; DE QUINCEY'S ESSAYS. THOMAS DE QUINCEY. Born, 1785. Died, 8th December, 1859. De Quineeys Essays. ESSAYS THOMAS DE QUINCEY. INCLUDING THE CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER, RICHARD BENTLEY, LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN, JOHN PAUL RICHTER, a Brief Memoir of tyt &uttjor. WARD, LOCK AND CO,, LONDON: WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.G. NEW YORK: BOND STREET. CONTENTS. BRIEF MEMOIR OF DE QUINCEY . . i . , ;- CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER : FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER . . . . i PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS ..... 4 THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM . . . . .30 INTRODUCTION TO THE PAINS OF OPIUM . . .40 RICHARD BENTLEY : Life oj Richard Bentley, D.D. By J. H. MONK, U.D. . .71 DR. PARR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES : The Works of Samtizl Parr, LI..D., -with Memoirs of his Life and Writings, and a Selection from his Correspondence. By JOHN JOHNSTONE, M.D. Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Opinions of the Rev. Samuel Parr, LL.D. With Biographical Notices of many of his Friends, Pupils, and Contemporaries. By the Rev. WILLIAM FIELD. Parriana ; or, Notices of the Rev. Samuel Parr, LL.D. By E. II. BARKER, Esq. . . . . . . .150 LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED 243 JOHN PAUL RICHTER 292 ANALECTS FROM RICHTER ... . 300 2C2C121 CONTENTS. PAGE THE KING OF HAYTI 313 GOETHE, AS REFLECTED IN HIS NOVEL OF WILHELM MEISTER ........ 331 ON THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE IN MACBETH . . 353 HISTORICO-CRITICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF THE ROSICRUCIANS AND FREE-MASONS . . 357 KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER . . . .402 FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY . .. . 413 ANECDOTAGE . .424 NOTES FROM THE POCKET-BOOK OF A LATE OPIUM- EATER : I. WALKING STEWART . . . . . .437 II. MALTHUS ....... 447 III. ENGLISH DICTIONARIES . . . . .453 IV. REFORMADOES . . . . . . -457 V. PROVERBS ....... 457 VI. ANTAGONISMS . . . - . . . 457 VII. To THE LAKERS . . . . . .458 VIII. ON SUICIDE . i ..... 460 IX. MEASURE OF VALUE . . . . . .463 X. FALSE DISTINCTIONS . '; ' ' . . . 4 66 XL MADNESS ....... 470 XII. ENGLISH PHYSIOLOGY . .' . *. . . .472 XIII. SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE . . . . .473 XIV. MANUSCRIPTS OF MELMOTH ..... 476 XV. SCRIPTURAL ALLUSION EXPLAINED . . -477 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. T^HE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, as Thomas De Quincey has been * often styled, from the remarkable personal experiences detailed in the celebrated work printed in this volume bearing that title, was born at Greenhay, a suburb of Manchester, in 1785. Many of his writings are auto-biographical, but, in the minute account he has given of his adrentures and suffering, fiction has been supposed by some, we believe erroneously, to be mixed with fact. De Quincey's nature, in our view, was so eminently truthful, that we cannot assent to the belief urged in one notice of his life, that in his narrations of his adventures " fiction is supposed to be mixed with fact to such a degree as to render it impossible in many cases to' discriminate between them." He was the fifth child of a merchant who spent much of his time in foreign lands, and who, dying in 1793, when Thomas De Quincey was seven years old, left to his family a fortune equal to about i6oo/. a year. The childhood of the author was passed chiefly in rural seclusion, with three sisters for his playmates. The death of one of these when he wa s not yet three years of age caused him scarcely so much sorrow as a sad perplexity ; it appalled him by its mystery, but he was solaced by a trust that she would return again, like the crocuses and roses. Once more, a few years later, the death MEMOIR. of a second sister overwhelmed him with grief, and the sentiments of love and religion which it evoked were nursed by him in silent reverie, and deepened the naturally solemn tone of his mind. "If," he writes in one of his papers, " I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, therefrom I should single out as worthy of special commemoration that I lived in rustic solitude ; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid, pugilistic brothers ; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent Church." He was sent to various schools, and Wjly distinguished himself by proficiency in Greek ; at the grammar- school at Bath, where he studied from his twelfth to his fourteenth year, it was said of him, as will be seen in the " Confessions," that he could have harangued an Athenian mob. He was thence trans- ferred, much to his chagrin, to a school at Winkfield, where he dis- contentedly remained for about a year. He entreated his guardian to send him to the university, but in vain, though the income arising from his patrimony would have been sufficient for his support there. Resolved, however, to be no longer numbered amongst schoolboys, he borrowed from a kind lady of rank ten guineas, ran away from school with a volume of Euripides in his pocket, and, by accident, directed his wanderings towards North Wales. Thomas De Quincey was thus thrown wholly on his own resources, and how he fared will be read in his own words. After great priva- tions, he found himself in London ; and there he suffered for weeks the pangs of absolute hunger. His description of the agonies he endured, and his wanderings through the great city, the kindness he received from a "black-sheep " lawyer, the goodness he found in the heart of one who belonged to the class of unfortunate women ; these experiences are written with a pathos and a power which win alike the sympathy of the charitable mind and the admiration of the literary critic. At length an opening, the nature of which is not apparent, is made for reconciliation with his friends. He seems to have visited various parts of England and Ireland, and at the end of 1803 to have gone to Oxford. In the autumn of 1804, the first time he was in viii MEMOIR. London after his entrance at the university, opium was suggested to him as an alleviator of rheumatic pains, from which he was acutely suffering. He took the lulling dose and every reader of the " Con- fessions " will know the ecstatic manner in which he praises the wonder-working drug. " Divine enjoyment; " " keys of paradise;" these are what he won from laudanum. What he gained afterwards was an " Iliad of woes." In the year 1808, having left his college the year before, he took a cottage at Grassmere, among the lakes and mountains of West- morc'and, the same cottage which had been before occupied by Worjsworth. Here he remained, with occasional absences, for the long period of seven-and-twenty years. He formed one of the cele- brated Lake group ; among his friends being Wordsworth and Coleridge, at Grassmere, Southey at Keswick, and Professor Wilson at Eilery. But his most intimate friend was " W T alking Stewart," who was then living in London, after having walked over a great part of Asia, Europe, and America, besides having, in his pedestrian tours, seen nearly the whole of our own island. Of him De Quincey wrote, in one of his papers, a brief account. In the pleasant quietude of his Westmoreland cottage, the study of German literature and philosophy principally occupied the attention of De Quincey ; he made translations from Lessing and Richter, and was among the first of Englishmen to inter- pret Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. The aim of his studies for many years was the production of a work, to which he proposed giving the title of De Emendatione Humani Intellectus. This was the name given by Spinoza to an unfinished labour begun by him, but the Opium-Eater could not command the efforts to rear the superstructure, of which the foundations were laid, any more than the Jewish philosopher could accomplish his task. Political economy subsequently engaged what he terms his period of imbecility. He welcomed the writings of Ricardo as the first pro- found utterances on the subjects of wealth and labour, and he was roused to an activity which resulted in his beginning " Prolegomena to all Future Systems of Political Economy." But the arrangements for publishing were set aside ; he failed to finish even the preface. MEMOIR. and this first appeared only in 1824, under the title of " The Templars' Dialogues." It is reputed to be one of the most thorough, although briefest, exhibitions of the Ricardian theory of value. When thirty-five years of age he went to London, and, as a con- tributor io the London Magazine, became acquainted with Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, Allan Cunningham, Tom Hood, and other lite- rary men. The "Confessions" were published in this magazine during the first year of his stay in London, and in the next they appeared in a volume. The high reputation which the recital of these extraordinary experiences then gained, has never been lost ; and the artistic power displayed by their author must keep the "Confessions" amongst the treasures of literature for long ages. To BlackwoocTs Magazine, TaiFs Edinburgh Magazine, North British Review, he sent auto-biographical sketches, reminiscences, essays, and discussions in history, philosophy, and criticism. Not all of these, by any means, will live, but it has been truly said of his writings, that they all show a wide range of learning and speculation, a delicate and subtle critical faculty, and a felicitous expression. After alternating between the lakes and the metropolis, De Quincey went, in 1843, to reside at Lasswade, a village about twelve miles from Edinburgh. For his personal appearance, he had a fine intellectual head, but has been described as of unprepossessing figure, diminutive in stature, and awkward in movement, and with a skin shrivelled and parchment-like. During the latter years of his life he performed regular tasks of walking in the garden, and would occasionally absent himself for several days together from his home. He died in 1859, being seventy-four years of age. We are at present without any sufficient review of De Quincey's life and works ; a personal and literary inquiry which would amply , repay investigation, and find a ready host of readers. CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. I HERE present you, courteous reader, with the record of a re- markable period of my life ; according to my application of it, I trust that it will prove, not merely an interesting record, but, in a considerable degree, useful and instructive. In t/zafhopc it is that I have drawn it up ; and that must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honourable reserve, which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English feelings, than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers, or scars, and tearing away that "decent drapery" which time, or indulgence to human frailty, may have drawn over them : accordingly, the greater part of our confessions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers ; and for any such acts of gratuitous self- humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that part of the German which is tainted with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French. All this I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach of this tendency, that I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this, or any part of my narrative, to come before the public eye, until after my death (when, for many reasons, the whole will be published) : and it is not without an anxious review of the reasons for and against this step, that I have, at last, concluded on taking it. Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice : they court privacy and solitude ; and, even in the choice of a grave, will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the church-yard, as if declining to claim fellowship CONFESSJONS OF with the great family of man, and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth) Humbly to express A penitential loneliness. It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it should be so ; nor would I willingly, in my own person, manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings ; nor in act or word do anything to weaken them. But, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others, from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price, might compensate, by a vast over-balance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not, of necessity, imply guilt. They ap- proach, or recede from, the shades of that dark alliance, in propor- tion to the probable motives and prospects of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offence ; in proportion as the temptations to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For r^y own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm, that my life has been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher : from my birth I was made an intellectual creature ; and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even in my school-boy days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess, not yet recorded* of any other man, it is no less true, that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a religious zeal, and have at length accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off in counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist t::at, in my case, the self-conquest was unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure. Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge ; and, if I did, it is possible that I might still resolve on the present act of confession, in con- sideration of the service which I may thereby render to the whole class of opium-eaters. But who are they ? Reader, I am sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced, some years ago, by computing, at that time, the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men distinguished for talent, or of eminent station) who were known to me, directly " Not yet recorded," I sav : for there is one celebrated man of the present day, who if all be true which is reported of him, has greatly exceeded me io uld furnish so many scores of cases (and that within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference that the entire population of England would furnish a proportionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I doubted, until some facts became known to me, which satisfied me that it was not incorrect. I will mention two : i. Three respectable London druggists, in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I hap- pened lately to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured me that the number of amateur opium-eaters (as I may term them) was, at this time, immense ; and that the difficulty of distinguishing these persons, to whom habit had rendered opium necessary, from such as were purchasing it with a view to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and disputes. This evidence respected London only. But, 2 (which will possibly surprise the reader more), some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was informed by several cotton manufacturers, that their work-people were rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating ; so much so, that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which, at that time, would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits ; and, wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease : but, as I do not readily believe that any man, having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted That those eat now who merer ate before ; And those who always ate now eat the more. Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are admitted, even by medical writers who are its greatest enemies : thus, for instance, Awsiter, apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his " Essay on the Effects of Opium " (published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead had not been sufficiently explicit on the pro- perties, counter-agents, &c., of this drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious terms (QOVOVTM vwerouri) '. " Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made common ; and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would take from that necessary fear and caution, which should prevent their experiencing the extensive power of this drug ; for there are many properties in it, if universally known, thai would habit- CONFESSIONS OF uate the use, and make it more in request with us than the Turks themselves; the result of which knowledge," he adds, " must prove a general misfortune." In the necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur ; but upon that point I shall have occasion to speak at the close of my Confessions, where I shall present the reader with the moral of my narrative. PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS. THESE preliminary confessions, or introductory narrative of the youthful aJvertures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of opium-eating in after life, it has been judged proper to premise, for three several reasons : 1. As forstalling that question, and giving it a satisfactory answer, which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium Confessions " How came any reasonable being to subject himself to such a yoke of misery, voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and knowingly to fetter himself with such a seven-fold chain ? " a question which, if not somewhere plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the indignation which it would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton folly, to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is necessary in any case to an author's purposes. 2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremendous scenery which afterwards peopled the dreams of the opium-eater. 3. As creating some previous interest of a personal sort in the confessing subject, apart from the matter of the confessions, which cannot fail to render the confessions themselves more interesting. If a man "whose talk is of oxen " should become an opium-eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) he will dream about oxen : whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find that the opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher ; and accordingly, that the phantasmagoria of his dreams (waking or sleeping, day dreams or night drams) is suitable to one who, in that character, Human! nihil a se alienum putat. For amongst the conditions which he deems indispensable to the sustaining of any claim to the title of philosopher, is not merely the ossession of a superb intellect in its analytic functions (in which part of the pretension, however, England can for some generations show but few claimants ; at least, he is not aware of any known candidate for this honour who can be styled emphatically a subtle thinker, with the exception of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and, in a narrower department of thought, with the recent illustrious excep- AN OPIUM-EATER. tion* of David Ricardo], but also on such a constitution of the moral faculties as shall give him an inner eye and power of in- tuition for the vision and mysteries of human nature : that consti- tution of faculties, in short, which (amongst all the generations of men that from the beginning of time have deployed into life, as it were, upon this planet) our English poets have possessed in the highest degree and Scottishf professors in the lowest. I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium- cater; and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaint- ance, from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice, purely for the c ake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it is, that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium, for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me ; but, so long as I took it with this view, I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences, by the necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts of indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain, in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In the twenty-eighth year of my age, a most painful affection of the stomach, which I had first experienced about ten years before, attacked me with great strength. This affection had originally been caused by the extre- mities of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. During the season of hope and redundant happiness which succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-four) it had slumbered : for the three following years it had revived at intervals ; and now, under unfavourable circum- stances, from depression of spirit, it attacked me with violence that yielded to no remedies but opium. As the youthful sufferings which first produced this derangement of the stomach were interesting in themselves and in the circumstances that attended them, I shall here briefly retrace them. My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the care of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and * A third exception might perhaps have been added : and my reason for not adding that exception is chiefly because it was only in his juvenile efforts that the writer whom I allude to expressly addressed himself to philosophical themes ; his riper powers have been dedicated (on very excusable and very in- telligible grounds, under the present direction of the popular mind in England) to criticism and the fine arts. This reason apart, however, I doubt whether he is not rather to be considered at. acute thinker than a subtle one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his mastery over philosophical subjects, that he has obviously not had the advantage of a regular scholastic education : he hai not read Plato in his youth (which most likely was only his misfortune), but neither has he read Kant in his manhood (which is his fault). t I disclaim any allusion to existing professors, of whom, indeed, I know only one. CONFESSIONS OF small ; and was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease ; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great, that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but would converse in Greek fluently, and without embarrassment an accom- plishment which I have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could furnish extempore; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions, as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, &c., gave me a compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. " That boy," said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one." He who honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar, " and a ripe and good one," and, of all my tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance ; and, finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by College, Oxford ; and was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and in- elegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favourite master ; and, besides, he could not disguise from my hourly notice the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy to be, and know himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge or in power o* mind. This was the case, so far as regarded knowledge at least, not with myself only ; for the two boys who jointly with myself com. posed the first form were better Grecians than the head-master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to sacrifice to the graces. When I first entered, I remember that wa read Sophocles ; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned triumvirate of the first form, to see our " Archididascalus " (as he loved to be called) conning our lesson before we went up, and laying a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses ; whilst we never condescended to open our books, until the moment of going up, and were generally employed in writing epigrams upon us wig, or some such important matter. My two class-fellows were poor, and dependent, for their future prospects at the university, on the recommendation of the head-master; but I, who had a small patrimonial property, the income of which was sufficient to support me at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. I made ist representations on the subject to my guardians, but all to no purpose. One, who was more reasonable, and had more know- 6 AN OPIUM-EATER. iedge of the world than the rest, lived at a distance ; two of the other three resigned all their authority into the hands of the fourth ; and this fourth, with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man, in his way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all opposition to his will. After a certain number of letters and personal inter- views, I found that I had nothing to hope for, not even a compro- mise of the matter, from my guardian ; unconditional submission jvas what he demanded ; and I prepared myself, therefore, for other measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty steps, and my seventeenth birthday was fast approaching ; after which day I had sworn within myself that I would no longer be numbered amongst school-boys. Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of high rank, who, though young herself, had known me from a child, and had latterly treated me with great distinction, lequesting that she would "lend" me five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came ; and I was beginning to despond, when, at length, a servant put into my hands a double letter, with a coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging; the fair writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay had arisen ; she enclosed double of what I had asked, and good- naturedly hinted, that if I should never repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now, then, I was prepared for my scheme ; ten guineas, added to about two that I had remaining from my pocket-money, seemed to me sufficient for an indefinite length of time ; and at that happy age, if no definite boundary can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope and pleasure makes it virtually infinite. It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, what cannot often be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling one) that we never do any- thing consciously for the last time (of things, that is, which we have long been in the habit of doing), without sadness of heart. This truth I felt deeply when I came to leave , a place which I did not love, and where I had not been happy. On the evening before I left for ever, I grieved when the ancient and lofty school-room resounded with the evening service, performed for the last time in my hearing ; and at night, when the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as usual) was called first, I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who was standing by, I bowed to him, and looking earnestly in his face, thinking to myself, "He is old and infirm, and in this world 1 shall not see him again." I was right ; I never did see him again, nor ever shall. He looked at me complacently, smiled good-naturedly, returned my salutation (or rather my valediction), and we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could not reverence him intellectually ; but he had been uniformly kind to me, and had allowed me many indulgences ; and I grieved at the thought of the mortification I should inflict upon him. The morning came, which was to launch me into the world, and from which my whole succeeding life has, in many important points, 2 7 CONCESSIONS OF taken its colouring. I lodged in the head-master's house, and had been allowed, from my first entrance, the indulgence of a private room, which I used both as a sleeping room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and gazed with deep emotion at the ancienr towers of , " drest in earliest light," and beginning to crim- son with the radiant lustre of a cloudless July morning. I was- firm and immovable in my purpose, but yet agitated by anticipation of uncertain danger and troubles ; and if I could have foreseen the hurricane, and perfect hail-storm of affliction, which soon fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. To this agitation the deep- peace of the morning presented an affecting contrast, and in some degree a medicine. The silence was more profound than that of midnight: and to me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence, because, the light being broad and strong, as that of noon-day at other seasons of the year, it seems to- differ from perfect day chiefly because man is not yet abroad ; and thus, the peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures of God, seems to be secure and deep, only so long as the presence of man, and his restless and unquiet spirit, are not there to trouble its sanctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and gloves, and lingered a little in the room. For the last year and a half this room had been my "pensive citadel:" here I had read and studied through all the hours of night ; and, though true it was, that for the latter part of this time, I, who was framed for love and gentle affections, had lost my gaiety and happiness, during the strife and fever of contention with my guardian, yet, on the other hand, as a boy so passionately fond of books, and dedicated to intellectual pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many happy hours in the midst of general de- jection. I wept as I looked round on the chair, hearth, writing- table, and other familiar objects, knowing too certainly that I looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write this, it is eighteen years ago ; and yet, at this moment, I see distinctly, as if it were but yesterday, the lineaments and expressions of the object on which I fixed my parting gaze : it was a picture of the lovely , which hung over the mantel-piece ; the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful, and the whole countenance so radiant with benignity and divine tranquillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my pen, or my book, to gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I was yet gazing upon it, the dRcp tones of clock proclaimed that it was four o'clock, I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently walked out, and closed the door for ever ! So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions of laughter and of tears, that I cannot yet recall, without smiling, an incident which occurred at that time, and which had nearly put a stop to the immediate execution of my plan I had a trunk of immense weight ; for, besides my clothes, it contained nearly all my library. The difficulty was to get this removed to a carrier's : my room was at an AN OPIUM-EATER. agrial elevation in the house, and (what was worse) the staircasa which communicated with this angle of the building was accessible only by a gallery, which passed the head-master's chamber-door. I was a favourite with all the servants ; and knowing that any of them would screen me, and act confidentially, I communicated my em- barrassment to a groom of the head-master's. The groom swore he would do anything I wished ; and, when the time arrived, went up- stairs to bring the trunk down. This I feared was beyond the <" strength of any one man : however, the groom was a man , Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear I The weight of mightiest monarchies ; and had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plains. Accordingly he persisted in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I stood waiting at the foot of the last flight, in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard him descending with slow and firm steps ; but, unfortu- nately, from his trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps of the gallery, his foot slipped ; and the mighty burden, falling from his shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the descent, that, on reaching the bottom, it trundled, or rather leaped, right across, with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bed-room door of the Archididascalus. My first thought was, that all was lost ; and that my only chance for exe- cuting a retreat was to sacrifice my baggage. However, on reflec- tion, I determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine : but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous, in this unhappy contre- temps, taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment, within the very ears of insulted authority, I could not forbear joining in it; subdued to this, not so much by the unhappy etourderie of the trunk, as by the effect it had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter of course, that Dr. would sally out of his room ; for, in general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to stay, however, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had ceased, no sound, or rustling even, was to be heard in the bed- room. Dr. had a painful complaint, which sometimes keeping him awake, made him sleep, perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering courage from the silence, the groom hoisted his burden again, and accomplished the remainder of his descent without ; accident. I waited until I saw the trunk placed on a wheelbarrow, and on its road to the carrier's : then, " with Providence my guide," I set off on foot, carrying a small parcel, with some articles of dress under my arm : a favourite English poet in one pocket ; and a small I2mo. volume, containing about nine plays of Euripides, in the other. . It had been my intention, originally, to proceed to Westmoreland, 9 CONFESSIONS OF both from the love I bore to that county, and on other personal accounts. Accident, however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent my steps towards North Wales. After wandering about for some time in Denbighshire, Merioneth- shire, and Caernarvonshire, I took lodgings in a small neat house in B . Here I might have stayed with great comfort for many weeks; for provisions were cheap at B , from the scarcity of other markets for the surplus products of a wide agricultural dis- trict. An accident, however, in which, perhaps, no offence was designed, drove me out to wander again. I know not whether my reader may have remarked, but I have often remarked, that the proudest class of people in England (or, at any rate, the class whose pride is most apparent) are the families of bishops. Noblemen, and their children, carry about with them, in their very titles, a sufficient notification of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this applies also to the children of many untitled houses) are often, to the English ear, adequate exponents of high birth, or descent. Sackville, Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell their own tale. Such persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of their claims already established, except among those who are ignorant of the world, by virtue of their own obscurity ; " Not to know them argues one's self unknown." Their manners, take a suitable tone and colouring ; and, for once that they find it accessary to impress a sense of their consequence upon others, they meet with a thousand occasions for moderating and tempering this sense by acts of courteous condescension. With the families of bishops it is otherwise ; with them it is all up-hill work to make known their pretensions ; for the proportion of the episcopal bench taken from noble families is not at any time very large ; and the succession to these dignities is so rapid, that the public ear seldom has time to become familiar with them, unless where they are con- nected with some literary reputation. Hence it is that the children of bishops carry about with them an austere and repulsive air, indicative of claims not generally acknowledged, a sort of noli me tangere manner, nervously apprehensive of too familiar approach, and shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty man, from all con- tact with the 61 voXXot. Doubfess, a powerful understanding, or unusual goodness of nature, will Deserve a man from such weak- ness ; but, in general, the truth of .ny representation will be acknow- ledged ; pride, if not of deeper root in such families, appears, at least, more upon the surface of their manners. This spirit of man- ners naturally communicates itself to their domestics, and other dependants. Now, my landlady had been a lady's maid, or a nurse, in the family of the Bishop of ; and had but lately married away and " settled " (as such people express it) for life. In a little town like B , merely to have lived in the bishop's family con- ferred some distinction ; and my good landlady had rather more than her share of the pride I have noticed on that score. What my lord " said, and what " my lord " did, how useful he was in 10 AN OPIUM-EATER. parliament, and how indispensable at Oxford, formed the daily burden of her talk. All this I bore very well ; for I was too good natured to laugh in anybody's face, and I could make an ample allowance for the garrulity of an old servant. Of necessity, how- ever, I must have appeared in her eyes very inadequately impressed with the bishop's importance ; and, perhaps, to punish me for my indifference, or, possibly, by accident, she one day repeated to me a conversation in which I was indirectly a party concerned. She had been to the palace to pay her respects to the family, and, din- ner being over, was summoned into the dining-room. In giving an account of her household economy, she happened to mention that she had let her apartments. Thereupon, the good bishop (it seemed) had taken occasion to caution her as to her selection of inmates ; "for," said he, "you must recollect, Betty, that this place is in the high road to the Head ; so that multitudes of Irish swindlers, run- ning away from their debts into England, and of English swindlers, running away from their debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to take this place in their route." This advice was certainly not without reasonable grounds, but rather fitted to be stored up for Mrs. Betty's private meditations, than specially reported to me. What followed, however, was somewhat worse : "O, my lord," answered my land- lady (according to her own representation of the matter), " I really don't think this young gentleman is a swindler; because ." "You don't think me a swindler ?" said I, interrupting her, in a tumult of indignation ; " for the future, I shall spare you the trouble of thinking about it." And without delay I prepared for my depar- ture. Some concessions the good woman seemed disposed to make; but a harsh and contemptuous expression, which I fear that I applied to the learned dignitary himself, roused her indignation in turn ; and reconciliation then became impossible. I was, indeed, greatly irritated at the bishop's having suggested any grounds of suspicion, however remotely, against a person whom he had never seen ; and I thought of letting him know my mind in Greek ; which, at the same time that it would furnish some presumption that I was no swindler, would also (I hoped) compel the bishop to reply in the same language ; in which case, I doubted not to make it appear, that if I was not so rich as his lordship, I was a far better Grecian. Calmer thoughts, however, drove this boyish design out of my mind: for I considered that the bishop was in the right to counsel an old servant ; that he could not have designed that his advice should be reported to me ; and that the same coarseness of mind which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the advice at all might have coloured it in a way more agreeable to her own style of thinking than to the actual expressions of the worthy bishop. I left the lodging the very same hour ; and this turned out a very unfortunate occurrence for me, because, living henceforward at inns, I was drained of my money very rapidly. In a fortnight I was re- duced to short allowance ; that is, I could allow myself only one meal a day. From the keen appetite produced by constant exercise ii CONFESSIONS OF and mountain air, acting on a youthful stomach, I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender regimen ; for the single meal which I could venture to order was coffee or tea. Even this, however, was at length withdrawn ; and, afterwards, so long as I remained in Wales, I subsisted either on blackberries, hips, haws, &c., or on the casual hospitalities which I now and then received, in return for such little services as I had an opportunity of rendering. Some- times I wrote letters of business for cottagers who happened to have relatives in Liverpool or London ; more often I wrote love-letters to their sweethearts for young women who had lived as servants in Shrewsbury, or other towns on the English border. On all such occasions I gave great satisfaction to my humble friends, and was generally treated with hospitality ; and once, in particular, near the village of Llan-y-styndwr (or some such name), in a sequestered part of Merionethshire, I was entertained for upwards of three days by a family of young people, with an affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart not yet impaired. The family consisted, at that time, of four sisters and three brothers, all grown up, and remarkable for elegance and delicacy of manners. So much beauty, and so much native good breeding and refinement, I do not remember to have seen before or since in any cottage, except once or twice in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They spoke English ; an accomplishment not often met with in so many members of one family, especially in villages remote from the high road. Here I wrote, on my first introduction, a letter about prize-money, for one of the brothers, who had served on board an English man-of-war ; and, more privately, two love-letters for two of the sisters. They were both interesting looking girls, and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst of their confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving me general instructions, it did not require any great penetration to discover that what they wished was that their letters should be as kind as was consistent with proper maidenly pride. I contrived so to temper my expressions as to reconcile the gratifica- tion of both feelings ; and they were much pleased with the way in which I had expressed their thoughts, as (in their simplicity) they were astonished at my having so readily discovered them. The reception one meets with from the women of a family generally determines the tenor of one's whole entertainment. In this case I had discharged my confidential duties as secretary so much to the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them with my conversa- tion, that I was pressed to stay with a cordiality which I had little inclination to resist. I slept with the brothers, the only unoccupied bed standing in the apartment of the young women ; but in all other points they treated me with a respect not usually paid to purses as light as mine ; as if my scholarship were sufficient evidence that I was of " gentle blood." Thus I lived with them for three days, and great part of a fourth ; and from the undiminished kindness which they continued to show ine, I believe I might have stayed with them up 10 this time, if their power had corresponded with their wishes. AN OPIUM-EATER. On the last morning, however, I perceived upon their countenances, as they sate at breakfast, the expression of some unpleasant com- munication which was at hand ; and soon after, one of the brothers explained to me, that their parents had gone, the day before my arrival, to an annual meeting of Methodists, held at Caernarvon, and were that day expected to return ; " and if they should not be so civil as they ought to be," he begged, on the part of all the young people, that I would not take it amiss. The parents returned with churlish faces, and " Dym Sassenach" (no English} in answer to all my addresses. I saw how matters stood ; and so, taking an affectionate leave of my kind and interesting young hosts, I went my way. For, though they spoke warmly to their parents in my behalf, and often excused the manner of the old people, by saying it was "only their way," yet I easily understood that my talent for writing love-letters would do as little to recommend me with two frave sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Greek Sapphics or Icaics ; and what had been hospitality, when offered to me witb the gracious courtesy of my young friends, would become charity, when connected with the harsh demeanour of these old people. Certainly, Mr. Shelley is right in his notions about old age ; unless powerfully counteracted by all sorts of opposite agencies, it is a miserable corrupter and blighter to the genial charities of the human heart. Soon after this, I contrived, by means which I must omit for want of room, to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and fiercer stage of my long sufferings ; without using a dispropor- tionate expression, I might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for upwards of sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity ; but as bitter, perhaps, as ever any human being can have suffered who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my reader's feelings by a detail of all that I endured ; for extremities such as these, under any circumstances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, even in de- scription, without a rueful pity that is painful to the natural good- ness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at least on this occasion, to say, that a few fragments of bread from the breakfast-table of one individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know of my being in utter want), and these at uncertain intervals, con- stituted my whole support. During the former part of my sufferings (that is, generally in Wales, and always for the first two months in London), I was houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. To this constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it mainly, that I did not sink under my torments. Latterly, how- ever, when cold and more inclement weather came on, and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had begun to sink i-nto a more languishing condition, it was, no doubt, fortunate for me, that the same person to whose breakfast-table I had access allowed me to sleep in a large, unoccupied house, of which he was tenant. Un- occupied, I call it, for there was no household or establishment in 13 CONFESSIONS OF it ; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But 1 I found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that the house already contained one single inmate, a poor, friendless child, appa- rently ten years old ; but she seemed hunger-bitten ; and sufferings of that sort often make children look older than they are. From- this forlorn child I learned, that she had slept and lived there alone, for some time before I came ; and great joy the poor creature ex- pressed, when she found that I was in future to be her companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large ; and, from the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious staircase and hall ; and, amidst the real fleshly ills f cold, and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her protection against all ghosts whatsoever ; but, alas ! I could offer her no other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow, but with no other covering than a sort of large horseman's cloak; afterwards, however, we discovered, in a garret, an old sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which added a little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for warmth, and for security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than usually ill, I took her into my arms, so that, in general, she was tolerably warm, and often slept when I could not; for, during the last two months of my sufferings, I slept much in the daytime, and was apt to fall into transient dozings at all hours. But my sleep distressed me more than my watching ; for, beside the tumultuousness of my dreams (which were only not so awful ds those which I shall have to describe hereafter as produced by opium), my sleep was never more than what is called dog-sleep; so that I could hear myself moaning, and was, often, as it seemed to me awakened suddenly by my own voice ; and, about this time, a hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber, which has since re- turned upon me, at different periods of my life, namely, a sort of twitching (I know not where, but apparently about the region of the stomach), which compelled me violently to throw out my fee* for the sake of relieving it. This sensation coming on as soon. as I began to sleep, and the effort to relieve it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only from exhaustion ; and, from increasing weakness (as I said before), I was constantly falling asleep, and constantly awaking. Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and very early ; sometimes not till ten o'clock . ; sometimes not at all. He was in constant fear of bailiffs ; improving on the plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in a diffe- rent quarter of London ; and I observed that he never failed to examine, through a private window, the appearance of those who knocked at the door, before he would allow it to be opened. He breakfasted alone ; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of his hazarding an invitation to a second person, any more than the quantity of esculent material, which, for the most AN OPIUM-EATER. part, was little more than a roll, or a few biscuits, which he had bought on his road from the place where he had slept. Or, if he had asked a party, as I once learnedly and facetiously observed to him, the several members of it stood in the relation to each othej (not sate in any relation whatever) of succession, as the metaphysi cians have it, and not of coexistence ; in the relation of parts of time, and not of the parts of space. During his breakfast, I gene- rally contrived a reason for lounging in ; and, with an air of as much indifference as I could assume, took up such fragments as he had left, sometimes, indeed, there were none at all. In doing this, I committed no robbery, except upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I believe), now and then, to send out at noon for an extra biscuit ; for, as to the poor child, she was never admitted into his study (if I may give that name to his chief depository of parch- ments, law writings, &c.) ; that room was to her the Blue-beard room of the house, being regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about six o'clock, which usually was his final departure for the night. Whether this child was an illegitimate daughter of Mr. , or only a servant, I could not ascertain ; she did not herself know ; but certainly she was treated altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did Mr. make his appearance, than she went below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, &c. ; and, except when she was summoned to run an errand, she never emerged from the dismal- Tartarus of the kitchens, to the upper air, until my welcome knock at night called up her little trembling footsteps to the front door. Of her life during the daytime, however, I knew little but what I gathered from her own account at night ; for, as soon as the hours of business commenced, I saw that my absence would be acceptable ; and, in general, therefore, I went off and sate in the parks, or else- where, until night-fall. But who, and what, meantime, was the master of the house r himself? Reader, he was one of those anomalous practitioners in lower departments of the law, who, what shall I say? who, on prudential reasons, or from necessity, deny themselves all the indulgence in the luxury of too delicate a conscience (a periphrasis which might be abridged considerably, but that I leave to the reader's taste); in many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive incumbrance than a wife or a carriage ; and just as people talk of "laying down" their carriages, so I suppose my friend, Mr. , had "laid down" his conscience for a time; meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as he could afford it. The inner economy of such a man's daily life would present a most strange picture, if I could allow myself to amuse the reader at his expense. Even with my limited opportunities for observing what went on, I saw many scenes of London intrigues, and complex chicanery, "cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," at which I sometimes smile to this day, and at which I smiled then, in spite of my misery. My situation, however, at that time, gave me little experience, in my own person, of any qualities in Mr. 's character but siicl* 15 CONFESSIONS OF as did him honour; and of his whole strange composition, I must forget everything but that towards me he was obliging, and, to the extent of his power generous. That power was not, indeed, very extensive. However, in common with the rats, I sate rent free ; and as Dr. Johnson has recorded that he never but once in his life had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so let me be grateful that, on that single occasion, I had as large a choice of apartments in a London mansion as I could possibly desire. Except the Blue-beard room, which the poor child believed to be haunted, all others, from the attics to the cellars, were at our service. " The world was before us," and we pitched our tent for the night in any spot we chose. This house I have already described as a large one. It stands in a conspicuous situation, and in a well-known part of London. Many of my readers will have passed it, I doubt not, within a few hours of reading this. For myself, I never fail to visit it when business draws me to Lon- don. About ten o'clock this very night, August 15, 1821, being my birth-day, I turned aside from my evening walk, down Oxford-street, purposely to take a glance at it. It is now occupied by a respectable family, and, by the lights in the front drawing-room, I observed a domestic party, assembled, perhaps, at tea, and apparently cheerful and gay : marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness, cold, silence, and desolation, of that same house eighteen years ago, when its nightly occupants were one famishing scholar and a neg- lected child. Her, by the by, in after years, I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from her situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child. She was neither pretty or quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in manners. But, thank God ! even in those years I needed not the embellishments of novel accessories to conciliate my affections. Plain human nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel, was enough for me ; and I loved the child because she was my partner in wretchedness. If she is now living, she is probably a mother, with children of her own ; but, as I have said, I never could trace her. This I regret ; but another person there was, at that time, whom I have since sought to trace, with far deeper earnestness, and with far deeper sorrow at my failure. This person was a young woman, and one of the unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prosti- tution. I feel no shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avowing, that I was then on familiar and friendly terms with many women in that unfortunate condition. The reader needs neither smile at this avowal, nor frown ; for, not to remind my classical readers of the old Latin proverb, " Sine Cerere," &c., it may well be supposed that in the existing state of my purse my connection with such women could not have been an impure one. But the truth is, that at no time of my life have I been a person to hold myself polluted by the touch or approach of any creature that wore a human shape. On the contrary, from my very earliest youth, it has been my pride to converse familiarly, more Socratico, with all human beings, 16 OPIUM-EATER. man, woman, and child, that chance might fling in my way: a practice which is friendly to the knowledge of human nature, to good feelings, and to that frankness of address which becomes a man who would be thought a philosopher : for a philosopher should not see with the eyes of the poor limitary creature calling himself a man of the world, and filled with narrow and self-regard- ing prejudices of birth and education, but should look upon himself as a catholic creature, and as standing in an equal relation to high and low, to educated and uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent. Being myself, at that time, of necessity, a peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I naturally fell in, more frequently, with those female peripatetics, who are technically called street-walkers. Many of these women had occasionally taken my part against watchmen who wished to drive me off the steps of houses where I was sitting. But one amongst them, the one on whose account I have at all introduced this subject, yet no ! let me not class thee, oh noble- minded Ann , with that order of women ; let me find, if it be possible, some gentler name to designate the condition of her to whose bounty and compassion ministering to my necessities when all the world had forsaken me I owe it that I am at this time alive. For many weeks, I had walked, at nights, with this poor friendless girl, up and down Oxford-street, or had rested with her on steps and under the shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old as myself: she told me, indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year. By such questions as my interest about her prompted, I had grad- ually drawn forth her simple history. Hers was a case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had reason to think), and one in which, if London beneficence had better adapted its arrangements to meet it, the power of the law might oftener be interposed to protect and to avenge. But the stream of London charity flows in a channel which, though deep and mighty, is yet noiseless and underground ; not obvious or readily accessible to poor, houseless wanderers, and it cannot be denied that the outside air and framework of London society is harsh, cruel, and repulsive. In any case, however, I saw that part of her injuries might easily have been redressed ; and I urged her often and earnestly to lay her complaint before a magis- trate. Friendless as she was, I assured her that she would meet with immediate attention ; and that English justice, which was no respecter of persons, would speedily and amply avenge her on the brutal ruffian who had plundered her little property. She promised roe often that she would ; but she delayed taking the steps I pointed out, from time to time ; for she was timid and dejected to a degree which showed how deeply sorrow had taken hold of her young heart ; and perhaps she thought justly that the most upright judge and the most righteous tribunals could do nothing to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something, however, would perhaps have been done ; for it had been settled between us, at length, but, unhappily, on the very last time but one that I was ever to see her, that in a day or two we should speak on her behalf. This little service it was CONFESSIONS OF desvined, however, that I should never realize. Meantime, that which she rendered to me, and which was greater than I could ever have repaid her, was this : One night, when we were pacing slowly along Oxford-street, and after a day when I had felt unusually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into Soho-square. Thither we went ; and we sate down on the steps of a house, which, to this hour, I never pass without a pang of grief, and an inner act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble act which she there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse. I had been leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I sank from her arms and fell backwards on the steps. From the sensations I then had, I felt an inner conviction of the liveliest kind, that without some powerful and reviving stimulus I should either have died on the spot, or should, at least, have sunk to a point of exhaustion from which all re-ascent, under my friendless circumstances, would soon have become hopeless. Then it was, at this crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan companion, who had herself met with little but injuries in this world, stretched out a saving hand to me. Uttering a cry of terror, but without a moment's delay, she ran off into Oxford-street, and in less time than could be imagined returned to me with a glass of port- wine and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach (which at that time would have rejected all solid food) with an instantaneous power of restoration ; and for this glass the generous girl, without a murmur, paid out of her own humble purse, at a time, be it remembered, when she had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life, and when she could have no reason to expect that I should ever be able to reimburse her. O, youthful benefactress ! how often, in succeed- ing years, standing in solitary places, and thinking of thee with grief of heart and perfect love, how often have I wished that, as in ancient times the curse of a father was believed to have a supernatural power, and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfil- ment, even so the benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude might have a like prerogative ; might have power given to it from above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to overtake, to pursue thee into the central darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were possible) into the darkness of the grave, there to awaken thee with an authentic message of peace and forgiveness, and of final reconciliation ! I do not often weep ; for not only do my thoughts on subjects con- nected with the chief interests of man daily, nay, hourly, descend a thousand fathoms " toode&p for tears ; " not only does the sternness of my habits of thought present an antagonism to the feelings which prompt tears, wanting, of necessity, to those who, being protected usually by their levity from any tendency to meditative sorrow, would, by that same levity, be made incapable of resisting it on any casual access of such feelings ; but also, I believe, that all minds which have contemplated such objects as deeply as I have done, must, for their own protection from utter despondency, have early- encouraged and cherished some tranquillizing belief as to the future AN OPIUM-EATER. balances and the hieroglyphic meanings of human sufferings. On these accounts I am cheerful to this hour ; and, as I have said, I do not often weep. Yet some feelings, though not deeper or more passionate, are more tender than others ; and often, when I walk, at this time, in Oxford-street, by dreamy lamp-light, and hear those airs played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me and my dear companion (as I must always call her), I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and so critically separated us for ever. How it happened, the reader will understand from what remains of this introductory narration. Soon after the period of the last incident I have recorded, I met, in Albemarle-street, a gentleman of his late Majesty's household. This gentleman had received hospitalities, on different occasions, from my family ; and he challenged me upon the strength of my family likeness. I did not attempt any disguise ; I answered his questions ingenuously, and, on his pledging his word of honour that he would not betray me to my guardians, I gave him an address to my friend, the attorney. The next day 1 received from him a ten- pound bank note. The letter enclosing it was delivered, with other letters of business, to the attorney ; but, though his look and manner informed me that he suspected its contents, he gave it up to me tion ourably, and without demur. This present, from the particular service to which it was applied, leads me naturally to speak of the purpose which had allured me up to London, and which I had been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from the first day of my arrival in London, to that of my final de- parture. In so mighty a world as London, it will surprise my readers that I should not have found some means of staving off the last extremities of penury ; and it will strike them that two resources, at least, must have been open to me, namely, either to seek assistance from the friends of my family, or to turn my youthful talents and attainments into some channel of pecuniary emolument. As to the first course, I may observe, generally, that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the chance of being reclaimed by my guardians ; not doubting that whatever power the law gave them would have been enforced against me to the utmost ; that is, to the extremity of forcibly restor- ing me to the school which I had quitted ; a restoration which as it i would, in my eyes, have been a dishonour, even if submitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted from me in contempt and i defiance of my own wishes and efforts, to have been a humiliation worse to me than death, and which ;vould indeed have terminated in death. I was, therefore, shy enough of applying fc^ assistance even in those quarters were I was sure of receiving it, at ..he risk of fur- nishing my guardians with any clue for recovering me. But, as to London in particular, though doubtless my father had in his lifetime toad many friends there, yet (as ten years had passed since his death) I remembered few of them even by name ; and never having seen London before, except once for a few hours, I knew not the address 19 CONFESSIONS OF of even those few. To this mode of gaining help, therefore, in part the difficulty, but much more the paramount fear which I have mentioned, habitually indisposed me. In regard to the other mode, I now feel half inclined to join my reader in wondering that I should have overlooked it. As a corrector of Greek proofs (if in no other way), I might, doubtless, have gained enough for my slender wants. Such an office as this I could have discharged with an exemplary and punctual accuracy that would soon have gained me the con- fidence of my employers. But it must not be forgotten that, even for such an office as this, it was necessary that I should first of all have an introduction to some respectable publisher ; and this I had no means of obtaining. To say the truth, however, it had never once occurred to me to think of literary labours as a source of profit. No mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money had ever occurred to me, but that of borrowing it on the strength of my future claims and expectations. This mode I sought by every avenue to compass ; and amongst other persons I applied to a Jew named D .