
more errors in syntax than Thomas Fuller. Swift finished his
great compositions with extreme care, but he learned the habit of
painstaking from his master Sir William Temple. One cannot be
too careful in making sweeping generalisations about the char-
acteristics of a period. Probably all that can be affirmed with
safety about Queen Anne prose is that,' taken as a whole, the prose
DANIEL DEFOE. 347
written by tins generation contained fewer grammatical errors, and
was, within certain limits, more varied in expression than the prose
written by the preceding generation ; and this can probably be
affirmed of any generation of writers in the history of our litera-
tura We are too apt to attribute the characteristics of a leading
writer to his age ; because Addison wrote with refined wit and
elegant simplicity, and had a certain number of imitators, we are
not to ascribe these qualities to the whole prose literature of the
reign of Queen Anne.
DANIEL DEFOE, 1661-173L
One of the most indefatigable and productive of our prose
writers, 1 pamphleteer, journalist, writer of Commercial Treatises,
of Religious Treatises, of History, and of Fiction. He is so well
known as the author of 'Robinson Crusoe,' that many think of
him in no other capacity; and forget, if they ever hear of, the
extraordinary number and variety of his works. He is reputed
author of 250 distinct publications. He was nearly sixty years
old when he published his first novel; and before that time he
had written some hundred and fifty treatises on politics, religion,
commerce, and what not.
He is sometimes represented as an illiterate London tradesman
with no education but what he gave himself after leaving school.
His own account is that he was educated by his father, a well-to-do
butcher in St Giles's, Cripplegate, with a view to the Dissenter
ministry, and that he studied for five years with that express aim.
At whatever time or times he had picked up his knowledge, he was
well informed, and even accomplished : being (by his own account)
master of five languages including Latin ; widely read in books
of history and travel ; and acquainted with such science as was
known in his day.
His life was stirring and eventful, although comparatively few
of the incidents are known. His enemies taunted him with begin-
ning business as a hosier. Tliis he denied, describing himself as a
trader. From other authority we know that in course of business
he visited Portugal, and perhaps other parts of the Continent
Whatever his trade may have been, he was too volatile to stick to
it An ardent politician, he wrote in 1683 a political pamphlet
on the war between the Turks and the Austrians; and in 1685
rode out (at least so he says) and joined the western rising for
the Duke of Monmouth. In 1692 he had to compound with his
creditors. It is a fair conjecture that about this time he began to
1 He is sometimes called the first author by profession ; but this is hardly
correct. Fuller had little to depend upon but the sale of his works, and Birken-
head, Needham, and L'Estrange, lived by their literary services to a party.
348 FKOM 1700 TO 1730.
cherish, with or without encouragement, hopes of patronage from
the Minister of State. Some friends offering to settle him as a
factor at Cadiz, he preferred his prospects at home. Another
business speculation was unsuccessful : he started a pantile work,
but, according to his own account, it lost him ^3000. In 1695
he was appointed accountant to the commissioners for managing
the duties on glass ; and held that office till the duty was abolished
in 1699. In 1701 his metrical satire ' The True-Born Englishman '
an energetic defence of King William, the Dutch, and the Rev-
olution brought him into high favour with the King. In 1702
an ironical proposal ' The Shortest Way with the Dissenters '
gave such offence that he was put in the pillory, fined, and im-
prisoned. During his imprisonment he collected and revised
twenty-one of the numerous tracts that he had written up to that
date, and projected a weekly periodical called the ' Review,' the
prototype of the 'Tatler' and the 'Spectator.' The first number
of the ' Review' was published on igth February 1704, and it was
continued single-handed for eight years. In 1704, through the
intervention of Harley, he was not only released, but was taken
into the confidence of Government, and employed on secret ser-
vices. In 1706-7 he spent four months in Edinburgh as an agent
for promoting the Union, and his skilful advocacy of the commer-
cial advantages of the measure is supposed to have exercised no
small influence on the happy result Through the changes of ad-
ministration during the latter years of Queen Anne, he continued
in the secret service of Government, all the time writing period-
icals and pamphlets with his characteristic prolific industry. Nor
did he lose this profitable connection with the ruling powers on
the accession of George I. and the Whigs. Till a discovery made
by Mr William Lee in 1869, it was supposed that at this date he
retired from politics, and wrote his more elaborate works : his
'Family Instructor' (1715), 'Religious Courtship' (1722), 'Com-
plete English Tradesman' (1726), ' Political History of the Devil'
(1726); and his novels the foundation of his literary fame
'Robinson Crusoe' (1719), 'Captain Singleton' (1720), 'Duncan
Campbell' (1720), 'Moll Flanders' (1721), 'Colonel Jack' (1721),
'Journal of the Plague' (1722), 'Roxana' (1724), 'Memoirs of a
Cavalier' (undated). But it seems that for several years after
1715 he played a very double game; being paid by the Whig
statesmen to insinuate himself into the staff of an extreme Jacobite
paper, ' Mist's Journal,' and repress its most obnoxious attacks.
In one of the newly discovered letters he says, " I ventured to
assure his Lordship the Sting of that mischievous Paper should bt>
entirely taken out, though it was granted that the style should
continue Tory, as it was, that the Party might be amused, and not
set up another, which would have destroyed the design. And this
DANIEL DEFOE. 349
Part I therefore take entirely on myself still." He continued his
prodigious literary activity to the very last, dying in April I73I. 1
In a proclamation offering a reward for his capture in 1703
(after his " Shortest Way with the Dissenters"), Defoe is described
as " a middle-sized spare man about forty years old, of a brown
complexion, and dark-brown hair, though he wears a wig, having
a hook nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his
mouth."
His constitution must have been very robust to endure the
enormous amount of work that he went through in the course of
his threescore and ten years of life. Not only was he constantly
engaged in literary work, but, as a secret agent of the Govern-
ment, he managed harassing negotiations and braved considerable
danger sometimes, as he said in his hyperbolical way, " running
as much risk as a grenadier on a counterscarp." Of his domestic
life we know nothing, except that he was married and had six
children.
The number, variety, freshness, and popularity of Defoe's works,
furnish the best possible evidence of the fertility and ingenuity of
his intellect. For thirty years always ready with something upon
every political and social question that was passing, he still had
energy, when this excitement was over, to conquer a new field of
literature ; and was quite as prolific on subjects of perennial and
universal interest as he had been on the more exciting topics of
the hour. The nature no less than the number of his works con-
veys the impression of amazing versatile energy. Little trouble
has been taken with the mere literary workmanship ; the author
of ' Robinson Crusoe ' can never be classed among the masters of
carefully elaborated prose. The labour has been expended on
making his narrative minutely circumstantial his reflection of
life a picture of unparalleled fidelity and detail. His novels are
in the autobiographical form ; and the circumstances of the vari-
ous situations, the adventures encountered by the supposed nar-
rator, and the feelings of different moments, are detailed with such
minuteness that all his fictions would pass for records of actual
experienca None of our writers, not even Shakspeare, shows half
such a knowledge of the circumstances of life among different
ranks and conditions of men ; none of them has realised with such
fidelity how so many different persons lived and moved. He dis-
plays especial subtlety in tracing the gradual growth of an opinion
or a purpose, from its first suggestion to its full development : this
power meets us in all his works, and perhaps nowhere is more con-
1 1 have mentioned only the most prominent of Defoe's writings. To mention
them all is impossible within our limits ; the titles alone would occupy at least
thirty or forty of our pages.
350 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
spicuous than in his representation of the growth of religious con-
viction in the ' Family Instructor.'
Supple and versatile of intellect, he was not distinguished for
either intensity or delicacy of feeling. He seems to have been a
vain, impulsive, audaciously boastful sort of man. His contro-
versial works are brimful of happy egotism ; he exults in his
ingenuity and clearness of vision, and boils over in ironical mock-
ery of his duller opponents. It is a tribute to his powers of ima-
gination, but few people will consider it a compliment to his
honesty, to say that we can believe hardly a word that he tells Ua
about himself. The stories that he gives about his youthful
enthusiasm in joining the Duke of Monmouth, and about the
unheard-of persecutions that he suffered in later life, are probably
no less fictitious than the adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
The characteristics of his intellect come out strongly in his
active life. If the precepts in the ' Complete English Tradesman'
were drawn from his own practice, he must have been a most
adroit man of business. His insinuating address was fully appre-
ciated by those that employed him on secret affairs of state. In
dealing with men, his fertile ingenuity and profound observation
left him never at a loss. He would seem to have been a most
consummate dissembler ; his easy success in playing the hypocrite
gave him the fullest confidence, and his daring effrontery well
entitled him to Pope's epithet "unabaslied Defoe." He was one
of the most audaciously shifty and supple of men.
It is but just to his fair fame to add that his hypocrisy was not
turned to malevolent objects : if he was not persecuted so much as
he represents, he is not accused of persecuting others. He was
probably too magnanimous for personal grudges. What is more,
no discoveries that have yet been made implicate him in transac-
tions detrimental to the public good.
Our author, as we have seen, wrote something like 150 treatises
on passing questions between 1688 and 1715; an exhaus'ive
account of his opinions would take us over the entire political,
social, and commercial history of that period. A few of the more
notable of his views may be singled out. He was a strong sup-
porter of the Revolution ; his ' True-Born Englishman ' was a
reply to a personal attack on the "foreigner" ruler and his Dutch
favourites. He strongly opposed the war with France ; we shall
quote from the ' Consolidator,' of date 1705, a satirical passage
that might have been the basis of Swift's famous ' Conduct of the
Allies' in 1711.1 By birth a Dissenter, he frequently made the
Higli-fliers, as the High Churchmen were called, the objects of his
ridicule; one of these attacks, we have seen, landed him in the
1 See p. 36-7.
DANIEL DEFOE. 351
pillory and in Newgate. His most considerable political achieve-
ment was his share in effecting the union between England and
Scotland ; his principal means of persuasion would seem to have
been the ad vantages to Scottish traders.
Uis active mind was fertile in practical projects. In 1697 he
published an ' Essay on Projects.' " He wrote," says Mr George
Chalmers, " many sheets about the coin ; he proposed a register
for seamen, long before the Act of Parliament was thought of; he
projected county banks, and factories for goods ; he mentioned a
proposal for a commission of inquiries into bankrupts' estates ; he
contrived a pension office for the relief of the poor." One of the
projects in his 'Essay' was a society on the model of the French
Academy " for encouraging polite learning, for refining the Eng-
lish language, and for preventing barbarisms of manners."
ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
Vocabulary. A good many of Defoe's phrases are old-fashioned,
and have long since dropped out of current English. We should
not be safe to use an expression upon his authority. He is an
excellent representative of the colloquial style of the time ; but
colloquial phrases have their day. Owing to his frequent use of
homely idioms, his writings are a very rewarding study to verbal
reformers, who desire to weed the language of slip-shod idioms
that have indolently been allowed to establish themselves, and who
are anxious to back their proposed reforms with the practice of
elder writers.
As we should expect in an author writing upon such a variety
of topics, his command of English is prodigious. If one may
judue from a general impression of variety, no writer comes nearer
to the Shakspearian profusion of languaga His sympathies were
so catholic that it is difficult to find out in what region he was
deficient. He is seldom declamatory or pathetic, but when he is,
the words seem to flow in the choicest abundance. The rich vein
in his vocabulary is easier to discover. From his wide practice as
a controversialist, he is a great master of the language of sarcasm
and abuse ; even ISwift's range is probably not more extensive, as
his powers of ridicule were less versatile.
He was too popular a writer to be eccentric in his general
language; yet sometimes in the extravagance of high spirits he
whimsically coins words that are not unlike some of the eccentri-
cities of Carlyle. The following is an example :
" The yet further extravagances which naturally attend the mischief of
wit, are beauism, dogmaticality, whimsifi cation, impudensity, and various
kinds of fopperosities (according to Mr Boyle), which, issuing out of the
352 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
brain, descend into all the faculties, and branch themselves by Infinite
variety into all the actions of life."
Sentences and Paragraphs. In this mechanical part of compo-
sition our author is singularly negligent, especially in his hurried
political tracts. Had he been, like Temple, a careful builder of
sentences studious of the arts of arrangement he could not have
produced one-tenth of what he wrote. His ungrammatical laxity
would not be allowed in any modern writer.
He is so careless that it would answer no purpose to exemplify
his errors, and so irregular that it would not be easy to discover
peculiarities of structure.
His only merit lies in his being consecutiv%. Whatever be the
distribution of the matter into sentences and paragraphs, he is
desirous that the connection be clearly apparent, and is very ex-
plicit in his phrases of reference.
Figures of Speech Similitudes. Illustrative force is the most
remarkable thing in Defoe's similitudes. In conjunction with the
general spirit and vigour of his language, their effect is electrify-
ing. Agreeably to the wonderful discursiveness of his intellect,
they are taken from all sources, not forcibly hunted out for embel-
lishment, but used for illustration when they present themselves.
As suited a vigorous popular style, his preference was for the
homely, and even the coarse. His allusions are sometimes learned,
but always easily understood from the homeliness of the expression.
We may quote a few examples :
" Dryden might have been told his fate that, having his extraordinary
genius slung and pitched upon a swivel, it would certainly turn round as fast
as the times, and instruct him how to write elegies to Oliver Cromwell and
King Charles the Second with all the coherence imaginable ; how to wiite
' Religio Laici' and the 'Hind and Panther, 'and yet be the same man,
every day to change his principle, change his religion, change his coat,
change his master, and yet never change his nature."
He describes, in the following metaphorical terms, the wonderful
psychological revelations of the Chinese philosopher, Mira-cho-cho-
lasmo :
" There you have that part of the head turned inside outward, in which
nature has placed the materials of reflecting ; and, like a glass beehive, rep-
resents to you all the several cells in which are lodged things past, even
back to infancy and conception. There you have the repository, with all
its cells, classically, annually, numerically, and alphabetically disposed.
There you may see how, when the perplexed animal, on the loss of a
thought or a word, scratches his poll, every attack of his invading fingers
knocks at nature's door, alarms all the register-keepers, and away they run,
xinlock all the classes, search diligently for what he calls for, and immedi-
ately deliver it up to the brain ; if it cannot be found, they entreat a little
patience, till they step into the revolvary, where they run over little cata-
logues of the minutest passages of life, and so, in time, never fail to hand
on the thing ; if not juat when he calls lor it, yet at some other time."
DANIEL DEFOE. 363
As an example of his more ambitious illustrations, take his com-
parison between the doctrine of passive obedience and the Coper-
nicau system :
" I take the doctrines of passive obedience, &c., among the statesmen, to
be like the Copernican system of the earth's motion among philosophers,
which, though it be contrary to all ancient knowledge, and not capable of
demonstration, yet is adhered to in general, because by this they can better
solve and give a more rational account of several dark phenomena in nature
than they could before.
"Thus our modern statesmen approve of this scheme of government; not
that it admits of any rational defence, much less of demonstration, but
because by this method they can the better explain, as well as defend, all
coercion in cases invasive of natural right than they could before."
Contrast. Although our author is not a studious cultivator of
point or epigram, yet these arts form one among his many instru-
ments of ridicule. We shall produce two examples. The first ia
an account of some of the things that he saw when he visited
the moon, through a wonderful glass that penetrated beneath all
disguises :
" Here we saw the state of the war among nations ; here was the French
giving sham thanks for victories they never got, and somebody else address-
ing and congratulating the sublime glory of running away; here was Te
Deum for sham victories by laud, and there was thanksgiving for ditto by
sea ; here we might see two armies fight, both run away, and both come and
thank God for nothing. Here we saw a plan of a late war like that in Ire-
land; there was all the officers cursing a Dutch general, because the damned
rogue would fight and spoil a good war, that, with decent management and
good husbandry, might have been eked out this twenty years ; there were
whole armies hunting two cows to one Irishman, and driving off black cattle
declared the noble end of the war. Here we saw a country full of stone
walls and strong towns, where, every campaign, the trade of war was carried
on by the soldiers with the same intriguing as it was carried on in the coun-
cil chambers ; there were millions of contributions raised, and vast sums
collected, but no taxes lessened ; whole plate-fleets surprised, but no treasure
found ; vast sums lost by enemies, and yet never found by friends ; ships
loaded with volatile silver, that came away full and got home empty ; whole
voyages made to beat nobody, and plunder everybody ; two millions robbed
from the honest merchants, and not a groat saved for the honest subjects.
There we saw captains listing men with the Government's money, and let-
ting them go again for their own ; ships fitted out at the rate of two millions
a -year, to fight but once in three years, and then run away for want of
powder and shot."
The next seems to be an extravagant parody of the epigram :
"He told me, as the inhabitants were the most numerous, so they were
the strangest people that lived; both their natures, tempers, qualities,
actions, and way of living, was made up of innumerable contradictions ; that
they were the wisest fools and the foolishest wise men in the world ; the
weakest, strongest, richest, poorest, most generous, covetous, bold, cowardly,
false, faithful, sober, dissolute, surly, civil, slothful, diligent, peaceable,
quarrelling, loyal, seditious nation that ever was known."
2
354 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
QUALITIES OF 8TYLK.
Simplicity. The use of homely language is one of the most
remarkable features in Defoe's style. It is one of the secrets of
the continued popularity of ' Robinson Crusoe.'
Two things may be specially exemplified under this head. One
is, the coarse plainness of language that he sometimes adopted for
purposes of ridicule ; and the other, his orderly colloquial exposi-
tion of subjects that might have been treated in a more pretentious
and abstruse style.
As an example of a very undignified tone of banter, take the
beginning of his 'Reasons against the Succession of the House
of Hanover,' another ironical piece that was taken for earnest, and
led to his temporary imprisonment :
" What strife is here among you all ? And what a noise about who shall
or shall not be king, the Lord knows when ? Is it not a strange thing we
cannot be quiet with the queen we have, but we must all fall into confusion
and combustions about who shall come after ? Why, pray folks, how old is
the queen, and when is she to die ? that here is this pother made about it.
I have heard wise people say the queen is not fifty years old, that she has
no distemper but the gout, that that is a life-long disease, which generally
holds people out twenty, or thirty, or forty years ; and let it go how it will,
the queen may well enough linger out twenty or thirty years, and not be a
huge old wife neither. Now, what say the people ? must we think of living
twenty or thirty years in this wrangling condition we are now in ? This
would be a torment worse than some of the Egyptian plagues, and would be
intolerable to bear, though for fewer years than that. The animosities of
this nation, should they go on, as it seems they go on now, would by time
become to such a height, that all charity, society, and mutual agreement
among us, will be destroyed. Christians shall we he called ? No ; nothing
of the people called Christians will be to be found among us. Nothing of
Christianity, Viz., charity, will be found among us ! The name Christian
may be assumed, but it will be all hypocrisy and delusion ; the being of
Christianity must be lost in the fog, and smoke, and stink, and noise, and
rage, and cruelty, of our quarrel about a king. Is this rational ? Is it
ftcrreeable to the true interests of the nation ? What must become of trade,
of religion, of society, of relation, of families, of people ? Why, hark ye,
you folk that call yourselves rational, and talk of having souls, is this a
token of your having such things about you, or of your thinking rationally ?
if you have, pray what is it likely will become of you all f Why, the strife
is gotten into your kitchens, your parlours, your shops, your counting-
houses, nay, into your very beds. You gentlefolks, if you please to listen
to your cook-maids and footmen in your kitchens, you shall hear them
scolding, and swearing, and scratching, and fighting among themselves ;
and when you think the noise is about the beef and the pudding, the dish-
water, or the kitchen-stuff, alas, you are mistaken ! the feud is about the
more mighty affairs of the government, and who is for the Protestant succes-
sion, and who for the Pretender. Here the poor despicable scullions learn
to ciy, High Church, No Dutch Kings, No Hanover, that they may do it
dexterously when they come into the next mob. Here their antagonists of
the dripping-pan practise the other side clamour, No French Peace, No
Pretender, No Popery. The thing is the very same up, "Ac.
DANIEL DEFOE. 355
Examples of his simple expositions may be found in any page
of the ' Complete Tradesman,' The following is a very fair speci-
men:
"Another trading license is that of appointing and promising payments
of money, which men in business are oftentimes forced to make, and forced
to break, without any scruple ; nay, and without any reproach upon their
integrity. Let us state this case as clearly as we can, and see how it stumls
as to the morality of it, for that is the point in debate.
"The credit usually given by one tradesman to another, as particulaily
by the merchant to the wholesale man, and by the wholesale-man to tiie re-
tailer, is such, that, without tying the buyer up to a particular day of pay-
ment, they go on buying and selling, and the buyer pays money upon
account, as his convenience admits, and as the seller is content to take it.
This occasions the merchant or the wholesale-man to go about, as they
call it, a-dunning among their dealers, and which is generally the work of
every Saturday. When the merchant comes to his customer the wholesale -
man, or warehouse-keeper, for money, he tells him, ' I have no money, sir ;
I cannot pay you now ; if you call next week, I will pay you.' Next week
conies, and the merchant calls again ; but it is the same thing, only the
warehouseman adds, ' Well, I will pay you next week, without fail.' When
the week comes, he tells him he has met with great disappointments, and
he knows not what to do, but desires his patience another week : and when
the other week comes, perhaps he pays him, and so they go on.
" Now, what is to be said for this ? In the first place, let us look back to
the occasion. This warehouse-keeper, or wholesale-man, sells the goods
which he buys of the merchant I say he sells them to the retailers, and it
is for that reason I place it first there. Now, as they buy in smaller <|iinn-
tities than he did of the merchant, so he deals with more of them in number,
and he goes about among them the same Saturday, to get in money that he
may pay his merchant, and he receives his bag full of promises, too, every-
where instead of money, and is put off from week to week, perhaps by fifty
shopkeepers in a day ; and their serving him thus obliges him to do the
same to the merchant.
"Again, come to the merchant. Except some whose circumstances are
above it, they are by this veiy \isage obliged to put off the Blackwellhall
factor, or the packer, or the clothier, or whoever they deal with, in propor-
tion ; and thus promises go round for payment, and those promises are kept
or t'roken as money comes in, or as disappointments happen: and all this
while there is no breach of honesty, or parole ; no lying, or supposition of
it, among the tradesmen, either on one side or other.
" But let us come, I say, to the morality of it. To break a solemn pro-
mise is a kind of prevarication ; that is certain, there is no coming off of it ;
and I might enlarge here upon the first fault, namely of making the pro-
mise, which, say the strict objectors, they should not do. But the trades-
man's answer is this: all those promises ought to betaken as they are made
namely, with a contingent dependence upon the circumstances of trade,
such as promises made them by others who owe them money, or the supposi-
tion of a week's trade bringing in money by retail, as usual, both of which
are liable to fail or at least to fall short ; and this the person who culls for
the money knows, and takes the promise with those attending casualties;
which if they fail, he knows the shopkeeper or whoever he is, must fail him
too."
Clearness. The last-quoted passage is a specimen of our author's
356 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
most distinct style of expression. When, as in the above case, he
is put upon his mettle to be perspicuous, lie observes a certain
precision of method, giving express notice when he passes from
one consideration to another : "In the first place, let us look back
to the occasion ; " " Again, come to the merchant ; " " But let us
come, I say, to the morality of it." But he writes too hurriedly
to be precise in expression. When we study for a little what he
writes, we can see that he has a clear and vigorous mind, and is
seldom oppressed by confusion of thought. But his expression is
often imperfect. He hurries on, and is content to leave it incom-
plete. The above phrases of transition, for example, are incom-
plete the first particularly. We see what they mean after we
have read the paragraph they introduce, but not before.
Strength. Defoe's general style may be described as nervous.
It has the strength arising from variety, copiousness, and vigorous
fitness of plain words and metaphors, with an occasional " tang "
of antithesis.
He wants the power of sonorous declamation ; as may be seen in
the coarse vigour of his familiar expostulation with the people of
England concerning their political dissensions. In his ' Seasonable
Warning and Caution,' touching the same theme, he attempts a
loftier flight, but mars the effect by occasional expressions in his
more usual tone of familiarity. Thus
" Why, how now, England 1 what ailest thee now ? What evil spirit
now possesseth thee ? thou nation famous for espousing religion, and
defending liberty; finiuent in all :iges for pulling down tyrants, and adher-
ing steadily to the fundamentals of thy own constitution: that has not only
secured thy own rights, and handed them down unimpared to every suc-
ceeding age, but has been the sanctuary of other oppressed nations ; the
strong protector of injured subjects against the lawless invasion of oppress-
ing tyrants.
"To thee the oppressed Protestants of France owed, for some ages ago,
the comfort of being powerfully supported, while their own king, wheedled
by the lustre of a crown, became apostate, and laid the foundation of their
ruin among themselves ; in thee their posterity find a refuge, and flourish
in thy wealth and trade, when religion and liberty find no more place in
their own country.
" To thee the distressed Belgii owe the powerful assistance by which they
took up arms in defence of liberty and religion against Spanish cruelty, the
perfidious tyranny of their kings, and the rage of the bloody Duke d'Alva.
"... But what has all this been for ? And to what intent and
purpose was all this zeal, if you will sink under the ruin of the very fabric
ye have pulled down ? If you will give up the cause after ye have gained the
advantage, and yield yourselves up after you have been delivered; to what
purpose then has all this been done f Why all this money expended? Why
all this blood spilt? To what end is France said to be reduced, and peace
now concluded, if the same Popery, the same tyranny, the same arbitrary
methods of government shall be received among you again ? Sure your pos-
terity will stand amazed to consider how lavish thi^s age has been of their
money aud their blood, and to how little purpose; since no age since the
DANIEL DEFOE. 35?
CTwttion of the world can show us a time whenever any nation spent BO
much blood and treasure to end just where they begun : as, it the arts o/
our enemies prevail, we are like to do."
His homely nervous style is well suited to the relation of lively
horrors, or of exciting commotions, such as riots and mutinies. In
recording the alarms caused by the fear of infection during the
Great Plague of 1665, he is incomparably graphic and impressive.
He produces his effects not by ponderous epithets, or impressive
reflections, but by the accumulation of striking details in homely
language. As an example :
"Another infected person came and knocked at the door of a citizen's
house, where they knew him very well ; the servant let him in, and being
told the master of the house was above, he ran up, and came into the room
to them as the whole family were at supper. They began to rise up a little
surprised, not knowing what the matter was; but he bade them sit still, he
only came to take his leave of them. They asked him, ' Why, Mr ,
where are you going f 'Going,' says he, 'I have got the sickness, and
shall die to-morrow night.' It is easy to believe, though not to describe,
the consternation they were all in ; the women and the man's daughters,
which were but little girls, were frightened almost to death, and got up, all
running out, one at one door and one at another, some down-stairs and some
up-stairs, and getting together as well as they could, locked themselves into
their chambers, and screamed out at the window for help, as if they had
been frighted out of their wits. The master, more composed than they,
though both frighted and provoked, was going to lay hands on him and
throw him down-stairs, being in a passion ; but then considering a little the
condition of the man, and the danger of touching him, horror seized his
mind, and he stood like one astonished. The poor distempered man, all
this while, being as well diseased in his brain as in his body, stood still like
oue amazed ; at length he turns round, ' Ay 1 ' says he, with all the seeming
calmness imaginable, ' is it so with you all ? Are you all disturbed at me ?
"Why, then, I'll e'en go home and die there.' And so he goes immediately
down-stairs. The servant that had let him in goes down after him with a
candle, but was afraid to go past him and open the door, so he stood on the
stairs to see what he would do ; the man went and opened the door, and
went out and flung the door after him."
Tlie Ludicrous. The extravagance of Defoe's sense of the ludi-
crous is in proportion to the marvellous energy of the man. He
deals in the same kind of undisguised banter as Macaulay ; only
he is more exuberant, stands less upon his dignity, hits fearlessly
at greater antagonists, and altogether has a more magnanimous
air. At the risk of being formal, we may compare him with the
other three great prose wits in this age of wits, Addison, Steele,
and Swift. He is more openly derisive and less bitter than Addi-
son, having no mastery of the polite sneer : he is not a loving
humorist like Steele, but sarcastically and derisively humorous ;
and he is more magnanimous and less personal than Swift, dealing
with public not with private conduct, and carrying into the war-
fare a spirit less savagely ferocious.
358 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
Passages already quoted illustrate the extravagance of his hu-
mour, as it appears in epigrammatic paradox, and in the application
of very homely language to affairs usually treated with stiff dignity.
His ' Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the
Moon,' is, as we should expect from the title, full of extravagant
fun so extravagant that the satire is converted into humour. In
the passage quoted concerning the Irish and French wars (p. 353),
the satire is predominant ; but very often he loses sight of his
polemical purpose, and gives a loose rein to his powers of ludicrous
invention. The metaphorical description of the discoveries of the
great psychologist (p. 352) is a fair example. Here is another :
"If these labours of mine shall prove successful, I may, in my next journey
that way, take an abstract of their most admirable tracts in navigation, and
the mysteries of Chinese mathematics ; which outdo all modern invention
at that rate, that it is inconceivable ; in this elaborate work I must run
through the 365 volumes of Augro-machi-lanquaro-zi, the most ancient
mathematician in all China ; from thence I shall give a description of a
fleet of ships of a hundred thousand sail, built at the expense of the emperor
Tangro the XVth. ; who, having notice of the general deluge, prepared these
vessels, to every city and town in his dominions one, and in bulk propor-
tioned to the number of its inhabitants ; into which vessel all the people,
with such movables as they thought fit to save, and with a hundred and
twenty days' provisions, were received at the time of the flood ; and the
rest of their goods being put into great vessels made of China ware, and fast
luted down on the top, were preserved unhurt by the water : these ships
they furnished with six hundred fathom of chain instead of cables, which
being fastened by wonderful arts to the earth, every vessel rid out the
deluge just at the town's end ; so that when the waters abated, the people
had nothing to do but to open the doors made in the ship-sides and come
out, repair their houses, open the great China pots their goods were in, and
so put themselves in statu quo."
One of the most striking features in our author's wit is his
power of irony. Of this power he received very disagreeable
proof : his ironical proposal, ' The Shortest Way with the Dissent-
ers,' was praised by the extreme High-fliers as an admirable idea,
and the mocking author imprisoned when they discovered to their
fury how they had been cheated ; and eleven years later, his iron-
ical ' Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover ' was
misinterpreted by the Government, and much to his surprise, he
was incarcerated as a genuine Jacobite. We have quoted the
opening of the latter piece. The following is a portion of the
mock declamation of his ' Shortest Way ' :
" It is now near fourteen years that the glory and peace of the purest and
most flourishing church in the world has been eclipsed, buffeted, and dis-
turbed, by a sort of men who God in His providence has suffered to insult
over her, and bring her down ; these have been the days of her humiliation
and tribulation. She was born with an invincible patience, the reproach of
the wicked, and Cod has nf Inst heard her prayers, and delivered her from
the opprcbsiou of ; lie .itnmytT.
DANIEL DEFOE. 359
" And now they find their day is over, their power gone, and the throne
of this nation possessed by a royal, English, true, and ever-constant member
of, and friend to the Church of England. Now that they find they are in
danger of the Church of England's just resentments; now they cry out
peace, union, forbearance, and charity, as if the Church had not too long
harboured her enemies under her wing, and nourished the viperous brood,
till they hiss and fly in the face of the mother that cherished them.
" No, gentlemen, the time of mercy is past, your day of grace is over ;
you should have practised peace and moderation, and charity, if you
expectrd any yourselves.
" We have heard more of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have
been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration ; you have told us that
you are the Church established by law, as well as others ; have set up your
canting synagogues at our church-doors, and the church and members have
been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what
not ; where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity, you have
shown to tender consciences of the Church of England, that could not take
oaths as fast as you made them ? that having sworn allegiance to their lawful
and rightful king, could not dispense with that oath, their king being still
alive, and swear to your new hodge-podge of a Dutch Government ? These
have been turned out of their livings, and they and their families left to
starve ; their estates double taxed, to carry on a war they had no hand in,
and you got nothing by. What account can you give of the multitudes you
have forced to comply, against their consciences, with your new sophistical
politics, who, like new converts in France, sin because they can't starve 1
And now the tables are turned upon you, you must not be persecuted, 'tia
not a Christian spirit !
" Your management of your Dutch monarch, whom you reduced to a mere
king of cl s, is enough to give any future princes such an idea of your
principles, as to warn them sufficiently from coming into your clutches ;
and, God be thanked, the Queen is out of your hands, knows you, and will
have a care of you."
KINDS OF COMPOSITION.
Defoe, as is testified by every page of his writings, excelled in
the graphic presentation both of concrete things and of states of
mind. He did not attempt comprehensive formal delineations of
complicated scenes, and so does not exhibit Descriptive method in
its most difficult application,; yet he must be allowed to be one of
our greatest masters of single descriptive touches.
One variety of descriptive method, indeed, he may be said to
have employed, and that with the highest success the presenta-
tion of scenes from the traveller's point of view. He puts before
us the various features of a country as they turn up in his narra-
tive. There is no full description of Robinson Crusoe's island in
any one place, but particular is added to particular as they oc-
curred to Robinson himself, and before the close of the narrative
we know the island from shore to shore. He acts upon the same
plan in all his narratives. One of his narratives in particular, his
' Voyage Round the World,' is framed expressly for descriptive
purposes ; in that work his main object is to present a systematic
360 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
body of his multifarious knowledge concerning foreign countries,
foreign trade, and foreign adventures, by sea and by land.
It is worthy of remark that he observes the cardinal rule of
description, the inaugural presentation of a comprehensive view,
lie fills in the picture by degrees, but he begins by drawing the
general outline. One of the first things that Robinson Crusoe
does is to go to the top of a hill and view the country :
" After I had with great labour and difficulty got to the top, I saw my
fate, to my great affliction, viz., that I was in an island environed every
way with the sea, no land to be seen except some rocks, which lay a great
way off, and two small islands, less than this, which lay about three leagues
to the west. I found also that the island I was in was barren, and, as I saw
good reason to believe, uninhabited, except by wild beasts, of whom, how-
ever, I saw none."
Another thing worth observing in his descriptions is that he
has a Herodotean knack of giving numerical measures of extent,
and of indicating the lie of a country by a reference to the points
of the compass. This is one of his arts for giving an air of reality
to his narratives.
The Narrative art of so successful a story-teller as Defoe de-
serves careful study. He chooses the simplest form of narration,
the record by an individual of incidents that have happened within
his personal knowledge. His narratives are all autobiographical
In his ' Memoirs of a Cavalier,' and others of his works, he mingles
general accounts of public transactions that the Cavalier took part
in with the narrative of personal adventures; but it is in the
narrative of personal adventures that the interest of the work
consists.
The question arises, Does he show any art beyond the accumu-
lation of interesting incidents : does he show skill in the order of
presenting them 1 Apart from the question of interest, which,
it is superfluous to say, Defoe sustains with unique power, his
narrative is eminently perspicuous. He has, to be sure, no com-
plicated difficulties to overcome, but he observes all the conditions
of perspicuity for the simple forms of narrative that he professes :
when he shifts the scene, he gives the reader distinct intimation of
the change ; when new agents are introduced, their appearance is
expressly announced ; and he does not depart from the order of
events without an apology and ample explanation. And as he is
tolerably exact in his measurement of space, so he is tolerably
exact in his measurement of time : the assigning of definite dates
also helps to keep up the air of reality. We have mentioned these
various items of lucidity without qualification : it should be added,
that thoujrh Defoe observes these conditions in the main, his nar-
JONATHAN SWIFT. 361
ratives were for the most part written hurriedly, and the close
reader finds an occasional confusion.
For popular Exposition, apart from his general felicity of lan-
guage, Defoe had two strong cards : a multifarious, and, compara-
tively speaking, inexhaustible command of examples and com-
parisons. His ' Complete English Tradesman ' is a manual of
advice that still finds readers.
JONATHAN SWIFT, 1667-1745.
The author of 'Gulliver's Travels,' the eccentric Dean of St
Patrick's in Ireland, has been all but universally acknowledged as
the most vigorous and grammatical writer of English anterior to
Johnson.
fle was born in Dublin, the posthumous son of Jonathan Swift,
a native of Yorkshire, said to be second cousin to the poet Dry-
den ; and was educated by the charity of an uncle at the school of
Kilkenny, and at Trinity College, Dublin. He entered the world,
ut the age of twenty-one, as private secretary to Sir William
Temple, who had married a relative of his mother. This post he
held, with a brief interval, for eleven years, remaining in the Moor
Park family till the death of Sir William in 1699. Again thrown
on his own resources, he was for a short time chaplain in the
family of Lord Berkeley, and from him obtained in 1700 the
livings 01' Laracor and Rathbeggin in the diocese of Meath. He
rose to no higher preferment till made Dean of St Patrick's by his
Tory friends in 1713.
Like other literary men of the time, he took an interest in pol-
itics, and wrote with a political aim. His first publication, ' Dis-
sensions in Athens and Rome,' appeared in 1701, when the author
was thirty-four years of age : it relates the evil consequences of
dissensions between Nobles and Commons in the ancient states,
and points a moral against the quarrelsome behaviour of the Eiig-
lish Commons The anonymous 'Tale of a Tub,' a satire on
religious dissensions and the self-sufficiency of the different
Churches, filled out with numerous satirical digressions on vari-,
ous subjects, was written about 1696, and first published in
1704. Along with the 'Tale of a Tub' appeared 'The Battle of
the Books ' a burlesque on Temple's opponents in the Ancient
versus Modern controversy. In 1708 he took a leading place
among the wits by his ridicule of John Partridge, the Philomath
or Astrologer. This performance made the name of Isaac Bicker-
staff one of the most popular in town, for whicL reason it was
assumed by Steele when he began the 'Tatler.' From 1710 to
1714, the four last years of Queen Anne's r^ign, he was the chief
3G2 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
literary support of the Tory Administration, writing the ' Conduct
of the Allies,' the ' Letter to the October Club,' the ' Examiner,'
and other telling compositions. His ' Journal to Stella ' was writ-
ten during his residence in London at this period. When George
came to the throne, and the power of government passed to the
Whigs, he retired to his Irish deanery. Ten years thereafter he
made a great sensation in the political world, and gained unex-
ampled popularity in Ireland, by his ' Drapier's Letters," written
against Wood's patent for a copper coinage. The letters raised
such a commotion that the patent had to be revoked. ' Gulliver's
Travels' was published in 1726-27, and "was received with such
avidity that the price of the first edition was raised before the
second could be marta"
Swift's relations with Stella and Vanessa Miss Johnson and
Miss Vanhomrigh are too complicated to be here entered upon
at length. Stella passed as a daughter of Sir William Temple's
steward, but was believed to be the natural daughter of Sir William
himself. When Swift went to Ireland he persuaded her to come
and live near him under the charge of Mrs Dingley, kept up with
her all the intimacy of a Platonic friendship, and latterly was
united to her by a private marriage, though the connection was
for some reason or other never publicly acknowledged. His rela-
tions with Miss Vanhomrigh were less mysterious, but more trag-
ical. As her literary tutor, he suffered or encouraged her to fall
passionately in love with him. Warm-hearted and impetuous, she
made him an offer of marriage ; and when he equivocated and
urged delay, she threw reserve aside, and pursued the unusual
suit with warm entreaty and argument. She died of a broken
heart, on discovering the Dean's intimacy with Stella.
Swift is described by Sir Walter Scott as " in person tall, strong,
and well made, of a dark complexion, but with blue eyes, black
an I bushy eyebrows, nose somewhat aquiline, and features which
remarkably expressed the stern, haughty, and dauntless turn of
his mind."
It needed considerable constitutional strength to support the
astonishing force of his character ; yet there would seem to have
been some radical disorder in his system. From our earliest
records of his behaviour, he was excessively irritable, at times even
savagely so. He could not endure to accommodate himself to
people ; he either gloomily held his tongue, or overbore opposition
with fierce impatience. We can hardly explain this without sup-
posing some radical distemper ; it may have been the uneasy
beginnings of the brain disease that afterwards unhinged his
reason.
Taken as a whole, his writings leave upon our minds a wonder-
JONATHAN SWIFT. 363
ful impression of persistent originality, analogical power, effective
eloquence, and wit. We feel his originality most vividly when we
compare his works with the works of writers less powerful or less
persistently concentrated; when, for example, we compare his
' Tale of a Tub ' with Defoe's ' Shortest Way with Dissenters/ or
his 'Gulliver's Travels' with Defoe's 'Voyage to the Moon.'
Defoe's performances have the originality of first thoughts dashed
off hastily originality, as it were, of the first remove. Swift's
performances appear as the outcome of strong powers working up
to a high ideal; remodelling first thoughts and still remaining
unsatisfied ; climbing, stage after stage, to a transcendently impos-
ing altitude above the common level A man with his quickness
of thought would probably find some ludicrous parallel upon the
first endeavour ; but he was not content until he had discovered a
parallel that should be supremely ludicrous. The surprising per-
sistence and power of his efforts appears not less in the quantity
than in the quality of his analogies. In the ' Tale of a Tub ' and
in ' Gulliver's Travels,' the multitude as well as the aptness of the
parallels between the imaginary narrative and the facts allegorised
are absolutely unrivalled among works of that nature, and could
have been conceived only by the greatest powers at the maximum
of intense concentration. He was famous for quick flashes of
extempore wit ; in an age of brilliant talkers, he held one of the
highest places. But the requirements for his sustained composi-
tions embraced something over and above this : ' Gulliver's Tra-
vels ' needed steady application as well as quickness of analogical
energy. There were men in the Queen Anne period that held
their own with Swift in the social interchange of wit, as there
were men more delicate in criticism and more sagacious in state-
craft ; but he stood alone in the rare combination of subtle wit
with demoniac perseverance.
In some of his writings he displays intense feeling; we read
hardly a page without encountering some stroke of passion.
Strong egotism is more or less involved in all his emotional mani-
festations. He was, as we have said, savagely impatient of the
slightest contradiction. If either a person or an institution jarred
with his notions of what it ought to be or ought to do, his rage
was instantaneous and irrepressible. 1 In his Journal to Stella,
indeed, he expressed himself with the most passionate fondness.
But this was not inconsistent with the irritable egotism that else-
where displayed itself as the ruling passion of his nature. It was,
indeed, an outcome of the same passion in an allotropic form : in-
tense affection for an intimate companion is describabie as an
1 The gross violations of decency in his writings are referable to the same
intense egotism ; he delighted to shock conventional notions, aud to brave con-
tradiction or rebuke.
304 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
expanded egotism. While Swift was in London, Stella was to
him an alter fyo, another self ; there were none of the irritations
of actual companionship to break the flow of his tenderness.
His conduct both in public and in private was determined by
imperious irritable pride. He was immoderately fond of the ex-
ercise of power, and ungovernably restless under authority. He
must have his own way for the moment, come what would. He
has not been proved guilty of mean selfishness or of malice. On
the contrary, he showed himself on several occasions public-
spirited and charitable. But both his public spirit and his charity
were to this extent egotistic that he insisted dictatorially upon his
own schemes for the good of the party interested. As a clergy-
man, "discharging his duties with punctuality," his ruling pas-
sion came out in dictatorial schemes for improving the condition
of his parishioners, and savage contempt for the idleness and over-
populating fecundity that marred his plans. During his four
years' importance at Court, he is described as lording it over the
highest officers of state, treating them with the air of a patron,
"affecting rather to dictate than advise." In private company,
though esteemed the greatest wit of the age, he behaved at times
with the same rude imperiousness. A story is told of his per-
emptorily bidding Lady Burlington " sing him a song," and, when
she refused, threatening to make her sing when he bade her. In
the rampant moments of this towering egotism, he was blind to
every other interest When he suspected his patron Lord Berke-
ley, and Berkeley's secretary, Bushe, of playing false to him in the
matter of a clerical presentation, he left their presence in a fury,
crying " God confound you both for a couple of scoundrels ! "
When his butler, who copied the Drapier Letters, seemed to pre-
sume upon his knowledge of the terrible secret, he dismissed the
man with " Do the worst you dare, sir ! " an infuriated braving
of consequences which it would be hard to parallel
Opiniojis. Macaulay brands our author as " an apostate politi-
cian." He coquetted with the Whigs, it is said, and went over to
the Tories when the Whig leaders showed an imperfect respect for
his powers. It is not pretended that he ever wrote for the Whigs,
or ever received favours from them. In his choice of a party he
probably was determined not a little by personal feelings and his
natural love of opposition.
His religious sincerity has been questioned. The presumptions
are drawn solely from the satirical and gross tone of his writings.
Macaulay terms him "a ribald priest" Against the presumptions
thus derived is the fact that he is often sarcastic with disbelievers
in Christianity. His ' Tale of a Tub ' supports the Church of
England against Papist and Presbyterian,
JONATHAN SWIFT. 365
We may quote one or two of his " Thoughts on various sub-
jects " :
" We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make
us love, one another."
" When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good
side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our mi mis run wholly on
the bad side."
" The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is
like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."
"The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies,
prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former."
" All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor ;
it is like spending this year part of next year's revenue. "
" Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation to posterity,
let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know. "
" A very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing
to live another time.
" Matrimony has many children ; Repentance, Discord, Poverty, Jealousy,
Sickness, Spleen, Loathing," &c.
In his letter to a Young Clergyman, he gives the following advice:
14 1 should likewise have been glad if you had applied yourself a little
more to the study of the English language than I fear you have done ; the
neglect whereof is one of the most general defects among the scholars ot this
kingdom, who seem not to have the least conception of a style, but run on
in a flat kind of phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms and ex-
pressions peculiar to the nation. . . . Proper words in proper places
make the true definition of a style."
ELEMENTS OF STYLE,
Vocabulary. Swift's mastery of the language for purposes of
ridicule is universally allowed to be unsurpassed. His range is
indeed somewhat too wide for ordinary tastes ; in the process of
"debasing and defiling," he sometimes condescends to use the
language of the brothel The propensity to shock decorum cost
him the favour of Queen Anne and a bishopric.
His diction is praised for its grammatical purity. We have just
seen that he was particular about not using barbarous terms.
" He studied purity ; and though perhaps all his strictures " [his
syntax] "are not exact, yet it is not often that solecisms can be
found ; and whoever depends on his authority, may generally con-
clude himself safe."
Sentences and Paragraphs. In point of syntax, our author is
so much more correct than any writer before Johnson that he
sometimes gets the credit of establishing modern grammar. Doubt-
less he profited greatly by his residence with the finically studious
Temple. If his syntax is more uniformly correct than Temple's,
366 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
he certainly owes to Temple the habit of being particular in this
matter. We can distinctly trace his master's influence in the
finished compacting of his sentences.
It is matter of praise that no other peculiarity calls for special
remark. He is neither strikingly periodic, nor strikingly loose,
nor strikingly pointed. His education under Temple taught him
the period and point; his natural love of simplicity kept him
from pushing these forms to an extreme. The consequence is,
that the reader's attention is not specially drawn to any one form,
which is so far the pert' ecti< >n of sentence style. Farther, with his
natural clearness, he is fairly attentive to the placing of words, and
to the unity of his sentences.
From Temple also he learned to study method, both in the
general arrangement of a discourse and in the disposition of para-
graphs. Almost vehemently anxious to be followed and under-
stood, he is explicit in referring us to what has been said, \vhat is
to come, and what is the connection of one thing with another.
One of his paragraph arts deserves to be exemplified. He often,
but not obtrusively often, reserves a telling point for the end.
This art is seen in the three following paragraphs from his letter
of advice to a Young Lady on her marriage :
" I must likewise warn you strictly against the least degree of fondness to
your husband before any witness whatsoever, even before your nearest rela-
tions, or the very maids of your chamber. This proceeding is so exceeding
odious and disgustful to all who have either good breeding or good sense,
that they assign two very unamiable reasons for it ; the one is gross hypoc-
risy, and the other has too bad a name to mention. If there is any differ-
ence to be made, your husband is the lowest person in company either at
home or abroad, and every gentleman present has a better claim to all marks
of civility and distinction from you. Conceal your esteem and love in your
own breast, and reserve your kind looks and language for private hours ;
which are so many in the four-and-twenty, that they will afford time to
employ a passion as exalted as any that was ever described in a French
romance.
" Upon this hesid I should likewise advise you to differ in practice from
those ladies who affect abundance of uneasiness while their husbands are
abroad ; tart with every knock at the door, and ring the bell incessantly
for the servants to let in their master ; will not eat a bit of dinner or supper
if the husband happens to stay out ; and receive him at his return with sucn
a medley of chiding and kindness, and catechising him where he has been,
that a shrew from Billingsgate would be a more easy and eligible companion.
" Of the same leaven are those wives who, when their husbands are gone a
journey, must have a letter every post, upon pain of fits and hysterics ; and
a day must be fixed for their return home, without the least allowance for
business, or sickness, or accidents, or weather ; upon which I can only say
that in my observation those ladies who are apt to make the greatest chatter
on such occasions, woTild liberally have paid a messenger for bringing them
news that their husbands had broken their necks on the road."
Figures of Speech Similitudes. No general statement can be
JONATHAN SWIFT. 367
made regarding our author's use of figures of similarity. Some of
his writings are very plain, and some of them are very figurative.
Setting aside ' Gulliver's Travels,' which affects the blunt diction
of a seaf earing captain, and not forgetting that the work as a whole
is one sustained similitude, we may say that when he writes
seriously his language is simple, unadorned, and designed above
everything to convey his meaning directly ; and that when he
writes in a spirit of ridicule he gives free play to his fancy. 1 Even
this needs modification. His gravest didactic is enlivened by
strong and apt similes and metaphors. Nothing could be more
absurd than the idea that he never uses metaphors. It is said to
be a boast of his own ; if so, he must have meant by metaphors
euphemisms for "nasty ideas." In that quarter he always calls a
spade a spade.
One thing is very remarkable and characteristic in his simili-
tudes; they never elevate a subject, except in irony. On the
other hand, they frequently debase, and that to no ordinary depth.
His allusions are often extremely gross.
A quotation or two will illustrate the character of his simili-
tudes. The first is on the worship of Clothes, which Carlyle
acknowledges as a "dim anticipation" of his Philosophy:
" The worshippers of this deity had also a system of their belief, which
seemed to turn upon the following fundamentals. They held the universe
to be a large suit of clothes, which invests everything : that the earth is
invested by the air ; the air is invested by the stars, and the stars are in-
vested by the primum mobile. Look upon this globe of earth, you will find
it to be a very complete and fashionable dress. What is that which some
call land, but a fine coat faced with green ? or the sea, but a waistcoat of
water tabby I Proceed to the particular works of the creation, you will find
how curious a journeyman Nature has been to trim up the vegetable beaux;
observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine
doublet of satin is worn by the birch. To conclude from all, what is man
himself but a microcoat, or rather a complete suit of clothes with all its
trimmings T As to his body there can be no dispute ; but examine even the
requirements of his mind, you will find them all contribute in their order
towards furnishing out an exact dress : to instance no more ; is not religion
a cloak, honesty a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt, self-love a surtout,
vanity a shirt, and conscience a pair of breeches, which, though a cover,"
Ac.
' ' The most accomplished way of using books at present is twofold : either,
first, to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly, and
then brag of their acquaintance ; or, secondly, which is indeed the choicer,
the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the in-
dex, by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the
tail. For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an ex-
pense of time and forms ; therefore men of much haste and little ceremony
1 Dr Johnson places the ' Tale of a Tub ' by itself for " copiousness of image*
and vivacity of diction ; " but others of his ironical pieces are of the same ohar*
acter. See the " Letter to a Young Poet"
368 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
are content to get in by the back-door. For the arts are all in a fl}ing
march, and therefore more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear.
Thus physicians discover the state of the whole body, by consulting only
what conies from behind. Thus men catch knowledge by throwing their
wit on the posteriors of a book, as boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon
their tails. Thus human life is best understood by the wise man's rule of
always regarding the end. "
" To my certain knowledge, some of our greatest wits in your poetical
way have not as much real learning as would cover sixpence in the bottom
of a basin ; nor do I think the worse of them ; for, to speak my private
opinion, I am for every man's working upon his own materials, and produc-
ing only what he can find within himself, which is commonly a better stock
than the owner knows it to be. I think flowers of wit ought to spring, aa
those in a garden do, from their own root and stem, without foreign assist-
ance. I would have a man's wit rather like a fountain, that feeds itselJ
invisibly, than a river, that is supplied by several streams from abroad.
" Or if it be necessary, as the case is with some barren wits, to take in the
thoughts of others in order to draw forth their own, as dry pumps will not
play till water is thrown into them ; in that necessity, I would recommend
some of the approved standard authors of antiquity for your perusal as a
poet ami a wit, because maggots being what you look for, as monkeys do
for vermin in their keepers' heads, you will find they abound in good old
authors, as in rich old cheese, not in the new; and for that reason you must
have the classics, especially the worm-eaten of them, often in your hands."
Allegory. The * Tale of a Tub ' and ' Gulliver's Travels ' are the
two most finished allegories in our language. Perhaps greater
constructive skill is shown in the Tale than in the Travels. The
Dean is said to have exclaimed in his old age, " What a genius I
had when I wrote that book ! " In the Travels he has no fixed
order to observe, and can introduce his satirical allusions when and
where he pleases ; but in the Tale he undertakes to allegorise a
history. A father dies leaving three sons, Peter, Martin, and Jack
(Popery, Episcopalianism, and Presbyteriariism, represented by the
apostle Peter, Martin Luther, and Jack Calvin).' He has no great
property to bequeath, so he bequeaths them each a coat (a system
of worship), with a body of directions how to preserve it This
will of his represents the Bible. The three sons soon fall into the
ways of the world, and overlay their coats with all the fashionable
trimmings at first evading the will by ingenious interpretations,
but finally locking it up and never referring to it. By-and-by
Martin and Jack have thoughts of reforming ; steal a copy of the
will ; and are kicked our, of doors by Peter. They then reform in
earnest, Martin cautiously, Jack impetuously : Martin picking off
the adventitious gold-lace, silver fringes, flame-coloured lining, <fec.,
carefully, so as not to injure the garment ; Jack tearing off these
ornaments with such violence as to leave his coat in tatters. Jack
quarrels with Martin for his want of zeal, separates from him in a
rage, runs mad, and sets up all kinds of strange doctrine. [The
JONATHAN S\VIFT. 369
bias of the allegory, it may be remarked, is strongly in favour of
the English Church.]
One of the most ingenious, and at the same time one of the
coarsest chapters, is the account of Jack's doctrine of ^Eolism
(from ^Eolus, the god of wind). It is a satire on the Puritan
belief in the special inspiration of preachers by the Holy Ghost.
The beginning is an example of his ingenuity in bringing scat-
tered particulars under a common idea :
" The learned ^Eolists maintain the original cause of all things to be wind,
from which principle this whole universe was at first produced, and into
which it must at last be resolved ; that the same breath which had kindled
and blew up the flame of nature, should one day blow it out. This is what
the adepti understand by their anima mundi; that is to say, the spirit, or
breath, or wind oi' the world; for, examine the whole system by the par-
ticulars of nature, and you will find it not to be disputed. For whether you
please to call the forma informans of man by the name of spiritus, animux,
afflatus, or anima ; what are all these but several appellations for wind,
which is the ruling element in every compound, and into which they all
resolve upon their corruption ? Farther, what is life itself but, as it is com-
monly called, the breath of our nostrils ? whence it is very justly observed
by naturalists, that wind still continues oi great emolument in certain mys-
teries not to be named," &c.
The following seems intended for an allegorical description of
Qeneral Assemblies among the Presbyterians :
" At certain seasons of the year you might behold the priests among them
in vast numbers, with their mouths gaping wide against a storm. At other
times were to be seen several hundreds linked together in a circular chain,
with every man a pair of bellows applied to his neighbour's breech, by which
they blew up each other to the size of a tun ; and for that reason, with givnt
propriety of speech, did usually call their bodies their vessels. When, by
these and the like performances, they were grown sufficiently replete, they
would immediately depart, and disembogue, for the public good, a plentiful
share of their acquirements into their disciples' chaps."
Irony. Of this art Swift is a consummate master. The best-
known specimens of his skill are ' An Argument to prove that
the abolishing of Christianity in England may, as things now
stand, be attended with some inconveniences, and perhaps not
produce those many good effects proposed thereby;' and 'A
Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in
Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for
making them beneficial to the public.' As compared with Defoe's
irony, the wit of these pieces is more subtle and surprising. The
opening of the "Argument" is inimitably happy; he affects to be
in a minority, and apologises for venturing to oppose the general
opinion :
" I am very sensible what a weakness and presumption it is to reason
against the general humour and disposition of' the world. I remember it
was, with great justice aud due regard to the freedom both of the public and
'2 A
370 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
the press, forbidden upon several penalties to write or discourse, or lay
wagers against the Union even before it was confirmed by Parliament ; be-
cause that was looked upon as a design to oppose the current of the people,
which, besides the folly of it, is a manifest breach of the fundamental law
that makes this majority of opinion the voice of God. In like manner, and
for the very same reasons, it may perhaps be neither safe nor prudent to
argue against the abolishing of Christianity at a juncture when all parties
appear so unanimously determined upon the point, as we cannot but allow
from their actions, their discourses, and their writings. However, I know
not how, whether from the affectation of singularity, or the perverseness of
human nature, but so it unhappily falls out, that 1 cannot be entirely of this
opinion. Nay, though 1 were sure an order were issued for my immediate
prosecution by the Attorney-General, I should still confess that, in the pres-
ent posture of our affairs, at home or abroad, I do not yet see the absolute
necessity of extirpating the Christian religion from among us.
"This perhaps may appear too great a paradox even for our wise and
paradoxical age to endure ; therefore I shall handle it with all tenderness,
and with the utmost deference to that great and profound majority which is
of another sentiment.
' Every candid render will easily understand my discourse to be intended
only in defence of nominal Christianity ; the other having been for some
time wholly laid aside by general consent as utterly inconsistent with our
present schemes of wealth and power."
In his "Modest Proposal" about the Irish children, he begins
by a description of the miseries of over-population, reminds us of
" the prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs,
or at the heels of their mothers," and declares that
"Whoever could find out, a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these
children sound useful members of the Commonwealth, would deserve so well
of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation."
He then puts in his claim to the distinction of such a discovery.
He proposes
" To provide for them in such a manner as, instead of being a charge upon
their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their
lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the
clothing, of many thousands. "
What, then, is the scheme 1
" I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in
London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most
delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked,
or boiled ; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a
ragout.
" I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the
120,000 children already computed, 20,000 may be reserved for breed,
whereof only one-fourth part to be males, which is more than we allow to
sheep, black cattle, or swine ; and my reason is, that these children are
belilom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our
savages, therefore one mule will be sufficient to serve four females. That
the remaining 100,000 may. at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons
of quality and fortune througii the kingdom, always advising the motliui to
JONATHAN SWIFT. 371
let them suck plentifully in the l:<st month, so as to render them plump and
fat tor a good table. A child will ninke two dishes at an entertainment foi
friends ; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will mako
a reasonable dish, and, seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be verj
good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.
" I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for
landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to
have the best title to the children.
" Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require), may
flay the carcase ; the skin of which, artifically dressed, will make admirable
gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.
"As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in
the most convenient parts of it, and butchers, we may be assured, will not
be wanting ; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, then
dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting-pigs. "
The above are perhaps the more horrible details of this horrible
proposal The conclusion is a very fine stroke of wit, as carrying
out the consistency of the irony to the greatest possible height :
" I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal
interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other
motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, provid-
ing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I
have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny, the youngest
being nine years old, and my wile past child-bearing."
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
Simplicity. "His delight was in simplicity. His style was
well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtilised by nice
disquisitions, decorated by sparkling conceits, elevated by am-
bitious sentences, or variegated by far-sought learning. . . .
He always understands himself, and his readers always under-
stand him : the peruser of Swift wants little previous knowledge ;
it will be sufficient that he is acquainted with common words and
common things ; he is neither required to mount elevations nor to
explore profundities ; his passage is always on a level, along solid
ground, without asperities, without obstruction." l
The Drapier Letters were written in peculiarly familiar style.
Whoever wishes to model upon Swift in this respect, must not for-
get that his simplicity verges on coarseness.
Clearness. It is not always Swift's desire to make his meaning
distinct. One of his arts is to hide it away under similitudes.
When he does wish to be beyond possibility of mistake, he knows
how to accomplish the object. He does not deal with subjects
where single words are much open to different interpretations by
different readers, and so has not much room for showing his skill
in preventing ambiguity. But he is careful to make his words fit
1 Johnson, Life of Swift
372 FROM I7u0 TO 1730.
close to his ideas, and often brings out his meaning sharply, by
contrasting it with what he does not mean.
Strength. His diction is emphatic and copious, and the intense
force of his satire is unsurpassed. Johnson's saying, that "he
pays no court to the passions, he excites neither surprise nor ad-
miration," 1 is a hasty judgment that needs qualification. If we
accept it, we must understand by passion sublimity ; and by sur-
prise and admiration, the elevation of sublimity. Nothing could
l>e more surprising or impressive than the flashes of Swift's wit;
:n id of passion, in one sense, there is enough, and more than enough,
in the Drapier's Letters :
" Good God ! who are this wretch's advisers? Who are his supporters,
abettors, encouragers, or sharers ? Mr Wood will oblige me to take five-
pence-halfpenny of his brass in every payment ; and I will shoot Mr Wood
and his deputies through the head, like highwaymen or .housebreakers, if
they dare to force one farthing of their coin on me in the payment of 100.
It is no loss of honour to submit to the lion ; but who, with the figure of a
man, can think Avith patience of being devoured alive by a rat ? He has
laid a tax upon the people of Ireland of 17s. at least in the pound ; a tax, I
say, not only upon lands, but interest-money, goods, manufactures, the hire
of handicraftsmen, labourers, and servants.
'* Shopkeepers, look to yourselves ! " &c.
Pathos. Swift had such a hatred of insincere sentiment, and
such a tendency to believe every open profession of sentiment to
be insincere, that he seldom, if ever, wrote a word either of affec-
tion or of compassion in any work intended for publication. The
only exceptions that I have remarked are in the Drapier Letters,
where he expresses an indignant pity for the sufferings of Ireland,
and makes a lofty profession of the disinterestedness of his public
spirit The Journal to Stella was not intended for the public eye.
There he indulges without constraint in infantine expressions of
fondness: Stella is "sirrah Stella," " Stellakins," "rogue Stella,"
"pretty Stella," "MD," "little MD," "dearest MD," "dear,
roguish, impudent, pretty MD."
"How now, sirrah, must I write in a morning to your impudence I
Stay till night
And then I'll write
In black and white
By candle-light
Of wax so bright
It helps the sight
A bite, a bite I
Marry come up, Mrs Boldface. "
* Sir W. Scott is more exact " He never attempted any species of composition
In winch either the sublime or the pathetic were required of him. But in every
department of poetry where wit is necessary, he displayed, as the subject chanced
to require, either the blasting lightning of satire, or the lambent and meteor-
like coruscations of frolicsome humour."
JONATHAN SWIFT. 373
The Ludicrous. He is pre-eminently a satirist ; nobody can pre-
tend to dispute his title of the prince of English Satirists.
In the ludicrous degradation of his victims, he makes no affec-
tation of kindliness, and parades rather than disguises his con-
tempt. Readers that are not subdued by the charms of his wit
pronounce him coarse, insolent, unfeeling, and turn from his pages
with aversion. This is one difference between him and Addison ;
they ayree in being derisive rather than humorous.
From Addison he differs still more in the extent and force of
his satire. Addison has a few pet objects of ridicule. Swift
exempts from his ridicule no profession, no foible, hardly any
institution, hardly any character. Clergymen, lawyers, doctors,
authors, politicians, wits, demonstrative affection, coxcombry, the
behaviour of ladies, bad manners, Popery, Presbyterianism, educjv-
tion, and, one may say in general, every individual that crosses
his opinions all come in for a cut of his stinging lash.
There are some fair specimens of insulting sarcasm among his
' Thoughts on various subjects ' :
"Query, whether churches are not dormitories of the living as well as of
the dead I "
"Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of diseases. Both were
originally the same trade, and still continue."
"The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his
countenance, and never to keep his word."
" A very little wit is valued in a woman, as we are pleased with a few
words spoken plain by a parrot."
"A nice man is a man of nasty ideas."
" If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their
works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever
had any. "
His advice "to a very young lady on her marriage" is an ex-
cellent specimen of rough sarcastic counsel, wholesome, but not in
the slightest accommodated to the palate. See p. 366.
A very favourite stroke at the free-thinkers and the wits is
to set forth ironically the advantages of the Church and of
Christianity :
"It is objected, as a very absurd, ridiculous custom, that a set of men
should be suffered, much less employed and hired, to bawl one day in seven
against the lawfulness of those methods most in use towards the pursuit of
greatness, riches, and pleasure, which are the constant practice of all men
alive on the other six. But the objection is, I think, a little unworthy of
BO refined an age as ours. Let us argue this matter calmly : I appeal to the
breast of any polite free-thinker, whether, in the pursuit of gratifying a
predominant passion, he has not always felt a wonderful incitement by
reflecting that it was a thing forbidden ; and therefore we see, in order to
cultivate this taste, the wisdom of the nation has taken special care that the
ladies should be furnished with prohibited silks, aiid the men with pro-
374 FKOM 1700 TO 1730.
hibited wine. And indeed it were to be wished that some other prohibi-
tions were promoted, in order to improve the pleasures of the town ; which,
for want of such expedients, begin already, as I am told, to flag and grow
languid, giving way daily to cruel inroads from the spleen."
He is dissatisfied with modern education :
"From frequently reflecting upon the course and method of educating
youth in this and a neighbouring kingdom, with the general success and
consequence thereof, I am come to this determination ; that education is
always the worse in proportion to the wealth and grandeur of the parents ;
nor do I doubt in the least, that if the whole world were now under the
dominion of one monarch (provided I might be allowed to choose where he
should form the seat of his empire), the only son and heir of that monarch
would be the worst educated mortal that ever was born since the creation ;
and I doubt the same proportion will hold through all degrees and titles,
from an emperor downwards to the common gentry."
"Another hindrance to good education, and I think the greatest of any,
is that pernicious custom in rich and noble families, of entertaining French
tutors in their houses. These wretched pedagogues are enjoined by the
father to take special care that the boy shall be perfect in his French ; by
the mother, that master must not walk till he is hot, nor be suffered to play
with other boys, nor be wet in his feet, nor daub his clothes, and to see the
dancing-master attends constantly and does his duty ; the father insists
that he be not kept too long poring on his book, because he is subject to
sore eyes, and of a weakly constitution."
In his treatise on good manners, he is very contemptuous about
the practice of duelling :
" I should be exceedingly sorry to find the legislature make any new laws
against the practice of duelling ; because the methods are easy and many for
a wise man to avoid a quarrel with honour, or engage in it with innocence.
And I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes,
to rid the world of each other by a method of their own, where the law has
not been able to find an expedient."
By nature extremely impatient of whatever was troublesome, he
hated over-civility. One of his Tatlers is a coarse exaggeration
of overdone hospitality. When sneering at the multiplication of
ceremonies, he relates a ridiculous accident, without caring to con-
ceal names :
" Monsieur Buys, the Dutch envoy, whose politics and manners were
much of a size, brought a son with him, about thirteen years old, to a great
table at Court. The boy and his father, whatever they put on their plates,
they first offered round in order to every person in company ; so that we
could not get a minute's quiet during the whole dinner. At last their two
plates happened to encounter, and with so much violence that, being china,
they broke in twenty pieces, and stained half the company with wet sweet-
meats and cream."
His personal sarcasms are very contemptuous. He alludes to
Defoe as "the fellow that was pilloried, I forget his name." He
is merciless on poor John Dennis :
JONATHAN SWIFT. 375
"One Dennis, commonly called 'the critic,' who had writ a threepenny
pamphlet against the power of France, being in the country, and hearing of
a French privateer hovering about the coast, although he were twenty miles
from the sea. fled to town, and told his friends they need not wonder at his
haste ; for the King of France, having got intelligence where he was, had
sent a privateer on purpose to catch him. "
One of the special objects of his pitiless dislike was Bnrnet the
historian. He ridiculed the ' History of my own Times ' under
the allegory of the ' Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish.'
Swift's copy of the history has been preserved; the marginal
comments are good specimens of the peculiar turn of his wit
I quote one or two as they are given in Collet's 'Relics of
Literature ' :
Preface, p. 3. Burnet. " Indeed, the peevishness, the ill-nature, and
the ambition of many clergymen, have sharpened my spirits perhaps too
much against them ; so I warn my readers to take all that I say on those
heads with some grains of allowance." Swift. " I will take his warning."
P. 28. Burnet. " The Earl of Argyle was a more solemn sort of man,
grave and sober, and free of all scandalous vices." Swift. " As a man is
free of a corporation, he means."
P. 5. Burnet. " Upon the King's death, the Scots proclaimed his son
king, and sent over Sir George Wincan, that married my great aunt, to
treat with him while he was in the Isle of Jersey." Svrift. " Was that the
reason why he was sent ? "
P. 163. Burnet (speaking of ' Paradise Lost ') " It was esteemed the
beautifullest and perfectest poem that ever was writ, at least in our lan-
guage." Surift. "A mistake ! for it is in English,"
KINDS OP COMPOSITION.
Persuasion. Swift's pamphlet on 'The Conduct of the Allies'
is said to have told with unexampled effect; to have revolution-
ised public feeling, and overturned a powerful Ministry. For ten
years, in union with Germany and Holland, we had fought against
the succession of a French prince to the Spanish throne ; we. had
won four splendid victories, and yet seemed in no hurry to make
reasonable overtures of peace. Dazzled by Marlborough's success,
the people had no suspicion that the war was protracted to fill his
pockets. Swift's pamphlet changed the aspect of things as by
enchantment ; it was read everywhere, and raised popular indig-
nation to such a height, that, within a year after its appearance,
a new Government was formed, which concluded the famous
Treaty of Utrecht
Johnson thinks that " the efficacy of this wonder-working pam-
phlet was supplied by the passions of its readers ; that it operated
by the mere weight of facts with a very little assistance from the
hand that produced them." But the art of the pamphleteer lay in
bringing the popular passions into exerciser in picking out, and
376 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
showing in strong lt<j;ht, facts that were escaping general notice
in relieving the pulilic from the fascination of military success, and
fixing their eyes on the other side of the picture.
If the 'Conduct of the Allies' gained its end by a skilful pres-
entation of facts in a calm statement, the Drapier Letters were
performances of a very different kind. A Mr Wood, a large owner
of mines, had obtained from Government a patent for issuing, under
certain regulations, a copper coinage of halfpence for Ireland. In
Ireland, then as now, there was strong jealousy of England ; and
Swift, striking in against the project, took full advantage of the
national feeling. The need of a copper coinage was glaring and
urgent he could say nothing on that score ; but he represented
that the Irish Houses of Parliament had previously requested leave
to coin and issue the needful money, and had been refused. What
was refused to the nobility and gentry of Ireland had been granted
to this man "a mean ordinary man, a hardware dealer." Swift
makes no attempt to argue the justice of the proceeding. He
heaps abuse upon Wood, 1 asserts against him audaciously ground-
less charges, pictures the most unreasonable consequences of the
measure, and pours out hot appeals to the passions of his readers.
The following quotations illustrate the kind of reasoning he
used. When to these ludicrous exaggerations of the inconveni-
ence of exchange the simple answer was made that nobody would
be obliged to take more than fivepence-halfpenny in copper, Swift
blustered about confining the liberty of the subject But for the
strong feeling existing against England, which blinded the Irish
to every consideration of reason, the Drapier would have been
laughed at. As it was, had the Government refused to give way,
his violent and hot exaggerations would have raised an armed re-
bellion, and his apparent patriotism made him a national hero :
" Suppose you go to an alehouse with that base money, and the landlord
gives you a quart for four of those halfpence, what must the victualler do t
' his brewer will not be paid in that coin ; or, if the brewer should be such a
fool, the farmers will not take it from them for their bere, because they are
bound by their leases to pay their rent in good and lawful money of Eng-
land ; which this is not, nor of Ireland neither; and the "squire their land-
lord will never be so bewitched to take such trash for his land ; so that it
roust certainly stop somewhere or other ; and wherever it stops, it is the
same thing, and we are all undone."
" If a squire has a mind to come to town to buy clothes, and wine, and
spices, for himself and family, or perhaps to pass the winter here, he must
bring with him live or six horses well laden with sacks, as the farmers bring
their corn ; and when his lady comes in her coach to our shops, it must be
followed by a car loaded with Mr Wood's money. And I hope we shall
have the grace to take it for no more than it is worth."
i See p. 37*
JOSEPH ADDISON. 377
"And let me in the next place apply myself particularly to you who are
the poorer sort of tradesmen. Perhaps you may think you will not be so
great losers as the rich if these halfpence should pass; because you seldom
see any silver, and your customers come to your shops or stalls with nothing
but brass, which you likewise find hard to be got. But yon may take my
word, whenever this money gains footing among you, you will be utterly
undone. If you carry these halfpence to a shop for tobacco or brandy, or
any other thing that you want, the shopkeeper will advance his goods
accordingly, or else he must break and leave the key under the door. ' Do
you think I will sell you a yard of tenpenny stuff for twenty of Mr Wood's
halfpence! no, not under 200 at least; neither will I be at the trouble of
counting, but weigh them in a lump.' I will tell you one thing further,
that if Mr Wood's project should take, it would ruin even our beggars ; for
when I give a b'-g^ar a halfpenny, it will quench his thirst, or go a good
way to fill his belly ; but the twelfth part of a halfpenny will do him no
more service than if I should give him three plus out of my sleeve."
JOSEPH ADDISON, 1672-1719.
Speaking of the age of William and Anne, Macaulay say&
" There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of liter-
ary merit were so splendid, at which men who could write well
found such easy admittance into the most distinguished society,
and to the highest honours of the State." Nobody profited more
than Addison by this accident of the times. His abilities were
very soon recognised by the Whig leaders. The son of Lancelot
Addison, Rector of Lichfield, educated at Charterhouse and Mag-
dalen College, Oxford, he was dissuaded from his design of enter-
ing the Church by Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax,
who procured him a pension from King William, and sent him to
travel in France and Italy (1699-1702). Returning to England on
the death of William, which had stopped his pension, he gained
some reputation by a poem commemorating the victory of Blen-
heim (1704); and, having thus proved his value to a party, was
in 1705 made Under-Secretary of State. Thereafter he held
various political offices : was appointed Keeper of the Records
of Ireland in 1709; Secretary to the Regency on the demise of
Queen Anne in 1714; one of the Lords of Trade under George
1. ; one of the Chief Secretaries of State in 1717. From these
high posts he drew a large income, while he had considerable
leisure for writing. He died in 1719, leaving one daughter by
the Countess Dowager of Warwick, whom he had married three
years before, and who added little to his comfort while he was
alive.
Addison's first prose composition, his 'Dialogues on Medals,'
was written during his Continental travels. In 1702 he pub-
lished an account of his travels in Italy, remarkable for happy
allusions to ancient Roman history and literature. His fame as
a prose writer rests on his contributions to periodical papers
378 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
the 'Tatler,' the ' Spectator,' and the ' Guardian.' The ' Tatler *
was commenced on April 12, 1709, by Sir Richard Steele, under
the assumed name of Isaac Bickerstaff. Addison, who was then
in Ireland, detected the author by a passage in the sixth number,
and sent his first ascertained contribution to No. 20, May 26. The
paper appeared three times a-week. Addison did not become a
regular contributor till his return from Ireland in September. The
last number of the 'Tatler' appeared on January 2, 1711. On
the demise of the ' Tatler,' Steele projected the ' Spectator,' to be
issued daily: it continued from March i, 1711, to December 6,
1712, and during all that time Addison was a frequent contrib-
utor, writing more than half of the numbers. The ' Guardian,' also
a daily paper, extended from March 12 to October i, 1713 ; Addi-
son's contributions were chiefly to the later numbers. In 1714
came out what is known as the Eighth Volume of the ' Spectator ' ;
of this nearly all the first half was written by Addison.
The ' Tatler,' the ' Spectator,' and the ' Guardian ' formally ex-
cluded politics ; their professed purpose was to discuss the fashions
and manners of society, the pulpit, the theatre, the opera, and
general literature ; in short, they were open to all the subjects
now discussed in the ' Saturday Review,' the ' Spectator,' or the
'Examiner,' except politics. In this respect they differed from
the ' Review ' of Defoe, the real prototype of modern periodicals.
But while they excluded politics in form, Addison, as we shall see,
in many of his papers was in no small degree influenced by politi-
cal prejudices.
Besides these universally-known performances, Addison wrote
some strictly political papers: in 1707, a pamphlet on the 'Pres-
ent State of the War ' ; the ' Whig Examiner,' a weekly tract, not
carried beyond the fifth number; the 'Trial of Count Tariff,' a
satire on the commercial treaty of Utrecht, 1713 ; and 'The Free-
holder,' a bi-weekly, carried through 55 numbers, 1715-16.
Addison' s personal appearance has not been very vividly re-
corded. Thackeray speaks of "his chiselled features, pure and
cold." We know also that he was a fair man, of a full habit of
body, soft and flabby from winebibbing and want of exercise.
He was so weakly a child that he was christened on the day of his
birth, not being expected to live.
The most general characteristic of his intellect is happily ex-
pressed by Johnson " He thinks justly, but he thinks faintly."
He is a great contrast to the prolific and vigorous Defoe. Not
only had he little spontaneous activity of intellect, little impulsive-
ness : this might be said of the cautious and sober Temple. More
than this, he had not sufficient constitutional energy to be equal
to the mere effort requisite for forming a clear and profound judg-
JOSEPH ADDISON. 379
ment on any question of difficulty. With his languid vitality, he
was content to be superficial. He had naturally a fine memory
for words, and was, in his quiet way, an accurate observer of what
passed before him. His chief intellectual exercise was the stu 1y
of " putting things " whether things that he had seen and heard,
reflections that he had made upon them, or thoughts that he had
met with in the course of his reading. He had neither scholarship
nor original thought " a fine gentleman living upon town, not
professing any deep scholastic knowledge of literature," and em-
ploying his leisure in writing elegant periodical articles. 1
Like Cowley, he had no depth of sentiment for imagination to
work upon. Not only so, but he was deficient in constitutional
power of enjoyment ; he was by nature shy, irritable, and captious,
sitting in company reserved and taciturn, until his cups had raised
him to the point of geniality. Even his panegyrist Thackeray
admits " I do not think Addison's heart melted very much, or
that he indulged very inordinately in the ' vanity of grieving.' "
" This great man was also one of the lonely ones of the world."
The chief emotion that he cultivated may be described in the
words of Johnson as " gay malevolence and satirical humour " :
the malevolence being due to his constitutional incapacity for
enjoyment to ill-nature, in the strict sense of the words ; while
the gaiety or humour arises chiefly from the delicate elegance of
his language, and the writer's pleasure in the exercise of his gift.
His essays on Milton and on the Pleasures of the Imagination
would seem to show that, though he had not energy to write with
sublimity himself, 2 he enjoyed sublime writing when it was pre-
sented to him ; he could at least utter the formula of indolent
admiration "There is a pleasure in what is great, in what is
beautiful, and in what is new."
Although engaged in politics, he had no natural gifts for active
1 "With reference to Addison in particular, it is time to correct the popular
notion of his literary character, or at least to mark it by severer lines of distinc-
tion. It is already pretty well known that Addison had no very intimate ac-
quaintance with the literature of his own country. It is known, also, that he did
not think such an acquaintance any ways essential to the character of an elegant
scholar and litterateur. Quite enough he found it, and more than enough for
the time he had to spare, if he could maintain a tolerable familiarity with the
foremost Latin poets, and a very slender one indeed with the Grecian. How
slender, we can see in his Travels." De Quincey, xv. 8.
2 " Though Addison generally hated the impassioned, and shrank from it as
from a fearful thing, yet this was when it combined with forms of life and fleshly
realities (as in dramatic works), but not when it combined with elder forms of
eternal abstractions. Hence he did not read, and did not like, Shakspeare the
music was here too rapid and lifelike ; but he sympathised profoundly with the
solemn cathedral- chanting of Milton. An appeal to his sympathies which ex-
acted quick changes in those sympathies he could not meet, but a more station-
ary key of solemnity he could." De Quincey, vii. 56. This is explained by hi*
want of constitutional energy, and consequent incapability of supporting ex-
citement.
380 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
lifa He could not have made his own position ; the accident of
the times rendered literary service valuable, and he was virtually
nothing more than the literary retainer and protege of the leaders
of a party. His easy indolent habits, with some other features of
his character, appear in the following sketch by Johnson :
"Of the course of Addison 's familiar day, before his marriage, Pope has
given a detail. He had in the house with him Bndgell, and perhaps Philips.
.His cliief companions were Steele, Budgell, Philips [Ambrose], Carey, Da-
venant, and Colonel Brett. With one or other of these he always break-
fasted. He studied all morning ; then dined at a tavern ; and went after-
wards to Button's. Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick's
family, who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the
south side of Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden. Here it
was that the wits of the time used to assemble. It is said, when Addison
had buffered any vexation from the Countess, he withdrew the company
from Button's house. From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern,
where he often sat late, and drank too much wine. In the bottle discontent
seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence. It
is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission
which he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours."
His conduct generally was marked by great prudenca He made
few enemies. He was at great pains to conciliate Swift. " Of his
virtue it is a sufficient testimony that the resentment of party has
transmitted no charge of any crime." Yet his irritable temper
was not under thorough control. On one occasion he put an
execution in force against Steele for a hundred pounds that hi
improvident friend had borrowed, and he has never been cleared
of the charge of jealous intriguing against Pope. De Quincey, in
his ' Life of Pope,' says that "Addison's petty manoeuvring against
Pope proceeded entirely from malignant jealousy. That Addison
was more in the wrong even than has generally been supposed,
and Pope more thoroughly innocent as well as more generous, we
have the means at a proper opportunity of showing decisively."
Opinions. In practical politics he adhered steadfastly to the
Whigs. In 1707 he elaborately justified the war with France,
maintaining that France and Britain were natural enemies. He
strongly supported the Hanoverian succession, and turned his
most malicious and unqualified ridicule against the " Pretender "
and his foreign adherents. With equal animosity he satirised the
Tory country gentlemen, or Tory fox-hunters, as he delighted to
nickname them.
Party politics, as we have said, had no place in the ' Tatler,' the
'Spectator,' and the 'Guardian.' The professed object of onr
author in these periodicals was " to banish vice and ignorance out
of the territories of Great Britain," and "to bring philosophy out
JOSEPH ADDISON. 381
of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and
assemblies, at tea-tables and coffee houses."
The minor immoralities that he attacked were such as affecta-
tion, presumption, foppery, fashionable extravagance, upstart vul-
garity. As "vices" of the same class, he contrived to satirise the
rustic manners of the objects of his constant aversion, the Tory
squires, " who had never seen anything greater than themselves
for twenty years."
In criticising polite literature, he gave his opinions on the
Opera, on Tragedy, on True and False Wit, on Sappho, on Ovid,
on Milton, and on the Pleasures of the Imagination. He "decided
by taste rather than by principles " ; and the taste of such a man,
while elegant in the highest degree, had a tendency to be captious
and narrow. He sneered at the scenery and stage machinery both
of the opera and of the theatre, considering that the effect upon
the audience should be produced mainly by the language of the
play. He ridiculed the use of Italian in the opera for which
De Quincey makes some game of him. Under False Wit he
reckoned Puns, Anagrams, Acrostics, Chronograms, Crambo, and
other agreeable ingenuities. In the case of Milton, his application
of Aristotle's rules for epic poetry, and his selection of fine pas-
sages, have the credit of first drawing general notice to ' Paradise
Lost' l His papers on the Pleasures of the Imagination have no
analytic value ; he gets no farther than that there is a pleasure in
beholding the great, the beautiful, and the new.
ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
Vocabulary. Were we to judge from the papers on Milton, we
should pronounce Addison's command of language rather under
than above the average of eminent literary men. 2 He is constantly
repeating the same epithets "inexpressibly beautiful," "wonder-
fully poetical," "wonderfully fine and pleasing." Upon lighter
themes his vocabulary is more varied. Choiceness and not pro-
fusion is at all times his characteristic ; yet we find him varying
his expression with the greatest ease on simple themes. Thus, iu
his paper in the ' Lover ' upon the female passion for china-ware,
he describes it with considerable variety " brittle ware," " frail
furniture," " perishable commodity," " all china-ware is of a weak
and transitory nature," " the fragility of china is such as a reason-
able being ought by no means to set its heart upon."
1 It is sometimes said that Addison was the first to discern Milton's excel-
lence. This is saying too much. Defoe had praised Milton several years before ;
and Steele, in one of his early 'Tatlers,' had expressed his admiration.
3 Lord Lytton is of opinion that Addison's command of expression was not
first-rate.
382 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
Sentences. Among our classic prose writers, Addison is the
standing example of a loose style. He is ostentatiously easy and
flowing, making no effort to be periodic, but rather studiously
avoiding the periodic structure. In his expository papers, when
he is not expressly aiming at point, he takes the utmost freedom
in adding clauses of explanation and amplification after he has
made a full statement Thus
" Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagina-
tion, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity,
and gives it an idea of which it was not before possest. We are indeed so
often conversant with one set of objects, and tired out with so many repeated
shows of the same things, that whatever is new or uncommon contributes a
little to vary human life, and to divert our minds for a while, with the
strangeness of its appearance : it serves us for a kind of refreshment, and
takes off from that satiety we are apt to complain of in our usual and ordi-
nary entertainments."
Here the structure is very loose, and the easy way of adding
clause to clause betrays the writer into not a little confusion,
which we shall notice in the proper place. The following is an-
other example of a loose tautologous sentence :
"They here began to breathe a delicious kind of ether, and saw all the
fields about them covered with a kind of purple light, that made them re-
flect with satisfaction on their past toils, and diffused a secret joy through
the whole assembly, which showed itself in every look and feature. "
The vice of this careless structure, which within proper limits
is not without its advantages, is the misplacing of clauses. The
two following examples are from Irving' s 'Elements of Com-
position ' :
" This kind of wit was very much in vogue among our countrymen, about
an age or two a^o, who did not practise it for any oblique reason, but purely
for the aake of being witty."
Here the clause " about an age or two ago " comes very awk-
wardly between the relative and its antecedent, and would be
much better disposed of at the beginning ' ' About an age or two
Ago, this kind of wit," &c.
"The Knight, seeing his habitation reduced to so small a compass, and
himself in a manner shut out of his own house, upon the death of his
mother, ordered all the apartments to be flung open, and exorcised by his
chaplain."
Irving remarks that here the clause "upon the death of his
mother " is so placed as to be ambiguous, and proposes to remedy
this by another arrangement namely, "seeing his habitation,
kc., the Knight, upon the death of his mother, ordered all the
apartments," <kc. This gets rid of the ambiguity, but is rather
a clumsy arrangement ; it would be better to begin with the
JOSEPH ADDISON. 383
clause of time "Upon the death of his mother, the Knight,"
ike.
It is chiefly in the papers on the Pleasures of the Imagination
that the inconvenience of this loose style is felt, and there chiefly
because it goes along with a vague and rambling train of thought.
On a light theme he is often smart and pointed, as will be suffi-
ciently illustrated in the examples of his Wit
Even iii the expository papers there are occasional touches of
pointed expression. In the following we see two forms of ex-
pression that are very largely used by Johnson :
" A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures that
the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a picture and
find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refresh-
ment in a description, and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of
fields and meadows than another does in the possession."
Sometimes, but not often, he makes the effort of a careful
balanced comparison. The following comparison between Homer
and Virgil is from a paper where he exhibits Homer, Virgil, and
Ovid as specimens respectively of " what is great, what is beauti-
ful, and what is new." It is a much simpler comparison than
either Temple's or Pope's, being more superficial dealing with
fewer circumstances ; besides, it is less just, the facts being ad-
apted to suit the author's theory:
" Homer is in his province when he is describing a battle or a multitude,
hero or a god. Virgil is never better pleased than when he is in his
Elysium or carrying out an entertaining picture. Homer's epithets gener-
ally mark out what is great, Virgil's what is agreeable. Nothing can be
more magnificent than the figure Jupiter makes in the first Iliad, nor more
charming than that of Venus in the first ./Eneid. " [Here the passages are
quoted.] " Homer's persons are most of them godlike and terrible; Virgil
has scarce admitted any into his poem who are not beautiful, and has taken
particular care to make his hero so
And gave his rolling eyes a sparkling grace,
And breathed a youthful vigour on his face.
In a word, Homer fills his readers with sublime ideas, and, I believe, has
rained the imagination of all the good poets that have come after him. I
. shall only instance Horace, who immediately takes fire at the first hint of
any passage in the ' Iliad ' or * Odyssey,' and always rises above himself
when he has Homer in his view. Virgil has dmwn together, into hih
' jEneid,' all the pleasing scenes his subject is capable of admitting ; and
in his 'Georgics,' has given us a collection of the most delightful land-
scapes that can be made out of fields and woods, herds of cattle, and swarms
of bees."
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
Simplicity has always been alleged as a great merit of Addison's
style " familiar," says the imperious dictator, " but not coarse."
" His prose is the model of the middle style;, on grave subjects
384 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
not formal, on light occasions not grovelling, pure without scrnpu-
losity, and exact without apparent elaboration ; always equable,
always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. Addi-
son never deviates from his track to snatch a grace ; he seeks no
tunbitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations."
To this merit in the expository papers, there are considerable
drawbacks. I would not insist with De Quincey on his superficial
treatment of Milton and of the Imagination. It is probably but
a slight exaggeration to say that he was " the man of all that ever
lived most hostile even to what was good in pedantry, to its
tendencies towards the profound in erudition, towards minute
precision, and the non- popular; . . . the champion of all
that is easy, natural, superficial." And it is but fair to say,
that if, as he boasted, he brought " Philosophy out of closets
and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assem-
blies, at tea-tables and coffee-houses," it certainly was Philosophy
in a very diluted form. But in a periodical such as the ' Specta-
tor ' the superficiality and dilution were not out of place ; " an
instructor like Addison was now wanting, whose remarks, being
superficial, might be easily understood, and being just, might
prepare the mind for more attainments."
Still, it should be possible, without going into more abstruse
considerations, to make such papers as those on the Pleasures of
the Imagination not only more accurate, but even more intelligible
and more easily remembered.
One great improvement in the way of rendering the papers
more perspicuous would be to state explicitly their real char-
acter; to lower their pretensions; to declare them to be not a
philosophic explanation of. aesthetic pleasures, but an enumera-
tion of objects that give pleasure to the imagination as being
great, beautiful, or new. Were this done, the reader would go
on smoothly, receiving first an account of pleasing objects in
nature; then in artificial works, gardens, and buildings; then in
the Fine Arts, statuary, painting, music, poetry, history, natural
philosophy. Once aware that the papers were nothing more
than a catalogue of things " apt to affect the imagination," the
reader could pass lightly over the moral reflections and crude
attempts at deeper explanation, as being but irregular excres-
cences upon the plan.
Such, we say, is the real character and value of the papers
the divisions become simple only when looked upon in this light ;
and had the author consulted the ease and instruction of the
reader, he would have indicated this at the beginning, and re-
peated the indication as he went on. But the truth is that he
did not know their real character he imagined he was going
deeper than he really went ; and in perplexing the reader with a
JOSEPH ADDISOX. 385
futile straining after explanation, he was bat repeating his own
perplexity.
A good deal might be done to make the papers more exact,
without going deeper into the matter.
His statements are frequently ambiguous. For example
" The prettiest landscape I ever saw was one drawn on the walls of a dark
room, which stood opposite on one side to a navigable river, and on the other
to a park."
This gives as good an opening for ingenious conjecture as the
most involved passages in the ancient classics; a collection of
such passages would be no mean substitute for classical discipline
of the ingenuity. At first sight one wonders how he could see a
picture in a dark room, and what the river and the park had to do
with it. If the ingenious student refer to the context, 1 he may be
able to see the meaning without the help of a commentator ; but
if so, he must be very ingenious indeed. As an example not so
hopelessly puzzling, but very misleading, take the following open-
ing of one of the Essays, marking an important transition in the
subject :
" I at first divided the pleasures of the imagination into such as arise from
objects that are actually before our eyes, or that once entered in at our eyes,
and are afterwards called up into the mind either barely by its own opera-
tions, or on occasion of something without us, as stitues or descriptions.
We have already considered the first division, and shall therefore enter on
the other, which, for distinction sake, 1 have called the secondary pleasures
of the imagination."
The first sentence states the two divisions : let the reader try to
discover them without reading through the whole paper, and the
chances are that the expression misleads him. Without attempt-
ing to recast the sentence, which might lead to an irrelevant scru-
tiny of the division itself, the following modification will make
the meaning plainer:
" I at first divided the pleasures of the imagination into such as arise from
objects that are actually before our eyes, and such as arise from objects that,
once having entered in at our eyes, are afterwards," &c.
Another breach of accuracy, too, often committed in these
papers on the Imagination, is to repeat the same statement in
a different form as if it were a different statement Look back
for an example of this tautology to a passage quoted among tho
Sentences (p. 382) " Everything that is new or uncommon," &c.
In the first sentence three expressions are identical, and the fourth
is only slightly different " new or uncommon raises a pleasure in
the imagination," "fills the soul with an agreeable surprise,"
"gratifies its curiosity," "gives it an idea of which it was not
1 Spectator, No. 414. The Essays on the Imagination are reprinted separately.
2 B
386 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
before posse&t : " yet the three last of those expressions are
given as the explanation of the first. So much confused feeble-
ness we discover when we take the sentence to pieces with chari-
table latitude "a novelty is agreeable when it is agreeable."
Were we to take the sentence in its grammatical strictness, we
should find him affirming a more questionable principle namely,
that " every novelty is agreeable." The second sentence in this
passage is equally unfitted for close examination.
He makes comparatively little use of contrast for the purpose of
giving clearness to his views. This makes his pages smoother read-
ing for such as are averse to the trouble of close thinking and dis-
like squareness of form ; but it is no small drawback to perspicuity.
At least when he does make a contrast, the form ought to be clear,
and very often it is not. Thus
"By greatness I do not only mean the bulk of any single object, but the
largeness of a whole view "
should be
" By greatness I mean not only the bulk of a single object, but the large-
ness of a whole view ; "
or, more perspicuously
"I apply the term greatness to a whole view as well as to a single object"
Again
"I must confess, after having surveyed the antiquities about Naples and
Borne, I cannot but think that our admiration of them does not so much arise
out of their greatness as uncommonness."
This should be " Arises not so much from their greatness as
from their uncommonness."
Take yet another example of this careless use of the forms of
contrast
"There is as much difference between comprehending a thought clothed
in Cicero's language, and that of an ordinary writer, as between seeing an
object by tbe light of a taper and the light of the sun."
Here the form of the expression implies exactly the opposite of
what he means.
Sometimes, from an affectation of polite ease, he does not choose
the aptest word. Thus
"Those who look into Homer are surprised to find his battles still rising
one above another, and improving in horror to the conclusion of the ' Iliad.'
Milton's fight of the angels is wrought up with the same beauty."
Such improprieties are a source of feebleness rather than of con-
fusion. As a rule, Addison's papers, particularly those on lighter
themes, are distinguished by the aptness of the phraseology. The
chief thing that tempts him to err is the study of elegance.
JOSEPH ADDISON. 387
Strength is not a feature of Addison's prose. He has neither
sublimity nor vigour : " a model," as Johnson says, "of the middle
style," "always equable, always easy, without glowing words or
pointed sentences."
In the matter of Pathos he is very unlike his warm-hearted
coadjutor Steele,
The Ludicrous. It is upon the witty vein in his writings that
Addison's fame is durably founded. His elegant satires on the
manners of his time will be read with delight when his grave
essays are glanced at as productions that made no small noise on
their first appearance, but were too superficial to be permanent.
He is the great English example of polite ridicule. The poig-
nancy of his sarcasm is so disguised and softened by elegance of
language, ingenuity of wit, and affectation of kindliness, that he is
often pointed out as a crowning instance of amiable humour. The
error would probably have less often been committed had he not
been conjoined with Steele, a writer of genuinely amiable humour.
However that may be, it is an error, and one that needs little dis-
cernment for its discovery. Not a single paper of Addison's can
be pointed out that does not contain some stroke of malice " gay
malevolence," perhaps, but nevertheless malevolence. The wit and
polish are exquisite. The satire is usually pointed at classes, and
not at individuals ; if it is pointed at individuals, they are not real
personages, but imaginary types of classes. He sometimes affects
kindliness for the object of his shafts. All these arts keep the
sufferer out of view, and enable us to enjoy the witty sallies with-
out scruple. Still, in characterising his humour, the critic must
not sink the fact that it is at basis malicious it is " humorous
satire." If we call it amiable humour, we must remember that it
is a kind of humour that may be amiable to the reader or hearer,
but is far from appearing amiable to the object
In exemplifying his satire, we shall follow the order of Criti-
cism, Politics, and Society.
In No. 5 of the * Spectator,' he opens his batteries on the
scenery and stage-machinery of the opera:
"As I was walking in the streets about a fortnight ago, I saw an ordinary
fellow carrying a cage full of little birds upon his shoulder ; and, as 1 waa
wondering with myself what use he would put them to, he was met very
luckily by an acquaintance, who had the same curiosity. Upon his asking
him what he had upon his shoulder, he told him that he had been buying
sparrows for the opera. ' Sparrows for the opera, ' says his friend, licking
his lips, 'what, are they to be roasted?' 'No, no,' says the other, 'they
are to enter towards the end of the first Act, and to fly about the stage. '
This strange dialogue awakened iny curiosity so far, that I immediately
bought the opera, by which means I perceived that the sparrows were to
act the part of singing-birds in a delightful grove , though upon a nearer
enquiry I found the sparrows put the same trick upon the audience that Sir
Martin Alar-ull practised upon his mist russ ; for though they flew in sight,
388 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
the music proceeded from a consort of flageolets and bird-calls which were
planted behind the scenes. . . . But to return to the sparrows ; there
have been so many flights of them let loose in this opera, that it is feared
the house will never get rid of them ; and that in other plays they make
their entrance in very improper scenes, so as to be seen flying in a lady's
bed-chamber, or perching upon a king's throne ; besides the inconveniences
which the heads of the audience may sometimes suffer frwn them."
Writing of English translations of Italian operas, and malici-
ously remarking on the blunders of the translators, he says :
" I remember an Italian verse that ran thus word for word-
And turned my rage into pity ;
which the English for rhyme sake translated
And into pity turned my rage.
By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the Italian, fell
upon the word rage in the English, and the angry sounds that were turned
to rage in the original were made to express pity in the translation. It
oftentimes happened likewise, that the finest notes in the air fell upon the
most insignificant words in the sentence. I have known the word and pur-
sued through the whole gamut, have been entertained with many a melo-
dious the, and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions
bestowed upon them, for, and from, to the eternal honour of our English
particles."
This exquisitely worded criticism is somewhat malicious towards
the poor singers and their audience; the satire was no doubt whole-
some, and the arch satirist could plead the sanction of good sense,
but there is not much amiability in the spirit of such ridicule. His
ridicule of the Tory squires is by no means so delicate. He had
carefully studied the character, with the sharp insight of inveterate
dislike, and exposes all the weak points of their rusticity with
unmerciful exaggeration. One of his first contributions to the
' Tatler ' is an account of a visit paid him in his own apartment by
Sir Harry Quickset, Sir Giles Wheelbarrow, Knight, Thomas Rent-
free, Esquire, Justice of the Quorum, Andrew Windmill, Esquire,
and Mr Nicholas Doubt, of the Inner Temple, Sir Harry's grand-
son. He had been forewarned of his distinguished company by a
letter from Sir Harry's steward :
" The hour of nine was come this morning, and I had no sooner set chairs,
by the steward's letter, and fixed my tea-equipage, but I heard a knock at
my door, which was opened, but no one entered ; after which followed a
long silence, which was broke at last by, ' Sir, I beg your pardon, I think I
know better; ' and another voice, ' Nay, good Sir Giles.' I looked out from
my window, and saw the good company all with their hats off, and arms
spread, offering the door to each other. . . . But they are now got to
my chamber-door, and I saw my old friend Sir Harry enter. I met him
with all the respect due to so reverend a vegetable ; for, you are to know,
that is my sense of a person who remains idle in the same place for half a
century. I got him with j,M'eat HUCCOSS into his chair by the fire, without
throwing down any of my cups. ... I had the misfortune, as they stood
JOSEPH ADDISON. 389
cheek by jowl, to desire the squire to sit down before the justice of the quo-
rum, to the no small satisfaction of the former, and resentment of the latter."
[On the squire's refusing to take tea, th steward proposed an adjournment
to some public-house.] " We all stood up in an instant, and Sir Harry filed
off from the left, very discreetly, countermarching behind the chairs towards
the door. After him, Sir Giles in the same manner. The simple squire
made a sudden start to follow ; but the justice of the quorum whipped
between upon the stand of the stairs. A maid going up with coals, made
us halt, and put us into such confusion that we stood all in a heap, without
any visible possibility of recovering our order. . . . We were fixed in
this perplexity for some time, until we heard a very loud noise in the street;
and Sir Harry asking what it was, I, to make them move, said ' it was fire.'
Upon this, all ran down as fast as they could, without order or ceremony,
into the street, where we drew up in very good order, and filed off down
Steer Lane ; the impertinent templar driving ua before him as in a string,
and pointing to his acquaintance who passed by."
Another of hid rustic characters in the ' Tatler ' is Tom Bellfrey,
the fox-hunter, who gives an imitation of a fox-chase in a London
drawing-room, and "calls all the neighbouring parishes into the
square." The most frequently quoted of these caricatures is the
"Tory Fox-liunter," drawn with unsparing skill in the 'Free-
holder.' Upon this character Dr Nathan Drake remarks :
"The character of the Tory Fox-hunter is, it must be confessed, in every
respect less ainiaMe and respectable thau that of Sir Roger de Coverley ;
we neither love nor esteem him ; for, instead of the sweet and benevolent
temper of the knight, we are here presented with a vulgar, rough, and
totally uneducated squire, whose credulity and absurd prejudices are not
softened down or relieved by those mild and tender feelings which so greatly
endear to us almost every incident in the life of Sir Roger. "
Yet Addison's share in the character of Sir Roger is really a cari-
cature of rusticity, not one whit better-natured than the Fox-
hunter. We shall notice more fully, in treating of Steele, that
" the sweet and benevolent temper," " the mild and tender feel-
ings," are Steele's contributions to the character of the knight.
This is not the only instance where Addison has profited by his
alliance with Steele.
His character of Will Wimble is a sharp and considerably, over-
charged satire on the younger sons of the aristocracy. While he
professes deep compassion that "so good a heart and such busy
hands were wholly employed in trifles," he exposes those trifling
occupations with anything but a loving hand. Will " generally
lives with his elder brother as superintendent of his game;" "is
extremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an idle man;"
" is a good-natured, officious fellow ; " " carries a tulip-root in his
pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a
couple of friends that live perhaps in the opposite sides of the
country." This is said to be " the case of many a younger brother
of a great family, who had rather see their children starve like
390 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
gentlemen, than thrive in a trade or profession that is beneath
their quality." To profess compassion after drawing such a picture
is to add keenness to the sting.
Of his satires on society, very short examples must suffice. Any
of his papers will illustrate the poignancy of the strokes, and the
exceeding delicacy and ingenuity of the expression. Perhaps the
most characteristic examples of this vein of his satire are seen in
his delicate application of caustic to the foibles of women. He
was animated by nothing like Steele's chivalrous gallantry to-
wards the sex. Take the following on the female passion for
china, his contribution to Steele's short-liveJ ' Lover ' :
"There are no inclinations in women which more surprise me than their
passions for chalk and china. The lirst of these maladies wears out in
a little, time ; but when a woman is visited with the second, it generally
takes possession of her for life. China vessels are playthings for women of
all ages. An old lady of fourscore shall be as busy in cleaning an Indian
mandarin, as her great-granddaughter is in dressing her baby.
" The common way of purchasing such trifles, if I may believe my female
informers, is by exchanging old suits of clothes for this brittle ware. The
potters of China have, it seems, tlieir factors at this distance, who retail out
their several manufactures for cast clothes and superannuated garments. I
have known an old petticoat metamorphosed into a punch-bowl, and a pair
of breeches into a teapot," &c.
In this example the wit is not quite worthy of Addison, and
the derision borders on coarseness. As an extreme contrast, take
a passage from the exquisitely graceful paper on the ' Use of the
Fan ' :
"Women are armed with fans, as men with swords, and sometimes do
more execution with them. To the end therefore that ladies may be entire
mistresses of the weapon which they bear, I have erected an academy for
the training up of youug women in the exercise of the fan, according to the
most fashionable airs and motions that are now practised at Court. The
ladies who carry fans under rue are drawn up twice a-day in my great hall,
where they are instructed in the use of their arms, and exercised by the fol-
lowing words of command :
Handle your fans,
Unfurl your fans,
Discharge your tana,
Ground your fans,
Recover your fans,
Flutter your fans.
By the right observation of these few plain words of command, a woman of
a tolerable genius who will apply herself diligently to her exercise for the
space of but one half-year, shall be able to give her fan all the graces that
can possibly enter into that little modish machine.
.... "The Fluttering of the Fan is the last, and indeed the master-
piece of the whole exercise ; but if a lady does not misspend her time, she
may make herself mistress of it in three months. I generally lay aside the
dog-days and the hot time of the summer for the teaching this part of the
exercise, for ns soon as ever I pronounce Flutter your Fans, the place is filled
with so many zephyrs and gentle breezes as are very refreshing in that
JOSEPH ADDISON. 391
season of the year, though they might be dangerous to ladies of a tendei
constitution in any other.
"There is an infinite variety of motions to he made use of in the Flutter
of a Fan : there is the angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter,
the confused flutter, the merry flutter, and the amorous flutter. Not to be
tedious, there is scarce any emotion in the mind which does not produce a
suitable agitation in the fan ; insomuch, that if I only see the fan of a dis-
ciplined lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes."
Not content with satirising the ladies of his own generation, he
carries his cynical raillery of the sex into imaginary generations,
before the Flood. In his papers on the loves of Shaluin and
Hilpah, the humour receives a satirical turn from the imputation
of unworthy motives to Hilpah.
Besides the redeeming graces of expression, two things may be
urged in extenuation of the malicious or satirical basis of Addison's
wit. First, his ridicule is not personal ; it is aimed at what the
author takes to be vice, folly, or bad taste, not at an actual offender.
Secondly, "it is justly observed by Tickell that he employed wit
on the side of virtue and religion."
Melody. A good deal of Johnson's panegyric of Addison's style
is really the picture of an ideal to which, in his opinion, Addison
approaches ; but many of the particulars are happy, and none more
so than this that " it was his principal endeavour to avoid all
harshness and severity of diction ; he is therefore sometimes ver-
bose in his transitions and connections, and sometimes descends
too much to the language of conversation." The melodious flow
of the diction is a very striking quality of our author's style ;
and doubtless his endeavour after this beauty accounts for many
of his sins against precision. In the Appendix to Bain's ' Rhetoric,'
a passage is analysed with a view to this quality, and it is traced to
the fewness of abrupt consonants or harsh combinations, the variety
of the vowels, and " the rhythmical construction, or the alternation
of long and short, emphatic and unemphatic sounds."
Taste. Elegance is the ruling quality of Addison's style. He
sacrifices everything to the unctuous junction of syllables, and the
harmonious combination of ideas. The pedantic scholarship of
Taylor, the rough vigour and profusion of Barrow, are illustrative
by extreme contrast But we might go the round of our great
writers without finding such another example of superficial smooth-
ness. We have remarked the studied refinement of Temple ; but
in Temple refinement is united with majesty and depth of feeling.
Cowley's diction is studied, and his thoughts light and trivial ; but
as compared with Addison, his rhythm is often awkward and
stumbling, his fancy exuberant, and his ridicule bare and un-
disguised.
The following is at once an illustration of his elegant treatment
392 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
of a thomw that might easily be made pedantic, and an example of
the principles that guided his own composition :
"Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a dis-
course, that make everything about them clear and beautiful. A noble
metaphor, when it is pbiced to an advantage, casts a kind of glory round
it, and darts a lustre through a whole sentence. These different kinds of
allusion are but so many different manners of similitude, and that they may
please the imagination, the likeness ought to be very exact, or very agree-
able, as we love to see a picture where the resemblance is just, or the posture
and air graceful. But we often find eminent writers very faulty in this
respect ; great scholars are apt to letch their comparisons and allusions from
the sciences in which they are most conversant, so that a man may see the
compass of their learning in a treatise on the most indifferent subject. I
have read a discourse upon love which none but a profound chymist could
understand, and have heard many a seniion that should only have been
preached before a congregation of Cartesians. On the contrary, your men
of business usually have recourse to such instances as are too mean and
familiar. They are for drawing the reader into a game of chess or tennis, or
for leading him from shop to shop, in the cant of particular trades and em-
ployments. It is certain there may be found an infinite variety of very
agreeable allusions in both these kinds ; but for the generality, the most
entertaining ones lie in the works of nature, which are obvious to all capa-
cities, and more delightful than what is to be found in arts and sciences.
SIB RICHARD STEELE, 1675-1729.
" When Mr Addison was abroad," writes Thackeray, " and after
he came home in rather a dismal way to wait upon Providence in
his shabby lodging in the Haymarket, young Captain Steele was
cutting a much smarter figure than that of his classical friend
of Charterhouse Cloister and Maudlin Walk." Steele, born in
Dublin, of English parents, was also a Charterhouse boy and an
Oxonian, his college being Merton. A gay, impetuous youth,
overflowing with wit and good-nature, and fond of company, he
yet gained some celebrity as a scholar, and before he graduated
had written a poem and a comedy. When he had to choose a
profession he fixed upon the army ; and his friends refusing to
buy him a commission, he enlisted as a private in the Horse
Guards. His wit making him a general favourite, he had, by the
year 1701, been promoted to the rank of captain in the Fusiliers.
He is said to have passed a dissipated and reckless life : he " prob-
ably wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy, in many
a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern fled from many a
bailiff." But if this debauchery was as bad as has been repre-
sented, in the midst of it all he kept up his literary tastes. In
1701 he published 'The Christian Hero,' a curious production for
a dissipated officer, and an indication of the sinning and repent-
ing character of the man. In the following year he produced a
comedy, 'The Funeral, or, Grief a la Mode,' a satire on hired
SIR RICHARD STEELE. 393
mourners and will-making lawyers. By the death of King William
he lost his chances of promotion in the army, and turned all his
powers to literature and politics. In 1703 appeared his comedy of
'The Tender Husband;' in 1704 the 'Lying Lovers,' a piece too
tame and moralising to succeed on the stage of those days. About
1705, through the influence of his friend Addison, he was ap-
pointed Gazetteer "the lowest Minister of State," as he face-
tiously styled himself. We shall not follow the windings of his
fortunes chronologically. His literary projects were ' The Tatler,'
* The Spectator,' ' The Guardian,' and ' The Lover,' already men-
tioned; 'The Englishman' and 'The Crisis,' 1714 (two intense
political pamphlets, which led to his expulsion from the House
of Commons); 'The Reader,' 1714, also political, like Addison's
' Whig Examiner,' an opposition print to the Tory ' Examiner ' ;
occasional political and anti-Popery tracts ; a collection of his
political writings, 1715 ; 'The Town-Talk,' 'The Tea-Table,' 'The
Chit-Chat,' short- lived periodicals, 1716; in 1719 'The Plebeian,'
which was opposed by Addison in the ' Old Whig,' and produced
a quarrel between the two friends; 'The Theatre,' a periodical,
1719-20, under the feigned name of Sir John Edgar; 'The Con-
scious Lovers,' his best comedy, 1722. His Government appoint-
ments were, after the Gazetteership, Commissionership of Stamps,
1710; Surveyorship of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court, and
Governorship of the Royal Company of Comedians, 1715; Com-
missionership of Forfeited Estates in Scotland, 1717.
His personal appearance would seem to have been rather un-
favourable. The satirical portrait by John Dennis is said by
Thackeray to bear "a dreadful resemblance" to the original
" Sir John Edgar, of the county of , in Ireland, is of a middle
etature, broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like the picture of
somebody over a farmer's chimney a short chin, a short nose, a
short forehead, a broad flat face, and a dusky countenance"
As we may judge from this picture, he possessed great bodily
energy, and his constitutional vigour supported him in the heartiest
enjoyment of life. Living in a whirl of social dissipation, he yet,
as Gazetteer, as editor of periodicals, and in other offices, went
through a great deal of worrying business; and in the hurry of
his active life was constantly snatching moments to despatch little
notes to his "dearest Prue." Of these affectionate billets, Mrs
Steele preserved no less than 400.
His intellect was of a rougher cast than his friend's. It is the
emotional character of the man that renders him interesting, and
entitles him to a good secondary place among our great writers of
prose. Probably a large fraction of his energy was spent in the
rollicking enjoyment of existence ; otherwise his rank would have
been higher than it is. His contributions to the ' Spectator ' and
394 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
allied periodicals take their distinction from his prevailing tender-
ness of heart and wide acquaintance with human life. To him
these papers owe their pathos, their humour, and their extraordi-
nary variety of characters. He loved company, and the quickness
of his sympathies made him constantly alive to differences in the
personalities of his companions.
His habits were irregular ; he had not the familiar routine and
select circle of Addison. He was under no necessity of economis-
ing his energies ; he seems to have been capable of bearing prac-
tically any amount of work and dissipation. He had small power
of resisting the impulses of emotion. His plans for the day were
easily disconcerted by the entrance of a good companion. In
politics, when any of his darling principles seemed to be in danger,
he rushed to the rescue without regard to consequences.
In this place we shall remark upon and exemplify chiefly hia
pathos and his humour. His characters are really artistic creations,
and belong to poetry und fiction.
On the other qualities of his style we remark cursorily. In
command of words he is not equal to Addison ; his choice is much
less felicitous. His sentence composition is irregular and careless,
often ungrammatical : writing in the character of a Tatler, he
thought it incumbent to assume " incorrectness of style, and an
air of common speech" a style very agreeable to his own in-
clinations. He has not the polished and felicitous melody of
Addison. His language and sentiments are much more glowing
and extravagant ; his papers may be distinguished by this feature
alone.
The chief differences between his own style and Addison's are
well summed up by himself " The elegance, purity, and correct-
ness in his writings were not so much my purpose as, in any in-
telligible manner as I could, to rally all those singularities ol*
human life, through the different professions and characters in
it, which obstruct anything that was truly good and great"
Paihos. Steele is one of the most touching of our writers.
Himself of a nature the reverse of melancholy, he yet at certain
seasons " resolved to be sorrowful " ; and when the sorrowful
mood was upon him, the incidents that he recalled or imagined
were of the most heartrending character. The kind of pathos
that we find in him would not be pathetic at all, in a poetic
sense, to the more delicate order of sensibilities : it would be a
pain, and not an aesthetic pleasure. There are not many of these
affecting papers in either 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' or 'Guardian.'
Most of those that do appeal to our tender sensibilities lay before
us situations of extreme anguish. We shall quote two examples,
in which the extreme painfulness of the incidents is relieved only
SIB RICHARD STEELE. 395
by the exhibition of extreme devotedness. The first is the story
of Unnion and Valentine (' Tatler,' No. 5) :
"At the siege of Namur by the Allies, there were in the ranks, of the
company commanded by Captain Pincent, in Colonel Frederick Hamilton's
regiment, one Unnion, a corporal, and one Valentine, a private centinel ;
there happened between these two men a dispute about a matter of love,
which, upon some aggravations, grew to an irreconcileable hatred. Unnion,
being the officer of Valentine, took all opportunities even to strike his rival,
and profess the spite and revenge which moved him to it. The centinel bore
it without resistance, but frequently said he would die to be revenged of that
tyrant. They had spent whole months thus, one injuring, the other com-
plaining; when, in the midst of this rage towards each other, they were
commanded upon the attack of the castle, where the corporal received a shot
in the thigh, and fell ; the French pressing on, and he expecting to be
trampled to death, called out to his enemy, ' Ah, Valentine ! can you leave
me here ? ' Valentine immediately ran back, and in the midst of a thick
fire of the French, took the corporal upon his back, and brought him
through all that danger, as far as the abbey of Salsine, where a cannon-ball
took off his head : his body fell under his enemy whom he was carrying off.
Unnion immediately forgot his wound, rose up, tearing his hair, and then
threw himself upon the bleeding carcase, crying, 'Ah, Valentine! was it
for me, who have so barbarously used tliee, that thou hast died I I will not
live after thee ! ' He was not by any means to be forced from the body, but
was removed with it bleeding in his arms, and attended with tears by all
their comrades who knew their enmity. When he was brought to a tent,
his wounds were dressed by force; but the next day, still calling upon
Valentine, and lamenting his cruelties to him, he died in the pangs of re-
morse and despair."
This story is given " in order to inspire the love and admiration
of worthy actions," and " as an instance of the greatness of spirit
in the lowest of her Majesty's subjects." The next is a deathbed
scene, from an account of a family where Mr Bickerstaff was very
intimate ('Tatler,' Nos. 95, 114):
" I went up directly to the room where she lay, and was met at the
entrance by my friend, who, notwithstanding his thoughts had been com-
posed a little before, at the sight of me turned away his face and wept.
The little family of children renewed their expressions of their sorrow ac-
cording to their several ages and degrees of understanding. The eldest
daughter was in tears, busied in attendance upon her mother ; others were
kneeling about the bedside ; and what troubled me most was, to see a little
boy, who was too young to know the reason, weeping only because his
sisters did. The only one in the room who seemed resigned and comforted
vas the dying person. At my approach to the bedside, she told me, with a
low broken voice, ' This is kindly done. Take care of your friend do not
go from him.' She had before taken leave of her husband and children, ia
a manner proper for so solemn a parting, and with a gracefulness peculiar
to a woman of her character. My heart was torn in pieces, to see the hus-
band on one side suppressing and keeping down the swellings of his grief,
for fear of disturbing her in her last moments ; and the wife, even at that
time, concealing the pains she endured, for fear of increasing his affliction.
She kept her eyes upon him for some moments after she grew speechless,
and soon after closed them for ever, la the moment of her departure, my
396 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
friend, who had thus far commanded himself, gave a deep groan, and fell
into a swoon by her bedside. "
We have evidence that Steele himself was overpowered by the
painfulness of his own creations. It is said that after writing the
above deathbed scene he was so affected as to be unable to pro-
ceed : the commonplace consolations that follow in the original
are said to have been appended by Addison. Sometimes he seeks
relief from his painful recollections or imaginations by violent
expedients. In one paper a most touching soliloquy is interrupted
by a knock at the door, and the arrival of a hamper of wine ;
whereupon he sends for three of his friends, and restores himself
to cheerfulness by the generous warmth of two bottles. In another
he works upon his reader's feelings till they reach the point of
agony, and then suddenly transfers the horrible scene to dream-
land :
" I was once myself in agonies of grief that are unutterable, and in so
great a distraction of mind, that I thought myself even out of the possibility
of receiving comfort. The occasion was as follows. When I was a youth
in a part of the army which was then quartered at Dover, I fell in love with
an agreeable young woman of a good family in those parts, and had the
satisfaction of seeing my addresses kindly received, which occasioned the
perplexity I am going to relate.
" We were in a calm evening diverting ourselves upon the top of the cliff
with the prospect of the sea, and trifling away the time in such little fond-
nesses as are most ridiculous to persons in business, and most agreeable to
those in love.
" In the midst of these our innocent endearments, she snatched a paper
of verses out of my hand, and ran away with them. I was following her ;
when on a sudden the ground, though at a considerable distance from the
verge of the precipice, sank under her, and threw her down from so pro-
digious a height, upon such a range of rocks, as would have dashed her into
ten thousand pieces, had her body been made of adamant. It is much easier
for my reader to imagine my state of mind upon such an occasion than for
me to express it. I said to myself, It is not in the power of Heaven to re-
lieve me ! when I awaked, equally transported and astonished, to see myself
drawn out of an affliction which, the very moment before, appeared to me al-
together inextricable."
The Ludicrous. Steele's humour is distinguished from Addison's
chiefly by two circumstances unaffected geniality and heartiness,
and less delicate elaboration.
Steele was a kindly observer of human frailties. Against what
he considered to be heartlessness and vice he was openly indignant :
his natural tendency was to use the lash freely in hot blood not
to introduce galling points of satire with a smiling countenance.
Minor faults, affectation, presumption, a dictatorial manner, and
suchlike, he ridiculed with good-humour, with a certain fellow-
feeling for the objects of his ridicule.
At the same time, he had not enough patient skill to work out
SIR RICHARD STEELE. 397
a ludicrous conception into the exquisite details that give such a
charm to the papers of Addison. By comparison with his coad-
jutor, he is sketchy and declamatory.
It is not difficult to find illustrations of both of these points.
In several cases Addison has taken up Steele's conception, and
worked it out with more elaborate skill, at the same time turning
it into a more slyly malicious, or at least a colder, vein.