* To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders (some of whom were, I believe, also Jews), I had introduced myself, with an account of my expectations ; which account, on examining my father's will at Doctor's Commons, they had ascertained to be correct. The person there mentioned as the second son of was found to have all the claims (or more than all) that I had stated : but one question still remained, which the faces of the Jews pretty * To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen months afterwards, I applied again on the same business ; and, dating at that time from a respectable college, I was fortunate enough to gain his serious attention to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen from any extravagance, or youthful levities (these, my habits and the nature of my pleasures raised me far above), but simply from the vindictive malice of my guardian, who, when he found him- self no longer able to prevent me from going to the university, had, as a parting token of his good nature, refused to sign an order for granting me a shilling beyond the allowance made to me at school, namely, one hundred pounds per annum. Upon this sum, it was, in my time, barely possible tcr have lived in college ; and not possible to a man, who, though above the paltry affectation of ostentatious disregard for money, and without any expensive tastes, confided, nevertheless, rather too much in servants, and did not delight in the petty details of minute economy. I soon, therefore, became embarrassed ; and, at length, after a most voluminous negotiation with the Jew (some parts of which, if I had leisure to rehearse them, would greatly amuse my readers), I was put in possession of the sum I asked for, on the "regular" terms of paying the Jew seventeen and a half per cent, by way of annuity on all the money furnished ; Israel, on his part, graciously resuming no more than about ninety guineas of the said money, on account of an attorney s bill (for what services, to whom rendered, and when, whether at the siege of Jerusalem, at the building of the Second Temple, or on some earlier occasion, I have not yet been able to discover). How many perches this bill measured I really forget ; but I still keep it in a cabinet of natural curiosities, and some time or other I believe I shall present it to the British Museum. 20 AN OPIUM-EATER. significantly suggested, was I that person ? This doubt had never occurred to me as a possible one ; I had rather feared whenever my Jewish friends scrutinized me keenly, that I might be too well known to be that person, and that some scheme might be passing in their minds for entrapping me and selling me to my guardians. It was strange to me to find my own self, materialiter considered (so I expressed it, for I doted on logical accuracy of distinctions), accused. or at least suspected, of counterfeiting my own self, formaliter considered. However, to satisfy their scruples, I took the only course in my power. Whilst I was in Wales, I had received various letters from young friends : these I produced, for I carried them constantly in my pocket, being, indeed, by this time, almost the only relics of my personal incumbrances (excepting the clothes I wore), which I had not in one way or other disposed of. Most of these letters were from the Earl of , who was, at that time, my chief (or rather only) confidential friend. These letters were dated from Eton. I had also some from the Marquis of , his father, who, though absorbed in agricultural pursuits, yet having been an Etonian himself, and as good a scholar as a nobleman needs to be, still retained an affection for classical studies, and for youthful scholars. He had, accordingly, from the time that I was fifteen, corresponded with me ; sometimes upon the great improvements which he had made, or was meditating, in the counties of M and SI , since I had been there ; sometimes upon the merit of a Latin poet ; at other times, suggesting subjects /o #/ ti which he wished me to write verses. On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends agreed to furnish two or three hundred pounds on my personal security, provided I could persuade the young earl, who was, by the way, not older than myself, to guarantee the payment on our coming of age : the Jew's final object being, as I now suppose, not the trifling profit he could expect to make by me, but the prospect of establishing a con- nection with my noble friend, whose immense expectations were well known to him. In pursuance of this proposal on the part of the Jew, about eight or nine days after I had received the ten pounds, I prepared to go down to Eton. Nearly three pounds of the money I had given to my money-lending friend, on his alleging that the stamps must be bought, in order that the writings might be pre- pared whilst I was away from London. I thought in my heart that he was lying ; but I did not wish to give him any excuse for charging his own delays upon me. A smaller sum I had given to my friend the attorney (who was connected with the money-lenders as their lawyer), to which, indeed, he was entitled for his unfurnished lodgings. About fifteen shillings I had employed in re-establishing (though in a very humble way) my dress. Of the remainder, I gave one-quarter to Ann, meaning, on my return, to have divided with her whatever might remain. These arrangements made, soon after six o'clock, on a dark winter evening, I set off, accompanied by Ann, towards Piccadilly ; for it was my intention to go down as far 21 OF as Salt Hill on the Bath or Bristol mail. Our course lay through a part of the town which has now all disappeared, so that I can no longer retrace its ancient boundaries : Swallow-street, I think it was called. Having time enough before us, however, we bore away to the left, until we came into Golden-square : there, near the corner of Sherrard-street, we sat down, not wishing to part in the tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. I had told her of my plans some time Defore ; and now I assured her again that she should share in my good fortune, if I met with any ; and that I would never forsake her, as soon as I had power to protect her. This I fully intended, as much from inclination as from a sense of duty ; for, setting aside gratitude, which, in any case, must have made me her debtor for fife, I loved her as affectionately as if she had been my sister ; and at this moment with seven-fold tenderness, from pity at witnessing her extreme dejection. I had, apparently, most reason for dejec- tion, because I was leaving the saviour of my life ; yet I, consider- ing the shock my health had received, was cheerful and full of hope. She, on the contrary, who was parting with one who had had little means of serving her, except by kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome by sorrow ; so that, when I kissed her at our final fare- well, she put her arms about my neck, and wept, without speaking a word. I hoped to return in a week at furthest, and I agreed with her that on the fifth night from that, and every night afterwards, she should wait forme, at six o'clock, near the bottom of Great Titchfield- street, which had been our customary haven, as it were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other in the great Mediterranean of Oxford- street. This, and other measures of precaution, I took : one, only, I forgot. She had either never told me, or (as a matter of no great interest) I had forgotten, her surname. It is a general practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank in her unhappy condition, not (as novel-reading women of higher pretensions) to style themselves Miss Douglass, Miss Montague, &c., but simply by their Christian names, Mary, Jane, Frances, &c. Her surname, as the surest means of tracing her, I ought now to have inquired; but the truth is, having no reason to think that our meeting could, in consequence of a short interruption, be more difficult or uncertain than it had been for so many weeks, I had scarcely for a moment adverted to it as necessary, or placed it amongst my memoranda against this parting interview ; and my final anxieties being spent in comforting her with hopes, and in pressing upon her the necessity of getting some medicine for a violent cough and hoarseness with which she was troubled, I wholly forgot it until it was too late to recall her. It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester Coffee- House, and the Bristol Mail being on the point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine fluent motion* of this mail soon The Bristol Mail is the best appointed in the kingdom, owing to the aad of " eitra sum for expenses AN OPIUM-EATER. laid me asleep. It is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on the outside of a mail-coach, a bed which, at this day, I find rather an uneasy one. Connected with this sleep was a little incident which served, as hundreds of others did at that time, to convince me how easily a man, who has never been in any great distress, may pass through life without knowing, in his own person, at least, any- thing of the possible goodness of the human heart, or, as I must add with a sigh, of its possible vileness. So thick a curtain of manners is drawn over the features and expression of men's natures, that, to the ordinary observer, the two extremities, and the infinite field of varieties which lie between them, are all confounded, the vast and multitudinous compass of their several harmonies reduced to the meagre outline of differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of elementary sounds. The case was this : for the first four or five miles from London, I annoyed my fellow-passenger on the roof, by occasionally falling against him when the coach gave a lurch to his side ; and, indeed, if the road had been less smooth and level than it is, I should have fallen off, from weakness. Of this annoy- ance he complained heavily, as, perhaps, in the same circum- stances, most people would. He expressed his complaint, however, more morosely than the occasion seemed to warrant ; and if I had parted with him at that moment, I should have thought of him (if I had considered it worth while to think of him at all) as a surly and almost brutal fellow. However, I was conscious that I had given him some cause for complaint, and therefore, I apologized to him, and assured him I would do what I could to avoid falling asleep for the future, and at the same time, in as few words as possible, I ex- plained to him that I was ill, and in a weak state fr^m long suffer- ing, and that 1 could not afford, at that time, to take an inside Slace. The man's manner changed, upon hearing that explanation, i an instant ; and when I next woke for a minute, from tne noise and lights of Hounslow (for, in spite of my wishes and efforts, I had fallen asleep again within two minutes from the time I had spoken to him), I found that he had put his arm round me to protect me from falling off; and for the rest of the journey he behaved to me with the gentleness of a woman, so that, at length, I almost lay in his arms ; and this was the more kind, as he could not have known I was not going the whole way to Bath or Bristol. Unfortunately, indeed, I did go rather further than I intended ; for so genial and refreshing was my sleep, that the next time, after leaving Hounslow, that I fully awoke, was upon the sudden pulling up of the mail (possibly at a post-office), and, on inquiry, I found that we had reached Maidenhead, six or seven miles, I think, ahead of Salt Hill. Here I alighted; and for the half-minute that the mail stopped, I was entreated by my friendly companion (who, from the transient glimpse I had of him in Piccadilly, seemed to me to be a gentleman's butler, or person of that rank), to go to bed without delay. This I promised, though with no intention of doing so; and, ? 2 3 CONFESSIONS OF m fact, I immediately set forward, or, rather, backward, on foot. !* must then have been nearly midnight ; but so slowly did I creep along, that I heard a clock in a cottage strike four before I turned down the lane from Slough to Eton. The air and the sleep had both refreshed me; but I was weary, nevertheless. I remember a thought (obvious enough, and which has been prettily expressed by a Roman poet) which gave me some consolation, at that moment, under my poverty. There had been, some time before, a murder committed on or near Hounslow Heath. I think I cannot be mistaken when I say that the name of the murdered person was Steele, and that he ' was the owner of a lavender plantation in that neighbourhood. Every step of my progress was bringing me nearer to the heath ; and it naturally occurred to me that I and the accursed murderer, if he were that night abroad, might, at every instant, be unconsciously approaching each other through the darkness ; in which case, said I, supposing I instead of being (as, indeed, I am) little better than an outcast, Lord of my learning, and no land beside were, like my friend Lord , heir, by general repute, to ^70,000 per annum, what a panic should I be under, at this moment, about tny throat ! Indeed, it was not likely that Lord should ever be in my situation ; but, nevertheless, the spirit of the remark remains true, that vast power and possessions make a man shamefully afraid of dying ; and I am convinced that many of the most intrepid ad- venturers, who, by fortunately being poor, enjoy the full use of their natural courage, would, if, at the very instant of going into action, news were brought to them that they had unexpectedly succeeded to an estate in England of ^50,000 a year, feel their dislike to bullets considerably sharpened,* and their efforts at perfect equanimity and self-possession proportionably difficult. So true it is, in the language of a wise man, whose own experience had made him acquainted with both fortunes, that riches are best fitted To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, Than tempt her to do aught may merit praise. Paradise Regained. I dally with my subject, because, to myself, the remembrance of these times is profoundly interesting. But my reader shall not have any further cause to complain ; for I now hasten to its close. In the road between Slough and Eton I fell asleep ; and, just as the morning began to dawn, I was awakened by the voice of a man It will be objected that many men, of the highest rank and wealth, have, in our own day, as well as throughout our history, been amongst the foremost in courting danger in battle. True, but this is not the case supposed Long fe-niliarity with power has, to them, deadened its effect and its attractions. 24 AN OPIUM-EATER. standing over me and surveying me. I know not what he was. He was an ill-looking fellow, but not, therefore, of necessity, an ill- meaning fellow ; or, if he were, I suppose he thought that DO person sleeping out-of-doors in winter could be worth robbing. In which conclusion, however, as it regarded myself, I beg to assure him, if he should be among my readers, that he was mistaken. After a slight remark, he passed on. I was not sorry at this disturbance, as it enabled me to pass through Eton before people were generally up. The night had been heavy and lowering, but towards the morning it had changed to a slight frost, and the ground and the trees were now covered with rime. I slipped through Eton unob- served ; washed myself, and, as far as possible, adjusted my dress, at a little public house in Windsor; and, about eight o'clock, went down towards Pote's. On my road I met some junior boys, of whom I made inquiries. An Etonian is always a gentleman, and, in spite of my shabby habiliments, they answered me civilly. My friend, Lord , was gone to the University of . '' Ibi omnis effusus labor ! " I had, however, other friends at Eton; but it is not to all who wear that name in prosperity that a man is willing to present himself in distress. On recollecting myself, however, I asked for the Earl of D , to whom (though my acquaintance with him was not so intimate as with some others) I should not have shrunk from presenting myself under any circumstances. He was still at Eton, though, I believe, on the wing for Cambridge. I called, was received kindly, and asked to breakfast. Here let me stop, for a moment, to check my reader from any erroneous conclusions. Because I have had occasion incidentally to speak of various patrician friends, it must not be supposed that I have myself any pretensions to rank or high blood. I thank God that I have not. I am the son of a plain English merchant, es- teemed, during his life, for his great integrity, and strongly attached to literary pursuits (indeed, he was himself, anonymously, an author). If he had lived, it was expected that he would have been very rich ; but, dying prematurely, he left no more than about ^30,000 amongst seven different claimants. My mother I may mention with honour, as still more highly gifted ; for, though unpretending to the name and honour of a literary woman, I shall presume to call her (what many literary women are not) an intellectual woman ; and I believe that if ever her letters should be collected and published, they would be thought generally to exhibit as much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as pure " mother English," racy and fresh with idio- matic graces, as any in our language, hardly excepting those of Lady M. W. Montague. These are my honours of descent; I have no others ; and I have thanked God sincerely that I have not, because, in my judgment, a station which raises a man too eminently above the level of his fellow-creatures, is not the most favourable to moral or to intellectual qualities. Lord D placed before me a most magnificent breakfast. It was rea^'y so ; but in my eyes it seemed trebly magnificent, from 25 CONFESSIONS OF being the first regular meal, the first "good man's table," that I had sat down to for months. Strange to say, however, I could scarcely eat anything. On the day when I first received my ten- pound bank-note, I had gone to a baker's shop and bought a couple of rolls ; this very shop I had two months or six weeks before sur- veyed with an eagerness of desire which it was almost humiliating to me to recollect. I remembered the story about Otway; and feared that there might be danger in eating too rapidly. But I had no need for alarm ; my appetite was quite sunk, and I became sick before I had eaten half of what I had bought. This effect, fron> eating what approached to a meal, I continued to feel for weeks ; or r when I did not experience any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected, sometimes with acidity, sometimes immediately and without any acidity. On the present occasion, at Lord D 's table, I found? myself not at all better than usual ; and, in the midst of luxuries, I had no appetite. I had, however, unfortunately, at all times a craving for wine ; I explained my situation, therefore, to Lord D , and gave him a short account of my late sufferings, at which he ex- pressed great compassion, and called for wine. This gave me a momentary relief and pleasure ; and on all occasions, when I had an opportunity, I never failed to drink wine, which I worshipped then as I have since worshipped opium. I am convinced, however,, that this indulgence in wine continued to strengthen my malady, fo? the tone of my stomach was apparently quite sunk ; but, by a better regimen, it might sooner, and, perhaps, effectually, have been revived. I hope that it was not from this love of wine that I lingered in the neighbourhood of my Eton friends ; I persuaded myself then that it was from reluctance to ask of Lord D , on whom I was conscious I had not sufficient claims, the particular service in quest of which I had come to Eton. I was, however, unwilling to lose my journey, and, I asked it. Lord D , whose good nature was unbounded, and which, in regard to myself, had been measured rather by his compassion perhaps for my condition, and his knowledge of my intimacy with some of his relatives, than by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own direct claims, faltered, nevertheless, at this request. He acknowledged that he did not like to have any dealings with money-lenders, and feared lest such a transaction might come to the ears of his connections. Moreover, he doubted whether his signature, whose expectations were so much more bounded than those of , would avail with my unchristian friends. However, he did not wish, as it seemed, to mortify me by an absolute refusal ; for, after a little consideration, he promised, under certain conditions, which he pointed out, to give his security. Lord D was at this time not eighteen years of age ; but I have often doubted, on recollecting, since, the good sense and prudence which on this occasion he mingled with so much urbanity of manner (an. urbanity which in him wore the grace of youthful sincerity), whether any statesman the oldest and the most accomplished in diplomacy could have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances* 26 AN OPIUM-EATER. Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business, with- out surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as those of a Saracen's head. Recomforted by this promise, which was not quite equal to the best, but far above the worst, that I had pictured to myself as possible, I returned in a Windsor coach to London three days after I had quitted it. And now I come to the end of my story. The Jews did not approve of Lord D 's terms ; whether they would in the nd have acceded to them, and were only seeking time for making i\ue inquiries, I know not ; but many delays were made, time passed on, the small fragment of my bank-note had just melted away, and before any conclusion could have been put to the business, I must have relapsed into my former state of wretchedness. Suddenly, how- ever, at this crisis, an opening was made, almost by accident, for reconciliation with my friends. I quitted London in haste, for a remote part of England ; after some time, I proceeded to the uni- versity ; and it was not until many months had passed away, that I had it in my power again to revisit the ground which had become so interesting to me, and to this day remains so, as the chief scene of *ny youthful sufferings. Meantime, what had become of poor Ann? For her I have reserved my concluding words ; according to our agreement, I sought her daily, and waited for her every night, so long as I stayed in London, at the corner of Titchfield-street. I inquired for her of every one who was likely to know her ; and during the last hout s of my stay in London, I put into activity every means of tracing her that my knowledge of London suggested, and the limited extent of .my power made possible. The street where she had lodged I knew, tut not the house ; and I remembered, at last, some account which she had given of ill-treatment from her landlord, which made it pro- bable that she had quitted those lodgings before we parted. She had few acquaintances ; most people, besides, thought that the earnestness of my inquiries arose from motives which moved their laughter or their slight regard ; and others, thinking that I was in chase of a girl who had robbed me of some trifles, were naturally and excusably indisposed to give me any clue to her, if, indeed, they ihad any to give. Finally, as my despairing resource, on the day I left London, I put into the hands of the only person who (I was sure) must know Ann by sight, from having been in company with us once or twice, an address to in shire, at that time the residence cf my family. But, to this hour, I have never heard a syllable about her. This, amongst such troubles as most men meet with in life, has been my heaviest affliction. If she lived, doubtless we must 'have been sometimes in search of each other, at the very same moment, through the mighty labyrinths of London ; perhaps even within a few feet of each other, a barrier no wider, in a London treet, often amounting in the end to a separation for eternity ! During some years, I hoped that she did live ; and I suppose that, in the literal and unrhetorical use of the word myriad, I may say, 27 CONFESSIONS OF that on my different visits to London, I have looked into many myriads of female faces, in the hope of meeting her. I should know her again amongst a thousand, if I saw her for a moment ; for, though not handsome, she had a sweet expression of countenance, and a peculiar and graceful carriage of the head. I sought her, I have said, in hope. So it was for years ; but now I should fear to see her ; and her cough, which grieved me when I parted with her, is nqw my consolation. I now wish to see her no longer, but think of her, more gladly, as one long since laid in the grave ; in the grave, I would hope, of a Magdalen ; taken away, before injuries and cruelty had blotted out and transfigured her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities of ruffians had completed the ruin they had begun. So then, Oxford-street, stony-hearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from thee ! the time was come, at last, that I no more should pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces ; no more should dream, and wake in captivity to the pangs of hunger. Successors, too many, to myself and Ano, have, doubtless, since then trodden in our footsteps ; inheritors of our calamities ; other orphans than Ann have sighed ; tears have been shed by other chil- dren, and thou, Oxford-street, has since echoed to the groans of innumerable hearts. For myself, however, the storm which I had outlived seemed to have been the pledge of a long fair weather ; the premature sufferings which I had paid do'wn, to have been accepted as a ransom for many years to come, as a price of long immunity from sorrow ; and if again I walked in London, a solitary and con- templative man (as oftentimes I did), I walked for the most part in serenity and peace of mind. And, although it is true that the cala- mities of my novitiate in London had struck root so deeply in my bodily constitution that afterwards they shot up and flourished afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that has overshadowed and darkened my latter years, yet these second assaults of suffering were met with a fortitude more confirmed, with the resources of a maturer intellect, and with alleviations from sympathizing affection, how deep and tender ! Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years that were far asunder were bound together by subtile links of suffering derived from a common root. And herein I notice an instance of the short- sightedness of human desires, that oftentimes, on moonlight nights, during my first mournful abode in London, my consolation was (if such it could be thought) to gaze from Oxford-street up every avenue in succession which pierces through the heart of Mary-le-bone to the fields and the woods ; for that, said I, travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which lay part in light and part in shade, " that is the road to the north, and, therefore, to ; and if I had the wings of a dove, that way I would fly for comfort." Thus I said, and thus I wished in my blindness ; yet, even in that very northern region it was, in that very valley, nay, in that very house to which my erroneous wishes pointed, that this second birth of my sufferings 28 AN OPIUM-EATER. began, and that they again threatened to besiege the citadel of life and hope. There it was that for years I was persecuted by visions as ugly, and as ghastly phantoms, as ever haunted the couch of an Orestes ; and in this unhappier than he, that sleep, which comes to all as a respite and a restoration, and to him especially as a blessed balm for his wounded heart and his haunted brain, visited me as my bitterest scourge. Thus blind was I in my desires ; yet, if a veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of man and his future calamities, the same veil hides from him their alleviations ; and a grief which had not been feared is met by consolations which had not been hoped. I, therefore, who participated, as it were, in the troubles of Orestes (excepting only in his agitated conscience), participated no less in all his supports ; my Eumenides, like his, were at my bed-feet, and stared in upon me through the curtains ; but, watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me company through the heavy watches of the night, sat my Electra ; for thou, beloved M., dear companion of my later years, thou wast my Electra ! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection wouldst permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of kindness, and to servile ministrations of tenderest affection ; to wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever ; nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies, that oftentimes bade me " sleep no more ! " not even then didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw any angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more than Electra did of old. For she, too, though she was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king of men,* yet wept sometimes, and hid her facef in her robe. But these troubles are past, and thou wilt read these records of a period so dolorous to us both as the legend of some hideous dream that can return no more. Meantime I am again in London ; and again I pace the terraces of Oxford-street by night ; and oftentimes, when I am oppressed by anxieties that demand all my philosophy and the comfort of thy presence to support, and yet remember that I am separated from thee by three hundred miles, and the length of three dreary months, I look up the streets that run northward from * Agamemnon. f O/x/jcr .& fitro Triiriov. The scholar will know that throughout this pas- sage I refer to the early scenes of the Orestes, one of the most beautiful ex- hibitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas of Euripides can furnish. To the English reader, it may be necessary to say, that the situation at the opening of the drama is that of a brother attended only by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience (or, in the mytho- logy of the play, haunted by the furies), and in circumstances of immediate Danger from ei emies, and of desertion or cold recard from nominal friends. 29 CONFESSIOA r S OF Oxford-street, upon moonlight nights, and recollect my youthful ejaculation of anguish ; and remembering that thou art sitting alone in that same valley, and mistress of that very house to which my heart turned in its blindness nineteen years ago, I think that, though blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of late, the promptings of my heart may yet have had reference to a remoter time, and may be justified if read in another meaning ; and if I could allow myself to descend again to the impotent wishes of childhood, I should again say to myself, as I look to the north, " O that I had the wings of a dove!" and with how just a confidence in thy good and gracious nature might I add the other half of my early ejaculation, " And that way I would fly for comfort ! " THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM. T T is so long since I first took opium, that if it had been a trifling J. 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 preferred to the autumn of 1804. During that season I was in London, having come thither for the first time since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the following way : From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head in cold water at least once a day ; being suddenly seized with tooth-ache, I attributed it to some relax- ation caused by an accidental intermission of that practice ; jumped out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of cold water, and, with hair thus wetted, went to sleep. The next morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which I had hardly any respite for about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets ; rather to run away, if possible, from my torments, than with any distinct purpose. By accident, I met a college acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium ! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain ! I had heard of it as I had heard of manna or of ambrosia, but no further ; how unmeaning a sound was it at that time ! what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart ! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remem- brances ! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a mystic impor- tance attached to the minutest circumstances connected with the place, and the time, and the man (if man he was), that first laid open to me the paradise of opium-eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless ; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. My road homewards lay through Oxford-street; and near " the stately Pantheon " (as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called it) I sawadruggist's shop. Thedrug- 30 AN OPIUM-EATER. .gist (unconscious minister of celestial pleasures !), as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected to look on a Sunday ; and when I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man might do ! and, furthermore, out of myshilling returned to me what seemed to be a real copper half-penny, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in spite of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed in my mind as a beatific vision of an immortal druggist sent down to earth on a special mission to myself. And it confirms me in this way of considering him, that when I next came up to London, I sought him near the stately Pantheon, and found him not ; and thus to me, who knew not his name (if, indeed, he had one), he seemed rather to have vanished from Oxford-street than to have removed to any bodily fashion. The reader may choose to think of him as, possibly, no more than a sublunary druggist : it may be so, but my faith is better : I believe him to have evanesced,* or evapo- rated. So unwillingly would I connect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and place, and creature, that first brought me acquainted with the celestial drug. Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium-taking ; and what I took, I took under every disadvantage. But I took it ; and in an hour, oh heavens ! what a revulsion ! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit ! what an apocalypse of the world within me ! That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes ; this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me, in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a a^a.nov vtirfvOes, for all human woes ; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discov- ered ; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket ; portable ecstasies might be had, corked up in .a pint-bottle ; and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. But, if I talk in this way, the reader will think I am laughing ; and I can assure him that nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium : its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion ; and, in his happiest state, the opium-eater * Evanesced : this way of going off from the stage of life appears to have been well known in the lyth century, but at that time to have been considered a peculiar privilege of blood royal, and by no means to be allowed to drug- gists. For, about the year 1686, a poet of rather ominous name (and who, by the by, did ample justice to his name), namely Mr. FLAT-MAN, in speaking of the death of Charles II., expresses his surprise that any prince should commit so abgurd an act as dying ; because, says he, Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear ; They should abscond, that is, into the other world. CONFESSIONS OF cannot present himself in the character of U Allegro ; even then, he speaks and thinks as becomes // Penseroso. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way of jesting, at times, in the midst of my own misery ; and, unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice, even in these annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader must allow a little to my infirm nature in this respect ; and with a few indul- gences of that sort, I shall endeavor to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed. And, first, one word with respect to its bodily effects ; for upon all that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial right) or by professors of medicine, writing ex cathedra, I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce, Lies ! lies ! lies ! I remember once, in passing a book-stall, to have caught these words from a page of some satiric author : "By this time I became convinced that the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week, namely, on Tuesday and Saturday, and might safely be depended upon for the list of bankrupts." In like manner, I do by no means deny that some truths have been de- livered to the world in regard to opium ; thus, it has been repeatedly affirmed, by the learned, that opium is a dusky 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 particularly disagreeable to any man of regular habits, namely, die.* These weighty propositions are, all and singular, true ; I cannot gainsay them ; and truth ever was, and will be, commend- able. But, in these three theorems, I believe we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by man on the subject of opium. And, therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to come forward and lecture on this matter. First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted, by all who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, meo $ericulo, that no quantity of opium ever did, or could, intoxicate. As to the tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum), that might certainly intoxicate, if a man could bear to take enough of it ; but * Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to have doubted ; for, in a jirated edition of Buchan's DOMESTIC MEDICINE, which I once saw in the hands of a farmer's wife, who was studying it for the benefit of her health, the doctor was made to say," Be particularly careful never to take above nve- and twenty ounces of laudanum at once." The true reading being probably five-and-twenty drops, which are held to be equal to about one grain of crude opium. 32 AN OPIUM-EATER. why ? because it contains so much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of producing' any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol ; and not in degree only incapable, but even in kind ; it is not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which it de- clines ; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours : the first, to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute, the second of chronic, pleasure ; the one is a flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession ; opium greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness, and a vivid exaltation, to the contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the hatreds, of the drinker ; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive ; and, with respect to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would pro- bably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or ante- diluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections ; but then, with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden development of kind- heartedness which accompanies inebriation, there is always more or less of a maudlin character which exposes it to the contempt of the bystander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed tears, no mortal knows why ; and the sensual creature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings, incident to opium, is no febrile access, but a healthy restoration to that which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any deep- seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with the impulses of a heart originally just and good. True it is, that even wine, up to a certain point, and with certain men, rather tends to exalt and to steady the intellect ; I myself, who have never been a great wine- drinker, used to find that half a dozen glasses of wine popular language, of any man, that he is disguised 'in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety ; and it is when they are drinking (as some old gentleman says in Athensus) that men display themselves in their true complexion of character ; which surely is not disguising themselves. But still, wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance ; and, beyond a certain point, it is sure to volatilize and to disperse the intellectual energies ; whereas opium always seems to compose what had been 33 CONFESSIONS OF agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part of his nature ; but the opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from any disease, or other remote effects of opium) feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount ; that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity ; and over all is the great light of the majestic intellect. This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium : of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only member, the alpha and omega ; but then it is to be recollected, that I speak from the ground of a large and profound personal experience, whereas most of the unscientific * authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of those who have written expressly on the materia medico,, made it evident, from the horror they express of it, that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however, candidly acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to its intoxicating power, such as staggered my own incre- -dulity ; for he was a surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say to him, that his enemies (as I had heard) charged, him with talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends apolo- gized fo:-him by suggesting that he was constantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now, the accusation, said I, is notfirtmd facie, and of necessity, an absurd one ; but the defence is. To my surprise, however, he insisted that both his enemies and his friends were in the right. "I will maintain," said he "that I do talk nonsense ; and secondly, I will maintain that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or with any view to profit, but solely and simply," said he, " solely and simply, solely and simply (repeating it three * Amongst the gieat herd of travellers, &c., who show sufficiently by their stupidity that they never held any intercourse with opium, I must caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of " Anastasius" This gentle- man, whose wit would lead one to presume him an opium-eater, has made it impossible to consider him in that character, from the grievous misrepresenta- tion which he has given of its effects, at page 215-217, of vol. I. Upon con- sideration, it must appear such to the author himself; for, waiving the errors I have insisted on in the text, which (and others) are adopted in the fullest manner, he will himself admit that an old gentleman, " with a snow-white beard," who eats "ample doses of opium," and is yet able to deliver what is meant and received as very weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice, s but an indifferent evidence that opium either kills prematurely, or sends Aem into a mad-house. But, for my part, I see into this old gentleman and his motives ; the fact is, he was enamoured of " the little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug," which Anastasius carried about him ; and no way of obtaining it so safe and so feasible occurred, as that of frightening its owner out of his wits (which, by the by, are none of the strongest). This commen- tary throws a new light upon the case, and greatly improves it as a story ; for the old gentleman's speech, considered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly absurd ; but, considered as a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excellently. AN OPIUM-EATER. times over), because I am drunk with opium, and that daily." 1 replied that, as to the allegation of his enemies, as it seemed to be established upon such respectable testimony, seeing that the three parties concerned all agreed in it, it did not become me to question it ; but the defence set up I must demur to. He proceeded to discuss the matter, and to lay down his reasons ; but it seemed to me so impolite to pursue an argument which must have presumed a man mistaken in a point belonging to his own profession, that I did not press him even when his course of argument seemed open to objection ; not to mention that a man who talks nonsense, even though "with no view to profit," is not altogether the most agree- able partner in a dispute, whether as opponent or respondent. I confess, however, that the authority of a surgeon, and one who was reputed a good one, may seem a weighty one to my prejudice ; but still I must plead my experience, which was greater than his greatest by seven thousand drops a day ; and though it was not possible to suppose a medical man unacquainted with the characteristic symp- toms of vinous intoxication, yet it struck me that he might proceed on a logical error of using the word intoxication with too great latitude, and extending it generically to all modes of nervous excite- ment, instead of restricting it as the expression for a specific sort of excitement, connected with certain diagnostics. Some people have maintained, in my hearing, that they had been drunk upon green tea ; and a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me, the other day, tbat a patient, in recovering from an illness, had got drunk on a beef-steak. Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to opium, I shall notice very briefly a second and a third; which are, that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily fol- lowed by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and mental. The first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying ; assuring my reader, that for ten years, during which I took opium at intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits. With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany, the practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Cer- tainly, opium is classed under the head of narcotics, and some such effect it may produce in the end ; but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system ; this first stage of its action always lasted with me, during my novitiate, for upwards of eight hours ; so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater himself, if he does not so time his exhibition of the dose (to speak medically) as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his sleep. Turkish opium- eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But, that the 35 CONFESSIONS OF reader may judge of the degree in which opium is likely to stupify the faculties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of treating the question illustratively, rather than argumentatively) describe the way in which I myself often passed an opium evening in London, during the period between 1804 and 1812. It will be seen, that at least opium did not move me to seek solitude, and much less to seek inactivity, or the torpid state of self-involution ascribed to the Turks. I give this account at the risk of being pronounced a crazy enthusiast orvisionary; but I regard that little. I must desire my reader to bear in mind, that I was a hard student, and at severe studies for all the rest of my time ; and certainly I had a right occasionally to relaxations as well as other people ; these, however, I allowed myself but seldom. The late Duke of used to say, " Next Friday, by the blessing of Heaven, I purpose to be drunk ; " and in like manner I used to fix beforehand how often, within a given time, and when, I would commit a debauch of opium. This was seldom more than once in three weeks ; for at that time ^ could not have ventured to call every day (as I did afterwards) for k - a glass of laudanum negus, warm, and without sugar ." No; as I have said, I seldom drank lauda- num, at that time, more than once in three weeks : this was usually on a Tuesday or a Saturday night ; my reason for which was this. In those days, Grassini sang at the opera, and her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever heard. I know not what may be the state of the opera-house now, having never been within its walls for seven or eight years ; but at that time it was by much the most pleasant place of resort in London for passing an evening. Five shillings admitted one to the gallery, which was subject to far less annoyance than the pit of the theatres ; the orchestra was distinguished by its sweet and melodious grandeur, from all English orchestras, the composition of which, I confess, is not acceptable to my ear, from the predominance of the clangorous instruments, and the almost absolute tyranny of the violin. The choruses were divine to hear ; and when Grassini appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured forth her passionate soul as Andromache, at the tomb of Hector, &c., I question whether any Turk, of all that ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had. But, indeed, I honour the barbarians too much by supposing them capable of any pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an Englishman. For music is an intel- lectual or a sensual pleasure, according to the temperament of him who hears it. And, by the by, with the exception of the fine extra- vaganza on that subject in Twelfth Night, I do not recollect more than one thing said adequately on the subject of music in all litera- ture ; it is a passage in the Religio Medici* of Sir T. Browne, and, I have not the book at this moment to consult ; but I think the passage begins, "And even that tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, in me strikes a deep fit of devotion," &c. 36 AN OPIUM-EATER. though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philosophic value, inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical effects. The mistake of most people is, to suppose that it is by the ear they com- municate with music, and therefore that they are purely passive to its effects. But this is not so; it is by the reaction of the mind upon the notices of the ear (the matter coming by the senses, \.\\&form from the mind) that the pleasure is constructed ; and therefore it is that people of equally good ear differ so much in this point from one another. Now, opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the mind, generally increases, of necessity, that particular mode of its activity by which we are able to construct out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure. But, says a friend, a suc- cession of musical sounds is to me like a collection of Arabic characters: I can attach no ideas to them. Ideas! my good sir? there is no occasion for them ! all that class of ideas which can be available in such a case has a language of representative feelings^ But this is a subject foreign to my present purposes ; it is suffi- cient to say, that a chorus, &c., of elaborate harmony, displayed before me, as in a piece of arras-work, the whole of my past life, not as if recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incar- nated in the music ; no longer painful to dwell upon, but the detail of its incidents removed, or blended in some hazy abstraction, and its passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All this was to be had for five shillings. And over and above the music of the stage and the orchestra, I had all around me, in the intervals of the per- formance, the music of the Italian language talked by Italian women, for the gallery was usually crowded with Italians, and I listened with a pleasure such as that with which Weld, the traveller, lay and listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter of Indian women ; for the less you understand of a language, the more sensible you are to the melody or harshness of its sounds. For such a purpose, therefore, it was an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian scholar, reading it but little, and not speaking it at all, nor under- standing a tenth part of what I heard spoken. These were my opera pleasures ; but another pleasure I had, which, as it could be had only on a Saturday night, occasionally struggled with my love of the opera. ; for, at that time, Tuesday and Saturday were the regular opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall be rather obscure, but, I can assure the reader, not at all more so than Marinus in his life of Proclus, or many other bio- graphers and auto-biographers of fair reputation. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had only on a Saturday night. What, then, was Saturday night to me, more than any other night? I had no labours that I rested from ; no wages to receive ; what needed I to care for Saturday night, more than as it was a summons to hear Grassini ? True, most logical reader; what you say is unanswerable. And yet so it was and is, that whereas different men throw their feelings into different channels, and most are apt to show their interest in the concerns of the poor, chiefly by sympathy, expressed in some shape 37 CONFESSIONS OF or other, with their distresses and sorrows, I, at that time, was dis- posed to express my interest by sympathizing with their pleasures* The pains of poverty I had lately seen too much of, more than I wished to remember ; but the pleasures of the poor, their consola- tions of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can never become oppressive to contemplate. Now, Saturday night is the season for the chief regular and periodic return of rest to the poor; io this point the most hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a common link of brotherhood ; almost all Christendom rests from its labours. It is a rest introductory to another rest; and divided by a whole day - and two nights from the renewal of toil. On this account I feel ' always, on a Saturday night, as though I also were released from some yoke of labour, had some wages to receive, and some luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake, therefore, of witnessing, upon as large a scale as possible, a spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I used often, on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to wander forth, without much regarding the direction or the distance, to all the markets, and other parts of London, to which the poor resort on a Saturday night, for laying out their wages. Many a family party, consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of his children, have I listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways and means, or the strength of their exchequer, or the price of household articles. Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be heard murmurs of discontent ; but far oftener expressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, hope, and tranquillity. And, taken generally, I must say, that, in this point, at least, the poiT are far more philosophic than the rich ; that they show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediable evils, or irreparable losses. Whenever I saw occasion, or could da it without appearing to be intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my opinion upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages were a little higher, or expected to be so, or the quartern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions and butter were expected to fall, I was glad ; yet, if the contrary were true, I drew from opium some means oi consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, that extracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into a compliance with the master-key. Some of these rambles led me to great distances; for an opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time. And sometimes, in my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty ^ problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphinx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters, and confound the intellect of hackney- coachmen. I could almost have believed, at times, that I must 38 AN OPIUM-EATER. be the first discoverer of some of these terra incognita, and doubted whether they had yet been laid down in the modern charts of London. For all this, however, I paid a heavy price in distant years, when the human face tyrannized over my dreams, and the perplexities of my steps in London came back and haunted my sleep, with the feeling of perplexities moral or intellectual, that brought confusion to the reason, or anguish and remorse to the conscience. Thus I have shown that opium does not, of necessity, produce in- activity or torpor ; but that, on the contrary, it often led me into markets and theatres. Yet, in candour, I will admit that markets and theatres are not the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater, when in the divinest state incident to his enjoyment. In that state, crowds become an oppression to him ; music, even, too sensual and gross. He naturally seeks solitude and silence, as indispensable conditions of those trances, or profoundest reveries, which are the crown and consummation of what opium can do for human nature. I, whose disease it was to meditate too much and to observe too little, and who, upon my first entrance at college, was nearly falling into a deep melancholy, from brooding too much on the sufferings which I had witnessed in London, was sufficiently aware of the tendencies of my own thoughts to do all I could to counteract them. I was, indeed, /ike a person who according to the old legend, had entered the cave ot Trophonius ; and the remedies I sought were to force myself into society, and to keep my understanding in continual activity upon matters of science. But for these remedies, I should certainly have become hypochondriacally melancholy. In after years, however, when my cheerfulness was more fully re-established, I yielded to my natural inclination for a solitary life. And at that time I often fell into these reveries upon taking opium ; and more than once it has happened to me, on a summer night, when I have been at an open window, in a room from which I could overlook the sea at a mile below me, and could command a view of the great town of L , at about the same distance, that I have sat from sunrise to sunset, motionless, and without wishing to move. I shall be charged with mysticism, Behmenism, quietism, &c. ; but that shall not alarm me. Sir H. Vane, the younger, was one of our wisest men ; and let my readers see if he, in his philosophical works, be half as unmystical as I am. I say, then, that it has often struck me that the scene itself was somewhat typical of what took place in such a reverie. The town of L represented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, and brooded over by dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind, and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance, and aloof from the uproar of life ; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife, were suspended ; a respite granted from the secret burdens of the heart ; a sabbath of repose ; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom 4 39 CONFESSIONS OF in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave ; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm ; a tranquillity that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms ; infinite activities, infinite repose. O just, subtile, and mighty opium ! that to the hearts of poor and "rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for "the pangs :-hat tempt the spirit to rebel," bringest an assuaging balm ; eloquent opium ! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath, and, to the guilty man, for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from blood ; and, to the proud man, a brief oblivion for Wrongs unredressed, and insults unavenged ; that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the triumphs of suffering innocence, false witnesses, and confoundest perjury, and dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous judges; thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples, beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, beyond the splendour of Babylon and Hekatompylos ; and, "from the anarchy of dreaming sleep," callest into sunny light the facen of long-buried beauties, and the blessed household countenances, cleansed from the "dishonours of the grave." Thou only givest these gifts to man ; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtile, and mighty opium ! INTRODUCTION TO THE PAINS OF OPIUM. /COURTEOUS, and, I hope, indulgent reader (for all my readers \^ must be indulgent ones, or else, I fear, I shall shock them too much to count on their courtesy), having accompanied me thus far, now let me request you to move onwards, for about eight years ; that is to say, from 1804 (when I said that my acquaintance with opium first began) to 1812. The years of academic life are now over and gone, almost forgotten; the student's cap no longer presses my temples ; if my cap exists at all, it presses those of some youthful scholar, I trust, as happy as myself, and as passionate a lover of knowledge. My gown is, by this time, I dare to say, in the same condition with many thousands of excellent books in the Bodleian, namely, dili- gently perused by certain studious moths and worms ; or departed, however (which is all that I know of its fate), to that great reservoir of somewhere, to which all the tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea- kettles, &c. , have departed, not to speak of still frailer vessels, such as glasses, decanters, bed-makers, &c.), which occasional resemblances in the present generation of tea-cups, &c., remind me of having one* 40 AN OPIUM-EATER. possessed, but of whose departure and final fate, I, in common with most gownsmen of either university, could give, I suspect, but an obscure and conjectural history. The persecutions of the chapel- bell, sounding its unwelcome summons to six o'clock matins, inter- rupt my slumbers no longer ; the porter who rang it, upon whose beautiful nose (bronze, inlaid with copper) I wrote, in retaliation, so many Greek epigrams whilst I was dressing, is dead, and has ceased to disturb anybody ; and I, and many others who suffered much from his tintinnabulous propensities, have now agreed to overlook his errors, and have forgiven him. Even with the bell I am now in charity ; it rings, I suppose, as formerly, thrice a day ; and cruelly annoys, I doubt not, many worthy gentlemen, and disturbs their peace of mind; but, as to me, in this year i$i2, I regard its treach- trous voice no longer (treacherous I call it, for, by some refinement of malice, it spoke in as sweet and silvery tones as if it had been inviting one to a part} 7 ) ; its tones have no longer, indeed, power to reach me let the wind sit as favourable as the malice of the bell itself could wish ; for I am two hundred and fifty miles away from it, andl buried in the depth of mountains. And what am I doing amongsC the mountains? Taking opium. Yes, but what else ? Why, reader, in 1812, the year we are now arrived at, as well as for some yeara previous, I have been chiefly studying German metaphysics, in the writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, &c. And how, and in what manner, do I live ? in short, what class or description of men do I belong to ? I am at this period, namely, in 1812, living in a cottage; and with a single female servant ( honi soit qui mal y fiense ) , who, amongst my neighbours, passes by the name of my " house-keeper." And, as a scholar and a man of learned education, and in that sense a gentleman, I may presume to class myself as an unworthy member of that indefinite body called gentlemen. Partly on the ground I have assigned, perhaps, partly because, from my having no visible calling or business, it is rightly judged that I must be living on my private fortune, I am so classed by my neighbours ; and, by the courtesy of modern England, I am usually addressed on letters, &c., Esquire, though having, I fear, in the rigorous construction df heralds, but slender pretensions to that distinguished honour; yes, in popular estimation, I am X. Y. Z., Esquire, but not Justice of the Peace, nor Gustos Rotulorum. Am I married? Not yet. And I still take opium ? On Saturday nights. And, perhaps, have taken it unblushingly ever since "the rainy Sunday," and "the stately Pantheon," and "the beatific druggist " of 1804 ? Even so. And how do I find my health after all this opium-eating? in short, how do I do ? Why, pretty well, I thank you, reader; in the phrase of ladies in the straw, "as well as can be expected." In fact, if I dared to say the real and simple truth (it must not be forgotten that hitherto I thought, to satisfy the theories of medical men, I ought to DC ill), I was miver better in my life than in the spring of 1812 ; and I hope sincerity, that the quantity of claret, port, or "particular Madeira," which, in all probability, you, good reader, have taken 41 CONFESSIONS OF and design to take, for every term of eight years, during your natural life, may as little disorder your health as mine was disordered by opium I had taken for the eight years between 1804 and 1812. Hence you may see again the danger of taking any medical advice from Anastasius; in divinity, for aught I know, or law, he may be a safe counsellor, but not in medicine. No ; it is far better to con- sult Dr. Buchan, as I did; for I never forgot that worthy man's excellent suggestion, and I was " particularly careful not to take above five-and-twenty ounces of laudanum." To this moderation and temperate use of the article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet, at least (that is, in 1812), I am ignorant and unsuspicious of the aveng- ing terrors which opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity. At the same time, I have only been a dilettante eater of opium ; eight years' practice, even with the single precaution of allowing sufficient intervals between every indulgence, has not been sufficient to make opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a different era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer of the year we have just quitted, I had suffered much in bodily health from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. This event, being no ways related to the subject now before me, further than through bodily illness which it produced, I need not more particularly notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813, I know not ; but so it was, that, in the latter year, I was attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same as that which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and accompanied by a revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my narrative on which, as respects my own self-justifi- cation, the whole of what follows may be said to hinge. And here I find myself in a perplexing dilemma : Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience, by such a detail of my malady, and of my struggles with it, as might suffice to establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer with irritation and constant suffer- ing ; or, on the other hand, by passing lightly over this critical part of my story, I must forego the benefit of a stronger impression left oo the mind of the reader, and must lay myself open to the misconstrue- tion of having slipped by the easy and gradual steps of self-indulging persons, from the first to the final stage of opium-eating (a miscon- struction to which there will be a lurking predisposition in most readers, from my previous acknowledgment). This is the dilemma, the first horn of which would be sufficient to toss and gore any column of patient readers, though drawn up sixteen deep, and constantly relieved by fresh men ; consequently that is not to be thought of. It remains, then, that I postulate so much as is necessary for my pur- pose. And let me take as full credit for what I postulate as if I had demonstrated it, good reader, at the expense of your patience and my own. Be not so ungenerous as to let me suffer in vour crood opinion through my own forbearance and regard for your comfort. No ; believe all that I ask of you, namely, that I could resist no longer, believe it liberally, and as an act of grace, or else in mere AN OPIUM-EATER. prudence ; for, if not, then, in the next edition of my Opium Con- fessions, revised and enlarged, I will make you believe, and tremble ; and, a force d'ennuyer, by mere dint of pandiculation, I will terrify all readers of mine from ever again questioning any postulate that I shall think fit to make. This, then, let me repeat : I postulate that, at the time I began to take opium daily, I could not have done otherwise. Whether, in- deed, afterwards, I might not have succeeded in breaking off the habit, even when it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and whether many of the innumerable efforts which I did make might not have been carried much further, and my gradual re-con- quests of ground lost might not have been followed up much more energetically, these are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of palliation ; but shall I speak ingen- uously ? I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too much of an Eudasmonist ; I hanker too much after a state of happi- ness, both for myself and others ; I cannot face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness ; and am little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit. On some other matters, I can agree with the gentlemen in the cotton trade* at Manchester in affecting the Stoic philosophy; but not in this. Here I take the liberty of an Eclectic philosopher, and I look out for some courteous and considerate sect that will condescend more to yie infirm condition of an opium-eater; that are "sweet men," as Chaucer says, " to give absolution," and will show some conscience in the penances they inflict, and the efforts of abstinence they exact from poor sinners like myself. An inhuman moralist I can no more endure, in my nervous state, than opium that has not been boiled. At any rate, he who summons me to send out a large freight of self- denial and mortification upon any cruising voyage of moral improve- ment, must make it clear to my understanding that the concern is a hopeful one. At my time of life (six-and-thirty years of age), it can- not be supposed that I have much energy to spare; in fact, I find it all little enough for the intellectual labours I have on my hands ; and, therefore, let no man expect to frighten me by a few hard words into embarking any part of it upon desperate adventures of morality. Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle in 1813 was what I have mentioned ; and from this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its functions. You understand, now, reader, what I * A handsome news-room, of which I was very politely made free in pass- ing through Manchester, by several gentlemen of that place, is called, I think, The Porch ; whence I, who am a stranger in Manchester, inferred that the subscribers meant to profess themselves followers of Zeno. But I have been since assured that this is a mistake. 43 CONFESSIONS OF am ; and you are by this time aware, that no old gentleman, " with a snow-white beard," will have any chance of persuading me to surrender "the little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug." No; I give notice to all, whether moralists or surgeons, that whatever be their pretensions and skill in their respective lines of practice, they must not hope for any countenance from me, if they think to begin by any savage proposition for a Lent or Ramadam of abstinence from opium. This, then, being all fully understood between us, we shall in future sail before the wind. Now, then, reader, from 1813, where all this time we have been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you please, and walk forward about three years more. Now draw up the curtain, and you shall see m3 in a new character. If any man, poor or rich, were to say that he would tell us what had been the happiest day in his life, and the why and the wherefore, I suppose that we should all cry out, Hear him ! hear him ! As to the happiest day, that must be very difficult for any wise man to name ; because any event, that could occupy so distinguished a place in a man's retrospect of his life, or be entitled to have shed a special felicity on any one day, ought to be of such an enduring character, as that (accidents apart) it should have continued to shed the same felicity, or one not distinguishably less, on many years together. To the happiest lustrum, however, or even to the happiest year, it may be allowed to any man to point without discountenance from wisdom. This year, in my case, reader, was the one which we have now reached ; though it stood, I confess, as a parenthesis between years of a gloomier character. It was a year of brilliant water (to speak after the manner of jewellers), set, as it were, and insulated, in the gloom and cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it may sound, I had a little before this time descended suddenly, and without any considerable effort, from three hundred and twenty grains of opium (that is, eight* thousand drops of laudanum) per day, to forty grains, or one-eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud of profoundest melancholy which rested upon my brain, like some black vapours that I have seen roll away from the summits of moun- tains, drew off in one day; passed off with its murky banners as simultaneously as a ship that has been stranded, and is floated off by a spring tide, That movcth altogether, if it move at all. Now, then, I was again happy : I now took only one thousand I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one grain of opium, which, I believe, is the common estimate. However, as both may be considered variable quantities (the crude opium varying much in strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Tea-spoons vary as much in size as opium in strength. bmall ones hold about one hundred drops : so that eight thousand drops are about eighty times a tea-spoonful. The reader sees how much I kept within L)r. Buchan's indulgent allowance. AN OPIUM-EATER. drops of laudanum per day, and what was that ? A later spring had come to close up the season of youth ; my brain performed its functions as healthily as ever before. I read Kant again, and again I understood him, or fancied that I did. Again my feelings of pleasure expanded themselves to all around me ; and if any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither, had been announced to me in my unpretending cottage, I should have welcomed him with as sumptuous a reception as so poor a man could offer. Whatever else was wanting to a wise man's happiness, of laudanum I would have given him as much as he wished, and in a golden cup. And, by the way, now that I speak of giving laudanum away, I remember, about this time, a little incident which I mention, because, trifling as it was, the reader will soon meet it again in my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my door. What business a Malay could have to trans- act amongst English mountains, I cannot conjecture; but possibly he was on his road to a seaport about forty miles distant. The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl, born and bred amongst the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort : his turban, therefore, confounded her not a little ; and as it turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as hers in the Malay, there seemed to be an impass- able gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, recollect- ing the reputed learning of her master (and, doubtless, giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of the earth, besides, perhaps, a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to understand that there was a sort of demon below whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the house. I did not immediately go down, but when I 'did, the group which presented itself, arranged as it was by accident, though not very elaborate, took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes ex- hibited in the ballets in the opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex, had ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wall with dark wood, that from age and rubbing resembled oak, and looking more like a rustic hall ot entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay, his turban and loose trousers of dingy white relieved upon the dark panelling ; he had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to relish, though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of simple awe which her countenance ex- pressed, as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more striking picture there could not be imagined, than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness, together with her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures, and adorations. Half hidden by the ferocious-looking Malay, was a little child from a neighbouring cottage, who had crept in alter him, and was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing upwards at 45 CONFESSIONS OF the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, whilst with one hand he caught at the dress of the young woman for protection. My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, being, indeed, confined to two words, the Arabic word for barley, and the Turkish for opium (madjoon), which I have learnt from Anastasius. And, as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung's Mithridates ; which might have helped me to a few words, I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad ; considering that, of such language as I possessed, the Greek, in point of longitude, came geographically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshipped me in a devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay. In this way I saved my reputation with my neighbours ; for the Malay had no means of betraying the secret. He lay down upon the floor for about an hour, and then pursued his journey. On his departure, I presented him with a piece of opium. To him, as an Orientalist, I concluded that opium must be familiar, and the expression of his face convinced me that it was. Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consternation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his ' mouth, and (in the school-boy phrase) bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, at one mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses, and I felt some alarm for the poor creature ; but what could be done? I had given him the opium in compassion for his solitary life, on recollecting that, if he had tra- velled on foot from London, it must be nearly three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought with any human being. I could not think of violating the laws of hospitality by having him seized and drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some English idol. No; there was clearly no help for it. He took his leave, and for some days I felt anxious ; but, as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I became convinced that he was used * to opium, and that I must have done him the service I designed, by giving him one night of respite from the pains of wandering. This incident I have digressed to mention, because this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him * This, however, is not a necessary conclusion, the varieties of effect pro- duced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A London magistrate (Harriott's " Struggles through Life," vol. iii., p. 391, third edition) has re- corded that on the first occasion of his trying laudanum for the gout, he took FORTY drops ; the next night SIXTY, and on the fifth night EIGHTY, without any effect whatever ; and this at an advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, however, which sinks Mr. Harriott's case into a trifle, and in my projected medical treatise on opium, which I will publish, provided the College of Surgeons will pay me for enlightening their benighted under- standings upon this subject, I will relate it; but it is far too good a story to- be published gratis. 46 AN OPIUM-EATER. worse than himself, that ran " a-muck " * at me, and led me into a world of troubles. But, to quit this episode, and to return to my intercalary year of happiness. I have said already, that on a sub- ject so important to us all as happiness, we should listen with plea- sure to any man's experience or experiments, even though he were but a ploughboy, who cannot be supposed to have ploughed very deep in such an intractable soil as that of human pains and plea- sures, or to have conducted his researches upon any very enlightened principles. But I, who have taken happiness, both in a solid and a liquid shape, both boiled and unboiled, both East India and Tur- key, who have conducted my experiments upon this interesting subject with a sort of galvanic battery, and have, for the general benefit of the world, inoculated myself, as it were, with the poison of eight hundred drops of laudanum per day (just for the same reason as a French surgeon inoculated himself lately with a cancer, an English one, twenty years ago, with plague, and a third, I know not of what nation, with hydrophobia), I, it will be admitted, must surely know what happiness is, if anybody does. And therefore I will here lay down an analysis of happiness ; and, as the most inter- esting mode of communicating it, I will give it, not didactically, but wrapt up and involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every evening during the intercalary year when laudanum, though taken daily, was to me no more than the elixir of pleasure. This done, I shall quit the subject of happiness altogether, and pass to a very different one, ihe^ams of opium. Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley, eighteen miles from any town ; no spacious valley, but about two miles long by three- quarters of a mile in average width, the benefit of which provision is, that all the families resident within its circuit will compose, as it were, one larger household, personally familiar to your eye, and more or less interesting to your affections. Let the mountains be real mountains, between three and four thousand feet high, and the cottage a real cottage, not (as a witty author has it) "a cottage with a double coach-house ;" let it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls, and clustering around the windows, through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn ; beginning, in fact, with May roses, and end' ing with jasmine. Let it, however, not be spring, nor summer, nor autumn ; but winter, in its sternest shape. This is a most important point in the science of happiness. And I am sur- prised to see people overlook it, and think it matter of congratulation that winter is going, or, if coming, is not likely to be a severe one. On the contrary, I put up a petition, annually, for as much snow, * See the common accounts, in any Eastern traveller or voyager, of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium, or are reduced to desperation by ill-luck at gambling. 47 CONFESSIONS OF hail, frost, or storm of one kind or other, as the skies can possibly altbrd us. Surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside, candles at four o'clock, 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, And at the doors and windows seem to call As heaven and earth they would together mell ; Yet the least entrance find they none at all ; Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall. Castle of Indolence. All these are items in the description of a winter evening which must surely be familiar to everybody born in a high latitude. And it is evident that most of these delicacies, like ice-cream, require a very low temperature of the atmosphere to produce them : they are fruits which cannot be ripened without weather stormy or inclement, in some way or other. I am not "particular'' as people say, whether it be snow, or black frost, or wind so strong that (as Mr. says) " you may lean your back against it like a post." I can put up even with rain, provided that it rains cats and dogs ; but something of the sort I must have, and if 1 have not, I think myself in a manner ill used: for why am I called on to pay so heavily for winter, in coals, and candles,, and various privations that will occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to have the article good of its kind? No: 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. Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this matter, that I cannot relish a winter night fully, if it be much past St. Thomas' day, and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances ; no, it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine. From the latter weeks of October to Christmas-eve, therefore, is the period during which happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters the room with the tea-tray ; for tea, though ridiculed by those who are aaturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual ; and, for my part, I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum inter necinum against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person who should presume to disparage it. But here, to save myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will introduce a painter, and give him directions for the rest of the picture. Painters do not like white cottaees, unless a good deal weather-stained ; but, as the reader now under- stands that it is a winter night, his services will not be required except for the inside of the house. Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven and a half feet high. This, reader, is somewhat ambi- tiously styled, in my family, the drawing-room ; but being contrived AN OPIUM-EATER. "a double debt to pay," it is also, and more justly, termed the library ; for it happens that books are the only article of property in which I am richer than my neighbours. Of these I have about five thousand, collected gradually since my eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as you can into this room. Make it populous with books ; and, furthermore, paint me a good fire ; and furniture plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-table; and (as it is clear that no creature can come to see one, such a stormy night) place only two cups and saucers on the tea-tray ; and, if you know how to paint such a thing symbolically, or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea- pot, eternal a-parte ante, and a parte ost; for I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four in the morning. And, as it is very unpleasant to make tea, or to pour it out for one's self, paint me a lovely young woman, sitting at the table. Paint her arms like Aurora's, and her smiles like Hebe's; but no, dear M., not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty ; or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of any personal pencil. Pass, then, my good painter, to something more within its power ; and the next article brought forward should naturally be myself, a picture of the Opium-eater, with his "little golden recep- tacle of the pernicious drug " lying beside him on the table. As to the opium, I have no objection to see a picture oithat, though I would rather see the original ; you may paint it, if you choose ; but I apprize you that no " little " receptacle would, even in 1816, answer my purpose, who was at a distance from the " stately Pantheon," and all druggists (mortal or otherwise). No : you may as well paint the real receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and as much like a wine-decanter as possible. Into this you may put a quart of ruby-coloured laudanum ; that, and a book of German metaphysics placed by its side, will sufficiently attest my being in the neighbour- hood ; but as to myself, there I demur. I admit that, naturally, I ought to occupy the foreground of the picture ; that being the hero of the piece, or (if you choose) the criminal at the bar, my body should be had into court. This seems reasonable ; but why should I confess, on this point, to a painter ? or, why confess at all ? If the public (into whose private ear I am confidentially whispering my confessions, and not into any painter's) should chance to have framed some agreeable picture for itself of the Opium-eater's ex- terior, should have ascribed to him, romantically, an elegant per- son, or a handsome face, why should I barbarously tear from it so pleasing a delusion, pleasing both to the public and to me ? No : paint me, if at all, according to your own fancy ; and, as a painter's fancy should teem with beautiful creations, I cannot fail, in that way, to be a gainer. And now, reader, we have run through all the categories of my condition, as it stood about 1816 1817, up to the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man ; and the elements of that happiness I have endeavoured to 49 CONFESSIONS OF place before you, in the above sketch of the interior of a scholar's library, in a cottage among the mountains, on a stormy winter evening. But now farewell, a long farewell, to happiness, winter or summer ! farewell to smiles and laughter ! farewell to peace of mind ! fare- well to hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep ! For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from these; I am now arrived at an Iliad of woes : for I have now to record THE PAINS OF OPIUM. is when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. Shelley's Revolt of Islam. READER, who have thus far accompanied me, I must request your attention to a brief explanatory note on three points : 1. For several reasons, I have not been able to compose the notes for this part of my narrative into any regular and connected shape. I give the notes disjointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up from memory. Some of them point to their own date ; some I have dated; and some are undated. Whenever it could answer my rrpose to transplant them from the natural or chronological order, have not scrupled to do so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. Few of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to which they relate ; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind. Much has been omitted. I could not, without effort, constrain myself to the task of either recalling, or constructing into a regular narrative, the whole burden of horrors which lies upon my brain. This feeling, partly, I plead in excuse, and partly that I am not in London, and am a helpless sort of person who cannot even arrange his own papers without assistance ; and I am separated from the hands which are wont to perform for me the offices of an amanuensis. 2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential and commu- nicative of my own private history. It may be so. But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me ; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper. The fact is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty years ahead of this time, and sup- pose myself writing to those who will be interested about me here- after ; and wishing to have some record of a time, the entire history 50 AN OPIUM-EATER. of which no one can know but myself, I do it as fully as I an abte with the efforts I am now capable of making, because I know nov: whether I can ever find time to do it again. 3. It will occur to you often to ask, Why did I not release myself from the horrors of opium, by leaving it off, or diminishing it ? To this I must answer briefly ; it might be supposed that I yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily ; it cannot be supposed that any man can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may be sure, there- fore, that I made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the first to beg me to desist. But could not I have reduced it a drop a day, or, by adding water, have bisected or tri- sected a drop ? A thousand drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce ; and that they would certainly not have answered. But this is a common mistake of those who know nothing of opium experimentally ; I appeal to those who do, whether it is not always found that down to a certain point it can be reduced with ease, and even pleasure, but that, after that point, further reduction causes intense suffering. Yes, say many thoughtless persons, who know not what they are talking of, you will suffer a little low spirits and dejection, for a few days. I answer, no ; there is nothing like low spirits ; on the contrary, the mere animal spirits are uncommonly raised ; the pulse is improved ; the health is better. It is not there that the suffering lies. It has no resemblance to the sufferings caused by renouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable irritation ot stomach (which surely is not much like dejection,) accompanied by intense perspirations, and feelings such as I shall not attempt to describe without more space at my command. I shall now enter " in medias res," and shall anticipate, from a time when my opium pains might be said to be at their acme, an account of their palsying effects on the intellectual faculties. My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. Yet I read aloud sometimes for the pleasure of others ; because reading is an accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word accomplishment as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the only one I possess ; and formerly, if I had any vanity at all con- nected with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this ; for I had observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players are the worst readers of all : reads vilely; and Mrs. , who is so celebrated, can read nothing well but dramatic compositions ; Milton she cannot read sufferably. People in general either read poetry without any passion at all, or else overstep the modesty of nature, and read not like scholars. Of late, if I have felt moved by anything in books, it has been by the grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in Para- dise Regained, when read aloud by myself. A young lady sometimes comes and drinks tea with us ; at her request and M.'s, I now and then read Wordsworth's poems to them. (W., by the by, is the only CONFESSIONS OF poet 1 ever met who could read his own verses ; often, indeed, he reads admirably.) For nearly two years I believe that I read no book but one ; and I owe it to the author, in discharge of a great debt of gratitude, to mention what that was. The sublimer and more passionate poets I still read, as I have said, by snatches, and occasionally. But my proper vocation, as I well knew, was the exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part, analytic studies are con- tinuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c., were all become insupportable to me ; I shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further reason, because I had devoted the labour of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elaborate toil of constructing one single work, to which I had presumed to give the title of an un- finished work of Spinosa's, namely, De Emendatione Humani Intellects. This was now lying locked up as by frost, like any Spanish bridge or aqueduct, begun upon too great a scale for the resources of the architect ; and, instead of surviving me as a monu- ment of wishes at least, and aspirations, and a life of labour dedi- cated to the exaltation of human nature in that way in which God had best fitted me to promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a superstructure, of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this state of imbecility, I had, for amusement, turned my attention to political economy ; my understanding, which formerly had been as active and restless as a hyena, could not, I suppose (so long as I lived at all), sink into utter lethargy; and political economy offers this advantage to a person in my state, that though it is eminently an organic science (no part, that is to say, but what acts on the whole, as the whole again reacts on each part), yet the several parts may be detached and contemplated singly. Great as was the prostration of my powers at this time, yet I could not forget my knowledge ; and my understanding had been for too many years intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware of the utter feebleness of the main herd of modern economists. I had been led in 1811 to look into loads of books and pamphlets on many branches of economy ; and, at my desire, M. sometimes read to me chapters from more recent works, or parts of parliamentary debates. I saw that these were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intellect ; and that any man of sound head, and practised in wielding logic with scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fungous heads to powder with a lady's fan. At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down 52 AN OPIUM-EATER. Mr. Ricardo's book ; and, recurring to my own prophetic anticipa- tion of the advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, " Thou art the man ! " Wonder and curiosity were emotions that had long been dead in me. Yet I wondered once more : I wondered at myself that I could once again be stimulated to the effort of reading ; and much more I wondered at the book. Had this profound work been really written in England during the nineteenth century ? Was it possible ? I supposed thinking* had been extinct in England. Could it be that an Eng- lishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by mer- cantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the universities of Europe, and a century of thought, had failed even to advance by one hair's breadth ? All other writers had been crushed and overlaid by the enormous weights of facts and documents ; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a priori, from the understanding itself, laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collection of tentative discussions into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on an eternal basis. Thus did one simple work of a profound understanding avail to give me a pleasure and an activity which I had not known for years ; it roused me even to write, or, at least, to dictate what M. wrote for me. It seemed to me that some important truths had escaped even "the inevitable eye" of Mr. Ricardo; and, as these were, for the most part, of such a nature that I could express or illustrate them more briefly and elegantly by algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy and loitering diction of economists, the whole would not have filled a pocket-book ; and being so brief, with M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as I was of all general exertion, I drew up my Prolegomena to all Ftiture Systems of Political Economy. I hope it will not be found redolent of opium ; though, indeed, to most people, the subject itself is a sufficient opiate. This exertion, however, was but a temporary flash, as the sequel showed ; for I designed to publish my work. Arrangements were made at a provincial press, about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An additional compositor was retained for some days, on this account. The work was even twice advertised ; and I was, in a manner, pledged to the fulfilment of my intention. But I had a preface to write ; and a dedication, which I wished to make a splen- did one, to Mr. Ricardo. I found myself quite unable to accomplish all this. The arrangements were countermanded, the compositor * The reader must remember what I here mean by thinking; because, else, this would be a very presumptuous expression. England, of late, has been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of creative and com- bining thDught ; but there is a sad dearth of masculine thinkers in any analytic path. A Scotchman of eminent name has lately told us, that he is obliged to quit even mathematics, for want of encouragement. S3 CONFESSIONS OF dismissed, and my " prolegomena" rested peacefully by the side oi its elder and more dignified brother. I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual torpor, in terms that apply, more or less, to every part of the four years during which I was under the Circean spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I seldom 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 accomplish ; and often that not until the letter had laid weeks, or even months, on my writing-table. Without the aid of M., all records of bills paid, or to be paid, must have perished ; and my whole domestic economy, whatever became of Political Economy, must have gone into irretrievable confusion. I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case ; it is one, however, which the opium- eater will find, in the end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of incapacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident to the neglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties, and from the remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a reflective and con- scientious mind. The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensi- bilities or aspirations ; he wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty ; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely out- runs his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and night-mare ; he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is com- pelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his ten- derest love : he curses the spells which chain him down from motion ; he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk ; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise. I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to the history and journal of what took place in my dreams; for these were the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering. The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of my physical economy, was from the reawaking of a state of eye generally incident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms : in some that power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye ; others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dis- miss or summon them ; or as a child once said to me, when I ques- tioned him on this matter, " I can tell them to go, and they go ; but sometimes they come when I don't tell them to come." Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlimited a command over appari- tions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers. In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty became positively distressing to me : *t night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along iu AN OPIUM-EATER. mournful pomp ; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before CEdipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And, at the same time, a corresponding change took place in my dreams ; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented, nightly, spectacles of more than earthly splendour. And the four following facts may be mentioned, as noticeable at this time: I. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point, that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams ; so that I feared to exercise this faculty; for, as Midas turned all things to gold, that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye ; and, by a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out, by the fierce chemistry of my dreams, into insufferable splendour that fretted my heart. II. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, were accom- panied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend not metaphorically, but literally to descend into chasms and sun- less abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had reascended. This I do not dwell upon ; because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be ap- proached by words. ill. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were ex- hibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time. I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or one hundred years in one night ; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium, passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience. IV. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived. I could not be said to recollect them ; for if I had been told of them when waking, 1 should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. But placed as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I recognized them instantaneously. I was once told by a near relative of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a iKer, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical as- 5 55 CONCESSIONS OF sistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for com- prehending the whole and every part. This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe ; I have, indeed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true, namely, that the dread book of account, which the Scriptures speak of, is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing a.s forgetting possible to the mind ; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil ; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever ; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil ; and that they are waiting to be revealed, when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn. Having noticed these four facts as memorably distinguishing my dreams from those of health, I shall now cite a case illustrative of the first fact ; and shall then cite any others that I remember, either in their chronological order, or any other that may give them more effect as pictures to the reader. I had been in youth, and ever since, for occasional amuse- ment, a great reader of Livy, whom I confess that I prefer, both for style and matter, to any other of the Roman historians ; and I had often felt as most solemn and appalling sounds, and most emphatically representative of the majesty of the Roman people, the two words so often occurring in Livy Consul Ro- manus ; especially when the consul is introduced in his military character. I mean to say, that the words king, sultan, re- gent, &c., or any other titles of those who embody in their own persons the collective majesty of a great people, had less power over my reverential feelings. I had, also, though no great reader of history, made myself minutely and critically familiar with one period of English history, namely, the period of the Parliamentary War, having been attracted by the moral grandeur of some who figured in that day, and by the many interesting memoirs which survive those unquiet times. Both these parts of my lighter reading, having furnished me often with matter of reflection, now furnish me with matter for my dreams. Often I used to see, after painting upon the blank darkness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival and dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself, " These are English ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are the wives and daughters of those who met in peace, and sat at the same tables, and were allied by marriage or by blood; and yet, after a certain day in August, 1642, never smibd imon each other again, nor met but in the field J>f battle ; and at Warston Moor, at Newbury, or at Naseby, cut asunder ail ties ot 56 AN OPIUM-EATER. love by the cruel sabre, and washed away in blood the memory ol ancient friendship." The ladies danced, and looked as lovely as the court of George IV. Yet I knew, even in my dream, that they aad been in the grave for nearly two centuries. This pageant would suddenly dissolve ; and, at a clapping of hands, would be heard the heart-quaking sound of Consul Romanus ; and immediately came "sweeping by," in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus or Marius, girt around by a company of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by the alalagmos of the Roman legions. Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his Dreams, and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls ; on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c., expressive of enormous power put forth, and resistance over- come. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a stair- case ; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little further, and you perceive it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi ? You suppose, at least, that his labours must in some way terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher ; on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld ; and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labouns ; and so on, until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my archi- tecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of my malady, the splendour of my dreams was indeed chiefly architectural; and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye, unless in the clouds. From a great modern poet I cite the part of a passage which describes, as an appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep : The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, "Was of a mighty city boldly say A wilderness of building, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth, Far sinking into splendour without end ! Fabric it seemed of diamond, and of gold, \Vith alabaster domes and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted ; here, serene pavilions bright, In avnues disposed 'here towers begirt 57 CONFESSIONS OF With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars illumination of all gems ! By earthly nature had the effect been wrought Upon the dark materials of the storm Now pacified ; on them, and on the coves, And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto The vapours had receded taking there Their station under a cerulean sky, c., &c. The sublime circumstance "battlements that on their restless fronts bore stars " might have been copied from my architectural dreams, for it often occurred. We hear it reported of Dryden, and of Fuseli in modern times, that they thought proper to eat raw meat for the sake of obtaining splendid dreams: how much better, for such a purpose, to have eaten opium, which yet I do not remember that any poet is recorded to have done, except the dramatist Shad- well ; and in ancient days, Homer is, I think, rightly reputed to have known the virtues of opium. To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes, and silvery ex- panses of water : these haunted me so much, that I feared (though possibly it will appear ludicrous to a medical man) that some drop- sical state or tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to use a metaphysical word) objective, and the sentient organ project itself as its own object. For two months I suffered greatly in my head a part of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of weakness (physically, I mean), that I used to say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my own folly. However, I got over this attack, though it must have been verging on something very dangerous. The waters now changed their character, from translucent lakes, shining like mirrors, they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, through many months, promised an abiding torment ; and, in fact, it never left me until the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had often mixed in my dreams, but not despotically, nor with any special power of tormenting. But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human face, began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens ; faces, imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries : my agitation was infinite, my mind tossed, and swayed with the ocean. May, 1818. The Malay had been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night, through his means, transported into Asiatic f/cenes. I know not whether others share in my feelings on this point ; but I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego AN OPIUM-EATER. England, and to live in China, and among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to others. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful images and associa- tions. As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capri- cious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name over- powers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time ; nor can any man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges, or the Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that Southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life, the great officina gen t 'mm. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires, also, into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all oriental names or images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the barrier of utter abhorrence, and want of sympathy, placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyze. I could sooner live with lunatics, or brute animals. All this, and much more than I can say, or have time to say, the reader must enter into, before he can com- prehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of oriental imagery, and mythological tortures, impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms : I was the idol ; I was Jie priest ; I was worshipped ; I was sacrificed. I fled from the "wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia : Vishnu hated me ; Seva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris : I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mum- mies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles ; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud. 59 CONFESSIONS OF I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my oriental dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the mon- strous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed, for a while, in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swal* lowed up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim, sightless, incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an oppression as of mad- ness. Into these dreams only, it was, with one or two slight excep- tions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles, especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the- rest. I was compelled to live with him ; and (as was always this case, almost, in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in Chinese houses with cane tables, dec. All the feet of the tables, sofas, &c., soon became instinct with life : the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repetitions ; and I stood loathing- and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way : I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear every- thing when- 1 am sleeping), and instantly I awoke: it was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside ; come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the transition from the d d crocodile, and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of innocent human natures and of infancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind, I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces. June, 1819. I have had occasion to remark, at various periods of my life, that the deaths of those whom we love, and, indeed, the contemplation of death generally, is (c 2 . 80 26 . . I|0 > 3 . 90 27 . 80 i 4 . 1OO 28 . . 80 e . 80 29 . . 80 I 6 . 80 30 . 80 7 . 80 THIRD WEEK. FOURTH WEE c. Mond. July 8 Drops of Laud. . 30 Mond. July 15 Dro s of Laud. . 76 .. 9 . 50 16 73* n l ~\ Z 7 "! Hiatus in 18 7 :*[ M.S. 19 .240 .isJ 20 . 80 . . ?6 . 21 35 FIFTH WEEK. Drops of Laud. Mond. July 22 60 23 24 25 26 27 none none none 200 none What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask, perhaps to such num- 69 CONFESSIONS OP To communicate this result of my experiment, was my foremost purpose. 2dly, as a purpose collateral to this, I wished to explain how it had become impossible for me to compose a Third Part in time to accompany this republication : for during the very time of this experiment, the proof-sheets of this reprint were sent to me from London ; and such was my inability to expand or to improve them, that I could not even bear to read them over with attention enough to notice the press errors, or to correct any verbal inaccuracies. These were my reasons for troubling my reader with any record, long or short, of experiments relating to so truly base a subject as my own body ; and I am earnest with tht reader, that he will not forget them, or so far misapprehend me as to believe it possible that I would condescend to so rascally a subject for its own sake, or, indeed for any less object than that of general benefit to others, buch an animal as the self-observing valetudinarian, I know there is. I have met him myself occasionally, and I know that he is the worst imagin- able heautontimoroumenos ; aggravating and sustaining, by calling into distinct consciousness every symptom that woulrl else, perhaps, under a different direction given to the thoughts, beco tie evanescent. But as to myself, so profound is my contempt for this undignified and selfish habit, that I could as little condescend to it as I could to spend my time in watching a poor servant-girl, to whom at this moment I hear some lad or other making love at the back of my house. Is it for a Transcendental philosopher to feel any curiosity on such an occasion ? Or can I, whose life is worth only eight and a half years' purchase, be supposed to have leisure for such trivial employments? However, to put this out of question, I shall say one thing which will, perhaps, shock some readers; but I am sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much of hi? time on the phenomena of his own body without some regard for it ; whereas the reader sees that, so far from looking upon mine with any complacency or regard, I hate it and make it the object of my bitter ridicule and contempt; and I should not be displeased to know that the last indignities which the law inflicts upon the bodies of the worst malefactors might hereafter fall upon it. And in testification of my sincerity in saying this, I shall make the following offer. Like other men, I have par- ticular fancies about the place of my burial ; having lived chiefly in a mountainous region, I rather cleave to the conceit that a grave in bers as 300, 350, &c. ? The impulse to these relapses was mere infirmity of purpose ; the motive, were any motive blended with this impulse, was either the principle of " reculer pour mieux sauter " (for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which, on awaking, found itself partly accustomed to this new ration), or else it was this principle that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will be borne best which meet with a mood of anger ; now, whenever I ascended to any large dos-e, I was furiously incensed on the following day, and could then have bc^ie anything 70 RICHARD BENTLEY. a green church-yard amongst the ancient and solitary hills will be a sublimer and more tranquil place of repose for a philosopher than any in the hideous Golgothas of London. Yet, if the gentlemen of Surgeons' Hall think that any benefit can redound to their science from inspecting the appearances in the body of an opium-eater, let them speak but a word, and I will take care that mine shall be legally secured to them that is, as soon as I have done with it my- self. Let them not hesitate to express their wishes upon any scruples of false delicacy and consideration for my feelings ; I assure them that they will do me too much honour by " demonstrating" on such a crazy body as mine ; and it will give me pleasure to anticipate this posthumous revenge and insult inflicted upon that which has caused me so much suffering in this life. Such bequests are not common ; reversionary benefits contingent upon the death of the testator are indeed dangerous to announce in many cases. Of this we have a remarkable instance in the habits of a Roman prince, who used, upon any notification made to him by rich persons, that they had left him a handsome estate in their wills, to express his entire satisfac- tion at such arrangements, and his gracious acceptance of those royal legacies ; but then, if the testators neglected to give him im- mediate possession of the property, if they traitorously " persisted in living" (si vivere fierseverarent, as Suetonius expresses it), he was highly provoked, and took his measures accordingly. In those times, and from one of the worst ot the Caesars, we might expect such conduct ; but I am sure that, from English surgeons at this day, I need look for no expressions of impatience, or of any other feelings but such as are answerable to that pure love of science and all its interests, which induces me to make such an offer. RICHARD BENTLEY. Life of Richard Bcntley, D.D. By J. H. MONK, D.D. MANY years ago, walking in the sequestered valleys of Cum- berland, with an eminent author of the present day, we came to a long and desolate sort of gallery, through a wilderness of rocks, which, after rising and narrowing for about two miles, suddenly opened right and left into a little pastoral recess, within the very heart of the highest mountains. This verdant circus pre- sented in its centre a beautiful but tiny lake, locally called a tarn* * " Tarn" any small lake among mountains much above the level of the larger lakes, and fed, not (as the)- arc) by one main stream, 'mt by a number 6 ' ?' RICHARD BENTLEY. v-Uh a wild brook issuing from it through the road by which we had approached, a few quiet fields upon the margin of the lake, solemn hills looking down upon it from every side ; and finally, a hamlet of seven cottages clustering together, as if for mutual support, in this lovely, but still awful, solitude. A solitude, indeed, so perfect we had never seen : nor had we supposed it possible that in the midst of populous England, any little brotherhood of households could pitch their tents so far aloft from human society, from its noisy bustle, and (we ventured to hope) its angry passions. Though a valley, and fenced by barriers verdant indeed, but also insuperable, this little chamber in the hills was yet far above the ordinary eleva- tion of inhabited ground : road there was none, except the rude sort of sheep-track by which we had come : the nearest town, and that a small one, was at six miles' distance ; and here, if anywhere, it seemed possible that a world-wearied man should find a perfect rest. "Yes," said our distinguished guide, who had guessed our thoughts " Yes, nature has done her part to create in this place an absolute and perpetual Sabbath. And doubtless, you conceive that, in those low-roofed dwellings, her intentions are seconded. Be un- deceived then : lawsuits, and the passions of lawsuits, have carried fierce dissension into this hidden paradise of the hills ; and it is a fact, that not one of those seven families will now speak to another." We turned away at these words with a pang of misanthropy, and for one moment assented to the King of Brobdignag that men are " the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface o.f the earth." Something of the same sentiment accompanied us at intervals through this Life of Bentley, and the records which it involves of Cambridge. Where upon this earth shall peace be found, if not within the cloistral solitudes of Oxford and Cambridge ? Cities of Corinthian beauty and luxury ; with endowments and patronage beyond the revenues of considerable nations ; in libraries pictures cathedral, surpassing the kings of the earth ; and with the re- sources of capital cities, combining the deep tranquillity of sylvan villages ; places so favoured by time, accident, and law, come nearer to the creations of romance than any other known realities of Christendom. Yet in these privileged haunts of meditation, hallowed by the footsteps of Bacon and Milton, still echoing to those of Isaac Barrow, and Isaac Newton absolutely walking amongst them, did the leading society of Cambridge with that man at their head, who, for scholarship, was confessedly "the foremost man of all this world " through a period of forty years fight and struggle with so deadly an acharnement ; sacrificed their time, energy, fortune, of petty rills trickling down the side of the surrounding hills : from the Danish taaren, a trickling. Lakers ! be thankful to Christopher North for solving a question hitherto found unanswerable. The Danes had a settlement in Ci?m berland. 