For example, we have quoted (p. 390) Addison's exquisite paper
on the use of the Fan. Let us look now at the original conception
in the'Tatler.' The "beauteous Delamira" being about to be
married, the " matchless Virgulta " beseeches her to tell the secret
of her manner of charming :
" Delamira heard her with great attention, and with that dexterity which
is natural to her, told her that ' all she had above the rest of her sex and
contemporary beauties was wholly owing to a fan (that was left her by her
mother, and had been long in the family), which, whoever had in posses-
sion, and used with skill, should command the hearts of all beholders ; and
since,' said she, smiling, '1 have no more to do with extending my con-
quests or triumphs, I will make you a present of this inestimable rarity.'
Virgulta made her expressions of the highest gratitude for so uncommon a
confidence in her, and begged she would ' show her what was peculiar in the
management of that utensil, which rendered it of such general force while
she was mistress of it.' Delamira replied, ' You see, madam, Cupid is the
principal figure painted on it ; and the skill in playing this fan is, in your
several motions of it, to let him appear as little as possible ; for honourable
lovers fly all endeavours to ensnare them ; and your Cupid must hide his
bow and arrow, or he will never be sure of his game. You may observe,'
continued she, 'that in all public assemblies, the sexes seem to separate
themselves, and draw up to attack each other with eye-shot : that is the
time when the fan, which is all the armour of a woman, is of most use in
our defence ; for our minds are construed by the waving of that little instru-
ment, and our thoughts appear in composure or agitation, according to the
motion of it. ... Cymon, who is the dullest of mortals, and though a
wonderful great scholar, does not only pause, but seems to take a nap with
his eyes open between every other sentence in his discourse : him have I
made a leader in assemblies ; and one blow on the shoulder as I passed by
him has raised him to a downright impertinent in all conversations. The
airy Will Sampler is become as lethargic by this my wand, as Cymon ia
prightly. Take it, good girl, and use it without mercy. ' "
Compare this with Addison's railing proposal to teach the use
of the fan, and his elaborate exposure of all the arts. A gallant
tenderness for the sex shines through " good-hearted Dick's" mock-
heroic humour. Addison politely holds the sex up to ridicule;
Steele sympathises with their little artifices, and even insinuates
a piece of genuine good advice as to the best means of success.
As another field for comparison, take their sketches of Clubs,
None of Addison's Clubs have the rollicking humour of the Ugly
Clvb, and none of Steele's have the mean and sordid insinuations
contained in the rules of the Twopenny Club. On the other hand,
398 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
even the Ugly Club, which was a favourite conception, 1 is far from
having the minute finish of the Everlasting Club.
The difference between the humour of the two writers is nowhere
more conspicuous than in the papers upon Sir Roger de Coverley.
Steele's Sir Roger is quite a different person from Addison's Sir
Roger. All that is amiable in the conception belongs to Steele.
His first paper (' Spectator,' No. 2) represents Sir Roger as a jolly
country gentleman, " keeping a good house both in town and coun-
try ; " a lover of mankind, with such a mirthful cast in his behav-
iour, that he is beloved rather than esteemed; unconfined to modes
and forms, disregarding the manners of the world when he thinks
them in the wrong ; when he enters a house, calling the servants
by their names, and talking all the way up-stairs to a visit He
had been a man of fashion in his youth, but being crossed in love
by a beautiful widow, had grown careless of his person, and never
dressed afterwards. Steele's subsequent papers, Nos. 6, 107, 109,
113, 1 1 8, 174, bear out this description give examples of his
common-sense, of his considerate treatment of his servants, of his
gratitude, to one of them for saving his life, and of his occasional
singularities of behaviour. The knight is made to explain his own
eccentricities as a result of his love disappointment " Between
you and me," he says, " I am often apt to imagine it has had some
whimsical effect upon my brain, for I frequently find that, in my
most serious discourse, I let fall some comical familiarity of speech
or odd phrase, that makes the company laugh." Such is Sir Roger
according to Steele an easy, good-natured gentleman, of good
sense, purposely setting at nought the conventions of fashion, sin-
gular and eccentric, but aware of his eccentricities. In Addison's
hands he becomes a very different character. He is transformed
into a good-natured Tory fox-hunter. He retains the good-nature
and the eccentricity ; he drops, except in name, the good sense,
and the familiar knowledge of town life. Addison makes him
a thorough rustic ; autocratic, self-important, ignorant, credulous.
True, he is at great pains to repeat that Sir Roger was much
esteemed for his universal benevolence " at peace within himself,
1 The Ugly Club, and the difficulties met with in finding members, form one
of the best specimens of Steele's rollicking humour. In giving an account of it,
he makes the following humorous confession in the person of the Spectator:
" For my own part, I am a little unhappy in the mould of my face, which is not
quite so long as it is broad. Whether this might not partly arise from my open-
ing my mouth much seldomer than other people, and by consequence not so
much lengthening the fibres of my visage, I am not at leisure to determine.
However it be, 1 have been often put out of countenance by the shortness of
my face, and was formerly at great pains in concealing it by wearing a periwig
with a high foretop, and letting my beard grow. But now I have thoroughly
got over the delicacy, and could be contented were it much shorter, provided it
might qualify me for a member of the Merry Club, which the following letter
gives me an account of."
SIk RICHARD STEELE. 399
and esteemed l by all about him." But this affectation of respect
for the knight is a sly artifice to bring him into ridiculous situa-
tions No. 106, the first of Addison's papers, is the most amiable
part of the picture, and seems designed to let Steele's conception
down softly. Yet even this paper shows Sir Roger in a ridiculous
light, inconsistent with the following paper, No. 107, by Steele.
Loth knight and servants are pleasantly caricatured in No. 106
" You would take his valet de diambre for his brother, his butler is
grey-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever
Been, and his coachman has the looks of a privy councillor." His
chaplain was chosen for his " good aspect, clear voice, and sociable
temper": "at his first settling with me," says Sir Roger, "I made
him a present of all the good sermons which have been printed in
English, and only begged of him that every Sunday he would pro-
nounce one of them in the pulpit" Among these venerable domes-
tics the good knight is treated like an infant. " When he is pleasant
upon a^y of them, all his family are in good humour, and none so
much as the person whom he diverts himself with : on the contrary,
if he coughs or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a
stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his ser-
vants." After this opening sketch of Sir Roger's good-nature, we
are presented with some exquisitely-wrought pictures of his ridic-
ulous doings. He exorcises the shut-up rooms of his house, by
making the chaplain sleep in them. In church " he suffers nobody
to sleep besides himself ; for if by chance he has been surprised
into a short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up
and looks about him, and if he sees anybody else nodding, either
wakes them himself, or sends his servant to them ; " he lengthens
out a verse half a minute after the rest of the congregation, says
Amen three or four times, and calls out to^John Matthews to mind
what he is about, and not disturb the congregation. He had been
a great fox-hunter in his youth. He would have given over Moll
White, the witch, to the County Assizes, had he not been dissuaded
by the chaplain. Perhaps the most exquisitely ludicrous of his
adventures are his journey to the Assizes, and his speech there
(No. 122); his visit to Westminster Abbey (329); his observations
on " The Distressed Mother," in the playhouse : in all these situa-
tions he is merely a good-natured, credulous, unsophisticated butt
for the delicate ridicule of his companion the Spectator.
While there is such a difference between the conceptions of the
tvro writers, there is a still greater difference in the execution. In
1 Esteemed. Steele had said that Sir Roger was rather beloved than esteemed.
But tliis was estimating the knight by the standard of his town friends. Addi-
Bon places him entirely in the country, and represents him as an object of great
admiration and respect to the simple country -people, thereby getting a douhU
(ratification for his contempt of the country or Tory party.
400 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
point of literary skill, any one of Addison's papers is worth all
Steele's put together. Stcele is sketchy and rude, and mars the
portraiture with patches of moralising. Addison fills in the minute
touches with his most exquisite skill. 1
OTHER WRITERS.
THEOLOGY.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century the Church of Eng-
land began to rest from her labours against Papacy, and to turn
her forces against a new enemy. A new topic engaged all clergy-
men of a literary and controversial disposition, and the general
tone of their sermons underwent a corresponding change. For
such changes one cannot assign a definite year ; it takes time to
give a new direction to the energies of a large body of different
men. We must be content to say that a religious revolution took
place during the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning
of the eighteenth. If we dip into the writings of Churchmen
twenty years before the end of the century, we find their polemic
tracts burning with zeal against Papacy, and their sermons ad-
ministering the consolations and warnings of Christianity, in full
assurance of its divine origin. Twenty years after the end of the
century we breathe a different atmosphere. The Church was then
on the alert against a new antagonist the all-absorbing topic was
the controversy with the Deists. Tracts poured from the press ;
young aspirants to the bench were eager to break a lance with
Toland or with Collins. Sermons were largely influenced by the
prevailing controversy. Devotional ardour was replaced by polem-
ical ardour, by a desire to " prove the reasonableness " of Christi-
anity. Whatever was the preacher's text, his anxiety was to
" prove " that it was eminently suited to the condition of men,
eminently calculated to make them happy. Sublimity and pathos
were banished fr.iin the pulpit, and argument reigned in their stead.
The great majority of the sermons preached in the eighteenth cen-
tury were " tedious moral essays " : their favourite exhortations
1 It is an example of the injustice done to Steele by the admirers of Addison,
and also of the want of discrimination in their homage, that they give Addison
credit for the amiability of the character as well as for the skill of the portrait-
ure. There can be no doubt that, in this as in other cases, Addison profited
greatly by his alliance with Steele ; the original suggestiveness of discursive
" Dick " gave many a hint for the elaborating skill of his friend. The laborious
Dr Drake thinks it a subject for regret that Steele's first draughts do not com-
bine better with Addison's full and accurate picture ; condescends to say that
Nos. 107 and 109 "carry on the costume and design of Addison with undeviat-
ing felicity " ; and thinks it " an ingenious conjecture of Dr Aikin, that Addison
intended, through the medium of Sir Roger's weakness, to convey an indirect
at ire on the coulined iiotioua and political prejudices of the country gentleman " I
THEOLOGY. 401
were "to abstain from vice, to cultivate virtue, to fill our station
in life with propriety, to bear the ills of life with resignation, and
to use its pleasures moderately."
Not a few of the theologians of this period might be grouped
together as taking part in the trial of the Bible by common reason.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century rationalism was pre-
dominant among learned students of religion, whether in the
Church or out of it. By nearly all theologians it seemed taken
for granted that tlie Bible was not to be received without question
as the authoritative word of God, but was to be tried by its agree-
ment with reason. Some accepted these evidences, some did not ;
orthodoxy was sharply assailed by heterodoxy, and issued numerous
sharp replies. The controversy did nothing appreciable for the
advancement of English style. None of the combatants could be
called great masters of language. 1
The three most distinguished Churchmen of this generation,
Atterbury, Hoadley, and Clarke, did not win their reputation in
the war against the Deists. Atterbury is known chiefly as a
politician ; Hoadley by his views regarding Church and State;
Clarke as a scholar, and a writer on Natural Theology and Ethics.
In literary power they are much inferior to the three great divines
of the preceding age, Barrow, Tillotson, and South.
Francis Atterbury (1662-1732), Bishop of Rochester, was an
uncompromising champion of the High Church and Tory party.
The son of a rector in Buckinghamshire, he was sent to Westminster
School and to Christ Church. As a scholar, he was, according to
Macaulay, more brilliant than profound. He took part in the
celebrated " Battle of the Books." He was tutor to Charles Boyle,
the editor of ' Phalaris,' and is generally understood to have written
the reply to Bentley's first short criticism of the Letters (1694).
He distinguished himself greatly in 1 700 by supporting the High
Church view of the powers of the Lower House of Convocation.
He is supposed to have borne a chief part in framing the speech
pronounced by Sacheverell at the bar of the House of Lords.
When the Tories rose into power, he was made Dean of Christ
Church, and afterwards Bishop of liochester. After the accession
of George, he was suspected of intriguing with the Pretender, and
formally banished in 1723. He died in France. He was a bold,
turbulent man, having an ambition that would not rest short of
the highest power ; eloquent, a dazzling master of controversial
fence ; so audacious in his statements and clever in his personali-
ties, that on two occasions he vanquished his superiors in learning,
and made the worse appear the better reason. " Such arguments
1 The best succinct account of the religious thought of this generation and the
following is contained in Mr Mark I'atti.son's "Tendencies of Religious Thought
iu England, 1688-1750," one of the ' Essays auU tte views!'
2 O
402 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
as he had he placed in the clearest light. Where he had no argu-
ments, he resorted to personalities, sometimes serious, generally
ludicrous, always clever and cutting. But whether he was grave
or merry, whether he reasoned or sneered, his style was always
pure, polished, and easy." His diction is not quite so pure as
Swift's or Addison's ; and it is easy in the sense of fluent and
racy, not in the sense of languid.
Benjamin Hoadley or Hoadly (1676-1761), successively Bishop
of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, wrote against the
pretensions of High Churchmen and Tories. On more than one
occasion he crossed swords with Atterbury. His most famous
work was a sermon preached before George I. soon after his eleva-
tion to the bench, on the ' Nature of the Kingdom of Christ.' The
text " My kingdom is not of this world " was a good clue to
the contents. He strongly advocated the subordination of the
Church to the State. The sermon made a great sensation. It
drew upon the author a formal censure from the Lower House of
Convocation, whose independent privileges had been maintained
by Atterbury ; and it originated what is known as the Bangorian
controversy, an engagement of some forty or fifty pamphlets. His
collected works occupy three volumes, published by his son in
1773. His style is in general vigorous and caustic ; he seems care-
less of elegance, and his dry sarcasms have lost their interest
The other eminent divine of the period is Dr Samuel Clarke
(1675-1729), the pupil and friend of Newton. As a scholar, he
translated Kohault's ' Physics ' into English, Newton's ' Optics '
into Latin, edited Caesar's 'Commentaries,' and published the
first twelve books of the ' Iliad ' with a Latin version. As a theo-
logian, he is known chiefly by an illusory attempt to give a mathe-
matical demonstration of the existence of God, which he undertook
upon the suggestion of Sir Isaac Newton. In the Boyle Lectures
(1704-5) he promulgated an ethical system whose chief proposition
is that goodness and virtue consist in the observance of certain
"eternal fitnesses." In 1715 he joined Newton in a famous con-
troversy with Leibnitz, who had represented the Newtonian phil-
osophy as both false and subversive of religion. His views on
the Trinity and on some other points hindered his advancement in
the Church. As regards style, Clarke's sermons may almost be
said to have been the models of the Scotch " moderate " school of
preachers heavy, prolix, argumentative, full of practical good
sense, and possessing none of the ardour familiar to us under the
name " Evangelical"
The leading " Deists " (so-called) were Toland, Collins, Wool-
Eton, and Tindal. With these might be reckoned Shaftesbury:
only he, from his rank (as Mr Pattiaun thinks), was refuted
THEOLOGY. 403
with less warmth, and had not the same notoriety aa a con-
troversialist.
John Toland (1669-1722) was born near Londonderry, of Catho-
lic parents, took a degree at Glasgow, and studied afterwards at
Leyden and Oxford. His 'Christianity not Mysterious,' 1696,
caused none the less excitement that its quarrel with orthodoxy
was chiefly concerning the word "mysterious." He accepted the
Bible theory of the origin of sin, only labouring to make out that
there was nothing mysterious about it. He did not repudiate
miracles ; he only held that there was nothing mysterious in an
all-powerful Being breaking through the order of nature. Pro-
fessor Ferrier styles him " but a poor writer," and charges him
with " dulness, pedantry, vanity, and indiscretion."
Anthony Collins (1676-1729), a gentleman of independent for-
tune, with an Eton and Cambridge education, and the training of
a barrister, an esteemed young friend of Locke's, wrote several
works that engaged him in controversy with the most eminent
divines of the time. In 1707 he discussed the value of testimony,
making polemical capital out of the 30,000 doubtful readings that
Dr John Mill had set down in his edition of the New Testament.
In 1710, in a 'Vindication of the Divine Attributes,' he contended
that predestination is incompatible with " freedom " of the human
will, and that the will is not "free." In 1713 his 'Discourse on
Free Thinking ' claimed unlimited permission to discuss the prob-
lems of religion. In 1724 appeared his most notorious work
' Discourse on the Grounds and Keasons of the Christian Religion ' ;
this publication was replied to by all the talent of the Church.
"The moral character of this writer stands extremely high for
temperance, humanity, and benevolence j and both as a magistrate
and a man he acquired general esteem." Though not orthodox,
he was religious ; he declared on his deathbed that he had endea-
voured to serve both God and his country. His style is simple,
clear, and concise; he has none of the iconoclastic violence of
other objectors to established faith.
In 1726, amid the storm of hostile criticism, there appeared on
the side of Collins a Moderator between an Infidel and an Apostate.
This was Thomas Woolston (1669-1733), Fellow and Tutor of
Sidney Sussex, Cambridge. Woolston had long made theology
his favourite study, but till more than fifty had shown no symp-
toms of acute heterodoxy. He had indeed taken up Origen's
view of the Old Testament as a spiritual allegory, and in 1723
had made acrimonious attacks on the clergy. But now he pushed
the iilea of allegory into the New Testament, maintaining that the
miracles also were fictitious allegories. In the four following
years, in 'Six Discourses on the Miracles of Christ,' he assailed
the gospel narrative with ridicule. He also issued some ironical
404 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
defences of Christian tenets. His manner was offensive ; he was
prosecuted for blasphemy, fined, and imprisoned.
In the last year of this period, 1730, Matthew Tindal (1657-
1733), a Fellow of All Souls, published a dialogue, 'Christianity
as old as the Creation, or the Gospel a republication of the Re-
li.ion of Nature.' This is perhaps the most elaborate of the
deist ical works of the period. The author holds the startling
dm trine that Christianity is useless where it is not mischievous;
that man has always been able to distinguish right and wrong
with regard to his special circumstances; and that to lay down a
system of general rules is certain to conduct to error.
The Deists were opposed by the whole force of the clergy, as
well as by a considerable number of laymen. Among those that
more particularly distinguished themselves apart from such
champions as Hoadley, Clarke, and Bentley, who achieved dis-
tinction in other fields may be mentioned Charles Leslie (1650-
1722), author of a famous work provoked chiefly by Toland, en-
titled 'Short and Easy Method with the Deists'; John Norris
(1657-1711), rector of Bemerton, one of the earliest critics of Locke,
who replied to 'Poland's 'Christianity not Mysterious'; Peter
Brown, Bishop of Cork, also a critic of Locke and Toland;
Edward Chandler (d. 1750), Bishop of Lichfield, who in 1725
wrote a ' Defence of Christianity ' against Collins ; Thomas Sher-
lock (1678-1761), Bishop of London, who wrote a 'Trial of the
Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus ' in reply to Woolston.
But the most able apologists belong to our next period; they
came forward to repel the assault made by Tindal. The fight
began to rage hotly about 1720, after the subsidence of the Ban-
gorian controversy ; Tindal's work was the culminating charge,
after which the battle became fainter.
PHILOSOPHY.
Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733) is famed as the author of
'The Fable of the Bees, or private Vices public Benefits.' l " This
work is a satire upon artificial society, having for its chief aim to
expose the hollowness of the so-called dignity of human nature."
He endeavours with cynical humour to explain away all alleged
cases of disinterested conduct. He regards pride and vanity aa
1 The received bibliography of this Fable is inaccurate. It appeared originally
in 1705 (not in 1714, the received date), as a small sixpenny pamphlet of doggerel
verses, entitled ' The Grumbling Hive ; or Knaves turned Honest. 1 Soon after,
it was pirated, and hawked about the streets in a halfpenny sheet. In 1714 the
author repulilished it with some two hundred small pages of remarks, and an
' Kn|uiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue:' the whole under the title "The
Falile of tlie Bees, or private Vices public Benefits.' In 1723 the work was en-
tirely recast, but the title, ' The Fable of the Bees,' was not then given to it for
the lirst time.
PHILOSOPHY. 405
the chief incentives that delude men into what is called public
spirit. His humour is the coarsest of the coarse ; but he cannot
be denied great wit, happy expression, and ingenious illustrations.
A happy saying of his stuck to Addison "a parson in a tye-wig";
which has much the same force as our familiar "a policeman in plain
clothes," the tye-wig being unclerical in the reign of Queen Anne.
William Wollaston (1659-1724), a clergyman, was bequeathed
an ample fortune when he was about thirty, settled in London,
and passed a life of study so very regular that he is said not to
have slept out of his own house for thirty years. Roused, like
Clarke, by the ethics of Hobbes, he wrote a treatise entitled ' The
Religion of Nature Delineated.' His ethical system is at bottom
the same with Clarke's, though differently expressed. According
to him, immorality consists in the violation of truth, truth con-
sisting in the observance of certain eternally fixed relations be-
tween man and man and between man and God.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, grandson
of the first Earl (" Achitophel ") (1671-1713), made a considerable
reputation as an ethical writer. He wa^fe for a few years in Parlia-
ment, but the greater part of his life was spent in study. His
works are, 'Inquiry concerning Virtue' (1699) ; 'Letter on En-
thusiasm' (1708); 'Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody' a
Platonic vindication of Deity and Providence, highly praised by
Leibnitz (1709); 'Essay upon the Freedom of Wit and Humour'
advocating the trial of religious as well as other doctrines by
the test of ridicule (also 1709); 'Advice to an Author' (1710).
The title of his collected works, excluding the ' Inquiry,' which
contains his ethical theories, is ' Characteristics of Men, Manners,
Opinions, and Times.' He was a man of feeble constitution, but
cheerful and witty. His ethical speculations show no great power
of analysis. He may be called the first of the intuitional schooL
writing without being at all aware of the difficulties of his position,
Cudworth had been alarmed at the attempt of Hobbes to restrict
the term moral to actions commanded by a supreme power;
Shaftesbury disliked Locke's theory that our ideas of morality are
got by reflection upon our experience. He calls himself a Moral
Realist; and holds not only that the distinctions between virtue
and vice are " real," but that we have a special moral sense, where-
by we distinguish what is virtuous and what is vicious. Into the
origin of this sense he does not profess to inquira His style is
highly elaborated. His first care is to be delicately melodious.
He strives also to avoid the very appearance of harshness in the
union of ideas. As a consequence, he is rather wanting in vigour,
is driven upon affected inversions, and is obliged often to prolong
his sentences to a tedious length before his smooth circumlocution!
amount to a complete expression.
406 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
George Berkeley (1684-1753\ Bishop of Cloyne, established him-
self in a high philosophical reputation. Bora in Ireland, he was
educated at Kilkenny School and at Trinity College, Dublin. A
precocious youth, he published his first work at the age of twenty-
three ' An Attempt to demonstrate Arithmetic without the aid of
Algebra or Geometry.' In 1709 (at age twenty-five) he wrote his
first psychological work, ' The Theory of Vision,' remarkable as the
earliest attempt to distinguish in an act of vision between what we
actually see with the eye and what we supply from former experi-
ence. In the following year (1710) he published his 'Principles
of Human Knowledge,' containing views so original that they or
at least misconceptions of them have become identified with his
name. The popular notion was that he denied the existence of
" Matter " ; and this current misconception was not in the least
modified by his repeated protests that what he denied the exist-
ence of was matter in the metaphysical sense, not matter as
understood by plain men. After the age of twenty-seven, he
published no further novelty in psychology, although in some
of his other works he expounded his Idealism at greater length.
He wrote in favour of passive obedience and non-resistance;
travelled on the Continent ; and is said to have literally been
the death of Malebranche in Paris, arguing with that phil-
osopher while he was suffering from inflammation of the lungs.
About 1722 he became acquainted with Miss Vanhomrigh, Swift's
Vanessa, who left him half of her fortune. In 1728 he set out on
a philanthropic scheme to convert the American Indians to Chris-
tianity by establishing a college in the Bermudas. This scheme
failing through breach of faith on the part of Sir R Walpole,
Berkeley returned, and was soon preferred to the see of Cloyne.
He took part in the deistic controversy; his 'Minute Philosopher*
is a most acute attack on the deistic positions. He is described
as "a handsome man, with a countenance full of meaning and
benignity, remarkable for great strength of limbs; and, till his
sedentary life impaired it, of a very robust constitution." The
characteristic of his intellect was extraordinary subtlety rather than
solid judgment. He had, perhaps, too warm an imagination to
arrive at sound and sober conclusions. Something of this caprice
of imagination appears in his conduct ; contrast his philandering
scheme to convert the Indians with morose Swift's endeavours to
improve the condition of the Irish peasants. Berkeley, too, was
an Irish clergyman ; and in the elevation of his parishioners
might have found an ample field for the strongest " enthusiasm
of humanity." His style lias always been esteemed admirable;
Bim pie, felicitous, and sweetly melodious. The dialogues are sus-
tained with great skill
HISTORY. 407
HISTORY.
There is no historian of any note in this period. Lawrence
Echard (1671-1730), an English clergyman, wrote several histori-
cal works, but none of them have kept a place among general
readers. His 'History of Rome,' 'General Ecclesiastical History,'
and ' History of England to the Revolution,' all obtained consider-
able praise and circulation in their day, but have been superseded
by the works of more eminent writers.
The most famous ANTIQUARY of the period is John Strype
(1643-1737), a most industrious collector of ecclesiastical anti-
quities relating to the Reformation in England : author of ' An-
nals of the Reformation,' and of separate 'Lives' of the various
founders of the Anglican Church.
With Strype may be mentioned Dr Humphrey Prideaux (1648-
1724), author of a 'Connection of the History of the Old and New
Testament' (1715-17), a work still used by students of divinity.
He wrote also a highly popular 'Life of Mahomet' (1707), and
other works.
Dr Potter (1674-1747), Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a
manual of the 'Antiquities of Greece,' which was the standard
work among students until superseded in some points by more
thorough researches. Basil Kennett (1674-1714) wrote a similar
work on ' Roman Antiquities,' which held its ground for nearly a
century.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Richard Bentley (1662-1742) is one of the most famous of
English critics. He was a graduate of Cambridge. In 1693
he published sermons against atheism, which he had preached
as Boyle Lecturer. About this time he was appointed Keeper
of the Royal Library of St James. When Charles Boyle pub-
lished his edition of 'Phalaris,' he animadverted on the in-
civility of Bentley in suddenly recalling a book that he had
borrowed from the library. Bentley took pungent notice of
this, and of the general value of the 'Epistles of Phalaris,' in
a dissertation appended to Wotton's 'Reflections on Temple's
Ancient and Modern Learning' (1697). This was the begin-
ning of the famous controversy burlesqued by Swift in his
'Battle of the Books.' Boyle, with the assistance of Atterbury
and Aldrich, replied to the dissertation, and was thought to have
demolished his antagonist. But Bentley, after two years' silence,
came forward with an irrefragably thorough exposure of the
spuriousness of the Letters, seasoned with' the most cutting and
unsparing ridicule of his opponents. There had never been in
408 'FROM 1700 TO 1730.
English criticism such a display of scholarship and arrogant wit ;
and Bentley's fame was at once established. His other great
performance was an attack on Collins, under the name of ' Philel-
eutherus Lipsiensis,' pointing out that the text of the New Testa-
ment is less corrupt than the text of any classical author, and
exulting in the Free-thinker's unscholarly mistakes. Bentley was
a man of imperious and capricious temper; .and, as Master of
Trinity, Cambridge, was involved in constant squabbles with the
Fellows. His critical scholarship is universally allowed to have
been prodigious. His sagacity in textual emendations is also
highly extolled, though with the qualification that he is too
bold. We laugh at many of his courageous liberties with the
text of Milton ; a Roman might have been equally amused with
some of his emendations of Horace. His style has surprising
force and wit, formed upon the scholastic models of unsparingly
personal acrimony. The times allowed great freedom of abuse
in controversy, and Bentley's natural temper had full scope.
The two principal coadjutors of Addison and Steele in the
' Spectator ' were John Hughes (1667-1720) and Eustace Budgell
(1685-1737). Both held Government appointments. Hughes was
a refined poetical soul, wrote poems and dramas, and translated
from Latin, French, and Italian polite literature. His papers in
the ' Spectator ' approach very near to Addison's in finish and
happy expression. The difference between them lies chiefly in
simplicity. Hughes has longer and more involved sentences, and
clogs the smooth flow of his rhythm with a greater number of
epithets. Budgell was a rough, vigorous, dissipated barrister,
who preferred making a figure in the coffee-houses and in litera-
ture to the practice of his profession. His humour is compara-
tively obstreperous, of the Defoe and Macaulay type, which the
French seem to consider peculiarly English. It is genial rather
from the author's hearty enjoyment of the fun he is making than
from any sympathy with the objects of his derision. The ' She
Komp Club ' and the rural sports of Sir Roger are from his pen.
He came to an unfortunate end. Tindal, the deist, having be-
queathed him 2000, he was suspected of having tampered with
the will ; and, unable to bear the disgrace of such a suspicion,
committed suicide by throwing himself into the Thames.
Over against these literary Whigs may be mentioned the literary
Tories, the associates of Swift in the 'Examiner' and elsewhere.
Passing over Mrs Manley, the novelist, who conducted the ' Ex-
aminer' after Swift, and who had been prosecuted for a satire
on the Whig statesmen, we may single out Dr John Arbuthnot
(1667-1735) as being, next to Swift, and excluding Pope, by far
the ablest writer on the Tory side. His best performance, 'The
History of John Bull/ a satire on Marlboiough and the war, was
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 409
ascribed to Swift, and is usually printed among Swift's works.
Swift said of him " He has more wit than we all have, and his
humanity is equal to his wit" Arbuthnotwas one of the northern
Scots that were now beginning to push their fortunes in London.
He was born in Kincardineshire, at a town of his own name, and
studied medicine in Aberdeen. Immediately after completing his
studies he went to London, and made a rrvelihood at first by
teaching mathematics. He soon brought himself into notice by
some tracts on mathematical and medical subjects. In 1705 he
was appointed physician extraordinary to Queen Anne; in 1709
physician ordinary. He became a leading wit in the coffee-
houses. When Swift came over from Ireland in 1708, and the
Tories concerted a grand assault upon the Whigs, Arbuthnot's
ready pen supplied some of the most effective missiles of offence.
The ' History of John Bull ' by Arbuthnot, the ' Conduct of the
Allies ' by Swift, and ' The Defence of Sacheverell ' by Atterbury,
were the three great literary contributions to the fall of the Whig
Government : the eulogist of Arbuthnot usually gives the honour
to Arbuthnot's performance, the eulogist of Swift to Swift's, the
eulogist of Atterbury to Atterbury's. Arbuthnot's other great
production is his share in the writings of ' Martinus Scriblerus,'
sometimes printed with Swift's works, sometimes with Pope's.
The Scriblerus Club was instituted in 1714 by Pope, Swift,
Arbuthnot, Gay, Parnell, Atterbury, Congreve, and others. The
object was to satirise the absurdities of literature. The members
were actuated a good deal by the spirit of Pope's 'Dunciad.'
Arbuthnot bore a large share in the works published under the
signature of Scriblerus. In the essay on the ' Art of Sinking,'
his hand can be traced in several of the chapters. Arbuthnot's
fortunes declined at the accession of George, and his later days
were made unhappy by poverty and ill-health. There is no col-
lected edition of his works. The ' John Bull ' is usually printed
in Swift's works, the ' Scriblerus ' papers partly in Swift's, partly
in Pope's. He was exceedingly careless of what he wrote ; all
was done to serve a passing purpose, and he took no pains to
preserve either manuscript or print. He must have been a man
of great social tact and amiability. Swift seems to have loved
him like a brother "If the world had a dozen Arbuthnots
in it," he wrote in one of his letters, "I would burn my Travels,"
The power of his satire was proved by its effects. He is the most
versatile, as regards mood, of all the great wits of the period.
When his feelings are not specially roused he is genial, lambent,
good-humoured ; but he was capable of genuine indignation, and
sometimes lays on the lash with unsparing severity. His paper
on the 'Altercation or Scolding of the Ancients' is in very happy
humour ; his ' Art of Political Lying ' is more sarcastic ; and some
410 FROM 1700 TO 1730.
sallies usually attributed to him against Bishop Burnet, the favour
ite butt of Swift, are worthy of the savage Dean himself.
One imposing figure in the public transactions of the time also
demands a high place in the history of our literature Henry St
John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751). His chief philosophical
and political works were written during the forced inaction of the
latter half of his life, and in this manual he should, in strict
method, be placed in the following generation ; but he is so thor-
oughly identified with the Queen Anne men that it would be
an unprofitable violation of the usual arrangement not to mention
him here.
Entering Parliament in 1701 at the age of twenty-three, he had
not to watch and wait for distinction ; his splendid powers placed
him at once in the front rank. He gained a seat in the Cabinet in
1704 as Secretary at War, and remained in office four years. Dur-
ing the four last years of Queen Anne, he and Harley were the
leaders of the Administration. He quarrelled with Harley, and
supplanted him as formal head of the Government about a week
before the Queen's death. With the death of the Queen his
power came to an end : he was suspected of having intrigued for
the succession of the Pretender Prince, and had to flee the country.
For some time he \\ as secretary to the Pretender ; and, turning to
literary composition, produced ' Reflections on Exile,' and a defence
of his conduct in the form of a letter to Sir William Wyndhanx
After seven years' exile, he was permitted to return, but was not
suffered to resume his place in the House of Lords. Upon his re-
turn he wrote in the ' Craftsman ' a series of letters, afterwards
reprinted as 'A Dissertation on Parties,' and busied himself with
other studies and writings. In 1735 ne weQ t to France, this time
voluntarily, and lived there for seven years, during which he pub-
lished 'Letters on the Study of History' and a 'Letter on the
True Use of Retirement.' On his final return to England in
1742, he settled at Battersea ; wrote 'Letters on the Spirit of
Patriotism ' ; the ' Idea of a Patriot King' (pub. in 1749) ; and the
various philosophical and other works published after his death by
his literary executor, David Mallet. Much has been said of the
splendid personality of Bolingbroke. Pope gave poetic expression
to a very general feeling when he said that, on the appearance of
a comet, he could not help thinking that it had been sent as a
chariot to take his friend St John away. " Nature," writes
Goldsmith, "seemed not less kind to him in her external em-
bellishments, than in adorning his mind. With the graces of
a handsome person, and a face in which dignity was happily
blended with sweetness, he had a manner of address that was
very engaging. His vivacity was always awake, his apprehen-
sion was quick, his wit refined, and his memory amazing; his
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 411
subtlety in thinking and reasoning was profound ; and all these
talents were adorned with an elocution that was irresistible."
His constitutional energy was prodigious, appearing in the wild
excesses of his dissolute youth, no less than in his hard work and
complicated intrigues as a Minister of State. The most striking
feature of his style is splendour of declamation. All his works,
philosophical as well as political, are written in a declamatory
strain, and read like elaborate speeches. Not only have the
words an oratorical glow and vehemence, but the general structure
is the structure of spoken rather than of written style. The dedi-
cation of his 'Dissertation on Parties,' addressed to Sir Robert
Walpole, is an extreme example:
" Let me now appeal to you, sir. Are these designs which any man, who
is born a Briton, in any circumstances, in any situation, ought to be
ashamed or afraid to avow? You cannot tliiuk it. You will not say it.
That never can be the case, until we cease to think like freemen, as well as
to be free. Are these designs in favour of the Pretender? I appeal to the
whole world; and I scorn with a just indignation to give any other answer
to so shameless and so senseless an objection. No; they are designs in
favour of the constitution ; designs to secure, to fortify, to perpetuate that
excellent system of government. 1 court no other cause ; I claim no other
merit "
Here not only the vehement eloquence, but the short sentences,
the pointed balance, the repetition of tiie leading word (as in
"designs"), the figures of interrogation and exclamation all
belong to oratory. We meet some or all of these characteristics
in every page. Although, however, in almost every page we
meet with the short oratorical sentence familiar to readers of
Macaulay, his sentences are not in general so short as in the
above extract On the contrary, he is rather famous for long
sentences remarkable on this ground, that the conclusion of the
predicate is put off by one clause after another, and yet these
clauses are so admirably placed that there is seldom the least
confusion. The structure of these long sentences is all the more
simple, that very often the latter part is a paraphrase or extension
in apposition to some word in the former part. Thus
" How different the case is, on the other side, will appear not only from
the actions, but from the principles of the Court party, as we find them
avowed in their writings ; principles more dangerous to liberty, though not
^0 directly, nor so openly levelled against it, than even any of those, bad as
they were, which some of these men value themselves for having formerly
opposed."
This structure is also oratorical. 1 To call Bolingbroke a splendid
1 In singling out certain features of Bolingbroke's style as oratorical, I do not
mean to imply that these are confined to oratory. I call them oratorical because
they are such as occur in nearly every Parliamentary speech of the eighteenth
century, and because they are peculiarly litUxl to spokeu address.
412 FEOM 1700 TO 1730.
declaimer is to give him little more than half his due. He is
also a wit; and at every turn he electrifies the reader with some
felicitous stroke of brevity, or happy adjustment of words to ias
meaning.
To enumerate all the miscellaneovs writers of this time would
be as much out of place in the present work as to enumerate all
that have written to newspapers or magazines within the nine-
teenth century. A great many periodicals, weekly, bi-weekly,
or daily, some continued for a few weeks, some for one or two
years, were published contemporaneously with, and after the
decease of, Defoe's ' Review ' ; Steele's ' Tatler, 1 ' Spectator,' and
' Guardian ' ; and Swift's ' Examiner.' A long list is given in
the beginning of voL iv. of Drake's Essays on Steele, Addison,
and Johnson. The names that we meet with a're such as ' The
Re-Tatler'; 'The Female Tatler'; 'The Tory Tatler'; 'The
Grumbler'; 'The Medley' (conducted by an accomplished man,
Mr Maynwaring) ; ' The Lay Monastery ' (conducted by the poet
Sir Richard Blackmore); 'The Censor' (conducted by Lewis
Theobald, the annotator of Shakspeare); 'The Free-thinker ' (sup-
ported by Ambrose Phillips, the friend of Addison, and George
Stubbs, a scholarly elegant recluse clergyman) ; ' The Plain
Dealer ' (started by Aaron Hill) ; ' The Intelligencer ' (by Dr
Sheridan, the friend and biographer of Swift). Most of the
periodicals of the day were political ; others diversified politics
with literature, on the plan of the ' Review ' ; and some con-
sisted of a few numbers directed against an object of aversion
in literature, manners, or even commerce. Periodicals were the
fashion, most of them very short-lived. A periodical sheet was
started to vent an opinion that, in the present day, would be
expressed in a letter, or a series of letters, to a daily newspaper ;
and expired either when the author had exhausted the idea, or
when the public had received enough and refused to purchase
more.
CHAPTER VIL
FROM 1730 TO 1760.
SAMUEL JOHNSOTT,
17091784.
THE great "Moralist" and "Lexicographer" was the son of a
respectable bookseller in Lichfield, where he was born on the i8th
of September. The mistress of a dame's school there praised him
as the best scholar she ever had. After five years at a higher
school in Lichfield, one year at the school of Stourbridge, and two
years loitering at home, he was sent, at the age of nineteen, to
Pembroke College, Oxford. He was too desultory to confine him-
self to the studies of the place, and continued in the library of the
college the wide miscellaneous reading he had practised in his
father's shop. Yet his fluent command of Latin procured him
marked attention. A Latin hexameter version of Pope's ' Messiah,'
which he executed as a Christmas exercise, was considered so good
that Pope is said to have declared that posterity would be in doubt
which was the original and which the translation. Owing to
poverty, he left Oxford in 1731 without taking a degree. Too
constitutionally irregular to settle down to a profession, he lived
at home for several months ; acted for several months as an usher ;
lived with a friend in Birmingham ; translated for a Birmingham
bookseller ' Lobo's Journey to Abyssinia ' (pub. in 1735); returned
to Lichfield ; married Mrs Porter of Birmingham, a widow with
;8oo ; and set up a boarding-school near Lichfield. Finally, the
school not succeeding, he removed to London in 1737, and for the
next quarter of a century maintained himself by his pen.
Hud he been born a generation sooner, and gone to London in
414 FROM 1730 TO 1760.
the reign of Queen Anne, he might have been retained as a party-
writer, and well rewarded. Bolingbroke or Harley might have
employed him to abuse Maryborough or browbeat the 'Freeholder.'
But in 1737 party-writers were not in demand The man of
letters might possibly meet with a wealthy patron, but his trust
was chiefly in the booksellers, who were beginning to compete for
the favour of the public with periodicals, editions, translations,
and every sort of compilation that was likely to sell. There was
plenty of employment, though at a low rate of remuneration, for
men of ability ; and had Johnson possessed ordinary business
habits and industry, he might have lived comfortably. During
the first ten years of his London life he wrote chiefly for CAVE,
the publisher of the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' (established in 1731),
composing prefaces, lives of eminent men, abridgments, and mis-
cellaneous papers. He succeeded William Guthrie as writer of the
Parliamentary Debates (which were forbidden to be reported, but
which Cave introduced into his Magazine as the proceedings of
the Senate of Lilliput, sending men to the House to bring away
what they could remember, and getting a clever man to compose
speeches according to their reports). In 1738 he published his
poem "London." In 1747 his fame was well established, and he
was engaged by a combination of London booksellers for ^1575
to prepare his famous Dictionary. In 1750, before this was com-
pleted, he began the work that raised his fame to its full height, a
periodical under the title of 'The Rambler.' This he carried on
single-handed twice a- week for two years. In 1753 he made
several contributions to 'The Adventurer.' The Dictionary was
completed in 1755 ; and, to grace his name on the title-page,
the University of Oxford presented him with the degree of M.A.
Thereafter he continued his multifarious writings for a livelihood.
In 1756 he wrote several reviews and other papers for the newly
started ' Literary Magazine.' From 1758 to 1760 he wrote the
papers known as 'The Idler' for Payne's 'Universal Chronicla'
In 1759 he wrote 'Rasselas.'
The year 1762 relieved him from his quarter of a century of
literary drudgery, bringing him from Government an annual pen-
sion of ^300. From that date he wrote comparatively little ;
his chief productions were the Notes to his edition of Shakspeare,
1765 ; his 'Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland,' and
'Taxation no Tyranny,' 1775; and the last and best of his
works, ' The Lives of the Poets,' prefixed as detached Prefaces to
an edition of the English Poets, 1779-81. After being made
independent by the pension, he spent a great part of his time in
social enjoyment, becoming the conversational oracle of a circle
of distinguished literary friends. In 1763 he met Boswell, to
whose painstaking record he is mainly indebted for the perpetua-
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 415
don of his fame. In 1764 he founded the Literary Club (still
existing), which met every Monday at the Turk's Head. In 1765
he made the acquaintance of the Thrales ; dined with them fre-
quently ; and finally came to be considered as a member of their
family. At his own house in Bolt Court, where Boswell found
him on his return from the Hebrides, he charitably kept a number
of humble dependants Mrs Williams, Mrs Desmoulins, Dr Robert
Levett, Black Frank, and a cat called Hodge. Among the inti-
mate associates of his latter years were Burke, Goldsmith, Gibbon,
Topham Beauclerk, Langton, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Joshua Rey-
nolds, Arthur Murphy. He died in his house in Bolt Court.
Johnson's appearance was far from prepossessing. "He is,
indeed," says Miss Burney, " very ill-favoured. He has naturally
a noble figure, tall, stout, grand, and authoritative ; but he stoops
horribly ; his back is quite round, his mouth is continually open-
ing and shutting as if he were chewing something ; he has a
singular method of twirling his fingers and twisting his hands ;
his vast body is in constant agitation, see-sawing backwards and
forwards ; his feet are never for a moment quiet ; and his whole
great frame looks often as if it were going to roll itself quite
voluntarily from its chair to the floor." One of his cheeks was
disfigured by the marks of scrofula; and his face showed the
peculiar nervous twitching known as St Vitus's Dance. His gait
was rolling and clumsy ; he seemed to be struggling with fetters.
Along with the scrofulous taint, he had inherited from his father
a disposition to melancholy, which came upon him in cruel fits.
During these gloomy seasons he was more imperious and irritable
than Swift. He had inherited, also, a deep-rooted indolence and a
hatred of regular work. His ambition, his desire to excel, was not
alone sufficient to overcome this constitutional indolence. He
needed to be " well whipt " at school, and when grown to man-
hood he did little more than enough to keep himself and his wife
from starving. England gave him but " fourpence-half penny a-
day," if she gave him no more, chiefly because he was too lazy to
work for more.
His intellectual powers must not be judged by what he produced.
He was indolent not in the sense of dozing away his time without
thinking or reading, but in the sense of being averse both to pro-
ductive exertion and to regular application. In his father's shop
at Lichfield, in the college library at Pembroke, and in arranging
the vast Harleian library of books and pamphlets, he was thoroughly
in his element; ranging with luxurious pleasure from book to
book, and insatiably storing up miscellaneous knowledge. Partly
in consequence of thus reserving his strength, he was capable of
intense concentration when he did apply his mind to production.
416 FROM 1730 TO 1760.
In dashing off a definition, a criticism, or a general precept, he
seized with great force upon the leading features. In these mo-
ments of intense concentration, he had the power of doing in a
wonderfully short time what Lord Brougham describes as seizing
the kernel and leaving the husk. This habit of making short
work with a subject gives his writings their most distinctive char-
acter. The bold comprehensive grasp, right usually in the main,
has always deeply impressed the admirers of force. On the other
hand, his hardihood in making untenably sweeping assertions, his
inevitable omission of many considerations in the course of his
intense but hurried survey, has severely tried the patience of the
lovers of delicate accuracy.
His naturally powerful reason was a good deal clouded by vari-
ous prejudices. He would believe no good either of republican or
of infidel. He did injustice to Milton ; he abused Bolingbroke
without reading him ; and Boswell mentions his having uttered
about Hume a remark too gross to be committed to paper. He
hated and ridiculed the French and the Scotch, and refused to be
persuaded that anybody could live happily out of London. In
these things, as in many others, he showed gross egotism and want
of sympathy. Swift was not more overbearing nor more intoler-
ant of contradiction. He had a peculiar horror of death, and if
anybody was said to feel differently, he at once pronounced them
either mad or mendacious. He was a humane, warm-hearted man,
at least towards cases of extreme distress brought on by no fault
of the sufferer ; he opened his house as a retreat for several " in-
firm and decayed " persons ; amused himself with their quarrels,
and patiently endured their caprices. He had a few strong attach-
ments. But even in his displays of benevolence and kindly affec-
tion, you see his natural love of domineering ; he allowed nobody
but himself to praise his favourites, and he treated them roughly
when they deviated from his ideal of propriety. He was fre-
quently humorous at his own expense, but he would allow nobody
else to take liberties with him ; he made boisterous mirth at the
expense of certain of his friends, but he would not endure that the
slightest air of ridicule should be thrown upon any of his own
sayings or doings. Often in his writings he enforced the "vanity
of human wishes." His 'Rasselas' is virtually a sermon on the
impossibility of finding perfect happiness in this world ; one of its
professed objects is the benevolent achievement of damping the
ardour of youth. Yet when anybody else ventured to complain
in his presence, he was ready to avow that the world is a very
enjoyable world, and to denounce all complaints as mere senti-
mental whining.
Though renowned as a biographer, he was far from being car-
ried away by hero-worship. He is rather chary than enthusiastic
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 417
in his allowance of merit, and scatters without mercy any air ot
romance or exaggeration that may have been gathered about an
eminent name by the zeal of admirers. When Sir Thomas Browne,
whom Johnson is said to have admired and imitated, declares that
" his life has been a miracle of thirty years ; which to relate were
not history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable,"
Johnson remarks somewhat sarcastically that " self-love, co-
operating with an imagination vigorous and fertile as that of
Browne's, will find or make objects of astonishment in every
man's life."
Opinions. In politics Johnson was a bigoted Tory. He could
not repress his political leanings even in writing the definitions for
his Dictionary. When writing the Parliamentary Debates for
Cave, he " took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best
of it" He wrote little in direct support of the Tories. After he
received his pension he conceived himself bound to do something,
and composed a few pamphlets ' The False Alarm,' ' The Falk-
land Islands,' 'The Patriot,' and 'Taxation no Tyranny.' In
these he stated his views of true liberty and true patriotism, and
maintained that the English Parliament had a right to tax the
Americans without their consent.
Naturally a pious man, he was a bigoted Churchman. He hated
Dissenters as " honestly " as he hated Whigs, infidels, French, and
Scotchmen.
Though called the Great Moralist, he expounded nothing that
could be called an ethical system. He simply applied strong good
sense to the common situations of life. His first principles were
understood, not stated.
The merits of his literary criticisms were the result of his good
sense, their defects the result of his narrow sympathies and frag-
mentary knowledge. He seldom or never erred on the side of ex-
travagant praise. He admired the wonderful powers of Shakspeare,
defended the violation of the " unities," and the mixture of comedy
with tragedy ; but, along with the great dramatist's virtues he enu-
merated considerable failings occasional " tumour, meanness, tedi-
ousness, and obscurity," wearisome narration, and the introduction
of frigid conceits and quibbles, to the ruin of true sublimity and
pathos. His tendency was to banish from poetry everything that
would not be approved of by sober reason. In some points his
principles of criticism were better than his practice. He laid down
that " in order to make a true estimate of the abilities and merits
of a writer, it is always necessary to examine the genius of his age
and the opinions of his contemporaries." But this was a perfec-
tion-height of critical qualification that indolence would not suffer
himself to attain. He wrote his notes on Shakspeare without
2D
418 FROM 1730 TO 1760.
having read a single one of the contemporary dramatists. He
had plenty of time, but he preferred to indulge his appetite for
social talk and desultory reading. Sometimes, too, he laid down
principles that he broke habitually in his own composition. He
satirised plays " where declamation roars and passion sleeps " ; yet
his own ' Irene ' belongs to the category. He condemned the prac-
tice of filling out the sound of a period with unnecessary words.
It is but fair to say that in later life he recognised his own faults.
On one occasion, when some person read bis ' Irene ' aloud, he left
the room, saying he did not think it had been so bad ; and in his
' Lives of the Poets ' he tried hard to work himself out of the son-
orous grandiloquence of the ' Rambler.'
ELEMENTS OP STYLE.
Vocabulary. Johnson's memory for words, and consequent com-
mand of language, was amazing. In this respect he stands in the
very first rank. One might suppose, from what is usually said
concerning the great preponderance of Latin words in his diction,
that he failed in command of homelier language ; but this is a
mistake. His ' Rambler ' is highly Latinised ; but in his Preface
to Shakspeare, 1768, we trace the beginnings of a homelier style.
In his 'Lives of the Poets' the style is not so Latinised as the
average style of the present day. The proportion of Latin words
is not above half as great as in a leader of the ' Times.' He is
often studiously homely, and shows a perfect command of homely
diction. Perhaps the less pompous diction of his latest produc-
tions is partly a result of his great practice in conversation. As
we have just said, he was conscious of the blemish in his ' Rambler,'
and endeavoured to amend.
As an example of studied variety of expression, take the follow-
ing comparison between punch and conversation :
" The spirit, volatile and fiery, is the proper emblem of vivacity and wit ;
the acidity of the lemon will very aptly figure pungency of raillery and
acrimony of censure : sugar is the natural representative of luscious adula-
tion and gentle complaisance ; and water is the proper hieroglyphic of easy
prattle, innocent and tasteless."
Sentences and Paragraphs. The often-remarked mannerism of
Johnson's sentences does not consist in one particular, but in the
combination of several
(i.) The frequent use of the balance structure. He employs
liberally all the arts of balance both in sound and in sense. In
the ' Lives of the Poets ' he is much less elaborate and sonorous in
his balances than in the 'Rambler.' In the following sentence
from the ' Rambler ' there are five different balances :
"It is easy to laugh at the folly of him who refuses immediate ease for
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 419
distant pleasure, and instead of enjoying the blessings of life, lets life glide
away in preparations to enjoy them ; it affords snc-h opportunities of trium-
phant exultation, to exemplify the uncertainty of the human state, to rouse
mortals from their dream, and inform them of the silent celerity of time,
that we may believe authors willing rather to transmit than examine so
advantageous a principle, and more inclined to pursue a track so smooth
and so flowery, than attentively to consider whether it leads to truth.
In the 'Lives of the Poets' there are few sentences of such
sonorous amplituda In this later work balances are numerous ;
but, on the whole, it may be said that there the cadence is more
varied, and that we have a greater proportion of curt, short sen-
tences and balances, in the following emphatic form :
"Observation daily shows that much stress is not to be laid on hyper-
bolical accusations and pointed sentences, which even he that utters them
desires to be applauded rather than credited, "
Such balances as the following are very common " If his jests
are coarse, his arguments are strong;" "too judicious to commit
faults, but not sufficiently vigorous to attain excellence;" "his
figures neither divert by distortion, nor amaze by exaggeration ; "
"however exalted by genius, or enlarged by study."
(2.) Short comprehensive sentences. These appear plentifully
in all his works, but, partly from the nature of the subject, are
especially plentiful in the 'Lives of the Poets.' The following
short passage is a fair illustration :
" In the poetical works of Swift, there is not much upon which the critic
can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always light, and
have the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and gaiety.
They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is
correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. Tliere seldom
occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all his verses
exemplify his own definition of a good style ; they consist of ' proper words
in proper places. ' "
(3.) One of the most striking mannerisms in Johnson's com-
position belongs strictly to the paragraph to the arrangement of
sentences rather than the arrangement of clauses. He has a habit
of abruptly introducing a general principle before the particular
circumstances that it applies to. We have remarked this as a
peculiarity in Macaulay's style. If Johnson did not originate tin*
form of composition, he was at least the first to bring it into
prominence. After him it was extensively adopted. Alacaulay
is hitherto his most celebrated imitator.
The following passage concerning Cowley is an example of his
abrupt introduction of general principles. It exemplifies also a
cognate practice of abruptly bringing in a person or thing con
trasted or compared with the subject of the discourse :
"In the year 1647, his 'Mistress' was published ; for he imagined, as
he declared in a preface to a subsequent edition, Unit ' poets are scarcely
420 FROM 1730 TO 1760.
thoueht freemen of their company, without paying some duties, or obliging
themselves to he true to love.'
"This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its orginal to the
fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful
homage to his Laura, refined the manners of the lettered world, and filled
Europe with love and poetry. But tlie basis of all excellence is truth: Ju
that professes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a real lover, and
Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness. Of Cowley we are told by Barnes,
who had means enough of information, that, whatever he may talk of his
own inflammability, and the variety of characters by which his heart was
divided, he in reality was in love but ouce, and then never had resolution to
tell his passion.
" This consideration cannot but abate in some measure the reader's esteem
for the works and the author. To love excellence is natural ; it is natural
likewise for tfie lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an elaborate display of his
own qualifications. The desire of pleasing has in different nten produced
actions of heroism, and effusions of wit ; but it seems as reasonable to appear
the champion as the poet of ' an airy nothing,' and to quarrel as to write for
what Cowley might have learned from his master Pindar to call ' the dream
of a shadow.' "
To make up what is called the "Johnsonian manner," or
"Johnsonese," we must take not only these striking peculiarities
of sentence-structure, but certain other peculiarities, especially a
peculiar use of the abstract noun, and vigorous comprehensive
brevity. Macaulay's sentence-structure is modelled in a consider-
able degree upnn Johnson's, yet the resemblance is not at first so
striking, because Macaulay is a concrete and diffuse writer, whereas
Johnson is extremely abstract and condensed.
Figures of Speech, Similitudes. Our author's prose is not
ornate. He studies condensed expression rather than embellish-
ment or illustration. None of our great prose writers is so spar-
ing of similitudes. In the ' Rambler ' there are pages that contain
hardly a single metaphor.
The few similitudes that he does use are in harmony with the
general loftiness of his style. Thus, Imlac is represented as saying
to Rasselas
"The world, which you figure to yourself smooth and quiet as the lake
in the valley, you will find a sea foaming with tempests, and boiling with
whirlpools ; you will be sometimes overwhelmed by the waves of violence,
and sometimes dashed agaiust the rocks of treachery."
Again, writing of the subversion of the Roman Empire lj> the
Northern barbarians, he says that had America then been dis-
covered, and navigation sufficiently advanced, "the intumescence
of nations would have found its vent, like all other expansive vio-
lences, where there was least resistance"
Allegory. There are several allegories in the 'Rambler' on the
model of the allegories in the ' Spectator.' One in the ' Rambler '
on " Wit and Learning " is the model of Dr Campbell's allegory
cm " Probability and Plausibility," examined minutely in the Ap-
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 421
pcndix to Bain's ' Rhetoric.' The allegoric style of composition,
though still occasionally used, now makes its appearance in com-
position much less frequently than in the age of Johnson. The
following is an example of the artificial manufacture, from ' Ram-
bler ' 96 " Truth, Falsehood, and Fiction, an Allegory " :
"While the world was yet in its infancy, TRUTH came among mortals
from above, and FALSEHOOD from below. TRUTH was the daughter of
JUPITER and WISDOM ; FALSEHOOD was the progeny of FOLLY impregnated
by the wind. . . .
"It sometimes happened that the antagonists met in full opposition. In
these encounters, FALSEHOOD always invested her head with clouds, and
commanded FRAUD to place ambushes about her. In her left hand she
born the shield of IMPUDENCE, and the quiver of SOPHISTRY rattled on her
shoulder. All the passions attended at her call; VANITY clapped her wings
before, and OBSTINACY supported her behind," &c.
Contrast. From his earliest composition to his last, Johnson
shows a liking for strong antithesis. It is frequently combined
with balance, and has been already to some extent illustrated.
He is particularly fond of antithesis in his succinct expositions of
character and style. Goldsmith is "a man who had the art of
being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion ;
whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without
constraint, and easy without weakness." Rowe "seldom moves
either pity or terror, but he often elevates the sentiments ; he sel-
dom pierces the breast, but he always delights the ear, and often
improves the understanding." "The 'Thessalia' of Rowe deserves
more notice than it obtains, and as it is more read will be more
esteemed." We have already quoted his account of Addison.
QUALITIES OP STYLE.
Simplicity. Perhaps the most common objection to Johnson'i
Btyle is that it contains too many heavy words of Latin origin.
The objection is just, but there are one or two things that the
objectors commonly overlook One is that his earlier style is
much more Latinised than his later : as already remarked, his
' Lives of the Poets ' contains more of the Saxon element than the
average style of the present day. Another thing is that his Latin
derivatives are not of his own coining : he told Boswell that he
had not taken upon him to add more than four or five words to
the language; and being, as a lexicographer, brought painfully
face to face with gaps in our language, he must in this respect
have practised no little self-denial. Finally, he is much lesa
Latinised than several writers of note both before and after him
than Sir Thomas Browne, for instance, or Robertson, or Gibbon.
The ' Rambler ' certainly is a. very ponderous composition. Re-
viewing it himself later in life, he shook his head, and exclaimed
422 FUOM 1730 TO 1760.
that it was "too wordy." Take as an example the following,
which is not an extreme case :
"In cities, and yet more in courts, the minute discriminations which
distinguish one from another are for the most part effaced, the peculiarities
of temper and opinion are gradually worn away by promiscuous converse,
a angular bodies and uneven surfaces lose their points and asperities by
frequent attrition against one another, and approach by degrees to uniform
rotundity."
Compare this with a passage from Sterne, where you have the
same idea:
"The genius of a people, where nothing but the monarchy is salique,
having ceded this department, with sundry others, totally to the women,
by a continual higgling with customers of all ranks and sizes from morning
to night, like so many rough pebbles shook along together in a bag, by ami-
cable collisions they have worn down their asperities and sharp angles, and
not only become round and smooth, but will receive, some of them, a polish
like a brilliant."
Again, take the following, which is rather an extreme example,
and reads almost like caricature " Johnsonese " :
."The proverbial oracles of our parsimonious ancestors have informed us,
that the fatal waste of fortune is by small expenses, by the profusion of sums
too little singly to alarm our caution, and which we never suffer ourselves
to consider together. Of the same kind is the prodigality of life; he that
hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to
know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle
of time fall useless to the ground. "
A simple writer would have expressed this in some such way as
the following :
" Take care of the pennies," says the thrifty old proverb, " and the pounds
will take care of themselves." In like manner we might say, Take care of
the minutes, and the years will take care of themselves.
The heaviness of Johnson's style does not arise from any ab-
struseness in the subject-matter. The ' .Rambler ' took up mainly
subjects suitable for light reading. The explanation seems to be
that his ear was enamoured of a measured ponderous movement,
of a lofty departure from the simple pace of common speech, and
that he was not versatile enough to adopt any other, even when
this was flagrantly unsuitable to the occasion. Myrtilla, a young
lady of sixteen, is made to state her case as follows :
' " Sir, you seem in all your papers to be an enemy of tyranny, and to look
with impartiality upon the world ; I shall therefore lay my case before you,
and hope by your decisiou to be set free from unreasonable restraints, and
enabled to justify myself against the accusations which spite and peevish-
ness produce against me.