72 RICHARD BENTLEY. personal liberty, and conscience, to the prosecution of their immortal hatreds ; vexed the very altars with their fierce dissensions; and went to their graves so perfectly unreconciled, that, had the classical usage of funeral cremation been restored, we might have looked for the old miracle of the Theban Brothers, and expected the very flames which consumed the hostile bodies to revolt asunder, and violently refuse to mingle. Some of the combatants were young men at the beginning of the quarrel ; they were grey-headed, palsied, withered, doting, before it ended. Some had outlived all distinct memory, except of their imperishable hatreds. Many died during its pro- gress ; and sometimes their deaths, by disturbing the equilibrium of the factions, had the effect of kindling into fiercer activity those rabid passions, which, in a Christian community, they should naturally have disarmed or soothed. Of feuds so deadly, so enduring, and which continue to interest at the distance of a century, everybody will desire to know who, in a criminal sense, was the author. The usual way of settling such questions is to say, that there were " faults on both sides," which, however, is not always the case ; nor, when it is, are the faults always equal. Dr. Monk, who gives the fullest materials yet pub- lished for a just decision, leaves us to collect it for ourselves. Meantime, we suspect that his general award would be against Bentley ; for, though disposed to be equitable, he is by no means indulgent to his hero ; and he certainly thinks too highly of Colbatch, the most persevering of all Bentley' s enemies, and a malicious old toad. If that, however, be Dr. Monk's leaning, there are others (with avenues, perhaps as good, to secret information) whose bias was the other way. In particular, we find Dr. Parr, about forty years after Bentley' s death, expressing his opinions thus to Dr. Charles Burney : " I received great entertainment from your account of our Aristarchus ; it is well written and well directed ; for, in spite of vulgar prejudice, Bentley was eminently right, and the College infamously wrong." \_Dr. Parr's Works, vol. vii., p. 389.] Our own belief sets in towards the same conclusion. But, if not, we would propose, that at this time of day Bentley should be pro- nounced right, and his enemies utterly in the wrong. Whilst living, indeed, or whilst surviving in the persons of his friends and relations, the meanest of little rascals has a right to rigorous justice. But when he and his are all bundled off to Hades, it is far better, and more considerate to the feelings of us Public, that a little dog should be sacrificed than a great one ; for by this means, the current of one's sympathy with an illustrious man is cleared of ugly obstruc- tions, and enabled to flow unbroken, which might else be un- pleasantly distracted, between his talents on the one hand and his knavery on the other. And one general remark we must make upon the conduct of this endless feud, no matter who began it, which will show Bentley 's title to the benefit of the rule we have proposed. People, not nice in distinguishing, are apt to confound all the parties to a feud under one common sentence ; and, whatever difference they 73 RICHARD BENTLEY. might allow in the grounds of quarrel, as to temper, at least, and charity, where all were confessedly irritated and irritating, they allow of none. But, in fact, between Bentley and his antagonists, the differences were vital. Bentley had a good heart ; generally speak- ing, his antagonists had not. Bentley was overbearing, impatient of opposition, insolent, sometimes tyrannical. He had, and deservedly, a very lofty opinion of himself ; he either had, or affected, too mean a one of his antagonists. Sume superbiam qiuzsitam meritis, was ihe motto which he avowed. Coming to the government of a very important college, at a time when its discipline had been greatly re- laxed, and the abuses were many, his reforms (of which some have been retained even to this day) were pushed with too high a hand; he was too negligent of any particular statute that stood in his way ; showed too harsh a disregard to the feelings of gentlemen ; and too openly disdained the arts of conciliation. Yet this same man was placable in the highest degree ; generous ; and, at the first moment. when his enemies would make an opening for him to be so, forgiving. His literary quarrels, which have left the impression that he was irritable or jealous, were (without one exception) upon his part mere retorts to the most insufferable provocations ; and though it is true, that when once teased into rousing himself out of his lair, he did treat his man with rough play, left him ugly remembrances of his leonine power, and made himself merry with his distressed condition ; yet on the other hand, in his utmost wrath, there was not a particle of malice. How should there ? As a scholar, Bentley had that happy exemption from jealousy, which belongs -almost inevitably to conscious power in its highest mode. Reposing calmly on his own supremacy, he was content that pretenders of every size and sort should flutter through their little day, and be carried as far beyond their natural place as the intrigues of friends or the caprice of the public could effect. Unmolested, he was sure never to molest. Some people have a letch for unmasking impostors, or for avenging the wrongs of others. Porson, for example what spirit of mischief drove him to intermeddle with Mr. Archdeacon Travis ? How Quixotic again in appearance how mean in his real motive was Dr. Parr's defence of Leland and Jorton ; or, to call it by its true name, Dr. Parr's attack upon Bishop Hurd ! But Bentley had no touch of this temper. When instances of spurious pretensions came in his way, he smiled grimly and good-naturedly in private, but forbore (sometimes after a world of provocations) to unmask them to the public.* * Take, for instance, his conduct to Barnes, the Cambridge Professor of Greek. Bentley well knew that Barnes was an indifferent scholar, whose ponderous erudition was illuminated by neither accuracy of distinction, nor elegance of choice. Yet Barnes spoke of himself in the most inflated terms, as though he had been the very Laureate of the Greek muses ; and, not content with these harmless vaunts, scattered in conversation the most pointed affronts to Bentley, as the man under whose superiority he secretly groaned. All this 74 RICHARD BENTLEY. Some of his most bitter assailants, as Kerr, and Johnson of Not- tingham, he has not so much as mentioned ; and it remains a problem to this day, whether, in his wise love of peace, he forbore to disturb his own equanimity by reading the criticisms of a malignant enemy, or, having read them, generously refused to crush thb insulter. Either way the magnanimity was equal for a man of weak irritability is as little able to abstain from hearkening after libels upon himself, as he is from retorting them. Early in life (Epist. ad Mill.} Bentley had declared " Non Nostrum est iteyttWj firenftaiveiv " It is no ^practice of mine to trample upon the ^rostrate ; and his whole career in literature reflected a comment- ary upon that maxim. To concede, was to disarm him. How opposite the temper of his enemies ! One and all, they were cursed with bad tempers, and unforgiving hearts. Cunningham,* James Gronovius, and Johnson, Conyers Middleton,f and Colbatch, all lost Bentley refused to hear ; praised him whenever he had an opportunity, even when Barnes introduced himself into the Phalaris dispute, and did him effec- tual services. At length Barnes published his Homer, and there shot hit final arrow against Bentley, not indeed by name, but taking care to guide it to its mark, by words scattered in all companies. Bentley was now roused to put an end to this persecution. But how ? He wrote a most masterly exami- nation of a few passages in the new edition, addressed it as a confidential letter to Dr. Davies, a common friend, desiring him to show it to the Profes- sor, by way of convincing him how easy a task such a critic would find it to ruin the character of the book, and thus appealing to his prudence for a cessa- tion of insults ; but at the same time assuring Dr. Davies that he would on no account offer any public disparagement to a book, upon which Barnes had risked a little fortune. Could a more generous way have been devised for re- pelling public insults ? * With respect to this elegant and acute scholar, the most formidable of Bentley's literary opponents, the following remarkable statement is made by Dr. Monk (p. 461) : "Between Alexander Cunningham, the historian, and Alexander Cunningham, the editor of Horace, there are so many particulars of resemblance, that Thompson, the translator of the history, was forced, after a minute inquiry, to remain in suspense whether or not they were the same individual. It appears that they were both Scotchmen, had both been travel- ling tutors, both resided at the Hague at the same period, both were intimate with certain distinguished public characters, both were eminent chess-players, both accomplished scholars, and both lived to an advanced age. These and many other coincidences long baffled all inquiry respecting the identity or diversity of the two namesakes : and it has, I believe, but recently been ascer- tained beyond a doubt, that the critic died at the Hague in 1730, and the his- torian died in London in 1/37." How truly disgusting that they would not die at the same time and place! This perverseness counteracts what Mr. Wordsworth calls " The mighty stream of tendency : " undoubtedly they oughi to have died on the same day of the same year, in which case the confusioii would have been complete and inextricable. As it is, we understand from a learned Scotch friend, that in certain papers which he communicated some years ago to Dr. Irving for his Life of Buchanan, and which doubtless will there be found, this curious case of Doppelganger is fully cleared up. t This celebrated man was the most malignant of a malignant crew. In 75 RICHARD BENTLEY. their peace of mind all made shipwreck of their charity during the progress of this dispute ; some of them for life. But from Bentley, whether wrong or right, as to the materia litis, the manner of con- ducting it drew no qualities but those which did him honour ; great energy ; admirable resources and presence of mind ; the skill and address of a first-rate lawyer; and courage nearly unparalleled under the most disastrous turns of the case, those, even, which, on two memorable occasions (the deprivation of his degrees, and his ejection from the mastership of Trinity College), seemed to have consigned him to ruin. In the very uttermost hurly-burly of the storm, it is not upon record that Bentley's cheerfulness forsook him for a day. At a time when Colbatch and Middleton were standing before judges as convicted delinquents, absconding from arrests, surren- dering to jailers, sneaking to the great men's levees, or making- abject interest for the reversion of some hollow courtier's smile, or an insinuation of his treacherous promise, Bentley was calmly pursu- ing his studies in his castle of the Master's Lodge of Trinity College ; sat on unconcernedly even after public officers were appointed to pull him out ; and never allowed the good humour of his happy fire- side to be disturbed by the quarrels which raved outside. He probably watched the proceedings of "the enemy," with the same: degree of interest with which we all read the newspapers during a foreign war : and the whole of the mighty process, which the bad passions of the other faction made gall and wormwood to them, to him appears to have given no more than the pleasurable excitement of a game of chess. Having thus bespoke the favourable opinion of our readers for Dr. Bentley, and attempted to give that impulse to the judgments upon his conduct, which the mere statement of the circumstances would not always suggest, until after a large examination of the contem- porary documents, we shall draw up a rapid sketch of his life, reserv- ing an ampler scale of analysis for the Phalaris controversy, and his Review of Bentley's Proposals for Editing the Greek Text of the New Testament, he stings like a serpent more rancorous party pamphlets neverwere written. He hated Waterland with the same perfect malignity; and his letters to Warburton, published in a 410. collection of his Miscellaneous Tracts, show that he could combine the part of sycophant upon occasion, with that of assassin-like lampooner. It is, therefore, no unacceptable retribution in the eyes of those who honour the memory of Dan. Waterland and Bentley, men worth a hecatomb of Middletons, that the reputation of this venomous writer is now decaying upon a belief at last thoroughly established, that in two at least, and those two the most learned of his works, he was an extensive plagiarist. This detection first threw light upon a little anecdote often related by Mr. Prebendary Lowth, brother to Bishop Lowth. Just before the publication of the Life of Cicero, Lowth happened to be with Middleton. A gentleman came in, and abruptly asked him if he had read the works of Bellenden ? Middleton turned pale, faltered, and acknowledged that he had. The whole scene was a mystery to Lowth. Parr's Preface to Bellendenus made all clear- So much for Conyers Middleton 76 RICHARD BENTLEY. the college quarrel, as the two capital events which served to diver- sify a passage through this world else unusually tranquil and uni- form. Richard Bentley was born the 27th of January, 1662, at Oulton, not far from Wakefield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Between his grandson, the celebrated Mr. Cumberland, and his present biographer, there is a difference as to the standing of his parents. Cumberland labours to elevate the family to a station of rank and consideration, for which he receives the usual rebukes from Dr. Monk, who pronounces them to have belonged to "the higher description of English yeomen," and thinks it more honourable to Bentley " to have raised himself from obscurity by the force of genius and merit," than " to have been born of gentle blood." But the two cases stand in no real opposition. Fora man with Bentley's object, low birth is not otherwise an obstacle to success in England, than as the poverty, which it generally presumes, may chance to exclude him from the universities. Once there, he will find that the popular provisions of those great bodies insure the fullest benefit to any real merit he may possess ; and without that even noble blood would have failed in procuring those distinctions which Bentley obtained. Besides, for Dr. Monk's purpose, Bentley was not low enough his friends being at any rate in a condition to send him to college. The zeal of Cumberland, therefore, we think rightly directed. And after all, with Dr. Monk's leave, since the question is not, which sort of parentage would be most creditable to Bentley, but which answers best to the facts, we must say that we incline to Cumberland's view. Finding it made out that, during the Parlia- ment war, Bentley's family adhered to the royal cause ; and that of his two grandfathers, one was a captain and the other a major, in the cavalier army ; we must think it probable that they belonged to the armigerous part of the population, and were entitled " to write themselves Esquire in any bill, quittance, &c., whatsoever." On the paternal side, however, the family was impoverished by its loyalty. From his mother, who was much younger than his father, Bentley learned the rudiments of Latin grammar. He was afterwards sent to the grammar school of Wakefield, and, upon the death of his father, Bentley (then thirteen years old) was transferred to the care of his maternal grandfather, who resolved to send him to college. This design he soon carried into effect; and in the summer of 1676, at what would now be thought too early an age by three years at the least, Bentley was matriculated at St. John's College, Cambridge. Of his studies at college nothing further is recorded than that he applied himself even thus early to the res metrica ; and amongst his familiar companions, the only one mentioned of any distinction is the prodigious William Wotton. Of this monster in the annals of premature erudition, we remember to have seen several accounts ; amongst others, a pretty good one in Birch's Life of Tillotson. Bui Dr. Monk mentions some facts which are there overlooked : for in- 77 RICHARD SENILE Y. stance, that at six years of age he read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, together with some Arabic and Syriac. In his tenth year he entered at Catherine Hall, in Cambridge, on which occasion he was matricu- lated by the head of that College as Gulielmus Wotton infra decent annos nee Hammondo nee Grotio secundus. As this could be true only with a limited reference to languages, the entry seems boyish and precipitate. At thirteen, being then master of twelve languages, and his proficiency in several of these attested by undoubted judges, he took his degree of B.A., an honour for which there was no prece- dent. It is evident, however, from Wotton's case, that attainments of this kind are found generally (as Butler says of Hebrew in par- ticular), " to flourish best in barren ground." Dr. Monk, indeed, seems to think that Wotton did not afterwards belie the splendour of his promise. We cannot agree with him. Surely his book on Ancient and Modern Learning, the most popular of his works, though neces- sarily entertaining from its subject, is superficial in a degree scarcely to be explained in one of so much reading, and commanding so much powerful assistance. Another of his works, a History of the Roman Empire, written expressly for the Duke of Gloucester, then heir-ap- parent, has no conspicuous merit of any kind, either of popular ele- gance on the one hand, or of learned research on the other. In fact, Wotton's position in the world of letters was most unfortunate. With accomplishments that were worth little except for show, he had no stage on which to exhibit them ; and, sighing for display, he found himself confounded in the general estimate with the obscure drudges of the age. How much more useful, and finally how much more brilliant, to have possessed his friend Bentley's exquisite skill in one or two languages, than a shallow mediocrity in a score ! Bentley took his first degree with distinction, his place in the arrangement of honours corresponding with that of third wrangler in the present system. Having now closed his education, he was left to speculate on the best way of applying it to his advancement in life. From a fellowship in his own college, the most obvious re- source of a young scholar, he was unfortunately excluded by a by- law, not rescinded until the reign of George IV. At length, after two years' interval, spent (as Dr. Monk supposes) at Cambridge, he was appointed by his college to the head mastership of the Spalding Grammar School. This situation, after holding it about a year, he quitted for the very enviable one of domestic tutor to the son of Stillingfleet, then Dean of St. Paul's. For this also he was indebted to the influence of his college : and perhaps no sort of preferment could have been more favourable to B.entley's views. Stillingfleet was a truly good man ; a most extensive and philosophic scholar ; a gentleman, and acquainted with courts ; and with a liberal allow- ance for the claims of a tutor, having himself officiated in that cha- racter. Another great advantage of the place was the fine library belonging to the Dean, which, excepting the celebrated ones of Moore, Bishop of Ely, and of Isaac Vossius, was perhaps the best private collection in the kingdom. It was besides a library of that RICHARD BENTLEY. particular composition which suited Bentley's pursuits ; and in the Dean's conversation he had the very best directions for using- it to advantage. Meantime, with this ample provision for intellectual wants, worldly ones were not likely to be overlooked. How possible it was at that day for a private tutor to reap nothing- from the very highest connections, was seen in the case of Dr. Colbatch, one of Bentley's future enemies. This man had held that situation suc- cessively in the families of Bishop Burnet, and of the proud Duke of Somerset ; and yet neither from the political Bishop, though all- powerful with Queen Mary, nor from the proud Duke, though Chancellor of his university, could he obtain any preferment. But Stillingfleet loved real merit ; and, fortunately for Bentley, in the next reign, being raised to the mitre, possessed the ear of royalty beyond any ecclesiastical person of his own time. It was in this fortunate situation that Bentley acquired that biblical learning which afterwards entitled him to the Divinity Professorship, and which warranted his proposals for a revised text of the New Testament, even after that of his friend Mill. About six years being spent in this good man's family, most delightfully no doubt to him- self, and then chiefly laying the foundations, broad and deep, of his stupendous learning, Bentley removed with his pupil early in 1689 to Oxford. Wadham College was the one selected; and both pupil and tutor became members of it. Stillingfleet was now raised to the see of Worcester ; and from his extensive connections, Bentley had the most useful introductions in every quarter. In particular, he had the privilege of disporting himself, like Leviathan, in the ocean of the Bodleian library : and it is certainly not going too far to say, that no man ever entered those sacred galleries so well qualified to make a general use of their riches. Of his classical accomplishments it were needless to speak. Mathematics, it is thought, by Dr. Monk, that he studied at Cambridge ; and it is cer- tain that, in Dean Stillingfleet' s family, he had, by a most laborious process of study, made himself an eminent master of the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac. Dealing much in cattle, a man's talk is of oxen ; and living in this El Dorado of books, it was natural that a man should think of writing one. Golden schemes floated in Bentley's mind ; for he was a golden scholar, and these were the golden hours of his early man- hood. Amongst other works, he projected at this period an entire edition of the Fragments of the Greek Poets, and also a Corpus of the Greek Lexicographers (Hesychius, Suidas, Pollux, &c.). To the irreparable loss of Grecian literature, neither scheme was accom- plished. Already in his Epist. ad Mill, he speaks of the first as abandoned " Sed hcecfuerunt" is the emphatic expression. It was in the fates that Bentley's maiden performance as an author should be in other and more obscure society. Amongst the manuscript riches of the Bodleian there was a copy the one sole * copy in this * By the way, it should be borne in mind, that, over and above the transla- 79 RICHARD BENTLh Y. world of a certain old Chronicler, about whose very name there has been a considerable amount of learned dust kicked up. Properly speaking, he ought to be called Joannes Malelas Antiochenus : but, if you are not particular about your Greek, you may call him Afalela, without an s. This old gentleman, a fellow of infinite dul- ness, wrote a Chronicle beginning with Adam, and coming down to the 35th year of Justinian. And here lies the necessity of calling him either Malela or Malelas; for, strange to say, as there were two Alexander Cunninghams, who at this very time were going about the world mere echoes or mocking-birds of each other, so there were two Johns, both of Antioch, both Chroniclers, both asses, (no dis- tinction there,) and both choosing to start from Adam. The pub- lication of this Chronicle had been twice meditated before, but interrupted by accidents. At length, in 1690, it was resumed under the superintendence of Mill, who claimed from Bentley a promise he had made to throw together any notes which might occur to him upon the proof-sheets, as they came reeking from the press. These notes took the shape of an Efiistola ad Millium : and thus the worthy old jackass of Antioch had the honour of coming forth to Bentley upon topics* either closely connected with the work, or remotely suggested by it. tions which yet survive into the Arabic, (a resource obviously of little hope, except in the case of scientific books,) there are in all three avenues by which we may have a chance for recovering any of the lost classics : ist, the Palimp- sests, as in repeated instances of late in the Ambrosian Library ; 2d, The Pompeii MSS. (for the sensible way of dealing with which, see a letter of Lord Holland to Dr. Parr) ; and 3d, The great chests of Greek MSS. in the Sultan's Library at Constantinople, packed up ever since the triumph of the Crescent in 1543. * Amongst these is the name Malelas, which Hody disputed, contending for Malela. Bentley replies by arguing the case on two assumptions : ist, That the names were Greek. Here the sum of his pleading is this that natu- rally the Latin language had no such termination as that of as with a pari- syllabic genitive ; that, in compliance with this original structure, all Greek names in as, were in early Latin rendered a ; and that this conformity to the popular idiom might be looked for the more certainly, as the situation of the usage was one which appealed to the populace : whence it is that, in the comic drama of Rome, we meet with Phaedria, Chseria, Sosia, &c. to so great an extent. But in proportion as literature prevailed, a practice arose of giving to Greek names in as their real Greek termination, without any Roman deflexion. Hence even Varro, though somewhat of an antiquarian bigot in old Romanisms, has Archytas, Athenagoras, &c. ; and Cicero is overrun with such names. One exception, however, in even Cicero's usage, is alleged upon the authority of Quintilian, viz. Hermagora. " Ego vero," says Bentley, " Ciceronem ita scripsisse ne ipsi quidem Ciceroni affirmanti crediderim." And certainly the dismal hiatus of Hermagora inventor, makes it probable that Cicero wrote 80 RICHARD BENTLEY. Here, by the way, we have a crow to pluck with Dr. Monk. How he came to make such a mistake we know not ; prima facie, ona would suppose he had not read the work. But this is impossible, for he states very well the substance of the most important dis- cussions in the epistle : yet certainly in the following sentence he prefers a charg-e against Bentley, which is altogether without foun- dation : "In addressing his learned correspondent, "says Dr. Monk, " he is not satisfied with marking their intimacy by the terms 0i'\jj *0aArj, Milli jucundissime suavissime, &c. ; but in one place he accosts him & 'luawiSiov an indecorum which neither the familiarity of friendship, nor the license of a dead language, can justify towards the dignified head of a house." Certainly, Dr. Monk aliud agebat when he wrote this censure, which at any rate from him, who else- where attempts to cheapen the dignity of academic heads, would come with a peculiar want of grace. The case is this : From a long digression, which Bentley confesses to be too discursive, he suddenly recalls himself to the old Chronicler Sed ad A ntiochensem redeo (p. 486 of Lennep'srepublication); and then, upon an occasion of an allusion to Euripides, he goes on to expose some laughable blunders of Malelas : one of these is worth mentioning; the passage, "HKOVITIV (is frjv Kvaveav Sf/ttTrXrryaSaH' Ile'rpai' vyoi'TfS * it seems, the old boy had so construed, as to make tcvavtav not a genitive but an accusative, and thus made a present to geography of the yet undiscovered country of the Cyanean land. Upon this, and a previous discovery of a ' ' Scythian f Aulis," by the sharp- Hermagoras. Bentley grants, however, that Cicero wrote Phania. Appii libertus; but why ? Because names of slaves, being household words, natu- rally followed the mother idiom, and not the learned idiom of books. 2dly, . However, let it be assumed, that the name is not Greek, but Barbarous, like that of 6 Zifftpa in the Old Test., 6 Zapb in the New. Bentley argues the case on this footing. But this, says he, I marvel at, " quod, ut de Graeco nomine cognitio habeatur, ad barbaras nationes provocant " (that, although the judicial investigation we are holding concerns a Greek name, yet the appeal is made to barbarians.') "However, no matter," says he, "as they choose to take the Huns for umpires, to the Huns we will go." And he then shows that the name of Attila became in Greek always 6 Amyas. Yet here again he makes a subtle distinction. The ancient patriarchal names of the Old Test, as Iaxta0, Iwrr^, ZaouA, &c., are retained in Greek unmodified. But the very same names, borne by modern persons, become Iaa>8oy, Itaayfyos, ZaoJiAos, &c. Upon that analogy, also, semi-barbarous names in a, as Abdalla, Mustapha, Juba, &c., which, had they been ancient, would have re. tained their final a, being modern, all become as in Greek. Such is the out. line of the refinements in this piece of learned special pleading, which is universally allowed to have settled the question. * An emendation of Bentley's for tlXarr; QvyovTf*. + This blunder of Jack's grew out of the confusion between the two Iphi- genias of Euripides that in Aulis. and in Tauris. Jack was thinking of Tauris, no doubt. Si RICHARD BENTLEY. sighted man of Antioch, Bentley makes himself merry; rates the geographers for their oversights ; and clapping old Malelas on the back, he thus apostrophizes him " Euge vero, &> 'IwavmtioV, pro- fecto aptus natus es ad omnia abdita et retrusa contemplanda!" (Well done, Johnny ! you are the boy for seeing through a mill- stone !) Manifestly, then, the I. M. that he is here addressing is not his correspondent John Mill, but the subject of his review, John Malelas, the absurd old jackass of Antioch. This passage, there- fore, in mere justice, Dr. Monk will cancel in his next edition : in fact, we cannot conceive how such a mistake has arisen with a man of his learning. We must also very frankly state our disagreement with Dr. Monk upon the style (meaning the temper) of this epistle. Pie charges it with " flippancy," and thinks some of the expressions "boastful." We have lately read it carefully with a view to these censures ; and we cannot find any foundation for them in a single instance. Se faire valoir is peculiarly the right of a young man on making his debut. The mere history of the case obliges Bentley sometimes to make known the failure of Isaac Casaubon, suppose of Vossius, or of Gataker, when he had himself brilliantly succeeded : and supposing that the first of these heroes had declared a corruption desperate which Bentley restored with two strokes of his pen, was it altogether his duty to dissemble his exultation ? Mere criticism, and a page covered with Greek, do not of themselves proclaim the pretensions of a scholar. It was almost necessary for Bentley to settle his own rank, by bringing himself into collision with the Scaligers, with Sal- masius, and Pearson. Now, had this been done with irreverence towards those great men, we should have been little disposed to say a word in his behalf. But far otherwise. In some passage or other, he speaks of all the great critics with filial duty. Erravit in re levi, says he of one, gravioribus opinor studiis intentus, vir supra cemulationem nostrum longissime positus. Of Pearson, in like manner, at the very moment of correcting him, he said on another occasion, that the very dust of his writings was gold. ^Emilius Portus, indeed, he calls homi?iumfutilissimus, justly incensed with him for having misled a crowd of great writers in point of chronology. But speaking of himself, he says Nos pusilli hormmculi ; and that is always his language when obliged to stand forward as an oppo- nent of those by whose labours he had grown wise. On this work, as Bentley's first, and that which immediately made him known to all Europe, we have spent rather more words than we shall be able to do on the rest. In dismissing it, however, we can- not but express a hope, that some future editor will republish this and the other critical essays of Bentley, with the proper accuracy and beauty : in which case, without at all disturbing the present continuity of the text, it will be easy, by marginal figures and titles, to point out the true divisions and subdivisions of this elaborate epistle ; for want of which it is at present troublesome to read. It sometimes happens to men of extraordinary attainments, that O2 RICHARD BENTLEY. they are widely talked of before they come forward on the public arena. Much " buz " is afloat about them in private circles : and as, in such cases, many are always ready to aid the marvellous, a small minority are sure, on the other hand, to affect the sceptical. In so critical a state of general expectation, a first appearance is everything. If this is likely to be really splendid, it is a mistaken policy which would deprecate the raising of vast expectations. On the contrary, they are of great service, pushed even to the verge of extravagance, and make people imagine the splendour of the actual success even greater than it was. Many a man is read by the light of his previous reputation. Such a result happened to Bentley. Unfathered rumours had been wandering through "the circles," about an astonishing chaplain of the Bishop of Worcester : and so great was the contrast of power and perfect ease in his late work, that his trumpeters and heralds were now thought to have made proclamation too faintly. This state of public opinion was soon indicated to Bentley by a distinction which he always looked upon as the most flattering in his long life. Robert Boyle had died on the last day but one of the year 1691. By his will this eminent Christian left an annual stipend of 50/. for the foundation of a lecture in defence of religion against infidels. The appointment to this lectureship has always been regarded as a mark of honour : a fortiori, then, the first appointment. That there could have been little hesi- tation in the choice, is evident; for, on the ijth of February, 169::, Bentley was nominated to this office. The lectures which he preached in the discharge of his duty, are deservedly valued pre- senting as much, as various, and as profound philosophy as perhaps was compatible with the popular treatment of the subject. Bentley flattered himself that, after this assault, the atheists "were silent, and sheltered themselves under deism." But this was imaginary. Spinosa, in particular, could not have had that influence which Bentley, Sam. Clarke, and so many others have fancied: for B. D. S. Opera Posthuma, 1677, where only his philosophical system can be found, has always been a very rare book : * and it was never reprinted until Professor Paulus, in our own days, published a com- plete edition of Spinosa' s works. Bayle, it is true, gave some account of the philosophy, but a most absurd, and besides a con- temptuous one. In fact, Bayle spite of the esteem in which his acuteness was held by Warburton, and even by Leibnitz must be now classed as a spirited litterateur rather than philosopher. Hobbists, however, we may believe Bentley, that there were in abundance : but they were a weak cattle ; and on Bentley' s par- ticular line of argument, even their master hardly knew his own mind. The lectures answered their end. They strengthened the public * How rare is evident from this, that at a great book sale in London, which had congregated all the Fancy, on a copy occurring, not one of the company but ourself knew what the mystica] title -page meant. 83 RICHARD BENTLEY. opinion of Bentley's talent, and exhibited him in a character more intimately connected with his sacred calling. Once only they were attacked from a quarter of authority. Dr. Monk, it appears to us, undervalues the force of the attack, and, perhaps, unduly, ascribes it to an impulse of party zeal. Keill, a Scotchman of talent, whose excellent lectures on Natural Philosophy are still quoted as a text- book in Germany, was led, (and our impression is led naturally,) in his examination of Burnet's Theory of the Earth, to notice two errors of Bentley, one of which, as Dr. Monk puts it more on the footing of a verbal ambiguity than our impression of it would have warranted, we will not insist on. The other, unless our memory greatly deceives us, was this : Bentley, having heard that the moon always presents the same face to our earth, inferred, from that fact, that she had no revolution upon her own axis ; upon which, Keill told him, that the fact he stated was a ground for the very opposite inference ; since the effect of the moon's motion about the earth to bring a different face before us could not be counteracted but by a coincident revolution on her own axis. Keill was a coarse man, who called a spade a spade, as was afterwards sufficiently shown in his almost brutal treatment of Leibnitz, on behalf of his friend Sir Isaac Newton. And it is possible, undoubtedly, that being a Pro- fessor at Oxford, he might have conceived some personal pique to Bentley, while resident in that university. But we really see no reason for ascribing to any ungenerous motive a criticism, which, though peevishly worded, was certainly called for by the conspicuous situation of the error which it exposed. In this year, Bentley was appointed a Prebendary at Worcester, and, in April, 1694, Keeper of all the King's Libraries. During the same year, he was a second time summoned to preach the Boyle Lecture ; and in the following year was made one of the Chaplains in ordinary to the King. Early in the year 1696, Bentley quitted the town-house of the Bishop of Worcester, and commenced housekeeping in his own lodgings as Royal Librarian. These lodgings, had he reaped nothing else from his office, were, to him, as a resident in London, a royal preferment. They were in St. James's Palace, adjoining to those of the Princess (afterwards Queen) Anne, and looked into the Park. In this year, Bentley took the degree of Doctor of Divinity; and somewhere about the same time appeared the edition of Calli- machus, by his friend Grsevius, with contributions from himself, of memorable splendour. In 1697 commenced, on Bentley's part, that famous controversy about the Epistles of Phalaris, which has conferred immortality on his name. The circumstances in which it originated are briefly these: The well-known dispute in France, upon the intellectual pretensions in a comparison with each other of the Ancients and Moderns, had been transferred to England by Sir William Temple. This writer, just then at the height of his popularity, had declared for the ancients with more elegance than weight of matter ; and, by RICHARD BENTLEY. way of fortifying his judgment, had alleged the Epistles of Phalaris and the Fables of ^Esop as proofs that the oldest parts of literature are also the best. Sir William was aware that both works had been challenged as forgeries. However, the suspicions of scholars were as yet unmatured ; and, in a matter of taste, which was the present shape of the question, Sir William Temple's opinion seemed entitled to some consideration. Accordingly, the Honourable Charles Boyle, nephew to the illustrious philosopher of that name, who was at tlvs time pursuing his studies at Christ Church in Oxford, and, upon the suggestion of Aldrich, the head of that College, had resolved to undertake an edition of some Greek book, as an academic exercise, was directed to Phalaris in particular, by this recent opinion of a friend, to whom he looked up with filial confidence and veneration. To insure as much perfection to his edition as was easily within his reach, Boyle directed Bennet, his London publisher, to procure a collation of MS. in the King's Library. This brought on an applica- tion to Bentley, who had just then received his appointment as Librarian ; and his behaviour on this occasion, scandalously mis- represented to Mr. Boyle, furnished the first ground of offence to Boyle. How long a calumny can keep its ground, after the fullest refutation, appears from the Preface to Lennep's Latin version of Bentley's Dissertation, (edit, of 1/81,) where, in giving a brief history of the transaction, the writer says " Bentleius tergiversari primum ; et aegre quod saepius efflagitatum erat concedere ; " and again, " ecce subito Bentleius iter parans Londino, maxima ope contendere a Becneto ut codex ille statim redderetur." All this is false. Let us here anticipate the facts as they came out on both sides some years after. Bentley, by the plainest statements, has made it evident that he gave every facility for using the MS. ; that he re- claimed it only when his own necessary absence from London made it impossible to do otherwise ; that this necessity was foreseen and notified at the time of lending it ; and that, even on the last day of the term prefixed for the use of the MS., sufficient time for dispatch- ing the business twice over* was good-naturedly granted by Bentley, after his first summons had been made in vain. These facts are established. That he lent the MS. under no sort of necessity to do so, nay, at some risk to himself, is admitted by * Bentley ascertained, by an experiment upon one-third of the MS., that, without any extraordinary diligence, it could be collated throughout in a space of four hours. Now, his first summons was at noon, but he indulgently ex- tended the term to "candle-light." How soon was that ? The day has since been ascertained to be Saturday, May 23. But as the year was upwards of half a century before the English reformation of the calendar, that day would correspond to the 2nd of June at present. Being, therefore, within thre* weeks of the longest day, we may assume, that, in the latitude of London, " candle-light " could not be understood as eaiiier than 9 o'clock, P.M. Allow- ing the collator, therefore, one hour for any other sort of collation, he had just double the time requisite for the collation of the MS. 85 RICHARD BENTLEY. bennet ; that he reclaimed it, under the highest necessity to do so, is not denied by anybody. At what point of the transaction is it, then, that the parties differ ? Simply as to the delay in lending, and on the matter of giving notice, that on such a day it would be resumed. A little procrastination in lending, and forgetting to give notice, would not have justified a public stigma, had either one or the other been truly imputed to Bentley. But both imputations he solemnly denied. It is painful that the stress of any case should rest upon a simple comparison of veracity between two men ; yet as Mr. Bennet has made this inevitable, let us state the grounds of comparison between himself and Dr. Bentley. In external re- spectability there was, in the first place, a much greater interval between* them than the same stations would imply at this day. Dr. Bentley, in the next place, was never publicly convicted of a falsehood ; whereas Bennet was, in this case at any rate, guilty of one. Thirdly, whilst the Doctor had no interest at stake which re- quired the protection of a falsehood, (since, without a falsehood, he was clear of the discourtesy charged upon him,) Bennet had the strongest : he had originally brought forward a particular statement, in a private letter, as a cloak for his own and his collator's indolence, without any expectation that it would lead to public consequences ; but now, what he had begun in policy, he clung to from dire neces- sity ; since, unless he could succeed in fastening some charge of this nature upon Dr. Bentley, his own excuse was made void ; his word of honour was forfeited ; and, from the precipitate attack on Bentley, into which he had misled his patron, all colour of propriety vanished at once. However, Bennet's private account was, as yet, uncontradicted ; and, on the faith of that, Boyle acquainted the public, in the Preface to his edition of Phalaris, that, up to the 4Oth Letter, he had taken care to have the book collated with the King's MS. ; but that, beyond that\he librarian had denied him the use of it, agreeably to his peculiar spirit of courtesy. Upon the very first publication of the Book, Bentley saw it, and immediately wrote to Mr. Boyle, ex- plaining the matter in a polite and satisfactory manner. Boyle replied in gentlemanly terms, but did not give him that substantial redress, which Bentley had reason to expect, of cancelling the leaf which contained *he affront. No further steps were taken on either * No two classes have, within the last century, so much advanced in social consideration as Bankers and Booksellers, (meaning Publishers). The bankers of that day were merely goldsmiths ; whence the phrase, hardly yet obsolete among elderly people, of " banker*' shops." Booksellers, again, having rarely stood forward, until Pope's time, in the character of enlightened co-operators with literary men, naturally took their place amongst the mechanical agents of the press. At present, an influential publisher belongs to a profession, which it belongs to himself to render dignified. In Bennet's time, he had not ceased to be (what a mere seller of books still is) a tradesman. After all, Gibson, the collator, has confessed in Bentley's favour. RICHARD BENTLEY. side for some time ; nor does it certainly appear that any would have been taken, but for an accidental interference of a third party. This was Wotton, Bentley's college friend. His book on Ancient and Modern Learning, originally published in 1694, and called out by Sir William Temple's Essay on the same subject, was now (1697) going into a second edition ; and as a natural means of increasing its interest, he claimed of Bentley an old promise to write a paper exposing the spurious pretensions of Phalaris and ^Esop. This pro- mise had been made before the appearance of Mr. Boyle's book, and evidently had a reference to Sir William Temple's strange judg- ment upon those authors. But, as matters had altered since then, Bentley endeavoured to evade a task which would oblige him to take a severe notice of Mr. Boyle's incivility and injustice. Wotton, however, held him to his engagement, and Bentley (fierhafis re- luctantly) consented. Here again the foreign editor of Lennep is too rash : he says of Bentley, that " cupide occasionem amplexus est." But we are not to suppose that the sincerity with which a man declines a fierce dispute, is always in an inverse ratio to the energy with which he may afterwards pursue it. Many a man shrinks with all his heart from a quarrel, for the very reason that he feels too sensibly how surely it will rouse him to a painful activity, if he should once embark in it, and an irritation fatal to his peace. In the fol- lowing year, Boyle, or the Christ-Church faction who used his name, replied at length. And certainly a more amusing* book, upon a subject so unpromising, has rarely been written. In particular, we agree with Dr. Monk, that few happier efforts of pleasantry exist, than that piece of raillery upon Bentley, where his arguments for the spuriousness of Phalaris are turned against himself, some critic of a future age being supposed to argue for the spuriousness of the Doctor's dissertation, as a work obviously impossible to have pro- ceeded from a great scholar and a person of dignified station. As to learning, certainly the joint-stock of the company made but a poor exchequer for defraying a war upon Bentley ; yet it was cre- ditable to wits and men of fashion : and in one point of view it was most happily balanced, for it was just shallow enough to prevent them from detecting their own blunders ; yet, on the other hand, deep enough to give them that colourable show of being sometimes in the right, which was indispensable for drawing out Bentley 's knowledge. Had it been a little deeper, they would have forborne their attack on Bentley : had it been a little shallower, Bentley could have had no motive for replying to them. Partly from the real merit * Hardly less amusing is \hzfirst Dissertation of Bentley, as published in the second edition of Wotton, (but in the third edition, 1705, and all subsequent ones, omitted.) This, where the heads only of the arguments are touched, without that elaborate array of learning which was afterwards found necessary, and where the whole is treated with irresistible fun and merriment, is a most captivating piece of criticism. A general reader, therefore, who is careless of the minute learning of the case, should read merely this first Dissertatiop? and Boyle's answer. 7 87 RICHARD BENTLEY. of the book in those points which the public could best appreciate, partly from the extensive and brilliant connections of the writers, it was eagerly read a second edition was immediately demanded, and Bentley was supposed to have been defeated. He, meantime, "hushed in grim repose," was couchant ; and, with his eyes upon the gambols of his victims, was settling himself at leisure for his fatal spring. Spite of the public applauses, some ominous mis- givings were muttered : one or two of the Boyle party began to "funk ;" they augured no good from the dead silence of Bentley; and Boyle, in particular, who was now in Ireland, sent to Atterbury some corrections furnished by his earliest tutor, Gale, the Dean of York ; an intimation of error, which Atterbury, who had been a chief contributor to the book, deeply resented. But errors, or corrections, were now alike past notice. Pelides was now armed for the field : the signal was given ; and at length, with the fullest benefit of final revision, which left no room for friend or foe to point out a flaw, that immortal Dissertation (immortalis ista Dissertatio, to speak the words of Person) descended like a thunderbolt upon the enemy, "And in one night The trumpets silenced, and the plumes laid low." In 1699, being then in his thirty-eighth year, Bentley received that main preferment which was at once his reward and his scourge for the rest of his life. At the latter end of that year, Dr. J. Montague was transferred (we cannot say, with Dr. Monk, promoted) from the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, to the Deanery of Dur- ham. Learning, services to religion, and (according to one rather scandalous tradition*) the firmness which he had manifested in governing the family of Bishop Stillingfleet, all conspired to point out Bentley as a person pre-eminently eligible to this station. Ac- cordingly, he received the appointment; and on the first day of * The story is this : Bishop Stillingfleet is reported to have said, " We must send Bentley to rule the turbulent Fellows of Trinity College. If any- body can do it, he is the person ; for I am sure that he has ruled my family ever since he entered it." Upon this Dr. Monk argues, that the anecdote is doubly refuted ; first, by the fact that Stillingfleet had been some time dead when the vacancy occurred ; secondly, because the Fellows had not been turbulent before Bentley's accession to the headship. Now, a little considera- tion will show, that the anecdote may be substantially true for all that, and probably was so (since it rests on too pointed and circumstantial an allusion to have been invented). Full two years before Bentley's instalment, it appears that a vacancy had been anticipated, and a canvass made, upon the rumoured appointment of Dr. Montague to the see of Worcester. That was the occa- sion, no doubt, of Stillingfleet's remark. Then, as to the word turbulent, besides that allowance must be made for the laxity of an oral story, the Fellows might be riotous in another sense than that of resisting the master's authority ; and throughout Dr. Montague's time, who perhaps was as riotous as they, it is pretty certain that they were so. RICHARD BENTLEY. February, 1700, he was solemnly installed in his office. It is evident that he rated its value somewhat differently * from Dr. Monk ; for he refused, in after years, to exchange it for the poor Bishopric of Bristol ; and, being asked by the Minister what preferment he would consider worth his acceptance, wisely replied, that which would leave him no reason to wish for a removal. This appointment was made under the unanimous recommendation of an Episcopal Commission, to whom King William, better fitted for a guard-room than the civil duties of the cabinet, had delegated the disposal of all church preferment within the gift of the crown. By the public it could not but have been approved ; but it was un- popular in the college, composed chiefly of indolent sots, who were not likely to anticipate with pleasure the disadvantageous terms on which they would stand with so accomplished a head. And our own conviction is, that the appointment would hardly have been carried, * Dr. Monk's undervaluation of college headships is so pointedly affected, and really so extravagant, that we cannot but suspect some personal pique or jealousy, how caused we pretend not to guess, as the foundation of it. Every- where he speaks of deaneries as of course superior in dignity to headships, forgetting that he himself has occasion to mention one dean, (a dean of York,) who looked to the mastership of Trinity as an object of ambition. And in one place he takes a flight beyond our comprehension : for, according to him, in a dispute between the head of a college and an archbishop, the parties stand " upon such unequal ground," that it is matter of astonishment to find it lasting beyond a moment. How ! is it in England that we hear such language, and in 1830 ? Why, but the other day, we had the edifying spec- tacle of an archbishop descending to a newspaper altercation with a mob orator, on the subject of his own money concerns ! There was unequal ground. But, with justice on his side, we really see nothing alarming in an archdeacon and a head of a college maintaining a controversial correspond- ence with a prince of the blood. A Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, presumptuous in disputing with an archbishop on a matter of literature and academic interest ! ! What false impressions would a foreigner carry away on the relations of English dignities from Dr. Monk's book ! The fact is, that, in popular consideration, a head of one of the smaller colleges, in either Cam- bridge or Oxford, is equal at the least to a dean ; and the head of Christ Church in Oxford, or Trinity in Cambridge, (perhaps some of the other colleges in both,) and the heads of the single colleges, which constitute the whole university in Dublin, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, are equal to bishops. We appeal to Dr. Monk himself, to say candidly which is the greater man in Oxford the Dean of Christ Church, or the Bishop of Oxford ? But Oxford is a poor bishopric. True ; and that introduces a fresh ground of comparison. As stations of profit, sometimes the headships have the advantage (united, as they often are, with complementary livings,) sometimes the bishoprics. As stations of comfort, however, they stand in no comparison. A col- lege head has the most delightful sinecure in the world; whereas bishop- rics, by those who are determined to do the work of them, are found to be the most laborious situations in the whole establishment. But here there are secrets. See the very opposite reports, for instance, of the see of Worcester, when held by bishops of different character. 7-2 89 RICHARD BENTLEY. had it not been backed by the influence of the Princess Anne. Since the death of Queen Mary, whose rancorous quarrel with her sister had never been settled, the natural influence of the Princess had been allowed to revive. That excellent lady regarded with par- ticular favour the learned champion of Christianity; and had de- signed that her son, the Duke of Gloucester, should be sent, at a proper age, to the college over which so meritorious a person pre- sided. In this scheme so much stress was laid on the personal co-operation of Bentley, that by an arrangement unheard of in English universities, his Royal Highness was to have resided under the master's roof. But these counsels were entirely defeated by the hand of Providence, which then lay heavy upon that illustrious house : in six months after Bentley's installation, the young prince wac summoned to the same premature death which had carried ofl all the children of his parents. Finding himself now able to offer a suitable establishment to the woman of his heart, on the 4th of January, 1701, Bentley married Mrs. (or, in modern language, Miss) Joanna Bernard, daughter ot Sir John Bernard of Brampton, in the county of Huntingdon. This lady, whom he had been accustomed to meet in the family of Bishop Stillingfleet, brought him four children, two daughters and two sons, of whom one died in infancy. He found her a most faithful com- panion through the storms of his after life ; and as her family connec- tions were of considerable distinction, and two years afterwards emerged into a blaze of court favour, she had the happiness of giving a powerful assistance to her husband at a moment of imminent danger. There is a story current, that during his courtship Bentley had nearly forfeited her favour by speaking sceptically of the Book of Daniel a story resting, it seems, on the slight authority of "wicked* Will Whiston," and which, as Dr. Monk observes, is " exceedingly improbable." About five months after his marriage, he was collated to the Arch- * This epithet, bestowed playfully upon Whiston by Swift, in ridicule of his sanctimony, would almost seem to have been seriously justified by his gene- ral bad faith in scattering injurious anecdotes about everybody who refused to fall in with his follies. His excuse lies in the extreme weakness of his brain. Ihink of a man, who had brilliant preferment within his reach, dragging his poor wife and daughter for half a century through the very mire of despon- dency and destitution, because he disapproved of Athanasius, or because the Shepherd of Hermas was not sufficiently esteemed by the Church of England ! Unhappy is that family over which a fool presides. The secret of all Whiston's lunacies may be found in that sentence of his Autobiography, where he be- trays the fact of his liability, from youth upwards, to flatulency. What he mistook for conscience was flatulence, which others (it is well known) have mistaken for inspiration. This was his original misfortune : his second was, that he lived before the age of powerful drastic journals. Had he been con- temporary with Christopher Noith, the knout would have brought him to his senses, and extorted the gratitude of Mrs. Whiston and her children. 90 RICHARD BENTLEY. deaconry of Ely, which brought with it not only honour, but two church livings. After this, Dr. Bentley never actively solicited any further prefer- ment, except once. This was in 1717, when the Regius Professorship of Divinity, by far the richest in Europe, became vacant by the death of Dr. James. It was held that Bentley was ineligible as head of Trinity ; for it might have happened, by the letter of the statutes, that he himself, in one character, would become judge of his own de- linquencies in the other. However, there was at least one precedent in his favour ; and as the real scruples of his opponents grew out of anything but principle, whilst his very enemies could not deny that his qualifications for the place were unrivalled, it is agreeable to record, that the intrigues for defeating him were met and baffled by far abler intrigues of his own ; and, on the 2d of May, 1718, he was installed to this most lucrative office. Referring to the earlier years of his connection with Trinity Col- lege, we may characterize his conduct generally as one continued series of munificent patronage to literature, beneficial reforms in college usages and discipline, many of which are still retained at this day with gratitude, and, finally, by the most splendid and ex- tensive improvements of the college buildings. His acts of the first class were probably contemplated by the Fellows with indifference ; but those of the second, as cutting off abuses from which they had a personal benefit, or as carried with too high a hand, and by means not always statutable, armed the passions of a large majority against him, whilst the continued drain upon their purses for public objects, which, it must be confessed, was in some instances immoderately lavish, sharpened the excitement against him by the irritation of immediate self-interest. Hence arose a faction so strongly organ- ized for the purpose of thwarting him in future, and of punishing him for the past, as certainly no delinquencies of the most eminent state criminal have ever yet called forth in any nation. Bentley, however, resisted with one hand, and continued to offend with the other. The contest soon became a judicial one ; and as it was the most memorable one in every respect that England has ever wit- nessed for duration, and the inexhaustible resources of the person whose interest was chiefly at stake upon its issue we shall give a faithful abstract of all its revolutions, condensed from many scores of pages in Dr. Monk's quarto. In any life of Bentley, this affair must occupy a foremost place ; and, considering the extreme in- tricacy of Dr. Monk's account, and the extreme falsehood of that in all former biographies, we hope to earn the thanks of our readers by the closeness of our analysis. On the 2ist of December, 1709, the feuds of Trinity College, which had been long ripening to a crisis, were first brought under the eye of a competent manager. On that day, Mr. Edmund Miller, a Fellow of Trinity, coming on a Christmas visit to his old friends, happened to enter the College at the very moment when a fresh encroachment of Dr. Bentley 's had flung the whole society into 9' RICHARD BENTLEY. agitation. To Miller, as a lawyer and a Fellow, their grievances were submitted by the College ; and as he lost no time in avowing himself their champion, and in very insolent terms, Dr. Bentley lost as little in forcibly dispossessing him of his Fellowship an act of violence which was peculiarly mistimed ; for it did not lessen Miller's power, stimulated his zeal, and added one more to the colourable grounds of complaint. Miller's name was struck off the College boards on the 1 8th of January ; on the igth, it was restored by the Vice-master and some senior Fellows ; and on the 24th, it was again struck off by Bentley. Matters, it may be supposed, were now coming to extremities ; and about this time it was that Bentley is said to have exclaimed" Henceforward, farewell peace to Trinity College!" For all important disputes which can arise in the different colleges (about forty-five in number) which compose the English universities, the final appeal lies to the Visitor of each college. But in the present case a previous question arose, "Who was the visitor?" the Crown, or the Bishop of Ely? Two separate codes of statutes, each in force, held a language on this point inconsistent with each other ; and the latter code was even inconsistent with itself However, as it happened that the particular statute which met the present case spoke unequivocally of the Bishop as visitor, it was resolved to abide by that assumption. And therefore, after communicating with the Bishop, a formal petition was addressed to his lordship, and on the 6th of February, 1710, signed by the Vice-master and twenty-nine Fellows. The Bishop, having received the petition without delay, made as little in sending Bentley a copy of it. And to this Bentley replied in a printed letter to his lordship. The two general heads, under which the charges against Bentley had been gathered, were dilapidation of the College funds, and violation of the statutes. These charges in the present letter are met circumstantially ; and in particular on that principal attempt of Bentley 's to effect a new and different distribution of the College income, which had in fact fur- nished the determining motive to the judicial prosecution of the quarrel, Dr. Monk admits that he makes out a very powerful case. Mortified vanity and disappointed self-interest, Bentley describes as the ruling impulses of his enemies. "Had I," says he, "herded and sotted with them : had I suffered them to play their cheats in their several offices, I might have done what I would ; I might have devoured and destroyed the College, and yet come away with their applauses for a great and good master." Bentley, in fact, was a most unpopular head succeeding to a very popular one. From whatsoever motive, he had not courted the society of his Fellows : that of itself was a thing that could not be forgiven ; and perhaps it is true that from pure mortified amour $ropre, united with those baser impulses which Bentley points out, fastening upon such occa- sions as the rashness of Bentley too readily supplied, the prosecution against him did radically take its rise. What was the prevailing impression left by Bentley 's pamphlet 92 RICHARD BENTLEY. we do not learn. However, as it was well understood to be really his, it did not fail to provoke numerous answers ; amongst which Mr. Miller's was eminent for the closeness of its legal arguments, and Blomer's for wit and caustic personality. After the petition, however, with the exception of some attempts on Bentley's side to disunite his enemies by holding out temptations which, as often as they failed, were immediately carried to account by the opposite faction as meditated breaches of the statute it does not appear that either side made any movement until the nth July, 1710, when the charges against Bentley were finally digested into fifty-four separate articles. These, having first been presented to the Bishop of Ely, were published in the shape of a pamphlet supported by such extracts from the statutes as seemed necessary to illustrate or substantiate the charges. The Bishop's first step was to send a copy of the articles to Bentley, who on his part appears "to have taken no notice of them whatever." This, be it observed, for many a good year continued to be a right-hand mode of manceuvring with Bentley : unless stirred up by a very long pole, he would not roar for any man. Meantime in this year, 1710, had occurred that most memorable of all intrigues, which, out of no deeper root than the slippery tricks of a waiting- woman, had overset the policy of Europe. The Whigs were kicked out ; the Tories were kicked in ; so far the game went just the wrong way for Bentley, his name being always for fancj borne on the Whig lists but that was a trifle. All the public dis- advantages of his party being ousted were compensated a thousand times over by the private benefit, that his wife happened to be related in blood to Lord Bolingbroke, (then Mr. Secretary St. John,) and also to Mr. Masham, husband of the favourite. " On this hint" he moved. By one or both of these channels he reached the ear of Mr. Harley, the Lord Treasurer. The Queen was already won over to his cause ; for she had been acquainted of old with the Doctor ; and Mrs. Bentley's court connections took care that the scandalous lives of some amongst Bentley's opponents should lose nothing in the telling. The Doctor was "invited" by the Prime Minister to sketch a scheme of conciliation ; and in obedience he drew up a firojet of a royal letter, which has since been found amongst the Harleian papers. Let it not offend the reader to hear, that in this letter each separate point in dispute was settled in favour of the Doctor himself. Reasonable as that was, however, Diis aliter visum est : the Minister was far too tortuous himself to approve of such very plain dealing. Indeed, as a lesson upon human nature, the " Royal Letter " must have been a perfect curiosity : for by way of applying a remedy to the Master's notorious infirmity of excessive indulgence and lax discipline, the letter concluded with strictly enjoining him "to chastise all license among the Fellows," and promising royal countenance and co-operation in the discharge of duties so salutary. Whether this bold stroke came to the knowledge of the enemy, is 93 RICHARD BENTLEY. hard to say ; for Dr. Monk gives us reason to think that it did, and did not, in the very same sentence. Certain it is that Bentley's "^oyal Letter was forwarded to the Premier on the loth November, 1710; and on the 2ist of that month he received a peremptory summons from the Bishop of Ely to answer the articles against him by the i8th of December. At one time Bentley avowed a design of appealing to the Convocation ; but for this, when steps were taken top baffle him, he substituted a petition to the Queen, explaining that her Majesty was the true visitor of Trinity College, that the Bishop of Ely was usurping her rights, and that Richard Bentley, resisting this usurpation, threw himself on her royal protection. This petition met with immediate attention, and was referred by Mr. Secretary St. John to the Attorney and Solicitor-General, who meantime stayed the Bishop's proceedings. Five months were spent in hearing all parties ; and on May 29, 1711, the two officers made their report, which was favourable to the Bishop's claim as respected Bentley, but pointed out to the Queen and the Doctor a legal mode of resisting it. As this decision left Bentley to no more than a common remedy at law, he determined to obtain higher protection ; and on July i2th, he addressed a letter to Harley, now Earl of Oxford, congratulating him on his recent escape from assassination, stating his own situation, and concluding with the offer of dedicating to his lordship the edition which he had been long preparing of Horace. This appeal obtained for him the Minister's active pro- tection ; the Bishop was again directed to stay proceedings ; and on the 8th of December the Horace was published, with a dedication, taking due notice of Harley's honours* of descent from the Veres and Mortimers. Bentley avowed his own cha'nge of party by saying, that " Horace was not less in favour with Maecenas from his having once served under the banners of Brutus and Cassius." In 1712, afterabove seven months' deliberation, the crown lawyers made a report on the question oiWko was Visitor ? It was un- favourable to Bentley ; for though declaring the Crown visitor in a general sense, it decided, notwithstanding, for the Bishop of Ely, in the single case of delinquency charged upon the Master the very case in question ; and one of the lawyers, Sir Joseph Jekyll, declared for the Bishop unconditionally. Now, then, it was expected that the interdict on the Bishop would be immediately taken off. However., it was not ; and some speculations arose at that time upon this apparent mystery, which have since appeared to be unfounded. Mrs. Bentley's influence was supposed to be at work. But the secret history of the intrigue was very different. The truth was this: Bentley's enemies had now found their way to Lord Oxford's ear ; this should naturally have operated to Bentley's ruin ; but fortunately for him, the Treasurer viewed the whole case as one not unworthy * We know not how true Harley's pretensions in this particular may be ; certainly Lord Bolingbroke ridicules them harshly, in his Letter to Sir William Wyadham, as mere jovial inspirations from the fumes of claret. 94 RICHARD BENTLEY. of his own management upon Machiavellian principles. A com- promise of the dispute was probably what the Minister proposed ; and if that were found impossible, an evasion, by a timely removal of Bentley to some other situation. Meantime, these conciliatory intentions on the part of the Premier were suddenly defeated by a strong measure of Bentley's. In the winter of 1712, he refused his consent to the usual division of the College funds. Attacked in this quarter, the Fellows became des- perate. Miller urged an application to the Court of Queen's Bench, with a view to compel the Bishop of Ely to proceed as Visitor ; for it was believed that the royal interdict would not be recognized by that court. Upon this the Ministers shrank from the prospect of being publicly exposed as partisans in private cabals ; and Lord Bolingbroke wrote hastily to the Bishop of Ely, giving him th6 Queen's permission to proceed, "as far by law as he was em- powered." Thus warranted, the Fellows brought their cause before the Queen's Bench, and before the end of Easter term, 1713, obtained a rule for the Bishop to show cause why a mandamus should not issue to compel him to discharge his judicial functions. Two considerable advantages had been obtained by Bentley about this time ; he had been able to apply the principle of divide et im- pera in the appointment to an office of some dignity and power : a success which, though it really amounted to no more than the de- taching from his enemies of that single member who benefitted by the bribe, he had dexterously improved into a general report that the party arrayed against him were repentant and disunited. The other advantage was of still higher promise. Early in the summer of 1712, the negotiations then pending at Utrecht had furnished the Whigs with an occasion for attack upon Ministers which was ex- pected to unseat them. How sanguine were the hopes embarked upon this effort, appears by the following passage from Swift's Journal to Stella " We got a great victory last Wednesday in the House of Lords, by a majority, I think, of twenty-eight ; and the Whigs had desired their friends to bespeak places to see Lord Treasurer carried to the Tower." In this critical condition, it was important to Oxford and Bolingbroke that their security should appear to stand not merely upon Parliamentary majorities, but also on the general sense of the country. Addresses, therefore, express- ing public confidence, were particularly welcome at court ; and Bentley managed one for them at Cambridge, which he was deputed to present. But these were advantages which could avail him nothing in the new posture of the dispute. The Court of Queen's Bench had re- lieved the Bishop of Ely from the royal interdict. The Bishop lost no time in throwing Bentley upon his defence. Bentley replied laconically (June 13, 1713) ; and after some further interchange of written pleadings with his accusers, he attempted to bring the whole affair to an abrupt issue at Cambridge ; in which case, for want of mature evidec-ce, an acquittal must have followed. But the Bishop 95 RICHARD BENTLEY. was on his guard. He had engaged the late Whig Lord Chancellor (Lord Cowper), and Dr. Newman, an eminent civilian, as his assessors ; and he replied drily, that if it suited their convenience, November would be the time of trial ; but at all events, London would be the place, as best furnished for both sides with the proper legal aids. However, it happened from the political agitations of that period, that the trial did not in fact come on until May, 1714. The great hall of Ely House was the court-room, and eight of the most eminent lawyers of the day assisted on one side or other as counsel. On the charge of wasting the College goods, Bentley made out a strong case. He produced the sanction of a majority; and the funds, it appeared, had been applied, at aR./ rate, to the adorning and re- pairing the College. As to the other charge of violating the statutes; it had been Bentley 's custom to palliate his strong measures by shifting between the statute and the practice, just as either hap- pened to afford him most countenance ; but there were some acts oppressive beyond the countenance of either precedent or statute. Public opinion, and, it is supposed, the private opinion of the Bishop, had hitherto powerfully favoured Bentley, but forsook him as the trial advanced ; and tradition records, that on some remark- able expression of this, Bentley fainted away. At length, after six weeks' duration, the Visitor was satisfied that the case had been established, and ordered a sentence of ejection from the Mastership to be drawn up. This was done, and the sentence was afterwards found amongst his papers. Meantime, the good Bishop Moore had caught cold during the long sittings ; and on the 3ist of July, before any of his apparitors could execute the sentence, he was himself summoned away by a sterner apparitor, to the other world. On the day following died Queen Anne ; and in one moment the favour of Oxford and Bolingbroke had become something worse than worth- less. Thus suddenly did Bentley see both friends and foes vanish from the scene, and the fine old quarrel of Trinity College fell back to the status quo ante bellum, and was welcome to begin the world again. So passed the first five years of the feud. Fleetwood, the new Bishop of Ely, declined to act as Visitor of the Master, unless he could also visit the Fellows. Upon this significant hint, the prose- cutors of Bentley, now reduced by six who had died during the stru ggle, acceded to a compromise. Sensible, however, that so long as Miller continued to be a Fellow, the stifled fire would be con. tinually rekindled, Bentley applied the whole force of his mind to eject him. A former pretext had been quashed; he now found a new one, but all in vain. The result for the present was simply to refresh the fury of Miller. He was now become a Sergeant ; and he laid fresh articles before the Bishop, who persisted, however, in declining to act. At this point of the history, a new actor came upon the stage, who brought to the management of the quarrel, self-devotion like 96 RICHARD EN2LEY. that of a Christian martyr, and malignity like that of a Pagan per- secutor. This was Dr. Colbatch, Professor of Casuistry. As a Fellow of Trinity College, he had unavoidably taken some interest in the affair from the first ; but from duty or gratitude he had sup- ported the Master ; or had passed into a state of strict neutrality ; or, finally, had acquiesced with reluctance in the measures of Miller. At length, however, it is said that some affair of college leases, in the terms of which Bentley seemed to sacrifice reversionary to present interests, put an end to his languor ; and he parted from the Master in a state of enmity that in this life was destined to no repose. Now, then, the college was in perfect anarchy ; yet the Bishop of Ely still refused to interfere, unless ordered by the King. In this dilemma the Archbishop of Canterbury, Wake, (the same, we think, who entertained the mad project for some sort of union with the Popish or Gallican Church,) pointed out the steps to be taken, amongst which the first was a petition to the King m Council. His Grace had himself lately received an affront from Bentley, and he now declared the jolly old Doctor to be " the greatest instance of human frailty that he knew of." After some delay, caused by the weakness of the Fellows in neglecting a prudent caution of the Archbishop, the petition was called for by the council and read. Then came a scene, in the history of public business, worthy of Swift. The council remits the case to Sir Edward Northey, at that time Attorney-General; Mr. Attorney remits to the Bishop of Ely; the Bishop back again to Mr. Attorney ; and finally exit Mr. Attorney in a hurry with all the papers in a bundle ; for Sir Edward was soon dismissed from office, and carried off the quarrel in his pocket. This was in 1716; for the three years which succeeded, Colbatch allowed himself to be amused with the merest moonshine by the Chancellor, Lord Macclesfield, who secretly protected Bentley. In 1719 the petition came again to light; and being read at the council board, was referred by the Lords Justices, who represented the absent King, to a committee of the Privy Council. This resurrection from Sir Edward Northey's pocket was a sad blow to Bentley ; three years' slumber gave him hopes that the petition had been applied to some " culinary, or post-culinary pur- pose," in which case he was well assured that another of equal weight could no longer be substituted. However, the next step was 10 get it laid, and that could be done only by a compromise with Sergeant Miller. This had been attempted in vain some years back, as it happened that the Sergeant was at that time discharging his wrath in a book against the Doctor. That book, however, hurt nobody but its author ; and the Sergeant now listened favourably to an overture, which offered him a profitable retreat. He retired for ever from the contest, with the reputation of a traitor, and 528/. sterling in his purse ; he rose afterwards to be a member of Parlia- ment, and a Baron of Exchequer in Scotland, but in Cambridge he never retrieved his character. 97 RICHARD BENTLEY. For eleven years the quarrel had now raged in the courts ; for the next seven, in consequence of this compromise with Miller and the Bishop of Ely's inertia, it was conducted by the press ; and strange it is to record, that all attempts in this way of Bentley's enemies, though practised authors, recoiled heavily on themselves how many pamphlets, so many libels. Sergeant Miller had already paid dearly for his. Next came Conyers Middleton, who, in two parti- cular sentences, seemed to intimate that justice could not be had (or even a hearing) from the King in Council. In November, 1721, the King and Richard Bentley taught him in Westminster Hall to take a new view of the subject. He was compelled to ask pardon, and heavily amerced in costs. Colbatch, with this warning before his eyes, committed exactly the same fault in a more dangerous shape. He was prosecuting Bentley as the supposed author of a supposed libel on himself in the University Courts ; and in support of the University jurisdiction, he published a book called Jus Academicum. Circumstances arose, however, to convince him that more danger was at hand to himself than his antagonist, and he declared himself willing to drop the proceedings. "Are you so?" said Bentley ; ' ' but so am not I . " There is a vulgar story of a gentle Quaker, who, finding a dog in the act of robbing his larder, declined rough modes of punishment, but said he would content himself with a parting admonition ; upon which, opening the door to the dog, he cried after him "Mad dog! good people, a mad dog!" In the same fashion did Bentley, not troubling himself to institute prosecu- tions, quietly beg leave, by his counsel, to read a sentence or two from the Jus Academicum before the Judges of the King's Bench. That was enough : the Judges bounced like quicksilver, for their jurisdiction was questioned ; and Dr. Colbatch, in Mr. Thurtell's language, was "booked." The troubles he went through in skulk- ing from justice, and running after great men's intercession, would really make a novel. The following extracts from Dr. Monk's account, lift up the veil upon the wretched condition of him who is struggling in the meshes of the law. After mentioning that the two Secretaries of State had promised their intercession with the Chief Justice, the account goes on thus : " He himself preferred his application to the Lord Chancellor, now Earl of Macclesfield, who, however great might be his faults, was remarkably acces- sible and affable. He indulged Colbatch with many interviews ; and although he condemned, without reserve, the offending passages of his book, promised him his good offices with the Chief Justice, to make the consequences light. But the patronage of these great ministers was not calculated to render the unfortunate divine any real service. The distinguished judge, who presided on the bench, entertained a high notion of the dignity of his court. He had also too just an opinion of the sanctity of the judicial character, not to be jealous of the interference of persons in power with the administration of justice. He therefore heard the representations of the Cabinet ministers, withuot the lest disposition to attend to them ; insomuch that the Premier accounted for 98 RICHARD BENTLEY. his inflexibility by observing, that Pratt had got the top of his preferment, and was, therefore, refractory, and not to be governed by them." Soon after this, the publisher, Wilkin, was brought to the bar : ' ' The affrighted bookseller made an effort tn save himself, by declaring that Dr.. Colbatch was the author ; but the Chief Justice told him he might do as he pleased about giving up the author, for it should not save him from the punishment due to the offence of circulating the pamphlet ; and that his fate should be a warning to other publishers ; adding, that the court would serve the author in the same way if brought before them. Wilkin's terrors were greatly augmented, when, upon applying in the evening at the chambers of Mr. Justice Fortescue to be bailed, he was informed by his lordship that he had that day taken as bail, of the publisher of the Freeholder's Journal, (a treasonable paper,) looo/., and 500^. for each of his sureties ; and he was actually required to produce the same amount, the judge saying that his offence was as great, or greater." The danger now thickened, and Colbatch was advised to keep out of the way, and with the utmost speed to procure the King's pardon, which had been promised him by both Secretaries of State. In what manner great men kept their promises in those days, the reader shall hear : "When he renewed his application for the interference of the great Ministers in his favour, he found their tone much altered. Lord Carteret, in particular, had at first been profuse in his assurances of protection in case of the worst. Should the Doctor be sent to prison, here, said he, brandishing his pen, is Mercury's -wand which -will soon fetch him out. Now, however, his lordship's language was altered ; he advised so and so, and he would under- take that nothing should hurt him. But Dr. Friend, whose heart misgave him on this point, begged his lordship to pledge his word, that, in case of the worst, Mercury's -wand should be put in operation. Re-encouraged by a fresh promise, the delinquent, who had changed his lodgings to escape notice, now put on his gown, and appeared publicly in the streets and in West- minster Hall. But here some lawyers, upon learning the grounds of his security, told him to despair his charm, for that if he confessed himself the author of Jus Academicum t the King himself could not hinder his being sent to prison." In this trying situation, Colbatch in 1722 strengthened himself by new friends, such as the Archbishop of York, the President of the Council, and many others ; but at length he discovered " that there was a lion in his path, which intercepted all his prospects of power- ful mediation." And who should this lion be? Why, simply that friend, the Chancellor, to wit, who was the warmest of all in pro- fessions. What a picture of courts does the following passage expose ! " The minister (Lord Townshend) then sent him to wait upon the Chief fustice, with a message from himself, intimating that the Crown would inter- fere to stay proceedings, and wishing to know in what manner that object could most properly be effected. Colbatch proceeded immediately to Sir 99 RICHARD BENTLEY. John Pratt's, but found that he had just gone out ; whereupon an unfortunate idea came across his mind, that he ought to go and communicate the Min- ister's designs to the Lord Chancellor, lest he should appear to distrust the promise of the latter. This wily Lord, having learnt the state of the case, determined to counteract what was doing ; and, under pretence of smoothing the way, made the Doctor promise not to deliver Lord Townshend's message to the Chief Justice, till he had himself seen him upon the subject. Colbatch, however, presently perceiving that he had been surprised and tricked by this exalted personage, went back to Lord Townshend, and candidly told him what had passed. The Minister revived his spirits by promising to procure him the King's pardon the next day, and directed him to call upon him again in the evening at his office, when he should see and talk with the Chancellor. Going at the time appointed, he found a cabinet meeting just broken up. Lord Townshend, as soon as he saw him, ordered Lord Macclesfield to be recalled, and the two great men held a long conversation apart, in which the Chancellor contrived to intercept the favour designed for the unfortunate Colbatch. They then joined him, and Lord Macclesfield urged that nothing more was required of him but to make a reasonable apology to the court, and that he would be committed to satisfy form ; that this would be only nominal, as he would regain his liberty the next day ; and earnestly advised him to undergo this trivial ordeal. Lord Townshend then joined in the recommenda- tion, saying Do, good Doctor, do. Thus pressed, he had no alternative but to acquiesce, although he was no longer deceived, but saw himself the victim of a hard-hearted policy." Certainly, if the Doctor's friends were knaves, ou a-fcu-pres, the Doctor himself was a fool, ou a-peu-pres. And the very perfection of folly pig-headed folly, (opposed to the equal pig-headedness in the judge,) appears in the final scene of this little drama, which we transcribe as a fair rival to any of the same kind in Gil Bias : "After, &c. &c., Dr. Colbatch was again brought up before the King's Bench, to petition for his discharge; whereupon Sir Littleton Powis, the senior puisne judge, delivered him his final objurgation. His lordship had just been reading the Jus Academicum, and was master of its contents ; but, unfortunately for the author, he considered some of the reflections, intended for Dr. Bentley, as levelled against the Court. He termed the appeals made to foreign lawyers quite foreign to the purpose ; a conceit which took his lordship's fancy so much, that he repeated it three or four times in the course of his speech. But the most disastrous point was the motto of the book Jura negat sibi nata, nihil non arrogat. He accused Colbatch of applying to the Court of King's Bench the most virulent verse in all Horace, Jura negat sibi nata, nihil non ABROGAT. The culprit immediately set him right as to Horace's word ; and told him besides, that the motto was intended to apply, not to the judges, but to Dr. Bentley. Sir Littleton, however, would not be driven from what he considered his stronghold ; he thrice recurred to this un- happy quotation, which accused their lordships of abrogating the laws ; and each time Colbatch was imprudent enough to interrupt and correct him. At last the Court remarked to his counsel, Kettelbey, that his client did not appear to be sensible of his being in contempt ; and, to convince him of that fact, sentenced him to pay 50^. to be imprisoned till it was paid, and to give security for his good behaviour for a year." It will appear like judicial infatuation in Bentley's enemies, that, 100 RICHARD BENTLEY. on that same day when this scene took place in the King's Bench, another process was commenced against Conyers Middleton for a libel upon the same court. "The pamphlet being handed to the Bench, the Chief Justice pronounced, that, if Dr. Middleton was really the author, he must be the most ungrateful man alive, con- sidering that the Court had already treated him with so much lenity." In fact, this unhappy coincidence in time of the two cases, gave to the reverend libellers the appearance of being in a conspiracy. However, though Middleton would not take a lesson from his friend to avoid his offence, he did as regarded the management of his de- fence. He applied to no Lord Macclesfields or Secretaries of State ; and, in consequence, he met precisely the same punishment as Colbatch, without the same protracted suffering. And so ended the sixth suit which Bentley had prosecuted to a triumphant issue, within three years, in the King's Bench, himself enjoying all the time the most absolute otiitm cum dignitate, whilst his malicious enemies were mere footballs to the fury of the law. These, however, were no more than episodes in the great epos of the original quarrel. In the latter end of 1727, after a seven years' rest, this began to revive. Bishop Fleetwood had been succeeded in the See of Ely by Greene, who was willing to act, provided his expenses were guaranteed, and certain legal questions answered favourably. His demands were granted ; and five eminent lawyers, having separately returned satisfactory answers, preparations were making for assault. Though managed silently, Bentley heard of them; and immediately petitioned the King, telling him that the Bishop of Ely was going to rob him of his rights. After three months' waiting for the result, the Bishop in turn petitioned the King to be heard on behalf of his See. A committee of the Privy Council was then appointed. Delays, as usual, were devised by Bentley; and it was not before .March, 1729, that the committee decided, that "they could not advise his Majesty to interfere at all, but that the Bishop was at liberty to proceed as he thought proper." Richard Bentley had come to a different decision, as he soon made Bishop Greene understand. In November, his lordship began to stir ; but Bentley soon pulled him up by moving the King's Bench for a prohibition, on the ground, that before he could be " visited," he must be twice admonished by the Vice-master: now, as he took care to have a Vice-master of his own choosing, this was not likely to happen before the Greek calends. The judges at length refused the prohibition, holding that the preliminary admonition was re- quired only in cases of petty delinquencies. Bishop Greene was therefore once more declared at liberty to proceed ; and at last it was thought, says Dr. Monk, " that all Bentley's resources were at an end." Little did they know of Richard Bentley who thought thus. On the 2d June, 1729, steps were again taken at Ely House, and a further day assigned. Before that day came, again had Bentley RICHARD BENTLEY. put a spoke in the Bishop's wheel. He applied to the King's Bench for a writ of prohibition on new grounds ; and this time he suc- ceeded. Next term, the Bishop applied to have the prohibition taken off. But that was more easily asked than granted. Bentley had bothered the judges with a paper which cost a week even to copy. The judges had no time to read it, and were obliged to con- tinue the prohibition; and then came the long vacation. In No- vember, 1/29, the campaign opened again ; but the Court declared that no case like this had ever come before them, and declined to pronounce judgment until it had been argued by way of declaration and answer. In 1730, with the vernal resurrection of nature, up rose the ever- lasting process. "Uprose the sun, and up rose Emily." Bishop Greene put in his plea. Bentley took no notice of it ; nor would to this hour, had not a rule been applied for to compel him. At the last minute of the time allowed, he replied, by asking for time, a month, for instance. The Court granted a week. At the last minute of the week he put in a replication, which, in Strange's Reports, is described as "immaterial." Upon this the Bishop, in technical phrase, demurred. But here, again, Bentley got Bishop Greene under his arm, and "fibbed" him. It is presumed in law, that, for his own interest, a plaintiff will proceed quickly ; so that, if he should not, the rules of the Court make no provision for compelling him. Now, it is true that Bentley was defendant on the main case ; yet, on that part of it which came before the Court of King's Bench, he was plaintiff ; of course he made no sign of proceeding. In Trinity term measures were taken to compel him. But next came another step, which also belongs to plaintiff. Plaintiff failed. As this was no more than making up what is called a "paper-book," defendant did it for him. But this Bentley would not hear of. " By no means," said he ; " it is my duty to do it. I have failed ; and I insist on being compelled to do my duty." And in this way again he whiled away the year until the long vacation arrived, when all men rest from their labour. Who will deny that his friends in Cambridge did right in giving the unconquerable old man a triumphal reception, meeting him at Bourn Bridge, and preparing him a welcome in Trinity College, in a manner similar to that of his Majesty's late reception in Cambridge ? Michaelmas term, 1730, the judges, after hearing three days' argument, gave judgment against two of Bentley's pleas ; on the third, they postponed their decision. Easter term, 1731, arrived, and new light dawned for Bentley. The charges against him all went upon a presumed validity of cer- tain statutes, known as Queen Elizabeth's, which had superseded the elder statutes of Edward VI., and no question had arisen, bui as to which set of statutes were valid for this particular case. Sud- denly the judges themselves started a question. Were these sta- tutes valid for any cas? Counsel on neither side had heard a 103 RICHARD BhNTLEY. whisper in that direction. Being uninstructed, they were silent. The judges differed amongst themselves, and the result seemed doubtful. But all at once they discovered a screw loose in another quarter. It was this : The Bishop had described himself as " Visitor especially authorized and appointed by the 40th of Queen Elizabeth's statutes." Now, waiving the other question, at any rate it was the elder statutes which had created this jurisdiction, the Elizabethan (supposing them valid) having at most recognized it. This flaw was held fatal by the whole bench, in other respects not unanimous, and a sufficient reason for continuing the prohibition. So terminated this stage of the interminable process; damages to- the prosecutors little less than one iooo/. ; and to Bentley, whose costs fell on the College, (and in their proportion, therefore, upon the prosecutors,) I300/. Prosecutors had to pay Bentley 2>., as costs contracted in discussing objections of his raising, notwith- standing every one of these objections had been dismissed. Such a result of their malice it is delightful to record. How Dr. Monk reconciles it with the fact of the continued prohi- bition, we pretend not to guess ; so it is, however, that we now find him speaking of Bishop Greene, as being at liberty to proceed "at discretion." However, we must take things as we find them. In July, 1731, Bentley, on suspicion that Bishop Greene was meditating a choice of courses, resolved not to spare Bishop Greene any course at all. With that view he petitioned the King to prohibit him by a fiat of the Attorney-General. This new attack exhausted Bishop Greene's entire stock of patience. Bishop Greene began to sing out furiously ; and, when the petition, after two hearings, was dis- missed as illegal in its prayer, his lordship resolved to go in to his man, and finish him in as few rounds as possible. Yet how ? After much deliberation, it was resolved to adopt the plan of an appeal to the House of Lords for a reversal of the late judgment of the King's Bench. It is ludicrous to mention, that whilst this grand measure was pending, a miniature process occurred, which put all the parties to the great one through what had now become regular evolutions. Bentley had expelled a gentleman from Trinity College. Of course, the man appealed to the Bishop of Ely ; of course the Bishop of Ely cited Bentley before him ; of course Bentley treated the citation with contempt, and applied to the King's Bench for his own familiar friend the rule to prohibit ; and. of course, the Court granted it. Upon which this feud merged quietly into the bosom of the main one, which now awaited the decision of the Upper House of Parlia- ment. On the 6th of May, the case opened before this illustrious Court, who were now to furnish a peripeteia to an affair which had occupied and confounded all sorts of courts known to the laws or usages of this kingdom. "The interest attached to the cause, and the personage whose fortunes were at stake," says Dr. Monk, "pro- duced full houses on almost every day that it was argued." Tha- 8 103 RICHARD BENTLEY. judges were ordrred to attend the House during its continuance ; and, from the novelty of the case, or some other reason, it was followed by the Peers with singular zest and attention. On the 8th of May, the judgment of the King's Bench was re- versed, chiefly (it is believed) through a speech of Bishop Sherlock's. The House then undertook, after some debate, to deliberate separately upon all the articles of accusation preferred against Bentley. This deliberation extended into the next session ; and, upon the 15th of February, 1733, final judgment was pronounced, giving to the Bishop of Ely permission to try the Master of Trinity on twenty of the sixty-four articles. The first court was held at Ely House on the i3th of June, 1733 ; and, on the 2;th of April, 1734, the whole trial being concluded, Bishop Greene, unsupported, how- ever, by his assessors, both of whom, it is known, were for a sentence of acquittal, "in terms of great solemnity, declared that Dr. Bentley was proved guilty both of dilapidating the goods of his college, and violating its statutes ; and, accordingly, pronounced him to be deprived of the Mastership of Trinity College, At length, then, after infinite doubles through a chase of five-and- twenty years, the old fox is hunted to earth : but who shall be the man to smoke him out ? Bentley saw no reason why the matter of execution might not be made to yield as good sport as the matter of trial. He had already provided an evasion ; it was this : the statute says, that when convicted, the Master shall, without delay, be stripped of his office by the Vice-master. He only was authorized to execute the sentence. The course then was clear : a Vice-master was to be provided who would not do his duty. The Bishop had a sort of resource in such a case. But Bentley had good reasons for believing, that it would be found unserviceable. Wanted therefore immediately, for Trinity College, a stout-hearted son of thunder, able to look a bully in the face. How ardently must Bentley have longed to be his own Vice ! As that could not be, he looked out for the next best on the roll. Meantime the Bishop issued three copies of his sentence one to Dr. Bentley, one for the college gates, and a third to Dr. Hacket, the Vice-master, requiring him to see it executed. The odious Colbatch already rioted in his vengeance : more than delay he did not suspect ; yet even this exasperated his venom, and he worried the poor Vice with his outcries. Bentley, be it remembered, was now in his seventy-third year : his services to Trinity College, to classical literature, to religion, were greater than can be readily estimated. Of his prosecutors and judge, on the other hand, with a slight change in Caligula's wish, any honest man might desire for the whole body one common set of posteriors, that in planting a single kick he might have expressed his collective disdain of them, their acts, and their motives. Yet old as Bentley was, and critical as he found his situation, he lost no jot of his wonted cheerfulness: "He maintained," says his biographer, ' not only his spirits, but his accustomed gaiety;" and in allusion 104 RICHARD BENTLEY. to his own predicament, gave the candidates, as a subject for a theme, the following words of Terence " hoc nunc dicis Ejectos hinc nos : omnium rerum, heus, vicissitude est !" Hacket, however, was not a man to depend upon ; he " felt uneasy, and had no mind to become a victim in defence of one whom he regarded with no affection." Luckily he was willing to resign : luckily, too, just then, Dr. Walker became eligible a devoted friend, of whom Dr. Monk believes, that he " would have cheerfully risked his life in the protection of his master." Dr. Walker was elected. He was not a man to be terrified by ugly words, nor by grim faces. Bishop Greene sent his mandate to Dr. Walker, requiring him immediately to deprive the Master : no attention was paid. Colbatch put bullying questions : Dr. Walker *' declined to give any reply." Then Bishop Greene petitioned the House of Lords, the very Court which had directed him to try the Doctor : the House kicked the petition out of doors. Then Bishop Greene turned to the Court of King's Bench ; and the Court granted a mandamus to Dr. Walker to do his duty. But that writ was so handled by Bentley's suggestions, that the judges quashed it. Then Bishop Greene procured another mandamus in another shape, viz., a mandamus to himself to compel Dr. Walker to do his duty. But that writ was adjudged, after long arguments, to be worse than the other. Then Bishop Greene obtained a third mandamus, which in- cluded some words that were thought certain to heal all defects : but upon argument it was found, that those very words had vitiated it. And in this sort of work Bentley had now held them in play four years since the sentence. Now, then, all mankind, with Bishop Greene at their head and Colbatch at their tail, verily despaired. Dr. Bentley had been solemnly sentenced and declared to be ejected ; yet all the artillery of the supreme courts of the kingdom could not be so pointed as to get him within their range. Through four consecutive years after his sentence, writ upon writ, mandamus after mandamus, had been issued against him : but all in vain : budge he would not for gentle or simple : the smoke of his pipe still calmly ascended in Trinity Lodge. And, like the care-hating old boy of Beaumont and Fletcher, he argued that it always had been so, and doubtless it always would be so. At length, when the third writ was quashed by the Judges of the King's Bench, after a solemn hearing on the 22d of April, 1/38, his enemies became finally satis- fied that " this world was made for Caesar;" and that to dislodge Dr. Bentley, by any forms of law yet discovered amongst men, was a problem of sheer desperation. From this day, therefore, that idle attempt was abandoned by all human beings, except Colbatch, who could find nobody to join him : and from this date, twenty-nine years from the opening of the process, and about thirty-eight from the opening of the quarrel, its extinction may be dated. The case 105 RICHARD JBENTLEY. appears to have been fatal to the See of Ely ; for Bishop Moore had lost his life in trying Bentley ; Bishop Fleetwood saved his by letting him alone ; and Bishop Greene, after floundering in his own sentence for four years, departed this life in a few days after finding out that fit never would be executed. Thus ended this great affair, which occupied about two-thirds of Dr. Bentley's manhood.* After this he amused himself with prose- cuting old Colbatch for 3^. 6d. which Colbatch (upon principles of ecclesiastical polity) vehemently desired to cheat him of. It is gratifying to add, that he trounced Colbatch, who was sentenced to pay 3-r. 6d., together with 2s. 6d. arrears, and 20/. costs. f Colbatch talked of applying to a higher court : but afterwards thought better on that subject, and confined his groans to a book which, it is to- be hoped, no mortal ever read. This last of his thousand-and-one lawsuits terminated in 1740: after which, he enjoyed a clear space of more than two years for assoiling himself from the irritation of earthly quarrels, and pre- paring for his end. His last appearance of a public nature, was on occasion of something which we must not call foolery in the offend- ing parties, since Dr. Monk considers it "alarming; " and here it was that he delivered his final jest. A youth, whose name has not reached posterity with much lustre, one Strutt, had founded a sect of atheists, by a book published in 1732. The Struttian philosophy had been propagated by Mr. Tinkler Ducket, a Fellow of Caius College. Tinkler, ambitious (it seems) of martyrdom in the cause of Struttism, privately denounced his own atrocities : a great fuss ensued : bishops and archbishops were consulted : and, finally, Tinkler was brought to trial on a charge of Strutting. He was fully proved to have Strutted, though he attempted to deny it : and on the last day of trial, Dr. Bentley being wanted to make up a quorum of heads, and by way of paying honour to the father of the university, who could not easily go to them, the court, with its appendages, atheist and all, adjourned to him. Court being seated, Bentley begged to know which was the atheist : and upon Tinkler being pointed out to him, who was a little meagre man, " Atheist ! " said he, " how ! is that the atheist ? Why, I thought an atheist would be * As evidence of the violent and unjust hostility to Bentley which prevailed in Cambridge, it ought to be mentioned, that, during the progress of this main feud, without a trial, and on the merest ex parts statement, Bentley was solemnly degraded and stripped of his degrees, to which he was restored only after a struggle of five and a half years, by a peremptory mandamus from the King's Bench. t By the way, Colbatch must have been pretty well cleaned out by this time, which is pleasing to believe ; for Dr. Monk, by examining the bursary books of Trinity College, has found, that the costs of the suit were nominally 3657^., but really not less than 4OOO/. : so that, at one time, a pleasant pros- pect of starvation was before the College. Over and above his share of all this, Colbatch had little pet libels of his own to provide for. Well is it that malice is sometimes a costly luxury ! 106 RICHARD BENTLEY. at least as big as Burrough the beadle ! " Burrough, it may readily be supposed, was a burly personage, fitted to enact the part of a leader to a defying philosophy. This incident occurred early in 1739. Some time further on in the same year, is fixed, conjecturally, as the period of a paralytic attack, from which it is certain that he suffered at some time in his latter years. That it was a slight one, is evident from the fact, that he acted as an examiner for a scholarship within a month of his death. About the beginning of the next year he lost his wife, in the fortieth year of a union memorably happy. His two daughters, both married, united their pious attentions to soothe his old age, and to win his thoughts from too painful a sense of this afflicting trial : and one of them, Mrs. Cumberland, having four children, filled his else desolate mansion with the sound, long silent, of youthful mirth and gladness. " Surrounded with such friends, the Doctor experienced the joint pressure of old age and infirmity as lightly as is consistent with the lot of humanity. He continued to amuse himself with reading ; and, though nearly confined to his arm-chair, was able to enjoy the society of his friends, and several rising scholars, (Markland, John Taylor, Thomas Bentley, &c.), who sought the conversation ot the veteran Grecian : with them he still discussed the readings of classical authors, recited Homer, and expounded ihe doctrine of the Digamma." Mr. Cumberland's portrait of his grandfather's amiable old age, we forbear to quote, as probably familiar to most of our readers : but one or two peculiarities in the domestic habits of his latter years, as less known, we add from Dr. Monk: " It is recorded that Bentley enjoyed smoking with his constant companion (Dr. Walker); a practice which he did not begin before his seventieth year; he is stated also to have been an admirer of good port wine, while he thought contemptuously of claret: which, he said, would be fart if it could. He generally wore, while sitting in his study, a hat with an enormous brim as a shade to protect his eyes ; and he affected more than ever a fashion of addressing his familiars with the singular pronouns thou and thee." There is, it seems, a tradition in Cambridge, that Bentley was accustomed to describe himself as likely to attain the age of four- score years ; but on what particular ground, is not said. In making this remark, he would observe, by way of parenthesis, that a life of that duration was long enough to read everything worth reading ; and then reverting to the period he had anticipated for himself, he would conclude " Et tune magna mei sub terris ibit imago." If this anticipation were really made by Bentley, it is a remark- able instance of that unaccountable spirit of divination which has haunted some people, (Lord Nelson, for instance, in the obstinate prediction before his final victory that the 2 \st of October would be his day ;) Bentley did accomplish his eightieth year, and a few 107 RICHARD BENTLEY. months more. About the roth of July, he was seized with what is supposed to have been a pleuritic fever. Dr. Heberden, at that time a young physician in Cambridge, for some reason not stated, (per- haps the advanced age of the patient,) declined to bleed him a measure which Bentley himself suggested, and which is said to have been considered necessary by Dr. VVallis. That the indications of danger were sudden and of rapid progress, is probable from the fact, that Dr. Wallis, who was summoned from Stamford, arrived too late. Bentley expired on the i4th of July, 1742 ; and in his person England lost the greatest scholar by far that she ever has produced ; greater than she will produce, according to all likelihood, under the ten- dencies of modern education. Some account of his principal works, and a general estimate of his services to literature, and of his character and pretensions as a scholar, we reserve to a separate paper. PART II. THE age is past in which men rendered a cheerful justice to the labours of the classical scholar. Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casau- bon, and the monster of erudition, Claudius Salmasius, are supposed by multitudes of sciolists to have misdirected their powers. In that case, Richard Bentley must submit to the same award. Yet it would perhaps be no difficult achievement to establish a better apology for the classical student than is contemplated by those who give the tone to the modern fashion in education. What it is proposed to substitute for classical erudition, we need not too rigorously examine. Some acquaintance with the showy parts of Experimental Philosophy and Chemistry a little practical Mathematics a slight popular survey of the facts of History and Geography a sketch of empirical Political Economy a little Law a little Divinity perhaps even a little Medicine and Farriery ; such are the elements of a fashionable education. All that is really respectable in a scheme of this complexion, the mathematics and the mechanical philosophy, judging by the evidence of the books which occasionally appear, should seem to be attained with any brilliant success only in that university (Cambridge) where these studies are pursued jointly with the study of classical literature. The notion of any hostility, therefore, between the philological researches of the Greek and Latin literator on the one hand, and the severe meditations on the other, of the geometrician and the inven- tive analyst such a hostility as could make it necessary to weigh the one against the other is, in practice, found to be imaginary No comparative estimate, then, being called for, we may confine ourselves to a simpler and less invidious appreciation of classical erudition upon the footing of its absolute pretensions. 108 RICHARD BENTLEY. Perhaps a judicious pleading on this subject would pursue some- thing of the following outline : First. It is undeniable that the progress of sacred literature is dependent upon that of profane. The vast advances made in Biblical knowledge, and in other parts of divinity, since the era of the Reformation, are due, in a great proportion, to the general Tprost- cution of classical learning. It is in vain to attempt a distinction between the useful parts of this learning and the ornamental : All are useful, all are necessary. The most showy and exquisite refine- ments in the doctrine of Greek melic metre, even where they do not directly avail us in expelling anomalies of syntax or of idiom from embarrassed passages, and thus harmonizing our knowledge of this wonderful language, yet offer a great indirect benefit : they exalt the standard of attainment, by increasing its difficulty and its compass ; and a prize placed even at an elevation useless for itself, becomes serviceable as a guarantee that all lower heights must have been previously traversed. Secondly. The general effect upon the character of young men from a classical education, is pretty much like that which is sought for in travelling ; more unequivocally even than that, coming at the age which is best fitted for receiving deep impressions, it liberalizes the mind. This effect is derived in part from the ennobling tone of sentiment which presides throughout the great orators, historians, and litterateurs of antiquity ; and in part it is derived from the vast difference in temper and spirit between the modern (or Christian) style of thinking, and that which prevailed under a Pagan religion, connected in its brightest periods with republican institutions. The mean impression from home-keeping, and the contracted views of a mere personal experience, are thus, as much as by any other con- ceivable means, broken and defeated. Edmund Burke has noticed the illiberal air which is communicated to the mind by an education exclusively scientific, even where it is more radical and profound than it is likely to be under those theories which reject classical erudition. The sentiments which distinguish a gentleman receive no aid from any attainments in science ; but it is certain, that familiarity with the classics, and the noble direction which they are fitted to impress upon the thoughts and aspirations, do eminently fall in with the few other chivalrous sources of feeling that survive at this day. It is not improbable, also, that a reflection upon the " uselessness " of such studies, according to the estimate of coarse Utilitarians that is, their inapplicability to any object of mercenary or mechanic science co-operates with their more direct influences in elevating the taste. Thence, we may explain the reason of the universal hatred amongst plebeian and coarse-minded Jacobins to studies and institutions which point in this direction. They hate the classics, for the same reason that they hate the manners of chivalry, or the characteristic distinctions of a gentleman. Thirdly. A sentiment of just respect belongs to the classical scholar, if it were only for the numerical extent of the items which IOQ RICHARD 8ENTLEY. compose the great total of his knowledge. In separate importance, the acquisitions of the mathematician transcend his : each several proposition in that region of knowledge has its distinct value and dignity. But in the researches of the scholar, more truly than in any other whatsoever, the details are infinite. And for this infinity of acts, on the parts of the understanding and the memory, if other- wise even less important, he has a special claim upon our con- sideration. Fourthly. The difficulty, as derived from peculiar idiom and construction, of mastering the two classical languages of antiquity, more especially the Greek, is in itself a test of very unusual talent. Modern languages are learned inevitably by simple efforts of memory. And, if the learner has the benefit of a rational plan of tuition, viz., the tuition of circumstances, which oblige him to speak the language, and to hear it spoken, for all purposes of daily life, there is perhaps no living idiom in Europe which would not be mastered in three months. Certainly, there is none which presupposes any peculiar talent, as a conditio sine qua non for its attainment. Greek does ; and we affirm peremptorily, that none but a man of singular talent can attain (what, after all, goes but a small way in the accomplish- ments of a scholar) the power of reading Greek fluently at sight. The difficulty lies in two points : First, in the peculiar perplexities of the Greek construction ; and, secondly, in the continual inadequation (to use a logical term) of Greek and modern terms ; a circumstance which makes literal translation impossible, and reduces the trans- lator to a continued effort of compensation. Upon a proper occasion, it would be easy to illustrate this point. Meantime the fact must strike everybody, be the explanation what it may, that very few persons ever do arrive at any tolerable skill in the Greek language. After seven years' application to it, most people are still alarmed at a sudden summons to translate a Greek quotation ; it is even ill-bred to ask for such a thing ; and we may appeal to the candour of those even who, upon a case of necessity, are able to ''do the trick," whether, in reading a Greek book of history for their own private amusement, (Herodian for example,) they do not court the assistance of the Latin version at the side. Greek rarely becomes as familiar as Latin. And, as the modes of teaching them are pretty much the same, there is no way of explaining this but by supposing a diffi- culty sui generis in the Greek language, and a talent sui generis for contending with it. Upon some such line of argument as we have here sketched illustrating the claims of the classical student according to the several grounds now alleged, viz. the difficulty of his attainments in any exquisite form, their vast extent, their advantageous tendency for impressing an elevated tone upon the youthful mind ; and, above all, their connection with the maintenance of that "strong book- mindedness," and massy erudition, which are the buttresses of a reformed church, and which failing (if they ever should fail), will leave it open to thousands of factious schisms, and finally even to no RICHARD BENTLEY. destructive heresies possibly a fair plealer might make out a case, stronger than a modern education-monger could retort, for the scholar, technically so called, meaning the man who has sur- rendered his days and nights to Greek, Latin, and the Biblical languages. Such a scholar, and modelled upon the most brilliant conception of his order, was Bentley. Wisely concentrating his exertions, under a conviction, that no length of life, or reach of faculties was sufficient to exhaust that single department which he cultivated, he does not appear to have carried his studies, in any instance, beyond it. Whatsoever more he knew, he knew in a popular way ; and doubtless for much of that knowledge he was indebted to conversa- tion. Carried by his rank and appointments (and, from a very early age, by the favour of his patron, Bishop Stillingfleet) into the best society, with so much shrewd sense, and so powerful a memory, he could not but bear away with him a large body of that miscellaneous knowledge which floats upon the surface of social intercourse. He was deficient, therefore, in no information which naturally belongs to an English gentleman. But the whole of it, if we except, perhaps, that acquaintance with the English law, and the forms of its courts, which circumstances obliged him to cultivate, was obtained in his hours of convivial relaxation ; and rarely indeed at the sacrifice of a single hour, which, in the distribution of his time, he had allotted to the one sole vocation of his life the literature of classical antiquity. How much he accomplished in that field, will be best learned from a catalogue raisonne of his works, (including his contributions to the works of others), and from a compressed abstract of that principal work to which he is indebted for much of the lustre which still settles upon his memory. His coup d'essazin literature, as we have already mentioned, was his appendix to the Chronicle of Malelas. It was written in the winter of 1690; but not published until June, 1691. Bentley was at this time twenty-nine years old, and could not therefore benefit by any consideration of his age. But he needed no in- dulgences. His epistle travels over a prodigious extent of ground, and announces everywhere a dignified self-respect, combined with respect for others. In all that relates to the Greek dramatic poets, Euripides in particular, and in the final disquisition (which we have already analyzed) on the laws which govern the Latinization ot Grecian proper names, the appendix to Malelas is still worthy of most attentive study. He soon after began to prepare editions of Philostratus, of Hesychius, and the Latin poet Manilius. From these labours he was drawn off, in 1692, by his first appointment to preach the Boyle Lecture. Those sermons are published. They were serviceable to his reputation at that time, and are still worthy of their place as the inaugural dissertations in that distinguished series of English divinity. It would be idle to describe them as in any eminent sense philosophical ; they are not so ; but they present as able a refutation III RICHARD BENTLEY. of the infidel notions then prevalent,* and (in the two latter lecture*) as popular an application to the same purpose of the recent New- tonian discoveries, as the times demanded, or a miscellaneous audience permitted. In 1694, Bentley was again appointed to preach the Boyle Lecture : but his sermons on that occasion have not been printed. On various pleas he delayed preparing them for the press so long, that before he found himself at leisure for that task, the solicitations of his friends had languished, and his own interest in the work had probably died away. Fifty-two years ago, when the life of Bentley was published in the Biographia Britannica, they were still in existence : but his present biographer has not been able to ascertain their subsequent fate. By this time the Philostratus was ready for the press, but an accident put an end to that undertaking. The high duties upon paper, and other expenses of printing in England, had determined Bentley to bring put his edition at Leipsic ; and accordingly one sheet was printed in that university. But Bentley, who had the eye of an amateur for masterly printing, and the other luxuries of the English and Dutch press, was so much disgusted with the coarse- ness of this German specimen, that he peremptorily put an end to the work, and transferred his own two collations of two Oxford MSS. to Olearius of Leipsic. In the edition published by this person in 1709, there will be found so much of Bentley' s notes as were contained in the specimen sheet ; these, however, extend no farther than page 1 1 ; and what is become of the rest, a matter of some interest to ourselves, we are unable to learn. In 1695, Bentley assisted his zealous friend Evelyn in the revision of his Numismata. In July, 1696, on taking his Doctor's degree, Bentley maintained three separate theses: one on the Rationality of the Mosaic Cos- mogony and Deluge; a second on the Divine Origin of the Christian Miracles ; and a third on the Relation between the * Misled by Dr. Monk, (who, though citing the passage from Bentley's Letters about the Hobbists, yet, in the preceding page, speaks of " the doctrines of Spinoza," as having contributed to taint the principles of many in the higher classes,) we had charged Bentley with the common error of his order, in supposing a book so rare as the B. D. S. Opera Posthuma to have been, by possibility, an influential one in England. But we now find, on consulting Dr. Burney's Collection of Bentley's Letters, (p. 146 of the Leipsic edition, 1825,) that Bentley expressly avowed our own view of the case. His words to Dr. Bernard are as follows : " But are the Atheists of your mind, that they have no books written for them ? Not one of them but believes Tom Hobbes to be a rank one ; and that his corporeal God is a mere sham to get his book printed. I have said something to this in my first sermon, and I know it to be true, by the conversation I have had with them. There may be some Spinozists, or immaterial Fatalists, beyond seas ; but not one English infidel in a hundred is other titan a. Hobbist." RICHARD BENTLEY. Christian and Platonic Trinities. These themes (at any rate the last) appear to us somewhat above the reach of Bentley's philosophy, or indeed of any English philosophy, since the days of Henry More, Cudworth, and Stillingfleet. The last of these persons, however, his own friend and patron, had probably furnished Bentley with direc- tions and materials for treating the question. This dissertation we should be delighted to read ; but it seems to have vanished as com- Eletely as the public breakfast which accompanied it. On the unday following, he preached before the University what is called the Commencement Sermon (of Revelation and the Messiah). Many years afterwards, this was added as an appropriate sequel to an edition of his Boyle Lectures, in 1692. It is a powerful and learned defence of the Christian faith, and of the claims of its founder to the character of the Jewish Messiah. Meantime, his professional exertions had not abated his zeal for literature. In the course of this year, he finished his notes and emendations to the text of Callimachus. These, together with a complete digest of that poet's fragments, admirably corrected, he transmitted to his learned friend Graevius of Utrecht, for the im- provement of a sort of Variorum Callimachus, which he was then carrying through the press. This had been originally projected, and some part already printed, by a son of Graevius, who died pre- maturely. In the very first letter of Graevius, September 17, 1692,* thus much had been explained to Bentley, and that amongst the ornaments of the edition would be a copious commentary of Ezechiel Spanheim, a distinguished Prussian, envoy at one time to England from the court of Berlin, and next after Bentley, perhaps, the best Grecian of the age. Drest in this pomp of learned apparel, the muse of Callimachus came forth with unexpected effect : fiars minima est ipsa puella sui ; and Bentley was perhaps sincere in assuring Graevius (i$th February, 1698) that, according to the judg- ment of one learned friend, no writer of antiquity had been so strictly endowed with editorial services. In May 1697, was published the original Dissertations on Phalaris, as a supplement to the second edition of Wotton's Essay on Ancient * Of all biographers, Dr. Monk is the most perversely obscure in fixing dates. As one instance, at p. 21, we defy any critic to explain the reference of the words" This happened in the latter part of 1690." What happened ? The words immediately preceding are, " that Bentley should publish his icmarks on Malelas." Naturally, therefore, every reader would understand the reference as pointing to the actual publication of those remarks ; but in the middle of the next page, he finds that this did not occur until June, 1691. Here, again, with respect to Callimachus, the wit of man could not make out, from the sentence which opens chapter V., whether the publication took place in the August of 1696 or of 1697. But by a letter of Graevius, dated on the 6th of September, 1697, and stating that he had three weeks before despatched six copies of the Callimachus as presents to Bentley, we ascertain that 1097 was the true date. "3 RICHARD BENTLEY. and Modern Learning. By way of suitable accompaniments, were added shorter dissertations on the spurious Letters of Themistocles. Socrates, and Euripides ; and finally on the Fables, and the personal deformity, imputed to JEsop. At the beginning of 1699, appeared the second (or complete) dissertation on Phalaris, from which (on account of the great expansion given to the principal theme) all supplementary parts were now unavoidably retrenched. Soon after this period, the manifold business which occupied Bentley, upon his promotion to the headship of Trinity College, upon his marriage, and various University appointments, appears to have interrupted his literary pursuits ; and perhaps he surrendered himself the more tractably to these avocations from the ordinary tenor of his life, in consideration of the excessive price of English paper, which, in 1698, he had assigned to Graevius * as a satisfactory motive for renouncing the press. However, when he did not work himself, he was always ready to assist those who did ; and in 1701, we find him applying his whole academic influence to the promotion of the Prussian, Kuster's, edition of Suidas, which he enriched partly from the MSS. of the deceased Bishop Pearson, partly from his own stores. In the summer of the year 1702, Bentley first formed the design of editing a body of classics for the use of the students in his own college ; and a Horace, which occupied him at intervals for the next ten years, was selected as the leader of the series. In 1708, by way of assisting his old friend, Ludolf Kuster, in a hasty edition of Aristophanes, he addressed to him three Critical Epistles on the Plutus and the Clouds. These were dislocated and mangled by Kuster, under the pressure of haste, and the unfortunate arrangements of the printer. Two, however, of the three have been preserved and published, exactly as Bentley wrote them ; and in this instance, we are happy to agree with Dr. Monk that these letters (and, we may add, the general tone, and much of the peculiar merit which belongs to the Phalaris Dissertation) point out Aristophanes, beyond all other writers of antiquity, as that one who would have furnished the fullest arena for Bentley 's various and characteristic attainments. About the same time, Bentley had the honour of giving a right direction to the studies of Tiberius Hemsterhuis, the founder of a distinguished school of continental scholars, whose metrical deficiencies had been made known by his recent edition of Julius Pollux. The two letters of Bentley have since been published by Ruhnken. In the year 1709, he assisted Davies in his edition of the Tusculan Questions of Cicero, by a large body of admirable emendations ; and in the same year, he communicated to Needham, who was then editing Hierocles, a collection of conjectures on the text of that * " de libris edendis consilium capere stultum esset, ob immanent in his regicnibus charts charitatem." Feb. 15, 1698. 