"At the age of five years I lost my mother, and my father, being not
qualified to superintend the education of a girl, committed me to the care of
his si&ter, who instructed me witli the authority, aud, not to deny her what
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 423
she may justly claim, with the affection of a parent. She had not very
elevated sentiments or extensive views, but her principles were good, and
her intentions pure; and though some may practise more virtues, scarce any
commit fewer faults."
In the above extract we see one good example of the peculiar use
of the abstract noun that has already been spoken of as peculiarly
Johnsonian. He uses the abstract noun with an active verb us if
it were the name of a person " the accusations which spite and
peevishness produce against me." Another example is seen in the
extract immediately preceding " sums too little singly to alarm
our caution." This is one of Johnson's most characteristic peculi-
arities, and appears no less in his later than in his earlier works.
Clearness. Writing with an intense concentration of his energies
upon the work in hand, he is generally successful in seizing upon
the most apposite words to express his meaning. He is also anx-
ious to be understood, and guards the reader from misapprehension
by stating what he does not mean. (We have already exemplified
his frequent use of contrast to explain qualities of style.) But he
was too hurried to be a minutely accurate writer. His assertions
are too unqualified. He had little of the scrupulous precision of
De Quincey : the utmost we can say is, that his expressions are
accurate in the main, and that he had an honest dislike to vague
language. He ridicules the vague use of the word Nature, a suj>-
jiosititious entity not unfrequently appealed to even in our tima
Rasselas asks a philosopher what is meant by " living according to
nature," and receives the following caricature in answer:
" To act according to nature, is to act always with due regard to the tit-
ness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects ; to concur
with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity ; to co-operate
with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things. "
Strength. Johnson's style is seldom or never impassioned. He
delivers himself with severe magisterial dignity and vigorous
authoritative brevity.
Robert Hall, in his early days, made Johnson a model, but soon
gave him up, complaining of a want of fervour in his morality.
Though profoundly convinced of the doctrines of Religion, he sel-
dom dilates on her "august solemnities," or on the grandeur of
her hopes and fears. What he keeps principally in view is the
beneficial effect of religious belief on human conduct, laying down
the law in sonorous dogmas.
In the presence of objects that raise emotions of sublimity in
other men, he was on the watch to lay hold of general rules. In-
stead of giving way to the aesthetic influences of the situation, he
pondered on the causes or the moral value of them, and meditated
dictatorial, high-sounding, general propositions. He acknowledged
himself impressed by the ruins of Icolmkill ; but instead of giving
424 FROM 1730 TO 1760.
expression to the sublime thoughts awakened by the place, he
fabricated the following sentence :
" Whatever withdraws us from the power of the senses ; whatever makes
the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances
us in the dignity of thinking beings." 1
One may choose examples of his severity and comprehensive
vigour from any page of the ' Rambler ' or of the ' Lives of the
Poets.'
Pathos. A certain softness is thrown over the stern moralising
of the ' Rambler ' by the humane designs of the moralist Good
advice, however roughly given, if it is honest and not ill-natured,
has a kindly effect. Farther, there is a pathetic air of gloomy
melancholy about his sonorous reflections on the vanity of human
wishes. But there is little in any part of Johnson's writings to
touch the warmer affections.
On themes of sorrow, as on themes of sublimity, his power to
move is paralysed by his constant tendency to reason and moralise.
Instead of sympathising with distress, lie seems to ask himself, Is
distress in these circumstances reasonable ? Rasselas in the happy
valley reasons acutely on the causes of his discontent :
"I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted
with its proper pleasures, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man surely
has some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has
some desires distinct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can be
happy."
But though he is said to " bewail his miseries with eloquence,"
his lamentations are not very touching :
" As he passed through the fields, and saw the animals around him, 'Ye,'
said he, ' are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among yon,
burdened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity; for
it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses from which ye are free ;
I fear pain when I do not feel it ; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected,
and sometimes start at evils anticipated : surety the equity of Providence has
balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments."
So when the Princess Nekayah loses her favourite maid Pekuah,
and "sinks down inconsolable in hopeless dejection," she is repre-
sented as holding her own in an argument with the philosopher
Imlac as to whether she " does well " to be sorrowful :
1 This proposition is an example of the sounding tautology that Johnson was
sometimes betrayed into by his powerful command of expression. It might be
analysed and translated into "Whatever makes us think more, gives increased
occupation to our thoughts." Similarly, his famous couplet
" Let observation with extensive view
Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
Is rendered " Let observation, with extensive observation, observe mankind
extensively."
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 425
"'Since Pekuah was taken from me,' said the princess, 'I have no
pleasure to reject or to retain. She that has no one to love or trust, has
little to hope. Sne wants the radical principle of happiness. We may, per-
haps, allow, that what satisfaction this world can afford, must arise from the
conjunction of wealth, knowledge, and goodness. Wealth is nothing but as
it is bestowed, and knowledge nothing but as it is communicated : they
must therefore be imparted to others, and to whom could I now delight to
impart them I Goodness affords the only comfort which can be enjoyed
without a partner, and goodness may be practised in retirement.' "
In the expression of impassioned affection he is as "uncouth
and tumultuous" as Garrick described him to have been in his
conjugal endearments. See, for example, the passionate lament of
the devoted Anningait on leaving his mistress Ajut :
" '0 life ! ' says he, 'frail and uncertain ! where shall wretched man find
thy resemblance but in ice floating on the ocean ? It towers on high, it sparkles
from afar, while the storms drive and the waters beat it, the sun melts it
above, and the rocks shatter it below. What art thou, deceitful pleasure !
but a sudden blaze streaming from the north, which plays a moment on the
eye, mocks the traveller with the hopes of light, and then vanishes for ever ?
What, love, art thou, but a whirlpool, which we approach without know-
ledge of our danger, drawn on by imperceptible degrees, till we have lost all
power of resistance and escape t Till I fixed my eyes on the graces of Ajut,
while I had not yet called her to the banquet, I was careless as the sleeping
morse, I was merry as the singers in the stars. Why, Ajut, did I gaze upon
thy graces ? why, my fair, did I call thee to the banquet ? Yet, be faith-
ful, my love, remember Anningait, and meet my return with the smiles of
virginity. I will chase the deer, I will subdue the whale, resistless as the
frost of darkness, and unwearied as the summer sun. In a few weeks I shall
return prosperous and wealthy ; then shall the roe-fish and the porpoise
feast thy kindred ; the fox and hare shall cover thy couch ; the tough hide
of the seal shall shelter thee from cold ; and the fat of the whale illuminate
thy dwelling.'"
The Ludicrous. The ' Rambler ' is much more serious in its tone
than the 'Spectator.' There is a greater proportion of gravely
didactic papers. Not that the 'Rambler' has not considerable
variety of topics. He does not confine himself to rebuking and
satirising vices : like the ' Spectator,' he aims at being a censor of
minor immoralities. Humorous satire of the follies of young men
and young women of fashion alternates with grave rebuke to scep-
ticism, and grave advice to young and old of both sexes and of
different occupations. But the prevailing tone is serious.
His sarcasm is very different from the " gay malevolence " of
Addison, and his humour very different from the good-natured
sympathy of Steele. When his indignation is roused, his vitu-
peration is round and unqualified. When he is in a pleasant mood,
his humour is broad and arrogant. The most pleasing form of his
humour is when he is humorous at his own expense.
The review of ' A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin
of Evil, by Soame Jenyns,' is a well-known example of his bully-
ing ridicule :
426 FROM 1730 TO 1760.
"He calls It a Free Enquiry, and indeed his freedom is, I think, greatei
than his modesty. Though he is far from the contemptible arrogance, of
the impious licentiousness, of Bolingbroke, yet he decides too easily upon
questions out of the reach of human determination, with too little con-
sideration of mortal weakness, and with too much vivacity for the necessary
caution."
" I am told that this pamphlet is not the effort of hunger : what can it be
then but the product of vanity ? and yet how can vanity be gratified by
plagiarism or transcription ? When the specnlatist finds himself prompted
to another performance, let him consider whether he is about to disburthen
his mind or employ his fingers ; and if I might venture to offer him a sub-
ject, I should wish that he would solve this question, Why he that has
nothing to write, should desire to be a writer ? "
The above shows the Great Moralist in his most unfavourable
aspect. He appeared thus only when his deep prejudices were
crossed. Many of the ' Ramblers ' are full of genuine humour,
broad and hearty, and of happy strokes of wit The following
account of " The Busy Life of a Young Lady," purporting to bo
written by herself, is a favourable specimen. It forms one of the
latest ' Ramblers,' and is written in an appropriately simple style,
as if he had been warned of the incongruity of his sounding periods
on similar occasions before :
"Dear Mr Rambler, I have been four days confined to my chamber by a
cold, which has already kept me from three plays, nine sales, five shows,
and six card-tables, and put me seventeen visits behind ; and the doctor tells
my mamma, that if I fret and cry, it will settle in my head, and I shall not
be fit to be seen these six weeks. But, dear Mr Rambler, how can I help
it t At this very time Melissa is dancing with the prettiest gentleman :
she will breakfast with him to-morrow, and then run to two auctions, and
hear compliments, and have presents ; then she will be dressed, and visit,
and get a ticket to the piny ; then go to cards and win, and come home with
two flambeaux before her chair. Dear Mr Hambler, who can bear it ?
" My aunt has just brought me a bundle of your papers for my amuse-
ment. She says you ore a philosopher, and will teach me to moderate my
desires, ami look upon the world with indiiference. But, dear Sir, I do not
wish nor intend to moderate my desires, nor can I think it proper to look
upon the world with indifference, till the world looks with indifference on
me. I have been forced, however, to sit this morning a whole quarter of
an hour with your paper before my face ; but just as my aunt came in,
riiyllida had brought nie a letter from Mr Trip, which I put within the
leaves; and read about absence and inconsolableness, and ardour, and irresis-
tible passion, and eternal constancy, while my aunt imagined that I was
puzzling myself with your philosophy, and often cried out, when she saw
me look confused, ' If there is any word which you do not understand, child,
I will explain it. '
" But their principal intention was to make me afraid of men ; in which
they succeeded so well for a time, that I durst not look in their faces, or be
left alone with them in a parlour ; for they made me fancy that no man ever
spoke but to deceive, or looked but to allure ; that the girl who suffered him
that had once squeezed her hand, to approach her a second time, was on the
brink of ruin ; and that she who answered a billet without consulting her
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 427
relations, gave love such power over her, that she would certainly become
either poor or infamous.
"But I am most at a loss to guess for what purpose they related such
tragic stories of the cruelty, perfidy, and artifices of men, who, if they ever
were so malicious and destructive, have certainly now reformed their manners.
1 have not, since my entrance into the world, found one who does not jiro-
fess himself devoted to my service, and ready to live or die as I ahull
command him. They are so far from intending to hurt me, that their
only contention is who shall be allowed most closely to attend, and most
frequently to treat me ; when different places of entertainment or schemes
of pleasure are mentioned, 1 can see the eye sparkle and the cheek glow
of him whop*) proposals obtain my approbation ; he then leads me off in
triumph, adores my condescension, and congratulates himself that he has
lived to the hour of felicity. Are these, Mr Rambler, creatures to be feared ?
Is it likely that any injury will be done me by those who can enjoy life only
while I favour them with my presence f "
KINDS OF COMPOSITION.
Description. Johnson rarely attempts to describe natural
scenery, and where he does try, as in the description of the
" Happy Valley," in ' Rasselas,' the clumsiness and poverty of the
language betray his want of familiarity with the work. His in-
terest, as he boasted, centred in man.
Narration, He never attempted national history. Indeed he
had a positive dislike to the subject, and rudely put down any-
body that introduced it into conversation. As a biographer, he
had great reputation in his own day. His Life of Savage, and his
Lives of the great naval heroes, Blake and Drake (contributed to
the ' Gentleman's Magazine '), were so much admired and talked
of, that the king specially desired him to write the lives of his
literary predecessors.
The excellence of his Lives consists not in narrative skill, nor in
power of showing in varied lights the prominent features of char-
acter, but in the numerous maxims, moral and literary, attached
to the biographical incidents. The narrative is really secondary.
Such is his propensity to moralise, that the events in his biog-
raphies seem reduced to the importance of so many texts.
Exposition. Johnson had not the qualifications of a popular
expositor. His diction was too Latinised, and he did not suffi-
ciently relieve the dryness of general statements by examples and
illustrations.
The only art of exposition that he excels in is the putting of a
statement obversely. We have already remarked his love of anti-
thesis. In the review of Jenyns (which is also a good measure of
his logical power) this is particularly apparent
The short political tract entitled " The Patriot " is a very fav-
ourable specimen of his expository style. He considers with much
428 FROM 1730 TO 1760.
vigour the various distinguishing marks of a true patriot, what
he will do, and what he will not do ; and then, obveiyely, " what
will prove a man to be not a patriot."
In expounding various delusive signs of patriotism, he proceeds
almost entirely by repetition in pointed forms, direct and obverse.
The following is a specimen :
"Some claim a place in the list of patriots by an acrimonious and unre-
mitting opposition to the Court.
"This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily in-
cluded in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country.
He that has been refused a reasonable or unreasonable request, who thinks
his merit underrated, and sees his influence declining, begins soon to talk of
natural equality, the absurdity of many made for one, the original compact,
the foundation of authority, and the majesty of the people. As his political
melancholy increases, he tells, and perhaps dreams, of the advances of the
prerogative, and the dangers of arbitrary power ; yet Ms design in all hia
declamation is not to benefit his country, but to gratify his malice."
Even this, which is in his later style, and is much more simple and
concrete than the 'Rambler,' would have been more popularly
effective if enlivened by examples. Macaulay would certainly have
produced cases in point, if any were to be had. The following
extract is more lively towards the end :
" It is the quality of patriotism to be jealous and watchful, to observe all
secret machinations, and to see public dangers at a distance. The true lover
of his country is ready to communicate his fears, and to sound the alarm
whenever he pereeives the approach of mischief. But he sounds no alarm
when there is no enemy ; he never terrifies his countrymen till he is terri-
fied himself. The patriotism, therefore, may be justly doubted of him,
who" [better, we may justly doubt the patriotism of him that] "professes
to be disturbed by incredulities ; who tells that the last peace was obtained
by bribing the Princess of Wales ; that the King is grasping at arbitrary
power ; and that, because the French in their new conquests enjoy their
own laws, thois is a design at Court of abolishing in England the trial by
juries."
Persuasion. Johnson's faulty exposition diminished hia influ-
ence with the generality of readers. The magisterial air of his
'Rambler' probably awed many into reading him. with respect,
and trying to profit by his doctrine ; but the dry abstract char-
acter of the exposition must have made the perusal anything but
a labour of love.
His political tracts must have exercised the very minimum of
influence for the productions of so great a writer. He was the last
man in the world to conciliate opposition, and his strong powers
of argument were warped by prejudice. His 'Taxation no Tyr-
anny,' written to defend the taxation of the American colonists
against their will, is at once overbearing and sophistical It
might inflame and iinbitter partisans, but it was too abusive and
too unreasonable to make converts.
THEOLOGY. 429
OTHER
THEOLOGY.
At the beginning of this period the controversy with the Deista
was at its height. Tindal's ' Christianity as old as the Creation '
had wrought the excitement to a frenzy. There was no lack of
replies in various degrees of power ; Leland enumerates as " valu-
able treatises" that appeared within the year 1730, works by Dr
Thomas Burnet, Dr Waterland, Mr Law, Mr Jackson, Dr Stebbing,
Mr Balguy, James afterwards Dr Foster, and a " pastoral letter "
by Bishop Sherlock. There were many others. One of the most
elaborate defences was made by Dr John Conybeare (1691-1757),
afterwards Bishop of Bristol This is praised by Warburton as
"one of the best- reasoned books in the world."
The Deists were reinforced by Thomas Morgan find Thomas
Chubb. Morgan published in 1737 'The Moral Philosopher, a
dialogue between Philalethes, a Christian Deist, and Theophanes,
a Christian Jew.' He does not hold with Tindal that the Chris-
tian republication of the law of nature is superfluous. He holds
that Christ's promulgation of " the true and genuine principles of
nature and reason " " were such as the people had never heard or
thought of before, and never would have known, without such an
instructor, such means and opportunities of knowledge." He calls
himself a Christian Deist But he repudiates both miracles and
prophecy : Christ, he holds, attained moral truth by " the strength
and superiority of his own natural faculties," and in that sense
may be said to have had the light of revelation ! He attacks
Judaism. " He representeth the law of Moses as ' having neither
truth nor goodness in it, and as a wretched scheme of superstition,
blindness, and slavery, contrary to all reason and common-sense,
set up under the specious popular pretence of a divine instruction
and revelation from God.' And he endeavours to prove that thia
was the sentiment of St Paul" Further, he attacks the preaching
of the apostles "pretends that they preached different gospels,
and that the New Testament is a jumble of inconsistent religions."
Morgan was specially refuted by Joseph Hallet, Dr John Chap-
man, and Dr Leland. Thomas Chubb (1679-1747), was a self-
educated man, journeyman to a tallow-chandler, yet much taken
notice of for his "strong natural parts and acuteness" by wealthy
patrons of letters. In his 'True Gospel of Jesus Christ asserted,'
and in his ' Discourse on Miracles," he takes much the same ground
as Morgan. He left for publication after his death a variety of
tracts on the most important subjects of religion. In these tracts,
among other sceptical views, he expresses uncertainty regarding a
future life.
430 FROM 1730 TO 1760.
Among the Deists it is usual to reckon Lord Bolingbroke. His
philosophical works, containing his arguments against orthodox
theology, were not published till 1754. By that time the excite-
ment had died down. His declamations against religion, which
went far beyond all previous attacks, were replied to by Leland
and Warburton.
By far the ablest of the Christian Apologists was Joseph But-
ler (1692-1752), Bishop of Bristol and Dean of St Paul's. His
'Analogy' (1736) is so compact and exhaustive, that it has super-
seded and destroyed the reputation of all the replies to the Deists
then current It was directed chiefly against Tindal's 'Chris-
tianity as old as the Creation.' In the first part he proves elabor-
ately that there is a Mural Governor of the universe who has
placed man in a state of probation, and rebuts any argument from
the incomprehensibility of parts of the scheme of the world to
the untruth of the leading doctrines of natural theology. In the
second part he maintains Christianity to be a divine republication
of natural religion, and marshals the various evidences. The work
is most thorough. It is a sagacious digest of all that had been
said in the course of the controversy. "It is no paradox to say
that the merit of the ' Analogy ' lies in its want of originality. It
came (1736) towards the end of the deistical period. It is the
result of twenty years' study the very twenty years during which
the deistical notions formed the atmosphere which educated people
breathed. The objections it meets are not new and unseasoned
objections, but such as had worn well, and had borne the rub of
controversy, because they were genuine. And it will be equally
hard to find in the ' Analogy ' any topic in reply which had not
been suggested in the pamphlets and sermons of the preceding
half-century." "Butler's eminence over his contemporary apolo-
gists is seen in nothing more than in that superior sagacity which
rejects the use of any plea that is not entitled to consideration
singly. In the other evidential books of the time, we find a mis-
cellaneous crowd of suggestions of very various value; never
fanciful but often trivial ; undeniable, but weak as proof of the
point they are brought to prove." 1 The matter of the work must
indeed be of sterling value to retain it in the place it has perma-
nently assumed as a text-book of Natural Theology. The style, as
a style designed for general reading, could hardly be worse. It
would hardly be possible to make a book more abstruse and diffi-
cult This probably arises partly, as Mr Pattison points out, from
his aiming at logical precision, at arranging the arguments so that
each shall have its exact weight, and no more. He is probably
entitled to the merit of precision. But his sins against simplicity,
against ready intelligibility, are heinous. His sentences are long
1 Mr Pattisou Essays and Reviews, pp 287, 289.
THEOLOGY. 431
and intricate, he studies to express himself in the most abstract
form possible, and there are very few examples or illustrations to
relieve the dry press of general statements. His defects as a
popular expositor are most vividly felt when he is compared
with Paley, who may be said to have interpreted him to the
multitude.
In William Warburton (1698-1779), Bishop of Gloucester, we
see a controversialist very different from the abstract and dignified
Butler, a bold man, of great intellectual force and wide erudition.
In his youth he was articled to an attorney. He took orders in
1727, and soon after obtained the rectory of Brand Broughton, in
Lincoln. His first work was, in 1736, on the alliance between
Church and State. His masterpiece is ' The Divine Legation of
Moses' (1738). The leading idea, which immediately involved
him in controversy, is the paradox that there is no mention of a
future state in the Old Testament, and that this, so far from being
an argument against its divine origin, is an argument in favour.
With much learning and ingemiity he seeks to establish that no
ruler except Moses has ever kept a people in subjection without
the sanction of punishments in a future life, and argues that Moses
could not have done so without supernatural assistance. Besides
this great work, he published sermons and controversial tracts
chiefly in defence of the Legation, and in refutation and abuse
of Bolingbroke. One of his most famous exploits was his defence
of Pope against the charge of Deism. Pope, it is said, had been
led on the ice by his friend Bolingbroke, and had adopted doubt-
ful tenets without being fully aware of their bearing. Warburton
went opportunely to the rescue, and proved a redoubtable cham-
pion. In Warburton force predominated very much over judg-
ment He delighted in upholding paradoxes and hopeless causes
arguing with great ingenuity, eking out his argument with
plentiful abuse, and, when violently excited, even going the
length of threatening his opponent with the cudgel. His com-
mand of language, if used with greater discretion, would have
given him one of the highest places in literature. His style is
simple, emphatic, and racy ; diversified with clever quotations
and pungent sarcasm (often taking the form of irony).
Dr John Leland (1691-1766), a Presbyterian minister in Dublin,
acquired considerable fame in the deistical controversy, which he
made the chief occupation of his Ufa He wrote separate works
against Tindal, Morgan, Dodwell, and Bolinghroke. His ' View
of the Deistical Writers' (1754), a brief work written in a spirit
of praiseworthy moderation, is still a text-book for students of
divinity. His great work, ' On the Advantage and Necessity of a
Christian Revelation ' (1764), is long since forgotten.
Dr Nathaniel Lardner (1684-1768), also a Dissenting minister,
432 FROM 1730 TO 1760.
published between 1730 and 1757 his voluminous 'Credibility of
the Gospel History.' This vast quarry of learning supplied Paley
with the material for his more neat and substantial ' Evidences.'
Dr James Foster 1 (1697-1753), another Dissenting minister
who, when he preached in London, drew wits and beaux to
hear him, making something like the sensation afterwards pro-
duced by Edward Irving took part against the Deists in various
tracts.
While the deistical controversy was raging, sacred literature
was not wholly neglected. Bishop Robert Lowth (1710-1787)
acquired great fame as a Biblical critic, translator, and commen-
tator. Dr Kennicot (1718-1783) began in 1753 his great work of
collating the MSS. of the Hebrew Bible. Bishop Thomas New-
ton (1704-1782), the editor of Milton, published in 1754 his famous
'Dissertations on the Prophecies.' Archbishop Seeker (d. 1768),
a man of somewhat eventful life, wrote lectures on the Catechism
of the Church of England, which were widely circulated in their
day. Bishop Edmund Law (1703-1787), who edited the works of
Locke, and whose life is written by Paley, published ' Considera-
tions on the Theory of Religion, and Reflections on the Life and
Character of Christ.'
Three or four devotional writings (or works in " hortatory the-
ology," as Dr Johnson calls them) that were written during this
period still hold their ground. Law's ' Serious Call to a Holy
Life ' (William Law, 1686-1761) is remarkable, aa the book that
is said to have converted Johnson from youthful levity. Watts' s
' On Improvement of the Mind ' (Dr Isaac Watts, 1674-1748, a
youthful prodigy, a well-known author of religious hymns) was
published about the beginning of this period. Doddridge's ' Rise
and Progress of Religion in the Soul' (Dr Philip Doddridge,
1702-1751, one of the most distinguished of Nonconformist divines,
and author of numerous religious works) was published in 1745.
Hervey's ' Meditations on the Tombs ' (James Hervey, 1714-
1758, took part against Bolingbroke, and had with Sandemau
a controversy of his own concerning the nature of faith), upon
its publication in 1746,. achieved immediate popularity, and is
still to be found in nearly every Scotch household its somewhat
bombastic ornaments being no blemish in the eyes of uncritical
readers.
The most celebrated pulpit orators of this generation, with the
exception perhaps of James Foster, belonged to the Methodists.
The germ of the Methodist Society was the " Holy Club " at
Oxford, which, in 1732, included the two Wesleys, John and
Charles, Whitefield, and " Meditation " Hervey, and drew inspi-
ration from the author of the ' Serious Call,' the spiritual father
" All these three D.D.'s received the honour from Aberdeen.
PHILOSOPHY. 435
of John Wesley. The name Methodist was first given to Charles
Wesley, 1 and from him extended to his companions.
John Wesley (1703-1791), the son of an English clergyman s
studied at Oxford and took orders. After officiating for some
years as curate to his father, he returned to Oxford, was intro-
duced by his brother Charles to the young "Methodists," and
entered into their enthusiasm. He spent two years in evangel
ising the newly established colony of Georgia (1735-37). Return
ing to England, he found himself one of the leaders of an impetu-
ous religious awakening. In 1741 he and Whiten" eld agreed to
separate. Wesley was comparatively a cold man, with a genius
for ruling, and strove rather to restrain the impetuosity of his fol-
lowers, acting as a drag upon their estrangement from the Church
of England. He did not permit the independent organisation of
Methodism till 1784. His preaching had not the melting power
of Whitefield's. It would seem to have been more strenuous ; at
least it had the peculiar effect of throwing excitable hearers into
convulsions.
George Whitefield (1714-1770), the founder of Calvinistic Meth-
odism, was celebrated for the marvellous power of his oratory.
He preached in many parts of England, America, and Scotland.
Everybody is familiar with the anecdotes of his preaching ; with
his drawing tears from the eyes of the Bristol colliers, and money
from the pocket of Benjamin Franklin. His published sermons
are far from equal to his reputation ; the charm seems to have
been in his voice, elocution, and gesture.
The founders of the Secession Church in Scotland, the two
brothers, Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, were also noted preachers,
especially Ebenezer. They were deposed by the General Assembly
in 1740. The chief cause of the quarrel with the Established
Church was the law of patronage. They are usually spoken of as
heading in Scotland a religious revival such as Wesley and White-
field began in England.
PHILOSOPHY.
The present is quite a flowering period in ethical and meta-
physical literature. Hutcheson was in full vigour at the com-
mencement of it ; Edwards, Hartley, and Hume were publishing
before it was far gone ; Price and Adam Smith began to publish
just before its close.
Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747), a native of Ireland, a student
at Glasgow, received in 1729 the appointment of Professor of
1 Charles Wesley was six years older than Hervey and Whitefield, and was
the originator of the Club. When he introduced his brother John to the Club,
John, being a senior of about thirty years of age, was looked up to with respect,
aud soou became their leader.
2 iv
434 FHOM 1730 TO 1760.
Moral Philosophy in Glasgow. He usually receives the credit ot
having by his eloquence and enthusiasm given the first great
stimulus to mental philosophy in Scotland. His chief works were
' Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue,'
first published in 1725 ; 'Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the
Passions and Affections,' 1728; 'A System of Moral Philosophy,'
published in 1755, after his death, containing the completest ex-
position of his views. He adopted and worked out Shaftesbury's
suggestion of a Moral Sense. He maintained the existence of dis-
interested feelings. He placed the Highest Good in the pleasures
of sympathy, moral goodness, and piety exalting these against
"creature comforts," Epicurean "enjoyment of life." His style
was copious and glowing. He tries to engage the attention of the
reader by great abundance of examples and comparisons.
David Hartley (1705-1757), a physician, was the first to bring
into prominence the doctrine of the association of ideas, explaining
by this theory the growth of moral sentiments. He is still more
famous as the first English writer to bring into prominence the
doctrine that the brain and the nerves are the instruments of the
mind. Not much has been added to his proofs. He held that
the impressions of sense are conveyed along the nerves by a vibra-
tory movement His ' Observations on Man ' was published in
1749. The style of this work is sober, and possesses few attrac-
tions. It is, however, sufficiently clear, and the doctrines nob
being abstruse, it is, for a psychological work, comparatively easy
reading.
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is notable in Philosophy for his
arguments against the so-called Freedom cvf the Will, and in The-
ology for his defence of the doctrine of Original Sin. He was born
in Windsor, Connecticut, became a preacher, was closely connected
with the great religious revival, though himself too feeUe and
awkward to address multitudes, conducted a mission to the In-
dians, and died President of New Jersey College. His 'Inquiry
into the Freedom of the Will' was published in 1754; his work
on Original Sin in 1 758. He was of a severe ascetic turn. He was
driven from his first charge as a minister in consequence of his
rigorous purging of the sacramental tables. His controversial
acuteness and subtlety in drawing distinctions entitle his works to
their high rank. He had little turn for style. Dry and precise,
without either felicity or ornament, his writings are calculated to
repel all but hard students of their particular subjects.
David Hume (1711-1776) is in this generation what Berkeley,
Locke, and Hobbes were in theirs. He belonged to a good Scot-
tish family. His strong literary turn appeared at an early age.
He tried to learn first law and then commerce, but found both
uncongenial. He spent three years iu France at Rueiiiis and at
PHILOSOPHY. 435
the Jesuit College of La Fleche. Immediately thereafter, in 1739,
he published his 'Treatise of Human Nature.' In 1741-42 ap-
peared his 'Essays Moral and Political'; in 1748 his 'Inquirj
concerning Human Understanding'; in 1751 his 'Inquiry con-
cerning the Principles of Morals' ; from 1754 to 1762 the various
volumes of his ' History of England.' While these were in course
of preparation he did not make his living by literature alone.
During one year he had charge of an insane young nobleman ; for
two years he was secretary to General St Glair, accompanying him
on an expedition to the coast of France and on a mission to Turin.
Thereafter he had important appointments in the service of the
Government From 1763 to 1766 he was Secretary to the British
Embassy at Paris, and on his return home became Under-Secre-
tary of State for the Northern Department. The last six years
of his life he spent in the pleasant society of Edinburgh. His
' Dialogues on Natural Religion ' were published by his nephew in
1779, three years after his death. Hume is described as a corpu-
lent man, " of happily- balanced temper," " of simple, unaffected
nature, and kindly disposition." He says of himself " I was, I
say, a man of mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open,
social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little
susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions."
He was not a very productive writer. He did not so much teem
with ideas ; he rather gave himself to the steady elaboration of a
few. His philosophical writings, whatever may be their scientific
value, have the merit of being clear and consistent. He was very
painstaking with his composition. His manuscripts bear evidence
of the most careful revision and fastidious choice of words and
phrases. Especially was he anxious to weed his diction of Scotti-
cisms, inviting criticism and correction with a genuine desire to
profit thereby. He offends chiefly by using terms peculiar to
Scotch law. The great beauty of his style is its perspicuity. His
choice of words is often very apt, and the combinations felicitous.
The heavy character of his subjects is enlivened by a constant dry
sparkle of antithesis, and occasional touches of quiet sarcasm and
humour. He is highly eulogised by Dr Nathan Drake "The
Essays of Hume, in fact, sometimes present the reader with the
grace and sweetness of Addison, accompanied with a higher finish-
ing and more accurate tact in the arrangement and structure of
periods ; so that no language is more clear and lively, more neat
and chaste, more durably and delicately pleasing to the ear, than
what may be produced from the best portions of those elaborate
but very sceptical disquisitions."
Adam Smith and Price published ethical works towards the
close of this period, but they belong properly to the next gen-
eration.
436 FEOM 1730 TO 17CO.
HISTORY.
The most famous historical work of this period is Hume's * His-
tory of England,' from the earliest times down to the Revolution.
The author's original idea was to write this History from the
Union of the Crowns to the accession of George I. He never
brought it further down than the Revolution ; and when he had
brought it to that point he enlarged his scheme in the other direc-
tion went back to the invasion of Julius Caesar, and carried down
the narrative to the Union. The work was highly popular. It is
sometimes compared with the ' History of England ' by Macaulay,
who began where Hume left off, and who is said to have been
ambitious of proving a worthy continuator of the elder historian.
The style, though more abstract and much less spirited than
Macaulay's, and though the writer aimed at being " concise after
the manner of the ancients," was brilliant and sparkling as com-
pared with the ordinary historical performances of that or of prior
date. There was also in the work a great feature of novelty.
Hume was the first to mix with the history of public transactions
accounts of the condition of the people, and of the state of arts
and sciences. Although these supplementary chapters of his are
very imperfect, and though he had neither materials for the task
nor a just conception of the difficulty of it, still the little that he
gave was a pleasing innovation. Like Macaulay, he is accused of
partiality in his explanation of events, but in the opposite direc-
tion. He is accused of giving a favourable representation of the
despotic conduct of the Stuarts, and of trying to throw discredit
on the popular leaders.
A 'Complete History of England,' also from the invasion of
Julius Caesar, but brought down to a later period than Hume's
to 1748 (afterwards to 1765), was published by Tobias Smollett,
the novelist, in 1758. A narrative from Smollett's pen could not
fail to be attractive. But such a work written in fourteen months
could hardly compete in manner, and still less in matter, with the
eight years' careful labour of Hume. The style is fluent and loose,
possessing a careless vigour where the subject is naturally exciting,
but composed too hastily to rise above dulness in the record of dry
transactions. As regards matter, the historian can make no pre-
tension to original research. He executed the book as a piece of
buck -work for a London bookseller, availing himself freely of
previous publications, and taking no pains to bring new facts to
light He was in too great a hurry even to compare and check
authorities : the history is said to be full of errors and inconsist-
encies. The concluding part of the work is sometimes printed aa
a continuation of Hume.
HISTORY. 437
Among the minor historians of the period were Thomas Carte
(b. 1686), an intense Jacobite, secretary to Bishop Atterbury,
author of a 'General History of England' (1747), and of a ' His-
tory of the Life of James, Duke of Ormond ' ; Nathaniel Hooke
(d. 1763), who assisted the famous Duchess of Maryborough in the
vindication of her life, compiler of a 'History of Rome' (1733-
1771), remarkable as taking the side of the plebeians; William
Harris (1720-1770), author of memoirs of James L, Charles L,
Oliver Cromwell, and Charles IL ; and the compilers of a ' Uni-
versal History,' published about 1760 namely, three Scotsmen
(Archibald Bower, John Campbell, and William Guthrie), 1
George Sale (translator of the Koran), and George Psalmanazar,
the pretended native of Formosa With these we may reckon
Lord Hervey, the Sporus of Pope, whose ' Memoirs of the Reign
of George II. , from his Accession to the Death of Queen Caroline,'
were published by Mr Croker in 1848.
The writer of the ' Life of Cicero,' a historical biography, Dr
Conyers Middleton (1683-1750), receives high praise for his style
from Dr Nathan Drake, when that work is said to be " the earliest
classical production which we possess in the department of history."
This, however, is considerably modified in what follows :
"Its reputation, however, as a specimen of fine writing, is on the decline.
. . . The chief defects of the composition of the ' Life of Cirero' have
arisen from the labour bestowed upon it. The sentences are too often, in
their construction, pedantic and stiff, owing in a great measure to the per-
petual adoption of circumlocutions, in order to avoid customary phrases and
modes of expression. The author has indeed, upon this plan, given a kind
of verbose dignity to his style ; but, at the same time, frequently sacrificed
ease, perspicuity, and spirit. In grammatical construction, he is for the
most part pure and correct ; but in his choice of words he has exhibited
frequent marks of defective taste. He is occasionally elegant and precise,
but more commonly appears majestic, yet encumbered, struggling under the
very mass of diction which he has laboured to accumulate. He has con-
tributed, however, to improve English composition by affording examples of
unusual correctness in the construction of his sentences, and of that round-
ness, plenitude, and harmony of period lor which his favourite Cicero has
been so universally renowned."
Middleton was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, an im-
placable enemy of the Master, Richard Bentley, with whom he had
several lawsuits, and whose New Testament he attacked with ex-
treme bitterness. He wrote several works of some note in their
day. He is severely handled by De Quincey, who calls him " the
most malignant of a malignant crew," rejoices that his gross unac-
1 Mentioned by Boswell as a political writer of such power, that Government
" thought it worth their while to keep him quiet by a pension." He was one of
the first authors by profession, unconnected with polities, though he <lid uot
scruple to enlarge his income by taking a side, lie is praised as thelirst historian
that made extensive searches among original documents. '
438 FROM 1730 TO 1760.
knowledged plagiarisms were detected, denounces him for being a
free-thinker all the time that he drew his bread from the Church,
and says that his style " at one time obtained credit through the
caprice of a fashionable critic."
The antiquaries of the period were, William Stukeley (1687-
1765), author of an Itinerary ; Dr Thomas Birch (1705-1765), an
industrious and faithful Dryasdust, associated with Sale in editing
Bayle's Dictionary, writer of biographical memoirs, editor of Milton,
of Dr Robert Boyle, of Thurloe's State Papers, &c. <fcc. ; Thomas
Elackwell (1701-1757), Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen,
a great enthusiast, who gave a new impulse to classical studies in
the North, and whose ' Memoirs of the Court of Augustus ' was
ridiculed by Johnson for its affectations of style.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), the famous discoverer of the
identity of lightning with the electrical spark, wrote several mis-
cellaneous papers, scientific and political, which have doubtless
had no small influence in forming American style. His chequered
life is pretty generally known. He made his fortune as a printer,
solely by his own sagacity, industry, and prudence, and bore a
distinguished part in the assertion of American independence, act-
ing as ambassador to Franca His writings are remarkable for
simplicity, terseness, and forca Both the language and the illus-
trations fit the meaning with emphatic closeness. He affects no
graces of style : a hard-headed, practical man, he seeks to convey
his meaning as briefly and as emphatically as possibla Thus
" Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industri-
ous and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will
be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be nappy ; at least you
will, by such conduct, stand the best chance for such consequences."
"He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face."
" He thit for giving a draught of water to a thirsty person should expect
to be paid with a good plantation, would be modest in his demands com-
pared with those who think they deserve heaven for the little good they do
on earth."
A writer of a very different stamp is William Melmoth
(1710-1799), the elegant translator of Pliny and Cicero, and author
of ' Letters of Sir Thomas Fitzosborne on several Subjects ' (1742).
"The style of Melmoth," says Dr Nathan Drake, "both in his
original and translated works, is easy, perspicuous, and elegant
He is more correct in grammatical construction, more select in his
choice of words, than any preceding writer ; but he is sometimes
languid and verbose. His taste, which was very refined and pure,
has seldom permitted him to adopt ornament not congenial to the
MISCELLANEOUS WEITEES. 439
subject of discussion, and his diction is therefore singularly chaste
and free from inflation."
James Harris (1709-1780), a man of fortune, who rose to be a
Lord of the Treasury, was celebrated as a writer on Art, Grammar,
and Logic. His most famous work is entitled ' Hermes, or a Phil-
osophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar.'
Dr John Brown (1715-1766), a friend of Warburton and Pope, a
critic of the Earl of Shaftesbury, is praised by Wordsworth as the
first to appreciate and describe the scenery of the English Lakes.
CHAPTER VIIL
FROM 1760 TO 17901,
EDMUND BURKE,
17281797.
UNTIL the publication of Mr Macknight's 'Life of Burke,' the
biographies of this eminent orator, writer, and statesman were full
of minute errors. Contradictory statements prevailed concerning
the date and place of his birth, the religion of his parents, his
early education, his employments before he entered Parliament,
and many other points wherein assurance is to be desired regard-
ing a man of such eminence.
He was born in a house on Arran Quay, Dublin, most probably
on January 12, 1728 or 1729.* His supposed ancestors were
wealthy citizens of Limerick, who adhered to the Catholic faith,
and lost their possessions in the time of Cromwell His father
was a solicitor in good practice, and belonged to the Protestant
communion. His mother's name was Nagle ; she was a Roman
Catholic. It is of some consequence to note that Burke's earliest
years were spent under the care of his Catholic uncles, who farmed
some land of their own in the south of Ireland, and that his school-
master (Abraham Shackleton, of Ballitore, in Kildare) was a
Quaker. He had thus the best possible training in the toleration
of different creeds. From 1743 to 1748 he was a student in
Trinity College, Dublin. He was too desultory to excel in the
studies of the place ; he had occasional fits of application to mathe-
matics and logic ; and he was awarded a scholarship in classics :
but he did not carry off the highest honours in any one department
1 1728 according to the register of Trinity College ; 1729 according to the tablet
in Beaconsneld Church.
EDMUND BTJRKE. 441
Not that, like his contemporary the gay Goldsmith, he wasted his
time in frolic and dissipation ; but he gave himself up to miscel-
laneous reading, especially of poetry, to verse-making, and to day-
dreaming. In 1747 he entered his name at the Middle Temple,
and in 1750 went to London to keep law terms ; but in this new
study he showed equally little diligence, and for some years is to
be conceived " as a young Templar, in delicate health, fond of
jaunting about England, fond of literature, and anything but fond
of law." i
His first literary productions appeared in 1756. 'A Vindication
of Natural Society,' intended as a parody of Bolingbroke's reason-
ings on religion, is sometimes praised as a successful piece of
mimicry ; but it contains more of the real Burke than of the sham
Bolingbroke. It may be viewed as an exercise in the style that
the author ultimately adopted as his habitual manner of composi-
tion. The ' Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful ' has much less
glow and sweep of style ; the writer's flow of words seems to be
painfully embarrassed by the necessity of observing order and
proportion of statement. In 1757 he married. The same year
he wrote ' An Account of European Settlements in America,' and
an unfinished ' Essay towards an Abridgment of English History.'
Next year he suggested to Dodsley the ' Annual Register,' a yearly
summary of notable facts. He is supposed to have written the
whole of this annual for 1758 and for 1759, and to have contrib-
uted the political summary for a good many years after.
In 1759 he was introduced more intimately to political life. In
that year he became connected with " Single-Speech " Hamilton as
private secretary, or, as he was nicknamed, "jackal," his previous
studies making him well qualified to act as political tutor. He
accompanied Hamilton to Ireland in 1761, and is supposed to have
been the original prompter of the efforts then instituted by Gov-
ernment to relax the inhuman penal laws against the Roman
Catholics. In 1765, his connection with Hamilton having ended
in an open rupture, he was fortunate enough to obtain the higher
appointment of private secretary to the Prime Minister, Lord
Rockingham, who continued his friend and patron to the last
He entered Parliament in 1766 as member for Wendover. Our
space will not allow us to trace his career minutely. During his
first session he supported Rockingham's conciliatory policy towards
the irritated colonies of North America in speeches that fairly
rivalled the eloquence of the veteran Chatham. Thereafter he
vigorously defended this policy both in Parliament and out of it,
with speech and with pamphlet, through several stormy years until
the final rupture and Declaration of Independence. ' Observations
1 The story that in 1751 he applied for the Professorship of Logic in Glasgow
is discredited as absurd, and its origin sufficiently accounted for.
442 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
on a late Publication, intituled The Present State of the "Nation,'
a reply to a jeremiad supposed to be written by Grenville, appeared
in 1769; 'Thoughts on Present Discontents' in the following
year. His patronage of the colonies was widely acknowledged
In 1771 he was appointed agent for the State of New York, with
a salary of 500 a year ; and in 1774 he was returned to Parlia-
ment free of expense by the peace-loving merchants of Bristol
His famous speech " on conciliation with America " was made in
support of certain resolutions that he introduced in 1775.
In 1778 he supported Lord Nugent's proposals for freeing the
trade of Ireland from certain restrictions. The credit of this
action which, indeed, " the impartial historian " would have
expected from any Irishman of moderately patriotic feelings
is not a little diminished by his factious opposition to Pitt's
endeavours in 1785 to procure the abolition of the remaining
restrictions.
In 1780 he brought forward his great scheme of economical
reform. The ministers of the Crown had at their disposal a large
number of lucrative sinecures, nominal posts in the royal house-
hold, and suchlike. On this patronage a gigantic system of
corruption, used by the Government to bribe adherents Burke
proposed to make considerable curtailments. Only a small part
of his scheme was carried.
About the same time his attention was powerfully drawn to
Indian misgovernment by his kinsman William Burke. In 1781
he sat on a committee of inquiry. In 1783 he assisted in concoct-
ing Fox's India Bill, which proposed to abolish the East India
Company and vest the government in seven commissioners ap-
pointed for life. Shortly afterwards he opposed the more consti-
tutional and judicious Bill introduced by Pitt. One of the most
memorable events of his life was the conduct of the impeachment
of Warren Hastings for tyrannical abuse of his power as Governor
of India. The trial lasted from 1788 to 1794, judgment not being
pronounced till 1796.
Much has been said regarding his views of the French Revolu-
tion, and his consequent separation from his political associates
In a debate on the Army Estimates in 1790, Fox took occasion to
praise the French Guards, because, during the late commotions,
they had sided, not with the Court, but with the people ; they
"hail shown t)>at men, by becoming soldiers, did not cease to be
citizens." In the course of the same debate Burke deprecated this
praise, called them " not citizens, but base hireling mutineers, and
mercenary sordid deserters," and warmly asserted that rather than
give the least countenance in England to the distemper of France,
he would " abandon his best friends, and join with his worst
enemies." Afterwards, when the leading members of his party
EDMUND BURKE. 443
avowed a decided sympathy with the Revolution, he openly and
violently broke with them, and employed his eloquence in decrying
that event with such effect that he has been called the leader of
the reactionary movement throughout Europe. His most famous
writings on the subject are ' Reflections on the French Revolution,'
1790 ; ' An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,' 1791 ; and
' Letters on a Regicide Peace,' 1796.
In 1794 he retired from Parliament Shortly after, he sustained
a great blow in the death of his only son, who had just been elected
for Malton in his stead. Towards the end of the same year he
received a pension from Government ; and the apparent inconsist-
ency of an economical reformer accepting such a boon having been
attacked by the Duke of Bedford in the House of Lords, he re-
plied in his famous "Letter to a Noble Lord," February 1795.
He died at Beaconsfield on July 8, 1797.
Burke's appearance is described by Mr Macknight in the follow-
ing terms : " Tall, and apparently endowed with much vigour of
body, his presence was noble and his appearance prepossessing. In
later years, the first peculiarity which caught the eye as Burke
walked forwards, as his custom was, to speak in the middle of
the House, were his spectacles, which, from shortness of sight,
seemed never absent from his face. . . . His dress, though
not slovenly, was by no means such as would have suited a leader
of fashion. He had the air of a man who was full of thought and
care, and to whom his outward appearance was not of the slightest
consideration. But as a set-off to this disadvantage, there was in
his whole deportment a sense of personal dignity and habitual
self-respect. . . . His brow was massive. . . . They who
knew how amiable Burke was in his private life, and how warm
and tender was the heart within, might expect to see these softer
qualities depicted on his countenance. But they would have been
disappointed. It was not usual at any time to see his face
mantling with smiles ; he decidedly looked like a great man, but
not like a meek or gentle one. ... All his troubles were
impressed on his working features, and gave them a somewhat
severe expression, which deepened as he advanced in years, until
they became to some observers unpleasantly hard. The marks
about the jaw, the firmness of the lines about the mouth, the stern
glance of the eye, and the furrows on the expansive forehead, were
all the sad ravages left by the difficulties and sorrows of genius,
aud by the iron which had entered the soul"
"During his boyhood, and even for some years after he had
reached manhood, his health was very delicate." He had an
athletic frame, but a tendency to consumption threatened him in
his childhood, and again when first he went to reside in London.
444 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
De Quincey justly describes Burke as " the supreme writer of
his century." No writer of that century is to be compared with
him as regards command of English expression. With equal
justice, as it seems to us, he is described by Carlyle as " a man
vehement rather than earnest ; a resplendent, far-sighted Rheto-
rician, rather than a deep, sure Thinker." Others, who eagerly
and somewhat perversely question this judgment of Carlyle' s,
maintain him to have been " a man of the highest genius, taking
rank with Shakspeare and Bacon." There is no necessary dis-
crepancy between these views, if only we recognise diversity of
gifts, and cease to advance impossible claims for our favourite
authors. Burke may have had as much intellectual force as either
Shakspeare or Bacon, although it displayed itself in a different line.
To be such a rhetorician as he was implies no common powers
immense resources of expression and illustration, a wide and ready
command of facts, and fertile and far-sighted ingenuity in arrang-
ing facts and principles for the purposes of persuasion. To be
among the foremost rhetoricians demands, probably, as great in-
tellectual power of its kind as to be among the foremost poets or
the foremost men of science. Be this as it may, one cannot read
much of Burke's writings without seeing that they are essentially
rhetorical His ' Vindication of Natural Society ' is obviously an
exercise in the art of special pleading. Even his 'Essay on the
Sublime and Beautiful ' is the work of a rhetorician rather than a
clear-sighted analyst It is not a profound analysis of aesthetic
emotions, but a wide assemblage of facts, and an ingenious plead-
ing in favour of some very fanciful theories. His various pamphlets
and speeches are, as Mr Arnold says, " saturated with ideas " ; but
the ideas are all brought out with polemical objects. Many of
them appear to have occurred in the heat of pressing his point,
and sometimes their application even carries an air of sophistry.
The claim of high political sagacity, so often advanced in his
favour, is not incompatible with this splendid ingenuity in ac-
cumulating substantial and insubstantial arguments in support of
his views. Yet one may well doubt whether Burke's political
sagacity was of the first rank. Certain of his predictions are
sometimes quoted as evidence of this sagacity ; but not to men-
tion that many of his predictions were oracular failures, the very
fact of making confident political predictions is in itself an evi-
dence of want of sagacity. It is, of course, unprofitable to argue
regarding a term so vague ; yet we are safe to say that the highest
honours of sagacity cannot be awarded to a man confessedly one-
Bided. He was too vehement and passionate to be always master
of his sagacity. "When "his passions were asleep," says an able
editor of his works, " and his judgment calm, no man could dis-
play more perspicacity ; the range and comprehensiveness of hia
EDMUND HURKE. 445
intellect peculiarly fitted him for grappling with tlie most difficult
and complicated subjects. But his inuiyiiuilion ivas capable of lead-
ing him into the wildest extravagances." We can understand hia
vehemence against the French Revolution : for a quarter of a
century he had been the persistent champion of constitutional
conservatism, and a persistent enemy to the realisation of political
ideals ; and in the close of his life he found his lessons violently
infringed, and his favourite pupils applauding the infringement as
the highest achievement of political wisdom. Nothing could have
been more exasperating to a man of proud sensibilities. But his
views of the French Revolution are not the only evidence of his
strong partiality for his own schemes. His opposition to Pitt's
India Bill, and to Pitt's Bill for relieving the commerce of Ireland,
offers perhaps stronger evidence of blind attachment to precon-
ceived opinions. Doubtless he saw many aspects of a question,
but he insisted upon throwing over them all a colour favourable
to his own conclusions. The inability to look with the eyes of
other men is universally admitted to have marred his influence in
Parliament. Mr Macknight, who writes the Hie of Burke with
somewhat of a biographer's partiality, allows that " his vehemence
indeed was frequently injurious to the object he had in view.
With. his friends in a hopeless minority, his cherished measures
entirely defeated, and his policy abhorred both by the Court and the
nation, instead of growing apathetic, or at least quiescent, during
this summer, he became only the more pertinacious, and even
violent in his denunciations of the Indian interest and the Govern-
ment which it supported. His speeches at this time abound in
imagery, philanthropy, wisdom, all the noblest characteristics of
his genius ; yet was the manner of their delivery so impetuous and
fervent, that plain men, who knew nothing and cared less about
the crimes which he declared to have been perpetrated in India,
thought his zeal, remaining, as it did, unseconded by the two
leaders of the House, to be almost incompatible with soundness
of mind."
In many respects Burke presents a strong contrast to the social
open-hearted Goldsmith. Both were compassionate and generous,
and both were extremely sensitive to kindness and to affronts.
But Burke had much more pride and reserve about him than
Goldsmith ; he was a much more dignified character. Goldsmith,
with his keen sense of the ridiculous, and his power and habit of
looking at himself from a spectator's point of view, often made a
butt of his own failings. Burke bore himself with decorous self-
respect When Goldsmith wanted money, he borrowed openly
and without shame ; Burke died lieavily in debt, yet somehow we
never hear the circumstance mentioned. There was a correspond-
ing difference between the men in their social demeanour. Gold-
446 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
smith bestowed his affections, one might almost say, promiscuously ;
he was ready to fraternise with almost anybody : Burke, on the
contrary, was a man of intense personal attachments, a devoted
husband, a fond father, a firm adherent to the interests of his
patron. Volatile in his likings, Goldsmith was equally volatile in
his dislikings. He was eminently a placable man, incapable of a
sustained grudge. Burke hated with a vehemence corresponding
to the warmth of his attachments, and thought no expression too
coarse, no comparison too degrading, for the objects of his resent-
ment To complete the parallel, Goldsmith's wit is light, and his
style very seldom endeavours to soar; Burke deals rather in
dignified irony or direct personal ridicule, and often soars to the
highest heights of rhetorical sublimity.
Burke possessed great industry, great powers of acquisition.
" He used to boast that he had ' none of that master-vice, sloth,*
in his disposition." "The most minute provisions of a compre-
hensive act of legislation the most wearisome drudgeries of
Parliamentary committees the driest and most tedious investi-
gations necessary for drawing up elaborate reports, to all this
his patience and industry were fully equal. Some of the public
documents he drew up are generally allowed to be perfect models
of that species of composition."
His ideal polity was government by a patriotic aristocracy. He
was never weary of maintaining that the end of government is the
good of the people, not the aggrandisement of the governing body.
At the same time, he did not recognise what the majority of voices
has since declared to be the best means of securing this. He
resisted Parliamentary reform. Looking to the corruption and
venality of the electors, he was disposed rather to lessen their
number with a view to increasing their weight and independence.
Against the selfishness of rulers, in case they were inclined to
pursue their own interests and forget their duties to the country,
he provided no check but unembodied public opinion.
From the beginning to the end of his political life he frequently
declaimed against the immediate practical application of what he
called "metaphysical theories" of government He was partic-
ularly hostile to the obtrusion of " natural rights " as a basis for
legislation. The statesman has to consider not what is right in
the abstract, but what is expedient in given circumstances. For
his own part, the British constitution came near his ideal polity,
and he vehemently contended that no change should be made
except to remedy specific grievances. The disabilities of the
Catholics, hardships in the Penal Code, financial extravagance,
the iniquities of the Slave Trade, were unmistakable definite
evils, and should be redressed ; deficient representation in Parlia-
EDMUND BUKKE. 447
ment was but an imaginary evil a hardship in speculation, not
ID practice.
With all his contempt for " visionary politicians," " metaphy-
sical theorists," " legislators of the schools," " sophisters," and
suchlike, he must not be classed with such "practical men" as
Macaulay, who profess to dispense with theory altogether. " I
do not," he says, " put abstract ideas out of the question, because
I well know that under that name I should dismiss principles,
and that without the guide and light of sound, well-understood
principles, all reasonings in politics, as in everything else, would
be only a confused jumble of particular facts and details, without
the means of drawing out any theoretical or practical conclusion."
Again
" I do not vilify theory and spectilation no, because that would be to
vilify reason itself. No ; whenever 1 speak against theory, I always mean
a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded, or imperfect theory ; and one of
the ways of discovering that it is a false theory is to compare it with practice.
This is the true touchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs
of men."
True, his language is not always so guarded ; and unless we
happen to light upon the right passages, we shall suppose him to
have embraced, in his contempt for metaphysical politics, all works
on the theory of government, from Locke downwards. If we read
attentively, we find that in his calm moments he was far from
despising political theories ; his real aversion was for attempts to
give immediate effect to political ideals in all their completeness :
" I do not mean to condemn such speculative enquiries concerning this
great object of the national attention" (the Constitution). "They may
tend to clear doubtful points, and possibly may lead, as they have often
done, to real improvements. What I object to, is their introduction into a
discourse relating to the immediate state of our affairs, and recommending
plans of practical government. "
One great feature in his statesmanship was his consistent en-
deavour to introduce into the conduct of affairs between nation
and nation higher principles of morality. Nations should be
humane, just, and generous in their dealings with nations, as
men should be humane, just, and generous in their dealings with
men ; what is immoral for a man is equally immoral for a nation.
He ignored the fact that there is no earthly tribunal to preside
over international disputes ; no executive to punish international
delinquencies ; no higher power to guarantee nations in the posses-
sion of life and property should their neighbours be less generous
and just than themselves.
448 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
ELEMENTS OF STYLE,
Vocabulary. Burke' s command of expression is strikingly rich.
He rejoices in multiform repetitions, in varied presentations of the
subject-matter :
" It may be safely said that there never was a man under whose
hands language was more plastic and ductile. No matter what his
subject no matter what the modification of thought which de-
mands expression he has always at command language at once
the most appropriate and the most beautiful. As to the materials
of his style, his vocabulary was as extensive as his knowledge,
and that was boundless. It consisted of the accumulated spoils of
many languages and of all agea Not only so, the technicalities
and appropriated phraseology of almost all sciences and arts, pro-
fessions and modes of life, were familiar to him, and were ready to
express in the most emphatic manner the exhaustless metaphors
which his imagination supplied from these sources. What is not
a little remarkable, he could employ with equal power all the ele-
ments of our copious language, combining the eloquence and rich-
ness of a classical diction with all the nerve and energy of our
Saxon vernacular. For lofty or dignified sentiment, he has at
command all the magnificence of the former ; while to give point
and energy to sarcasm, and ridicule, and invective, he can employ
the full powers of the latter."
We have already sai 1 that we regard such unqualified panegyrics
as hopeless but profitable ideals, rather than descriptions of any-
thing that has been or can be actually achieved. Perfect command
of English, like any other perfection, is hard to attain ; we must
be content to rank Burke among the few that have come nearest
to that perfection.
The following are two examples of his habit of urging the same
fact in many different forms. The first is from his reply to the
political pamphlet supposed to have been written by Grenville :
"The piece is called 'The Present State of the Nation.' It may be con-
idered as a sort of digest of the avowed maxims of a certain political school,
the effects of whose doctrines and practices this country will feel long and
severely. It is made up of a farrago of almost every topic which has been
agitated on national afairs in Parliamentary debate, or private conversation,
for these last seven years. The oldest controversies are hauled out of the
dust with which time and neglect had covered them. Arguments ten times
repeated, a thousand times answered before, are here repeated again. Public
accounts formerly printed and reprinted revolve once more, and find their
old station in this sober meridian. All the commonplace lamentations upon
the decay of trade, the increase of taxes, and the high price of labour and
provisions, are here retailed again and again in the same tone with which
they have drawled through columns of Gazetteers and Advertisers for
ccuiury together. Paradoxes which aU'ruiit common -sense, and uuiiiterest-
EDMUND BUUKE. 449
ing barren truths which generate no conclusion, are thrown in to augment
unwieldy bulk without adding anything to weight. Because two accusations
are better than one, contradictions are set staring one another in the face
without even an attempt to reconcile them. And, to give the whcle a sort
of portentous air of labour and information, the table of the House of Com-
mons is swept into this grand reservoir of politics."
Our other example is taken from the famous ' Letter to a Noble
Lord':
"Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary tribunals, where
men have been put to death for no other reason than that they had obtained
favours from the Crown. I claim not the letter, but the spirit, of the old
English law that is, to be tried by my peers. I decline his Grace's juris-
diction as a judge. I challenge the Duke of Bedford as & juror to pass upon
the value of my services. Whatever his natural parts may be, I cannot
recognise in his few and idle years, the competence to judge of my long and
laborious life. If I can help it, he shall not be upon the inquest of my
quantum meruit. Poor rich man ! He can hardly know anything of public
industry in its exertions, or can estimate its compensations when its work
is done. I have no doubt of his Grace's readiness in all the calculations of
vulgar arithmetic ; but I shrewdly suspect that he is little studied in the
theory of moral proportions ; and has never learned the rule of three in the
arithmetic of policy and state. "
Sentences. Giving his strength to the choice of words and of
illustrations, he seems to have paid little attention to the mech-
anism of his sentences. Clumsily constructed sentences occur
frequently in his essay on the 'Sublime and Beautiful,' and
occasionally in his later productions. He cannot be said to
write in a formed style. In many of his vehement passages the
sentences move with an abruptness and rapidity resembling the
habitual mannerism of Macaulay. Nearly all the 'Letter to a
Noble Lord' is written in this style. The following extract is
a good specimen :
' In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his attack upon me
and my mortuary pension. He cannot readily comprehend the transaction
he condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit of no bargain ; the
production of no intrigue ; the result of no compromise ; the ett'ect of no
solicitation. The first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately or
immediately, to His Majesty or any of his ministers. It was long known
that the instant my engagements would permit it, and before the heaviest
of all calamities had for ever condemned me to obscurity and sorrow, I had
resolved on a total retreat. I had executed that design. I was entirely out
of the way of serving or of hurting any statesman or any party when the
ministers so generously and so nobly carried into effect the spontaneous
bounty of the Crown. Both descriptions have acted as became them.