114 RICHARD BENT LEY. author, which, though not equally sound, have the customary Bent- leian merit of extraordinary ingenuity. It is one illustration of the universal favour which Bentley extended to the interests of knowledge, even in those departments which promised no glory to himself, that he had long laboured to obtain a second and improved edition of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia. Sir Isaac, however, was, at this time, engrossed by his employments at the Mint; but at length, in this year, 1709, Bentley had the satisfac- tion of engaging Professor Cotes in that task, and of opening a long- correspondence * between the Professor and Sir Isaac, which ar- ranged the whole alterations and additions. In the spring of 1710 was published one of Bentley's occasional works, which caused at that time, and yet continues to cause, some speculation. An unexplained mystery hung even then over the mode of publication ; and a mystery still hangs over its motive. In the latter end of 1709, the well-known Clericus, or Le Clerc, whose general attainments Dr. Monk rates far too highly, published an edition of the Fragments of Menander and Philemon, with a brutish ignorance of Greek. Simple ignorance, however, and presumption, cannot be supposed sufficient to have provoked Bentley, who uni- formly left such exposures to the inevitable hand of time. Yet so it was, that, in December of the same year, Bentley sat down and wrote extemporal emendations on three hundred and twenty-three passages in the Fragments, with a running commentary of unspar- ing severity upon the enormous blunders of Le Clerc. This little work, by a circuitous channel, in the spring of 1710, he conveyed into the hands of Peter Burman, the bitterest enemy of Le Clerc. It may readily be conceived that Burman, thirsty as he was at that particular moment for vengeance, received with a frenzy of joy these thunderbolts from the armoury of Jove. He published the work im- mediately, under the title of Emendationes in Menandri et Phile- monis Reliquias, auctore Phileleuthero Lipsiensi,' and with an insulting preface of his own. Before the press had completed its work, Le Clerc heard of the impending castigation. The author's name also was easily suspected in the small list of Greek scholars. Le Clerc, who conducted a severe review, wrote in his usual spirit of dictatorial insolence to Bentley, calling upon him to disavow so shocking an attack. Bentley replied by calmly pointing out to him his presumption as a Grecian editor, and his arrogant folly as a bully. Meantime the book was published, and read with so much avidity, (a) though in a learned language,) that in three weeks the entire impi sssion was exhausted. It was attacked by the old hornet James Gronovius, who hated Le Clerc and Bentley with an equal hatred, and also by the scoundrel De Pauw ; but, said Bentley, with * This correspondence is still preserved in Trinity College ; and we are sure that every reader will join us heartily in praying for its publication. "5 RICHARD BENTLEY. tne most happy application of a line from Phaedrus, " Nondum eorum ictus tanti facio, ut iterum a me vapulent : Multo majoris colaphi mecum veneunt." On the 8th of December, 1711, Bentley put the finishing hand to his edition of Horace the most instructive, perhaps, in its notes, of all contributions whatsoever to Latin literature. The attacks which it provoked were past counting ; the applauses were no less vehe- ment from every part of Europe ; and, amongst others, from an old enemy Atterbury, the ringleader in the Phalaris controversy. A second and improved impression of the work was immediately called for, and issued from the press of Amsterdam. In 1713, Bentley replied, under his former signature of Phileleu- therus Lifisiensis, to Anthony Collins' s " Discourse of Free- thinking." His triumph, in this instance, was owing less to his own strength than to the weakness of his antagonist. Collins had some philosophical acuteness, as he showed elsewhere : but of learning, properly so called, he had none. The most useful service which Bentley rendered to the public on this occasion was the just colouring which he gave to an argument for impeaching the crc:r> of the New Testament, recently impressed upon the timid and the scrupulous by the notoriety of Dr. Mill's labours upon its text. Many Christians had been scandalized and alarmed by a body of thirty thousand various readings in a text issuing from inspiration. But Bentley re-assured their trembling faith, by showing that an immense majority of these variations scarcely affected the sense at all ; and, of those which did, few, indeed, would be found to disturb any cardinal doctrine, which, after all, was otherwise secured by un- suspected passages. It is an interesting reflection to us at this day, that the Collins here refuted was that friend of Locke, as appears from his letters, originally published by Des Maizeaux, upon whom he lavished every proof cf excessive regard in the last moments of his life. He introduced him even with the most flatter- ing recommendations to his hostess, Lady Masham, the daughter of that Cudworth who had spent his life in the refutation of philo- sophic scepticism ! * In 1715, on occasion of the first Pretender's expedition, Bentley preached before the University a sermon on Popery, which, though merely occasional, ranks amongst the most powerful expositions of the corruptions introduced into pure Christianity by that stupendous superstition. The force of its natural and manly rhetoric may be * Collins wanted something more than piety ; he \vas not even an honest man ; for he reprinted his work in Holland, purified from the gross cases of ignorance exposed by Bentley ; and then circulating this improved edition amongst his friends in England, which he had taken care to mask by a lying title-page, he persuaded them that the passages in question were mere for- geries of Bentley's. 1x6 RICHARD BENTLEY. conceived from this fact, that Sterne, the wholesale plagiarist, has borrowed from it a long passage for the sermon which he puts into the mouth of Corporal Trim, who is made to express its terrible energy by saying, that " he would not read another line of it for all the world." On the i5th of April, 1716, Bentley, in a letter to Wake, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, brought forward a scheme, which of itself should have immortalized him, for retrieving the original text of the New Testament exactly as it was at the time of the Council of Nice, without the difference of "twenty words," or "even twenty par- ticles." Compressed within a few words, his plan was this : Mill, and other collectors of various readings, had taken notice only of absolute differences in the words never of mere variations in thsir order and arrangement; these they conceived to be purely acci- dental. Bentley thought otherwise ; for he had noticed, that, wher- ever he could obtain the genuine reading of the old authorized Latin version, technically called the Vulgate, the order of the words exactly corresponded to the order of the original Greek. This pointed to something more than accident. A sentence of St. Jerome ripened this suspicion into a certainty. Hence it occurred to him, that, if by any means he could retrieve the true text of the Latin Vulgate, as it was originally reformed and settled by St. Jerome, he would at once obtain a guide for selecting, amongst the crowd of variations in the present Greek text, that one which St. Jerome had authenticated as the reading authorized long before his day. Such a restoration of the Vulgate, Bentley believed to be possible by means of MSS., of which the youngest should reach an age of nine hundred years. How far this principle of restoration could have been practically carried through, is a separate question ; but, for the principle itself, we take upon ourselves to say, that a finer thought does not occur in the records of inventive criticism. It is not a single act of conjectural sagacity, but a consequential train of such acts. In the same year, Bentley wrote a letter to Biel on the Scriptural glosses in our present copies of Hesychius, which he considered in- terpolations from a later hand. This letter, which evidences the same critical acquaintance with Hesychius, which, in the aids given to his friend Kuster, he had already manifested with Suidas, has been pub- lished by r Alberti, in the Prolegomena to his edition of that lexi- cographer. In this year also, a plan was agitated (according to one tradition, by the two Chief Justices, Parker and King,) for an edition of the Classics, in usum Princifiis Frederici. Such a project could not fail to suggest a competition with the famous French series, in usum Delphini. Difficulty there was none in making the English one far more learned ; and, with that view, it was designed that Bentley should preside over the execution. For this service, he is said to have demanded iooo/. er annum for life ; on the other hand, Lord Townshend, by the same account, would give no more than 500/. Some misunderstanding arose, and, finally, the whole ploc IT;? RICHARD BENTLEY. was dismissed by the court, in company with the liberal minister who had entertained it. Perhaps this is not to be regretted ; for a corpus of editions, as much more learned than the Delphin, as Bentley was more learned than Huet, v/ould stand a good chance of being almost useless to boys. In 1717, Bentley preached before the King. This sermon was published ; and is described by Dr. Monk as being, perhaps, not worse calculated to win the favourable opinion of general readers, than anything else which its author has left. For ourselves, we have not been so fortunate as to meet with it. Not long after, in the same year, Bentley was elected the Regius Professor of Divinity in Cambridge. On the ist of May, the day preceding his election, he delivered his probationary lecture. The subject, even more than the occasion, made this so interesting, that we do not hear, without indignation, of the uncertainty which all parties profess with regard to the fate of a copy of it, known to have been in existence forty years ago. The lecture treated the famous question of the disputed passage On the Three Heavenly Wit- nesses, (I. Epist. of St. John, v. 7.) Person, to whom such a lecture must have been peculiarly interesting, had read it ; so had Dr. Vin- cent, the late Dean of Westminster. Could neither of these gentle- men have copied it ? Or, if that were forbidden, could they not have mastered the outline of the arguments ? Meantime, as to the result, everybody is agreed that Bentley peremptorily rejected the verse. Yet, in a correspondence, at the beginning of this very year, with some stranger, which has been since published, Bentley is less positive on that matter, and avows his determination to treat the case, not as a question for critical choice and sagacity, but simply as a question of fact to be decided, whenever he came to that part of his new edition of the Greek Testament, by the balance of read- ings, as he should happen to find them on this side or that in the best MSS. " What will be the event," he says, " I myself know not yet; having not used all the old copies I have information of." Vithin the four months' interval between this correspondence and his probationary lecture, it is improbable that Bentley should have made any such progress in his Greek Testament, as could materially affect his view of this question ; and we infer from that consideration, that, in his lecture, he must have treated it purely as a question for sagacity and tentative conjecture, not for positive evidence. This latter mode of deciding the case, by which he promised his corres- pondent that he would finally abide, remains therefore unaffected by the award of his lecture. We agree with Dr. Middleton, the first Bishop of Calcutta, that the controversy is not yet exhausted. In the following month, (June, 1717,) he delivered his inaugural oration,, which lasted for two hours and a half, on entering upon the duties of his chair. This, which unfortunately has not been preserved, except in the slight and sneering sketch of an enemy, appears to have been chiefly an apologetic account of his whole literary career ; doubtless for the purpose of disarming the general presumption, 118 RICHARD BENTLEY. that a course of study, which had been so peculiarly directed to what, in the old university phrase, are called the humanities of literature, could not but have impressed a bias upon his inquiries unfavourable to the austerer researches of divinity. He reminded his audience, however, that he had been appointed on two separate occasions a public champion of Christianity; and that, in another instance, when he had stepped forward as a volunteer in the same august service, he had earned the solemn thanks of the university. In 1718, Bentley resumed, but suddenly and finally discontinued, the third part of his answer to Collins. He had agreed to pursue it, at the particular request of the Princess of Wales ; and two half- sheets were actually printed ; but conceiving- himself ill-treated by the court, he protested that he would do nothing to gratify those who behaved no better than his declared enemies. Meantime he had been prosecuting his great scheme for the restoration of the Nicene text of the New Testament, according to the opportunities of leisure which his public duties allowed him, with his usual demoniac energy, and with a generous disregard of expense. Through different agents, he had procured collations of MSS. all over Europe ; and in particular, had maintained a corres- pondence with the Benedictines of St. Maur, one extract from which has been published by Sabatier, in his Bibliorum Sacrorum Ver* stones Antiques. By the autumn of 1720, his work was so far advanced, that, in October, he issued a formal prospectus, stating its plan, (as originally sketched, in the spring of 1716, to the Arch- bishop of Canterbury,) its form and price, and the literary aids which he counted upon. The twenty-second chapter of the Revelations accompanied these proposals, as a specimen not of the paper or printing, (which were to be the best that Europe afforded,) but of the editorial management. And with that just appreciation of his own merits which the honest frankness of Bentley would seldom allow him to suppress, he solemnly consecrated the work " as a KfiijL-fi\iov, a KTwa (s aei, a charter, a Magna Charta, to the whole Christian Church ; to last when all the ancient MSS. may be lost and extinguished." Conyers Middleton, incapable of under- standing this grand burst of enthusiasm, immediately wrote a pamphlet to disparage the project, which he stigmatized (in allusion to the South Sea schemes, recently exposed) as Bentley' s Bubble* One instance will explain the character of his malice : He made it a theme for scurrilous insinuations against Bentley, that he published by subscription. Now, in any age, an expensive undertaking, which presupposes a vast outlay for the collation * (or occasionally the pur- chase) of MSS., and rare editions, is a privileged case, as respects * Bentley had paid Wetstein 50^. for the collation of a single Palimpsest ; which sum, in relation to the vast extent of the MS., seems to us, with Dr. Monk's leave, a trifle; though, in relation to Bentley's purse, and the inr.ny demands upon it of the same nature, and his prospects of remuneration, it might be a large one. 9 "9 RICHARD BENTLEY. Subscriptions ; but in that age everybody published by subscription. Pope did so, and in that way made his fortune by the Iliad. And what marks the climax in Middleton's baseness, he himself published his knavish Life of Cicero, in the most deliberate manner, upon the ordinary terms of a subscription. Early in January, 1721, ap- peared a caustic reply to Middleton's pamphlet, which, upon internal evidence, is, and was, ascribed to Bentley. In about three months, Middleton retorted in a pamphlet four times as long- as his first, and openly avowing himself by name as the author. These pamphlets we have read ; for they are printed in a quarto republication of Mid- dleton's Miscellanies. And we are bold to say, in opposition to Dr. Monk, that they offer no shadow of sound or scholariike objection to Bentley 's Programme. That was written in one evening by candle- light. Why not ? It fell into no real error by its precipitancy. Cavils are the best of Middleton's argument ; malice his best inspiration ; and, as to the beautiful style, which (according to the old catechism of Blair, &c.) Dr. Monk attributes to Middleton, we presume that many, of equal merit, are sold daily at sixpence a pound to trunk- makers and pastrycooks. It was the fate of Dr. Bentley, that every work executed or pro- jected by him, should be assailed. Accordingly, on this occasion, concurrently with the pamphlets of Middleton appeared many others, with or without names, English and Latin, virulent or gentle. To Middleton, however, has always been imputed the honour of having crushed the project ; how erroneously, we now first learn from Dr. Monk. Bentley could not be disturbed by what he had not seen ; now he declared to Bishop Atterbury, that he " scorned to read the rascal's book ;" and there is full proof, that, for eight years and up- wards after these attacks, he procured collations as zealously as ever. The subscriptions again, which are stated to have been not t^rss than two thousand guineas, show that purchasers were unde- iierred by the clamours of malice. However, the fact is, that the work did at length languish, for what reason is still doubtful. Wetstein, in his Prolegomena, says, that the abandonment of the work rose out of Bentley 's disgust at the meanness of the Treasury in refusing to remit the duty upon the paper for this national undertaking. The facts are truly stated ; but we have proof that the effect was in- sufficient to retard his labour "even for a day." The best guess we can offer to account for the final wreck of so much labour and expense, is, that being continually withdrawn from Bentley's attention, by the perplexities of his multiplied lawsuits, until the shades of old age had overtaken him, the work gradually ceased to occupy his thoughts, or to interest his ambition. During the long vacation of 1722, Bentley read a copy of Nicander's Theriaca, put into his hands by Dr. Mead, and wrote his corrections on the margin. These have since been published by Dr. Monk, in the Cambridge Museum Criticum. In 1723, the edition of the Tusculan Questions, by Davies, to which Bentley had communicated its original value, was reprinted. 120 RICHARD BENTLEY. On this occasion, he again enriched it with an ample dowry of his own conjectural emendations. These it was his intention to support by notes. Unfortunately, a pressure of business had pre-occupied his attention at the critical moment ; the press could not wait ; and the book was launched, leaving the best part of its freight behind ; and that part, unfortunately, without which the rest was of little value. In 1724, Dr. Hare, Dean of Worcester, originally a confidential friend of Bentley's, who had on three several occasions injured him by his indiscretion or his meanness, consummated his offences by an act of perfidious dishonesty : he published an edition of Terence, in which everything meritorious was borrowed, without acknowledg- ment, from the colloquial instructions of Bentley, imperfectly appre- hended, and clumsily explained. In revenge for this treachery, Bentley carried rapidly through the press a Terence of his own ; and by way of anticipating Hare, who had announced a Phaedrus, he united an edition of that author (connected, as usual, with P. Syrus) in the same volume. This was published at the beginning of 1726. The Phsedrus was a precipitate, in fact an extempore, performance ; but the Terence is, in our opinion, of all Bentley's editions, the most brilliantly finished. With relation to the critic, undoubtedly his Horace is by much the most elaborately learned ; but with relation to the interests of the author, his Terence is the most complete. In 1731 occurred an incident in the literary life of Bentley, upon which no rational judgment has ever yet been pronounced. At the latter end of that year, he undertook his edition of the Paradise Lost; it was carried on with his usual haste, and was published in January, 1732. He was now seventy years old, and his age, combined with the apparent extravagance of some of his corrections, might seem at first to countenance Dr. Monk's insinuation of dotage.* But the case is totally misconceived. His edition of Milton had the same merits as his other editions ; peculiar defects it had, indeed, from which his editions of Latin classics were generally free ; these, how- ever, were due to no decays in himself, but to original differences in the English classic from any which he could have met with in Pagan literature. The romantic, or Christian, poetry, was alien to Bentley's taste ; he had no more sense or organs of perception for this grander and more imaginative order of poetry, than a hedge-hog for the music of Mozart. Consequently, whatsoever was peculiarly characteristic in it, seemed to him a monstrous abortion ; and had it been possible that passages in the same impassioned key should occur in the austere and naked words of the Roman or Grecian muse, * Dr. Monk says, truly enough, that Bentley's corrections would often " lop off the most beautiful parts of the poem." But we are petrified on finding the first instance -which he gives Bentley's very reasonable censure of a well-known bull which all the world has laughed at : 1 Adam, the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve." 92 RICHARD BENTLEY. he would doubtless have proscribed them as interpolations of monks, copyists, or scholiasts, with the same desperate hook which operated so summarily on the text of Paradise Lost. With these infirmities, and this constitutional defect of poetic sensibility, the single blunder which he committed, was in undertaking- such a province. The management of it did him honour ; for he complied honestly with the constitution of his mind, and was right in the sense of taking a true view, but from a false station. Whenever a wise man plays the fool, we may suspect that a woman is at the bottom ; and for this blunder of Bentley's, we are to thank Queen Caroline, who had a curiosity to see the English Hercules at work upon some task within her own range of sympathy ; and accordingly, with the same womanish folly which, in Queen Elizabeth, imposed upon Shak- speare the grotesque labour of exhibiting Falstaff in love, she laid her commands upon Bentley for a kind of service which obliged him too frequently to abjure all his characteristic powers and accomplish- ments. That a suspicion at times crossed his own mind, (his nephew's it certainly did,) that for her Majesty's amusement he was making himself a stupendous jackass, is very probable from his significant excuse at the end " non injussa cecmi.'' 1 Meantime we agree altogether with Dr. Monk, that to any moral blame in this atfair, on account of his fiction of an editorial man of straw, Bentley is not liable, let Dr. Johnson say what he will. It was a fiction of modesty at once and of prudence, which saved him from the neces- sity of applying his unmeasured abuse immediately to Milton. This middleman was literally a mediator between Milton and the Bentleian wrath of damnation, which is already too offensive even as applied to a shadow. This foolery over, Bentley recoiled with the spring of a Roman catapulta to his natural pursuits. In 1732, he undertook an edition of Homer, chiefly with a view to the restoration of the digamma to its place and functions in the metre. This design he had first seriously adopted in 1726; and now, upon the instigation of Lord Carteret, he noted and corrected the entire Iliad and Odyssey, re- jecting those lines which would not bend to his hypothesis. The Homer was never published ; but the MS., having been bequeathed in 1786 to Trinity College by Dr. R. Bentley, the nephew, was after- wards liberally transmitted to Gottingen, for the use of Heyne, who, in his own edition of Homer, acknowledged the profoundest obliga- tions to it, and made the world circumstantially acquainted with its merits. The Homer must be considered as virtually the final labour of Bentley ; for his Manilius, which he published in 1739, when he was in his 78th year, had been prepared for the press forty-five years before. The notes on this singular poem, which has always been as interesting to us as it was to Bentley and to Joseph Scaliger, have the usual merits and the usual faults of Bentley's notes being all ingenious, sometimes very learned, defences of innovations on the received text, bold, original, or absolutely licentious, as may hap- 122 RICHARD BENTLE K pen. In Horace or Lucan we seek for no more but we confess, that in a poem like the Astronomicon, crowded with triple difficul- tiesof science in the first place ; secondly, of science disfigured by the perplexed hypothesis of the old astronomy ; and thirdly, of all this warped from its natural expression by the necessities of the metre and the ornaments of a poetic treatment, we read Bentley's philological notes with singular disadvantage after the philosophic commentaries of Joseph Scaliger. The astronomy has never been cleared up entirely, Scaliger having in this part committed singular errors. But much of the poem, which assigns the temperament, the bias of character, the habits of men born under all the leading aspects of the stars, is less in need of elucidation, unless when it is particularly corrupt ; and in such places Bentley is of great service. Fourteen years after the death of Bentley, Horace Walpole pub- lished at his private press a Lucan, illustrated by the notes of Bentley, combined with those of Grotius. This poet was within Bentley's range of sympathy: and, as plausible conjectures for the emendation of the text, we know of nothing comparable to his sug- gestions. Such is the long list of Bentley's literary labours, without includ- ing his speculations upon four separate Greek inscriptions, and perhaps other occasional assistances, as yet imperfectly ascertained, to his friends, which his generosity made him at all times no less ready to grant, than the careless prodigality of inexhaustible wealth made him negligent to resume. We have also purposely excluded from our list the fugitive pamphlets of business, or of personal de- fence, by which Bentley met his ungenerous assailants ; a part of his works which, as a good man, though with human infirmities, he would doubtless wish to be now cancelled or forgotten, under that comprehensive act of Christian forgiveness which there can be no doubt, that, in his latter days, he extended even to those unjust enmities which provoked them. Confining ourselves to his purely literary works, and considering the great care and attention which belong almost to each separate sentence in works of that class, we may perhaps say that, virtually, no man has written so much. By way of bringing his characteristic merits within the horizon of the least learned readers, we shall now lay before them a close analysis of his ablest and most famous performance, the Phalaris ; and it happens, favourably for our purpose, though singularly, that the most learned of Bentley's works is also that which is best fitted for popular admiration. Phalaris had happened to say, that some worthy people in Sicily had been kind enough to promise him a loan ; not, however, on any pastoral considerations, such as might seem agreeable to that age and country, but on the bare Judasan terms of so imich per shent (Savdfffiv). Here the forger of the Letters felt that it was indispen- sable to assign real names. Bills upon Simonides, endorsed by 123 RICHARD BENTLEY. Pythagoras, would have been likely to fall to a discount in critical estimation, and to have damaged the credit of the letters. The contractors for his loan, therefore, are not humble individuals, but cities Phintia, to wit, and Hybla. Well, and what of them ? Were their acceptances likely to be protested for non-payment ? By no means ; both were probably solvent ; and, at all events, their ex- istence, which is something, is guaranteed by Ptolemy,, by Anto- ninus, and by Pliny. "But," says Bentley, (oh that ominous but.') " it is ill luck for this forger of letters, that a fragment of Diodorus was preserved, to be a witness against him." From this little frag- ment, now raised up from the dust of ages, Bentley deduces a sum- mary conviction of the forgery. This city of Phintia, in fact, had its name from the author of its existence, one Phintias ; he was a petty prince, who flourished about the time of Pyrrhus the Epirot, and built the city in question, during the one hundred and twenty-fifth Olympiad ;* that is to say, abiding by the chronology mostfavour~ able to the authenticity of the Letters, above 270 years after Phalaris. "A pretty slip," says Bentley " a pretty slip this of our Sophist, to introduce his tyrant borrowing money of a city almost three hundred years before it was named or built !" Such is the starting argument of Bentley. It will be admitted to be a knock-down blow ; and though only one, and applied to a single letter of the whole series, a candid looker-on will own, that it is such a one as settles the business ; and no prudent champion, however game, would have chosen to offer himself to the scratch for a second round. However, of irepJ TOV Bo<\e'a thought otherwise. The next argument is of the same description, being a second case of anachronism ; but it merits a separate statement. In the instance of Phintia the proof was direct, and liable to no demur ; but here the anachronism is made out circumstantially. Hence it is less readily apprehended ; and the Boyle party, in their anger or their haste, did in fact misapprehend it ; and upon their own blunder they built a charge against Bentley of vicious reasoning, which gave him an opening (not likely to be missed by him) for inflicting two courses of the knout instead of one. The case is this : Stesichorus, the lyric poet, had incurred the displeasure of Phalaris, not for writing verses against him, but for overt acts of war ; the poet had been levying money and troops, and, in fact, making hostile demonstrations at * Bentley, upon grounds which are satisfactory, and most elaborately de- veloped, fixes the flourishing of Phalaris to the 57th Olympiad. In this the reader may happen to know that he differed with that learned chronologist, but most confused writer, H. Dodwell. It is important, however, to remark, that, logically speaking, it would be a circle (or petitio principii) to press Bentley with Dodwell's authority in this particular instance, inasmuch as Dodwell had, in fixing the era of Phalaris, mainly relied upon the very Letters in dispute ; at that time unsuspected, or nearly so. That fact, important to Bentley, as disarming the chronological authority of Dodwell, is no less im- portant, as demonstrating that the question of Phalaris is not one of mere taste, but operatively connected with historical results. 124 RICHARD BENTLEY. two separate places A hintium and A Icesa. Accordingly, Letter 92 takes him to task, and insinuates an ugly consequence: viz. the chance of being " snapt " (so Bentley calls it) by the bull before he got safe home to Himera. The objection raised upon this passage regards Alaesa : Did that town exist so early as the days of Phalaris ? No, says Bentley, nor for a hundred and forty years after Phalaris having been founded by Archonides in the second year of the 94th Olympiad, consequently one hundred and forty years after the death of Phalaris ; and then, upon a testimony which cannot be resisted by a Boyle man, viz., the testimony of these very Letters, one hun- dred and fifty-two at the very least, after this particular letter. But might there not be other cities, earlier than this, which bore the same name ? There might in fact there were. How, then, shall it be known whether that particular Alsesa, which would involve the ana- chronism, viz. the Alaesa founded by Archonides, is the Alaesa of the Letter-writer? As the argument by which Bentley replies to this ques- tion has been so much misconceived, and is in fact not very clearly stated in either dissertation, we shall throw it into a formal syllogism. Major Proposition. The Alsesa of the Pseudo-Phalaris and Ste- sichorus is the maritime Alaesa. Minor Proposition. The maritime Alsesa is the Alaesa founded by Archonides. Ergo. The Alaesa of Archonides (viz., an Alaesa of nearly two centuries later than the era of Phalaris) is the Alaesa of the Pseudo- Phalaris. Now comes a famous argument, in which Bentley makes play beautifully. Phalaris had been ill, and, wishing to reward his Greek physician in a manner suitable to a prince, amongst other presents called from the first contriver of them, one Thericles, a Corinthian potter." Originally, therefore, as to the material, they must have been porcelain or, however, earthenware of some quality or other, (Pliny having by general consent tripped in supposing Thericles a turner.) But, as often happens, in process of time, " they were called Thericlaean from their shape, whatsoever artisan made them, or whether of earth, or of wood, or of metal." So far well. But " there is another thing," says Bentley, " besides a pretty invention, very useful to a liar, and that is, a good memory." For "the next thing to be inquired is the age of this Thericles ; and we learn that from Athenaeus one * witness indeed, but as good as a multitude in * There is, however, a collateral testimony from a poet contemporary with the old age of Thericles, viz., Eubulus, which gives a perfect confirmation to that of Athenaeus. In the final dissertation, Bentley brought forward this fragment. In fact, the good luck of Bentley, in meeting all the out-of-the- way evidence which he sometimes required, is not less remarkable than his skill in using it. RICHARD BENTLEY. a matter of this nature. This cup (says he) was invented by Thericles, the Corinthian potter who was contemporary with, Aristophanes the comedian" This is enough. Bentley goes on to compute, that all the sur- viving plays of Aristophanes range within a period of thirty- six years ; so that, allowing the full benefit of this latitude to the Pseudo-Phalaris, viz. that Thericles invented his cups in the very first year of this period, still, even upon that concession, the very earliest baking of the potter's china will be one hundred and twenty years after the final baking of Phalaris himself. This article in the first Dissertation was short ; but the Oxford critique upon it furnished him with an occasion, and almost a neces- sity, for supporting it, in the second, with a bravura display of his learning upon all the collateral points that had been connected with the main question. And, as the attack had been in unusual terms of insolence, (asking him, for instance, how he "durst" oppose such men as Grotius and Scaliger,*) Bentley was under no particular obligation to use his opportunities with forbearance, or to renounce his triumph. This was complete. It is not Boyle, or his half- learned associates, but the very heroes of classical literature for the preceding one hundred and fifty years Buchanan, Scaliger, Grotius, Casaubon, Salmasius, who on this occasion (respectfully, but, as to the matter, effectually) are shown to be in error. Most readers are aware, that amongst the multifarious researches which belong to what is called learning, the res metrica has been developed more slowly than any other. The field, therefore, being so under-cultured, had naturally drawn the attention of an ambitious young scholar like Bentley ; and, in his epistle to Mill upon John Malelas, he had already made his name illustrious by the detection of a canon in Anapaestic metre. "Ned," says Dr. Parr, writing to Dr. Maltby in 1814, " I believe Bentley knew nothing scientifically of choral metre." ' Why, no, Sam, perhaps he did not; neither did Person, if we speak strictly of choral metre ; and for Sam himself, little indeed upon any metre whatsoever, except that he somewhere conceives himself to have corrected a few loose iambics of a Latin comic poet, (a feat which did not require a Titan.) However, at that day (1690) it was no trifle to have revealed a canon which had cer- tainly escaped the most eagle-eyed scholars we have mentioned. On the present occasion, it was an appropriate sequel of that triumph, and one which will remind scholars of a similar feat by Porson with regard to iambic metre, (see Pref. to th Hecuba of Euripides,) that a formidable array of passages, objected to by the Boyle party as overthrowing his canon, and twelve others, volunteered by himself, are all corrected in a way which, whilst it delivers his * This, by the way, shows the variety of hands employed in Boyle's book,, and the want of an editor to impress harmony upon them : elsewhere, the Scaligers, and such people, are treated as pedants. 126 RICHARD BENTLEY. canon from the supposed contradiction, forces from him the finest display of his own critical sagacity. The fourth argument exposes an anachronism pretty much like that of AlcBsa in the second. The Pseudo-Phalaris having occasion to speak of the Zanclaeans, and in three previous Letters of the Messanians, manifestly betrays that he thought Zancle and Messana two different towns. " Certainly," says Bentley, " the true Phalaris could not write thus ; and it is a piece of ignorance inexcusable in our Sophist not to know that these names belonged to one and the same city at different times." But, perhaps, the change from the early name of Zancle, to the latter one of Messana, may have hap- pened during the progress of these very Letters. The present arrangement of the Letters is indeed inconsistent with that supposi- tion ; for it is the eighty-fifth which mentions the old name Zancle, whilst the first, twenty-first, and eighty-fourth mention Messana. But that objection, if there were no other, might be eluded by sup- posing the particular order in which the Letters stand in our present editions to have been either purely accidental, or even arbitrarily devised by some one of the early librarii. But allowing all this, the evasion of Bentley's argument will still be impossible on grounds of chronology. Thucydides tells us the occasion of that irreparable expulsion which the Zanclseans suffered and the time, viz. about the last year of the 7oth Olympiad. The same author states the circumstances under which the new name Messana arose ; and though he does not precisely date this latter incident, he says gene- rally that it was ov vo\\<$ wepov, (not long after the other.) Sepa- rate parts of this statement are corroborated by other historians ; and, upon the whole, taking the comjbutus least favourable to Bentley, the new name of Messana appears not to have been imposed by Anaxi- laus until more than sixty years after Phalaris was dead and gone. One objection there is undoubtedly to this argument, and Bentley frankly avows it ; Pausanias antedates Anaxilaus by not less than one hundred and eighty years. But there is no need to recite the various considerations which invalidate his authority, since the argu- ment derived from him is one of those which prove too much. Doubtless, it would account for the use of " Messana " in the Letters of Phalaris, but so effectually account for it as to make it impossible that any other name should have been familiarly em- ployed at an age when " Zancle " must have been superannuated by a century. Such is the dilemma in which Bentley has noosed his enemies ; skilfully leaving it a matter of indifference to his cause, whether they accept or reject the authority of Pausanias. From this dilemma, however, Boyle attempts to escape, by taking a distinction between the town and the people who drew their name from it. Zancleeans, he thinks, might subsist under that name long after Zancle had changed its masters and forfeited its name. But this hypothesis is destroyed by means of an inscription which Bentley cites from a statue at Olympia, connected with the comment RICHARD BENTLEY. of the person who records it : the statue, it seems, had been set up by Evagoras, who inscribed himself upon it as a Zanclaean ; from which single word the recorder infers the antiquity of the statue, arguing that the mere name " Zanclcean " sufficiently proved its era to have been anterior to the imposition of the modern nameof Messana; where- as clearly, had there been a race of Zanclaeans who survived (under that name) the city of Zancle, this argument would have been without force, and could not have occurred to the writer who builds upon it. The fifth argument will, perhaps, not be thought so entirely satisfactory as it seemed to Bentley. Phalaris, in threatening the people of Himera, says avrovs eK-rptyte ir'nvos S//CTJV / will extirpate them like a pine-tree ; that is to say, root and branch. Now, this Delphic threat, and in these identical words, appears first of all in Herodotus, who explains the force of it to lie in this that of all trees the pine only was radically destroyed by mere lopping. That 'historian ascribes the original use of this significant allusion to Crcesus, who did not begin his reign until six years after the pre- tended use of it by Phalaris. But Bentley conceives that he has sufficient reason to father it upon Herodotus himself ; in which case it will be younger than the age of Phalaris by a century. But we confess ourselves dissatisfied ; or, if that word is too strong, imper- fectly satisfied. "We see," says Bentley, "the phrase was then" (?'. e. in the time of Croesus) " so new and unheard of, that it puzzled a whole city." But it is probable that accidents of place, rather than of time, would determine the intelligibility of this proverb : wherever the pine-tree was indigenous, and its habits familiarly known, the allusion would suggest itself, and the force of it would be acknowledged, no matter in what age. And as to the remark that Aulus Gellius, in the title of a chapter now lost, seems to con- sider Herodotus as the real author of the saying, it amounts to nothing : at this day we should be apt to discuss any vulgar error which has the countenance of Shakspeare, under a title such as this " On the Shakspearian notion that a toad is venomous " meaning merely to remind our readers that the notion has a real popular hold and establishment, not surely that Shakspeare was the originator of it. The authority of Eustathius, so very modern an author, adds no strength at all to Bentley's hypothesis. No real links of tradition could possibly connect two authors removed from each other by nearly two thousand years. Eustathius ascribes, or seems to ascribe, the mot\.o Herodotus, not in a personal sense, but as a short-hand way of designating the book in which it is originally found. The truth is, that such a proverb would be coeval and coextensive with the tree. Symbolical forms are always delightful to a semi-bar- barous age ; such, for instance, as the emblematic advice of that silent monitor to a tyrant, who, walking through a garden, cut ofl the heads of all the plants which overtopped the rest. Threats more especially assume this form ; where they are perfectly understood, they are thus made more lively and significant ; and, on the other .hand, where they are enigmatical, the uncertainty (according to a 128 RICHARD BENTLEY. critical remark of Demetrius Phalereus) points the attention to them under a peculiar advantage of awe and ominous expectation. The sixth argument is another case of the second and fourth. Phalaris exults that he had routed the Tauromenites and the Zan- clseans. " But," says Bentley, "there is an old true saying Uo\\a Kaiva ret iro\iiju>vmany new and strange things happen in war. We have just now seen those same routed Zanclaeans rise up again, after a thousand years, to give him a worse defeat. And now the others, too, are taking their time to revenge their old losses : for these, though they are called Tauromenites both here and in three other letters, make protestation against the name, and declare they were called Naxians in the days of the true Phalaris. Taurominium, qucB antea Naxos, says Pliny. Whence it is that Herodotus and Thucydides, because they wrote before the change of the name, never speak of Taurominium, but of Naxos." Yet it will be objected that Bentley himself has made Pythagoras contemporary with Phalaris : now of this very Pythagoras, Porphyry says " that he delivered Croton, Himera, and Taurominium from tyrants;" and lamblichus says "that a young man of Tauro- minium being drunk, Pythagoras played him sober by a few airs of grave spondees." A third writer also, Conon, says, of a person in the age of Cyrus the elder, contemporary with Pythagoras and Phalaris, that he "went to Taurominium in Sicily." The answer to all this is obvious : Taurominium is here used with the same sort of licensed Prolepsis, as when we say, Julius Ccesar conquered France and made an expedition into England 'though we know that Gaul and Britain were the names in that age. The seventh, eighth, and eighteenth arguments may be thrown together, all turning upon the same objection, viz. that Phalaris is apt to appropriate the thoughts of better men than himself a kind of robbery which possibly other royal authors have practised, but hardly (like Phalaris) upon men born long after their own time. The three cases of this, cited by Bentley, are of very different weight. Let us begin with the weakest. Writing to Polygnotus, Phalaris is found sporting this sentiment \lryos tpyov O-KI& irapa rols vuQpovtafpois vcirlsfvrai that words are regarded as the shadow of deeds by persons of good sense. "It is a very notable saying, and we are obliged to the author of it ; and, if Phalaris had not modestly hinted that others had said it before him, we might have taken it for his own. But then there was either a strange jumping of good wits, or Democritus was a sorry plagiary ; for he laid claim to the first invention of it. What shall we say to this matter? Democritus had the character of a man of probity and wit. Besides, here are Plutarch and Diogenes, two witnesses that would scorn to flatter. This bears hard upon the author of the Letters. But how can we help it ? He should have minded his hits better, when he was minded to play the tyrant. For Democritus was too young to know even Pythagoras ; 129 RICHARD SENILE Y. T& TUV xpovcav ndxtrat considerations of chronology arc inconsistent with it; and yet Pythagoras survived Phalaris." Such is Berkley's argument; but undoubtedly it is unfair. He says "besides," as though Plutarch and Diogenes were supplementary evidences to a matter otherwise established upon independent grounds ; whereas it is from them only, and from Suidas, whom he afterwards brought forward, that we know of any such claim for Democritus. Again, Bentley overrates their authority. That of Plutarch, upon all matters of fact and critical history, is at this day deservedly low ; and as to Diogenes Laertius, nobody can read him without perceiving that precisely upon this department of his labour, viz. the application of all the stray apophthegms, prose epigrams, and " good things," which then floated in conversation, he had no guide at all. Some- times there might be a slight internal indication of the author ; philosophic sarcasms, for instance, of every age, were ascribed boldly to the cynical Diogenes ; sometimes an old tradition might descend with the saying; but much more frequently every aphorism or pointed saying was attributed by turns to each philo- sopher in succession, who, in his own generation, had possession of the public ear. Just the same thing has happened in England ; multitudes of felicitous motshave come down through the i8th century to our days doing duty first under the names of Swift, Dr. Johnson. Sheridan, &c., next of Lord Chesterfield, then of Quin, Foote, and above all, of George Selwyn, who enjoyed a regal benefit of claim over all waifs and derelicts ; and, finally, of Jekyll, Brinsley Sheridan, Courtenay, Sam Rogers, and Thomas Moore. Over and above all this, Bentley is obliged to make two concessions, which take the edge off his argument. Michael Pselhis ascribes the saying to Simonides ; and Isidore, the Pelusiot, generally to the Lacedae- monians. Now, at all events, this breaks the unanimity of the ascription to Democritus, though each for itself should happen to be false. The objection to Simonides is, that he was but seven years old when Phalaris was killed. This, though surely, in a matter so perplexed as the chronology of that era, it is driving' rather closely, we may allow. But what objection is there to the Lacedaemonians ? Certainly we can discern, in the very nature of the sentiment, a reason that may have influenced Isidore for tracing it up to a. Laconic parentage ; but though this is an argument for suspicion, it is none for absolute rejection. Neither does Bentley make any objection of that sort. Here again he seems to rely upon chronology; for his own words are no stronger than these, that " though the date be undetermined, it might fairly be presumed to be more recent than he," (i. e. Phalaris.) ' ' Fairly to be presumed / ' ' is that all ? And why is it to be presumed ? Simply because " four parts out of five " among the Lacedaemonian apophthegms collected by Plutarch are, in Bentley's judgment, later than the age of Phalaris. Even this leaves a chance not quite inconsiderable, that the anachronism may not exist in the apophthegm before us. But, finally, had Bentley been called on for his proof of the particular 130 RICHARD BENTLEY. proportions here assigned to the Anti-Phalaridean and Post-Pha- laridean apophthegms, it would perhaps have appeared that the present argument of his was utterly worthless. For how came he to discriminate two classes ? Of necessity, by some marks, (as, sup- pose diction of a certain quality, more or less archaic, and metrical arrangement, which would belong to all the "yvu>ncu taken from the dramatic writers.) And are these criteria sufficient ? Undoubt- edly they are ; for example, before the iambics of the Greek tragedy existed, iambic apophthegms could not be detached from it. No such metrical yv&ytr?, therefore, can pretend to an earlier date than that of the drama itself. Well, then, having so effectual a test, with what propriety could Bentley throw the decision upon a ratio of chances "four out of five?" For no matter if the chances against a fact had been a thousand to one before examination, yet tf, after examination and submission to the test, the result were in favour of that fact, it will be established no less certainly than if the chances had been just the other way. The positive application of the test is transcendent to all presumptions and probabilities what- soever, however reasonable it might have been to rely upon them in a case where no examination had been possible. So much for this section, which though the weakest of the whole is wound up in the most stinging manner ; for Boyle having argued that apparent plagiarisms in a case like this proved nothing, since, in fact, no absolute originality, and therefore no manifest plagiarism, could be imagined in sentiments which belong to human nature itself, Bentley assures him that he is mistaken exhibiting in his own person a refutation of that maxim; " for there are many such nostrums in his book, such proper and peculiar mistakes, as were never thought on nor said by any man before him." The argument in the eighteenth section, which would fix upon Phalaris a reference to an epitaph first cited by Demosthenes in his Crown Oration, delivered in the third year of the H2th Olympiad, nearly two hundred and twenty years after his own death, is about as dubious as the last. But the case in the eighth section is un- answerable. Phalaris is made to say I/TJTOVS yap omas aJda.va.-ror P7V ex*'", us