When I could no longer serve them, the ministers have considered my
situation. When I could no longer hurt them, the Revolutionists have
trampled on my infirmity, My gratitude, I trust, is equal to the manner
in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me, indeed, at a time of
life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no circumstance of fortune
could afford me any real pleasure. But this was no fawlt in the royal donor,
or in his ministers, who were pleased, in acknowledging the merit* of an
9, V
450 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
invalid servant of the public, to assuage the sorrows of a desolate old
man. "
Figures of Speech. Burke's profusion of figurative language has
been the theme of endless admiration. His mind was a repertory
of things generally known concerning history, sciences, profes-
sions, manufactures, handicrafts ; and he drew illustrations from
all classes of subjects in his multifarious knowledge. It is too
much to say that " abstract and physical science, the most familiar
and domestic arts, the professions, nay, the handicrafts practised
by all classes of men, must yield up their peculiar mysteries, tlieir
most recondite and technical phraseology, to furnish the materials
of his illustrations." Such things need " illustration " rather than
afford it To make obscurities plain, we do not have recourse to
the most recondite and technical phraseology of special occupa-
tions. Burke does, indeed, occasionally use very technical terms
such as " lixiviated " and " aphelion " ; but it is misleading to
speak of this in the language of admiration.
It is usually said that his later writings are much more figura-
tive than his earlier. In the hands of Macaulay this paradoxical
circumstance has been greatly exaggerated. The figurative lan-
guage of his earlier productions is more subdued, and attracts
comparatively little attention ; but the figurative turn is unmis-
takably there. And the language of his youthful letters is quite
as extravagant as the most extravagant of his fulminations against
the French Revolution.
Like Carlyle, he makes abundant use both of tropes and of the
explicit figures. He is especially rich in metaphors : he has been
called " the greatest master of metaphor that the world has ever
seen;" and if we except Carlyle, we may allow that he is the
most metaphorical of our prose writers.
We shall not attempt to give a classified illustration of his
figures. They are taken, as we have said, from many sources.
A few extracts from his 'Letter to a Noble Lord' will give the
reader a fair idea of their character. We must, however, remem-
ber that this composition was written at fever -heat, with the
flaming vehemence of insulted sensibility, and that the illustra-
tions have a corresponding temperature. Otherwise the specimen
is sufficiently representative :
" Let me tell my youthful censor that the necessities of that time required
something very different from what others then suggested, or what his Grace
now conceives. Let me inform him that it was one of the most critical
periods in our annals.
"Astronomers have supposed, that if a certain comet, whose path inter-
cepted the ecliptic, had met the earth in some ( I forget what) sign, it would
have whirled us along with it, in its eccentric course, into God knows what
regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous cornet of the Rights of Man
(which 'from its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war,' and ' with fear of
EDMUND BURKE. 451
change perplexes monarehs"), had that comet crossed upon us in that inter-
nal state of England, nothing human could have prevented our being irre-
sistibly hurried out of the highway of heaven into all the vices, crimes,
horrors, and miseries of the French Revolution.
" Happily, France was not then jacobinised. Her hostility was at a good
distance. We had a limb cut off ; but we preserved the body. We lost our
colonies ; but we kept our constitution. There was indeed much intestine
heat ; there was a dreadful fermentation. Wild and savage insurrection
quitted the woods, and prowled about our streets in the name of reform.
" Had [certain ' Parliamentary reforms '] taken place, not France, but
England, would have had the honour of leading up the death -dance of
democratic revolution.
" My measures were, what I then truly stated them to the Housa to be, in
their intent, healing and mediatorial. I heaved the lead every inch of way
I made.
"The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to
reform anything ; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all unchanged.
The consequences are before us not in remote history, not in future prog-
nostication : they are about us ; they are upon us. The revolution harpies
of France, sprung from night and hell, or from that chaotic anarchy which
generates equivocally ' all monstrous, all prodigious things,' cuckoo-like,
adulterously lay their eggs, and brood over and hatch them in the nest of
every neighbouring State. These obscene harpies, who deck themselves in
I know not what divine attributes, but who in reality are foul and ravenous
birds of prey (both mothers and daughters), flutter over our heads, and
souse down upon our tables, and leave nothing unrent, unrifled, unravaged,
or unpolluted with the slime of their filthy ofl'al.
" I was not, like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled
into a legislator ; Nitor in adversum is the motto for a man like me. At
every step of my progress in life (for every step was 1 traversed and op-
posed), and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my passport,
and again and again to prove my title to the honour of being useful to my
country.
" The grants to the house of Kussel were so enormous as not only to out-
rage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Dnke of Bedford is the
leviathan among all the creatures of the Crown. He tumbles about his
unwieldy bulk ; he plays and he frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty.
Hugs as he is, and whilst ' he lies floating many a rood,' he is still a crea-
ture. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles
through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers me
all over with the spray everything of him and about him is from the
throne. Is it for him to question the dispensation of the royal favour I
" The persons who have suffered from the cannibal philosophy of Frame
are so like the Duke of Bedford, that nothing but his Grace's probably not
speaking quite so good French, could enable us to find out any difference.
. . . I assure him that the Frenchified faction, more encouraged than
others, are warned by what has happened in France. Look at him and his
landed possessions as an object at once of curiosity and rapacity. He ia
inmle fur them in every part of their double character. As robbers, to them
452 FKOM 1760 TO 1790.
he is a noble booty ; as speculatists, he is a glorious subject for their experi-
mental philosophy. He affords matter for an extensive analysis in all the
branches of their science, geometrical, physical, civil, and political
Deep philosophers are no fritters : brave sans-culottes are no formalists.
They will no more regard a Marquis of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavi-
stock ; the Lord of Woburn will not be more respectable in their eyes than
the Prior of Woburn ; they will make no difference between the superior of
a Covent Garden of nuns, and of a Covent Garden of another description.
They will not care a rush whether his coat is long or short ; whether the
colour be purple or bine and buff. They will not trouble their heads with
what part of his head his hair is cut from ; and they will look with equal
respect on a tonsure and a crop. Their only question will be, that of their
Lfffrndre, or some other of their legislative butchers, how he cuts up ? how
he tallows in the caul or on the kidneys?
" Is it not a singular phenomenon, that whilst the sans-culotte carcase-
butchers, and the philosophers of the shambles, are pricking their dotted
lines upon his hide, and like the print of the poor ox that we see at the
shop-windows at Charing-Cross, alive as he is, and thinking no harm in the
world, he is divided iuto rumps, and sirloins, and briskets, and into all sorts
of pieces for roasting, boiling, and stewing, that all the while they are
measuring him, his Grace is measuring me ; is invidiously comparing the
bounty of the Crown with the deserts of the defender of his order, and in
the same moment fawning on those who have the knife half out of the
sheath poor innocent !
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood."*
QUALITIES OP STYLE.
Simplicity. From the nature of his subjects, and the imperious
necessity of being directly intelligible to an audience, the public
speaker generally uses a more familiar diction than the writer of
recondite books ; and when he takes his pen in hand to produce a
political pamphlet, his style is likely to have something of the easy
intelligibility of his speeches. Burke cannot be classed among the
more abstruse writers of our language. But he may be said to be
abstruse for an orator. His turn of expression is often abstract ;
and in the pursuit of loftiness and dignity, he introduces a large
mixture of unfamiliar words from Latin sources.
Not, however, that he is invariably magniloquent. He fre-
quently unl>ends, and then becomes homely enough. Especially
when he wishes to cover anything with ridicule, his words are
taken from everyday speech, and his figures from the commonest
objects; indeed, both words and figures are often plain to the
degree of being coarse.
He is the model of Macaulay in his abundant use of facts and
statistics. But his facts and statistics have not the simple effect
of Macaulay's ; he is more thoroughgoing, enters more into detail ;
his ' Observations on the State of the Nation,' and his speech on
' P^conomical Reform,' are not superficial productions, but discuss
their respective topics with the fulness of a speech on the Budget
EDMUND BURKE. 453
Clearness, Perspicuity. His earlier writings are arranged with
great clearness. His later works, like Carlyle's political rhap-
sodies, are less perspicuous. He was aware of the importance of
method ; in his ' Reflections on the French Revolution,' he adopted
the form of a letter advisedly, that he might have greater scope.
" A different plan, he was sensible, might have been more favour-
able to a commodious division and distribution of the matter."
In such a work, rigid obedience to a plan would have been a cold
obstruction to the warm flow of his eloquence.
Precision. It may be doubted whether, with all his industry, he
had patience enough to be a precise writer. His treatise on the
' Sublime and Beautiful ' is very much wanting in the exactness
required for scientific discussion. He shows himself conscious of
the principle that in scientific writing each word should be used in
a definite sense ; and himself proposes to give the loose word " de-
light " a distinctive signification ; but before many pages are over
he violates his own definition.
Strength. Strength is the prominent quality in Burke's style,
as it is in our literature generally. The peculiar mode is difficult
to express ; but it may be said that Burke's strength has some-
thing of the quality of Macaulay's, although possessing greater
body and less rapidity and point We have already mentioned
the similarity in the structure of their sentences. They have also
a similar declamatory energy, a similar concreteness, and some-
thing of the same mixture of original turns of expression with a
copious use of stock-phrases. Before we can feel the resemblance,
we must leave out of sight the differences in opinion and in depth
and range of thought ; when we succeed in disregarding these
differences in subject-matter, the resemblance otherwise is very
striking.
The following is a fair specimen of the general style of the
' Reflections. 1 In it we can easily trace all the above points of
resemblance to Macaulay :
" I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic
ejaculation commonly called nuiic dimittis, made on the first presentation of
our Saviour in the Temple, and applying it with an inhuman and unnatural
rapture, to the most horrid, atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps
ever was exhibited to the pity and indignation of manic ind. This 'leading
in triumph,' a thing in its best form unmanly and irreligious, which tills
our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the
moral taste of every well-born mind. Several English were the stupefied
and indignant spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have been
strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling a procession of American
savages, entering into Onondago, after some of their murders called victories,
and leading into hovels hung round with scalps, their captives, overpowered
with the scoffs and buffets of women as ferocious as themselves, much more
Mian it resembled the triumphal pomp of a civilised, martial nation ; if a
civilised nation, or any men who had a sense of generosity, were capable of
454 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
a personal triumph over the fallen and the afflicted. ... I must believe
that the National Assembly find themselves in a state of the greatest humili-
ation in not being able to punish the authors of this triumph or the actors
in it ; and that they are in a situation in which any inquiry they may mak
upon the subject must be destitute even of the appearance of liberty or im-
partiality. The apology of that Assembly is found in their situation ; !>ut
when we approve what they must bear, it is in us the degenerate choice ot \
vitiated mind. (
' ' With a compelled appearance of deliberation they vote under the
dominion of a stern necessity. They sit in the heart, as it were, of a
foreign republic ; they have their residence in a city whose constitution has
emanated neither from the charter of their king, nor from their legislative
power. There they are surrounded by an army not raised either by the
authority of their crown, or by their command ; and which, if they should
order to dissolve itself, would instantly dissolve them. There they sit, after
a gang of assassins had driven away some hundreds of the members ; whilst
those who held the same moderate principles, with more patience or better
hope, continued every day exposed to outrageous insults and murderous
threats. There a majority, sometimes real, sometimes pretended, captive
itself, compels a captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand, the
polluted nonsense of their most licentious and giddy coffee-houses. It is
notorious that all their measures are decided before they are debated. It is
beyond doubt that under the terror of the bayonet, and the lamp-post, and
the torch to their houses, they are obliged to adopt all the crude and des-
perate measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all
conditions, tongues, and nations. Among these are found persons, in com-
parison of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and Cethegus a man
of sobriety and moderation. Nor is it in the clubs alone that the public
measures are deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous distortion
in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set
up in all the places of public resort. In these meetings of all sorts, every
counsel, in proportion as it is daring, and violent, and perfidious, is taken
for a mark of superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as
the fruits of superstition and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is
considered as treason to the public. Liberty is always to be estimated per-
fect as property is rendered insecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and
confiscation, perpetrated or meditated, they are forming plans for the good
order of future society. Embracing in their arms the carcases of baso
criminals, and promoting their relations on the title of their offences, they
drive hundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to sub-
sist by beggary or by crime."
In passages specially laboured, where Burke's individual genius
is at its height, and the figures and turns of expression are peculi-
arly his own, we cannot profess to trace any appreciable likeness.
The following is quoted by De Quincey, with the remark that
Burke is said to have acknowledged spending more labour upon
it than upon any passage in all his writings, and to have been
tolerably satisfied with the result:
' ' As long as the well-compacted structure of our Church and State, the
sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence,
defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on
the brow of the British Zion ; as long as the British monarchy, not more
limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud keep of
EDMUND BURKE. 455
Windsor, rising In the majesty of proportion, and girt with the donble belt
of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall over-
see and guard the subjected land, so long the mounds and dykes of the low
flat Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the
levellers of France. As long as our sovereign lord the king, and his faithful
subjects the lords and commons of this realm, the triple cord which no man
can break ; the solemn sworn constitutional frank -pledge of this nation ; the
firm guarantees of each other's being and each other's lights ; the joint and
several securities, each in its place and order for every kind and every
quality of property and of dignity, as long as these endure, so long the
Duke of Bedford is safe, and we are all safe together ; the high from the
blights of envy and the spoliation of rapacity ; the low from the iron hand
of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. Amen ! and so be it :
and so it will be,
' Dam domus JEnesz Capitoli immobile saxnm
Accolet ; imperiumque pater Romauus habebit.' "
The great element of power in Burke, over and above what he
has in common with Macaulay, is his extravagant splendour of
imagery. This, especially in the picked passages usually quoted
from him, gives such a flavour to his composition, that readers,
forming their judgment upon these passages, would refuse to
believe how much Macaulay had made him a model. He rises
to a pitch of wild excitement that Macaulay was incapable of.
The images thrown off in these ungovernable moments were such
as Macaulay could never have imitated. The following, from the
'Letters on a Regicide Peace,' describing the embassy to the
French Minister, is a well-known quotation :
" To those who do not love to contemplate the fall of human greatness,
I do not know a more mortifying spectacle than to see the assembled
majesty of the crowned heads of Europe waiting as patient suitors in the
ante-chamber of regicide. They wait, it seems, until the sanguinary tyrant
Carnot shall have snorted away the fumes of the indigested blood of his
sovereign. Then, when, sunk on the down of usurped pomp, he shall have
sufficiently indulged his meditations with what monarch he shall next glut
his ravening maw, he may condescend to signify that it is his pleasure to be
awake ; and that he is at leisure to receive the proposals of his high and
mighty clients for the terms on which he may respite the execution of the
entence he has passed upon them. At the opening of those doors, what a
sight it must be to behold the plenipotentiaries of royal impotence, in tho
precedency which they will intrigue to obtain, and which will be granted to
them according to the seniority of their degradation, sneaking into tho
regicide presence, and, with the relics of the smile, which they had dressed
up for the levee of their masters, still flickering on their curled lips, present-
ing the faded remains of their courtly graces, to meet the scornful, ferocious,
sardonic grin of a bloody ruffian, who, whilst he is receiving their homage,
is measuring them with his eye, and fitting to their size the slider of his
guillotine ! These ambassadors may easily return as good courtiers as they
went : but can they ever return from that degrading residence, loyal and
faithful subjects ; or with any true affection to their master, or true attach-
ment to the constitution, religion, or laws of their country ? There is gu-at
danger that they, who enter smiling into this Trophonian cave, will come
out of it sad and serious conspirators ; and such , will continue as long
456 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
as they live. Thay will become true conductors of contagion to every
country which has had the misfortune to send them to the source of that
electricity."
Pathos. Burke is often said to excel in pathos as in every other
quality of style ; but if we take tranquillity and composure to be
part of the essence of pathos, there is very little of it to be found
within the range of his published works. It was inconsistent with
his purposes as an orator to draw soothing pictures of distress. In
the conclusion of the celebrated Begum charge in the trial of
Warren Hastings, he is said to have made " an affecting appeal
to the feelings and the passions of their lordships ; " but his
object was to horrify and inflame them, not to fill them with
luxurious feelings of compassion. The soft tranquillity of patlios
was inconsistent with his purposes as an orator. It was no less
inconsistent with his nature. An excitable man, of ungovern-
able sensibility, when his feelings were moved he was ever prone
to run into wild extravagance. He probably possessed the power
of communicating his own excitement to such as were not repelled
by it ; but the effect produced went very far beyond the tranquil
borders of pathos.
His well-known allusion to Marie Antoinette is very touching,
but it touches our sensibilities more keenly than pathos. The
emotion cannot sustain itself in the melting inood, but passes into
fiery indignation.
The Ludicrous. During his quarter of a century of polemical
life, he made abundant use of the weapon of ridicule. In his
earlier writings he had recourse chiefly to dignified irony irony
that shows no great wit, but is always pleasing and effective from
the copiousness and vigour of the language. The ridicule of his
later writings, of which we have had a specimen in the quotations
from his ' Letter to a Noble Lord,' is extravagantly excited and
personal. " If by wit," says Mr Rogers, " be meant any of its
lighter and more playful species, then it can hardly be doubted
that in these Burke did not excel ; at least whatever powers of
this kind he might possess, they were in no sort of proportion to
his other intellectual endowments. It is true that Burke was fond
of punning ; his success, however, was not equal to his ardour in
the pursuit Again, if by wit be meant that caustic and subtle
irony, which is the more powerful from the calmness of the style,
and stings the deeper from the collected manner of him who utters
it neither did Burke possess much of this. But if by wit be
meant any of its forms compatible with fierce invective, his
speeches abound with innumerable instances of the highest merit."
His invective, as we see in his attack upon the Duke of Bedford,
is of the most direct and unvarnished kind. He does not scruple
tc make the most grossly offensive comparisons in the plainest
EDMUND BURKE. 457
terms. Frequently, indeed, by his vehemence, he defeated his
own ends. Only partisans could have applauded his recrimina-
tions on the Duke of Bedford, and his unmeasured abuse of
Hastings provoked a reaction in favour of the victim.
The following are examples of the licence that he ventured to
take in his invective against Hastings. We quote from the collec-
tion of his speeches :
" What (said Mr Burke) could make this proud and haughty ruler of India
submit to such language, and bear with such opprobrium ? Guilt, conscious
guilt ! The cursed love of money had got possession of his soul ; and in the
contemplation of his detested wealth, he found sufficient consolation for the
loss of character and of honour. Under the lash of Sir John Clavering, and
the execration of all Asia, he seemed to say with the poet
Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo
Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in area.' 1
It was this love of money that made him deaf to the calls of glory, and
callous to the feelings of honour. It was this unbounded and insatiable
Iussion for money that had seared his conscience and his feelings ; and
liippy in the accumulation of wealth, even by the foulest means, he could
bear, unmoved, the most cutting reproaches of Sir John Claverinjr. He lay
down in his sty of infamy, wallowed in the filth of disgrace, and fattened
upon the offals and excrements of dishonour."
" Mr Burke then cited passages from a variety of oriental authors, prov-
ing the right of property in India, and showing that that property had been
respecteil by the greatest princes and conquerors, by Tamerlane, Gengis
Khan, Khouli Khan, and others. But (said Mr Burke) the Council have
fancied that we compared Air Hastings to Tamerlane and others, and they
have told your lordships of the thousands of men slaughtered by the ambi-
tion of those princes. Good God ! have they lost their senses ? Can they
euppose that we meant to compare a fraudulent maker of bullock-contracts
with an illustrious conqueror ? We never compared Hastings to a lion or a
tiger ; we have compared liim to a rat or a weasel. When we assimilate him
to such contemptible animals, we do not mean to convey an idea of their
incapability of doing injury. When God punished Pharaoh and Egypt, it
was not by armies, but by locusts and by lice, which, though small and
contemptible, are capable of the greatest mischiefs."
Such puerile meanness of invective must inevitably recoil upon
the author. In a cooler frame of mind, Burke himself would
have been the first to condemn it ; and we cannot suppose that
he ever indulged in it without to some extent bullying his artistic
as well as his prudential conscience.
His fury against Hastings carried him to lengths still more
outrageous :
" He made some very sarcastic similes as to the connection between Mr
Hastings and the Begums, quoting Dean Swift's 'Progress of Love' aa
1 " The people hiss me, but when I go home and feast my eyes upon the coins
in my safe, I cry ' Bravo ! ' to myself."
458 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
npplicable on the occnsion. The humour touching the Manny Begnm
flowed something in this way : ' Age has its comforts the consolations of
debility and ugliness m:iy be found in brandy. The old lady had therein a
monopoly. She was a great dealer in the article. But mark the transition
a youth of sentiment and love ; an old age reposing upon the brandy-cask."
He then ironically adverted to the passion of great men for strumpets.
'Antony had his Cleopatra, and Mr Hastings his Munny Begum. It might
be so; for aged, shrivelled, bony deformity had its relish for some palates;
but, good God ! no man ever fell in love with his own banyan 1 ! ' "
We have seen that he compared Hastings to a wallowing sow.
He also compared him to " the keeper of a pig-sty, wallowing
in filth and corruption." Towards the conclusion he became so
violent as to apply the epithets " rogue, common cheat, swindler " ;
and to declare " You must repeal this Act of Parliament, you
must declare the Legislature a liar, before you can acquit Warren
Hastings."
Taste. In his more excited compositions Burke frequently
offends against good tasta His abuse of the Duke of Bedford,
of Warren Hastings, and of the principal actors in the French
Revolution, is often outrageously coarse. His comparison of the
Duke to a whale, his comparison of Hastings to a sow, and hia
imagining Carnot to have drunk the blood of a king, and to be
"snorting away the fumes of indigestion" in consequence, cannot
be paralleled except from " the scolding of the ancients " ; and
these are not perhaps his worst violations of taste. Lord Brougham
produces the following tit-bit concerning Mr Dundas :
"With six great chopping bastards" ('Reports of Secret Committee'),
"each as lusty as an infant Hercules, this delicate creature blushes at the
sight of his new bridegroom, assumes a virgin delicacy; or to use a more
fit, as well as a more poetical, comparison, the person so squeamish, so
timid, so trembling lest the winds of heaven should visit too rousjhly, is
expanded to broad sunshine, exposed like the sow of imperial augury, lying
in the mud with all the prodigies of her fertility about her, as evidence of
her delicate amour."
These occasional infractions of taste, gross though they be, must
not be allowed to detract from his just fame as " the supreme
writer of his century." Taste is certainly not the special virtue
of English literature : there is none of our greatest masters of
prose that does not offend in some particular. Burke was far
from being prone " to revolve ideas from which other minds
shrink with disgust," at least in cold blood ; only when excited
he could not find images too disgusting to express his aversion.
KINDS OF COMPOSITION.
Description. Burke's descriptive forte is very like Macaulay's.
There is no method in his descriptions ; his works contain none of
1 " MmiHy-liroker."
EDMUND BURKE. 459
the elaborate word-painting to be found in farlyle : but he details
impressive circumstances with his characteristic fulness of expres-
sion, and profusion and boldness of imagery.
He gives the following picturesque account of the ancient
manner of catering for the royal household :
"These old establishments were formed also on a third principle, stiD
more adverse to the living economy of the age. They were formed, sir, on
the principle of purveyance, and receipt in kind. In former days, when the
household was vast, and the supply scanty and precarious, the royal pur-
veyors, sallying forth from under the Gothic portcullis to purchase provision
with power and prerogative instead of money, brought home the plunder of
a hundred markets, and all that could be seized from a flying and hiding
country ; and deposited their spoils in a hundred caverns, with each its
keeper. "
The present condition of the royal palaces he describes as
follows :
" But when the reason of old establishments is gone, it is absurd to pre-
serve nothing but the burthen of them. . . . Our palaces are vast,
inhospitable halls. There the bleak winds, there 'Boreas, and Eurus, and
Caurus, and Argestes loud,' howling through the vacant lobbies, and clat-
tering the doors of deserted guard-rooms, appal the imagination, and conjure
up the grim spectres of departed tyrants the Saxon, the Norman, and the
Dane ; the stern Edwards and fierce Henries who stalk from desolation to
desolation, through the dreary vacuity, and melancholy succession of chill
and comfortless chambers. . . . They put me in mind of Old Sarum,
where the representatives, more in number than the constituents, only serve
to inform us that this was once a place of trade, and sounding with ' the
busy hum of men,' though now you can only trace the streets by the colour
of the corn ; and its sole manufacture is in members of Parliament."
Persuasion. Our author's qualifications as an orator are elabo-
rately analysed by Mr Rogers, from whom we make the following
extracts :
" As an orator, Burke will never be ranked among the very first
masters of the art, so long as the professed object of oratory shall
be conviction and persuasion. Not that we for a moment assert
that the degree of eloquence possessed by an orator is always to
be estimated by his success. By no means ; for as on the one
hand there are many cases in which the divinest eloquence will in
vain contend against the prejudices of an audience predetermined
not to be convinced, so there are many where the passions have
already spoken more eloquently than the orator. The question, in
such instances, is not how much, but how little, oratorical skill is
necessary to success." Treating eloquence and oratorical skill as
synonymous a somewhat questionable usage Mr Rogers goes on
to remark that Burke's eloquence was not "adapted to produce
success."
For purposes of persuasion he erred in not appealing to prin-
ciples of action. He allowed his reason and his imagination to
460 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
play freely upon the subject, and did not confine himself to the
orator's chief end namely, to guide his audience to a particular
resolution. " He can seldom confine himself to a simple business-
like view of the subject under discussion, or to close, rapid, com-
pressed argumentation on it. On the contrary, he makes bound-
less excursions into all the regions of moral and political philosophy;
is perpetually tracing up particular instances and subordinate prin-
ciples to profound and comprehensive maxims ; amplifying and
expanding the most meagre materials into brief but comprehensive
dissertations of political science, and incrusting (so to speak) the
nucleus of the most insignificant fact with the most exquisite
crystallisations of truth; while the whole composition glitters
and sparkles again with a rich profusion of moral reflections,
equally beautiful and just." " His exuberance of fancy " was
" equally unfavourable to the attainment of the highest oratorical
excellence. When a speaker indulges in very lengthened or elab-
orate imagery, a suspicion is sure to be engendered (and, except
in one or two instances of very extraordinary mental structure,
that suspicion is uniformly just) that he is scarcely in earnest;
that if he has an object, it is to commend his own eloquence
rather than to convince his audience; that his inspiration is not
the inspiration of nature ; and for this very sufficient reason, that
it is not natural for intense emotion to express itself in the fan-
tastic forms of laboured imagery. . . . When illustration is
very abundant and elaborate, even the admiration it may excite
will often be anything but friendly to the speaker's professed object,
nay, the very reverse ; the admiration will resemble that which is
excited by a fine piece of poetry. . . . That it is possible to
indulge in such exuberance of illustration, as to suspend the cur-
rent of strong passions, and defeat the orator's avowed object, it is
needless to say."
Farther, he was either ignorant of the feelings of his audience,
or too vehement and self-willed to try to conciliate them. " As a
political tactician, Burke was far inferior to many of his contem-
I>oraries. There was, in fact, a singular disproportion between his
knowledge of human nature in general, and his knowledge of in-
dividual character; or, if he possessed the latter at all, he was
strangely incapable of using it to any practical purpose. None
understood better than he did, that abstract principles of policy
must be modified by actually existing circumstances; yet this
very same maxim, of such profound truth and such immense
value, he showed a singular inability to apply to individual con-
duct, on the small scale and within the limited sphere of parties.
In the conduct of any measure, he never deigned to consult pre-
judices or to soften enmity. He had no patience to bear with folly;
he was only irritated by it So far from any attempt to conciliate
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 461
his political opponents, he often exasperated hostility by setting
them all at open defiance, and would frequently pour out the most
bitter scorn and invective, when the most guarded and temperate
style of expression was essential to success. Never checking tho
impetuosity of his passions, he often contended for mere trifles
with a pertinacity which could only have been justified in the
defence of principles of vital importance ; trifles, the timely and
graceful concession of which would have insured success, which
would have far more than counterbalanced such a sacrifice. He
never seemed nicely to calculate, with a view to his own conduct,
the temper and conduct of the House, or the exact relation of
parties in it; thus he never cared to conceal or disguise his
opinions on any subject whatever, but uniformly expressed them
boldly and fully. Now, though we may admire the blunt hon-
esty of such conduct, none can commend its prudence; nothing
but the most imperious necessity could justify it."
OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 1728-1774.
Goldsmith's life offers an exception to the usual even tenor of
the literary career. His fortunes were as chequered as restless
imprudence and romantic generosity could make them. His father
was a good-hearted Irish clergyman, the supposed original of
Dr Primrose in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' and of the kindly old
preacher in the ' Deserted Village.' Oliver was born at Pallas, in
Longford, the fourth of a family of seven. When he was two
years old his father removed to the more comfortable living of
Lissoy, in West Meath. His first teacher was a garrulous old
soldier, who had served under Marlborough, and delighted to en-
tertain the boys with tales of marvellous adventure. He entered
Trinity College, Dublin, as a. sizar, in the year of the great Jaco-
bite rising, 1745. What he afterwards said of Parnell's college
course may be applied to his own " His progress through the
college course of study was probably marked with but little splen-
dour ; his imagination might have been too warm to relish the
cold logic of Burgersdicius, or the dreary subtleties of Smiglesius ;
but it is certain that as a classical scholar few could equal him."
He had no liking for mathematics, but, as he afterwards boasted,
he could " turn an ode of Horace with any of them." He is said
to have more than once been in difficulties with the heads of the
college from his love of boisterous frolic. He left college with no
fixed aim. His father designed him for the Church, but after he
had spent two years at home in preparation, he failed to give
satisfaction to the bishop, and could not obtain orders. He next
thought of the law, and set off for London ; but falling into good
company at Dublin, he spent all his money there, and returned
462 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
home in disgrace. He was then fitted out for the study of medi-
cine in Edinburgh, but was much too restless to pass decorously
through the ordinary curriculum and settle down into a quiet
practice. After studying (or at least staying) two years in Edin-
burgh, he went off to the Continent, and spent some time in the
medical schools of Leyden and Louvain. Thereafter, in a restless
spirit of adventure, he wandered through Switzerland, Italy, and
France, supporting himself mainly, it is said, by playing on the
flute for food and lodging. In 1756 he returned to London, and
there tried various ways of making a livelihood ; being succes-
sively assistant to an apothecary, physician (among the poorer
orders), proof corrector in Richardson's press, usher in Dr Milner'a
school at Peckham, critic for the ' Monthly Review,' and usher
again. In 1 7.58 he tried to pass at Surgeon's Hall as a hospital
mate, but was rejected, and thus driven back finally on literature.
His first independent work was ' The Inquiry into the State of
Polite Learning in Europe," which appeared anonymously in 1759.
From that date till his death, in 1774, he received steady work
from the booksellers, and but for his imprudent generosity and love
of finery, might have lived in comfort, if not in luxury. His chief
productions were ' The Bee,' a weekly periodical, which reached
only eight numbers, lasting through October and November, 1759;
'Chinese Letters,' contributed to Newbery's 'Public Ledger' in
1760, and afterwards published separately under the title of 'The
Citizen of the World ' ; ' The History of England, in a series of
Letters from a Nobleman to his Son,' 1762 ; ' The Vicar of Wake-
field,' written and sold in 1764, but not published till 1766 ; 'The
Traveller,' 1764; the comedy of 'The Good-Natured Man,' per-
formed in 1768; 'History of Rome,' 1769; ' The Deserted Village,'
1770; 'History of England,' in four volumes, 1771 ; 'She Stoops
to Conquer,' performed in 1773; 'History of Animated Nature,'
1774-
" The Doctor," as he was called, had not a handsome exterior.
Miss Reynolds once toasted him as " the ugliest man she knew."
Boswell says " His person was short, his countenance coarse and
vulgar, his deportment that of the scholar awkwardly affecting the
easy gentleman." Judge Day's description is more favourable:
" In person he was short about five feet five or six inches ; strong
but not heavy in make ; rather fair in complexion, with brown
hair such, at least, as could be distinguished from his wig. His
features were plain but not repulsive certainly not so when
lighted up by conversation. His manners were simple, natural,
and perhaps on the whole, we may say, not polished ; at least,
without the refinement and good-breeding which the exquisite
polish of his compositions would lead us to expect."
OLIVKll GOLDSMITH. 463
His naturally strong constitution was soon impaired by his
hardships. At the age of thirty-one he wrote thus to his brother :
"Though I never had a day's sickness since I saw you, yet 1 am
not that strong active man you once knew me. You scarcely can
conceive how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, and
study, have worn me down." The climate of London was trying
to him, and he frequently had to recruit by taking lodgings in the
country.
The strong points of Goldsmith's intellect centred in his power
of easy and graceful literary composition. He was not a profound
scholar, and his mind was neither very comprehensive nor very
productive. His fame rests upon the charms of his style : he tried
nearly every kind of composition poetry, comedy, fiction, history,
essay-writing, natural science and, as Johnson said in his well-
known epitaph, " whatever he touched he adorned." He criticised,
as he wrote, with exquisite taste. The fragments that Mr Forster
has reprinted from the ' Monthly Review,' Goldsmith's earliest
performances, are models of just criticism. His delicately sym-
pathetic nature was a peculiar qualification for appreciating the
works of others. This also gave him his singular power of reading
character. His drawing of the members of the Literary Club, in
the poem " Retaliation," is a supreme work of art. On the strength
of Garrick's well-known epigram
"Here lies poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll "
it has sometimes been said that he was very dull in conversation,
and that in the Literary Club he was often made a butt As
Boswell admits, his conversational dulness has been much exag-
gerated. Undoubtedly he was quicker with his pen than with his
tongue. A man of fine taste needs time to mature his thoughts ;
and Goldsmith, careless of his reputation, often opened his mouth
without the least premeditation. As to his being made a butt, it
was part of his peculiar humour to sacrifice himself for the amuse-
ment of the company by affecting ridiculous vanity and stupidity.
Many of the anecdotes of his vanity bear evidence of the stolidity
of the narrators their incapability of understanding a joke or
entering into the fun of humorous affectation.
In the matter of emotion, he was one of those beings that are
often found in extremes. When fortune went well with him, he
was as happy as the day was long. So mobile were his sympa-
thies that he could not be sad in merry company, and was easily
beguiled out of his sorrows. Yet he was also easily dispirited, and
often took dark views of the future. Self-respect kept him from
making many confidants of his heartless anticipations. He often
assumed an appearance of gaiety when there was no small anxiety
464 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
within ; but we find him, in an affectionate letter to his brother in
Ireland, complaining of a " settled melancholy" and "gloomy
haliits of thinking"; and he sometimes laid his cares before Lia
sturdy friend Johnson. After a happy deliverance from gloomy
apprehensions, he would entertain his friends with ludicrous pic-
tures of his previous distress. He was a warm friend and a
generous enemy; quick to take offence and easily pacified. Hi.s
lieart overflowed with tenderness : he loved the happy faces uf
children, and could not bear to see misery. With his rare skill in
divining the thoughts of others, and detecting what they prided
themselves upon, he might have been a stinging satirist ; but his
tenderness, though it could not restrain, always induced him to
soften the dart.
The imprudence of his conduct has often been dilated upon.
As a young man he was flighty, and more bent upon seeing the
world than willing to subside into a staid professional career. His
life was one long battle with imprudence. He was thirty-one
when he finally settled down to authorship ; and then he never
thought of laying up money for an evil day, but spent faster than
he earned, and died two thousand pounds in debt. " His purse
replenished," says Judge Day, "the season of relaxation and
pleasure took its turn, in attending the theatres, Ranelagh, Vaux-
hall, and other scenes of gaiety and amusement. When his funds
were dissipated and they fled more rapidly from his being the
dupe of many artful persons, male and female, who practised upon
his benevolence he returned to his literary labours, and shut him-
self up from society to provide fresh matter for his bookseller, and
fresh supplies for himself." There are several well-known anec-
dotes of his imprudent generosity. On one occasion about the
beginning of his career as an author, he pawned a suit of clothes
that he had on loan to save his landlady from an execution for
debt Throughout all his struggles he continued to send money
to his poor mother in Ireland ; and when he died, " on the stairs
of his apartment there was the lamentation of the old and infirm,
and the sobbing of women, poor objects of his charity, to whom
he had never turned a deaf ear."
Opinions. Goldsmith is not known to have held strong opinions,
as Johnson did, either in politics or in sectarian religion. He was
more of an observer than of a doctrinaire. He had seen much of
mankind, and interested himself more in noting characteristic ex-
pression and conduct than in gaining adherents to any favourite
views. The point of view of the Chinese Letters is characteristic.
Himself emancipated by temperament and education from nearly
every mode of traditionary prejudice, he regarded as absurd and
mischievous many of the English opinions, customs, and iustitu-
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 465
tions. But he did not attack these directly, as Mr Matthew Ar-
nold has lately done, in his own proper person. He assumed the
person of a philosophic Chinaman, and showed, in the form of let-
ters to friends in the East, how English ways appeared in the eyes
of a "Citizen of the World," In these letters he not only expresses
surprise at superficial absurdities in dress, in public ceremonies,
and suchlike, and at such incongruities as charging admission-tees
to tombs and other memorials of great men, but also strikes at
graver subjects, at the law of divorce, at iniquities in the ad-
ministration of justice, at the abuses of Church patronage, at the
frivolous causes of great wars, and similar matters of more serious
import.
ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
Vocabulary. The best evidence of Goldsmith's wide command
of language is his excellence in so many different kinds of compo-
sition. The remarkable thing is his combination of purity with
copiousness. He is more copious than Addison ; and, while no less
simple than that master of simple language, he never is affectedly
easy, never condescends to polite slang. One is safe to assert that
no writer of English is at once so copious and so pure.
Sentences and Paragraphs. The light and graceful structure of
Goldsmith's sentences cannot be too much admired. It would be
interesting to find out what preceding writer he is most indebted
to. We may concede to Boswell and to Dr Nathan Drake that in
some respects he belongs to the "Johnsonian school." Had Gold-
smith written before Johnson, he would probably have constructed
his sentences as loosely as Addison. He may have learnt from
Johnson to observe grammar more strictly than was usual with the
Queen Anne writers, to balance clauses, and to round off his sen-
tences without leaving inelegant tags. Probably he caught these
parts of his skill from Johnson, though none but the greater gram-
matical accuracy can be said to have been originated by " the great
lexicographer." But in other respects his style is so unlike John-
son's that it needs some practice in criticism to discover any re-
semblance whatsoever. Not to speak of Goldsmith's simple diction
and exquisite melody, which make a sufficient disguise for the
general reader, his sentences are much shorter, less condensed, and
less abrupt When we remember Goldsmith's acquaintance with
French literature, we can hardly help ascribing some of the merits
of his style to the influence of the French.
In the following specimens of his style, taken from his earliest
work, the ' Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning,' we
catch an occasional echo of Johnson ; but the general structure is
much lighter and more graceful :
"if we examine the state of learning in Germany, we shall find that th>
2 Q
466 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
Germans early discovered a passion for polite literature ; but unl nppily, like
conquerors who, invading the dominions of others, leave their own to deso-
lation, instead of studying the German tongue, they continued to write in
Latin. Thus, while they cultivated an obsolete language, and vainly laboured
to apply it to modern manners, they neglected their own.
" At the same time, also, they began at the wrong end, I mean by being
commentators ; and though they have given many instances of their indus-
try, they have scarcely afforded any of genius. If criticism could have im-
proved the taste of a people, the Germans would have been the most polite
nation alive. We shall nowhere behold the learned wear a more important
appearance than here ; nowhere more dignified with professorships, or dressed
out in the fopperies of scholastic finery. However, they seem to earn all the
honour of this kind which they enjoy. Their assiduity is unparalleled; and
did they employ half those hours on study which they bestow on reading,
we might be induced to pity as well as praise their painful pre-eminence.
But, guilty of a fault too common to great readers, they write through vol-
umes while they do not think through a page. Never fatigued themselves,
they think the reader can never be weary ; so they drone on, saying all that
can be said on the subject, not selecting what may be advanced to the pur-
pose. Were angels to write books, they never would write folios."
Again
"The French nobility have certainly a most pleasing way of satisfying
the vanity of an author, without indulging his avarice. A man of literary
merit is sure of being caressed by the great, though seldom enriched. His
pension from the Crown just supplies half a competence, and the sale of his
labours makes some small addition to his circumstances. Thus the author
leads a life of splendid poverty, and seldom becomes wealthy or indolent
enough to discontinue an exertion of those abilities by which he rose. With
the English it is different. Our writers of rising merit are generally neglected,
while the few of an established reputation are overpaid by luxurious afflu-
ence. The young encounter every hardship which generally attends upon
aspiring indigence ; the old enjoy the vulgar and perhaps the more prudent
satisfaction of putting riches in competition with fame. Those are often
seen to spend their youth in want and obscurity ; these are sometimes found
to lead an old age of indolence and avarice. But such treatment must natu-
rally be expected from Englishmen, whose national character is to be slow
and cautious in making friends, but violent in friendships once contracted,"
Once more, in a criticism of Gray's Odes, he says
"We cannot without regret behold talents so capable of giving pleasure
to all, exerted in efforts that at best can amuse only the few : we cannot
behold this rising poet seeking fame among the learned, without hinting to
him the advice that Isocrates used to give his scholars, Study the people.
This study it is that has conducted the great masters of antiquity up to
immortality. Pindar himself, of whom our modern lyrist is an imitator,
appears entirely guided by it. He adapted his works exactly to the disposi-
tions of his countrymen. Irregular, enthusiastic, and quick in transition,
he wrote for a people inconstant, of warm imagination, and exquisite sensi-
bility. He chose the most popular subjects, and all his allusions are to cus-
toms well known in his days to the meanest person."
Figures of Speech. Goldsmith resembles Johnson in the neglect
of ornamental similitudes. To say so is, however, to use " simili-
tudes" in the sense of similes, or formal similitudes. The remark
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 467
does not apply as regards metaphors. Goldsmith's style is too
much elevated by metaphors to be called plain. He is not so plain
a writer as Addison ; his style has (to use Ben Jonson's expression)
more "blood and juice." Thus
" The other countries of Europe may be considered as immersed in ignor-
ance or making but feeble efforts to rise. Spain has long fallen from amaz-
ing Europe with her wit ? to amusing them with the greatness of her catholic
credulity."
Again
" Men like these, united by one bond, pursuing one design, spend their
labour and their lives in making their fellow-creatures happy, and in repair-
ing the breaches caused by ambition. In this light, the meanest philosopher,
though all his possessions are his lamp or his cell, is more truly valuable than
he whose name echoes to the shout of the million, and who stands in all the
glare of admiration. In this light, though poverty and contemptuous neglect
are all the wages of his goodwill from mankind, yet the rectitude of his in-
tention is an ample recompense ; and self-applause for the present, and the
alluring prospect of fame for futurity, reward his labours. The perspective
of life brightens upon us, when terminated by an object so charming. Every
intermediate image of want, banishment, or sorrow, receives a lustre from
its distant influence. With this in view, the patriot, philosopher, and poet,
have often looked with calmness on disgrace and famine, and rested on their
straw with cheerful serenity. Even the last terrors of departing nature abate
of their severity, and look kindly on him who considers his sufferings as a
passport to immortality, and lays his sorrows on the bed of fame."
Contrast. As sufficiently appears in the preceding quotations, he
was taken with the charm of rhetorical antithesis, and laboured to
deliver his sayings in an antithetical form. In his ' Polite Learn-
ing ' we can read but few sentences without encountering a formal
" point " ; and here and there we find the general sparkle condensed
into the brilliancy of an epigram.
The following are examples of his epigrams :
' Cautious stupidity is always in the right."
' We see more of the world by travel, more of human nature by remain*
ing at home."
' We grow learned, not wise, by too long a continuance at college."
4 To imitate nature was found to be the surest way of imitating antiquity."
' The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal
them. " l
The peculiar artifice of ending off a sentence with an unexpected
turn is of the nature of epigram. Of this artifice we might cull
numerous examples from Goldsmith. It peculiarly suited his gay
volatility. We take the three following from the narrative of the
Man in Black : 2
1 Epigrams similar to this occur in South, Butler, Young, and Voltaire.
a Tli.- Man in Black is usually said to be modelled on the real character of
Goldsmith's father. The father of the Man in Black is obviously drawn from
Goldsmith's father; the Man in Black is no less obviously intended by Gold-
smith tor a portrait of himself.
468 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
"After I had resided at college for seven years, my father died, and left
me his blessing."
" Friendship ! thou fond soother of the human breast, to thee we fly in
every calamity ; to thee the wretched seek for succour ; on thee the care-tired
son of misery fondly relies ; from thy kind assistance the unfortunate always
hopes for relief, and may ever be sure of disappointment ! "
"A soldier does not exult more when he counts over the wounds he has
received, than a female veteran when she relates the wounds she has formerly
given : exhaustless when she begins a narrative of the former death-dealing
power of her eyes. She tells of the knight in gold lace, who died with a
single frown, and never rose again till he was married to his maid ; of the
squire who, being cruelly denied, in a rage flew to the window, and lifting
up the sash, threw himself in an agony into his arm-chair ; of the parson
who, crossed in love, resolutely swallowed opium, which banished the stings
of despised love by making him sleep."
Minor Figures. Goldsmith sometimes assumes a declamatory
style, with oratorical interrogation and answer, and paragraphs in
the form of a climax. In these declamations there is usually a
tincture of mock-heroism. Thus
"What, then, are the proper encouragements of genius? I answer, Sub-
sistence and respect ; for these are rewards congenial to its nature. Every
animal has an aliment suited to its constitution. The heavy ox seeks
nourishment from earth ; the light chameleon has been supposed to exist on
air ; a sparer diet than even this will satisfy the man of true genius, for he
makes a luxurious banquet upon empty applause. It is this alone which
has inspired all that ever was truly great and noble among us. It is, as
Cicero tinely calls it, the echo of virtue. Avarice is the passion of inferior
natures ; money the pay of the common herd. The author who draws his
quill merely to take a purse, no more deserves success than he who presents
a pistoL"
QUALITIES OF STYLE,
Simplicity. The specimens already quoted afford a fair measure
of his simple language and simple structure Goldsmith is among
the simplest of our writers. In one aspect he differs from Addi-
son : his diction is more metaphorical, farther elevated above the
language of common life. This is borne out by our quotations.
But in another and more striking aspect he resembles Addison :
his simplicity is an elegant simplicity. He is not homely like
Paley, nor coarse like Swift. This, also, is sufficiently apparent
without farther illustration.
To write with simplicity on some of Goldsmith's themes was
comparatively easy. ' Others could not have been treated in a
simple style without a considerable effort. In particular, some
of his ' Animated Nature ' must have tried his powers of simple
exposition. Where he had objects to describe birds, beasts, or
fishes he probably experienced no difficulty except in mastering
the details. But sometimes he is called upon to expound general
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 469
principles, and then we have an opportunity of seeing the extent
of his art. The following is his account of the attraction of
gravity. In some parts the language might possibly be made
more familiar without becoming less exact; but his manner of
approaching the subject, and the easy sequence of the thoughts,
are eminently popular. He seems at the end of every sentence
to place himself in the position of the reader to weigh its effect
from the reader's point of view, to study what might be expected
next, and how to carry the reader easily forward to the next
idea :
" Modern philosophy has taught us to believe, that when the great
Author of nature began the work of creation, he chose to operate by second
causes ; and that, suspending the constant exertion of his power, he endued
matter with a quality by which the universal economy of nature might be
continued, without his immediate assistance. This quality is called attrac-
tion, a sort of approximating influence, which all bodies, whether terrestrial
or celestial, are found to possess ; and which, in all, increases as the quantity
of matter in each increases. The sun, by far the greatest body in our system,
is, of consequence, possessed of much the greatest share of this attracting
power ; and all the planets, of which our earth is one, are of course entirely
subject to its superior influence. Were this power, therefore, left uncon-
trolled by any other, the sun must quickly have attracted all the bodies of
our celestial system to itself ; but it is equally counteracted by another
power of equal efficacy ; namely, a progressive force which each planet re-
ceived when it was impelled forward by the divine Architect upon its first
formation. The heavenly bodies of our system being thus acted upon by
two opposing powers namely, by that of attraction, which draws them to-
wards the sun, and that of impulsion, which drives them straight forward
into the great void of space they pursue a track between these contrary
directions ; and each, like a stone whirled about in a sling, obeying two
opposite forces, circulates round its great centre of heat and motion."
Clearness. As we have frequently noticed in treating of simple
writers, it is vain to expect in union with simplicity the somewhat
antagonistic merit of precision. Goldsmith is no exception : he is
not careful to observe mathematical accuracy. Thus, in the above
passage, a mathematician would object to the phrase, " equally
counteracted by another power of equal efficacy," as an expression
for tlie action of centrifugal relatively to centripetal force. In
exact language, it would rather apply to two equal forces acting
in direct opposition, and so bringing things to a stand-still
Strength. Had the bent of Goldsmith's genius been for the
sublime, the works that he undertook gave him ample oppor-
tunities of displaying his powers. His periodical essays, as their
purpose demanded, were chiefly upon the lighter topics. But in
his ' History of the Earth and of Animated Nature' (to quote the
title at full length), he was free to describe the grandeurs of
nature as well as the beauties and the curiosities ; and he pre-
ferred the beautiful, the odd, and the instructive to the sublime.
470 FEOM 1760 TO 1790.
So in his histories there was plenty of room for lofty declamation;
but he shows no inclination to avail himself of such opportunities.
Let us take, for instance, his reflections on the death of Caesar,
and on the extinction of the Western Empire of Rome both good
openings for the eloquent worshipper of greatness. The following
is his peroration on Caesar, more remarkable for sound judgment
than for eloquence :
" Caesar was killed in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and about fourteen
years after he began the conquest of the world. If we examine his history,
we shall be equally at a loss whether most to admire his great abilities or
his wonderful fortune. To pretend to say that from the beginning he
planned the subjection of his native country, is doing no great credit to his
well-known penetration, as a thousand obstacles lay in his way, which
fortune, rather than conduct, was to surmount. No man, therefore, of his
sagacity, would have begun a scheme in which the chances of succeeding
were so many against him : it is most probable that, like all very successful
men, he only made the best of every occurrence ; and his ambition rising
with his good fortune, from at first being contented with humbler aims, he
at lust begun to tliink of governing the world, when he found scarce any ob-
stacle to oppose his designs. Such is the disposition of man, whose cravings
after power are always most insatiable when he enjoys the greatest share."
He dismisses the Roman Empire at the conclusion of his
* History of Rome ' with two sentences :
"Such was the end of this great empire, that had conquered mankind
with its arms, and instructed the world with its wisdom ; that had risen by
.temperance, and that fell by luxury ; that had been established by a spirit
of patriotism, and that sunk into ruin when the empire was become so ex-
tensive, that a Roman citizen was but an empty name. Its final dissolution
happened about five hundred and twenty-two years after the battle of Phar-
salia ; an hundred and,, forty-six after the removal of the imperial seat to
Constantinople ami four hundred and seventy-six after the nativity of our
Saviour. "
Bolingbroke, Burke, or De Quincey would have concluded in a
much loftier strain.
Pathos. Considering Goldsmith's natural tenderness and wide
acquaintance with distress, one would expect his writings to be
deeply tinged with pathos. In reality, however, he is not so
pathetic a writer as Sterne. His benevolence was probably more
active than sentimental, just as Sterne's was more sentimental
than active. His poems and his novel contain some of our very
finest touches of pathos, but in his ordinary prose we meet with
comparatively few. The only deeply touching letter in his
' Citizen of the World ' is one entitled " A City Night Piece,"
and it in some parts is too distressing to be lingered over with
melancholy pleasure, rather serving the moralist's end of making
the reader uncomfortable :
"The clock just struck two, the expiring taper rises and sinks in the
socket, the watchman forgets the hour iu slumber, the laborious and the
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 471
happy are at rest, and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt, revelry, ami
despair. The drunkard once more fills the destroying bowl, the robber
walks his midnight round, and the suicide lifts his guilty arm against his
own sacred person.
"Let me no longer waste the night over the pages of antiquity or the
sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue the solitary walk, where Vanity
ever changing, but a few hours past walked before me, where she kept up
the pageant, and now like a froward child, seems hushed with her own
importunities. . . .
" How few appear in those streets which but some few hours ngo were
crowded 1 and those who appear now no longer wear their daily mask, nor
attempt to hide their lewdness or their misery.
"But who are those who make the streets their couch, and find a short
repose from wretchedness at the doors of the opulent ? These are strangers,
wanderers, and orphans, whose circumstances are too humble to expect re-
dress, and whose distresses are too great even for pity. Their wretchedness
excites rather horror than pity. Some are without the covering even of
rags, and others emaciated with disease : the world has disclaimed them ;
society turns its back upon their distress, and has given them up to naked-
ness and hunger. . . .
"Why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of wretches I cannot
relieve ! Poor houseless creatures ! the world will give you reproaches, but
will not give you relief. The slightest misfortunes of the great, the most
imaginary uneasiness of the rich, are aggravated with all the power of elo-
quence, and held up to engage our attention and sympathetic sorrow. The
poor weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate species of tyranny;
and every law which gives others security, becomes an enemy to them.
"Why was this heart of mine framed with so much sensibility ? or why
was not my fortune adapted to its impulse? Tenderness, without a capacity
of relieving, only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object
which sues for assistance."
The Ludicrous. Goldsmith surpasses all our humourists in the
combination of delicate wit with extravagant fun. His fancy was
of the lightest and airiest order, and his volatile spirit was easily
warmed to the boiling-point of comical extravagance. " His
comic writing," says Leigh Hunt, " is of the class which is per-
haps as much preferred to that of a staider sort by people in
general, as it is by the writer of these pages comedy running
into farce. ... It is that of the prince of comic writers,
Moliere. The English have no dramatists to compare in this
respect with the Irish. Farquhar, Goldsmith, and Sheridan sur-
pass them all ; and O'Keefe, as a farce-writer, stands alone."
The following passage from a letter written about the time when
he commenced author, may be quoted as characteristic. He was
far from being a happy self-complacent man, but the mere excite-
ment of writing to a friend was enough to elevate him " o'er a'
the ills o' life victorious." The sturdier, less inflammable spirit of
Burns, required stronger stimulants to raise it to the same pitch :
"God's curse, sir ! who am I ? Eh ! what am I? Do you know whom
you have otlended I A inaii whose character may one of these days be men-
472 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
tioned with profound respect in a German comment or Dutch Dictionary;
whose name you will probably hear ushered in by a Doctissimus Doctissi-
morum, or heel-pieced with a long Latin termination. Think how Gold-
Bmhhius, or Gubblegurchius, or some such sound, as rough as a nutmeg-
grater, will become me. ... I must own my ill-natured contemporaries
have not hitherto paid me those honours I have had such just reason to
expect. I have not yet seen my face reflected in all tho lively display of
red and white paints on any sign-posts in the suburbs. Your handkerchief-
weavers seem as yet unacquainted with my merits or my physiognomy, and
the very snuff-box makers appear to have forgot their respect. Tell them
all from me, they are a spt of Gothic, barbarous, ignorant scoundrels. There
will come a day, no doubt it will," &c.
His works contain many traces of this airy conquest of the ills
of life. Beau Tibbs is made to describe his garret as " the first
floor down the chimney " ; the Man in Black, when imprisoned,
reflects that " he is now on one side the door, and those who are
unconfined are on the other; that is all the difference between
them:" and both are strokes of wit that may have consoled the
author himself in similar circumstances. His incomparable " de-
scription of an author's bed-chamber," ending with the couplet
" A night-cap decked his brows instead of bay,
A cap by night a stocking all the day "
may also be taken as a Immorous transfiguration of his own expe-
rienca Take also the following anecdote related in the " Club of
Authors " :
" I'll tell you a story, gentlemen, which is as true as that this pipe is
made of clay. When I was delivered of my first book, I owed my tailor for
a suit of clothes ; but that is nothing new, you know, and may be any man's
case as well as mine. Well, owing him for a suit of clothes, and hearing
that my book took very well, he sent for his money, and insisted on being
paid immediately. Though I was at the time rich in fame, for my book ran
like wild-fire, yet I was very short in money, and being unable to satisfy his
demand, prudently resolved to keep my chamber, preferring a prison of my
own choosing at home, to one of my tailor's choosing abroad. In vain the
bailiffs used all their arts to decoy me from my citadel ; in vain they sent to
let me know that a gentleman wanted to speak with me at the next tavern;
in vain they came with an urgent message from my aunt in the country; in
vain I was told that a particular Mend was at the point of death, and de-
sired to take his last farewell. I was deaf, insensible, rock, adamant; the
bailiffs could make no impression on my hard heart, for I effectually kept
my liberty by never stirring out of my room. "
" This was all very well for a fortnight ; "but at the end of that
time the unfortunate author was entrapped by " a splendid mes-
sage from the Earl of Doomsday." He took coach and rode in
high expectation to the residence, as he thought, of his noble pa-
tron ; but on alighting, found himself, to his horror, at the door of
a spunging-house. All the proceedings of this club of authors are
in Goldsmith's happiest vein, and form a good illustration of his
THEOLOGY. 473
power of throwing a ludicrous colour over incidents uncomfortably
near the reality of his own life.
Goldsmith is also the most amiable of our satirists. He was full
of " the milk of human kindness," and the range of his sympathies
was wide. His ridicule is always on the side of good sense and
good feeling. And he handles even his embodiments of folly and
weakness " tenderly, as if he loved them " ; as if , at least, he had
a lurking toleration for tliem, and secretly recognised their claim
to exist in their own way as varieties of multiform humanity.
The most exquisite of his humorous creations is Beau Tibba,
who figures in the letters of the ' Citizen of the World*
OTHER WRITERa
THEOLOGY.
Few of the theologians that we reckon in this period were men
of high literary celebrity. The reason probably is that there was
no exciting topic to vex the theological world, and put its foremost
intellects upon their mettle. The Deists had been a hundred times
answered before 1760, and no other heresy equally dangerous and
exciting appeared until the ferment of the French Revolution.
The great religious revival begun by Wesley and Whitefield gained
no distinguished champions during the first half of the reign of
George I1L
One of the most eminent divines of the generation was Samuel
Horsley (1733-1806), who has been called " the last of the race of
polemical giants in the English Church a learned, mighty, fear-
less, and haughty champion of the theology and constitution of the
Anglican Establishment." His first efforts in authorship were some
mathematical tracts. In 1776 he published proposals for a new
edition of the works of Sir Isaac Newton. About the same time
he wrote on Man's Free Agency. His charge to the clergy of his
archdeaconry in 1783 involved him in a controversy with Priestley
concerning the divinity of Christ : in which controversy he is said
to have displayed great learning, masterly reasoning, and impetuous
dogmatism. He was made Bishop of St David's in 1788. When
the French Revolution broke out, he stood forth in the front rank
of alarmists, and declaimed with great vehemence against the "twin
furies" Jacobinism and Infidelity. His declamations against
conventicles, and his disposition to favour penal laws against Dis-
sent, brought him into collision with Robert Hall, who assails him
as " the apologist of tyranny, and the patron of passive obedience,"
and describes a sermon of his as a " disgusting picture of sancti-
monious hypocrisy and priestly insolence" Horsley had an arro-
gance and dogmatism even fiercer than Warburtou's, without any-
474 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
thing like Warburton's genius for style. His sermons procured
him respect from many that disapproved of his violence as a po-
lemic : they are distinguished by breadth of view and clear racy
expression.
Beilby Porteous (1731-1808), Bishop of London, was a divine of
a much milder type, author of a poem " On Death," which gained
the Seajtonian prize in 1759, and the intimate associate of Hannah
More, whom he is said to have assisted in the composition of her
religious novel, ' Ccelebs in search of a Wife.' He wrote a life of
his patron, Archbishop Seeker, and published a variety of sermons,
charges, and other devotional tracts.- His ' Evidences ' is still used
as a class-book in schools.
The most distinguished Scottish theologian of the time was
George Campbell, author of an able ' Dissertation on Miracles,'
written in reply to Hume's Essay on Miracles, and a 'New Trans-
lation of the Gospels, with Preliminary Dissertations,' a work dis-
playing the highest critical sagacity. We shall notice him again
among the writers on Rhetoric.
PHILOSOPHY.
By far the most eminent psychologist of this generation is
Thomas Reid (1710-1796), the founder of what is known as the
Philosophy of Common Sense. He was a native of Kincardine-
sliire, and was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen. He
studied for the Church, and in 1737 was presented to the living of
New Machar, a parish near Aberdeen. In 1752 he was appointed
Professor of Philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen. While in this
office he took part in the meetings of a literary coterie, of great
local celebrity, which comprised several men that attained emi-
nence in the world of letters himself, Campbell, Beattie, and Ger-
ard. In 1763 he was invited to succeed Adam Smith as Professor
of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow. His ' Inquiry into the Human
Mind,' which had been discussed by his friends in Aberdeen, and
had been in part submitted to Hume, was published in 1764. The
impulse to this work was given, as he said in the dedication, by
Hume's ' Treatise of Human Nature.' He had not previously
" thought of calling in question the principles commonly received
with regard to the human understanding ; " but finding that, " by
reasoning which appeared to him to be just," there was built upon
those principles " a system of scepticism which leaves no ground
to believe any one thing rather than its contrary," he proceeded to
subject the principles themselves to a close examination. " For
my own satisfaction, I entered into a serious examination of the
principles upon which the sceptical system is built; and was not a
little surprised to find, that it leans with its whole weight upon a
PHILOSOPHY. 475
hypothesis which is ancient indeed, and hatli been very generally
received by philosophers, but of which I could find no solid proof.
The hypothesis I mean is, That nothing is perceived but what is
in the mind which perceives it : that we do not really perceive
things that are external, but only certain images and pictures of
them imprinted upon the mind, which are called impressions and
ideas." The ' Inquiry ' has a polemical tone throughout, and con-
tains a good deal of humorous banter directed against Hume upon
the assumption that the arch-sceptic is bound in consistency to
believe " neither his own existence nor that of his reader," and that
" the intention of his work is to show that there is neither human
nature nor science in the world." Without attempting to define
Reid's position relatively to modern analysts of the mind, we may
give his views concerning the origin of knowledge in his own words.
Against the opinion that all knowledge concerning external things
is derived from the phenomena of Sense and the operations of the
Intellect upon the phenomena, he contends that " many original
principles of belief" are "suggested by our sensations." "Sensa-
tion suggests the notion of present existence, and the belief that
what we perceive or feel does now exist. ... A beginning of
existence, or any change in nature, suggests to us the notion of a
cause, and compels our belief of its existenca And, in like man-
ner, certain sensations of touch, by the constitution of our nature,
suggest to us extension, solidity, and motion, which are nowise like
to sensations, although they have been hitherto confounded with
them." After teaching in his Professorship till 1781, Reid pre-
pared a more systematic exposition of the Mind, which appeared
in two parts 'Essays on the Intellectual Powers,' in 1785 ; and
' Essays on the Active Powers,' in 1788. He continued his studious
activity till the very close of his long life, writing philosophical
essays, working mathematical problems, and following the progress
of physical science. "In point ot bodily constitution, few men
have been more indebted to nature than Dr Reid. His form was
vigorous and athletic ; and his muscular force (though he was
somewhat under the middle size) uncommonly great ; advantages
to which his habits of temperance and exercise, and the unclouded
serenity of his temper, did ample justice." The mere fact of his
originating a school of philosophy, even though we allow that his
conclusions were supported by popular feeling, argues a large meas-
ure of intellectual force, in one direction or another ; but very dif-
ferent opinions have been expressed as to his capacities for mental
analysis. Various particulars in his style and in his favourite
studies indicate a tendency to dwell by preference upon the con-
crete. He had no great turn for style ; his composition deserves
the praise of " ease, perspicuity, and purity " ; it is, besides, neat
and finished, and often moves with considerable spirit : but it haa
476 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
neither the Incisive vigour of Campbell, the copiousness of Smith,
nor the original freshness of Tucker.
Abraham Tucker (1705-1774), author of ' The Light of Nature
Pursued, by Edward Search, Esq.' a work in seven volumes, four
of which were published in 1765, and the remainder after his
death is in point of style one of the most pleasing of our philo-
sophical writers. The son of a wealthy London merchant, having
received an Oxford education and acquired many elegant accom-
plishments, he bought an estate near Dorking, and there lived a
" retired and undiversified " life, " the exercise of his reason being
his daily employment." He declined the political business that
Burke held to be a duty intrusted to men of his station, and
spent his time in a soft Epicurean endeavour to realise the maxi-
mum of tranquil happiness. He "apportioned his time between
study and relaxation ; " and, when in London, " commonly devoted
much of his evenings to the society of his friends, relations, and
fellow- collegians, among whom he was particularly distinguished
for his dexterity in the Socratic method of disputation." We may
indicate his philosophical position in a loose compendious way by
saying that he based his psychology upon Hartley's, and that his
original ethical views are adopted, digested, and systematised in
Paley's ' Moral Philosophy.' Paley candidly acknowledges his
obligations. " There is one work to which I owe so much, that it
would be ungrateful not to confess the obligation ; I mean the
writings of the late Abraham Tucker, Esq. I have found in this
writer more original thinking and observation upon the several
subjects that he has taken in hand, than in any other, not to say
in all others put together. His talent also for illustration is un-
rivalled. But his thoughts are diffused through a long, various,
and irregular work. I shall account it no mean praise, if I have
been sometimes able to dispose into method, to collect into heads
and articles, or to exhibit in more compact and tangible masses,
what in that otherwise excellent performance is spread over too
much surface." Tucker's style has several charms rarely met in
philosophical works charms, indeed, that are more or less incom-
patible with rigorous scientific precision. The diction is simple,
thickly interspersed with colloquial idioms, and has an exquisitely
musical flow. In every other sentence we are delighted with some
original felicity of expression or of illustration. The loose and
often ungrammatical structure of the sentences, and the diffusive
rambling character both of the work as a whole and of the several
divisions, forbid his being taken as a model for strict scientific
exposition ; but the popular expositor of practical wisdom might
learn a great deal from his copious and felicitous language and
imagery. Obviously, however, it will not do even for popular
purposes to imitate him closely. The expense of his voluminous
PHILOSOPHY. 477
treatise may have something to do with the general neglect of so
ingenious a writer ; but at any rate it is significant against close
imitation of his style that the views of Happiness and Virtue in
Paley's 'Moral Philosophy,' which are simply Tucker's summarised
and formulated, are never referred to their original author.
Richard Price (1723-1791) a Dissenting minister in London,
who supported the cause of American Independence, and who was
vehemently abused by Burke because from his pulpit in Old Jewry
Lane he hailed the French Revolution as the advent of Liberty
made himself a considerable name in Ethical Philosophy. His
' Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals ' was
published in 1758. "He appears as the antagonist of the empiri-
cism popularly associated with the name of Locke, and as the
leading representative of his time in England of the double origin
of knowledge. The doctrine of Price with respect to the Good
and the True reminds us more of the Pure lleason of his great
German contemporary Kant, than of the internal and common-
sense school of Hutcheson and Reid." He also " reveals affinities
to Platonism." l His style displays in no eminent degree either
of the cardinal virtues of a philosophical work ; he is not remark-
ably perspicuous, and he is far from being remarkably precise.
His numerous political and economical pamphlets are written with
considerable energy, " not unfitly typified by the unusual muscular
and nervous activity of his slender person."
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), a Unitarian minister, illustrious
in Natural Science as the discoverer of oxygen and other elementary
substances, was an irrepressibly voluminous writer not only in science
but in theology, philosophy, history, politics, and whatever hap-
pened to engage his interest. At the age of twenty-two he became
pastor to a Dissenting congregation, and from that time till 1773
he occupied various situations as minister and as tutor, and began
to make himself a name by his theological and scientific writings.
From 1773 the patronage of the Earl of Shelburne enabled him to
devote the most of his time to scientific and literary pursuits. He
made his discovery of oxygen in 1774. In the same year he wrote
a severe examination of the Common-Sense Philosophy, defending
the principles of Locke and Hartley. In his ' Disquisitions relat-
ing to Matter and Spirit,' 1777, he avowed himself a materialist,
and showed that materialism did not affect the arguments for the
existence of God, or for the belief in a future state. His ' History
of the Corruptions of Christianity,' 1782, was attacked, as we
have said, by Horsley, and a hot war in pamphlets was carried on
through more than one stage of rejoinder and surrejoinder. Dur-
ing the excitement of the French Revolution, his advanced opin-
ions made him an object of aversion ; his house in Birmingham
1 Professor Fraser, in the ' Imperial Dictionary of Biography.'
478 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
was sacked by a mob ; and he was ultimately obliged to betake
himself to America. He died at Northumberland in Pennsylvania.
: He is said to have been a man of mild, urbane manners, and to
have won the personal favour of very bigoted antagonists when he
met them face to face. Brougham rather misrepresents him in
describing him as " a fierce and angry polemic." He often writes
severe things, but he writes with perfect command of temper. He
cannot be charged with unprovoked abuse : his asperities are called
forth by what he considers arrogance, conceit, or misrepresentation
on the part of others. " Those," he says, " who are disposed to be
civil to me shall meet with civility from me in return ; and as to
those who are otherwise disposed, I shall behave to them as I may
happen to be affected at the time."' For his own part, whether
right or wrong, he is exceedingly fair and candid. His style is
idiomatic, compact, incisive, and vigorous. He is eminently easy
to follow : he usually describes the progress of his thoughts, ex-
plains by what circumstances he was led to take such and such a
view, and thus introduces us from the known to the unknown by
an easy gradation.
James Seattle (1735-1803), one of Dr Reid's Aberdonian co-
terie, whose reputation rests chiefly on his poetry, first came before
the public in 1770 as an antagonist to Hume. He was a man of
intensely personal, not to say spiteful feelings, intemperately sen-
sitive ; and his 'Essay on Truth' is written with anything but
philosophic calm. On the title-page he describes his work as
" written in opposition to sophistry and scepticism," and through-
out ascribes to his opponent the basest motives, and to his oppon-
ent's writings the most degrading influences ; claims for himself
and his side the exclusive possession of love for truth, learning,
mankind, and honourable fairness ; and declares repeatedly that
none of Mr Hume's admirers understand him : in short, he offen-
sively assumes a superiority to Hume in morals, and a superiority
to Hume's followers in intellect. His style has considerable power
of the rotund declamatory order; copious, high-sounding, and
elegant ; occasionally in its appeals to established feeling throwing
out rhetorical interrogations, followed by brief, abrupt answers.
His Essay was very popular with the English clergy, and exasper-
ated the easy-minded Hume more perhaps than any of the numer-
ous replies to his obnoxious opinions. Beattie wrote also in prose
several miscellaneous essays 'On Poetry and Music' (1762);
'On Laughter' (1764); 'On Classical Learning' (1769); and
'Dissertations Moral and Critical' (1783).
Another of the Aberdonian coterie, perhaps the most powerful
mind of the number, and of a very different temper from Beattie,
was George Campbell (1719-1796), already mentioned as an an-
tagonist to Hume's ' Essay on Miracles.' Originally destined for
PHILOSOPHY., 479
the law, he changed his mind and entered the Church, was ap-
pointed minister of Banchory-Ternan* wa& subsequently translated
to one of the city charges in Aberdeen, and in 1759 became Prin-
cipal of Marischal College. His first work was the ' Dissertation
on Miracles,' 1762. After several less-known performances, lie
published in 1776 his 'Philosophy of Rhetoric,' which is often
spoken of as the most original work on that subject that had
appeared since Aristotle. His ' New Translation of the Gospels '
was published in 1778. Campbell was a man of sturdy, sagacious
intellect, and tolerant temper. In controversy he was candid and
generous, imputing no unworthy motives, and making no offensive
claims to superior powers of discernment. His style is perspicuous
and terse ; he writes as one possessing a clear comprehensive grasp
of his subject, and an abundant choice of language.
Along with Campbell may be mentioned Henry Home, Lord
Kames (1696-1782), and Hugh Blair (1718-1799) ; both, like him,
best known in general literature by their works on English Com-
position, Home was an Edinburgh lawyer of great social wit and
literary tastes, who employed his leisure after his elevation to the
bench in composing various works, metaphysical, social, and criti-
cal 'Principles of Morality and Natural Religion" (1751); 'Art
of Thinking' (1761); 'Elements of Criticism' (1762); 'Sketches of
the History of Man' (1773); 'The Gentleman Farmer' (1777);
'Loose Hints on Education' (1781). His diction is tolerably
copious, and his turns of expression often have something of the
crisp ingenuity of Hume's, but his sentences are not very skilfully
put together ; his style wants flow. Curiously enough, his analysis
of the mechanical artifices of sentence-making is one of the most
substantial parts of his ' Elements ' ; it supplied both Campbell
and Blair with all that they have to say on sentence-mechanism,
and contains some ingenuities that they did not see fit to adopt.
Blair was a highly popular minister in Edinburgh, who, in 1759,
following the example of Adam Smith, and also under the patron-
age of the benevolent Maecenas, Lord Kames, began to read a
course of lectures on Belles Lettres. A Chair of Rhetoric being
endowed in 1762, Blair was appointed the first Professor. He
published his course of lectures in 1783. He was the most popular
Bermon-writer of his day. His sermons, the first volume of which
was published in 1777, were received with delighted applause in
England ; were commended by Johnson ; and were translated into
almost every language of Europe. His reputation is now consider-
ably faded : works for which their admirers fondly predicted clas-
sical immortality, are now universally neglected. He was a flow-
ing, elegant writer, with no great pretensions to depth or origin-
ality: his 'Rhetoric'* is a very vapid performance compared with
Campbell's " Campbell's," says Whately, " is incomparably supe-
480 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
rior, not only in depth of thought and ingenious original research,
but also in practical utility to the student"
Adam Smith (1723-1790) is an important figure in the history
of Ethics, and, as the author of the first systematic treatise on
Political Economy, is entitled to the honour of being called the
founder of that scienca He was born at Kirkcaldy in Fifeshire, a
posthumous child. At the age of fourteen he entered Glasgow
College, and after a curriculum of three years, proceeded thenca
with a Sneil Exhibition to Oxford. He was expected to take
orders in the English Church, but he preferred returning to Scot-
land and taking his chance of getting a professorship in one of the
Universities. Settling in Edinburgh in 1748, he began to read
lectures on Rhetoric under the patronage of Lord Kames ; and
soon after, in 1751, was elected Professor of Logic in the Univer-
sity of Glasgow. In 1752 he obtained the more coveted Chair of
Moral Philosophy, a post made illustrious by Carmichael and
Hutcheson. His 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' was published in
1759. In 1763 he was induced to resign his professorship and
undertake the education of the young Duke of Buccleuch. He
travelled with his pupil for two or three years, and on his return
withdrew to his native town of Kirkcaldy, and applied himself for
. ten years, with little interruption, to solitary study, the fruits of
which at length appeared, in 1776, in his great work 'The Wealth
of Nations.' During the last twelve years of his life he held the
office of Commissioner of Customs. Before his death he burnt all
his unpublished manuscripts with the exception of a few compara-
tively unimportant essays. In person he was a grave preoccupied-
looking man, of a stout middle size, with large features and large
grey eyes, absent-minded in company, often incontinently talking
to himself, and keeping up his rather poor constitution by strict
regularity and temperance. He was warm and affectionate in
disposition, exceedingly unreserved, with simple frankness express-
ing the thoughts of the moment, and with ready candour retract-
ing his opinion if he found that he had spoken without just
grounds. His intellectual proceedings were calm, patient, and
regular : he mastered a subject slowly and circumspectly, and
carried his principles with steady tenacity through multitudes of
details that would have checked many men of greater mental
vigour unendowed with the same invincible persistence. He was
noted for his strength of memory, and had a wide acquaintance
with English, French, and Italian literature, his tastes inclining
him to the so-called classical school of Corneille, Racine, Pope, and
Gray. The principal feature of his ethical work is his tracing the
operation of sympathy as the prime constituent of moral senti-
ments. " The purely scientific inquiry is overjaid by practical and
hortatory dissertations, and by eloquent delineations of characte
HISTORY. 481
r
and of beau-ideals of virtuous conduct. His style being thus
pitched to the popular key, he never pushes home a metaphysical
analysis ; so that even his favourite theme, Sympathy, is not
philosophically sifted to the bottom." The most striking doctrine
in his ' Wealth of Nations ' was his advocating the abolition of
commercial restrictions the doctrine of " Free Trade." Concern-
ing the sometimes disputed originality of this work, his editor, Mr
M'Culloch, remarks : " Some of the most important doctrines em-
bodied in the ' Wealth of Nations ' had been distinctly announced ;
and traces, more or less faint, of the remainder, may be found in
various works published previously to its appearance. But this
has little or nothing to do with the peculiar merits of Smith, and
in no respect invalidates his claim to be considered as the real
founder of the science of political economy. Some of the disjecta,
membra had, indeed, been discovered, with indications of the
others. But their importance, whether in a practical or scientific
point of view, and their dependence, were all but wholly unknown.
They formed an undigested mass, without order or any sort of
rational connection, what was sound and true being frequently (as
in the theory of the economists) closely linked to what was false
and contradictory. Smith was the enchanter who educed order
out of this chaos. And in such complicated and difficult subjects,
a higher degree of merit belongs to the party who first establishes
the truth of a new doctrine, and traces its consequences and limita-
tions, than to him who may previously have stumbled upon it by
accident, or who had dismissed it as if it were valueless." Smith's
style is perspicuous and melodious, and both the language and
the imagery are chosen with admirable taste. Perhaps its chief
value to the student arises from its copiousness, which sometimes
amounts to diffuseness. He is particularly rich in subjective
language. It is a good exercise for the ethical or the economical
expositor to run over his pages and note his various modes of ex-
pressing the same facts or principles. The construction of his
sentences is loose, and wanting in vigour.
HISTORY.
During this period two historians sustained and advanced the
higher ideal of historical composition furnished by David Hume.
Robertson published his ' History of Scotland ' in the last year of
the reign of George IL (1759), and Gibbon his 'Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire ' in the first year of the last quarter of the
century (1776). Robertson's History was the greatest success
that had been achieved by any historical work up to that time ;
and Gibbon's was still more successful than Robertson's.
William Robertson (1721-1793), the son of an Edinburgh
2 H
482 FROM 1760 TO 1790. ,
minister, received the usual Scotch school and college education,
entered the Established Church, and at the early age of twenty-
two was ordained to the charge of the small parish of Gladsmuir
in East Lothian. The lightness of his clerical duties left him
ample time fur study as well as for extra-parochial activity : he
read and wrote with methodical industry, attended the meetings of
a distinguished literary society in Edinburgh, and made such a
figure in the debates of the General Assembly of the Church, that
he soon was recognised as the leader of the "Moderates." In
1759 appeared his ' History of Scotland,' the first edition of which
was sold within a month ; and in the same year he was translated
to the charge of Old Greyfriars' in Edinburgh. In 1762 he was
appointed Principal of the University. In 1769 he completed
what is generally regarded as his masterpiece, the ' History of
Charles V. ' ; in 1777 his 'History of America,' which grew natu-
rally out of the ' History of Charles.' His only other published
work, the ' Disquisition on Ancient India,' appeared in 1791, about
two years before his death. Robust in personal build, a broad,
square-shouldered man, rather over the middle height, with a large
head and large features, Robertson was no less robust in intellect.
He seems to have been well fitted for active life : he displayed
great sagacity and firmness as a leader in the General Assembly ;
and the common saying about him is that he would have been
better employed in acting history than in writing it. He took
great pains both with the composition of his History and with the
collection of the facts. He particularly prided himself, and with
justice, upon his accuracy. After all the labour that he spent
upon his style, and all the praises that have been lavished upon
its purity and correctness, it is not of much value to the student
of composition. It is undoubtedly pure and correct : it contains
no Scotch idioms and no grammatical inaccuracies ; but neither
does it contain many peculiarly English idioms ; and it possesses
little original charm of expression. Some of the admirers of
Robertson allege as a peculiar merit of his style that it can be
readily turned into Latin ; and this is another way of saying that
it is not distinctively idiomatic. Indeed nothing else was to be
expected : he had no opportunities of hearing English as it was
spoken, and learned it almost as a foreign language from books.
The wonder is that he succeeded in freeing himself so completely
from peculiar Scotch idioms. The chief merit of his narrative,
apart from its superior accuracy, is perspicuous arrangement : this
was so much dwelt upon by contemporary critics that we must
suppose it to have been a very sensible improvement on preceding
Histories. Among other things that have been mentioned as
coefficient causes of his extraordinary success, besides the correct-
ness and perspicuity of his style, and the accuracy of his research,
HISTORY. 483
are the comprehensiveness of his views, his singular insight into
political transactions, and the management of his narrative so as
to excite the interest of a dramatic plot.
The first year of the last quarter of the eighteenth century is
rather a memorable year in prose literature ; it witnessed the death
of Hume and the publication of three remarkable works, Smith's
' Wealth of Nations,' Campbell's ' Philosophy of Rhetoric,' and
Gibbon's ' Roman Empire.'
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), the son of a wealthy proprietor in
Surrey and Hampshire, was born at Putney. He was an infirm
child, the only survivor of a family of seven, and being sent to
school at irregular intervals, was allowed very much to educate
himself. Having free access to good libraries, he read voraciously,
particularly in historical works ; and when he went to Oxford at
the age of fifteen, he possessed " a stock of knowledge that might
have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school-
boy would have been ashamed." At Oxford he had resided but
fourteen months, when meeting in the course of his multifarious
reading with two productions from the pen of Bossuet, he was by
them converted to the Roman Catholic faith, and consequently
obliged to quit the University. He would not seem to have lost
much by this forced separation : " To the University of Oxford,"
he says, " I acknowledge no obligation ; and she will as cheerfully
renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a
mother." Removed from Oxford, he was placed at Lausanne in
Switzerland, under the care of a pious clergyman, who persuaded
him to return to the Protestant communion. At Lausanne he re-
mained nearly five years. On his return to England in 1758, he
lived chiefly at his father's house in Hampshire ; and, entering no
profession, continued the miscellaneous studies that had occupied
him in Switzerland. In 1761 he made his first appearance as an
author in an essay on ' The Study of Literature,' written in French ;
a work that made no impression at home, but was very favourably
received abroad. About the same time he was appointed a captain
in the Hampshire Militia : he afterwards said that this experience
was of use to him when he came to write his history " The dis-
cipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave him a clearer
notion of the phalanx and the legion." Some three years after
this, in the course of a tour in Italy, he conceived the idea of his
famous work : " It was at Rome, on the i5th of October 1764, as
I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed
friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea
of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind."
He did little towards the fulfilment of this conception till 1770,
when the death uf his father left him master of an ample fortune.
484 FKOM 1760 TO 1790.
The first volume appeared in 1776, and was received with unpre-
cedented favour ; the first edition was disposed of in a few days.
He completed the work at Lausanne in 1787, and it was pub-
lished in 1788, on his fifty-first birthday. His death took place in
the beginning of 1794, about ten months before the birth of Grote,
the historian of Greece.
Gibbon is described as having been in his early years of feeble
constitution and slender frame, with a disproportionately large head.
]n after-life he presented an obese figure, fashionably dressed,
with a small mouth, a mellifluous voice, and elegant and digni-
fied manners. " His honourable and amiable disposition," says
lirougham, who is far from being a generous critic, "his kind and
even temper, was praised by all, displayed as it was in the steadi-
ness of his friendships, and the generosity of his conduct towards
Deyverdun, and indeed all who needed whatever help his circum-
stances enabled him to give. Perhaps the warmth of his affection
was yet more strikingly exemplified in his steady attachment to
his kind aunt, Miss Porten,"and towards his venerable stepmother."
The same authority objects to Mackintosh's off-hand opinion that
Gibbon "might have been cut out of a corner of Burke's mind,
without being missed ; " and affirms that Burke's " whole writings,
excellent as they are for some qualities, will never stand nearly so
high in the estimation of mankind, either for profound learning or
for various usefulness, as the ' Decline and Fall.'" As regards the
peculiar opinions of this work, its hostility to Christianity has
been widely reprobated and deplored : the author's insidious way
of accounting for the spread of Christianity by " secondary causes "
that is, by circumstances apart from the inherent power of the
religion has always given especial offence. His excuse that he
might have softened the two obnoxious chapters (the i5th and
1 6th) if he had thought that "the pious, the timid, and the pru-
dent, would feel, or affect to feel, with such exquisite sensibility,"
was more aggravating than apologetic. Apart altogether from the
character of his opinions, his style is very remarkable " copious,
splendid, elegantly rounded, distinguished by supreme artificial
skill." That it cannot be recommended as a general model, is no
more than must be said of almost all English authors. In spite of
its singularities, it must be considered a valuable contribution to
the wealth of the language. He possessed in the largest measure
the author's first great requisites a full command of words, and
the power of striking out fresh combinations. His chief mechanical
peculiarities are an excessive use of the abstract noun, and an
unusually abundant employment of descriptive and suggestive
epithets. This last peculiarity is the main secret of what is often
described as the "pregnancy" of his style; it forms one of the
principal arts of condensation, brevity, compression. He conveys
HISTORY. 485
incidentally, by a passing adjective, information that Macaulay
would have set forth in a special sentence : from its form, the
expression seems to take for granted that the reader is already
acquainted with the facts referred to, but substantially in an
allusive way it adds to the knowledge of the most uninitiated.
To this period belongs also the most successful biography in our
language. It was not published till 1791, but probably everything
except the printing was executed before the last year of the present
division.
James Boswell (1740-1795), the only son of the laird of Auchin-
leck, in Ayrshire, wlio was an Edinburgh lawyer, and rose to be
one of the Lords of Session, was born in Edinburgh, and educated
for the law. He showed from early manhood less fondness for
business than for travel and literary company. At the age of
twenty-three, he set out to make the tour of Europe, was intro-
duced to Johnson as he passed through London, and shaped the
course of his travels so as to obtain introductions to many of the
chief European celebrities, including Voltaire and Rousseau. On
his return, he published in 1768 'An Account of Corsica, with
Memoirs of General Paoli ' ; his enthusiasm for the Corsicans and
their general procuring him the nickname of " Corsica Boswell."
In 1773 he accompanied Johnson on his famous tour through the
Hebrides; his journal of this tour he published in 1785, the year
after Johnson'B death. His great work, 'The Life of Johnson,'
appeared, as we have said, six years later. With all the praise
that is lavished upon this biography, the author himself is rather
an underrated man. It is pretty generally supposed that little
intellectual power was required for such a production that it is
merely an affair of memory and observation. Now such powers of
memory and observation are certainly no common endowment ;
but these are far from being the only powers displayed in the
work. Casual readers are apt to undervalue the skill shown in the
arrangement and the narrative of the facts and the conversations ;
and Mncaulay, who dilutes upon the meanness of spirit shown in
the drawing out of Johnson's opinions, gives no credit to the in-
genuity. Boswell was undoubtedly a man of much social tact,
possessing great general knowledge of human nature, and a most
penetrating insight into the thoughts and intents of his habitual
companions. He played upon the prejudices of Johnson, and
gained his own ends, with consummate adroitness. It is but a
fair retort to Macaulay, that whoever considers Boswell a " great
fool," lays himself open, as regards that judgment at least, to a
similar imputation. His habit of thrusting himself upon cele-
brated men was not such an immorality as has sometimes been
represented ; it was at least the most amiable and disinterested
486 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
form of tuft-hunting. And it is rather a hasty judgment to set
down the fact that lie could live on friendly terms with celebrated
men of every variety of character and opinions to innate servility
of disposition ; a better-advised, not to say a more generous judg-
ment, would accept his own explanation that he " ever delighted
in that intellectual chemistry which can separate good qualities
from evil in the same person," and that he endured the evil for the .
Bake of the good.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford (1717-1797), the son of Sir
Robert Walpole, is one of the most felicitous of our minor writers
of prose. The peculiarities of his easy sauntering disposition were
a great puzzle to Lord Macaulay: that energetic writer pronounced
him "the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious,
the most capricious of men," and said that " his mind was a bundle
of inconsistent whims and affectations." His inconsistencies are
not so startling when we bear in mind the character and station
of the man ; he was too fond of ease, too much averse to effort, to
take the trouble of being consistent. His endeavour was to gratify
his various tastes at the minimum of exertion. He had a taste for
pictures and for articles of antiquarian value, and haunted print-
shops and auction - rooms ; he frequented clubs and went into
society, and amused himself with retailing the gossip and the bon-
mots to lady and other correspondents ; he procured introductions
to eminent and notorious individuals ; in political circles he en-
joyed the mischievous fun of setting people together by the ears.
He purposely refrained from forming opinions, or purposely dis-
sembled them, that he might be saved the trouble of maintaining
them. He was ambitious of literary distinction, and wrote books :
but he pretended that they were valueless, and disclaimed the
title of author ; partly, no doubt, for the pleasure of so doing, but
partly also that he might be saved the effort of supporting a char-
acter for learning. He is described as a very tall, slender man,
with dark, lively, penetrating eyes, and complexion of a most un-
healthy paleness. His observant faculty and freedom from excite-
ment gave him a great advantage in witty repartee and impromptu
turning of compliments. One of his greatest beauties of style is
his skill in hitting off characteristic traits. His works are rather
voluminous : writing would seem to have been his favourite em-
ployment: ' Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors,' 1758 ; 'Anec-
dotes of Painting,' 1761-71; 'Catalogue of Engravers,' 1763;
' Castle of Otrantu,' 1764; ' Mysterious Mother,' 1768; 'Historic
Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III,' 1768. Several
volumes of his Letters have also been published.
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 487
1 Junins.' The first of the celebrated Letters of Junius appeared
on the 2ist of January 1769, in the ' Public Advertiser,' one of the
leading newspapers of the time. The same writer had been, under
various signatures, an active correspondent for at least two years
before, and is supposed to have written some of the shorter letters
that appeared in explanation and reinforcement of the views of
Junius. The letters under the signatures of " Junius " and " Philo-
Junius" had a certain unity of theme, were more studied in com-
position, and, from a combination of circumstances, made by far
the greatest sensation in the political world. At the time when
they appeared, there was an almost unparalleled disorganisation
among the rulers of the country : an obstinate king bent upon
asserting and extending his prerogative ; Parliament distracted by
opposite policies, and still more by personal enmities ; difficulties
with more than one European power ; a growing quarrel with our
American colonies ; and at home an imbittered struggle for the
freedom of the press. Junius attacked the conduct and character
of the leading politicians with unprecedented freedom. The mere
splendour of his language and the energy of his sarcasm would
have made him a reputation ; but what chiefly attracted interest
and raised consternation was the knowledge that he showed of
State secrets and of the private life of his victims. The excite-
ment grew when the name of this apparent traitor to his order
baffled the most determined inquiries.
The authorship of Junius was never acknowledged, either
publicly or privately. There are several traditions of great per-
sons who professed to know all about it ; but none of them are
said to have committed themselves to an express declaration.
In 1804, the Marquess of Lansdowne asserted that "he knew
Junius, and knew all about the writing and production of those
letters;" that Junius had never been publicly named; and that
he purposed one day to write a pamphlet and disclose the secret:
but he died and gave no sign. The evidence for the authorship is
thus wholly circumstantial.
In the day and generation of Junius himself, nearly every man
of distinction was named by one person or another as the " Great
Unknown." The preliminary essay to the 1812 edition of Junius
issued by the son of Woodfall, the publisher of the ' Public Ad-
vertiser,' and containing Junius's private letters to Woodfall,* along
with fac-similes of his handwriting discusses the pretensions of
some twelve or more individuals. Since 1812 many volumes have
been written, solving the mystery with equal confidence in favour
of different claimants. Colonel Barr6, Lauchlin Macleane, Thomas
Lord Lyttleton, Lord Temple (with Lady Temple as amanuensis),
are among the authors more recently put forward at considerable
length.
488 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
The pretensions of Sir Philip Francis have been countersigned
by an overwhelming number of authorities. His name was never
mentioned in connection with the celebrated Letters until 1814;
in 1816, Mr John Taylor, in his " Junius Identified with a cele-
brated Living Character," produced a body of evidence that has
since been very generally accepted as conclusive. Brougham,
Lord Campbell, De Quincey, Macaulay, Earl Stanhope, and many
others have declared themselves satisfied. De Quincey is perhaps
the most decided. Lord Brougham, he says, does not " state the
result with the boldness which the premises warrant. Chief-
Justice Dallas, of the Common Pleas, was wont to say that a
man arraigned as Junius upon the evidence here accumulated
against Sir Philip Francis, must have been convicted in any court
of Europe. But I would go much farther ; I would say that there
are single proofs, which (taken separately and apart from all the
rest) are sufficient to sustain the whole onus of the charge."
The arguments in favour of the title of Francis are such as the
following : " Junius " shows an acquaintance with the forms of
the Secretary of State's Office, and with the business of the War
Office ; Francis began life as a clerk in the Secretary of State's
Office, and was a clerk in the War Office at the time of the ap-
pearance of the Letters. " Junius" shows a minute acquaintance
with the private life of statesmen and with secret political man-
oeuvres ; Francis had means of access to such knowledge through
his father, as well as through other channels. Francis thus pos-
sesses the preliminary requisites for a claimant to the honour or
dishonour of the authorship. It was possible for him, from his
situation in life, to obtain the very special and startling know-
ledge displayed by " Junius." Farther, it is contended that the
character of Francis was consistent with the characteristic temper
of " Junius." Francis was an ambitious man, of proud, imperious
disposition, with a certain generosity of public spirit, but of in-
tense personal animosity, and very exacting in his ideal of human
virtue, especially as regarded his superiors in public station; a
young man iu a humble office jealously measuring himself with
higher officials, and savage because he had to drudge for men that
he considered inferior to himself. Again, it is contended that
Francis possessed the requisite ability. " Junius " was evidently
a cultivated and practised writer ; and Francis was in a peculiar
manner bred to the pen by his father, and seems to ha\e begun at
an early age to send letters to the newspapers on passing events.
In addition to these considerations, which do no more than show
that Francis was capable of writing " Junius," and had a motive
in his own jealous ambitious temper, there are various alleged
coincidences that bring the charge more nearly home. " The
tendency of all the external arguments," says De Quincey, "drawn
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 489
from circumstantial or personal considerations, from local facts, or
the records of party, flows in the very same channel ; with all the
internal presumptions derived from the style, from the anomalous
use of words, from the anomalous construction of the syntax, from
the peculiar choice of images, from the arbitrary use of the tech-
nical shorthand for correcting typographical errors, from capricious
punctuation, and even from penmanship (which, of itself, taken
separately, has sometimes determined the weightiest legal inter-
ests). Proofs, in fact, rush upon us more plentiful than black-
berries ; and the case ultimately becomes fatiguing, from the very
plethora and riotous excess of evidence. It would stimulate at-
tention more, and pique the interest of curiosity more pungently,
if there were some conflicting evidence, some shadow of presump-
tions against Francis. But there are none, absolutely none."
One of the chief arguments against the title of Francis is that
he was an exceedingly vain man, and yet expressly denied the
authorship. In reply to this argument De Quincey is particu-
larly ingenious. He points out, in the first place, that the denial
is ambiguous "most jesuitically adapted to convey an impres-
sion at variance with the strict construction which lurks in the
literal wording." Secondly, he urges that Francis was debarred
from making the avowal by fear and shame. He had obtained
his information by treachery, and he had directed his ill-nature
against some of his principal benefactors. To disclose the secret
would have been to declare himself a detestable villain. And this
consideration is one of the strongest corroborative proofs of the
identity of Junius with Francis ; for who else had the same
motive to perpetual secrecy ? " Upon such an account only is
It possible to explain the case. All other accounts leave it a
perpetual mystery, unfathomable upon any principles of human
nature, why Junius did not, at least, make his claim by means of
Borne last will and testament."
The principal opponent of the " Franciscan " theory of Junius,
as it is called, is Mr Hayward. Those who wish to see all that
can be pleaded against the verdict of the majority should consult
his " More about Junius," reprinted from ' Fraser's Magazine,'
Vol. LXXVI. The Franciscans have recently received strong
support from the ' Professional Investigation of the Handwriting
of Junius,' by Mr Charles Chabot, Expert Mr Chabot is of
opinion that the handwriting of Junius is the handwriting of
Francis disguised.
Dr Francis, the father of Sir Philip, was an Irish clergyman,
who settled in London as author and teacher about the middle of
the century. He is known as the translator of Horace, Demos-
thenes, and ^Eschinea He was an active party - writer, was
intimate with Lord Holland and other statesmen, and was always
490 FROM 1760 TO 1790.
well stored with political gossip. Philip, born in Dublin in 1740,
was brought by his father to London, and received his principal
schooling at St Paul's, where he was the master's most admired
pupil In 1756 he obtained, through his father's patron, Lord
Holland, a junior clerkship in the Secretary of State's Office, and
remained there, with certain brief interruptions, until 1762, when
be was appointed first clerk in the War Office. He held his clerk-
ship iu the War Office for ten years, during which he is supposed
to have written the " Candor " letters, " Junius," and many letters
under other signatures. He resigned the clerkship in 1772, for
reasons that are somewhat obscure. The Franciscans hold that
the motive was resentment at the appointment of Chamier as
Deputy-Secretary, and connect this with the attacks of Junius
upon that individual. In 1773 he obtained an extraordinary
preferment, which the Franciscans suppose to be somehow con-
nected with his authorship of Junius. He was made a member of
the Supreme Council in Bengal, with a salary of ^10,000 a-year.
In India he persistently opposed Warren Hastings, and was
wounded by him in a duel. Returning to England in 1780, he
entered Parliament, and became an active supporter of the Whigs.
He died in 1818.
The leading feature in the mechanical part of the style of
"Junius" is the predominance of the balanced structure "the
poised and graceful structure of the sentences;" and the leading
" quality " of the style is sarcasm, sometimes elaborately polished,
sometimes inclining to coarse, unvarnished abuse. The imagery is
also much admired, and the expression is often felicitous, though
far from being of the first order of originality.
John Home Tooke (1736-1812) is best known in literature by
a philological work, 'The Diversions of Purley' (pub. 1786); but
his general fame rests more upon his political activity. Made a
clergyman against his will by his father, a wealthy London poul-
terer, he nevertheless engaged actively in politics on the Radical
side ; and finding himself trammelled by the clerical character, he
resigned his living in 1773, and studied law. He twice suffered
for his "advanced" opinions. He was fined and imprisoned in
1777 for accusing the king's troops of having "murdered" the
American insurgents at Lexington ; and in 1794 he was tried for
high treason, mainly on account of his connection with the Con-
stitutional Society during the excitement of the French Revolu-
tion. Yet, upon the whole, he prospered. Having rendered some
service to Mr Tooke of Purley, he was made that gentleman's heir,
and assumed his name ; and he spent his latter years in literary
leisure and genial society at Wimbledon. During his active life
he made several unsuccessful attempts to gain a seat in Parlia-
ment, and at last entered as representative of tlie rotten borough
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 491
of Old Sarum in 1801. Tn 1802 he was excluded from the House ;
his exclusion being a most startling exemplification of two prin-
ciples one that no priest can lay aside his orders and become a
layman, 1 and the other (enacted in 1802 for the express purpose of
ousting Tooke) that no one in priest's orders can sit in the House
of Commons. His etymological ' Diversions ' arose out of his
political career. He began to theorise in prison upon the con-
struction by the judges of certain propositions in a case quoted
against him on his trial in 1777. This perhaps accounts for his
proceeding upon what is justly described as the "monstrous"
principle that " the etymological history of words is our true guide,
both as to the present import of the words themselves, and as to
the nature of those things which they are intended to signify."
Apart from this, he is very ingenious in his attempts to trace how
the language of mind has been borrowed from the language of
external things, and how conjunctions and other syntactic particles
of speech have been derived from significant nouns and verbs.
But the main interest of the 'Diversions' to the general reader
lies in the witty intermixture of political thrusts and declamations.
No other prose writers within this period have any special in-
terest. The writings of the eccentric James Burnet, Lord Mon-
boddo (1714-1799), contain interesting passages, such as his theory
about the origin of man, and his humorously extravagant defence
of the superiority of ancient over modern writers ; but the interest
is more in the matter than in any felicity or original force of
expression.
J .Repealed in
CHAPTER IX.
FROM 1790 TO l82Q.
WILLIAM PALEY,
17431805.
THE middle thirty years of Paley's life coincided very nearly with
the preceding period ; but as most of his works l were published
in the beginning of this period, we take him as belonging to it.
His life was easy and prosperous, without any striking turns
either of hardship or of good fortune. He was born at Peter-
borough, his father being a minor canon in the Cathedral. His
father was afterwards appointed head-master of the grammar-
school of Giggleswick in Yorkshire, and the family removed there.
Though not very precocious as a boy, he gave such proofs of
shrewdness and intellectual force as to raise high expectations of his
future eminence. At the age of fifteen he was entered as a sizar at
Christ's College, Cambridge. It is said on his own authority that
he was at first an idle student, and loved company better than his
books, and that he made a remorseful resolution to read hard when
one of his idle companions reproved him for wasting his talents.
He probably exaggerated the effect of this reprimand ; but how-
ever that may be, he did become a hard student, and eventually
came out senior wrangler. He taught Latin for three years in an
academy at Greenwich. In 1766 he was elected to a fellowship in
his college, and appointed a lecturer. One of his college friends
was a son of Bishop Law, and through the bishop's influence he
1 The list is : ' Moral and Political Philosophy,' 1785 ; ' Horse Paulinas, or
The Truth of the Scripture History of St Paul evinced,' 1790 ; ' A View of the
Evidences of Christianity,' 1794 ; ' Natural Theology,' 1802. There are published
also several of his Sermons.
WILLIAM PALEY. 493
was preferred from one benefice to another in the see of Carlisle.
His ' Moral Philosophy ' was based upon the lectures he delivered
in his college. Upon the publication of his ' Evidences of Chris-
tianity ' in 1794, he was rewarded by three several bishops with
preferments amounting in all to considerably more than j2ooo.
From some unknown cause or causes, he never obtained a bishopric.
In the course- of his leisure he found time to write the works we
have mentioned. He died at Bishop Wearmouth on the 25th of
May 1805.
In person Paley was above the middle height, of a stout make,
inclining in his later years to corpulence. A good, easy man, he
was rather careless about his attire, and his homely manners and
provincial accent are said to have stood in the way of his elevation
to the bench.
His intellect was clear and steady. He is a shining example of
the form of practical good sense characteristic of Englishmen. He
did not hunt after paradoxes and subtleties, nor did he throw him-
self with eagerness into original investigations. He liked to walk
on sure ground, and made abundant use of the labours of others.
Good sense is the distinguishing quality of his ' Moral and Political
Philosophy.' In the case of such a question as the existence of a
moral sense, he enters into no subtle disquisition, but puts the
thing at once to a rough and simple test ; and such theories as
that of " natural right " he at once sets aside as groundless. In
his ' Evidences of Christianity,' which has long been the text-
book on the subject, he does little more than popularise the con-
densed Butler and the voluminous Lardner. The ' Horae Paulinse '
and the 'Natural Theology' are the product of no more subtle
qualities of mind than patient industry and shrewdness.
He was sober and temperate in his feelings, a most unromantic
and unpoetic man. At school and at the university he was much
sought after as a boon companion ; his good-humour and drollery,
set off by his rather cumbrous and slovenly exterior, making him
a great favourite. Throughout life he retained his social neigh-
bourly ways, keeping up acquaintance with his parishioners in
homely, unostentatious intercourse. His writings contain little or
nothing to satisfy the emotions ; occasionally we cross a pleasant
vein of irony or sarcasm, and we are constantly entertained with
homely facts, but high-flown sentiment is totally wanting. 1
i Discoursing on Human Happiness in his Philosophy he openly disclaims
refined sentiment: "I will omit much usual declamation on the dignity and
capacity of our nature ; the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational
to the animal part of our constitution ; upon the worthiness, refinement, and
delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of
others ; because I hold that pleasures differ in nothing bat in continuance and
intensity."
494 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
His easy compliant temper, and shrewd steady intellect, were
the ruling principles of his conduct True, he was ambitious of
literary distinction, but he pursued his ambition by safe and easy
paths. He was eminently "loyal to facts"; he recognised their
supremacy without a struggle. At college he proposed to defend
the thesis that eternity of punishment is contrary to the divine
attributes ; but when his tutor expressed disapproval, he simply
placed a "not" before "contrary," and reversed his arguments.
Later in life, when charged with some inconsistency, he made the
humorous remark that " he could not afford to keep a conscience."
As clergyman and author, he got through his work by steady regu-
larity. Everything had its allotted time, and in his untroubled
existence there were few interruptions to his settled plans.
Opinions. It is probably owing to the prestige of Paley's doc-
trines that Utilitarianism is so often and so obstinately identified
with selfishness. To class Paley with the Utilitarians of the pres-
ent day is misleading. He agrees with them fully in one point,
and in one point only namely, in repudiating Innate moral dis-
tinctions. On a very fundamental point he is utterly at variance
with them ; he allows no merit to disinterested action, as such.
In Paley's view, they only are praiseworthy that act from a regard
to their own everlasting happiness. In matters of religion, what-
ever may have been Paley's private opinions, he published nothing
inconsistent with the Thirty-Nine Articles. In one solitary point
he showed a tendency to be latitudinarian ; he wrote, in defence of
his patron Bishop Law, a pamphlet against the propriety of requir-
ing Subscription to Articles of Faith.
He was eminently free from bigotry, and wrote in favour of the
most enlightened tolerance, with an exception against works of
" ridicule, invective, and mockery." " Every species of intoler-
ance which enjoins suppression and silence, and every species of
persecution which enforces such injunctions, is adverse to the pro-
gress of truth." In the matter of Church government he held that
" if the dissenters from the establishment become a majority of the
people, the establishment itself ought to be altered or qualified."
He had the humanity to write strongly against the slave trade,
and to refute every shred of argument that could be urged in its
favour.
ELEMENTS OP STYLE,
Vocabulary. Although Paley's language is not studiously varied,
he never seems to be in want of words, and the combinations are
often agreeably fresh. His preference is for homely words ; but he
does not scruple to use the most technical terms, and now and then
WILLIAM PALEY. 495
even quotes Latin, trusting to make himself intelligible to the
ordinary capacity by the power of his homely illustrations.
Sentences and Paragraphs. The chief thing worth noticing about
Paley's sentences is that they are not constructed upon a few favour-
ite forms, or with any leaning to a favourite rhythm. His is not a
"formed" style; he is studious to express himself in simple lan-
guage, without regard to measure or fluent melody.
It might be expected that, having no misleading desire for
euphonious combinations, he would adopt the best arrangement
for emphasis. But it is not so ; he had not much natural turn for
point, and does not seem to have been aware of the advantage of
calling special attention to a word by its position.
The construction of his paragraphs is worth examining minutely,
(i.) The first thing that strikes us in turning over his pages with
an eye to the paragraph division is the unusual number of para-
graphs. Every statement that he wishes to make prominent, he
places in a paragraph by itself. Thus
" It will be our business to show, if we can,
" I. What Human Happiness does not consist in i
" II. What it does consist in.
" FIKST, then, Happiness does not consist," 4c.
Again
" The above account of human happiness will justify the two following
conclusions, which, although found in most books of morality, have seldom,
I think, been supported by any sufficient reasons :
" FIRST, That happiness is pretty equally distributed amongst the differ-
ent orders of civil society :
"SECONDLY, That vice has no advantage over virtue, even with respect
to this world's happiness. "
Once more
" The four CARDINAL virtues are, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and
justice.
" But the division of virtue, to which we are in modern times most accus-
tomed, is into duties:
"Towards God; as piety, reverence, resignation, gratitude, &c.
" Towards other men (or relative duties) ; as justice, charity, fidelity,
loyalty, &c.
"Towards ourselves; as chastity, sobriety, temperance, preservation of
life, care of health, &c."
The above short extracts show his arts of giving prominence to
leading statements :md leading words. He uses separate para-
graphs ; he makes divisions conspicuous sometimes by figures
L, II., <fec., sometimes by numbers printed in small capitals
FIRST, SECONDLY, &c.; he emphasises leading words by printing
them in small capitals or in italics. The first chapter of the book
on ' Moral Obligations ' upon the question, Why am I obliged to
496 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
Icf-ep my word 1 is a very happy example of his perspicuous method
His chief defect in this respect is in the arts of indicating degrees
of subordination. He has nothing but the difference between capi-
tals and italics, and the difference between Roman numbers (L, IL,
<fec.) and Arabic (i, 2, &c.) Owing to this defect, the multiplicity
of small paragraphs is not a little confusing when we attempt to
take in a chapter at a comprehensive glance. It would be a great
advantage if the most important statements were printed in larger
type.
(2.) The next thing that strikes us is the fulness of his phrases
of reference, and the consequent ease of following his exposition.
We are constantly kept to the point by such phrases as " We will
explain ourselves by an example or two;" "This will serve for one
instance ; another is the following ; " " For this is the alternative.
Either . . . or . . . ; " and so forth.
(3.) When we take special paragraphs in detail, we find that the
exposition is not so perspicuous as we should expect from the per-
spicuity of the larger divisions. On examination we find the rea-
son to be that he does not always keep the main subject prominent,
but in his easy way changes the point of view. In the following
passage, though the separate statements are simple, they cannot
be put together coherently without an effort :
" The art in which the secret of human happiness consists, is to set the
habits in such a manner that every change may he a change for the better.
The habits themselves are much the same ; lor whatever is made habitual,
becomes smooth and easy, and nearly inditi'erent. The return to an old
habit is likewise easy, whatever the habit be. Therefore the advantage is
with those habits which allow of an indulgence in the deviation from them."
Here the remark about the return to an old habit is not so put as
to show its relevance. It were better omitted at that particular
stage. Perhaps the following would be a simpler statement :
" The great art of human happiness is to set the habits in such a manner
that every change may be a change for the better. In a habit itself there
is little either of pleasure or of pain ; whatever is made habitual becomes
smooth, easy, and nearly indifferent. The pleasure or pain lies in the de-
parture from a habit. This being so, our wisdom is to form such habits as
may be changed for the better, and are not likely to be changed for the
worse. "
To be sure, the difference between the two modes of statement ia
slight ; still in exposition every little helps, and changes that seem
trifling in a short passage, may, if carried through a chapter, make
a very substantial difference to the ease of the reader. It is only
by slight changes that Paley's method can be improved upon ; and
the student of popular exposition would do well to attend to sucb
improvements.
WILLIAM TALEY. 497
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
Simplicity and Perspicuity are the eminent qualities of Paley's
style. We have already said that the diction, though occasionally
Latinised and technical, is upon the whole familiar, and that the
structure, with certain possibilities of improvement, is upon the
whole perspicuous and easy to follow. But the simple diction and
perspicuous structure are by no means the only elements of his
popular style.
(i.) It is somewhat of a paradox to say concerning a writer on
Moral and Political Philosophy, Christian Evidences, and Natu-
ral Theology, that his subject-matter is not abstruse. Of course,
Paley's subject-matter is abstruse compared with the subject-matter
of mere narrative, or of essays on the minor morals. But it is not
so abstruse as it might be, considering the professed themes. He
is careful not to take up any doctrine that is too deep or too subtle
for popular exposition. He knows either by instinct or by definite
purpose where to stop. He makes no pretence of going to the very
root of a matter. In discussing moral obligation he does not enter
upon the Freedom of the Will. In his 'Natural Theology' he
does not enter upon external perception. In considering cases of
conscience, he restricts himself to " the situations which arise in
the life of an inhabitant of this country in these times." " I have,"
he says, " examined no doubts, I have discussed no obscurities, I
have encountered no errors, I have adverted to no controversies,
but what I have seen actually to exist." In saying all this, we
must not forget that such subjects as Paley does think fit to dis-
cuss might be treated in a very abstruse manner. Only it is neces-
sary to remember that the popular character of his exposition
depends to some extent upon the choice of subject-matter.
(2.) He has a habit of stating principles in their application to
a concrete case, and he chooses very homely illustrations. These
are undoubtedly the main secrets of the simplicity of his style.
A good example of his simple way of stating disputed principles
by bringing them to bear on a supposed case, is seen in his chapter
on the " moral sense." He begins the chapter by relating the
story of Caius Toranius, who in the proscription by the trium-
virate was betrayed to the executioners by his own son. He
then proceeds :
" Now the question is, whether, if this story were related to the wild boy
caught some years ago in the woods of Hanover, or to a savage without ex-
perience, and without instruction, cut off in his infancy from all intercourse
with his species, and, consequently, under no possible influence of example,
authority, education, sympathy, or habit ; whether, I say, such a one would
feel, upon the relation, any degree of that sentiment of disajtprobalion of
1'oranius's conduct which we feel, or not?
2 I
498 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
"They who maintain the existence of a moral sense; of innate maxims;
of a natural conscience ; that the love of virtue and hatred of vice are
instinctive ; or the perception of right and wrong intuitive ; (all which
are only different ways of expressing the same opinion,) affirm that he,
would.
" They who deny the existence of a moral sense, &c., affirm that he would
not.
" And upon this, issue is joined.
"As the experiment has never been made, and, from the difficulty of
procuring a subject (not to mention the impossibility of proposing the
question to him, if we had one), is never likely to be made, what would
be the event, can only be judged of from probable reasons."
He then proceeds to state the pros and cons.
No better instance could be had of the simplicity of his ex-
amples and comparisons than the well-known pigeon illustration.
It constitutes the first chapter of the book on 'Relative Duties,'
and is headed On Property :
" If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn ; and if (instead of
each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and
no more) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a
heap ; reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse ; keep-
ing this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps worst, pigeon of the
flock ; sitting round and looking on, all the winter, whilst this one was
devouring, throwing about, and wasting it : and if a pigeon more hardy or
hungry than the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly
fl} ing upon it, and tearing it to pieces ; if you should see this, you would
see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among
men. Among men, you see the ninety -and -nine, toiling and scraping
together a heap of superfluities for one (and this one, too, oftentimes the
feeblest and worst of the whole set, a child, a woman, a mailman, or a fool),
getting nothing for themselves all the while but a little of the coarsest of
the provision which their own industry produces ; looking quietly on, while
they see the fruits of all their labour spent or spoiled ; and if one of the
number take or touch a particle of the hoard, the others joining against him,
and hanging him for the theft" 1
Clearness. Perspicuity is possessed by Paley in a very high
degree, but the precision of his statements and definitions is a
good deal affected by his paramount desire to be popular. Too
clear-headed to run into confusion, he is at the same time anxious
to accommodate himself to the plainest intelligence, and, like
many simple writers, purchases simplicity at the expense of
exactness. His purpose is to be easily understood by the mass,
and he deliberately and avowedly prefers a division or definition
because it is common and popular. His classification of the
virtues is an example (see p. 495). His consideration of "what
1 An account of Paley can hardly be considered complete without this illus-
tration. It has a historic interest. It is said that when Paley's name was sug-
gested to George III. as one that might deserve a bishopric, the King cried
" Paley ? hae ! hae ! pigeon Paley ? " whereby our author's hopes of such pro-
motion were ruined for ever.
WILLIAM PALEY. 499
we mean to gay when a man is OBLIGED to do a thing" is a
favourable specimen of his popular way of defining, and of bis
care to be as exact as is consistent with popular usage :
"A man is said to be obliged ' when he is urged by a violent motive result-
ing from the command of another.'
"FIRST, 'The motive must be violent' If a person who has done me
some little service, or has a small place in his disposal, ask me upon some
occasion for my vote, I may possibly give it him, from a motive of gratitude
or expectation : but I should hardly say that I was obliged to give it him ;
because the inducement does not rise high enough. Whereas, if a father or
a master, auy great benefactor, or one on whom my fortune depends, require
my vote, I give it him of course, and my answer to all who ask me why I
voted so and so is, that my father or my master obliged me ; that I had re-
ceived so many favours from, or had so great a dependence upon, such a one,
that I was obliged to vote as he directed me.
"SKCONDLY, 'It must result from the command of another.' Offer a
man a gratuity for doing anything for seizing, for example, an offender
he is not obliged by your offer to do it ; nor would he say he is ; though he
may be induced, persuaded, prevailed upon, tempted. If a magistrate or the
man's immediate superior command it, he considers himself as obliged to
comply, though probably he would lose less by a refusal in this case than in
the former.
" I will not undertake to say that the words obligation and obliged are
used uniformly in this sense, or always with this distinction : nor is it pos-
sible to tie down popular phrases to any constant signification ; but wher-
ever the motive is violent enough, and coupled with the idea of command,
authority, law, or the will of a superior, there, I take it, we always reckon
ourselves to be obliged.
"And from this account of obligation, it follows, that we can be obliged
to nothing, but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by : for
nothing else can be a 'violent motive ' to us. As we should not be obliged
to obey the laws or the magistrate, unless rewards or punishments, pleasure
or pain, somehow or other depended upon our obedience; so neither should
we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practise
virtue, or to obey the commands of God."
Strength, tScc. The preceding extracts give a fair idea of the
amount of force in Puley's composition ; he never soars or de-
claims. No other quality of his style need be specially noticed.
We have already remarked his indifference to melody in the
structure of his sentences. Unless in the vulgarity of his illus-
trations, he cannot be said to offend against good taste ; he is a
homely expositor who never even in an illustration makes any
pretence to touch the finer sensibilities, and never being in the
region of art, cannot be caught trespassing.
KINDS OF COMPOSITION.
Description, Paley's anatomical descriptions in his 'Natural
Theology ' have been much admired. There is nowhere, perhaps,
a better field for the display of perspicuous descriptive power
than in describing the complicated mechanism of the humau
500 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
body. It is, however, hardly fair to compare Paley with system-
atic writers on anatomy, and to praise the lucidity of his descrip-
tions at their expense. He has an advantage over them in taking
up the contrivances of the human mechanism only in so far as
they subserve certain ends, confining himself to their obvious
points of suitability to those ends, and'not entering into puzzling
intricacies of detail. On the other hand, it is but justice to his
extraordinary powers of perspicuous arrangement to say that sys-
tematic writers might often take a lesson from him.
He seems to have been a ware of the great art of preventing
confusion in complicated descriptions the art of keeping the
leading features prominently before the reader. This he was
enabled to effect more easily in many cases by the intention of
his work. He wished to show how exquisitely various parts are
adapted to particular ends, and thus had ready to his hand an
easy principle of lucid arrangement. He treats the body simply
as a piece of machinery, or rather as an assemblage of machines,
and describes each part only in so far as it performs some par-
ticular function. Take, for example, his description of the spine
or backbone. He does not attempt to deal with all its compli-
cations at once ; he separates its contrivances into three groups
according to the purposes that they serve, according as they
contribute to stability or firmness, to flexibility, or to the safe
conveyance of the spinal marrow.
His mastery of familiar figures was of signal service to him in
his endeavours to put the reader at starting in possession of a
comprehensive idea of the subject of his description. To illus-
trate this we shall quote the beginning of his -account of the
circulation of the blood. The quotation also illustrates what
may be laid down as a principle in the description of mechanical
contrivances namely, that we should begin by stating the pur-
pose, as giving the most comprehensive idea of the mechanism :
"The utility of the circulation of the blood, I assume as an acknowledged
point. One grand purpose is plainly answered by it ; the distributing
to every part, every extremity, every nook and corner of the body, the
nourishment which is received into it by one aperture. What enters at the
mouth finds its way to the fingers' ends. A more difficult mechanical pro-
blem could hardly, I think, be proposed, than to discover a method of con-
stantly repairing the waste, and of supplying an accession of substance to
every part of a complicated machine at the same time.
" This system presents itself under two views : first, the disposition of the
blood-vessels, i.e., the laying of the pipes; and, secondly, the construction
of the engine at the centre viz., the heart, for driving the blood through
them."
Exposition. All Paley's works became popular standards, and
his ' Evidences ' and ' Natural Theology ' have not yet been super-
seded. No writer has surpassed him in popularising the subjects
WILLIAM PALEY. 501
that he treated of. He may not rank high as an original thinker;
but as a popular expositor he may still be said to be "the first of
the first rank." The fact that he is far from perfect even in that
capacity, should be an inducement for authors of kindred genius
to surpass him, or at least to bring similar subjects up to the level
of more recent thought
We have seen that his great art of exposition is the production
of homely examples and comparisons. This appears in every
extract that we have considered, and needs not be farther enlarged
upon. It needs only be remarked, that trusting to this way of
making himself intelligible, he is not always so careful as he
might be in his general statements.
He does not often repeat a statement, either directly or ob-
versely. His ideal seems to be to give a single statement, and
then follow up with one or more illustrations, as the case may
require.
Of course, his power of homely illustration would not have in-
sured his popularity as the expounder of a technical subject had
he not been so orderly and methodical, and had he not avoided
the most abstruse inquiries.