M^> are too evident to leave any doubts about the fountain from which the Pseudo-Phalaris is drawing. The inference of Bentley is " that, if this iambic came from the stage, it must be later than Phalaris, let it belong to what poet soever, tragic or comic." Boyle, on the other hand, is "very well satisfied that there were both tragic and comic poets before the days of Phalaris." And upon this, in law phrase, issue is joined. Comedy is discussed in the present section. Bentley argues the following points against Boyle : First, that Epicharmus is to be considered the father of Comedy upon more and better authorities than Susarion ; Secondly, this being admitted, that upon chrono- RICHARD BENTLEY. logical grounds Phalaris could not borrow a verse from comedy ; Thirdly, even supposing Susarion to have contributed something to the invention, yet that this could not have availed Phalaris, unless be had come over incognito to the villages of Attica, inasmuch as " his plays were extemporal, and never published in writing;" and Fourthly, granting even " that they were published, it is more likely they were in tetrametres and other chorical measures, than in iambics." And why so ? Because, as the Drama grew up from a festival, in which the main elements were singing and dancing, it is certain that the earliest metres were those which adapted them- selves to dancing. It is, however, true, though at that time unknown to the learned, that an unpublished MS., of one Diomedes Scholas- ticus, upon Dionysius Thrax, which MS. is in the King's Library, asserts, that " Susarion was the beginner of comedy in verse, whose plays were all lost in oblivion : but there are two or three iambics of a play of his still remembered. In fact, there are in all five : the first four in this very MS. which had been seen only by Bentley, (and some of them in two other authors;) the last (which, by the way, seems to us a later addition by way of ivinvQiov] in Stobaeus. We shall give the whole, as the sentiment unfortunately belongs to all ages : 'AKoveTf, Aeir Svaapluv At'-yei rciSe 'fios &i\ivov Mfyap60ev TpiiroSloKios' Kaxbv yvviUKfs* a\\' opus, 5 STjjuorai, OVK fff-rlv oiKtiv oiKtav &vtv KUKOV. Kal yap rb yTJ/jiai, Kal TO /XT) 77)^01, Kait6v. Hear, O people: thus speaks Susarion, &c. Women are a tor- ment; but still, my countrymen, there is no keeping house with- out this torment. To marry, then, and not to marry, is alike calamitous. Bentley produces this evidence (which, by the way, he corrects capitally) against himself; but disarms it chiefly by this argument. Susarion is here introduced addressing the audience in his own person ; now that, taken in connection with the iambic metre, will prove the verses to be no part of a play. For though sometimes the poet did address the parterre, yet this was always done through the chorus; and what were the measures that the chorus used at that time ? " Never iambics, but always anapaests or tetrametres; and I believe," says Bentley, " there is not one instance that the chorus speaks at all to the^5z'/in iambics; to the actor it sometimes does." Boyle, in treating the case of Susarion, had made much use of a passage in the Arundel Marbles. Unfor- tunately the words, which he particularly relied on, were mere emendations of Palmerius and Selden. Now it happened that Selden, whose Greek knowledge we ourselves consider miserably inaccurate, had in this instance made but a very imperfect examina- tion of the marble chronicle itself. The consequence was, that Boyle had here unintentionally prepared an opening for a masterly display of skill on the part of Bentley, who had the pleasure at one and the. 132 RICHARD BENTLEY. same moment of exhibiting his Greek without ostentation of doing a* critical service to that famous Arundelian monument, on which so many learned heads had been employed of dragging after him, as captives, a whole host of heroes in literature, whom he had indis- putably defeated and finally, of establishing his triumph in the question immediately before him.* All this learning, however, Bentley fails not to remind his readers, is ex abundanti, so much over and above what was necessary to decide the dispute, and, in fact, an excursus forced from him by his antagonist. For in reality certain words in the apophthegm, no ways essential to its expression, are proofs (or so Bentley regards them) that the Pseudo-Phalaris was borrowing not merely from the Greek drama before it existed, but from a specific dramatist, Euripides, to wit ; and a specific tragedy now lost, viz. Philoctetes. However, we must own that this part of the argument appears to us questionable at least, and perhaps positively wrong ; questionable, because Bentley has laid far too much stress on two words so exceedingly common as ex*"' and -irporfiKft, the rest being (as he himself admits) absolutely indispensable to the expres- sion of the thought, and therefore sure to occur to any writer having occasion to express it. To these two words confessedly he commits the entire burden of the tragedian's claim ; and upon the ground, that, where so many equivalent expressions were at hand, it was hardly to be supposed that two persons writing independently, " would have hit upon the same by chance." But we reply, that the words %\fw and irpoo-^/c, each containing an iambus, are convenient, and likely to offer to any man writing in iambic metre, which several of Bentley's equivalents are not. At any rate, the extent of the coincidence is not sufficient. But secondly, we think that unques- * Seldom, perhaps, has there been a more ingenious correction than that of Selden's eV 'Afl^ais on the Arundel Marble. Bentley had remarked else- where that the marble uniformly said 'Afloat: why, then, should it suddenly, and in this place only, say tv 'Aflijvois, (which was Selden's suggestion for filling up the EN A ... AI2 *) Bentiey's reading of eV airfivais, in plaustris, im- mediately recalls the line of Horace, " Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis." No less important is Bentley's confirmation of a reading formerly proposed by one who distrusted it. Palmerius, much against his will, (for he could find no sense in the words,) had made out upon the marble that the inventor of Comedy received as his prize VxaSwi' Upaixov, itlBov Sivov a basket of figs, and a hogshead of wine. Bentley produced an unpublished couplet of Dios- corides, the last line of which fully confirms the marble : X' &TTIKOS %v "2.vKtav appixos 3.6\os fri . e. and a basket of figs besides was the Attic prize. Another reading of this line, which substitutes $Q\os for 30Aos, we need not notice more particularly, as it is immaterial to the point before us. RICHARD BENTLEY. tionably the apophthegm was not the fragment of the Philoctetes ; for the words there stand thus : Ouroi irpo,; 'ABdi>a,TOi>. In this there is some difference, even as to the form of the thought ; and the Pseudo-Phalaris must greatlyhave disturbed the order, and, without apparent reason, to obtain his own. But the best answer is this, that the words, as they now stand, are in a natural iambic arrangement (as vaTov op? exv 'Ou -- irpoaiiK.fi. The defect in the second line might be supplied in a thousand ways. And we therefore throw Bentley back upon that general form of his argument, which he imagined to be superseded by a special one : King Phalaris, in any case, is detected borrowing from a tragic drama, if not from this particular drama of Euripides ; and as elsewhere we have seen him drawing loans from cities before they were founded, so here he is manifestly borrowing a sentiment from some tragedian unknown, before tragedy itself existed. The two next arguments may be thrown together. In the first of them, Phalaris is convicted of borrowing a phrase (-rlv o\t6pov evpf) from Callimachus ; and another (eVep^ 8afy*o", in the sense of bad fortune} perhaps also from Callimachus if not, from Pindar ; no matter which, since either way there would be an anachronism. These cases are, perhaps doubtful ; in fact, the acknowledged coincidence of two original poets shows that the last phrase, at any rate, had gained a sort of proverbial footing. Not so with regard to the word philosopher, which furnishes the matter for another section. The 56th Letter is addressed to Pythagoras the Philosopher ; this being only the superscription, may have been the addition of a copier ; and, if so, the argument of Bentley would be eluded ; but in the 231! Letter, the word philosophy cannot be detached from the context. Now, it is universally agreed, that Pythagoras himself introduced * * In saying that Pythagoras introduced the term philosopher, we must be understood to mean, (and Bentley, we presume, meant,) that he first gave currency to that particular determination of the word "philosopher" by which, under the modest eu^Tjunrju^j of an amateur or dilettante in wisdom, was understood an investigator of first causes, upon a particular scheme ; else, in the general and unlimited sense of the word, merely as a lover of wisdom, and nothing masked under that title, there can be no doubt that Pythagoras did not introduce the word. The case is the same as that of the modern illuminati ; as a general and unrestricted term, it is, of course, appli- cable to all men each in his degree who can make any pretensions to intel- lectual culture. But, in the particular sense of Adam Weishaupt, and many 134 I RICHARD BENTLEY. the word ; a fact which hardly needs an attestation ; however, from a crowd of authors, Bentley quotes Cicero to the following effect : "That, when Pythagoras had discoursed before Leon, (the tyrant of Sicyon,) that prince, much taken with his wit and eloquence, asked him what art or trade he possessed. 'Art,' says Pythagoras, ' I profess none; I am a philosopher.' 1 Leon, in admiration of the newness of the name, inquired what these philosophers were, and wherein they differed from other men." On this, says Bentley, "What a difference is here between the two tyrants! The one knows not what philosopher means : the other seems to account it as threadbare a word as the name of wise men of Greece ; and that, too, before he had ever spoken with Pythagoras. We cannot tell which conversation was first. If Phalaris was the first, the Epistles must be a cheat. But, allowing Leon's to be the first, yet it could not be long after the other ; and it is very hard to believe that the fame of so small a matter could so soon reach Phalaris' s ear in his castle, through his guard of blue-coats, and the loud bellowing of his bull." In a note on the word blue-coats,* Bentley says, "This is not said at random ; for I find the Agrigentines forbade their citizens to wear blue clothes, because blue was Phalaris's livery." Boyle's answer is characteristic at once of his breeding as a man of quality, and his pursuits as a scholar : for he takes a scholarlike illustration, and he uses it like a courtier. Queen Elizabeth, it seems, in addressing one of the universities, introduced, upon her own authority, the word Faminilis. Now, could that learned body have paid her a more delicate compliment, asks Boyle, than by using the royal word in its answer ? Bentley rejects this as a piece of unworthy adulation ; not that Bentley was always above flattering ; but his mind was too coarse and plain to enter into the spirit of such romantic and Castilian homage : his good sense was strong, his imaginative gallantry weak. However, we agree with him that, previously to any personal conversation with Pythagoras, the true Phalaris could not possibly have used this new designation "as familiarly as if it had been the language of his nurse," but " would have ushered it in with some kind of introduction." other mystical enthusiasts of modern Germany, that term designated a secret society, whose supposed objects and purposes have been stated by Robinson and the Abbe Baruel with a degree of circumstantiality which must have been rather surprising to the gentlemen themselves. * The meaning of Bentley's joke, as well as odd coincidence in the Agri- gentine regulation, is now obsolete. It must be remembered, therefore, that all the menial retainers of English noblemen, from a very early period of our history and, from this passage, it seems that the practice still subsisted in Bentley's time received at stated intervals an ample blue coat. This was the generic distinction of their order; the special one was the badge or cogni- zance appropriated to the particular family under which they took service ; and from the periodical deliveries of these chaw'eristic articles of servile costume, came our word livery. 10 135 RICHARD BENTLEY. In the following section comes on to be argued, the great question of the age of Tragedy. The occasion is this: In the 63d Epistle, Phalaris " is in great wrath with one Aristolochus, a tragic poet, that nobody ever heard of, for writing tragedies against him." Bentley amuses himself a little with the expression of "writing tragedies againft a man;" and with the name of Aristolochus, whom he pronounces a fairy poet, for having kept himself invisible to all the world since his own day ; though Boyle facetiously retorts, that, judging by the length of his name, he must have been a giant, rather than a fairy. But the strength of Bentley' s objection is announced in this sentence : " / must take the boldness to tell Phalaris, who am out of his reach, that he lays a false crime to the poet's charge ; for there was no such thing nor word as tragedy when he tyrannized at Agrigentum." Upon this arose the dispute concerning the earliest date of tragedy. In treating this interesting question, Bentley first addresses him- self to the proof that Thespis, and not Epigenes or Phrynicus, was the true and original inventor of tragedy; and that no relics of uny one Thespian drama survived in the age of Aristotle ; conse- quently, that those fragments which imposed upon Clemens Alexan- drinus and others, were forgeries ; and he points out even the particular person most liable to the suspicion of the forgery, viz. Heraclides Ponticus, a scholar of Aristotle's. The fact of the forgery is settled indeed upon other evidence ; for these four monstrous words, KKz|f/8i, X0V7TTT)?, *Ae7ftco, Apoijf occur in the iambics attributed to Thespis. Now these words are confessedly framed as artificial contrivances for including the entire twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet. But Bentley makes it tolerably evident that no more than eighteen, certainly not twenty-four, existed in the age of Thespis. The lines, then, are spurious ; and the imaginary evidences for the fact of Thespis having written anything, are got rid of. And as to any supplementary argument from the Alcestis, supposed to be ascribed to him by the Arundel Marbles, that is overthrown i. By the received tradition that Thespis admitted no female character into his plays : a fortiori, then, that he could not have treated a subject, the whole passion of which turned upon a female character ; but, 2. More effectually by the triumphant proof which Bentley gives, that the Arundelian Alcestis was a pure fiction of Selden's, arising out of imperfect examination. Next, however, let it be conceded that Thespis did write, will that be of any service to Boyle ? This introduces the question of the precise era of Thespis. Now, on the Oxford Marble, most unfortunately the letters which assign this are obliterated by time and weather. But Bentley suggests an obvious remedy for the misfortune, which gives a certain approxi- mation. The name of Thespis stands between two great events, viz. the defeat of Crcesus by Cyrus, immediately preceding, and the accession of Darius, immediately following. The first of these is placed by all great chronologists in the first year of the 5Qth Olympiad; the last, in the second year of the 6sth Olympiad. Between these RICHARD BENTLEY. dates, then, it was (a latitude of twenty-five years) that Thespis founded the tragic drama. And this being so, it follows, obviously, that Phalaris, who perished in the third year of the 5/th Olympiad, could not have afforded a subject to tragedy during his lifetime. Boyle most idly imagines an error in the marble chronicle, through an omission of the sculptor. Certainly the o-0o\MTa operarum are well known to literary men of our times, but hardly where the proof- sheets happen to be marble ; and after all, Bentley shows him that he would take no benefit by this omission. Three collateral dis- quisitions on Phrynicus, the successor of Thespis, on Solon, and on the origin of the word tragedy, are treated elaborately, and with entire success ; but they depend too much on a vast variety of details to admit of compression. In the Twelfth Section, Bentley examines the dialect. " Had all other ways failed us," says he, " of detecting this impostor, yet his very speech had betrayed him ; for his language is Attic ; but he had forgotten that the scene of these Epistles was not Athens, but Sicily, where the Doric tongue was generally spoken and written. Pray, how came that idiom to be the court language at Agrigentum ? ' ' Athens, the nurorvpavvos, or tyrant-hating, by old prerogative, was not likely to be a favourite with the greatest of tyrants. And above all, we must consider this that in the age of Phalaris, before litera- ture had given to the Attic dialect, that supremacy which it had afterwards, there was no one reason for valuing this exotic dialect, (as it was to Phalaris,) or giving it any sort of preference to the native dialect of Sicily. But it is objected that Phalaris was born at Astypalsea, an island where, in early times, there existed an Attic colony. Now, in answer to this waiving the question of fact, would he, who for twenty years had been a tax-gatherer in Sicily, have not learned the Doric ? Studying popularity, would he have reminded the natives, by every word he uttered, that he was a foreigner ? But perhaps he was not born at Astypalsea : there is a strong presumption that he was born in Sicily: and even in Astypalaea, there is " direct evidence that it was a Dorian colony, not an Athenian ; for it was planted by the Megarians." But other eminent Sicilians, it may be said, quitted the Doric for the Attic in then- writings. True : but that was in solemn composi- tions addressed to the world, epic poems and histories not in familiar letters, "mostly directed to the next towns, or to some of his own domestics, about private affairs, or even the expenses of his family, and never designed for the public view." "Yet," retorts Boyle, "we have a letter of Dion of Syracuse to Dionysiu j the Tyrant, and a piece of Dionysius's, both preserved among Plato's Epistles, and written in such a dialect as if both prince and philosopher (to use the Doctor's phrase) had gone to school at Athens." Here, rejoins Bentley, he is " very smart upon me ; but he lashes himself; for the philosopher really did go to school at Athens, and xo-2 '37 RICHARD BENTLEY. lived with Plato and Speusippus : " and as to the prince, though he " did not go to Athens, yet Athens, as I may say, went to him ; for not Plato only, but several other philosophers, were entertained by him at his court in Syracuse." But again, says Boyle, thinking to produce a memorable and un- objectionable case, because taken from Scripture, Epimenides the Cretan did not write in the Cretic dialect; for, in the line cited from him by St. Paul, KpTJTes ael (Jfeujeu, KctKa, STJPI'O, jafffpes apyal, the word 1 would in the Cretic dialect have been aits. Even from this position, so difficult as it might seem at this time of day to dispute, Bentley's unrelenting scourge immediately forces him : he produces a Cretic epistle and a Cretic inscription, (of absolute authority, being on marble,) both of which present the form del. But, even had it been otherwise, we must remember, that from a poem to a familiar epistle, non valet consequentia ; the latter could not abandon the dialect native to the writer, without impeaching its credit. And so fatal is Bentley's good luck, here as every- where, that he produces a case where a letter of this very Epimen- ides, which still survives, was denounced as spurious by an ancient critic, (Demetrius the Magnesian,) for no other reason than because it was not Cretic in its dialect, but Attic. With his customary bad fortune, Boyle next produces Alcaeus and Sappho, as persons " who were born in places where the Ionic was spoken, and yet wrote their lyric poems in ,-Eolic or Doric." For this assertion he really had some colourable authority, since both ./Elian and Suidas expressly rank Lesbos among the Ionian cities. Yet, because Meursius, and before him, Brodseus, and after both, Bentley himself, had all independently noticed the word Lesbos as an error for Lebedos, Bentley replies in the following gentle terms : ' I protest I am ashamed even to refute such miserable trash, though Mr. Boyle was not ashamed to write it. What part is it that I must teach him ? That Alcseus and Sappho were natives of Lesbos ? But it is incredible he should be ignorant of that. Or, that the language of Lesbos was ^Eolic ? Yes, there his learning was at a loss ; he believed it was Ionic." It is then demonstrated, by a heap of authorities, not only that Lesbos was an ^Eolian city, but that, (as Strabo says,) in a manner, it was the metropolis of ^Eolian cities. Well, but Agathyrsides, at least, quitted his Samian or Doric dialect for Ionic. Answer: There was no such person; nor did the island of Samos speak Doric, but Ionic Greek. Andronicus of Rhodes, then, in his still surviving Commen- tary on Aristotle's Ethics. The Commentary does indeed survive ; but that the author was a Rhodian, is a mere conceit of a modern, 138 RICHARD BEJVTLEY. and a very unlearned person.* This fact had been already stated by Daniel Heinsius, the original editor of Andronicus. Well, at any rate, Dionysius of Halicarnassus : that case is past disputing. Why, yes, he was of Doric birth undoubtedly, and undoubtedly he wrote in the Attic dialect. But then, in the first place, he lived amongst those who had nothing to do with the Doric which was one reason for abjuring his native dialect ; and, secondly, which is the material difference between him and Phalaris, he wrote in the age of Augustus Caesar when the Attic dialect had been established for four centuries as the privileged language of Grecian literature. " But the most remarkable instance of all" says Boyle, " is that of Zaleucus, King of the Locrians, a Doric colony : the fire- face to whose laws is preserved, and has plainly nothing of th& Doric dialect in it ''." Sad fate of this strongest of all instances! His inexorable antagonist sets to work, and, by arguments drawn from place, time, and language, makes it pretty nearly a dead certainty that the pretended laws of Zaleucus were as pure a fabri- cation as the Letters of Phalaris. Afterwards he makes the same scrutiny, and with the same result, of the laws attributed to Charon- das ; and in the end, he throws out a conjecture that both these forgeries were the work of some sophist not even a native Greek ; a conjecture which, by the way, has since been extended by Valckenaer to the Pseudo-Phalaris himself, upon the authority of some Latin idioms. f [N. B. Any future editor of Bentley's critical works ought to notice the arguments of Warburton, who, in the Divine Legation, endeavours to support the two lawgivers against Bentley.] The use of the Attic dialect, therefore, in an age when as yet no conceivable motive had arisen for preferring that to any other dialect, the earliest morning not having dawned of those splendours which afterwards made Athens the glory of the earth, is of itself a perfect detection of the imposture. But let this be waived. Con- ceive that mere caprice, in a wilful tyrant like Phalaris, led him to adopt the Attic dialect : stet pro ratione voluntas. Still, even in such a case, he must have used the Attic of his own day. Caprice * It is, however, still reprinted at intervals by the Clarendon Press, as the work of Andronicus Rhodius. t Valckenaer's argument is good as far as it goes ; pity that so exquisite a Grecian should not have detected many more flaws of the same quality ! But in this respect the letters of Phalaris seem to enjoy that sort of unaccountable security which hitherto has shielded the forgeries of Chatterton. No man, with the slightest ear for metre, or the poorest tact for the characteristic marks of modem and ancient style of poetic feeling, but must at once ac- knowledge the extravagance of referring these poems to the age of Henry IV. Yet, with the exception of an illusion to the technical usages of horse- racing, and one other, we do not remember that any specific anachronisms, either as to words or things, have been yet pointed out in Chatterton. 139 RICHARD BENTLEY. might go abroad, or it might go back in point of time ; but caprice- could not prophetically anticipate, as Phalaris does, the diction of an age long posterior to his own. Upon this subject Bentley ex- presses himself in a more philosophic tone than he usually adopts. " Every living language," says he, "like the perspiring bodies of living creatures, is in perpetual motion and alteration. Some words go off, and become obsolete ; others are taken in, and by degrees grow into common use ; or the same word is inverted to a new sense and notion ; which, in tract of time, makes as observable a change in the air and features of a language, as age makes in the lines and mien of a face." Boyle, however, admitting this as a general law, chooses to suppose that the Greek language presented an eminent exception to it ; insomuch that writings, separated by an interval of two thousand years, were, in his judgment, nearerto each other in point of phraseology, than English works separated by only t\vo centuries. And as the reason of this fancied stability, he assigns the extended empire of the Greeks. Bentley disputes both the fact and the reason. As to the fact, he says that the resemblance between the old and modern Greek literature was purely mimetic. Why else, he asks, arose the vast multitude of scholiasts ? Their aid was neces- sary to explain phrases which had become obsolete. As to exten- sive empire, no better cause can be assigned why languages are not stationary. In the Roman language, for example, more changes took place during the single century between the Duilian column (z. e. the first naval victory of the Romans) and the comedies of Terence, than during the four centuries preceding. And why ? Because in that century the Roman eagles first flew beyond the limits of Italy. Again, with respect to the Athenian dialect, we find, from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that already by the time of the great orators, the peculiar Attic of Plato and Thucydides had become antiquated, although these last stood in the same relation of time to Demosthenes, that Dryden did to Pope. Now this is sufficiently explained by the composition of the Athenian population in the noth Olympiad, as afterwards recorded by Athenaeus. At that time there were twenty-one thousand citizens, ten thousand naturalized foreigners, and four hundred thousand slaves. Under this proportion of nineteen foreigners * to one native, well might the dialect suffer rapid alterations. Thus far Bentley maintained his usual superiority. But in the particular examples which he adduced, he was both unexpectedly penurious and not always accurate. The word Qvyarf^s, daughters, ueed in the Hebrew manner for young women, was indisputably a neologism impossible to the true Phalaris. So also of Ttporptiretv used for irpocDf'peix. With respect to the phrase Tlaitiiav tpaaa\, used for lovers of children, which Bentley contends must have been equivalent in * Benti?y here, rather too hastily, takes credit for as many foreigners as slaves, forgetting the vernacular slaves (though certainly they were less numerous than among the Romans.) I 4 RICHARD BENTLEY. the elder ages to the infamous word TlaiSfpaa-at, it has been since sup- posed that he was refuted byMarkland, and v. 1088 of the Surplices of Euripides; but on the whole, we are of opinion that Bentley was right. It was the prerogative of the Tragic Drama, as of poetry in general, to exalt and ennoble: Thus, for instance, "filled her with thee a goddess fair," in Milton's L' Allegro, would in plain prose become almost an obscene expression ; but, exalted and sustained by the surrounding images, it is no more than allowably voluptuous. In the absolute prose of Phalaris, we think with Bentley that the phrase could not have borne an innocent meaning. Thus far Bentley was right, or not demonstrably wrong ; but in the two next instances he errs undeniably ; and the triumph of Boyle, for the first time and the last, cannot be gainsaid. Bentley imagined that vpoSiSwfu, in the unusual sense of giving beforehand, (instead of betraying,") had no countenance from the elder writers ; and he denounced the word SUOKW when applied to the pursuing an object of desire, believing that it was applicable only to the case of an enemy picrstiing one who fled. Here we see the danger, in critical niceties, of trusting to any single memory, though the best in the world. And we can well believe Bentley when he charges his oversight upon the hurry of the "press staying for -more copy.'" Having erred, however, the best course is to confess frankly and unreservedly; and this Bentley does. But in one point he draws from his very error an advantageous inference : his Oxford enemies had affected to regard him as a mere index- hunter; and Alsop had insolently described him as " virztm in volvendis Lexicis satis diligentem" Now, says Bentley, it was just because I was not what they would represent me, just because I too much neglected to search Lexicons and Indexes, and too entirely relied on my own reading and unassisted memory, that this one sole error in my first hasty dissertation remained, like the heel of Achilles, to show a touch of human infirmity, in what else might have claimed the immaculateness of a divine origin. Upon a final examination of the Letters, Bentley detected three other words, which manifestly belonged to a later and a philosophic era viz. np6voia, used not in the sense of foresight but of Divine Providence; ^roix^ov, which at first meant a letter or an element of words, used for element in the natural philosopher's sense : and Koalas for the world. But the truth is, that this line of argument threw Bentley upon the hard task of proving negatives. It might be easy, as occasions offered, to show that such a word was used by a particular age ; one positive example sufficed for that: but difficult indeed to show that it was not. The whole is a matter of practice and feeling ; and without any specific instances of modern idiom, which yet might perhaps still be collected by a very vigilant critic, no man of good taste, competently prepared, will hesitate to con- demn the Letters as an imposture, upon the general warrant of the style and quality of the thoughts ; these are everywhere redolent of a state of society highly artificial and polished, and argue an era of 141 RICHARD BENTLEY. literature matured, or even waning, as to the division of its several departments, and the pretensions of its professors. The argument which succeeds in the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Sections, is equally ludicrous and convincing. Throughout the Letters, Fhalaris sports a most royal munificence and gives away talents with as much ease as if they had been sixpences. Now, the jest of the matter is, that Sicilian talents were really not much more. The Attic forger of the Letters, naturally thinking of the Attic talent, (worth about i8o/.,) forgot, or he never learned, that the Sicilian talent was literally two thousand times less in value. Thus Phalaris complains of a hostile invasion, as having robbed him of seven talents ; which, if they could be supposed Attic talents, make I26o/. sterling; but being Sicilian talents, no more than \2S. yd. Again, he gives to a lady, as her marriage portion, five talents, meaning, of course, Attic talents (z. e. goo/.) ; but what the true Phalaris must have understood by that sum was nine shillings ! And in other places he mentions Apodal coins which were not Sicilian. Boyle endeavoured to resist these exposures, but without any success ; and the long dissertation on Sicilian money which his obstinacy drew upon Bentley, remains a monument of the most useful learning, as it corrects the errors of Gronovius, and other first-rate authorities, upon this very complex topic. Meantime, the talent everywhere meant to be understood was the Athenian ; and upon that footing the presents made by Phalaris are even more absurd by their excess, than upon the Sicilian valuation of the talent by their defect. Either way, the Pseudo-Phalaris is found offending against the possibilities of the time and of the place. One instance places the absurdity in a striking light, both as respects the giver and the receiver. Gold was at that time very scarce in Greece, so that the Spartans could not, in every part of that country, collect enough to gild the face of a single statue ; and they finally bought it in Asia of Croesus. Nay, long afterwards, Philip of Macedon, being possessed of one golden cup, weighing no more than half a pound Troy, could not sleep, if it were not placed under his pillow. But, perhaps, Sicily had what Greece wanted ? So far from it, that, above seventy years after Phalaris, Hiero, King of Syracuse, could not obtain gold enough for a single tripod and a Victoria, until after a long search, and a mis- sion to Corinth ; and even then his success was an accident. So much for the powers of the giver. Now for the receiver. A physician in those days was not paid very liberally ; and even in a later age, the following are the rates which the philosopher Crates Assigns as a representative scale for the practice of rich men : " To a cook, 30/. ; to a physican, 8d. ; to a toad-eater, QOO/. ; to a noral adviser smoke ; to a courtezan, i8o/. ; to a philosopher, 4^." But this was satire. True : yet seriously, not long after the death of Phalaris, we have an account of the fees paid to Demo- cedes, the most eminent physician of that day. His salary for a whole year from the people of ^Egina was i8o/. The following 148 RICHARD BENTLEY. year he was hired by the Athenians for 300/. ; and the year after that by a prince, richer than Phalaris, for 36o/. ; so that he never got so much as a guinea a-day. Yet, in the face of these facts, Phalaris gives to his physician, Polycletus, the following presents for a single cure : four goblets of refined gold, two silver bowls of unrivalled workmanship, ten couple of large Thericlaean cups, twenty young boys for his slaves, fifteen hundred pounds in ready money, besides a pension for life, equal to the highest salaries of his generals or admirals; all which, says Bentley, though shocking to common sense, when supposed to come from Phalaris, a petty prince of a petty district in Sicily, "is credible enough, if we consider that a sophist was the paymaster;" who, as the actors in the Greek comedy paid all debts with lupins, pays his with words. As his final argument, Bentley objects that the very invention of letter- writing was due to Atossa the Persian Empress, younger than Phalaris by one or two generations. This is asserted upon the authority of Tatian, and of a much more learned writer, Clement of Alexandria. But, be that as it may, every person who considers the general characteristics of those times, must be satisfied that, if the epistolary form of composition existed at all, it was merely as a rare agent in sudden and difficult emergencies rarer, perhaps, by a great deal, than the use of telegraphic dispatches at present. As a species of literary composition, it could not possibly arise until its use in matters of business had familiarized it to all the world. Letters of grace and sentiment would be a remote afterthought upon letters of necessity and practical negotiation. Bentley is too brief, however, on this head, and does not even glance at some collateral topics, such as the Lacedaemonian Caduceus and its history, which would have furnished a very interesting excursus. His reason for placing this section last is evident. The story of Mucianus, a Roman of consular rank, who had been duped by a pretended letter of Sarpedon's (that same Sarpedon, si Diis filaceat, who is killed in the Iliad by Patroclus,) furnishes him with a parting admonition, personally appropriate to his antagonist that something more even than the title of Honourable " cannot always secure a man from cheats and impostures." In the Sixteenth Section, which might as properly have stood last, Bentley moves the startling question, (able of itself to decide the controversy,) " in what secret cave" the letters had been hidden, " so that nobody ever heard of them for a thousand years?" He suggests that some trusty servant of the tyrant must have buried them under ground ; " and it was well he did so ; for if the Agri- gentines had met with them, (who burned both him and his relations and his friends,) they had certainly gone to pot." [The foreign translator of the two Phalaris Dissertations (whose work, by the way, was revised by the illustrious Valckenaer) is puzzled by this phrase of "going to got " and he translates it conjecturally in the following ludicrous terms : " Si enim eas invenissent Agritentini, sine dubio tergcndis natibus inserviissent"] Boyle, either himself in a mist, RICHARD BENTLEY. or designing to mystify his readers, cites the cases, as if parallel cases, of Paterculus and Phsedrus, the first of whom is not quoted by any author now extant till Priscian's time five hundred years iater than his own era and not again until nine hundred years after Priscian : as to Phaedrus, supposed to belong to the Augustan era, he is first mentioned by Avienus, four hundred years after this epoch, and never once again, until his works were brought to light by Pithou late in the sixteenth century. These cases Boyle cites as countenancing that of Phalaris. But Bentley will not suffer the argument to be so darkened : the thousand years which succeeded to Priscian and Avienus were years of barbarity ; there was little literature, and little interest in literature, through that long night in Western Europe. This sufficiently accounts for the obscurity in which the two Latin authors slumbered. But the thousand years which succeeded to Phalaris, Solon, and Pythagoras, were precisely the most enlightened period of that extent, and, in fact, the only period of one thousand successive years, in the records of our planet, that has uninterruptedly enjoyed the light of literature. So that the difference between the case of Phalaris, and those which are alleged as parallel by Boyle, is exactly this: that the Pseudo-Phalaris was first heard of in " the very dusk and twilight before the long night of ignorance ;" whereas Phsedrus, Lactantius, &c., suffered the more natural effect of being eclipsed by that light. The darkness which extinguished the genuine classics, first drew Phalaris into notice. Besides, that in the cases brought forward to countenance that of Phalaris, the utmost that can be inferred is no more than a negative argument, those writers are simply not quoted ; but from that no argument can be drawn, concluding for their non-existence. Where- as, in the case of Phalaris, we find various authors Pindar, for instance, Plato, Aristotle, Timaeus, Polybius, and others, down even to Lucian talking of the man in terms which are quite inconsistent with the statements of these letters. And we may add, with regard to other distinguished authors, as Cicero in particular, that on many occasions, their very silence, under circumstances which suggested the strongest temptation to quote from these letters, had they been aware of their existence, is of itself a sufficient proof that no such records of the Sicilian tyrant had ever reached them by report. Finally, the matter of the letters, to which Bentley dedicates a separate section of his work, is decisive of the whole question to any man of judgment who has reviewed them without prejudice or pas- sion. Strange it is at this day to recollect the opposite verdicts on this point of the controversy, and the qualifications of those from whom they proceeded. Sir William Temple, an aged statesman, and practised in public business, intimate with courts, a man of great political sagacity, a high-bred gentleman, and of brilliant accomplishments, singles out these letters not merely as excellent iit their kind, but as one argument amongst others for the unapproach- able supremacy in all intellectual pretensions of the ancients ; on the other hand, Bentley, a young scholastic clergyman of recluse M4 RICHARD BENTLEY. habits, comparatively low in rank, and of humble breeding, pro- nounces the letters to be utterly despicable, and unworthy of a, prince. On such a question, and between such judges, who would hesitate to abide by the award of the sage old diplomatist ? Yet a single explanation discredits his judgment : he was angry and pre- judiced. And the actual result is that every reader of sense heartily accedes to Bentley's sentence "You feel, by the emptiness and deadness of them, that you converse with some dreaming pedant with his elbow on his desk; not with an active, ambitious tyrant, with his hand on his sword, commanding a million of subjects." It remains that we should say a few words on Bentley's character, and the general amount of his claims. This part of his task, Dr. Monk, for a reason quite unintelligible to us, has declined ; and Dr. Parr has attempted it with his usual sonorous tympany of words, but with no vestiges of distinct meaning, or of appropriate commenda- tion. We do not design, on this occasion, to supply their omissions by 3. solemn and minute adjudication of Bentley's quantum meritit in every part of his pretensions ; that will be a proper undertaking, and one from which we shall not shrink, in connection with some general review of the leading scholars since the restoration of letters, English and continental. At present, we shall confine ourselves to a brief and unpretending suggestion of some few principal considera- tions, which should guide our estimate of Bentley's services to literature. Bentley was a man of strong "mother wit," and of masculine good sense. These were his primary advantages ; and he had them in excess, if excess belongs to gifts of that quality. They are gifts which have not often illuminated the labours of the great classical scholar ; who, though necessarily a man of talent, has rarely been a man of powerful understanding. In this there is no contradiction; it is possible to combine great talents with a poor understanding ; and such a combination is, indeed, exceedingly common. The Scaligers, perhaps, were men of commanding sense. Isaac Casaubon, who has been much praised for his sense, (and of late more than ever by Messrs. Southey and Savage Landor,) was little above mediocrity in that particular. His notices of men and human life are, for the most part, poor and lifeless commonplaces. Salmasius, a great scholar, was even meaner as a thinker. To take an illustra- tion or two from our own times, Valckenaer and Person the two best Grecians, perhaps, since Bentley were both poor creatures in general ability and sense. Person's jeux d'esfirit, in the news- papers of his day, were all childish and dull beyond description : and, accordingly, his whig friends have been reduced to the sad necessity of lying and stealing on his behalf, by claiming (and even publishing) as Person's, a copy of verses, (The Devil's Sunday Thoughts?) of which they are well assured he did not write a line. Parr, again, a good Latin scholar, though no Grecian, for general power of thought and sense, was confessedly the merest driveller of RICHARD BENTLEY. his age. But Bentley was not merely respectable in this particular: he reached the level of Dr. Johnson, and was not far short of the powers which would have made him a philosopher. The next great qualifications of Bentley were, ingenuity, and (in the original sense of that term) sagacity. In these he excelled all the children of men ; and as a verbal critic will probably never be rivalled. On this point we remember an objection to Bentley, stated forcibly by Mr. Coleridge; and it seemed, at the time, un- answerable ; but a little reflection will disarm it. Mr. Coleridge had been noticing the coarseness and obtuseness of Bentley's poetic sensibilities, as indicated by his wild and unfeeling corruptions of the text in Paradise Lost. Now, here, where our knowledge is per- fectly equal to the task, we can all feel the deficiencies of Bentley . and Mr. Coleridge argued, that a Grecian or Roman of taste, if restored to life, would, perhaps, have an equally keen sense of the ludicrous, in most of the emendations introduced by Bentley into the text of the ancient classics ; a sense which, in these instances, is blunted or extinguished to us by our unfamiliar command over the two languages. But this plausible objection we have already answered in another place. The truth is, that the ancient poets are much more than the Christian poets within the province of un- imaginative good sense. Much might be said, and many forcible illustrations given, to show the distinction between the two cases ; and that from a poet of the Miltonic order, there is no inference to a poet such as Lucan, whose connections, transitions, and all the process of whose thinking, go on by links of the most intelligible and definite ingenuity ; still less any inference to a Greek lexi- cographer like Suidas, or Hesychius, whose thoughts and notices proceed in the humblest category of mere common sense. Neither is it true, that, with regard to Milton, Bentley has always failed. Many of his suggestions are sound. And, where they are not, this does not always argue bluntness of feeling ; but, perhaps, mere defect of knowledge. Thus, for example, he has chosen, as we remember, to correct the passage, " That on the secret top Of Horeb or of Sinai," &c. into sacred top ; for he argued, that the top of a mountain, exposed to the whole gaze of a surrounding country, must of all places be the least private or secret. But, had he happened to be familiar with mountains, though no higher than those of England, he would have understood that no secrecy is so complete, and so undisturbed by sound or gaze from below, as that of a mountain-top such as Helvellyn, Great Gaval, or Blencathara. Here, therefore, he spoke from no defect of feeling, but from pure defect of knowledge. And, after all, many of his better suggestions on the text of Milton will give an English reader an adequate notion of the extraordinary ingenuity with which he corrected the ancient classics. 146 RICHARD BENTLEY. A third qualification of Bentley, for one province of criticism at least, was the remarkable accuracy of his ear. Not that he had a peculiarly fine sense for the rhythmus of verse, else the divine structure of the Miltonic blank verse would have preserved numerous fine passages from his " slashing" proscription. But the indepen- dent beauty of sounds, and the harsh effect of a jingle of syllables, no critic ever felt more keenly than he ; and hence, on many oc- casions, he either derived originally, or afterwards supported, his corrections. This fineness of ear perhaps first drew his attention to Greek metre, which he cultivated with success, and in that department may be almost said to have broken the ground. The Digamma, and its functions, remain also trophies of his exquisite sagacity in hunting backward, upon the dimmest traces, into the aboriginal condition of things. The evidences of this knowledge, however, which Heyne used and published to the world, are simply his early and crude notes on the margin of his Homer. But the systematic treatise, which he afterwards developed upon this foundation, was unknown to Heyne, and it is still unknown to the world. This fact, which is fully explained in Mr. Sandford's late excellent edition of Thiersch's Greek Grammar (p. 312-13), has been entirely overlooked by Dr. Monk. The same quality of sagacity, or the power of investigating\>&ck- ward, (in the original sense of that metaphor,) through the corrup- tions of two thousand years, the primary form of the reading which lay buried beneath them, a faculty which in Bentley was in such excess, that it led him to regard every MS. as a sort of figurative Palimpsest, in which the early text had been overlaid by successive layers of alien matter, was the fruitful source both of the faults and the merits of his wonderful editions. We listen with some impa- tience to Dr. Monk, when he falls in with the common cant on this subject, as though Bentley had injured a reader by his new readings. Those whose taste is really fine enough to be offended by them, (and we confess, that in a poet of such infinite delicacy as Horace, we ourselves are offended by the obtrusion of the new lections into the text,) are at liberty to leave them. If but here and there they im- prove the text, (and how little is that to say of them !) lucro ponatur. Besides, the received text, which Bentley displaced, was often as arbitrary as his own. Of this we have a pleasant example in the Greek Testament : that text which it was held sacrilege in Bentley to disturb, was in fact the text of Mr. Stephens, the printer, (possibly of a clever compositor,) who had thus unintentionally become a sort of conscience to the Protestant churches. It was no more, therefore, than a fair jest in Bentley, upon occasion of his own promised revision of the text, " Gentlemen, in me behold your Pope." Dr. Monk regrets that Bentley forsook Greek studies so often for Latin ; so do we ; but not upon Dr. Monk's reason. It is not that Bentley was inferior, as a Latin scholar, to himself as a Grecian H7 RICHARD BENTLEY. it is, that Grecians, as good as he, are much rarer than Latinists of the same rank. Something must be said of Bentley's style. His Latinity was assailed with petty malignity, in two set books, by Ker and Johnson. However, we see no justice in Dr. Monk's way of disparaging their criticisms, as characteristic of schoolmasters. Slips are slips ; faults are faults. Nor do we see how any distinction can be available between schoolmasters' Latin and the Latin of sublimer persons in silk aprons. The true distinction which would avail Bentley we take to be this. In writing Latin there are two distinct merits of style ; the first lies in the mere choice of the separate words ; the second, in the structure and mould of the sentence. The former is within the reach of a boy armed with a suitable dictionary, which distinguishes the gold and silver words, and obelizes the base Brummagem copper coinage. The other is the slow result of infinite practice and original tact. Few people ever attain it; few ever could attain it. Now, Bentley's defects were in the first accom- plishment ; and a stroke of the pen would everywhere have purified his lexis. But his great excellence was in the latter, where faults, like faults in the first digestion, are incapable of remedy. No cor- rections, short of total extirpation, will reach that case : blotting will not avail : "unalitura. potest." His defect, therefore, is in a trifle ; his success in the rarest of attainments. Bentley is one of those who think in Latin, and not among the poor frosty translators into Latin under an overruling tyranny of English idiom. The phrase faritas sermonis, used for purity of style, illustrates Bentley's class of blemishes. We notice it, because Ker, Dr. Monk, and Dr. Parr, have all concurred in condemning it. Castitas might be substituted for -puritas ; as to sermonis, (fiace virorum tan- torum,} it admits of apology. Bentley's English style was less meritorious ; but it was sinewy, native, idiomatic, though coarse and homely. He took no pains with it : where the words fell, there they lay. He would not stop to modulate a tuneless sentence ; and, like most great classical scholars of that day, he seemed to suppose that no modern language was capable of a better or worse. How much more nobly did the Roman scholars behave Cicero, Varro, &c. who, under every oppression of Greek models, still laboured to cultivate and adorn their own mother tongue ! And even the example of Addison, whom Bentley so much admired, might have taught him another lesson ; for though this great writer, unacquainted with the real powers of the English language,* had flippantly pronounced it a "brick" edifice, by comparison with the marble temples of the ancients, yet * It is a fact that Addison has never cited Shakspeare but once; even that was a passage which he had carried away from the theatre. Sir W. Temple knew of no Lord Bacon ; Milton and Jeremy Taylor knew not of each other ; and Addison had certainly never read Shakspeare. 148 RICHARD BENTLEY. Tie did not the less take pains to polish and improve it. Brick, even, has its own peculiar capacities of better and worse. Bentley's law- less pedantries of " -putid" and " negoce," though countenanced by equal filth in L' Estrange and many writers of the day, must, in any age, have been saluted with bursts of laughter ; and this formal defence of the latter word was even more insufferably absurd than the barbarism which he justified. On the other hand, the word ignore, which he threw in the teeth of Mr. Boyle, had been used by that gentleman's uncle in many of his works : it is, in fact, Hiber- nian, which Bentley did not know; and in England is obsolete, except in the use of grand juries. Being upon this subject, we must take the liberty of telling Dr. Monk, that his own expressions of "overhaul," for investigate, and "attackable" are in the lowest style of colloquial slang. The expression of a " duty " being " due," which is somewhere to be found in his book, is even worse. As a Theologian, Bentley stood in the same circumstances as the late Bishop of Llandaff. Both were irregularly built for that service ; both drew off the eyes of the ill-natured, and compensated their deficiencies by general ability ; both availed themselves of a fortunate opportunity for doing ^popular service to Christianity, which set their names above the more fully accomplished divines of their day ; both carried, by a coztp-de-main, the King's professorship of divinity at Cambridge, which is the richest in the world ; and, finally, both retreated from its duties. In conclusion, we shall venture to pronounce Dr. Bentley the greatest man amongst all scholars. In the complexion of his cha- racter, and the style of his powers, he resembled the elder Scaliger, having the same hardihood, energy, and elevation of mind. But Bentley had the advantage of earlier polish, and benefitted by the advances of his age. We should pronounce him, also, the greatest of scholars, were it not that we remember Salmasius. Dr. Parr was in the habit of comparing the Phalaris dissertation with that of Salmasius De Lingua Hellenistica. For our own parts, we have always compared it with the same writer's Plinian Exer citations. Both are among the miracles of human talent : but with this difference, that the Salmasian work is crowded with errors ; whilst that of Bentley, in its final state, is absolutely without spot or blemish. 149 DR. PARR AND DR. PARR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. The Works of Samuel Parr. LL.D., -with Memoirs of his Life and Writings, and a Selection from his Correspondence. By JOHN JOHN- STONE, M.D. Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Opinions of the Rev. Samuel Parr, LL.D. With Biographical Notices of many of his Friends, Pupils, and Contemporaries. By the REV. WILLIAM FIELD. Parriana; or, Notices of the Rev. Samuel Parr, LL.D. By E. H. BARKER, Esq. PART I. / T V HE time is come when, without offence, the truth may be spoken 1 of Dr. Parr. Standing by the side of the grave, men's eyes, as it were, fastened upon the very coffin of an excellent person, all literary people under any restraint of honourable feelings all writers who have trained themselves to habits of liberal sympathy and of generous forbearance everybody, in short, but the very rash or very juvenile, the intemperate or malignant put a seal upon their lips. Grief, and the passionate exaggerations of grief, have a title to in- dulgent consideration, which, in the upper walks of literature, is not often infringed ; amongst polished Tories, amongst the coterie of this journal, we may say never. On this principle it was that we prescribed to ourselves most willingly a duty of absolute silence at the timeof Dr. Parr's death, and through the years immediately suc- ceeding. The sorrow of his numerous friends was then keen and raw- For a warm-hearted man and Dr. Parr was such there is an answe? able warmth of regret. Errors and indiscretions are forgotten virtues are brought forward into high relief ; talents and accomplish* ments magnified beyond all proportions of truth. These extrava- gances are even graceful and becoming under the immediate impulses which prompt them : and for a season they are, and ought to be, endured. But this season has its limits. Within those limits the rule is De mortuis nil nisi bomim. Beyond them, and when the privilege of recent death can no longer be sustained, this rule gives way to another De mortuis nil nisi verum et probabiliter demonstratum. This canon has now taken effect with regard to Dr. Parr. The sanctities of private grief have been sufficiently re- spected, because the grief itself has submitted to the mitigation of time. Enough has been conceded to the intemperance of sorrowing friendship ; the time has now arrived for the dispassionate apprecia- tion of equity and unbiassed judgment. Eighteen years have passed away since we first set eyes upon Di . S?uuel Parr. Off and on through the nine years preceding, we had HIS CONTEMPORARIES. heard him casually mentioned in Oxford, but not for any good. In most cases, the anecdote which brought up his name was some pointless parody of a Sam-Johnsonian increpation, some Drury-Lane counterfeit of the true Jovian thunderbolts : " Demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen JE.it et cornipedum sonitu simularet equorum." In no instance that we recollect had there appeared any felicity in these colloquial fulminations of Dr. Parr. With an unlimited license of personal invective, and with an extrava- gance of brutality not credible, except in the case of one who happened to be protected by age and by his petticoats, con- sequently with one power more than other people enjoy, who submit themselves to the restraints of courtesy, and to the decencies of social intercourse, the Doctor had yet made nothing of his extra privilege, nor had so much as once attained a distinguished success. There was labour, indeed, and effort enough, preparation without end, and most tortuous circumgyration of periods ; but from all this sonorous smithery of hard words in osity and ation, nothing emerged no wrought massy product but simply a voluminous smcke. Such had been the fortune, whether fairly representing the general case or not. of our own youthful experience at second-hand in respect to Dr. Parr, and his colloquial prowess. When we add, that in those years of teeming and fermenting intellects, at a crisis so agitating for human interests upon the very highest scale, no mere philologists or grammaticaster though he had been the very best of his class could have held much space in our thoughts ; and, with respect to Dr. Parr in particular, when we say that all avenues to our esteem had been foreclosed from our boyish days by one happy sarcasm of the Pursuits of Literature, where Parr had been nick- named, in relation to his supposed model, the Birmingham Doctor ; * and finally, when we assure the reader that he was the one sole specimen of a Whig parson that we had ever so much as heard of within the precincts of the Church of England ; laying together all this, it may be well presumed, that we did not antici- pate much pleasure or advantage from an hour's admission to Dr. Parr's society. In reality having heard all the fine colloquial per- formers of our own times, we recoiled from the bare possibility of being supposed to participate in the curiosity or the interest which, * One of Dr. Parr's biographers argues that his soubriquet had no founda- tion, in fact, the Doctor not being either by birth or residence a denizen of this great officina for the arts of imitative and counterfeit manufacture. But the truth is, that he had sufficiently connected himself with Birmingham in the public mind, by his pointed intercourse with the Dissenters of that town, and by the known proximity to Birmingham of his common and favourite residence, to furnish a very plausible basis to a cognomen that was otherwise specially fitted to express the relations of his style and quality of thinking to those of Johnson. DR. PARR AND in various degrees, possessed most of those who on that morning surrounded us. The scene of this little affair was a front drawing- room in the London mansion of one of Dr. Parr's friends. Here was collected a crowd of morning visitors to the lady of the house : and in a remote back drawing-room was heard, at intervals, the clamorous laugh of Dr. Samuel Parr, then recently arrived from the country upon a visit to his London friend. The miscellaneous com- pany assembled were speedily apprised who was the owner of that obstreperous laugh so monstrously beyond the key of good society ; it transpired, also, -who it was that provoked the laugh ; it was the very celebrated Bobus Smith. And, as a hope was expressed that one or both of these gentlemen might soon appear amongst us, most of the company lingered in the reasonable expectation of seeing Dr. Sam we ourselves, on the slender chance of seeing Mr. Bobus. Many of our junior readers, who cannot count far beyond the year in question (1812), are likely to be much at a loss for the particular kind of celebrity, which illustrated a name so little known to fame in these present days, as this of Bobus Smith. We interrupt, there- fore, our little anecdote of Dr. Parr, with the slightest outline of Mr. Smith's story and his pretensions. Bobus, then (who drew his nickname, we conjecture, though the o was pronounced long, from subscribing the abbreviated form of ob us , for his full name JRo- bertus] a brother of the Rev. Sydney Smith, who now reposes from his jovial labours in the Edinburgh Review, upon the bosom of some luxurious English Archdeaconry, had first brought himself into great notice at Cambridge by various specimens of Latin verse, in the Archaic style of Lucretius. These we have sought for in vain ; and, indeed, it appears from a letter of Mr. Smith's to Dr. Parr, that the author himself has retained no copies. These Latin verses, however, were but bagatelles of sport. Mr. Smith's serious efforts were directed to loftier objects. We had been told, as early as 1806, (how truly we cannot say,) that Mr. Bobus had publicly avowed his determination of first creating an ample fortune in India, and then returning home to seize the post of Prime Minister, as it were by storm; not that he could be supposed ignorant, how indispensable it is in ordinary cases, that good fortune, as well as splendid connec- tions, should concur with commanding talents, to such a result. But a condition, which for other men might be a sine qua non, for himself he ventured to waive, in the audacity, said our informant, of conscious intellectual supremacy. So at least the story went. And for some years, those who had heard it continued to throw anxious gazes towards the Eastern climes, which detained her destined premier from England. At length came a letter from Mr. Bobus, saying. " I'm coming." The fortune was made; so much, at least, of the Cambridge menace had been fulfilled ; and in due time Bobus arrived. He took the necessary steps for prosecuting his self-created mission : he caused himself to be returned to Parliament for some close borough : he took his seat : on a fitting occasion he prepared to utter his maiden oration : for that purpose he raised himself bolt- 152 ffIS CONTEMPORARIES. apright upon his pins : all the world was hushed and on tiptoe when it was known that Bobus was on his legs : you might have _ieard a pin drop. At this critical moment of his life, upon which, as ;'t turned out, all his vast cloud-built fabrics of ambition were sus- pended, when, if ever, he was called upon to rally, and converge all his energies, suddenly his presence of mind forsook him : he faltered : rudder and compass slipped away from him : and oh ! Castor and Pollux ! Bobus foundered ! nor, from that day to this, has he been heard of in the courts of ambition. This catastrophe had occurred some time before the present occasion ; and an event which had entirely extinguished the world's interest in Mr. Bobus Smith had more than doubled ours. Consequently wewaited with much solicitude. At length the door opened ; which recalls us from our digression into the high road of our theme : for not Mr. Bobus Smith, but Dr. 1'arr entered. Nobody announced him ; and we were left to collect his name from his dress and his conversation. Hence it happened, that for some time we were disposed to question ourselves whether this might not be Mr. Bobus even, (little as it could be supposed to resemble him,) rather than Dr. Parr, so much did he contradict all our rational pre- conceptions. "A man," said we, "who has insulted people so outrageously, ought not to have done this in single reliance upon his professional protections ; a brave man, and a man of honour, would here have carried about with him, in his manner and deportment, some such language as this, ' Do not think that I shelter myself under my gown from the natural consequences of the affronts I offer : mortal combats I am forbidden, sir, as a Christian minister, to engage in ; but, as I find it impossible to refrain from occasional license of tongue, I am very willing to fight a few rounds, in a ring, with any gentleman who fancies himself ill-used.' " Let us not be misunderstood; we do not contend that Dr. Parr should often, or regularly, have offered this species of satisfaction. But we do insist upon it that no man should have given the very highest sort of provocation so wantonly as Dr. Parr is recorded to have done, unless conscious that, in a last extremity, he was ready, like a brave man, to undertake a short turn-up, in a private room, with any person whatsoever whom he had insulted past endurance. A doctor, who had so often tempted a cudgelling, ought himself to have had some ability to cudgel. Dr. Johnson assuredly would have acted on that principle. Had volume the second of that same folio with which he floored Osborn, happened to lie ready to the prostrate man's grasp, nobody can suppose that Johnson would have gainsaid his right to retaliate ; in which case, a regular succession of rounds would have been established. Considerations such as these, and the Doctor's undeniable reputation (granted even, by his most admiring bio- graphers) as a sanguinary flagellator, throughout his long career of pedagogue, had prepared us nay, entitled us to expect in Dr. ?arr a huge carcass of man, fourteen stone at the least. Even his \tyle, pursy and bloated, and his sesquipedalian words, all warranted 1 1-2 '53 DR. PARR AND the same conclusion. Hence, then, our surprise, and the perplexity we have recorded, when the door opened, and a little man, in a buz wig, cut his way through the company, and made for a fauteuil standing opposite to the fire. Into this he lunged; and then forth- with, without preface or apology, began to open his talk upon us. Here arose a new marvel and a greater. If we had been scandalized at Dr. Parr's want of thews and bulk, conditions so indispensable for enacting the part of Samuel Johnson, much more, and with better reason, were we now petrified with his voice, utterance, gestures, and demeanour. Conceive, reader, by way of counterpoise to the fine * enunciation of Dr. Johnson, an infantine lisp the worst we ever heard from the lips of a man above sixty, and accompanied with all sorts of ridiculous grimaces and little stage gesticulations. As he sat in his chair, turning alternately to the right and to the left, that je might dispense his edification in equal proportions amongst us, ie seemed the very image of a little French gossiping abbe. Yet all that we have mentioned, was, and seemed to be, a trifle by comparison with the infinite pettiness of his matter. Nothing did he utter but little shreds of calumnious tattle the most ineffably silly and frivolous of all that was then circulating in the Whig salons of London against the Regent. He began precisely in these words : " Oh ! I shall tell you " (laying a stress upon the word shall, which still further aided the resemblance to a Frenchman) "a sto-hee" (lispingly for story) " about the Pince Thegent" (such was his near- est approximation to Prince Regent.} "Oh, the Pince Thegent the Pince Thegent ! what a sad, sad man he has turned out ? But you shall hear. Oh ! what a Pince ! what a Thegent ! what a sad Pince Thegent !" And so the old babbler went on, sometimes wringing his little hands in lamentation, sometimes flourishing them with French grimaces and shrugs of shoulders, sometimes expanding and contracting his fingers like a fan. After an hour's twaddle of the lowest and most scandalous description, suddenly he rose and hopped out of the room, exclaiming all the way, " Oh ! what a Pince, oh, what a Thegent, did anybody ever hear of siich a sad Pince such a sad Thegent, stick a sad, sad Pince Thegent ? Oh, what a Pince," &c., da capo. Not without indignation did we exclaim to ourselves, on this wind- ing up of the scene, " And so that then, that lithping slander- monger, and retailer of petty scandal and gossip, fit rather for washerwomen over their tea, than for scholars and statesmen, is the champion whom his party propound as the adequate antagonist of Samuel Johnson! Faugh!" We had occasion, in this instance, as in so many others which we have witnessed, to remark the conflict between the natural and the artificial (or adopted) opinions of the world, and the practical triumph of the first. A * Boswell has recorded the remarkably distinct and elegant articulation and intonation of Johnson's English. 