Over and above all this, he must also have possessed some means
of imparting popular interest. Putting aside the intrinsic interest
of the subjects, which must always be supposed in a popular work,
we can see little in Paley's manner of exposition to attract interest
except its simplicity, and its contrast in that respect to other works
on the same subjects. When we wish to know something of a
subject, and can find nothing but dry, abstruse expositions, it is
a great pleasure to meet with an instructor that sympathises with
our difficulties, and is studiously careful to make the path of
knowledge easy. Such an instructor is Paley. Take, for ex-
ample, his most technical work, the ' Moral and Political Phil-
osophy.' Instead of scaring us in the Preface with a parade of
the difficulties of the subject, and apologies for his temerity in un-
dertaking such a task, he understates the difficulties, and takes the
task upon him with easy confidence. We are told that the design
of the work is to " direct private consciences in the general conduct
of human life," " to instruct individuals in their duty." There is
not a hint of any perplexity about what " conscience " is, or what
" duty " is. The discussion of the difficult points, such as the
Moral Sense, is managed with such consummate simplicity, that
we read the work through as a shrewd body of good advice, and
wonder how there could be so much hot controversy about questions
so plain. Our conductor never indicates, by any faltering in his
tone, that he is in any difficulty. When he starts a subject on
which moralists have shown a perplexing difference of opinion, he
confidently assures us that the differences are more in name than
502 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
p
in reality. It is refreshing to turn to the Book on ' Moral Obli-
gations,' and find the first chapter which is headed, " The Ques-
tion, Why am I obliged to keep my word, considered " effect such
an easy reconciliation of conflicting views :
" Why am I obliged to keep my word !
" Because it is right, says one. Because it is agreeable to the fitness of
things, says another. Because it is conformable to reason and nature, says
a third. Because it is conformable to truth, says a fourth. Because it
promotes the public good, says a fifth. Because it is required by the will
of God, concludes a sixth.
"Upon which dili'erent accounts, two things are observable :
"FiRST, that they all ultimately coincide.
"The fitness of things, means their fitness to produce happiness: the
nature of things, means that actual constitution of the world, by which
some things, as such and such actions, for example, produce happiness,
and others misery ; reason is the principle by which we discover or judge
of this constitution : truth is this judgment, expressed or drawn out into
propositions."
Persuasion. As might be inferred from what we have said,
Paley is much more successful in convincing the reason than in
captivating the fancy or touching the feelings. As a preacher he
is " moderate " and " rationalistic," insisting much upon the pru-
dence of living in accordance with the Christian faith. He excels
more as a controversial writer. His fairness and clear good sense
always produce a favourable impression ; and in his steady way of
going to work, he gives a succinct presentation of an opponent's
arguments before proceeding to state his case in reply. The
' Evidences ' are generally allowed to be nearly exhaustive from
their particular point of view, and in the ' Natural Theology ' he
makes the most of his knowledge.
He shines especially in refutation. He was perhaps hardly
energetic enough to show much original ingenuity in discovering
arguments. His power in what may be called " constructive "
argument lay rather in effective statement and arrangement, and
in the elaborate filling-out of the skeleton-ideas of others. It is
in refutation, in " destructive " argument, that he appears to most
advantage. He lias a mercilessly steady eye for inconsistency ;
and, from his habit of referring every general statement to its
basis of facts, often makes short work of very specious generalities.
His power lies most conspicuously in the happy use of particular
facts to demolish groundless generalities. In this way, for ex-
ample, he conclusively exposes the commonplace outcry against
theoretical politicians, which has been taken up even by such men
as Macaulay :
" I am not ignorant of an objection that has been advanced against all
abstract/ speculations concerning the origin, principle, or limitation of civil
authority namely, that such speculations possess little or no influence upon
WILLIAM PALEY. 503
the conduct either of the State or of the subjects, of the governors or the
governed, nor are attended with any useful consequences to either ; that in
times of tranquillity they are not wanted ; in times of confusion they are
never heard. This representation, however, in my opinion, is not just
Times of tumult, it is true, are not the times to learn ; but the choice which
men make of their side and party, in the most critical occasions of the
commonwealth, may nevertheless depend upon the lessons they have re-
ceived, the books they have read, and the opinions they have imbibed, in
seasons of leisure and quietness. Some judicious persons, who were present
at Geneva during the troubles which lately convulsed that city, thought
they perceived, in the contentious there carrying on, the operation of that
political theory which the writings of Rousseau, and the unbounded esteem
in which these writings are holden by his countrymen, had diffused among
the people. Throughout the political disputes that have within these few
years taken place in Great Britain, in her sister kingdom, and in her foreign
dependencies, it was impossible not to observe, in the language of party, in
the resolutions of public meetings, in debate, in conversation, in the general
strain of those fugitive and diurnal addresses to the public which such occa-
sions call forth, the prevalency of those ideas of civil authority, which are
displayed in the works of Mr Locke."
He was not the man to rush into every controversy affecting the
Church ; but, once aroused, he was au able champion of his causa
His paper on ' Subscription to Articles of Faith,' written in defence
of his patron, Bishop Law, against some animadversions, is a model
of cool and thorough refutation. An extract or two will show how
vigorously he argues, and how carefully he has mastered his op-
ponent's positions :
" The author of the ' Considerations ' " (the title of Bishop Law's work)
"contends very properly that it is one of the first duties a Christian owes to
his Master 'to keep his mind open and unbiassed' in religious inquiries.
Can a man be said to do this who must bring himself to assent to opinions
proposed by another ? who enters into a profession where both his subsis-
tence and success depend upon his continuance in a particular persuasion ?
In answer to this we are informed that these articles are no ' rule of faith '
(what ! not to those who subscribe them?) ; that 'the Church deprives no
man of his right of private judgment ' (she cannot ; she hangs, however, a
dead weight upon it) ; that it is 'a very unfair state of the case to call sub-
scription a declaration of our full and final persuasion in matters of faith ;
though if it be not a ' full ' persuasion, what is it ? and ten to one it will be
' final,' when such consequences attend a change. That 'no man is hereby
tied up from impartially examining the Word of God, ' i. e. , with the ' impar-
tiality' of a man who must 'eat* or 'starve,' according as the examination
turns out ; an ' impartiality ' so suspected that a court of justice would not
receive his evidence under half of the same influence : nor from altering his
opinion if he finds reason so to do ; which few, I conceive, will find, when
the alteration must cost them so dear. If one could give credit to our author
in what he says here, and in some other passages of his Answer, one would
suppose that, in his judgment at least, subscription restrained no man from
adopting what opinion he pleased, provided ' he does not think himself
bound openly to maintain it ;' that 'men may retain their preferments, if
they will but keep their opinions to themselves. ' If this be what the Church
of England means, let her say so.
" It seemed to add strength to this objection that the judgment of most
504 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
thinking men, being in a progressive state, their opinions of course must
many of them change ; the evil nd iniquity of which the answerer sets forth
with great pleasantry, but has forgot at the same time to give us any remedy
for the misfortune, except the old woman's receipt, to leave off thinking for
fear of thinking wrong.
"Our author, good man, 'is well persuaded that the generality of the
clergy, when they offer themselves for ordination, consider seriously what
office they take upon them, and firmly believe what they subscribe to.' I
arn persuaded much otherwise. But as this is a ' fact, ' the reader, if he be
wise, will neither take the answerer's word for it nor mine, but form his
own judgment from his own observation. Bishop Burnet complained above
sixty years ago, that 'the greater part,' even then, ' subscribed the Articles
without ever examining them, and others did it because they must do it. '
Is it probable that, in point either of seriousness or orthodoxy, the clergy
have much mended since ? "
ROBERT HALL, 1764-183L
One of the most eminent preachers of his generation, if not the
most eminent. He was the son of a Baptist minister at Arnsby,
near Leicester, the youngest of fourteen children. He seems to
have been a very precocious boy : he is related to have been a great
talker at the age of three, to have told amusing stories at six, to
have studied Butler's ' Analogy ' and Jonathan Edwards ' On the
Will ' at nine, and to have learnt all that his schoolmaster could
teach him at eleven. He received his higher education at a Baptist
academy in Bristol, and at King's College, Aberdeen, where he
passed through the regular course of study and took the degree of
M.A. At Aberdeen he was the class-fellow and intimate com-
panion of Sir James Mackintosh the two young men often walk-
ing together and debating questions in metaphysics and general
literature. For five years he officiated at Broadmead, near Bristol,
as assistant-minister to a Baptist congregation, acting at the same
time as classical tutor in the Baptist Academy. In 1790 he re-
ceived a call from a congregation in Cambridge, and remained
there for fifteen years, acquiring great fame as a preacher. While
there he published some tracts and sermons, ' Christianity Con-
sistent with the Love of Freedom ' (1791) ; 'Apology for the Free-
dom of the Press' (1793); 'Modern Infidelity considered with
respect to its Influence on Society' (1799); 'Reflections on War'
(1802); 'The Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis' (1803).
What with hard study, and what with the excitement of preach-
ing and talking, he overtaxed his strength : in 1804, and again in
1805, he had an attack of insanity. When his health was re-
established, he became associated with a congregation in Leicester,
and preached there with such acceptance that the church had to be
enlarged. He remained at Leicester for nearly twenty years. In
1826 he removed to Bristol, upon an invitation from the church
where he had been assistant nearly forty years befora He died at
EGBERT HALL. 505
Bristol in 1831. His collected works, edited with a Life by Dr
Olinthus Gregory, contain the pieces above mentioned ; two small
volumes of sermons (among which may be singled out the ' Funeral
Sermon for the Princess Charlotte,' and 'The Glory of God in
Concealing'); 'Terms of Communion' (an attempt to promote
free communion among Christian Churches); and other pieces
of minor importance.
Hall had a large-built, robust-looking figure. When in repose,
his features wore a stern expression, his large mouth having a
peculiarly formidable appearance ; but when he was engaged in
friendly talk, the lines were soft and winning.
With so much of the appearance of robust health, his consti-
tution was far from being strong in 'all its parts. All his life
through he suffered from acute pains in the side and loins ; and
when he died, the cause of his sufferings was found to be exten-
sive disease of the heart and the right kidney. The other vital
organs were found to be quite healthy ; and this probably explains
why he was able to endure his acute pains so long, and to enjoy
life, to maintain even a buoyant flow of spirits, in the intervals of
the keener paroxysms. He supported nature further by large
doses of stimulants and narcotics, drinking enormous quantities
of tea (as many as thirty cups in an afternoon), smoking hard, and
in his later years, when his pains increased, taking as much as a
thousand drops of laudanum in a night
. As in the case of Johnson, still more in the case of Hall, it would
be unfair to estimate his intellectual powers by his published writ-
ings. These contain much clear and vigorous argument, copious-
ness of expression, and here and there passages of splendid
declamation ; but they do not bear out the reputation he held
among his contemporaries, both in his peculiar brotherhood and
out of it. He never concentrated his powers long upon any one
theme. He was very unlike the steady, sagacious Paley, who
threw the greater part of his energy into his books. He was ready
to spend himself upon " labour that profiteth not," at least for
posthumous reputation. He went through a laborious course of
reading in Latin and Greek authors, " because he thought himself
especially defective in a tasteful and critical acquaintance with
them ; " sparing not even " the best treatises on the Greek metres
then extant." He went through a similarly laborious course of
reading in mathematics, in order to comprehend Sir Isaac New-
ton's philosophical discoveries. When Macaulay wrote his cele-
brated article on Milton, Hall set to work at Italian, that he
might be able to verify the comparison between Milton and Dante.
A man so discursive could not be expected to write much at a high
standard of excellence. Nearly all his published writings were
composed rather hastily. He prepared only one or two of hia
606 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
sermons for publication : most of them were published after his
death from notes taken by hearers. The intellectual power dis-
played in what he has written is very unequal ; but there are
passages that show us what he was capable of, and entitle him
to a high rank in literature.
Like Jeremy Taylor, Hall was at once a hard student and a
man of warm feelings. He had, as we have said, in spite of all
his acute sufferings, a keen enjoyment of life. He said of himself
that he " enjoyed everything." He liked company extremely
"Don't let us go yet," he was often heard to say; "the present
place is the best place." He took pleasure in the dry treatises of
Jonathan Edwards, and spoke with enthusiasm of Chillingworth's
' Religion of Protestants ' -" It is just," he said, " like reading a
novel." His likes, dislikes, and admirations were numerous, and ex-
pressed with vehemence. In argument he was excitable, and often
lost his temper : when his companions differed from him on a point
that he had considered well, he closed the debate with a peremp-
tory deliverance of his opinion. When excited, he indulged freely
in personal sarcasms. In genial company he was the gayest of
companions ; uttering his opinions without reserve, playing on his
friends with affectionate raillery, and showing a grateful sense of
the regard paid to his talents. With unaffected piety he often took
himself to task for not making his conversation more spiritually
edifying, and made good resolutions to amend ; but though he
entered a company with the best intentions, his genial impulses
were too strong.
For active life he was eminently unqualified. He was tolerably
methodical in his studies, and there is no record of his being
diverted by other interests from the due preparation of his weekly
discourses. But in the matter of active duties he needed constant
supervision. He became absorbed in his books, and forgot his
engagements. His deacons often had to look for him in his study.
He was sometimes ignorant of the day of the week : and if he
went to London, and engaged to deliver letters for his friends, the
chances were that he brought them back in his pocket
Opinions. Hall caused some suspicion and anxiety among his
graver brethren by the liberality of his views, and his free remarks
on names venerable in the Church. There was no moroseness, no
austerity, in his religious opinions : as we have seen, he was by
nature lively and full of gay spirits. He was latitudinariun in
his views of Church government, inclining to Pope's epigram,
"Whate'er is best administered is best." In his 'Terms of Com-
munion,' he advocated tlie admission of every denomination of
Christians to the communion-tables of every other. There his in-
dulgence stopped. He had Johnson's hatred of infidelity and infidels.
ROBERT HALL. 507
He wrote with great spirit against ecclesiastical and political
intolerance to Dissenters.
He took little part in political controversies. His first work,
' Christianity consistent with a Love of Freedom,' was designed
to vindicate the exertions of Christian ministers in the cause of
political freedom ; but though he defended the principle, he him-
self ha-1 no natural turn for the work. In his 'Apology for the
Freedom of the Press and for General Liberty,' he appears as one
of the earliest advocates for Parliamentary Reform.
ELEMENTS OP STYLE.
Vocabulary. His command of language is sufficiently copious,
though not by any means of the first order. This is perhaps due
in no small measure to the course of his reading. He spent com-
paratively little time upon the masters of the English language.
His favourite authors were the writers of systematic and contro-
rersial theology and metaphysics. From this circumstance his
command of the great popular body of the language is limited in
comparison with what might be expected with his powers of verbal
memory. And from the same circumstance his diction is Latin-
ised and heavily encumbered with the technical phrases of argu-
mentation.
Sentences. In the structure of his sentences he is a close imita-
tor of Johnson. He acknowledged that in his youth he "aped
Johnson, and preached Johnson," but said that he found the
diction too cumbrous, and abandoned all attempts to make it a
modeL His sentences, however, although shorter, bear unmis-
takable traces of Johnson. He has not the same abrupt way of
introducing generalities, but he imitates all the arts of balance,
from the ponderous swing to the sharp emphatic point.
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
Simplicity. Hall's diction is not suited for a popular style.
Not only does it want pictorial embellishments, except in the
more highly wrought passages : it is positively dry ; he has a
preference for heavy Latin derivatives, and for abstract forms of
expression the result, as we have said, in some measure, of his
favourite studies. Such expressions as " The author knows not
with certainty to whom to ascribe it He believes it fell from the
pen of an illustrious female, Mrs More" belong to a stilted order
of composition very shocking to modern advocates of the Queen's
English. Apart from the occasional use of stilted and unfamiliar
words, the general cast of the expression is excessively abstract.
Any passage will illustrate this : let us take (from the ' Sentiments
508 FKOM 17'JO TO 1820.
proper to the Present Crisis') some remarks upon our reasons for
expecting to be victorious over the French :
" They appear to entertain mistaken sentiments, who rely with too much
confidence for success on our supposed superiority in virtue to our enemies.
Such a confidence betrays inattention to the actual conduct of Providence.
Wherever there is conscious guilt, there is room to apprehend punishment ;
nor is it for the criminal to decide where the merited punishment shall first
fall. The cup of divine displeasure is, indeed, presented successively to
guilty nations, but it by no means invariably begins with those who have
run the greatest career in guilt. On the contrary, 'judgment often begins
at the house of God ; ' and He frequently chastises His servants with severity
before He proceeds to the destruction of His enemies. He assured Abraham
his seed should be afflicted in Egypt for four hundred years, and that after
their expiration, ' the nation that afflicted them he would judge.' "
There is undeniably a certain dignity in this mode of expres-
sion, but it is very much unsuited to the easy apprehension of
people generally. A simple writer would probably prefer some
such beginning as this :
"We do wrong to trust in our being more virtuous than our enemies.
Even though we are more virtuous, that is no reason for believing that Pro-
vidence, in the first instance at least, will fight on our side. We may be
better than our enemies, yet we cannot pretend to be perfect : if we are
guilty, we deserve to be punished, and we have no right to complain if we
ore punished before others more guilty than ourselves. Consider the deal-
ings of Providence in past times. Have the most wicked nations always
len the first to receive punishment? No; on the contrary, 'judgment
often begins at the house of God,'"&c.
Clearness. Hall's mind had a natural craving for broad com-
prehensive views, and he usually states his case with great per-
spicuity. His pursuit of abstract argumentative literature also,
while it confirmed him in the use of unfamiliar language, accus-
tomed him to a certain exactness of expression. In his contro-
versial works he makes copious use of logical formalities, and
gives evidence of a concentrated effort to be clear in his phrases
of reference and in the general conduct of his discourse, as well
as precise and discriminate in the employment of doubtful terms.
Strength. The distinguishing excellence of Hall's style consists
in general vigour and elevation of language. His astonishing
popularity was probably due to the occasional bursts of splendid
eloquence.
His ' Apology for the Freedom of the Press ' is written with
great spirit The following bears out what we say as regards
general vigour and elevation :
" Between the period of national honour and complete degeneracy, there
is usually an interval of national vanity, during which examples of virtue
are recounted and admired without being imitated. The Romans were
never more proud of their ancestors than wheu they ceased to resemble
ROBERT HALL. 509
them. From being the freest and most high-spirited people in the woriu,
they suddenly fell into the tamest and most abject submission. Let Hot
the name of Britons, my countrymen, too much elate you ; nor even think
yourselves safe while you abate one jot of that holy jealousy by which your
liberties have hitherto been secured. The richer the inheritance bequeathed
you, the more it merits your care for its preservation. The possession must
be continued by that spirit with which it was at first acquired ; and as it
was gained by vigilance, it will be lost by supineness. A degenerate race
repose on the merits of their forefathers ; the virtuous create a fund of their
own. The former look back to their ancestors to hide their shame ; the
latter look forward to posterity, to levy a tribute of admiration. In vain
will you confide in the forms of a free constitution. Unless you reanimate
these forms with fresh vigour, they will be melancholy memorials of what
you once were, and haunt you with the shade of departed liberty. A silent
stream of corruption poured over the whole land, has tainted every branch
of the administration with decay. On your temperate but manly exertions
depend the happiness and freedom of th latest posterity. That Assembly
which sits by right of representation, will be little inclined to oppose your
will, expressed in a firm, decisive manner. You may be deafened by
clamour, misled by sophistry, or weakened by division, but you cannot be
despised with impunity. A vindictive ministry may hang the terrors of
criminal prosecution over the heads of a few with success ; but at their peril
will they attempt to intimidate a nation. The trick of associations, of pre-
tended plots, and silent insurrections, will oppose a feeble barrier to the
impression of the popular mind."
The concluding expression is an example of our author's peculiar
failing, the introduction here and there of an incongruous mean-
ness of expression, of a word or phrase out of tune as it were.
" The impression of the popular mind " is a feeble ending ; " tJie
will of a whole people" or some such phrase, would have been
more in keeping. These occasional lapses are probably the results
of his chronic malady ; when an acute paroxysm came upon him,
he mu&t often have ended otf a sentence with the first form that
occurred, having no patience to see that it harmonised.
A good example of his loftiest flights is the animated address at
the close of ' Sentiments proper to the Present Crisis.' The passage
is often quoted :
" By a series of criminal enterprises, by the successes of guilty ambition,
the liberties of Europe have been gradually extinguished : the subjugation
of Holland, Switzerland, and the free towns of Germany, has completed that
catastrophe ; and we are the only people in the eastern hemisphere who are
in possession of equal laws and a free constitution. Freedom, driven from
every spot on the Continent, has sought an asylum in a country which she
always chose for her favourite abode ; but she is pursued even here, and
threatened with destruction. The inundation of lawless power, after cover-
ing the whole earth, threatens to follow us here ; and we are most exactly,
most critically placed, in the only aperture where it can be successfully re-
pelled, in the Thermopylae of the universe. As far as the interests of free-
dom are concerned, the most important by far of sublunary interests, you,
my countrymen, stand in the capacity of the federal representatives of the
human race ; for with you it is to determine (under God) in what condition
tiie latest posterity shall be born j their fortunes are entrusted to your care,
510 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
and on your conduct at this moment depends the colour and complexion of
their destiny. If liberty, after being extinguished on the Continent, is
suffered to expire here, whence is it ever to emerge in the midst of that
thick night that will invest it ? It remains with you then to decide whether
that freedom, at whose voice the kingdoms of Europe awoke from the sleep
of ages, to run a career of virtuous emulation in everything great and good ;
the freedom which dispelled the mists of superstition, and invited the
nations to behold their God ; whose magic touch kindled the rays of genius,
the enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of eloquence ; the freedom which
poured into our lap opulence and arts, and embellished life with innumer-
able institutions and improvements, till it became a theatre of wonders ; it
is for you to decide whether this freedom shall yet survive, or be covered
with a funeral pall, and wrapt in eternal gloom. It is not necessary to await
your determination. In the solicitude you feel to approve yourselves worthy
of such a trust, every thought of what is afflicting in warfare, every appre-
hension of danger must vanish, and you are impatient to mingle in the
battles of the civilised world. Go, then, ye defenders of your country,
accompanied with every auspicious omen ; advance with alacrity into the
fiold, where God Himself musters the hosts to war. Religion is too much
interested in your success not to lend you her aid ; she will shed over this
enterprise her selectest influence. While you are engaged in the field, many
will repair to the closet, many to the sanctuary ; the faithful of every name
will employ that prayer which has power with God ; the feeble hands which
are unequal to any other weapon will grasp the sword of the Spirit ; and
from myriads of humble, contrite hearts, the voice of intercession, supplica-
tion, and weeping, will mingle in its ascent to heaven with the shouts of
battle and the shock of arms.
The continuation of this passage, which is not so often quoted,
exhibits no falling off of power. There is not perhaps in the
whole range of oratory anything more inspiring than the con-
cluding invocations :
" While you have everything to fear from the success of the enemy, you
have every means of preventing that success, so that it is next to impossible
for victory not to crown your exertions. The extent of your resources, under
God, is equal to the justice of your cause. But should Providence deter-
mine otherwise, should you fall in this struggle, should the nation fall, you
will have the satisfaction (the purest allotted to man) of having performed
your part ; your names will be enrolled with the most illustrious dead;
while posterity, to the end of time, as often as they revolve the events of
this period (and they will incessantly revolve them), will turn to you a
reverential eye, while they mourn over the freedom which is entombed in
your sepulchre. I cannot but imagine the virtuous heroes, legislators, and
patriots, of every age and country, are bending from their elevated seats to
witness this contest, as if they were incapable, till it be brought to a favour-
able issue, of enjoying their eternal repose. Enjoy that repose, illustrious
immortals ! Your mantle fell when you ascended ; and thousands inflamed
with your spirit, and impatient to tread in your steps, are ready to swear by
Him that sitLeth upon the throne, and livethfor ever and ever, they will pro-
tect freedom 'in her last asylum, and never desert that cause which you
sustained by your labours, and cemented with your blood. And thou, sole
Kuler among the children ot men, to whom the shields of the earth belong,
gird on thy sword, thou Most Mighty : go forth with our hosts in the day of
battle 1 Impart, in addition to their hereditary valour, that confidence of
ROBERT HALL. 511
success which springs from thy presence ! Pour into their hearts the spirit
of depnrted heroes ! Inspire them with thine owu ; and while led by thine
hand, and fighting under thy banners, open thou their eyes to behold in
every valley and in every plain, what thy prophet beheld by the same
illumination chariots of fire and horses of fire ! Then shall the strong man
be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark ; and they shall both burn together,
and none shall quench them. "
In the Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte there are
several soaring passages. The following is one of the most
striking :
"What, my brethren, if it be lawful to indulge such a thought, what
would be the funeral obsequies of a lost soul ? Where shall we find the
tears tit to be wept at such a spectacle I or, could we realise the calamity in
all its extent, what tokens of commiseration and concern would be deemed
equal to the occasion I Would it suffice for the sun to veil his light, and
the moon her brightness ; to cover the ocean with mourning, and the heavens
with sackloth ? or were the whole fabric of nature to become animated and
vocal, would it be possible for her to utter a groan too deep, or a cry too
piercing, to express the magnitude and extent of such a catastrophe ? "
Another of his most celebrated flights occurs in the magnificent
sermon on ' The Glory of God in Concealing.'
Pathos. We remarked that Jeremy Taylor describes the miser-
ies of human life more as a poet than as a preacher of morality.
Hall was opposed to this on principle. He thought that the
preacher should endeavour not so much to be tender and touch-
ing, as to stir his hearers to virtuous action. He distinguishes
clearly the pathetic and the practical treatment of distress:
" There are kinds of distress founded on the passions, which, if not
applauded, are at least admired in their excess, as implying a peculiar
refinement of sensibility in the mind of the sufferer. Embellished by
taste, and wrought by the magic of genius into innumerable forms, they
turn grief into a luxury, and draw from the eyes of millions delicious tears.
. . . Nor can I reckon it among the improvements of the present age,
that, by the multiplication of works of fiction, the attention is diverted
from scenes of real to those of imaginary distress ; from the distress which
demands relief, to that which admits of embellishment : in consequence of
which the understanding is enervated, the heart is corrupted, and those feel-
ings which were designed to stimulate to active benevolence are employed in
nourishing a sickly sensibility. . . . Though it cannot be denied that
by diffusing a warmer colouring over the visions of fancy, sensibility is often
a source of exquisite pleasures to others if not to the possessor, yet it should
never be confounded with benevolence. ... A good man may have
nothing of it ; a bad man may have it in abundance. "
Wherever, therefore, Hall describes scenes of misery, he does so
in such away as to "stimulate to active benevolence," and makes
no attempt to diffuse over them the warmer colouring that " draws
from the eyes of millions delicious tears." His well- known picture
of the horrors of war is an example.
Besides, his genius inclined much more to sublimity than to
512 FKOM 1790 TO 1820.
pathos. In the Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte, from
which we have already given a quotation, he passes lightly over
the affecting aspects of death, dilates in magnificent strains on
such collateral themes as the grandeurs of eternity, and exhibits
"the uncertainty of human prospects, and the instability of
earthly distinctions," as considerations to " check our presump-
tion, and appal our hearts."
And again, for purposes of pathos, his diction is too Latinised :
language can hardly be touching unless it is simple. His frequent
use of controversial forms is peculiarly jarring, when the theme is
of a tender nature. Take for example his ' Reflections on the In-
evitable Lot of Human Lifa' He begins in a determined tone,
as if he meant to overbear a very obstinate opponent " TJiere is
nothing better established by universal observation, than that the
condition of man upon earth is less or more an afflicted condition :
' Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.' " Through-
out the sermon the melancholy train of reflection is harshly broken
by these disputatious turns of expression. Thus " If we are
tempted to repine at seeing others in peace and prosperity, while
we are harassed and distressed, we form a most inadequate and
premature judgment. Their period of trial will arrive," <kc. In
expressing the pathos of pious confidence he introduces the same
fatal intellectual hardness. The effect of the following passage is
destroyed by the two clauses marked in italics a chilling limita-
tion, and a no less lowering comparison :
" That the Lord reigns, is one of those truths which lie at the very basis
of piety; nor is there any more consoling. Jt fills the heart, under a right
impression of it, with a cheerful hope and unruffled tranquillity, amidst the
changes and trials of life, wlvich we shall look for in vain from any other
quarter. "
The last sentence should have been expressed in some such way
as follows :
"Amidst the changes and trials of life, it fills the heart with cheerful
hope and unruffled tranquillity."
KINDS OF COMPOSITION.
Persuasion. Hall's Latinised diction and argumentatative forms
were against his popularity as a preacher. How it came about
that he was popular in spite of these drawbacks is explained by
John Foster :
" There was a remission of strict connection of thought towards the con-
clusion, where he threw himself loose into a strain of declamation, always
earnest, and often fervid. This was of great effect in securing a degree of
favour with many, to whom so intellectual a preacher would not otherwise
THEOLOGY. 613
have been acceptable ; it was this that reconciled persons of simple ptetv
nd little cultivated understanding. Many who might follow him with
very imperfect apprehension and satisfaction through the preceding parts,
could reckon on being warmly interested at the end. '
On the whole, however, his was not a style of preaching that
was likely to have much practical effect on the conduct of his
hearers. He was much too general both in his exaltation of
virtue and in his denunciation of vice. John Foster relates that
after a sermon on the sin and absurdity of covetousness, one of
the hearers observed to another "An admirable sermon yet
why was such a sermon preached ? For probably not one person
in the congregation, though it is not wanting in examples of
the vice in question, would take the discourse as at all applicable
to himself." " Too many of the attendants," says Foster, " wit-
nessed some of the brightest displays rather with the feeling of
looking at a fine picture than of being confronted by a faithful
mirror ; and went away equally pleased with a preacher that was
so admirable, and with themselves for having the intelligence and
taste to admire him."
" It appeared a serious defect in Mr Hall's preaching, that he practically
took on him too little of this responsibility of distinguishing degrees of
Christian virtue. In temporary oblivion of the rule that theoretic descrip-
tion should keep existing fact so much in view that a right adjustment may
be made between them, he would expatiate in eloquent latitude on the
Christian character, bright and ' full-orbed ' in all its perfections, of con-
tempt of the world, victory over temptation, elevated devotion, assimilation
to the divine image, zeal for the divine glory, triumphant faith, expansive
charity, sanctity of life ; without an intimation, at the time or afterward,
that all this, so sublime if it were realised, so obligatory as the attainment
toward which a Christian should be, at whatever distance, aspiring, is yet
unhappily to be subjected, on behalf of our pool nature, to a cautious dis-
cussion of modifications and degrees ; especially when the anxious question
comes to be, What deficiencies prove a man to be no Christian t "
OTHER WRITERS.
THEOLOGY.
About the beginning of this period the Evangelical movement
inaugurated by Wesley and Whitefield among the lower classes,
began to make itself powerfully felt in higher circles. One of ita
chief leaders was Charles Simeon (1759-1836), appointed vicar of
Trinity Church in Cambridge in 1782. Simeon was, in the face
of very bitter opposition, an energetic preacher of evangelical
doctrine, and a generous patron of pious young men, such as
Henry Martin and Henry Kirke White. He bore the chief part
in originating the missionary schemes of the English Church.
His 'Horae Homileticae' (complete in 21 vols., 1832) is a
2 K
514 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
sentative exposition of evangelical views. Another repiesenta-
tive work of this school of religious thought, of a more popular
character, is Wilberforce's ' Practical Christianity,' published by
the great agitator for the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1797.
This work has gone through fifty editions in England and America,
and has been translated into several European languages.
To the same school belonged the brothers Milner, Joseph
Milner (1744-1797), vicar of Hull, and Isaac Milner (1751-1820),
Senior Wrangler, Master of Queen's College, and Dean of Car-
lisle, two sturdy-minded natives of Yorkshire, who raised them-
selves from humble lifa The ' History of the Church ' was begun
by the elder brother in 1794, and finished by the younger in 1812.
Isaac Milner is said to have been the means of converting Wilber-
force to evangelical piety, and he was an honoured member of the
society that we have already mentioned as influencing the youth
of Macaulay.
With these may be linked, as an Evangelical of a different type,
John Foster (1770-1843), a Baptist clergyman, a friend of Robert
Hall's, known in general literature as a writer of essays. Foster
was far from having Hall's reputation as a preacher : he was a
reserved kind of man, and his power lay more exclusively with
the pen. The best known of his essays, which have passed through
many editions, is one " On Decision of Character." He cultivated
originality both in thought and in expression. His command of
language and illustration is copious, but his style has a want of
flow, an air of labour. He repeats an idea again and again, but
the successive repetitions do not, like the varied expression of
Chalmers, make the meaning more and more luminous; they
often burden rather than illuminate the general reader, and they
strike the critic as a laboured exercise in the accumulation of
synonyms and similitudes.
We may place in another group the divines that engaged deeply
in politics. Chief among these (excluding Bishop Horsley, who
remained during the first half of this period the Jupiter of Con-
servative Churchmen) stands Dr Samuel Parr (1747-1825), known
in his day as the Whig Samuel Johnson, but by the present gen-
eration hardly distinguished from the founder of "Parr's Life
Pills." Parr was a man of unquestionable ability, and the oblivion
that has overtaken his name is due to his having left no great
work on any great subject His fame rested upon two accom-
plishments, both perishable foundations, Latin scholarship and
powers of conversation. His pre-eminence in Latin composition
was universally acknowledged : although a Whig, he was selected
tc write the epitaphs of Johnson and of Burke. His powers of
conversation are attested by evidence equally unequivocal : al-
though he held no higher station than the curacy of Ilatton, he
THEOLOGY. 615
was received at the tables of the Whig nobility, and corresponded
with " nearly one-half of our British peerage, and select members
of the royal family." His talents secured this admission to high
life in spite of a rude dogmatic manner, a homely person, and
eccentricity in the matter of dress. Besides this indirect evidence
of his social acceptability, we have the direct evidence of Johnson,
whom the lesser Samuel imitated in the rudeness of his manner
" Sir," he said to Langton, " I am obliged to you for having asked
me this evening. Parr is a fair man. I do not know when I have
had an occasion of such free controversy." With all this it is
strange that Parr never received the coveted distinction of a
bishopric : the explanation probably is that his chief patron, Fox,
died just as the Whigs came into power, and that his other friends
in high circles were not so indulgent to his arrogantf eccentricities
and classical licence of personal invective. His style was grandilo-
quent to an extravagant extreme. De Quiucey speaks of " his
periodic sentences, with their ample volume of sound and self-
revolving rhythmus ; " and of " his artful antithesis, and solemn
anti-libration of cadences." And Sydney Smith, who reviewed his
' Spital Sermon ' in the first number of the ' Edinburgh Review,'
characterises the style as follows: "The Doctor is never simple
and natural for a single instant Everything smells of the rheto-
rician. He never appears to forget himself, or to be hurried by his
subject into obvious language. Every expression seems to be the
result of artifice and intention ; and as to the worthy dedicatees,
the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, unless the sermon be done into
English by a person of honour, they may perhaps be flattered by
the Doctor's politeness, but they can never be much edified by his
meaning. Dr Parr seems to think that eloquence consists not in
an exuberance of beautiful images not in simple and sublime
conceptions not in the language of the passions ; but in a studi-
ous arrangement of sonorous, exotic, and sesquipedal words."
Another clergyman and politician, more successful in the world
than Parr, was Richard Watson (1737-1816), successively Second
Wrangler at Cambridge, Professor of Chemistry, Professor of
Divinity, and Bishop of Llandaff. In politics he was a moderate
Whig ; he vindicated the principles of the French Revolution at
the outset, but in 1798 he issued 'An Address to the People of
Great Britain, warning them of the danger which the French
Revolution taught them.' He also wrote 'An Apology for Chris-
tianity,' in reply to Gibbon ; and ' An Apology for the Bible,' in
reply to Paine. His own orthodoxy was suspected. He was an
exceedingly ambitious man, and although more than once in his
life he received undeserved promotion, yet in his autobiography he
is indignant that the Whigs did not prefer him to a more lucrative
see. Watson's anti-revolutionary address was fiercely commented
516 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
on by Gilbert Wakefleld (1756-1801\ the son of an English rector,
who took orders in the Church, but left it from conscientious
scruples. He was a very scholarly man, and published a trans-
lation of the New Testament, and ' An Inquiry concerning the
Person of Christ.' An earnest creature, of sensitive excitable
temperament, he felt warmly, and gave fearless expression to his
convictions. He was prosecuted for his reply to the Bishop of
Llandaff, and imprisoned for two years. He survived his imprison-
ment only a few months.
PHILOSOPHY.
In this generation the philosophy of Reid was upheld by Dugald
Stewart (1753-1828), Professor of Mathematics, and subsequently,
from 1785 to 1810, Professor of Moral Philosophy, in Edinburgh.
He propounded little that was original in philosophy ; his opinions
were for the most part modifications of Reid ; but as an expositor
of philosophical doctrines, his reputation stands deservedly high.
Most of his works were composed after his retirement from the
Chair of Philosophy in 1810. A remark is sometimes made that
his best works were his pupils ; the plain paraphrase of which is
that he was a person of stately manners and polished oratory, and
a rare thing then for a man in his position a Whig in politics,
and that several scions of the Whig nobility were placed in Edin-
burgh under his care. Along with a fine presence, Stewart pos-
sessed great natural eloquence. James Mill used to declare that
though he had heard Pitt and Fox deliver some of their most ad-
mired speeches, he never heard anything nearly so eloquent as
some of the lectures of Professor Stewart While his account of
Mind coincides in the main with Reid's, the statement and illus-
tration of the doctrines, and the arguments on points of dispute,
are his own. He is the most ornate and elegant of our philosophi-
cal writers. His summaries of philosophical systems are some-
times praised as being especially perspicuous and interesting. His
manner as a controversialist is peculiarly agreeable when taken
in contrast to the hard-hitting and open ridicule of such contro-
versialists as Priestley : Stewart's copious lubricated eloquence is
much better fitted to conciliate opponents than win assent.
Thomas Brown (1778-1820) was appointed colleague to Stewart
in the Moral Philosophy Chair in 1810, and discharged the duties
of the office till his death in 1820. Brown is an often-quoted case
of precocious genius : he composed and published ' Observations
on Darwin's Zoonomia ' before he had completed his twentieth
year. He was one of the band of young men that originated the
1 Edinburgh Review,' and he wrote a paper on Kant in the second
number; but he took offence and seceded before the Review was
PHILOSOPHY. 5 1 7
many months old. In 1805 he published an 'Inquiry into the
Relation of Cause and Effect' During the ten years of his pro-
fessoriate, he published several poems, which possessed little origi-
nal merit, and soon relapsed into the province of the antiquarian.
In his philosophy, Brown agreed with Reid and Stewart in ascrib-
ing an intuitive origin to certain beliefs, and differed from them in
some minor points of nice distinction relating to external percep-
tion. He was a very popular lecturer : he was more sentimental
than Stewart, his style was more florid, and his criticism of his
predecessors was acrimonious and racy, not to say flippant.
The most influential and original philosopher of this generation
was Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the founder of the science of
Jurisprudence, and the first to make a thorough application of the
principle of Utility to practical affairs. The sou of a London
solicitor, he was sent to Westminster School, and to Oxford, and
bred to the law ; but, cherishing a strong repugnance to legal
abuses, he refrained from the practice of his profession, and lived
the life of a studious recluse.
His character and writings are very impartially discussed in a
well-known essay by Mr John Stuart Mill (' Dissertations,' vol. i.)
" Bentham has been in this age and country the great questioner
of things established. It is by the influence of the modes of
thought with which his writings inoculated a considerable number
of thinking men, that the yoke of authority has been broken, and
innumerable opinions, formerly received on tradition as incontest-
able, are put upon their defence, and required to give an account
of themselves." He " carried the war of criticism and of refuta-
tion, the conflict with falsehood and absurdity, into the field of
practical abuses." Nor was he merely a negative, destructive, or
subversive philosopher. His mind was eminently positive, con-
structive, synthetic. He never pulled down without building up.
After showing that an institution was inconsistent with his funda-
mental principles, he always suggested a substitute that was con-
sistent therewith. His method of procedure was more important
than his results. His method " may be shortly described as the
method of detail ; "of treating wholes by separating them into their
parts, abstractions by resolving them into things, classes and
generalities by distinguishing them into the individuals of which
they are made up ; and breaking every question into pieces before
attempting to solve it" The method was not by any means
absolutely original; but "whatever originality there was in the
method, in the subjects he applied it to, and in the rigidity with
which he adhered to it, there was the greatest." Again, "the
generalities of his philosophy itself have little or no novelty. To
ascribe any to the doctrine that general utility is the foundation
of morality, would imply great ignorance of the history of philo-
518 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
Sophy, of general literature, and of Bentham's own writings. He
derived the idea, as he says himself, from Helvetius; and it was
the doctrine, no less, of the religious philosophers of that age,
prior to Reid and Beattie." As regards the results, those achieved
in the field of Ethics are not nearly so valuable as those achieved
in the field of Jurisprudence. [The value of Bentham's labours in
Jurisprudence is universally admitted. Even his somewhat un-
^riendly critic Macaulay says, with characteristic sweep, that he
" found jurisprudence a gibberish and left it a science."] Tn
Ethics his conclusions are marred by the peculiarities of his own
character. " Bentham's contempt, then, of all other schools of
thinkers, his determination to create a philosophy wholly out of
the materials furnished by his own mind, and by minds like his
own, was his first disqualification as a philosopher. His second
was the incompleteness of his own mind as a representative of
universal human natura In many of the most natural and strong-
est feelings of human nature he had no sympathy ; from many of
its graver experiences he was altogether cut off;" and he was
deficient in the power by which one human being enters into the
mind and circumstances of another. " His knowledge of human
nature is wholly empirical ; and the empiricism of one who has
had little experience. He had neither internal experience nor
external ; the quiet, even tenor of his life, and his healthiness of
mind, conspired to exclude him from both. He never knew pros-
perity and adversity, passion nor satiety. He never had even
cue experiences which sickness gives ; he lived from childhood to
the age of eighty-five in boyish health. He knew no dejection, no
heaviness of heart. He was a boy to the last. . . . Other
ages and other nations were a blank to him for purposes of in-
struction. He measured them but by one standard ; their know- '
ledge of facts, and their capability to take correct views of utility,
and merge all other objects in it" His style is much better in
his early writings than in his later. His ' Fragment on Govern-
ment,' published anonymously, was so well written that it waa
attributed to some of the greatest masters of style at the time.
Even in the most involved of his later writings we meet with many
happy turns of expression, and with imagery " quaint and humor-
ous, or bold, forcible, and intense." His great fault is intricacy.
The origin of this is well explained by Mr Mill : " From the same
principle in Bentham came the intricate and involved style, which
makes his later writings books for the student only, not the gen-
eral reader. It was from his perpetually aiming at impracticable
precision. Nearly all his earlier, and many parts of his later
writings, are models, as we have already observed, of light, play-
ful, and popular style : a Benthamiana might be made of passages
worthy of Addison or Goldsmith. But in his later years and more
PHILOSOPHY. 519
advanced studies, he fell into a Latin or German structure of sen-
tence, foreign to the genius of the English language. He could
not bear, for the sake of clearness and the reader's ease, to say, as
ordinary men are content to do, a little more than the truth in one
sentence, and correct it in the next The whole of the qualifying
remarks which he intended to make, he insisted upon embedding
as parentheses in the very middle of the sentence itself. And
thus, the sense being so long suspended, and attention being re-
quired to the accessory ideas before the principal idea had been
properly seized, it became difficult, without some practice, to make
out the train of thought."
With Bentham, Mr Mill ranks as the other great " seminal mind "
of England in that generation the poet Samual Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834). Bentham's leading purpose was to provide good sub-
stitutes for the bad side in existing institutions. Coleridge in-
sisted rather upon the good side, and the propriety of making the
most of that. Coleridge was also the first great English champion
of German transcendental philosophy. It was principally through
conversation that he exercised his influenca To some extent,
also, he disseminated his opinions in print, although he was too
confirmed an opium-eater to be a persistent worker. In 1 796 he
issued nine numbers of a Radical weekly paper, called ' The
Watchman'; in 1809-10 twenty-seven numbers of the 'Friend,'
an unfinished project designed to convey a consistent body of
opinions in Theology, Philosophy, and Politics; in 1816 'The
Statesman's Manual, or the Bible the best Guide to Political Skill
and Foresight, a Lay Sermon'; in 1817 'A Second Lay Sermon,'
"on the existing distresses and discontents "; in 1817 'Biographia
Literaria,' a history of the development of his own opinions ; in
1825 'Aids to Reflection.' His prose style is copious, and has
something of the soft melody of his verse.
To this period belong also two well-known names in Political
Economy, the Rev. T. E. Malthus (1766-1836) and David Ricardo
(1772-1823). Malthus's celebrated work on ' Population ' appeared
in 1798. Ricardo's 'Political Economy' was published in 1817.
Both are moderately perspicuous writers, but neither of them pos-
sessed any special gift of style.
Archibald Alison (1757-1839), son of an Edinburgh magis-
trate, educated at Glasgow and at Oxford, latterly an Episcopal
clergyman in Edinburgh, is known in letters as the father of
the historian, Sir Archibald, and as the author of an ' Essay on
Taste,' published in 1790, and in 1811 commended and adopted
in its leading positions by the critical potentate, Francis Jeffrey.
Alison denied that there is any intrinsic pleasure either in
sound, in colour, or in form. He resolved the emotions of sub-
limity and beauty into associations with primitive sensibilities.
520 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
The 'Essay' is written in a very readable style for a work of
abstruse analysis.
Another literary man of this generation, best known through
his son, is Isaac Disraeli (1766-1848), author of 'Curiosities
of Literature,' ' Literary Miscellanies,' ' Quarrels of Authors,'
'Calamities of Authors,' &c. His 'Literary Character,' an at-
tempt to analyse the constituents of literary genius, was a
favourite with Byron. In the writings of the elder Disraeli we
meet with occasional touches of the felicity of expression so
conspicuous in his more distinguished son.
HISTORY.
The most considerable history published in the early part of
this period was Mitford's ' History of Greece." William Mitford
(1744-1827) was the son of an English proprietor near Southamp-
ton, served with Gibbon as an officer in the Hampshire militia,
and sat for many years in Parliament His History appeared in
successive volumes at long intervals between 1784 and 1818. The
writer was a stanch Conservative, and part of the success of the
work, in those days of political apprehension, was due to the use
he made of the proceedings and the disasters of the Grecian re-
publics to point a moral against democracy. The work was very
derisively reviewed by the young Whig Macaulay in one of his
first efforts, and it was humorously pronounced by the Conserva-
tive De Quincey to be " choleric in excess, and as entirely partial,
as nearly perfect in its injustice, as human infirmity would allow."
Mitford's style is in general verbose, periodic, and heavy. There
is, however, a certain animation in his narratives of striking events;
and his expression sometimes receives a warm colour from the
strength of his feelings as a political partisan. He is included by
De Quincey among "orthographic mutineers," eccentrics in the
matter of spelling.
The history of Greece was written also by John Gillies (1747-
1836), an alumnus of Glasgow, and travelling tutor to a son of the
Earl of Hopetoun, who in 1793 succeeded Robertson as historio-
grapher-royal for Scotland, and figured in the literary society of
" Modern Athens " during the first quarter of this century. H is
'History of Greece 'was published in 1786. He published also
translations from Aristotle, wrote upon Frederick the Great, and
continued his history down to the reign of Augustus. All hia
works have been eclipsed, as regards both matter and manner.
MISCELLANEOUS.
William Cobbett (1762-1835) raised himself, by the force of his
self-educated literary powers, from the station of a private soldier
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 521
to a seat in Parliament He could not remember a time when he
did not earn his own living. An impulsive, self-willed lad, work-
ing with his father, a small farmer in Surrey, he first made an
abortive attempt to go to sea ; then ran away to London and
obtained employment as an attorney's clerk ; from that enlisted
as a private soldier, and went abroad with his regiment Obtain-
ing his discharge after eight years' service, he emigrated to America
in 1792, and soon distinguished himself as a violent political writer,
standing up with a characteristic love of contradiction against the
ruling democratic faction. The extreme virulence of his abuse
soon made the States too hot for him : after two trials for libel
and one conviction, with sweeping damages, he returned to Eng-
land in 1800, and commenced political writer in London under his
American nickname "Peter Porcupine." For a short time he
wrote on the side of the Conservatives; but he soon quarrelled
with them, and became, what he ever afterwards continued, an
ultra-Radical His famous paper, ' The Weekly Political Regis-
ter,' was begun in 1802, and continued till his death. He exer-
cised great influence upon the working classes, and raised intense
hostility among those opposed to his opinions : he was several
times prosecuted for libel, and in 1817 he had to recross the
Atlantic to evade the pressure of a short-lived Act of Parliament,
which he asserted to have been passed for his special annoyance.
After several unsuccessful attempts to gain a seat in Parliament,
he was returned for the borough of Oldham in 1832, but he lived
only three years to enjoy his honours, and made no figure in the
House. Besides his political writings, he composed a French
Grammar and an English Grammar, and towards the close of his
life wrote 'Rural Rides' and 'Advice to Young Men.' Cobbett
has been called "The Last of the Saxons," and the designation
may be allowed if the essence of the Saxon character is taken to
be dogged, impracticable, unaccommodating energy, and indomi-
table courage. Exceedingly impetuous, he needed only opposition
to make his most random impulses persistent. He was a man
destined to excite strong feelings wherever he went, troubling the
political world as a strongly-charged electrical cloud troubles the
atmosphera He was a great master of clear and forcible idio-
matic English. His ' Rural Rides ' expounds the homely aspects
of English scenery with much picturesqueness and graphic neat-
ness of touch. In his political diatribes he indulged in a licence
of invective and abuse almost incredible to newspaper readers of
this generation, although it was not so much above the ordinary
heat of his time.
A strong contrast to the pragmatic Cobbett was the amiable,
indolent, speculative Sir James Mackintosh (1765 - 1832). A
native of Inverness-shire, he \\as a student, along with Robert
522 FROM 1790 TO 1820.
Hall, at King's College, Aberdeen; went to Edinburgh in 1784
to qualify for the practice of Physic; and in 1788 set out for
London with a doctor's degree, to push his fortunes. He failed
to establish himself in medical practice, and was obliged to depend
for a livelihood mainly on his literary abilities. He was first
brought into notice by his ' Vindiciae Gallic*,' a glowing defence
of the French Revolution against the denunciations of Burke.
Soon after, he abandoned medicine for law, and was called to the
bar in 1795. In 1803 he distinguished himself by his defence of
Peltier against a prosecution for a libel on Bonaparte. In 1804
he was appointed Recorder of Bombay. After seven years of
"sickly vegetation" in India, he returned with an impaired con-
stitution ; entered Parliament ; was appointed Professor of Law in
the East India College at Haileybury; wrote philosophical dis-
sertations for the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' and miscellaneous
articles for the ' Edinburgh Review ' ; and remained for twenty
years a very acceptable member of general society. The great
literary ambition of his life was to write the History of England :
for this he had accumulated many materials, but he left only a
fragment on the Causes of the Revolution of 1688. He wrote
also for ' Lardner's Cyclopaedia ' a Life of Sir Thomas More, and
an abridgment of English History, carried down as far as the
Reformation. Mackintosh was an amiable and able man, humor-
ously introspective and tolerant, fond of reading and of society,
and an observant critic both of books and of men. Easy, good-
humoured indolence, aggravated by his residence in India, stood
between him and durable reputation. His fame, like Dr Parr's,
rests chiefly on perishable traditions of his conversational power :
he had no Boswell to preserve specimens for us, and we have only
such reports as the testimony of Sydney Smith " His conversa-
tion was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human
being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with." His
rank is not high either as a philosopher or as a historian : he was
naturally averse to vigorous exertion, whether in reasoning or in
research; his authority was weakened, as he himself knew and
admitted, by an amiable propensity to eulogistic declamation.
Miscellaneous writing received a new impulse in the early part
of the nineteenth century by the establishment of the Reviews and
the Magazines namely, ' Edinburgh Review ' in 1802 ; ' Quarterly
Review' in 1808; 'Blackwood's Magazine' in 1817; 'London
Magazine' in 1820; and 'Westminster Review' in 1823. We
give some account of a few of the principal writers in our con-
cluding chapter.
CHAPTER X.
SELECT WRITERS OF THE EARLY PART OF THIS
CENTURY.
THEOLOGY.
Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D., (1780-1847), is the most celebrated
name among the preachers of the Church of Scotland. A native
of Anstruther, in the county of Fife, he was sent at the age of
twelve to the University of St Andrews, and was licensed to
preach in 1799. In 1802 he was presented to the charge of Kil-
many in Fife. During his college course, and the first six years
of his ministry, he seems to have held no serious views in religion ;
in fact, he seems to have entered the Church in heartless scepti-
cism, simply as a means of securing a livelihood. His favourite
studies were scientific. In the interval between his obtaining
licence and his coming of age, he studied chemistry, natural
philosophy, and moral philosophy under the Edinburgh pro-
fessors of the time. During the winter after his presentation to
Kilmany, he taught the mathematical class in the University as
assistant to a superannuated professor : during the following
winter, having quarrelled with the University authorities, he
set up opposition lectures in the town; and not satisfied with
lecturing in the winter at St Andrews, he also lectured on
chemistry to his parishioners at Kilmany during the summer.
He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Professorship of Mathe-
matics at St Andrews, and subsequently for a similar post in
the University of Edinburgh. He was lieutenant and chaplain
to a regiment of Volunteers. He published a book on ' The
Extent and Stability of the National Resources.' Altogether
his life was at this time most laborious and eccentric. His
composition of the article "Christianity" for the 'Edinburgh
524 FROM 1820.
Encyclopaedia' seems to have been a turning-point in his career.
The death of a sister in 1808, and a lingering illness in the follow-
ing year, are also mentioned as circumstances that helped to fix
his thoughts more upon the peculiar work of the ministry. From
about that time dates the beginning of his fame as a preacher.
In 1815 he accepted a call to the Tron Church in Glasgow. Dur-
ing the eight years of his ministry there, he acquired as a preacher
and a social reformer a wider reputation than had ever before
attended the labours of a minister of the Church of Scotland.
His ' Astronomical Discourses ' raised universal admiration ; and
when he visited London, the leading wits of the day, and notably
Canning and Wilberforce, " formed part of his congregation wher-
ever he preached, and vied with one another in their anxiety to do
him honour in society." His * Commercial Discourses' also had
an enormous circulation. As a social reformer he was known by
his advocacy of Malthusianism, his extraordinary energy In organ-
ising the voluntary contributions for the relief of the poor, and his
personal efforts to " excavate the practical heathenism of our large
cities." In 1823 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy
in St Andrews; in 1827 declined an offer of a chair of Moral
Philosophy in University College, London; and in 1828 accepted
a Divinity Professorship in Edinburgh. The first extra-official
work of his professorial life was a continuation of papers on the
1 Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns,' begun before he
left Glasgow : this was soon followed in the same direction by a
course of lectures on Political Economy, which, when published in
1832, were highly praised by the authorities in that subject. He
also published his lectures on Natural Theology and on Christian
Evidences, and wrote the Bridgewater Treatise on "the adapta-
tion of the world to the mental constitution of man." In addition
to his professorial and literary labours, he played a prominent part
in the Courts of the Church : he was particularly distinguished by
his schemes for Church extension, and by the lead that he took in
the controversies terminating in the Disruption. He was chosen
by acclamation Moderator of the first Free Church Assembly, and
spent his latter years as Principal of the Free Church College
in Edinburgh. He had no small influence in raising and establish-
ing what is known as the Sustentation Fund. His collected works
fill thirty-four duodecimo volumes.
We have mentioned his extraordinary fame as a preacher. His
appearance is described as being by no means prepossessing ; he
had a hard voice and a broad pronunciation ; his gestures were
uncouth ; and, unlike Robert Hall, he brought a written sermon
to the pulpit, and confined his eyes to the manuscript. The
charm seems to have lain in his fervid nervous energy. The
hearers were laid hold of by his extraordinary concentrated em-
JAMES MILL. 525
phasis and graphic expression, and brought almost mesmerically
under his influence. As an author, he is distinguished more for
his statement of the views of others than for the excogitation of
anything profoundly original. It may with confidence be pro-
nounced that he had a greater genius for exposition than any
other Scotchman of this century except Carlyle. 1 We cannot read
a page of Chalmers without feeling ourselves in the hand of a
master of luminous and varied exposition. Himself possessing
the clearest grasp of his subject, he fully comprehended and
kept steadily in view the difficulties of the reader : he sought to
unfold his matter in the most luminous sequence, and to make
sure that one point was thoroughly expounded before he pro-
ceeded to the next. He insisted upon being vividly understood.
His habit of persistent repetition, of turning over each proposition
and presenting it in many different shapes, is the most remarkable
feature in his style. Robert Hall is reported to have dwelt upon
this in conversation : " He often reiterates the same thing ten or
twelve times in the course of a few pages. Even Burke himself
had not so much of that peculiarity. His mind resembles . . .
a kaleidoscope. Every turn presents the object in a new and
beautiful form ; but the object presented is still the same. . . .
He may be said to indulge in this repetition to a faulty excess.
His mind seems to move on hinges, not on wheels. There is
incessant motion, but no progress. When he was at Leicester,
he preached a most admirable sermon, on the necessity of immedi-
ate repentance ; but there were only two ideas in it, and on these
his mind revolved as on a pivot" Whether Chalmers carries
repetition to excess is matter of opinion : in a popular expositor
excessive repetition is an error upon the right side. It is incorrect
to say that there is no progress in his expositions ; there is pro-
gress, but it is slow and thorough.
HISTORY.
In 1817-18 was published the 'History of British India,' by
James Mill (1773-1836), celebrated afterwards as a writer on
psychology, ethics, and sociology. "An ampler title to distinction
in history and philosophy," writes the late Mr Grote, ''can seldom
be produced than that which Mr James Mill left behind him. We
know no work which surpasses his 'History of British India'
in the main excellences attainable by historical writers: indus-
trious accumulation, continued for many years, of original author-
ities careful and conscientious criticism of their statements, and
1 It is rather a remarkable fact that both these men in their younger dayi
were distinguished as mathematicians. Such combinations of high scientific
with the highest literary aptitude are rare.
526 FROM 1820.
a large command of psychological analysis, enabling the author to
interpret phenomena of society, both extremely complicated and
far removed from his own personal experience." Born in Kin-
cardineshire, not far from the birthplace of Thomas Reid, Mill
was educated after a fashion and with a purpose very common
in Scotland : he was sent to the school of his native parish, Logic-
Pert ; to the grammar-school of the nearest town, Montrose ; and
to the University of Edinburgh; and he was destined to the
ministry of the Kirk. But after receiving licence as a preacher,
he relinquished his intended profession, and took, about the
beginning of this century, a step that Jeffrey about the same
time had thoughts of taking went to London, and settled there
as, to use Jeffrey's expression, a literary "grub." He became
editor of the 'Literary Journal,' a short-lived adventure, and
wrote for the 'Eclectic Review,' the 'Edinburgh Review,' and
other periodicals. He made the acquaintance of Jeremy Ben-
tham, and for a number of years he and his family lived during
the summer in Bentham's country-housa His ' History of British
India' was commenced in 1806. In 1819, the year after the pub-
lication of this work, he was offered the high post of Assistant-
Examiner of Correspondence in the India House, in which he was
ultimately chief Examiner, an office nearly equivalent to the
Under-Secretaryship of State for Indian Affairs. Shortly after his
appointment to the India House he contributed to the ' Encyclo-
paedia Britannica' the articles on Government, Jurisprudence,
Liberty of the Press, Prison Discipline, Colonies, Law of Nations,
and Education. He was one of the principal contributors to the
'Westminster Review,' which was founded in 1823. His chief
works on more abstruse subjects are ' Elements of Political
Economy,' 1821-22; 'Analysis of the Human Mind,' 1829; and
'Fragments on Mackintosh,' 1835. Mill was endowed with
eminent powers of expression and illustration. Bentham judged
rightly in helping him on as a promising expositor of utilitarian
principles. His strength, however, lay more in the logical, scientific
faculty : men were drawn to his books more by the severe and
penetrating rationality of the matter than by the attractions
of the style. The severity of his style was probably deepened
by a lurking cynicism that on several occasions made itself
disagreeably conspicuous : a man of clear insight and intense
reserved disposition, he had something like a passionate hatred
of superficial knowledge and gushing sentimentality, and he
opposed the philosophy of Sir James Mackintosh and the ami-
able Hindu extravagance of Sir William Jones with too much
asperity, and in the case of Jones with some disadvantage
to the truth. His style possesses very little figurative orna-
ment ; it aims at brief and clear expression as the main chance ;
HENRlt MALLAM. 627
and its principal charms are the severe charms of sententious
iucisiveness and occasional strokes of epigrammatic point. His
'Encyclopaedia' essays have always been exceedingly popular
among hard-headed people : they have none of the softer graces
of style, but they are almost unrivalled as efforts at the concise
application of general principles to practical life ; and, in addition
to their " pithy " character, their constant endeavour to give the
pith of the matter in the briefest possible statement, they contain
sharp stimulating touches of epigram and of cynical paradox.
Macaulay's criticism that "his arguments are stated with the
utmost affectation of precision, his divisions are awfully formal,
and his style is generally as dry as that of Euclid's elements," is,
like too many of Macaulay's criticisms, an extreme caricature.
The main defect in these essays is pointed out by the author's
son, Mr John Stuart Mill, in the chapter on the " Geometrical
method of reasoning in Politics" (Logic, ii. 471). The 'History
of British India ' is a perspicuous, well-arranged narrative, written
without much pretence to fine composition. As in his essays, the
style is enlivened chiefly by epigrammatic turns, succinct maxims,
and sharp cynical criticisms. The value of the work consists
mainly in its clear analysis of institutions, and its reviews of legal
and political transactions by the light of general principles. 1 Con-
cerning Mill's other principal works we quote the opinion of Mr
Grote : " Mr James Mill's ' Elements of Political Economy' were,
at the time when they appeared, the most logical and condensed
exposition of the entire science then existing. Lastly, his latest
avowed production, the ' Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human
Mind,' is a model of perspicuous exposition of complex states of
consciousness, carried farther than by any other author before him."
Henry Hallam (1777-1859) is the author of three celebrated
historical works. The son of a dignitary of the English Church,
he received his education at Eton and Oxford, and afterwards
studied law in the Inner Temple; but possessing some private
fortune, and holding besides a Goverment sinecure, he was inde-
pendent of professional emolument, and devoted himself to litera-
ture. He attached himself to the Whig party, wrote for the
'Edinburgh Review,' took an active part in the Anti-slavery
1 Its value was much increased gome twenty years ago by the annotations of
Mr Wilson, Boden Professor of Sanscrit in Oxford, who followed Mill step by
step over the field with a superior knowledge of Hindu literature. It appears
that Mill, while his work is fully entitled to the praise of extensive research, was
somewhat prejudiced against the Hindus by his antipathy to what he considered
the overestimate of them formed by Sir William Jones. Mr Wilson not only
corrects Mill's errors in matters of fact, but pursues him throughout with a sharp
criticism of his conclusions regarding men and measures ; and while he cannot
be said to show the same superiority in judgment that he shows in scholarship,
the caustic criticising of the critic forms an interesting by-play in the perusal of
the book. Mr Wilson also continues the history up to his own time.
528 FROM 1820.
agitation, and was united with Brougham, Mackintosh, Russell,
Al thorp, and other notabilities of his party, in the establishment
of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. His ' View
of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages,' pronounced by
foreign critics to be "beyond contradiction" the best of his works,
was published in 1818; his ' Constitutional History of England'
in 1827 ; his 'Introduction to the Literature of Europe during the
1 5th, 1 6th, and ijth Centuries,' in 1838-39. In 1830 George IV.
instituted two gold medals for the best historical works of hia
reign : and Hallam and Washington Irving were the historians
that his Majesty delighted to honour. Hallam's works are praised
for industrious research and dignified impartiality ; his Constitu-
tional History is accepted as the standard work on that subject.
He had great reputation as a scholar ; Byron calls him " classic
Hallam much renowned for Greek:" but it may be doubted
whether his Introduction to the Literature of Europe was not too
ambitious a work for any one man not possessed of the resources of
Faust. Certainly his criticisms of English writers, though always
expressed with elegance, will not always bear close examination,
and too often give evidence of very superficial and second-hand
knowledge. 1 Ornate, dignified elegance is the characteristic of
his style : for popular purposes it is perhaps too Latinised.
Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., the historian of Modern Europe,
born December 29, 1792, was the son of the Rev. Archibald
Alison, author of the ' Essay on Taste,' who, at the time of his
birth, was vicar of Kenley in Shropshire. His father removing to
Edinburgh when he was five years old, he received his school and
university education there, and became, in 1814, an advocate at
the Scotch bar. He was at Paris in 1814, "when Talma played
before a pitful of kings ; " and there conceived the idea of record-
ing from its first beginnings the stirring series of events that
was supposed to have terminated in the meeting of the Allied
sovereigns. The prosecution of this idea cost him "fifteen sub-
sequent years of travel and study, and fifteen more of composi-
tion ;" the first instalment of his ' History of Europe from 1789 to
the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815' making its appearance
in 1833, an d the concluding volumes in 1844. Meantime this was
far from being his sole occupation : he published ' Principles of the
Criminal Law of Scotland' in 1832, and 'Practice of the Criminal
Law' in 1833; and from 1834 he discharged the duties of the
sheriffdom of Lanarkshire. He was a frequent contributor to
' Blackwood's Magazine ' ; a selection of his contributions in three
volumes was published in 1850. He wrote also 'Principles of
Population,' 1840; ' Free Trade and Protection,' 1844; 'England
in 1815 and in 1845 ' > 'Life of the Duke of Marlborough,' 1847.
1 For example see p. 213 of this work.
SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. 529
In the latter years of his busy life he continued his History to the
accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852 ; the successive volumes
appearing between 1852 and 1859. He was created a baronet by
Lord Derby's Ministry in 1852. His death took place on the 23d
of May 1867. Sir Archibald was in politics an extreme Conserva-
tive : he remained an uncompromising opponent to the principles
of Free Trade, and he never ceased to represent the Reform Bill of
1832 as inaugurating an era of disorganisation and decay. Two
of his opinions in particular have been subjected to much criticism:
one that crime is increased rather than diminished by merely
intellectual education a doctrine inculcated also by Auguste
Comte, and which presents a considerable field for casuistry ; and
the other relating to the amount of harm done to British com-
mercial interests by the return to a metallic currency after the
conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. His peculiar views are strongly
enounced in the later continuation of his History. But, as is
admitted by the sharpest critics of this work, his Toryism and his
crotchets are not allowed to interfere with the fairness and candour
of his narrative, or with his estimates of political opponents. The
' Edinburgh Review ' credits him with " an entire freedom from all
mean and petty jealousies or rancorous sentiments towards his
antagonists;" and affirms that "he has a generous and hearty
appreciation of all merit which he perceives, and can bestow
praise in no stinted measure even on those most opposed to him."
In addition to this, one of the first requisites for the supremely
difficult task of writing contemporary history, Sir Archibald dis-
played the greatest industry in collecting materials for his work ;
all agree in bearing testimony to the thoroughness of his researches.
Very little exception has been taken to the accuracy of his facts,
as regards either omission or positive error less than has been
taken in the case of Macaulay's ' History of England ' ; adverse
critics have confined themselves principally to his opinions. His
style has been exposed to considerable animadversions : gram-
marians have cited from his pages numerous violations of grammar,
and the ' Edinburgh Review ' charges him with verbosity, and with
excessive pomp in the enunciation of his general reflections. These,
however, are faults that occur chiefly to the critic and the cynic ;
and the critics of Sir Archibald's style do not appear to have
sufficiently accounted for the extraordinary world-wide popularity
of the work. The ' History of Europe,' widely circulated at home,
has been translated into all European languages, and also into
Arabic and Hindustani : in a work designed for general reading,
such popularity may be taken as a proof of excellence, unless good
reasons can be assigned to the contrary. The intrinsic interest of
the events narrated, absorbing as that undoubtedly was, and the
author's industrious accuracy, great as that was, do not constitute
2L
530 FROM 1820.
a sufficient explanation ; the interesting story is undeniably told
with high narrative skill. When we disregard minute errors of
structure, and look to general effects, we find many excellences of
style that help to explain his popularity. The historian possesses
a flowing command of simple and striking language, always equal
to the dignity and spirit of the events related, and enlivened by
happy turns of antithesis and epigram. He had a feeling for
dramatic contrasts, and introduces them with striking effect. He
visited the scenes of all the important engagements, and his de-
scriptions have the freshness and animation of pictures drawn from
nature. Finally, what is of prime importance in such a work,
though he deals with highly complicated affairs involving the
interaction of several different powers, he keeps the concurring
streams of events lucidly distinct, and brings the reader withput
perplexity to their joint conclusion. His explanatory episodes are
peculiarly elaborate and luminous. In short, it has been well said
that " if the art of engaging the reader's attention, and sustaining
it by the vigour, spirit, and vivacity of the narrative be a high
merit, many popular and many great historians must cede superi-
ority of this kind to Sir Archibald Alison."
PHILOSOPHY.
Sir William Hamilton, Bart. (1788-1856), the greatest British
supporter of a priori philosophy in this century, was the son of Dr
W. Hamilton, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Glasgow.
He was the lineal representative and was adjudged heir to the title
of Sir Robert Hamilton, the leader of the Covenanting forces at
Drumclog. His father died when he was two years old. He re-
ceived his schooling partly at home, partly at the public schools of
Glasgow, and partly at private schools in England. He passed
through the curriculum of Arts in Glasgow, and spent a winter at
Edinburgh in the study of medicine, which he was inclined to
make his profession. In 1807 he went to Oxford as an exhibitioner
on the Snell Foundation. There he became engrossed in the study
of mental philosophy, and in the final examination professed a
knowledge of an unusual (though currently very much exaggerated)
list of books, and was passed with the highest distinction. About
this time he abandoned his design of entering the profession of
medicine, and ultimately settled at Edinburgh as a lawyer, being
called to the bar in 1814, three years after his graduation as B.A.
at Oxford. In 1820 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the
Chair of Moral Philosophy, vacated by the death of Brown, the
appointment being given to John Wilson. In the following year
he was appointed to the poorly-salaried Chair of Civil History.
His appointment to the Chair of Logic did not take place till 1836.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 531
By this time, through articles contributed to the ' Edinburgh Re-
view,' and subsequently reprinted under the title of ' Dissertations
and Discussions in Philosophy,' he had obtained European reputar
tion as a philosopher. In 1844 his health was much shattered by
an attack of paralysis of the right side, which, while it left his mind
uninjured, permanently disabled the side affected, impairing his
eyesight and his speech, and leaving him with an imperfect use of
his right arm and right leg. " He had so far recovered from his
illness in the winter of 1844-45 as to be able to resume his studies,
and he continued the work of reading and thinking with but slight
interruptions till a few days before his death in May 1856. The
editing of Reid, which had suffered so much from interruptions,
was resumed. The work was finally published though without
being completed in November 1846. The supplementary disser-
tations D* * and D* * * had been written before his illness." His
class lectures on Logic and Metaphysics were published after his
death, under the editorial charge of the late Dean Mansel and Pro-
fessor Veitch, his pupils. In his youth Hamilton was a very
handsome, athletic man. He is described by Carlyle as having
"a fine firm figure of middle height; one of the finest cheerfully-
serious human faces, of square, solid, and yet rather aquiline type ;
and a pair of the beautifullest kindly-beaming hazel eyes, well
open, and every now and then with a lambency of smiling fire in
them, which I always remember as if with trust and gratitude."
" He was finely social and human in these walks or interviews.
His talk was forcible, copious, discursive, careless rather than
otherwise ; and on abstruse topics, I observed, was apt to become
embroiled and revelly, much less perspicuous and elucidative than
with a little deliberation he could have made it. ... By
lucid questioning you could get lucidity from him on any topic."
In company he had no pretensions to shine as a talker, and list-
ened quietly without showing any disposition to strike in, unless
he had a special interest in the subject, when he became animated
and fluent. " He did not accommodate himself to the prevailing
opinions of the company ; but rather took delight in running atilt
against them in a good-humoured way. He had great pleasure in
stating and defending some paradox or startling opinion (of which
he would perhaps afterwards make a joke), not because it exactly
represented his own opinion, but sometimes merely for the sake of
argument, and more frequently with the wish to uphold the un-
popular side of a question under discussion." 1 "The prevailing
opinion on a subject, when strongly put, had a tendency to arouse
in him a feeling of opposition." "As in intellect he was critical,
so in temperament he was strongly polemical, even finding a cer-
tain enjoyment in conflict for its own sake." " His views on
1 Professor Veitch's Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, p. 142.
532 FROM 1820.
University matters brought him pretty frequently into sharp colli-
sion with some of his colleagues. For with all his lovableness,
even tenderness of nature, Hamilton was yet a man of resolute
will, and high and somewhat uncompromising temper." From the
time of his extraordinary examination at Oxford, his erudition
and encyclopedic reading became a subject of wonder and exagger-
ated rumour. He seems to have had something of the same book-
devouring turn as Johnson. Johnson is described as " tearing out
the heart " of a book, and Sir William, in a coarser modification
of the phrase, as " tearing out the entrails " expressions that
point to the same habit of glancing at the table of contents, the
index, or the marginal annotations, and reading only what one
happens to be interested in. The two men agreed further in
combining with this literary epicureanism (or rather gluttony) a
reluctance to compose ; but Hamilton, who had a decided mechani-
cal turn, preserved the results of his reading in an elaborately
ingenious commonplace-book, 1 whereas Johnson left what he read
to the chances of resuscitation by his powerful memory. Of late
years both the extent and the accuracy of Hamilton's scholarship
have been questioned, but with all deductions he still remains
what he was represented to De Quincey as being " a monster of
erudition." We do not here attempt any outline of his philoso-
phy ; and his philosophical abilities are still matter of dispute.
As regards style, he had, with his prodigious memory, a fine com-
mand of language ; his command of the language of controversy,
especially for the purpose of summarily " putting down " an an-
tagonist, is at least as good as his command of the language of
philosophical exposition. In both operations he is masterly. He
had a taste for antithesis and pithy compression. He was also
notably studious of method, of good arrangement ; more, appar-
ently, from a love of mechanical symmetry, than from any lively
sympathy with the difficulties of the reader.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), the chief of the originators of the
'Edinburgh Review,' was the son of a depute-clerk of the Court
of Session, and received his early education at the Edinburgh
High School. He pursued university studies partly at Glasgow,
partly at Oxford, and partly at Edinburgh, exercising himself all
the while voluminously in English composition. At Oxford he
remained only nine months, and left with a sense of relief, finding
the routine subjects of study very uncongenial. He was called to
the Edinburgh bar in 1794. Entertaining the then unpopular prin-
ciples of the Whig party, his career was for several years the re-
1 Professor Veitch's Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, p. 386.
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 533
rerse of pro&perous, and more than once he had serious thoughts
of abandoning the profession. The establishment of the ' Edin-
burgh Review' in 1802 was the making of his fame and fortune.
" Without patronage, without name, under the tutelage of no
great man ; propounding heresies of all sorts against the ruling
fancies of the day, whether political, poetical, or social ; by sheer
vigour of mind, resolution of purpose, and an unexampled com-
bination of mental qualities five or six young men in our some-
what provincial metropolis laid the foundation of an empire to
which, in the course of a few years, the intellect of Europe did
homage." The sociable and clear-sighted Jeffrey was admirably
fitted to keep together and direct the energies of this fortuitous
concourse of unemployed talent. His fame grew with the fame
of the work. He rose rapidly to a first-rate position at the bar.
His election to the Rectorship of Glasgow University in 1820 was
a proof of the general admiration of his powers. His election as
Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1829 was a proof that he
enjoyed the highest popularity among his brother lawyers. From
1830, for about three years and a half, he held office in the "Whig
Ministry as Lord Advocate. In 1833 he was appointed one of the
Judges of the Court of Session, and lived in the quiet discharge
of his judicial duties and the pleasant society of " Modern Athens "
until his seventy-seventh year, when he died, after a brief illness,
on the z6th of January 1850.* Jeffrey was a dark, wiry, little
creature, with small mobile features, black sparkling eyes, and a
remarkably long, narrow head. His voice was high-pitched, his
speech somewhat mincing, and his movements exceedingly ani-
mated. "Jeffrey's manner," wrote his friend Horner, "almost
irresistibly impresses upon strangers the idea of levity and super-
ficial talents." His appearance, however, did not do him justice.
" He has indeed a very sportive and playful fancy, but it is accom-
panied with an extensive and varied information, with a readiness
1 The following is his own account of his connection with the 'Edinburgh
Jleview ': " I wrote the first article in the first number of the Review in Oc-
tober 1802, and sent my last contribution to it in October 1840 ! It is a long
period to have persevered in well or in ill doing ! But I was by no means
equally alert in the service during all the intermediate time. I was sole editor
from 1803 till late in 1829 ; and during that period was no doubt a large and
regular contributor. In that last year, however, I received the great honour of
being elected, by my brethren of the bar, to the office of Dean of the Faculty of
Advocates ; when it immediately occurred to me that it was not quite fitting
that the official head of a great Law Corporation should continue to be the con-
ductor of what might be fairly enough represented as, in many respects, a party
journal ; and I consequently withdrew at once and altogether from the manage-
ment. ... I wrote nothing for it for a considerable time subsequent to
1829 ; and during the whole fourteen years that have since elapsed, have sent in
all but four papers to that work, none of them on political subjects. 1 ceased
in reality to be a contributor in 1829." Preface to the collected edition of hit
contributions to the 'Edinburgh Review,' 1843.
534 FROM 1820.
of apprehension almost intuitive, with judicious and calm discern-
ment, with a profound and penetrating understanding." To this
it must be added, that the range of his apprehension, discernment,
or penetration was not of the widest order : a man of great activity !
and decision, with much knowledge of the world, and skill in the
management of men, he yet did not display, at least in literature,
the highest power of entering into the feelings of others, of under-
standing the position of men very different in character from him-
self. In his criticisms of Wordsworth we see vividly at once his
own character and his failure to appreciate a character very differ-
ent from his own. He was an affectionate man, intensely attached
to his friends, and uncontrollably fond of their society ; and the
passages that he admires in Wordsworth are chiefly passages of
tenderness. He loved natural scenery, too, in a way, and does
justice to Wordsworth's more striking word-pictures ; but he was
too much attached to " the busy haunts of men " to follow the
raptures of a genuine nature -worshipper, and he found Words-
worth's minute descriptions intolerably tedious. But what he
chiefly failed to understand, and what chiefly offended him, were
the meditations natural to a recluse, and the glorification of chil-
dren and of country personages to a degree altogether out of keep-
ing with their conventional place in the social scale. He was
constantly accusing Wordsworth of clothing the commonest com-
monplaces with unintelligible verbiage, and of debasing tenderness
with vulgarity. A similar narrowness, the same tendency to lay
down the law without a suspicion that other people were differently
constituted from himself, appears in his essay on ' Beauty.' Him-
self defective in the feeling for colour, he denies that colour pos-
sesses any intrinsic beauty, and is utterly sceptical regarding the
statements of artists and connoisseurs, suspecting them of pedantry
and jargon. His style is forcible and copious, without any pre-
tence to finished or elegant structure. His diction is perhaps too
overflowing; his powers of amplification and illustration some-
times ran away with him ; " his memory," says Lockhart, " ap-
peared to range the dictionary from A to Z, and he had not the
self-denial to spare his readers the redundance which delighted
himself." His collected works give but a feeble idea of the clever-
ness of his ridicule ; he refused Jo republish the most striking
specimens of his satirical skill.
Conjoined with Jeffrey in the origination of the 'Edinburgh
Review' was the Rev. Sydney Smith (1771-1845), the most bril-
liant wit of his generation. The son of an eccentric English
gentleman, he was educated at Winchester and at Oxford, and
then set adrift to push his own fortunes. He wished to study for
the bar, but was under (he necessity of entering the Church. For
three years he acted as curate in a small village in the midst of
SYDNEY SMITH. 535
Salisbury Plain. In 1797, being appointed travelling tutor to the
son of the parish squire, he set out with his pupil for the Univer-
sity of Weimar, but was forced by the political storm then raging
on the Continent to put into Edinburgh. Here he found a conge-
nial group of aspiring young men, most of them fortuneless like
himself, and linked together by agreement in unpopular political
views : among these, some four or five years after his arrival, he
suggested the idea of a quarterly periodical as a vent for their
opinions and their ambition, and himself took a leading part in
writing and in choosing articles for the first number of the ' Edin-
burgh Review.' He contributed to this periodical for a quarter
of a century, until he became a dignitary of the Church ; and his
strong sense and wit are justly credited with a large share of its
popularity. In 1804-5-6 he lectured at the Royal Institution on
Moral Philosophy. Very slender recognition was given to his
powers and his connection with the rising Whig Review : although
his political friends were then in office, he had to accept the small
living of Foston-le-Clay in Yorkshire ; and even it was obtained
with some difficulty. There he remained for twenty-two years.
In 1828 he was presented by Lord Lyndhurst, a Conservative, to
the canonry of Bristol Cathedral, and from that time ceased to
write for the ' Edinburgh Review.' Through the influence of the
same nobleman he was enabled to exchange Foston for the living
of Combe Florey, near Taunton. All that his Whig friends did tor
him was to make him a prebendary of St Paul's : this piece of pro-
motion he received in 1831. His case is sometimes mentioned along
with Swift's as an example of political ingratitude ; the excuse for
not making him a bishop was that his writings were generally re-
garded as being inconsistent with clerical decorum. He died on
the 22d of February 1845. Like De Quincey, Jeffrey, Wilson, and
many other less distinguished contributors to periodical literature,
he has left no great work as a pre-eminent monument of his genius ;
his Peter Plymley's " Letters on the subject of the Catholics," which
appeared in 1808, are his most elaborate efforts on any one subject,
and they do not extend beyond fifty closely-printed octavo pages.
It is perhaps a vain regret to wish that his powers had been spent
upon sustained compositions of greater length ; he wrote briefly
upon questions of passing interest with extraordinary immediate
effect ; he influenced as well as gratified his contemporaries ; and
now that his objects have been attained and the interest of his
themes has been succeeded by other interests, the lovers of wit are
as much entertained by his short effusions as they would have been
by more ambitious performances. Both physically and mentally
Sydney Smith belonged to the race of giants. He was a man of a
large build, and of a constitution that retained to his latest years
a hearty enjoyment of life. His wit and great convivial powers
536 FROM 1820.
did not prevent him from making more solid attainments : though
not by any means a profound scholar, or a logician of scholastic
subtlety, he did not disdain to master the dry facts of what he
professed to discuss ; and he argued with strong good sense : bis
papers on political questions are instructive and convincing, as well
as witty. " He never came into society without naturally and easily
taking the lead as, beyond all question, the most agreeable, sensible,
and instructive guest and companion that the oldest person living
could remember." His straitened means and the enforced solitude
of country life were doubtless efficacious in giving earnestness and
solidity to his character ; had genial company been always within
his reach, he would probably now have been known only as a con-
vivial spirit of happy memory. Regarding the mechanical part of
his style, Mr Hayward l makes the following criticism : " His ser-
mons, which are mostly free from mannerism, prove that he could
combine purity and correctness with force of language when he
thought fit. But his humorous writings are often deficient in ease,
smoothness, grace, rhythm, and purity, because he constantly aimed
at effect by startling contrasts, by the juxtaposition of incongruous
images or epithets, or by the use of odd sounding words and strange
compounds of Greek and Latin derivation. Thus he describes a
preacher wiping his face with his cambric ' sudarium,' and asks,
'why this h^loplexia on sacred occasions alone 1 ?' A weak and
foolish man is 'anserous' and ' asinine.' Dr Parr's wig is the //.eya
0a.vp.a of barbers," &c. On these defects in his composition it
would be easy to insist too much ; they are part and parcel of the
pervading quality of his style. He takes rank among our greatest
masters of the ludicrous. He has been surpassed as a wit, sur-
passed as a humorist, surpassed as a satirist ; but taken all in all,
both in his writings and in private society, he probably never has
been surpassed in the power of exciting hearty laughter. In pri-
vate company he seems to have been irresistible ; the more so that
" there was always plenty of bread to his sack ; the coruscations
of his humour were relieved not by flashes of silence, but by the
moonlight beams of good feeling and good sense." With his \m-
failing buoyancy of spirits, he could keep up the flow of wit and
clever nonsense long after men of ordinary constitution would
have been exhausted ; out of the mere wealth of his constitution
he could do what was impossible for Theodore Hook without an
extreme use of stimulants. His style has something of the reported
character of his conversation ; mixed up with the " infinite hu-
mour," we have clear statement of pertinent facts and sound argu-
ments. We are not conscious of any awkwardness of transition
from the comic to the serious ; he usually writes with a serious
purpose with the object of discrediting, both by reason and by
1 Biographical and Critical Essays, i. 60,
CHARLES LAMB. 537
ridicule, something that he disapproves of. He is often humorous,
purely for the sake of the humour, but his prevailing purposes are
serious. What is more, he did not, like the ' Spectator,' the ' Ram-
bler,' and the ' Citizen of the World,' attack ignorance, folly, bigotry,
and vice with inoffensive generality, directing his ridicule against
imaginary types ; but he openly assailed and turned to scorn living
men, and laws, parties, and institutions that were in actual exist-
ence. He was far from surveying mankind with the artistic im-
partiality of Goldsmith ; he used his wit unmercifully on the side
of a party ; he was one of the most aggressive of the Edinburgh
Reviewers. Anti-revolutionary alarmists, the upholders of Catholic
disabilities, fanatical Methodists, Indian missionaries, the abuse of
classical study, female education, public schools, the Game-laws,
the Poor-laws, the state of prisons, the cruel treatment of untried
prisoners these and suchlike were the objects of his witty satire
and humorous derision. Although a good-natured man, without a
trace of the sourness and fierceness of Swift, and now recognised as
having used his powers in the main on the side of good sense and
good feeling, he was most provokingly and audaciously personal
in his strictures. This point must be especially attended to in
an estimate of Sydney Smith as a master of the ludicrous ; the
mere fact of overt personality distinguishes him from all our great
humorists or satirists except Swift, and he is distinguished from
Swift by his greater heartiness of nature. He is too complacent,
too aboundingly self-satisfied, too buoyantly full of spirits, to hate
anybody ; but he burlesques them, derides them, and abuses them
with the most exasperating effrontery in a way that is great fun
to the reader, but exquisite torture to the victim. For short char-
acteristic specimens we may refer to his review of Dr Langford's
sermon, and his Letters on the American Debts.
A humourist of a much less robust and boisterous type than
Sydney Smith, a humourist in a more restricted sense of the word,
was the author of the ' Essays of Elia,' Charles Lamb (1775-1834).
The son of a lawyer's clerk in the Inner Temple, he was, along
with Coleridge, a scholar on the foundation of Christ's Hospital,
went from that to the South Sea House, and in 1792 obtained an
appointment in the India House, where he remained for thirty-three
years. While his public life was thus uneventful, the course of his
domestic life was altered and saddened by a well-known tragical
calamity, the result of an outbreak of insanity in his only sister.
This took place in 1796. "For a time Mary was confined in an
asylum ; but, the fit passing off, she was released, on her brother
giving a solemn undertaking to watch over her through life.
. . . For the sake of his sister, he gave up the brighter pro-
spects of life, . . . abandoning, it is thought, a passion he
had conceived for a young lady who is apparently alluded to in his
538 FROM 1820.
Essays under the designation of 'Alice W? The history of the
long association between brother and sister, broken from time to
time by a fresh accession of the fatal malady, is one of the most
touching things in fact or fiction." Lamb's first appearance as an
author was in 1798; in that year "Charles Lloyd and Charles
Lamb" published 'Blank Verse.' In the same year appeared his
prose tale of 'Rosamond Gray'; in 1801 his tragedy of 'John
Woodvil,' an imitation of the Elizabethan style, which was merci-
lessly ridiculed by the Edinburgh Reviewers. Shortly afterwards
he wrote a farce, which also proved a failure. In 1807 he pub-
lished his ' Tales from Shakspeare,' written in conjunction witli his
sister. He made several contributions to Leigh Hunt's ' Reflector.'
The papers that established his reputation with the public were
his ' Essays of Elia,' which originally appeared in the ' London
Magazine,' and were reprinted in a collected form in 1823. In
1825 he retired from his clerkship with a handsome pension. He
gives a very humorous account of his sensations on thus obtain-
ing liberty from the routine of the desk, and of the unhappi-
ness that soon overtook him from his having nothing to do.
He lived through nine years of his uneasy leisure, occasionally
writing verses and periodical articles, but adding little to his
literary reputation. His sister Mary survived till 1847 > but
after his death her lunacy returned, and she had to be placed
under restraint Lamb was a very different man from the robust,
hearty, buoyant Sydney Smith : a spare, slender person, of ex-
tremely excitable nervous temperament, of shy melancholy air,
his humour not an outcome of healthy animal spirits, but a pro-
vision of the fancy to make up for the poverty of the constitu-
tional sources of pleasure. He had a tinge of the insanity that
was developed in his sister; a melancholy capricious turn; an
excitability that might easily have been pushed beyond the limits
of self-control. Two or three glasses of wine excited him ; and,
once excited, he carried out the most comical whims with an utter
recklessness of consequences and appearances. Shy in general
society, he was a man of warm and deep affections, as was
evinced not only by his lifelong devotion to his sister, but by
his excessive fondness for the company of a few intimate friends.
As we often see in an excitable nature not endowed with a con-
stitution capable of sustaining much excitement, he hated bustle,
agitation, change all the associations of vigorous energy ; his
feelings were all in favour of quiet and repose. He loved things
that had been passively abandoned to the operations of nature- -
tattered old books, crazy old houses, old-fashioned pumps and
statues ; he disliked brand - new books, and execrated modern
improvements. Narrative, he said, teased him ; he had little
concern in the progress of events ; he loved to hang "for tlit
WALTER LANDOR, 539
thousandth time over some passage in old Burton, or one of his
strange contemporaries." His sociability and his old habits led
him to prefer the town to the country, and his whimsical humour
to exaggerate this preference in the presence of the Lakers ; but
in the town his favourite haunts were suburban lanes and the
quiet gardens of the Temple ; and he had a genuine longing for
the " pretty pastoral walks in hearty, homely, loving Hertford-
shire." Akin to his dislike of rigorous energy, was his fondness
for oddities, for things that were not braced up by an effort to a
conventional standard, but seemed as if they had whimsically
followed their own sweet will "out-of-the-way humours and
opinions heads with some diverting twist in them " " things
quaint, irregular, out of the road of common sympathy," and
particularly the oddities of authorship, such as " the beautiful
obliquities of the Religio Medici." He liked the "artificial
comedy" of Congreve and Wycherly, as a region "where no
cold moral reigns," "out of which our coxcomical moral sense
is for a little transitory ease excluded." He wished people to
enjoy in imagination the comical invasions of strict morality,
and professed for himself that after "an airing beyond the
diocese of the strict conscience," he "came back to his cage
and his restraint the fresher and more healthy for it." With
all Lamb's whims and oddities, the foundations of his being
were serious and substantial. He was a most penetrating ob-
server and critic; his eye was not easily diverted from the
heart of a subject Readers of poetry are pre-eminently in-
debted to him for his services in the work of exhuming the old
dramatic writers of the Shakspearian age. " He threw," it has
been said, " more and newer light upon the genuine meaning
of the great masterpieces of the theatre than any other man;
and yet we do not remember a single instance in which his
positions have been gainsaid."
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), author of the poems
' Gebir ' and ' Count Julian,' and who, as Byron said, " culti-
vated much private renown in the shape of Latin verses," is by
some authorities placed in the first rank among writers of prose.
His life has recently been written with great minuteness by Mr
John Forster. He was born in the year of the outbreak of the
American War (1775), on the 3th January, the anniversary of
the execution of Charles L From his youth up he gave evidence
of an insubordinate spirit; he had to quit Rugby, and subse-
quently Oxford, in consequence of misdemeanours, aggravated
by dogged defiance of authority. After his rustication from
Oxford in the summer of 1794, he declined his father's desire
that he should choose a profession, by way of having something
to do; and being heir to considerable estates, preferred being
540 FEOM 1820.
put upon a yearly allowance, with liberty to travel where he
pleased. His poem 'Gebir' was published in 1797; it was
highly praised by Southey in the ' Critical Review,' but it made
no impression on the general public. As he sympathised with
the anti - monarchical enthusiasts of- the period, his help was
solicited for the current newspaper warfare, and he made several
contributions to journals then supported by Coleridge and Southey.
The death of his father in 1805 made him a wealthy man, and for
a year or two thereafter he lived chiefly at Bath in great splendour.
In 1808 he suddenly set out for Spain to assist in the war of
liberation, but soon quarrelled with some of his associates and
came back again. Shortly after his return, he sold his paternal
estates, bought Llanthony in Monmouthshire, and married "a
pretty little girl, of whom he seems literally to have had no other
knowledge than that she had more curls on her head than any
other girl in Bath." In 1812 appeared his tragedy of 'Count
Julian,' the legendary traitor who introduced the Moors into
Spain. While Wilson was living in supreme happiness at Elleray,
poor Landor at Llanthony was in a Tartarean broil of bitter
quarrels with his tenants and his neighbours, the final result of
which was his departure from England and his settlement in Italy
in 1815. Twenty years he remained in Italy, during which his
only productions worthy of note were the ' Imaginary Conversa-
tions ' (1824-29) and 'Pericles and Aspasia' (1835). Throughout
this period his fractious temper involved him in frequent quarrels
with various Florentine officials and others ; and in 1835 an
irreconcilable quarrel with his wife drove him back to England.
He lived chiefly at Bath for twenty-one years, and published in
1853 'Last Fruit off an Old Tree,' a volume containing a few
more conversations, and miscellaneous odds and ends. In 1858
he withdrew from England to escape an action for libel raised
at the instance of a lady he had quarrelled with ; and spent the
remaining six years of his life in Italy. Landor, as De Quincey
remarks, is one of those authors about whose personal appearance
we have a special curiosity. He was, then, an erect, stout-set
man, of middle height, with a broad head retreating in front
but very full behind, fair-complexioned and grey-eyed, wearing in
later years a peculiarly venerable look from his grey hairs, broad
bald forehead, and erect carriage. The headstrong, overbearing,
quarrelsome, ungregarious side of his character, is made apparent
by the briefest outline of his social career. Towards his few friends
he seems to have been generous and overflowingly affectionate.
Yet even among friends admitted to his intimacy he was so
exacting and " touchy," that they never knew the moment when
they might strike against a torpedo that should make an irre-
parable breach. His most intimate friendships were states of
WILLIAM HAZLITT. 541
unstable equilibrium. His prose writings are better known than
his poetry ; yet it is probably his poetry that is the most secure
basis of his reputation. His crowning excellence is sublimity of
conception : the character of Count Julian is his masterpiece, and
it is ranked by so sober a judge as De Quincey with the Satan
of Milton and the Prometheus of vEschylus. In his 'Imaginary
Conversations,' as was to be expected from so wilful an egotist,
dramatic exhibition of character is no part of their excellence.
Some critics, indeed, profess to see a great deal of character in
some of the dialogues. But the concession is made that it is not
impossible that in many cases he first wrote the opinions and then
looked about for a passably consistent mouthpiece ; and in many
cases personages are credited with opinions that they are very
unlikely to have entertained. The ' Conversations ' are interest-
ing not from their dramatic propriety or significance, but as the
vehicles of Landor's own opinions. He does not attempt to
imitate the style of literary interlocutors : in the dialogue be-
tween Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville, Greville talks the
language of Sidney's ' Arcadia,' and Sidney the language of Walter
Landor. In his prose style two points of excellence may be
singled out the aphoristic force of his general propositions, and
the felicitous force of his imagery. In the opinion of many, his
style has too much force. In addition to the vigour and occa-
sional vehemence of the meaning, the minute observer will remark
that the words are studiously chosen for emphatic articulation,
containing an unusual proportion of energetic " labials," a choice
doubtless apt and consistent, but, like all obtrusive arts, liable to
be overdone. 1
William Hazlitt (1778-1830), an eminent critic, born at Maid-
stone, in Kent, was the son of a Dissenting minister, and was
carefully educated by his father with a view to the same pro-
fession. As he grew up, his own wishes did not ratify his father's
choice, and at the age of seventeen he was permitted to change
the direction of his studies, and to indulge an ambition of becom-
ing a great painter. He persevered in the study and practice of
painting for several years, and is said to have been prevented from
attaining eminence only by a too fastidious spirit of criticism, and
a despair of working up to his high ideals. His first literary effort
was a metaphysical work on the ' Principles of Human Action,'
1 Landor is the chief of De Quincey's " orthographic mutineers " (De Quincey's
Works, xiii. 95) : " As we are all of us crazy when the wind sits in some par-
ticular quarter, let not Mr Landor be angry with me for suggesting that he is
outrageously crazy upon the one solitary subject of spelling." Landor's views
about spelling and purity of language in general are to be found in the dialoguo
between Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor in ' Last Fruit off an Old Tree,'
and in two ' Imaginary 'Conversations ' between Johnson and Home Tooke.
542 FROM 1820.
published in 1805, remarkable as advocating the disinterested aide
in human nature. From that date he subsisted by literature.
He wrote an abridgment of Tucker's ' Light of Nature' in 1807 ;
compiled a selection of Parliamentary speeches, under the title of
'The Eloquence of the British Senate,' in 1808; and did other
"journey -work" for the booksellers. In 1813 he delivered at
the Russell Institution a series of lectures on English Philosophy ;
a fact worth mention, as showing that for many years the chief
studies of the future critic were philosophical. About this time
he became connected with the press as a contributor of political
and theatrical criticisms, some of which were afterwards worked
up into the volumes ' Political Essays ' and ' A View of the English
Stage.' He was first brought prominently into notice by his
lectures at the Surrey Institution on the "English Poets" (1818),
on the "English Comic Writers" (1819), and on the "Dramatic
Literature of the Age of Elizabeth" (1821). About the same
time appeared his ' Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.' His other
principal works were ' Table Talk,' 1821-22 ; the ' Spirit of the
Age ' (a series of criticisms on contemporaries, bitterly condemned
by nearly all reviewers), 1825 ; the ' Plain Speaker,' a collection
of Essays, 1826 ; and his last and greatest performance, ' The Life
of Napoleon,' 1828-30. During the last ten years of his life he
was a frequent contributor to various periodicals the ' London
Magazine,' the ' Edinburgh Review,' the ' New Monthly,' and the
' Monthly.' He died on the i8th of September 1830. " In person
Mr Hazlitt was of the middle size, with a handsome and eager
countenance, worn by sickness and thought ; and dark hair which
had curled stiffly over the temples, arid was only of late years
sprinkled with grey. His gait was slouching and awkward, and
his dress neglected ; but when he began to talk he could not be
mistaken for a common man. In the company of persons with
whom he was not familiar, his bashfulness was painful ; but when
he became entirely at ease, and entered on a favourite topic, no
one's conversation was ever more delightful." He was an excit-
able man, of intense and vehement feelings, nursing and indulging
excitement to dangerous excess. He did not criticise in cold blood.
The reviewers of his own time dwelt upon his intense love and
admiration for great authors as one of his " noblest " qualifications
for the office of critic. " He did not square and measure out his
judgments by the pedantries of dry and lifeless propositions his
taste was not the creature of schools and canons, it was begotten
of Enthusiasm by Thought." Critics who admired this qualifica-
tion, as applied to the great men of former times, sharply resented
its application in the ' Spirit of the Age ' to the author's contem-
poraries. Enthusiasm was then spoken of as " bad taste " and
" affectation "; and poor Hazlitt was told the bitter truth that it
LEIGH HUNT. 543
was his worst enemy. His criticisms of his contemporaries seem
to us to be, taken all in all, neither more nor less just than his
criticisms of departed poets, comic writers, and dramatists. In all
his criticisms alike he strikes us as a man of extravagant sentiment
and hyperbolical expression, widely read in philosophy and in
general literature, a habitual and acute student of human char-
acter, more alive to varieties of excellence than any of his critical
contemporaries, excepting De Quincey and John Wilson, and
more, perhaps, than even these, alive to what may be called
varieties of mood. His judgment was liable to be " deflected "
by intemperate feeling, generous or splenetic. His criticisms
must be taken with some grains of allowance on this score before
we appreciate their substantial body of sound discernment He
often puts things graphically and incisively ; but his composition
strikes the general taste of critics as wearing too much an appear-
ance of effort, and straining too much at flashing effects. " Haz-
litt," says De Quincey, " was not eloquent, because he was discon-
tinuous. No man can be eloquent whose thoughts are abrupt,
insulated, capricious, and non-sequacious. . . . Now Hazlitt's
brilliancy is seen chiefly in separate splinterings of phrase or image
which throw upon the eye a vitreous scintillation for a moment,
but spread no deep suffusions of colour, and distribute no masses
of mighty shadow. A flash, a solitary flash, and all is gone." De
Quincey objects also to Hazlitt's habit of trite quotation, of orna-
menting his pages with " tags of verse and ' cues ' of rhyme."
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), journalist, essay-writer,
book-compiler, and poet, may be placed with Hazlitt as another
distinguished member of what was derisively termed " The Cock-
ney School" He was the son of a West Indian lawyer, settled at
Southgate in Middlesex, and received his schooling at Christ's
Hospital His father published a collection of his verses in 1802,
under the title of ' Juvenilia,' when he was but eighteen a col-
lection which met with a much more favourable reception than
Byron's 'Hours of Idleness,' published some five years later.
Throughout his life his aspirations and pursuits were exclusively
literary. The short trial that was made of his business abilities
in a law office, and subsequently in the War Office, could hardly
be said to be an interruption. When he was little more than
twenty he made a sensation as a dramatic critic in his brother's
paper, the 'News.' In 1808 he joined with his brother in setting
up the ' Examiner,' designed as a weekly organ for political views
more advanced than were then current in the press. The attacks
of the ' Examiner ' upon the Government involved it in more than
one prosecution for libel ; and in 1813 our author was indicted for
certain sarcastic comments on the Prince Regent, and suffered im-
544 FROM 1820.
prisonment for two years, glorying in his bonds, and declining
several offers from friends to pay his fine and procure his release.
In 1816 his 'Story of Rimini' presented him to the public as a
poet; and as he had, some years before, in his ' Feast of the Poets,'
rather captiously insulted the whole of that irritable race, his per-
formance was reviewed and himself reviled with the utmost spirit.
In 1819-21, he published the 'Indicator,' a weekly series of essays
on the model of the ' Spectator.' The most notorious event in his
life, next to his imprisonment for a political offence, was his con-
nection with Lord Byron. He set sail for Italy in 1821 to assist
Byron and Shelley in establishing the ' Liberal,' a projected new
light in matters social, political, and religious ; but the scheme
failed through want of congeniality among the collaborateurs; and
Hunt, after his return to England, published ' Recollections of
Lord Byron,' in which he tried to exculpate himself at the expense
of his friend. He returned to England in 1825. For the remain-
ing thirty-four years of his life he lived as a man of letters in
London, the fruits of his pen being eked out by occasional con-
tributions from his friends, and after 1847 by a Government
pension of ^200, bestowed by Lord John Russell. He projected
periodicals the ' Companion ' (shortly after his return, a contin-
uation of the 'Indicator'), the 'Tatler' (1830-33), the 'London
Journal' (1834), and wrote to periodicals already established;
composed a fictitious autobiography of Sir RALPH ESHER, a gentle-
man of the Court of Charles IL (1832), a poem, 'Captain Sword
and Captain Pen,' 1839, and a play, 'The Legend of Florence,'
1840 ; and published various compilations, criticisms, and books
of gossip 'Imagination and Fancy,' 1845; 'Wit and Humour,'
1846 ; ' Stories from the Italian Poets,' 1846 ; ' Men, Women, and
Books' (a collection from his periodical essays), 1847 ; 'A Jar of
Honey from Mount Hybla,' 1847; 'The Town,' 1848; 'Autobio-
graphy,' 1850; 'The Religion of the Heart,' 1853; 'The Old
Court Suburb,' 1855. He died on the 28th of August 1859. He
is described as a rather tall man, of dark complexion, with erect
carriage, and engaging liveliness and suavity of address. " His
hair was black and shining, and slightly inclined to wave ; his
head was high, his forehead straight and white, his eyes black and
sparkling." The inner as well as the outer man differed consider-
ably from the typical John Bull He was ruled by sentiment. His
capacities for business were of the poorest order. He had no sense
of the value of money, and would often have been in great distress
had not the amiability of his character procured him relief from
the generosity of his friends. As a youth he was spoiled by the
praise of his precocity; overweeningly self-complacent, he sat in
judgment with a patronising air upon his elders and superiors,
and, meaning no harm in the world, made hosts of enemies on
JOHN WILSON. 545
every side. When his eyes were opened to the unconscious offen-
siveness of his behaviour, he appeared in a more amiable aspect
His ' Autobiography ' is brimming with expressions of goodwill to
all mankind, and frank confession of youthful offences. His phil-
anthropic sentiment was overflowing. Uncle Toby was his ideal
" divine Uncle Toby." " He who created Uncle Toby was
the wisest man since the days of Shakspeare." "As long as the
character of Toby Shandy finds an echo in the heart of man, the
heart of man is noble." In point of style, his model was Addison.
In simplicity and felicitous grace of expression he may be con-
trasted with the more robust and careless vigour predominant in
the early days of the 'Edinburgh Review' and ' Blackwood.' He
particularly excels in graceful touches of humorous caricature.
John Wilson, " Christopher North " (1785-1854), was the son
of a prosperous manufacturer in Paisley. When he was six or
seven years old, he was placed under the care of the minister
of the neighbouring parish of Mearns, and displayed from the
first his singular union of muscular vigour with love of intel-
lectual distinction. Jack was anything but a dull boy; his en-
thusiasm for angling and other sports, 1 and his rattling youthful
eloquence, were no less conspicuous than his quickness in book-
learning. He studied at Glasgow, and subsequently at Oxford.
At Glasgow he carried off the first prize in the Logic class ; and at
Oxford, besides being distinguished as a boxer and as the best far-
leaper of his day in England, he was said to have passed for his
degree " the most illustrious examination within the memory of
man." He left Oxford in 1807, and soon after, having purchased
the beautiful residence of Elleray on the banks of the Windermere,
he married, and lived there for several years in Utopian health and
happiness, surrounded by the finest of scenery, and varying his
poem-writing and halcyon peace with walking excursions and jovial
visits from friends that, like himself, entered with zest into the
hearty enjoyment of life. During this period he wrote his ' Isle
of Palms,' a beautiful reflection of the soft passage of his days. In
1815, in consequence of pecuniary embarrassment, brought on by
the misfortunes of the trustee of his father's property, he was
under the necessity of choosing a profession, and decided for the
Scottish bar. He made no effort to secure a practice. In 1820
he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh.
The duties of this Chair he discharged till 1851, when he retired
upon a pension of ^300, all the more gratifying as a mark of
public respect that it was bestowed by his political enemies. But
the most brilliant side of his life was his activity in connection
with ' Blackwood's Magazine,' which, after a short tentative flight,
1 See Recreations of Christopher North.
2 M
546 FKOM 1820.
was in 1817 fairly started in its present character with "Chris-
topher North " as its leading contributor. When Wilson gave up
his residence at Elleray, he was, writes Professor Ferrier, 1 " after
sundry pleasant overtures from Jeffrey, and the composition of one
eloquent article on ' Childe Harold ' for the ' Edinburgh Review,'
induced finally to cement a perpetual treaty with Mr Blackwood,
and to act, for months and years, as the animating soul of his
celebrated Magazine." It was not, however, by a jump, or even
rapidly, that Wilson attained to the full command of his powers,
or the Magazine to a lucrative circulation. It was established in
1817 ; but it was not until 1825 that that brilliant succession of
articles from Wilson's pen began to appear, which brought fame
to him and a shoal of subscribers to the Magazine. For the ten
following years, his industry never flagged. About 1836 it became
somewhat intermittent, although, until near the close of his life, it
was still powerfully exerted. " Dies Boreales " were the last con-
tributions from his pen to ' Blackwood's Magazine.' 2 All his prose
writings made their first appearance in ' Maga,' as he delighted to
call the Magazine ; after his death the principal of them were
collected and published by the Messrs Blackwood under the editor-
ship of his son-in-law Professor Ferrier. The numerous floating
traditions of " Christopher North's" commanding personal appear-
ance and physical prowess have always made him one of the most
popular of literary characters. The graceful dignity of his carriage,
and the length of limb and peculiar formation of heel that gave him
his extraordinary superiority as a far-leaper, are recorded with
characteristic minuteness in De Quincey's sketch. De Quincey
also dwells upon the popularity of his manners his frank, open
affability to all comers, his " infinite gamut " of acquaintance from
college "Don" to groom, ostler, and stable-boy. His writings
were no less popular than his person. As a critic he did not pos-
sess De Quincey's subtle power of entering into characters different
from his own (in that respect De Quincey probably stood alone
among his contemporaries) ; but his sympathies were so broad that
it is not easy to define their limits. His strong pleasure in natural
scenery, the native susceptibility of his eye to colour and form,
gave him a wider compass than Jeffrey, and was the secret of his
enthusiastic advocacy of Wordsworth, as a corresponding deficiency
was the secret of Jeffrey's no less earnest depreciation. When we
compare his review of Lord Tennyson's early poems with Lockhart's
* In Mackenzie's Imperial Dictionary of Biography.
2 Among the early contributors to this Magazine, which introduced a new era
In periodical writing, being the iirst parent of all the magazines that now swim
the literary stream, were John Gibson Lockhart, Captain Hamilton (author of
'Cyril Thornton,' a brother of Sir Willian Hamilton), John Gait (author of
'Annals of the Parish'), Mrs llemans, David M. Moir ('' Delta"), Sir Archibald
Alison, De Quincey, and other well-kuowu names.
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHAKT. 547
review of the same publication in the ' Quarterly,' we see that this
nature-interest, this additional " bump " or bumps, overbalanced his
repugnance to the admixture of the " Cockney " element, and the
pseudo-metaphysical " drivel," that irreconcilably offended his early
friend and associate. As regards Wilson's style, it has been said
by Mr Hallam that "his eloquence is like the rush of mighty
waters." He greatly admired Jeremy Taylor; and while, from
temperament, he does not display the same habitual breathless
eagerness in the accumulation of words, but pours out his full
eloquence with less appearance of excitement, he often reminds us
of Taylor's manner in his way of following out picturesque simil-
itudes. Comparing them upon one point only, and disregard-
ing other characteristics, we should say that of the two Taylor is
the more rhetorical, and Wilson the more eloquent : Taylor rather
accumulates his wealth of expression upon given themes ; Wilson
flows out spontaneously and often somewhat irrelevantly to the
subject in hand, concerning what strongly interested him in real
life : Taylor can flexibly bring his powers to bear upon any sub-
ject ; Wilson, although from the width of his interests the distinc-
tion is not glaringly obtrusive, is copious only when he happens
to strike a plentiful spring in his own nature. With all Wilson's
Nimrod force and abounding animal spirits, perhaps his richest
and most original vein of expression is connected with his love of
peaceful beauties in natural scenery. A very high tribute both
to his judgment and to his powers of illustration is paid by De
Quincey when he says that from Wilson's contributions to ' Black-
wood's Magazine,' and more especially from his meditative ex-
aminations of great poets ancient and modern, zflorUegium might
be compiled of thoughts more profound and more gorgeously
illustrated than exist elsewhere in human composition.
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854), already mentioned in con-
nection with ' Blackwood's Magazine,' was editor of the ' Quarterly
Review' for more than a quarter of a century, from 1826 to 1853.
The son of a Scotch parish minister in Lanarkshire, he was a dis-
tinguished student at Glasgow College, and at the close of his cur-
riculum was presented to one of the Snell exhibitions for Balliol
College, Oxford. In the final examination at Oxford in 1813, he
took a first-class in classics. After a visit to Germany, in the
course of which he made the acquaintance of Goethe, he fixed his
residence in Edinburgh, and was called to the Scotch bar in 1816.
Like several other young lawyers of the same date, his profession was
more literature than law. He co-operated with Wilson in the inau-
guration of ' Blackwood's Magazine' in 1817. He had a principal
hand in the famous ' Chaldee Manuscript' l In 1819 he published
1 This pungent production appeared in the seventh number of ' Blackwood'a
Magazine, the first number contributed to by Wilson and Lockhart. It was
548 FROM 1820.
' Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' satirical sketches of Edinburgh men
of the time. In the following year he married the eldest daughter
of Sir Walter Scott, who fitted up for the reception of the youthful
pair the little cottage of Chiefswood, near Abbotsford. Here he
produced in rapid succession his ' Metrical Translations of Spanish
Ballads,' and his four novels, 'Valerius,' 'Adam Blair,' 'Reginald
Dalton,' and ' Matthew Wald.' From 1826, when he accepted the
editorship of the ' Quarterly Review,' he resided in London ; and
besides his editorial duties and his own contributions to the peri-
odical, which were upwards of a hundred in number, he found
time to write his ' Life of Burns ' for ' Constable's Miscellany '
(1827), his 'Life of Napoleon' for 'Murray's Family Library'
(1829), and his greatest work, the 'Life of Scott,' the last volume
of which appeared in 1838. Lockhart was a thin, dark, erect
figure, proud and reserved in general society, and regarded with
some fear on account of his sarcastic ways ; but among his chosen
companions, at least in his earlier and happier years, loved for his
exuberance of animal spirits and his irrepressible flow of wit and
humour. The kindliness that was not distributed promiscuously,
made itself felt all the more strongly within the chosen circle. He
made numerous enemies, especially during his career in Edinburgh,
by the tormenting force of his ridicule, by his ingenuity in driving
rusty nails into the most vulnerable parts of his victims ; yet more
acts of generous kindness and high integrity are recorded of him
than can be placed to the credit of many men of more philan-
thropic professions and greater general suavity of manner. As
a critical potentate "he was kind and considerate towards un-
pretending merit, ready to recognise and welcome real talent in
friend or foe, and severe only where presumption went hand in
hand with ignorance." Much of his power as a writer depended
upon his penetrating knowledge of character. The most notable
feature in his novels and tales is the development of thought, feel-
ing, and purpose, under the influence of circumstances : he loves
particularly to play upon natural mistakes, and the consequences of
natural mistakes, in the interpretation of appearances. His most-
admired articles in the ' Quarterly ' are biographical. Throughout
his life the study of character seems to have been his prevailing
study : we trace the natural bent towards it in his boyish carica
tures, and we have the first memorable fruits of it in ' Peter's
Letters.' The 'Life of Burns' is a good specimen of his power:
when we compare this work with Dr Currie's, we are most forcibly
struck with Lockhart's skill in weaving out of crude material
a coherent narrative of characteristic incidents. No student of
written in the style of the Old Testament Its clever personalities made such a
sensation that it was withdrawn from the second edition of the number. (See
Wilson's Works, voL iv.)
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. 549
biography can afford to overlook Lockhart. Apart from his skill
in choosing significant circumstances, he is peculiarly distinguished
by his faithful adherence to reality : his biographies are remark-
ably free from the distortions of romance and hero-worship. He
objected on several grounds to the writing of the lives of persons
recently deceased ; but he held that if " contemporaneous bio-
graphy," as he called it, is to be permitted, the biographers should
be peculiarly careful not to make in favour of the hero suppressions
that might do injustice to other persons concerned. It was prob-
ably in pursuance of this principle that he made revelations con-
cerning Scott which extreme admirers of the poet would rather he
had left unsaid. Lockhart's is not a studied, finished style, but he
had a great mastery of language, and is exceedingly fresh and
varied in his diction. His characteristic qualities are keen incisive
force, and sarcastic exuberant wik
INDEX OF PKINCIPAL NAMES,
PAGB
Butler, Samuel, .
306
Alison, Rev. A.,
Sir A.,
Andrewes,
Arbuthnot,
Ascham,
Ashmole,
Atterbury,
Aubrey,
BACON, FRANCIS, .
Baker, . . .
528
255
408
197
305
401
343
. 239-255
Butter, . . .
Carmlen, . .
Campbell, John, .
Campbell, George, .
Capgrave, . .
CAULYLE, .
Carte, . . .
Cartwright, . .
Cavendish, . .
. . 263
235
437
474. 478
. . 187
( 131-180, 44, 191,
I 195. 328
437
233
IQ3
Caxton, . . .
. . 187
Chalmers, . ,
C23
. . 478
Charleton, . .
344,
Cheke, . . .
196
Bentley, . .
47
Chillingworth, .
Chubb, .
t . 258
, . 429
Berners, Juliana, .
188
r8o
Clarendon, . .
3>4
438
Blackwell, . .
438
Coleridge, . .
Collins, . . .
5*9
AC'S
Conybeare, . .
42Q
Bolingbroke, . .
. 410
Cotton, . . .
Coverdale, . .
235
J 94
COWLET, . .
. 280-208
Boyle.
Brown, John, .
43Q
Brown, Peter, .
Brown, Thomas, .
404
. . 5*6
3O7
Cumberland, . .
34 1
3O I
2^8
( 31-76, IOO. 1*37,
DB QUINCET, .
1 138, 379, 488, 546
Burnet Gilbert .
Burnet, Thomas, .
Burton, . . .
Butler, Joseph,
339
. . 262
430
Disraeli, I., . .
Doddridge, . .
520
INDEX OF PRINCIPAL NAMES.
551
Hutcheson,
Hyde (Clarendon),
433
34
Dugdale, ...
305
Jeffrey, . .
JOHNSON
532
Ellwood, ...
340
Jonson, Ben, .
. . 260
Erskine, ...
433
Kames, Lord, .
Kennet,
Eeunicot, . .
Kuolles, . .
Lamb, . . .
Landor, . .
Lardner, . .
. 479
407
. . 432
537
539
431
Fabyan, .
Felltham, .
Field, .
Fortescue, .
Foster, James,
Foster, John,
Fox, George, .
Foxe, John, .
Francis, . .
188
306
855
186
301
196
488
Law, Edmund, .
Law, William,
Leland, John,
Leland, Dr John, .
432
432
. 192
FULLER, ...
Gauden, . .
. 864-274
3"
L'Estrange, . .
343
GOLDSMITH, ...
Guthrie, ...
Hakluyt, ...
Hale, ....
. 461-473
437
3 6
Lockhart, . .
340
547
f 77- 130
MAOAULAY, < 331,
( 486,
Mackenzie,
Mackintosh, .
Malory, . .
, 172, 177, 252,
342, 419, 485.
527
342
521
. 189
Hales, ....
Halifax
Hall, Edward, . .
Hall, Joseph, . .
HALL, ROBERT, . .
Hallain, ....
. 192
257
504-513
527
Harrington, ...
Harris, James, . .
Harris, William, . .
3*3
439
437
Mandeville, Ber. de,
Mandeville, Sir John,
Manley, Mrs,
Marprelate, .
May, . .
404
. . 183
. . 408
233
305
Hazlitt, ....
Hayward, Sir John, .
Hayward, A. C., . .
Herbert (of Cherbury)^ .
Hervey, James, . .
Hervey, Lord, . .
* o 23 1
489, 536
260
432
437
Middleton, .
Mill, James, .
Milner, Isaac,
Milner, Joseph,
Milton, .
Mitford,
437
525
5H
. 310
Monboddo, .
More, Henry,
More, Sir T.,
Morgan, .
Morton, .
Needham, . .
Newton, Sir Isaac,
Newton, Thomas, .
39
. 189
. 429
255
3 T 4
344
432
Hobbes, . .
Holinshed, . .
Hooke, ....
Hooker, John, . .
HOOKKR, RICHARD, .
198
437
. 199
. 313-227
Howell, ...
305
Hume, ....
Hunt, Leigh, . . .
434
543
552
INDEX OF PRINCIPAL NAMES.
PALKT, . . .
. 49 2 -S04
Stanihurst, . .
STEELE, . .
Stewart, . .
Stillingfleet, .
199
. 392-400
516
337
Pecock, , * , .
186
Strype, . .
407
Pepys, .
Porteous, ...
342
474
Swrra, . . ,
TAYLOR, . .
. . 3 6l '377
. . 274-289
Priestley, ...
Psalmanazar, . .
Purchas, .
477
437
. 236
Tillotson,
Tindal, . .
Toland,
Tooke,
Trevisa, . .
Tucker, . .
Tyndale, . .
Ussher, . .
Wakefield, . .
Walpole, . .
Walton, . .
Warburton, . .
Watson, . .
Watts,
Wesley, . .
Whitefield, .
337
. . 44
43
49
1 86
47<5
193
. . Si6
. . 486
' 309
431
SIS
43
433
433
345
Ricardo, . . .
Robertson, ...
5'9
. 481
Rutherford, . . .
Rymer, ...
304
343
Sanderson, ...
Sandys, ...
Saville, ...
Becker, ...
Selden, . . .
Shaftesbury . . .
Sherlock, Thomas, .
Sherlock, William, .
Sidney, Algernon, .
SIDNEY, SIR P., . .
Simeon, . . .
Smith, Adam, . .
Smith, Sydney, . .
Smollett, . .
299
. 262
344
432
259
405
. 44
338
3 4
. 000-213
. 480
534
436
WiclifiFe,
Wilkins,
Wilson, Arthur, .
Wilson, John, .
Wilson, Thomas, .
Wollaston, . .
Wood, . .
Woolston, . .
Wotton,
184
39
305
54S
197
. 405
. 343
. 403
. . 261
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