154 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. crowd of ladies were present : most of them had been taught to believe that Dr. Parr was a prodigious scholar, and in some mys- terious way, and upon something not exactly known or understood except by learned men, a great authority, and, at all events, what is called a public character. Accordingly, upon his first entrance, all of them were awed deep silence prevailed and the hush of indefinite expectation. Two minutes dispersed that feeling ; the Doctor spoke, and the spell was broken. Still, however, and long afterwards, some of them, to our own knowledge, continued to say " We suppose" (or, " we have been told") "that Dr. Parr is the modern Johnson." Their artificial judgments clung to them after they had evidently given way, by a spontaneous movement of the whole company, to the natural impression of Dr. Parr's conversation. For no sooner was the style and tendency of Dr. Parr's gossip apparent, than a large majority of those present formed themselves into little parties, entered upon their own affairs, and, by a tacit convention, agreed to consider the Doctor as addressing himself exclusively to the lady of the house and her immediate circle. Had Samuel Johnson been the talker, nobody would have presumed to do this ; secondly, nobody, out of regard to his own reputation, would have been so indiscreet as to do this ; he would not have acknow- ledged weariness had he felt it ; but, lastly, nobody would have wished to do this ; weariness was impossible in the presence of Samuel Johnson. Nether let it be said, that perhaps the ladies present were unintellectual, and careless of a scholar's conversation. They were not so : some were distinguished for ability all were more or less tinctured with literature. And we can undertake to say, that any man of tolerable colloquial powers, speaking upon a proper topic, would have commanded the readiest attention. As it was, every one felt, (if she did not even whisper to her neighbour,) "Here, at least, is nothing to be learned." Such was our first interview with Dr. Parr; such its issue. And now let us explain our drift in thus detailing its circumstances. Some people will say, the drift was doubtless to exhibit Dr. Parr in a disadvantageous light as a petty gossiper, and a man of mean per- sonal appearance. No; by no means. Far from it. We have a mean personal appearance ourselves ; and we love men of mean appearance. Having one spur more than other men to seek distinc- tion in those paths where nature has not obstructed them, they have one additional chance (and a great one) for giving an extended development to their intellectual powers. Many a man has risen to eminence under the powerful re-action of his mind in fierce counter- agency to the scorn of the unworthy, daily evoked by his personal defects, who with a handsome person would have sunk into the luxury of a careless life under the tranquillizing smiles of continual admira- tion. Dr. Parr, therefore, lost nothing in our esteem by showing a mean exterior. Yet even this was worth mentioning, and had a value in reference to our present purpose. We like Dr. Parr : we may say even, that we love him for some noble qualities of heart that 155 DR. PARR AND really did belong to him, and were continually breaking out in the' midst of his singular infirmities. But this, or even a still nobler moral character than Dr. Parr's, can offer no excuse for giving a false elevation to his intellectual pretensions, and raising him to a level which he will be found incapable of keeping when the props of partial friendship are withdrawn. Our object is to value Dr. Parr's claims, and to assign his true station both in literature and in those other walks of life upon which he has come forward as a public man. With such a purpose before us, it cannot be wholly irrelevant to notice even Dr. Parr's person, and to say, that it was at once coarse, and in some degree mean ; for his too friendly biographers have repeatedly described his personal appearance in flattering terms, and more than once have expressly characterized it as " dignified ;" which it was not, according to any possible standard of dignity, but far otherwise ; and it is a good inference from such a misstatement to others of more consequence. His person was poor; and his features were those of a clown coarse, and ignoble, with an air, at the same time, of drollery, that did not sit well upon age, or the gravity of his profession. Upon one feature, indeed, Dr. Parr valued himself exceedingly ; this was his eye : he fancied that it was peculiarly searching and significant : he conceited, even, that it frightened people ; and had a particular form of words for expressing the severe use of this basilisk function : " I inflicted my eye upon him," was his phrase in such cases.* But the thing was all a mistake : his eye could be borne very well : there was no mischief in it. Doubtless, when a nervous gentleman, in a pulpit, whowas generallythe subject of these inflictions, saw a comical looking old man, from below, levelling one eye at him, with as knowing an expression as he could throw into it, mere perplexity as to the motive and proper construc- tion of so unseasonable a personality might flutter his spirits ; and to the vain, misjudging operator below, might distort this equivocal confusion, arising out of blank ignorance of his meaning, into the language of a conscious and confessing culprit. Explanations, in the nature of the thing, would be of rare occurrence : for some would not condescend to complain ; and others would feel that the insult, unless it was for the intention, had scarcely body enough and tangi- ble shape to challenge inquiry. They would anticipate, that the same man, who, in so solemn a situation as that between a congre- gation and their pastor, could offer such an affront, would be apt to throw a fresh ridicule upon the complaint itself, by saying, "Fix * Lord Wellesley has been charged with a foible of the same kind ; how truly, we know not. More than one person of credit assured us, some six-and- twenty years ago, that at his levees, when Governor-General of India, he was gratified, as by a delicate stroke of homage, upon occasionally seeing people throw their eyes to the ground dazzled, as it were, by the effulgent lustre of his. This is possible ; at the same time we cannot but acknowledge that our faith in the story was in some slight degree shaken by finding the same foppery attributed (on tradition, however,) to Augustus Caesar, in the Memoirs of Suetonius. 156 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. my eye upon you, did I ? Why, that's all my eye with a vengeance. Look at you, did I ? Well, sir, a cat may look at a king." This said in a tone of sneer : and then, with sneer and strut at once, " I trust, sir, humbly, I take leave to suppose, sir, that Dr. Parr is not so obscure a person, not so wholly unknown in this sublunary world, but he may have license to look even at as great a man as the Reverend Mr. So-and-so." And thus the worthy doctor would perse- vere in his mistake, that he carried about with him, in his very homely collection of features, an organ of singular power and effect for detecting hidden guilt. A mistake at all events it was ; and his biographers have gone into it as largely under the delusions of friendship, as he under the delusions of vanity. On this, therefore, we ground what seems a fair inference that, if in matters so plain and palpable as the character of a man's person, and the expression of his features, it has been possible for his friends to fall into gross errors and exaggerations, much more may we count upon such fallacies of appreciation in dealing with the subtler qualities of his intellect, and his less deter- minable pretensions as a scholar. Hence we have noticed these lower and trivial misrepresentations as presumptions with the reader, in aid of our present purpose, for suspecting more weighty instances of the same exaggerating spirit. The animus, which prompted so unserviceable a falsification of the real case, is not likely to have hesitated in coming upon ground more important to Dr. Parr's reputation, and at the same time, much more susceptible of a sincere latitude of appraisement, even amongst the neutral. It is so with a view to a revision of too partial an adjudication, that we now insti- tute this inquiry. We call the whole estimates to a new audit ; and submit the claims of Dr. Parr to a more equitable tribunal. Our object, we repeat, is to assign him his true place, as it will here- after be finally assigned in the next, or more neutral generation. We would anticipate the award of posterity ; and it is no fault of ours, that, in doing so, it will be necessary to hand the doctor down from that throne in the cathedral of English clerical merit, on which the intemperate zeal of his friends has seated him for the moment, into some humble prebendal stall. Far more agreeable it would naturally have been to assist in raising a man unjustly depreciated, than to undertake an office generally so ungracious as that of re- pressing the presumptuous enthusiasm of partizans, where it may seem to have come forward, with whatever exaggerations, yet still in a service of disinterested friendship, and on behalf of a man, who, after all, was undeniably clever, and, in a limited sense, learned. The disinterestedness, however, of that admiration which has gathered about Dr. Parr is not so genuine as it may appear. His biographers (be it recollected) are bigots, who serve their superstition in varnishing their idol : they are Whigs, who miss no opportunity of undervaluing Tories and their cause : they are Dissenters, who value their theme quite as much for the collateral purpose which it favours of attacking the Church of England, as for its direct and 157 DR. PARR AND avowed one of lauding Dr. Parr. Moreover, in the letters (which, in the undigested chaos of Dr. Johnstone's collection, form three volumes out of eight) Dr. Parr himself obtains a mischievous power, which, in a more regular form of composition, he would not have possessed, and which, as an honest man, we must presume that he would not have desired. Letters addressed to private correspondents, and only by accident reaching the press, have all the license of pri- vate conversation. Most of us, perhaps, send a little treason or so at odd times through the post-office ; and as to scand. magn., espe- cially at those unhappy (luckily rare) periods when Whigs are in power, if all letters are like our own, the Attorney-General would find practice for a century in each separate day's correspondence. In all this there is no blame. Hanc veniampetimusqtie damns que vicissim. But publication is another thing. Rash insinuations, judgments of ultra violence, injurious anecdotes of loose or no authority, and paradoxes sportively maintained in the certainty of a benignant construction on the part of the individual correspondent all these, when printed, become armed, according to circum- stances of time and person, with the power of extensive mischief. It is undeniable, that through Dr. Parr's published letters are scat- tered some scores of passages, which, had he been alive , or had they been brought forward in a direct and formal address to the public, would have called forth indignant replies of vehement expostulation or blank contradiction. And many even of his more general com- ments on political affairs, or on the events and characters of his times, would have been overlooked only upon the consideration that the place which he occupied, in life or in literature, was not such as to aid him in giving effect to his opinions. In many of these cases, as we have said already, the writer had a title to allowance, which those who publish his letters have not. But there are other cases which call for as little indulgence to him as to them. In some of his political intemperances, he may be con- sidered as under a twofold privilege : first, of place since, as a private letter- writer, he must be held as within the protection and the license of his own fireside ; secondly, of time since, on a general rule of construction, it may be assumed that such communications are not deliberate, but thrown off on the spur of the occasion : that they express, therefore, not a man's settled and abiding convictions, but the first momentary impulses of his passion or his humour. But in many of his malicious sarcasms, and disparaging judgments, upon contemporaries who might be regarded, in some measure, as competitors with himself, either for the prizes of clerical life, or for public estimation, Dr. Parr could take no benefit by this liberal con- struction. The sentiments he avowed in various cases of this descrip- tion were not in any respect hasty or unconsidered ebullitions of momentary feeling. They grew out of no sudden occasions; they were not the product of accident. This is evident; because uni- formly, and as often almost as he either spoke or wrote upon the persons in question, he gave vent to the same bilious jealousy in HIS CONTEMPORARIES. sneers or libels of one uniform character ; and, if he forbore to do this in his open and avowed publications, the fair inference is, that his fears or his interest restrained him ; since it is notorious, from the general evidence of his letters and his conversation, that none of those whom he viewed with these jealous feelings could believe that they owed anything to his courtesy or his moderation. For example, and just to illustrate our meaning, in what terms did he speak and write of the very eminent Dean of Carlisle, and head of Queen's College, Cambridge the late Dr. Isaac Milner ? How did he treat Bishop Herbert Marsh ? How, again, the illustrious Bishop Horsley ? All of them, we answer, with unprovoked and slanderous scurrility ; not one had offered him any slight or offence, all were persons of gentlemanly bearing, though the last (it is true) had shown some rough play to one of Parr's pet heresiarchs, all of them were entitled to his respect by attainments greatly superior to his own, and all of them were more favourably known to the world than himself, by useful contributions to science, or theologic learning. Dean Milner had ruined his own activities by eating opium ; and he is known, we believe, by little more than his con- tinuation of the Ecclesiastical History, originally undertaken by his brother Joseph, and the papers which he contributed to the London Philosophical Transactions. But his researches and his accomplish- ments were of wonderful extent ; and his conversation is still remem- bered by multitudes for its remarkable compass, and its almost Burkian* quality of elastic accommodation to the fluctuating acci- dents of the occasion. The Dean was not much in the world's eye : at intervals he was to be found at the tables of the great ; more often he sought his ease and consolations in his honourable academic retreat. There he was the object of dislike to a particular intriguing clique that had the ear of Dr. Parr. He was also obnoxious to the great majority of mere worldlings, as one of those zealous Christians who are usually denominated evangelical, and by scoffers are called the saints ; that is to say, in common with the Wilberforces, Thorntons, Hoares, Elliots, Babingtons, Gisbornes, &c., and many thousands of less distinguished persons in and out of Parlia- ment, Dean Milner assigned a peculiar emphasis, and a more significant interpretation, to those doctrines of original sin, the terms upon which redemption is offered regeneration, sanctifica- * Those who carry a spirit of distinguishing refinement into their classifica- tions of the various qualities of conversation, may remark one peculiar feature in Edmund Burke's style of talking, which contra-distinguished it from Dr. regressive and analytic. That thought which he began with, contained, by involution, the whole of what he brought forth. The two styles of conversation corresponded to the two theories of generation, one (Johnson's) to the theory of Preformation (or Evolution), the other (Burke's) to the theory of Epigenesis. 150 DR. PARR AND tion, &c., which have the appearance of being the characteristic and peculiar parts in the Christian economy. Whether otherwise wrong or right in these views, it strikes us poor lay critics (who pre- tend to no authoritative knowledge on these great mysteries), that those who adopt them have, at all events, a firima facie title to be considered less worldly, and more spiritual-minded, than the mass of mankind ; and such a frame of mind is at least an argument of fitness for religious contemplations, in so far as temper is concerned, be the doctrinal (or merely intellectual) errors what they may. Consequently, for our own parts, humbly sensible as we are of our deficiencies in this great science of Christian philosophy, we could never at any time join in the unthinking ridicule which is scattered by the brilliant and the dull upon these peculiarities. Wheresoever, and whensoever, we must freely avow that evidences of real non- conformity to the spirit of this impure earth of ours command our unfeigned respect. But that was a thing which the worthy Dr. Parr could not abide. He loved no high or aerial standards in morals or in religion. Visionaries, who encouraged such notions, he viewed (to express it by a learned word) as aepoparowTas, and as fit subjects for the chastisement of the secular arm. In fact, he would have persecuted a little upon such a provocation. On Mr. Pitt and the rest who joined in suspendingthe Habeas Corpus Act, Dr. Parr was wont to ejaculate his pastoral benediction in the following after- dinner toast " Qui suspenderunt, susfiendantur ! " And after- wards upon occasion of the six bills provoked by the tumults at Manchester, Glasgow, &c., his fatherly blessing was daily uttered in this little fondling sentiment, " Bills for the throats of those who- framed the bills ? " On the same principle, he would have prayed fervently had any Isaac Milner infested his parish " Let those who would exalt our ideals of Christianity, be speedily themselves exalted ! " And therefore, if any man inquires upon what grounds it was that Dr. Parr hated with an intolerant hatred scorned and sharpened his gift of sneer upon the late Dean of Carlisle we have here told him " the reason why ; " and reason enough, we think, in all conscience. For be it known, that, over and above other weighty and obvious arguments for such views, Dr. Parr had a standing personal irritation connected with this subject a continual "thorn in the flesh" in the relations subsisting between him and his principal, the incumbent of his own favourite and adopted parish. As the positions of the parties were amusing to those who were in possession of the key to the right understanding of it, viz. a know- ledge of their several views and opinions, we shall pause a moment to describe the circumstances of the case. Dr. Parr, it is well known, spent a long period of his latter life at Hatton, a village in Warwickshire. The living of Hatton belonged to Dr. Bridges, who, many a long year ago, was well known in Oxford as one of the Fellows in the magnificently endowed college of Magdalen ; that is to say, Dr. Bridges was the incumbent at the time when some accident of church preferment brought Dr. Parr 1 60 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. into that neighbourhood. By an arrangement which we do not exactly understand, the two doctors, for their mutual convenience, exchanged parishes. We find it asserted by Dr. Johnstone, that on Dr. Parr's side the exchange originated in a spirit of obliging accommodation. It may be so. However, one pointed reservation was made by Dr. Bridges [whether in obedience to church discipline or to his private scruples of conscience we cannot say] viz. that, once in every year, (according to our remembrance, for a series of six consecutive Sundays,) he should undertake the pulpit duties of the church. On this scheme the two learned clerks built their alterni fosdera regni ; and, like two buckets, the Drs. Bridges and Parr went up and down reciprocally for a long succession of years. The waters, however, which they brought up to the lips of their parishioners, were drawn from two different wells ; for Dr. Bridges shared in the heresy of the Dean of Carlisle. Hence a system of energetic (on Dr. Parr's side, we may say of fierce) mutual coun- teraction. Each, during his own reign, laboured to efface all im- pressions of his rival. On Dr. Bridges's part, this was probably, in some measure, a necessity of conscience ; for he looked upon his flock as ruined in spiritual health by the neglect and ignorance of their pastor. On Dr. Parr's, it was the mere bigotry of hatred, sucll as all schemes of teaching are fitted to provoke which appeal to a standard of ultra perfection, or exact any peculiar sanctity of life. Were Bridges right, in that case, it was clear that Parr was wrung by miserable defect. But, on the other hand, were Parr right, then Bridges was wrong only by superfluity and redundance. Such was the position, such the mutual aspects, of the two doctors. Parr's wrath waxed hotter and hotter. Had Dr. Bridges happened to be a vulgar sectarian, of narrow education, of low breeding, and without distinguished connections, those etesian gales or annual monsoons, which brought in his periodical scourge, would have been hailed by Parr as the harbingers of a triumph in reversion. Yielding the pulpit to his rival for a few Sundays, he would have relied upon the taste of his parishioners for making the proper distinctions. He would have said, "You have all eyes and ears you all know that fellow; you all know me : I need say no more. Pray, don't kick him when he comes again." But this sort of contempt was out of the question, and that kindled his rage the more. Dr. Bridges was a man of fortune ; travelled and accomplished ; familiar with courts and the manners of courts. Even that intercourse with people of rank and fashion, which Parr so much cultivated in his latter years, and which, to his own conceit, placed him so much in advance of his own order, gave him no advantage over Dr. Bridges. True, the worthy fanatic (as some people called him) had planted himself in a house at Clifton near Bristol, and spent all his days in running up and down the lanes and alleys of that great city, carrying Christian instruction to the dens of squalid poverty, and raising the torch of spiritual light upon the lairs of dissolute wretchedness. But, in other respects, he was a man comme ilfaut. However his mornings might be spent, 161 JDR. PARR AND his sotreesvtere elegant ; and it was not a very unusual event to meet a prince or an ambassador at his parties. Hence, it became im- possible to treat him as altogether abject, and a person of no social consideration. In that view, he was the better man of the two. And Parr's revenge, year after year, was baulked of its food. In this dilemma of impotent rage, what he could he did ! And the scene was truly whimsical. Regularly as Dr. Bridges approached, Dr. Parr fled the country. As the wheels of Dr. Bridges were heard mutteringin advance, Dr. Parr's wheelswere heard groaningin retreat. And when the season of this annual affliction drew to a close, when the wrath of Providence was spent, and the church of Hatton passed from under the shadows of eclipse into renovated light, then did Dr. Parr cautiously putting out his feelers to make sure that the enemy was gone resume the spiritual sceptre. He congratulated his parish of Hatton that their trials were over ; he performed classical lustrations, and Pagan rites of expiation ; he circled the churchyard nine times withershins (or inverting the course of the sun) ; he fumigated the whole precincts of Hatton church with shag tobacco ; and left no stone unturned to cleanse his little Warwick- shire fold from its piacular pollution. This anecdote illustrates Dr. Parr's temper. Mark, reader, his self- contradiction. He hated what he often called " rampant ortho- doxy," and was never weary of running down those churchmen who thought it their duty to strengthen the gates of the English church against Popish superstitions and Popish corruptions on the one hand, or Socinianism on the other. Yet, let anything start up in the shape of zealous and fervid devotion right or wrong and let it threaten to displace his own lifeless scheme of ethics, or to give a shock of galvanism to his weekly paralytic exhortations " not upon any account or consideration whatsoever to act improperly or in opposition to the dictates of reason, decorum, and prudence ; " let but a scintilla- tion appear of opposition in that shape, and who so ready to perse- cute as Dr. Parr ? Fanaticism, he would tell us, was what he could not bear ; fanaticism must be put down : the rights of the church must be supported with rigour ; if needful, even with severity. He was also a great patron of the church as against laymen ; of the parson as against the churchwarden ; of the rector's right to graze his horse upon the graves ; of the awful obligation upon his con- science to allow of no disrespectable, darned, or ill-washed surplice ; of the solemn responsibility which he had undertaken in the face of his country to suffer no bell-ringing except in canonical hours ; to enforce the decalogue, and also the rubric : to obey his ecclesiasti- cal superiors within the hours of divine service ; and finally, to read all proclamations or other state documents sent to him by authority, with the most dutiful submission, simply reserving to himself the right of making them as ridiculous as possible by his emphasis and cadence.* In this fashion Dr. Parr manifested his reverence for the * Dr. Pair's casuistry lor regulating his practice in the case of his being 162 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. church establishment ; and for these great objects it seemed to him lawful to persecute. But as to purity of doctrine, zeal, primitive devotion, the ancient faith as we received it from our fathers, or any service pretending to be more than lip service, for all such question- able matters it was incumbent upon us to show the utmost liberality of indifference on the most modern and showy pattern, and, except for Popery, to rely upon Bishop Hoadly. This explanation was necessary to make the anecdote of Dr. Bridges fully intelligible ; and that anecdote was necessary to explain the many scornful allusions to that reverend gentleman, which the reader will find in Dr. Johnstone's collection of letters ; but above all, it was necessary for the purpose of putting him in possession of Dr. Parr's character and position as a member of the Church of England. To return from this digression into the track of our speculations, Dean Miller and Dr. Bridges stood upon the same ground in Dr. Parr's displeasure. Their offence was the same ; their criminality perhaps equal ; and it was obviously of a kind that, for example's sake, ought not to be overlooked. But Herbert Marsh was not im- plicated in their atrocities. No charge of that nature was ever preferred against him. His merits were of a different order ; and confining our remarks to his original merit, and that which perhaps exclusively drew upon him the notice of Mr. Pitt's government, not so strictly clerical. His earliest public service was his elaborate statement of the regal conferences at Pilnitz, and his consequent justification of this country in the eyes of Europe, on the question then pending between her and the French Republic, with which party lay the onus of first virtual aggression, and with which there- fore, by implication, the awful responsibility for that deluge of blood and carnage which followed. This service Herbert Marsh per- formed in a manner to efface the remembrance of all former attempts. His next service was more in the character of his profession he in- troduced his country to the very original labours in theology of the learned Michaelis, and he expanded the compass and value of these labours by his own exertions. Patriots, men even with the feeblest sense of patriotism, have felt grateful to Dr. Marsh for having exonerated England from the infinite guilt of creating a state of war lightly upon a weak motive upon an unconsidered motive or indeed upon anymotive or reason whatsoever; for a reason supposes choice and election of the judgment, and choice there can be none called upon to read occasional forms of prayer, proclamations, &c., which he did not approve as a politician (and observe, he never did approve them) was this : read he must, was his doctrine ; thus far he was bound to dutiful sub- mission. Passive obedience was an unconditional duty, but not active. Now it "would be an active obedience to read with proper emphasis and decorum. Therefore everybody sees the logical necessity of reading it into a farce, making grimaces, " inflicting one's eye," and in all ways keeping up the jest with the congregation. Was not this the boy for Ignatius Loyola ? 163 DR. PARR AND without an acknowledged alternative. Now, it was the triumphant result of Dr. Marsh's labours, that alternative there was practically none, under the actual circumstances, for Great Britain ; and that war was the mere injunction of a flagrant necessity, coupling the insults and the menaces of France with what are now known to have been the designs, and indeed the momentary interests, of the predominant factions at that epoch. Herbert Marsh has satisfied everybody almost but the bigots (if any now survive) of Jacobinism, as it raged in 1792 and 1793, when it held its horrid Sabbaths over the altar and the throne, and deluged the scaffolds with innocent blood. All but those he has satisfied. Has he satisfied Dr. Parr ? No. Yet the Doctor was in absolute frenzy of horror, grief, and indignation, when Louis XVI. was murdered. And, therefore, if the shedding of what he allowed to be the most innocent blood could justify a war, and the refusal of all intercourse but the in- tercourse of vengeance with those who, at that period; ruled the scaffold, then, in that one act (had there even been wanting that world of weightier and prospective matter, which did in fact impel the belligerents), Dr. Parr ought in reason to have found a sufficient justification of war. And so perhaps he would. But Dis aliter visum est ; and his Di and Di majorum gentium, paramount to reason, conscience, or even to discretion, unless such as was merely selfish, were the Parliamentary leaders from whom he expected a bishopric, (and would very possibly have got it, had some of them lived a little longer in the first decade of this century, or he himself lived to the end of this present decade.*) Hence it does not much surprise us, that, in spite of his natural and creditable horror, on hearing of the fate of the French king, he relapsed into Jacobinism so fierce, that two years after, a friend, by way of agreeable flattery, compliments him as being only " half a sans-culotte ; " a compli- ment, however, which he doubtless founded more upon his confidence in Dr. Parr's original goodness of heart, and the almost inevitable contagion of English society, than on any warrant which the Doctor had yet given him by words or by acts, or any presumption even which he was able to specify, for so advantageous an opinion. Well, therefore, might Herbert Marsh displease Dr. Parr. He was a Tory, and the open antagonist of those by whom only the fortunes of sans- culottes, thorough-bred or half-bred, had any chance of thriving ; and he had exposed the hollowness of that cause to which the Doc- tor was in a measure sold. As to Horsley, his whole life, as a man of letters and a politician, must have won him the tribute of Dr. Parr's fear and hatred ; a tribute which he paid as duly as his assessed taxes. Publicly, in- deed, he durst not touch him ; for the horrid scourge which Horsley * Had Mr. Fox lived a little longer, the current belief is, that he would have raised Dr. Parr to the mitre ; and had the Doctor himself survived ta November of this present year, Lord Grey would perhaps have tried Li* earliest functions in that line upon him. 164 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. had wielded at one time, in questions of scholarship and orthodoxy, still resounded in his ears. But in his letters and conversation, Dr. Parr fretted for ever at his eminence, and eyed him grudgingly and malignly ; and those among his correspondents, who were not too generous and noble-minded to pay their court through his weak- nesses, evidently were aware that a sneer at Bishop Horsley was as welcome as a basket of game. Sneers, indeed, were not the worst : there are to be found in Dr. Parr's correspondence some dark insinu- ations, apparently pointed at Horsley, which involve a sort of charges that should never be thrown out against any man without the accom- paniment of positive attestations. What may have been the tenour of that bishop's life and conversation, we do not take upon us to say. It is little probable, at this time of day, under the censorious vigilance of so many unfriendly eyes, and in a nation where even the persons upon ihe judicial bench exhibit in their private lives almost a sanc- tity of deportment, that a dignitary of the English Church will err by any scandalous immorality. Be that, however, as it may, and con- fining our view to Horsley in his literary character, we must say, that he is far beyond the reach of Dr. Parr's hostility. His writings are generally excellent : as a polemic and a champion of his own church, he is above the competition of any modern divine. As a theologian, he reconciles the nearly contradictory merits of novelty and originality with well-meditated orthodoxy : and we may venture to assert, that his Sermons produced the greatest impression, and what the newspapers call " sensation," of any English book of pure divinity, for the last century. In saying this, we do not speak of the sale ; what that might be, we know not ; we speak of the strength of the impression diffused through the upper circles, as apparent in the reverential terms, which, after the appearance of that work, universally marked the sense of cultivated men in speak- ing of Bishop Horsley even of those who had previously viewed him with some dislike in his character of controversialist. Let the two men be compared ; not the veriest bigot amongst the Dissenters, however much he would naturally prefer as a companion, or as a subject for eulogy, that man who betrayed* the interests of his own church to him who was its column of support and ornament, could have the hardihood to insinuate that Dr. Horsley was properly, or becomingly, a mark for the scurrilities of Dr. Parr. In what falls * We shall have an opportunity farther on of showing what was Parr's con- duct to the church of which he professed himself a member, and in what sense he could be said to have betrayed it. At present we shall protect ourselves from misconstruction, by saying that his want of fidelity to the rights and interests of the church was not deliberate or systematic ; in this, as in other things, he acted from passion often from caprice. He would allow only this or that doctrine of the church to be defended ; he would ruinously limit the grounds of defence ; and on these great questions, he gave way to the same rank personal partialities, which, in the management of a school, had attracted the notice, and challenged the disrespect, of boys. 165 DR. FARR AND within the peculiar province of a schoolmaster, we think it probable (to make every allowance which candour and the simplicity of truth demand) that Dr. Parr had that superior accuracy which is main- tained by the practice of teaching. In general reach and compass of intellect, in theology, in those mixed branches of speculative research which belong equally to divinity and to metaphysics (as in the Platonic philosophy, and all which bears upon the profound doctrine of the Trinity), or (to express the matter by a single word) in philosophic scholarship, and generally in vigour of style and thought, we suppose Horsley to have had, in the eyes of the public, no less than in the reality of the case, so prodigiously the advantage, that none but a sycophant, or a false friend, would think of sug- gesting seriously a comparison so disadvantageous to Dr. Parr. But at all events, let the relations of merit be what they may in Horsley, certainly his absolute merit is unquestionable ; and the continued insults of Dr. Parr are insufferable. Upon these flagrant justifications, individual attacks past count- ing, besides a general system of disparagement and contumely towards the most distinguished pretensions in church and state, unless ranged on the side of the Whigs, or even if presuming to pause upon those extremities which produced a schism in the Whig club itself, we stand for a sufficient apology in pressing the matter strongly against Dr. Parr. A rejoinder on our side has in it some- thing of vindictive justice. Tories, and not Tories only, but all who resist anarchists (for that Dr. Parr did not blazon himself in that character, was due to the lucky accident which saved him from any distressing opportunities of acting upon his crazy speculations), have an interest in depressing to their proper level those who make a handle of literature for insidious party purposes, polluting its amenities with the angry passions proper to our civil dissensions, and abusing the good nature with which we Tories are always ready to welcome literary merit, without consideration of politics, and to smile upon talent though in the ranks of our antagonists. The Whigs are once more becoming powerful, and we must now look more jealously to our liberalities. Whigs are not the kind of Eple to be trusted with improper concessions: Whigs "rampant" use Dr. Parr's word), still less. Had Dr. Parr been alive at this r, he would have stood fair for the first archbishopric vacant ; for we take it for granted that the Duke of Wellington, according to his peculiar system of tactics, would long ere now have made him a bishop. Let us therefore appraise Dr. Parr; and to do this satis- factorily, let us pursue him through his three characters, the triple rSle which he supported in life of Whig politician ; secondly, of scholar (or, expressing our meaning in the widest extent, of literary man); and finally of theologian. These questions we shall discuss in a separate paper ; and, from the many personal notices which such a discussion will involve, and the great range of literary topics which it will oblige us to traverse, we may hope to make it not unamusing to our readers. There are, 1 66 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. in every populous community, many different strata of society, that lie in darkness, as it were, to each other, from mere defect of mutual intercourse ; and in the literary world there are many chambers that have absolutely no communication. Aftenvards, when twenty thirty sixty years have passed away by means of posthumous memoirs, letters, anecdotes, and other literary records they are all brought in a manner face to face ; and we, their posterity, first see them as making 1 up a whole, of which they themselves were im- perfectly conscious. Every year makes further disclosures ; and thus a paradox is realized that the more we are removed from personal connection with a past age of literature, the better we know it. Making Dr. Parr for the moment a central figure to our groups, we shall have it in our power to bring upon the stage many of the persons who figured in that age as statesmen, or leaders in political warfare ; and most of those who played a part, prominent or sub- ordinate, in literature ; or who conspicuously filled a place amongst the civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries of the state. Meantime, as an appropriate close to this preliminary paper, we shall put a question and, in a cursory way, we shall discuss the proper answer to it upon Dr. Parr as a man of the world, and ambitious candidate for worldly distinctions ; in short, as the architect of his fortunes. Was he, in this light, an able and suc- cessful man ? Or, separating the two parts of that question which do not always pioceed concurrently, if he were not successful in a degree corresponding to his own wishes and the expectations of his friends, if it is notorious that he missed of attaining those prizes which he never hesitated to avow as the objects that stimulated his ambition, in what degree are we to ascribe his failure to want of talent, to misdirection of his talent, to a scrupulous and fastidious integrity, to the injustice of his superiors, or, finally, to mere ac- cidents of ill luck ? One man in each ten thousand comes into this world, accordingly to the homely saying, " with a silver spoon in his mouth ; " but most of us have a fortune to make a station to create. And the most general expression, by far the most absolute and final test, of the degrees in which men differ as to energy and ability, is to be found in the large varieties of success which they exhibit in executing this universal object. Taking life as a whole, luck has but little sway in controlling its arrangements. Good sense and perseverance, prudence and energy, these are the fatal deities that domineer over the stars and their aspects. And when a man's coffin knocks at the gates of the tomb, it is a question not unim- portant, among other and greater questions, What was he on beginning life, what is he now ? Though in this, as in other things, it is possible to proceed in a spirit of excess, still, within proper restrictions, it is one even of 3. man's moral obligations, to contend strenuously for his own advancement in life ; and, as it furnishes, at the same time, a criterion as little ambiguous as any for his intel- lectual merits, few single questions can be proposed so interesting to a man's reputation, as that which demands the amount of his 12 *" DR. PARR AND success in playing for the great stakes of his profession or his trade. What, then, was the success of Dr. Parr ? The prizes which the Doctor set before his eyes from his earliest days, were not very lofty, but they were laudable ; and he avowed them with a naivete that was amusing, and a frankness that availed at least to acquit him of hypocrisy. They were two a mitre and a coach-and-four. "I am not accustomed," says he, (writing to an Irish bishop,) "to dissemble the wishes I once had" [this was in 1807, and he then had them more than ever] "of arriving at the profits and splendour of the prelacy, or the claims to them which I believe myself to possess." The bishopric he did not get; there he failed. For the coach-and-four, he was more fortunate. At the very latest period of his life, when the shades of death were fast gathering about him, he found himself able to indulge in this luxury and, as his time was obviously short, he wisely resolved to make the most of it ; and upon any or no excuse, the Doctor was to be seen flying over the land at full gallop, and scouring town and country with four clerical-looking long- tailed horses. We believe he even meditated a medal, commemorating his first ovation by a faithful portrait of the coach and his own episcopal wig in their meridian pomp ; he was to have been represented in the act of looking out of the window, and " inflicting his eye " upon some hostile parson picking his way through the mud on foot. On the whole, we really rejoice that the Doctor got his coach and his four resounding coursers. The occa- sional crack of the whip must have sounded pleasantly in his ears at a period when he himself had ceased to operate with that weapon when he was no more than an emeritus professor and naffnyofpos no longer. So far was well ; but still, we ask, how came it that his coach panels wanted their appropriate heraldic decoration ? How was it that he missed the mitre? Late in life, we find him character- izing himself as an " unpreferred, calumniated, half-starving country parson ; " no part of which, indeed, was true ; but yet, we demand, How was it that any colourable plea existed, at that time of his career, to give one moment's plausibility to such an exaggeration ? Let us consider. Dr. Parr was the son of a country practitioner in the humbler de- partments of medicine. Parr, senior, practised as a surgeon, apothe- cary, and accoucheur. From him, therefore, his son could expect little assistance in his views of personal aggrandizement. But that was not necessary. An excellent Latin scholar, and a man who brought the rare sanction (sanctification we were going to say) of clerical co-operation and countenance to so graceless and reprobate a party as the Whigs, who had scarcely a professional friend to say grace at their symposia, must, with any reasonable discretion in the conduct of his life, have been by much too valuable an article on the Whig establishment to run any risk of neglect. The single clerk, the one sole reverend man of letters, who was borne upon their books, must have had a priceless value in the eyes of that faction when "taking stock," and estimating their alliances. To them he 1 68 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. must have been what the Emperor of Morocco is to the collector of butterflies. To have lost this value, to have forfeited his hold upon their gratitude, and actually to have depreciated as he grew older, and better known to the world, implies too significantly some gross mis- conduct, or some rueful indiscretions. The truth is this ; and for Parr's own honour, lest worst things should be thought of him than the case really warrants, his friends ought to make it known though a man of integrity, he could not be relied upon : in a muster of forces, he was one of the few that never could be absolutely reckoned and made sure of. Neither did his scruples obey any known law : he could swallow a camel, and strain at a gnat, and his caprice was of the most dangerous kind ; not a woman's caprice, which is the mere mantling of levity, and readily enough obeys any fresh impulse, which it is easy to apply in an opposilo direction. Dr. Parr's caprices grew upon another stock ; they were the fitful outbreaks of steady, mulish wrong-headedness. This was a constitutional taint, for which he was indebted to the accoucheur. Had the father's infirmity reached Dr. Parr in his worldly career, merely in that blank neutral character, and affected his fortunes through that pure negative position of confessed incapacity to help him, which is the whole extent of disastrous influence that the bio- graphical records ascribes to him all would have been well. But the old mule overruled his son to the end of his long life, and controlled his reiterated opportunities of a certain and brilliant success, by the hereditary taint in the blood which he transmitted to him, in more perhaps than its original strength. The true name for this infirmity is, in the vulgar dialect, pig-headedncss. Stupid imperturbable adherence, deaf and blind, to some perverse view that abruptly thwarted and counteracted his party, making his friends stare, and his opponents laugh ; in short, as we have said, pure pig-headedness, //za/was the key to Dr. Parr's lingering prefer- ment : and, we believe, upon a considerate view of his whole course, that he threw away ten times the amount of fortune, rank, splendour, and influence that he ever obtained; and with no countervailing ndemnity from any moral reputation, such as would attend all consistent sacrifices to high-minded principle. No ! on the contrary, with harsh opposition and irritating expressions of powerful disgust from friends in every quarter all conscious that, in such instances of singularity, Dr. Parr was merely obeying a demon, that now and then mastered him, of wayward, restive, moody self-conceit, and the blind spirit of contradiction. Most of us know a little of such men, and occasionally suffer by such men in the private affairs of life men that are usually jealous of slights, or insufficient acknowledg- ments of their personal claims and consequence : they require to be courted, petted, caressed : they refuse to be compromised or com- mitted by the general acts of their party ; no, they must be especially consulted ; else they read a lesson to the whole party on their error, by some shocking and revolting act of sudden desertion, which, from a person of different character, would have been considered 169 . FARR AND perfidy. Dr. Johnstone himself admits, that Parr was "jealous of attention, and indignant at neglect ; " and on one occasion endeavours to explain a transaction of his life, by supposing that he may have been " hurried away by one of those torrents of passion, of which there are too many instances in his life." * Of the father, Parr obstetrical, the same indulgent biographer remarks, (p. 10,) that he was " distinguished by the rectitude of his principles;" and, in another place, (p. 21,) he pronounces him, in summing up his character, to have been " an honest, well-meaning Tory ; " but, at the same time, confesses him to have been " the petty tyrant of his fireside," an amiable little feature of character, that would go far to convince his own family, that " rectitude of principles " was not altogether incompatible with the practice of a ruffian. Tory, however, Parr, senior, was not: he was a Jacobite, probably for the gratification of his spleen, and upon a conceit that this arrayed him in a distinct personal contest with the House of Hanover; whereas, once confounded amongst the prevailing party of friends to that interest, as a man-midwife, he could hardly hope to win the notice of his Britannic Majesty. His faction, however, being beaten to their heart's content, and his own fortune going overboard in the storm, he suddenly made a bolt to the very opposite party : he ratted to the red-hot Whigs: and the circumstances of the case, which are as we have here stated, them, hardly warrant us in putting a very favourable construction upon his motives. As was the father, so was the son : the same right of rebellion reserved to himself, whether otherwise professing himself Jacobite or Whig; the same peremptory duty of passive obedience for those of his household ; the same hot intemperances in politics ; the same disdain of accountableness to his party leaders ; and, finally, the same " petty tyranny of the fire- side." This last is a point on which all the biographers are agreed : they all record the uncontrollable ill temper and hasty violence of Dr. Parr within his domestic circle. And one anecdote, illustrating his intemperance, we can add ourselves. On one occasion, rising up from table in the middle of a fierce discussion with Mrs. Parr, he took a carving knife, and applying it to a portrait hanging upon the wall, he drew it sharply across the jugular, and cut the throat of the picture from ear to ear, ihus murdering her in effigy. This view of Parr's intractable temper is necessary to understand his life, and in some measure to justify his friends. Though not (as he chose himself to express it, under a momentary sense of his slow progress in life, and the reluctant blossoming of his preferment) " a half-starved parson," yet most unquestionably he reaped nothing at Page 307, vol. i. The Doctor adds" As in the lives of us all." But, besides that this addition defeats the whole meaning of his own emphasis on the word his, it is not true that men generally yield to passion in thcil political or public lives. Having adopted a party, they adhere to it ; generally fer good and for ever. And the passions, which occasionally govern them, are the passions of their party not their own separate impulses as individuals. IJO HIS CONTEMPORARIES. all from his long attachment to Whiggery, by comparison with what he would have reaped had that attachment been more cordial and un- broken, and had he, in other respects, borne himself with more dis- cretion ; and above all, had he abstained from offensive personalities. This was a rock on which Parr often wrecked himself. Things, and principles, and existing establishments, might all have been attacked with even more virulence than he exhibited, had his furious passions allowed him to keep his hands off the persons of individuals. Here lay one class of the causes which retarded his promotion. Another was his unbecoming svarfare upon his own church. " I am sorry," said one of his earliest, latest, and wisest friends, (Bishop Sennet,) " I am sorry you attack the church, for fear of consequences to your own advancement." This was said in 1792. Six years after, the writer, who had a confidential post in the Irish government, and saw the dreadful crisis to which things were hurrying, found it ne- cessary to break off all intercourse with Dr. Parr ; so shocking to a man of principle was the careless levity with which this minister of peace, and his immediate associates, themselves in the bosom of security, amongst the woods of Warwickshire, scattered their fire- brands of inflammatory language through the public, at a period of so much awful irritation. Afterwards, it is true, that when the Irish crisis had passed, and the rebellion was suppressed, his respect for Parr as a scholar led him to resume his correspondence. But he never altered his opinion of Parr as a politician ; he viewed him as a man profoundly ignorant of politics ; a mere Parson Adams in the knowledge of affairs, and the real springs of political action, or political influence ; but unfortunately with all the bigotry and violent irritability that belong to the most excited and interested partizan ; having the passions of the world united with the ignorance of the desert ; coupling the simplicity of the dove with the fierce instincts of the serpent. The events of his life moved under this unhappy influence. Leaving college prematurely upon the misfortune* of his father's death, he became an assistant at Harrow under the learned Dr. Sumner. About five years after, on Dr. Sumner's death, though manifestly too young for the situation, he entered into a warm contest for the v icant place of head-master. Notwithstanding the support of Lord Dartmouth and others, he lost it ; and unfortunately for his peace of mind, though, as usual, he imagined all sorts of intrigues against himself, yet the pretensions of his competitor, Benjamin Heath, * Even that was possibly barbed in some of its consequences to Parr, by his own imprudence. The widow (his stepmother) is said to have injured Parr by her rapacity. But, if so, Parr had certainly himself laid the foundation of an early hatred between them, by refusing to lay aside his mourning for his own mother, on the marriage day of this second Mrs. Parr with his father. We do not much quarrel with his conduct on that occasion, considering his age (sixteen) and the relation of her for whom he mourned. But still the act was characteristic of the man, and led to its natural results. DR. PARR AND were such as to disabuse all the world of any delusive conceit, that justice had not been done. Parr, it must be remembered, then only twenty-five years old, had, in no single instance, distinguished him- self ; nor had he even fifty years after no, nor at the day of his death given any evidences to the world that he was comparable to Heath as a Grecian. The probable ground of Heath's success was a character better fitted to preside over a great school, (for even the too friendly biographers of Parr admit that he did not command the respect of the boys,) and his better established learning. Naturally enough, Parr was unwilling to admit these causes, so advantageous to his rival, as the true ones. What then, is his account of the matter ? He says, that he lost the election by a vote which he had given to John Wilkes, in his contest for Middlesex. To John Wilkes mark that, reader! Thus early had this "gowned student" engaged his passions and his services in the interest of brawling, intriguing faction. This plan failing, he set up a rival establishment in the neighbour- hood of Harrow, at Stanmore ; and never certainly did so young a man, with so few of the ordinary guarantees to offer that is to say, either property, experience, or connections meet with such generous assistance. One friend lent him two thousand pounds at two per cent., though his security must obviously have been merely personal. Another lent him two hundred pounds without any interest at all. And many persons of station and influence, amongst whom was Lord Dartmouth, gave him a sort of countenance equally useful to his interests, by placing their sons under his care. All came to nothing, however ; the establishment was knocked up, and clearly from gross defects of management. And, had his principal creditor pressed for repayment, or had he shown less than the most generous forbearance, which he continued through twenty-one years, (in fact until the re- payment was accomplished without distress,) Parr must have been ruined ; for in those days there was no merciful indulgence of the laws to hopeless insolvents ; unless by the favour of their creditors, they were doomed to rot in prison. Now, in this one story we have two facts illustrated, bearing upon our present inquiry first, the extraordinary good luck of Parr ; secondly, his extraordinary skill in neutralizing or abusing it. What young man, that happens to be penniless at the age of twenty-five, untried in the management of money, untried even as the presiding master in a school, would be likely to find a friend willing to intrust him, on his personal responsibility, (and with no prospect for the recovery of his money, except through the tardy and uncertain accumulation of profits upon an opposition school,) with so large a sum as two thousands pounds ? Who, in an ordinary way, could count upon the support of a nobleman enjoying the ear and confidence of royalty ? Lastly, who would so speedily defeat and baffle, by his own unassisted negligence and flagrant indis- cretions, so much volunteer bounty ? At this time of his life, it strikes us, in fact, that Dr. Parr was mad. The students at Stan- 173 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. more were indulged in all sorts of irregularities. That, perhaps, might arise from the unfortunate situation of the new establishment too near to its rival ; and in part, also, from the delicate position of Parr, who, in most instances, had come under an unfortunate personal obligation to the young gentlemen who followed him from Harrow. But in his habits of dress and deportment, which drew scandal upon himself, and jealousy upon his establishment, Parr owed his ill success to nobody but himself. Mr. Roderick, his assistant, and a most friendly reporter, says, that at this time he "brought upon himself the ridicule of the neighbourhood and passengers by many foolish acts ; such as riding in high prelatical pomp through the streets on a black saddle, bearing in his hand a long cane or wand, such as women used to have, with an ivory head like a crosier, which was probably the reason why he liked it." We see by this he was already thinking of the bishopric. "At other times he was seen stalking through the town in a dirty striped morn- ing gown : Nilfuit unquam sic imfiar sibi" When we add, that Dr. Parr soon disgusted and alienated his weightiest friend amongst the residents at Stanmore, Mr. Smith, the accomplished rector of the place, we cannot wonder that little more than five years saw that scheme at an end.* The school at Stanmore he could not be said to leave ; it left him : such was his management, that no fresh pupils succeeded to those whom the progress of years carried off to the universities. When this wavering rushlight had at length finally expired, it became necessary to think of other plans, and in the spring of 1777 he accepted the mastership of Colchester school. Even there, brief as his connection was with that establishment, he found time to fasten a quarrel upon the trustees of the school in reference to a lease ; and upon this quarrel he printed (though he did not publish) a pamphlet. Sir William Jones, his old schoolfellow, to whom, as a lawyer, this pamphlet was submitted, found continual occasion to mark upon the margin such criticisms as these, "too violent too strong." The contest was apparently de land cafirina ; so at least Sir William thought, f * Laying together all the incidents of that time, it is scarcely possible to doubt that Parr conducted himself with great impropriety. Benjamin Heath neither answered the letter in which Parr attempted to clear himself from the charge of exciting the boys of Harrow to insurrection against Heath's authority, nor did he so much as leave his card at Stanmore, in acknowledgment of Parr's call upon him. As to Mr. Smith, the rector, celebrated for his wit and ability, the early associate of Johnson and Garrick, from being " the warmest of Parr's friends," (such is Mr. Roderick's language,) he soon became cool, and finally ceased to speak. Mr. Roderick does not acquit his friend of the chief blame in this rupture. t Dr. Johnstone, however, speaking of the pamphlet as a composition, dis- covers in it " all the peculiarities of Parr's style its vigour, its vehemence, its clearness," its et cetera, et cetera ; and lastly, its " splendid imagery : " and DR. PARR AND But, luckily, he was soon called away from these miserable feuds to a more creditable sort of activity. In the summer of 1778, the mastership of the public grammar-school at Norwich became vacant : in the Autumn , Parr was elected ; and in the beginning of 1779, he commenced his residence in that city. Thus we see that he was unusually befriended in all his undertakings. As a private speculator at Stanmore, as a candidate for Colchester, as a candidate for Norwich, he was uniformly successful as far as it is possible that encouragement the most liberal, on the part of others, can overrule a man's own imprudence. The mastership of Norwich has certainly been considered a valuable prize by others. How it happened that Parr found it otherwise, or whether mere restlessness and love of change were his governing motives, does not appear ; but it is certain, that in August, 1785, he sent in his resignation; and at Easter, 1786, he went to reside at the parsonage house at Hatton, in the county of Warwick, where he opened a private academy. And though, as old age advanced, he resigned his pupils, Hatton continued to be his place of residence. This, then, was the haven, the perpetual curacy of Hatton, into which Dr. Parr steered his little boat, when he had already passed the meridian* of his life. And (except upon a visit) he never again left it for any more elevated abode. For a philosopher, we grant that a much happier situation cannot be imagined than that of an English rural parson, rich enough to maintain a good library. Dr. Parr was exactly in those circumstances : but Dr, Parr was no philosopher. And assuredly this was not the vision which floated before his e3 r es at Stanmore, when he was riding on his "black saddle," in prelatical pomp, with his ivory crozier in his fist. The coach-and-four and mitred panels, must then have flourished in the foreground of the picture. But at that time he was between twenty- five and thirty : now he was turned forty an age when, if a man should not have made his fortune, at least he ought to see clearly before him the road by which it is to be made. Now what was Parr's condition at this time, in respect to that supreme object of his exertions ? We have no letter on that point in this year, 1786 : but we have one in 1782, when it does not appear (and indeed can obviously, by way of a specimen of this last quality, he quotes the following most puerile rhetoric; "I had arrayed myself in a panoply of the trustiest armour in the breast-plate of innocence, the shield of the law, the sword of indignation, and the helmet of intrepidity. When I first entered the lists against these hardy combatants, I determined to throw away the scabbard," nnd so forth. The sword of indignation ! Birch-rod he surely means. How- ever, we must think, that the bombs of contempt, and the mortars of criticism, ought to open upon any person above the age of eight years who could write such stilted fustian. * By meridian, we here mean the month which exactly bisected his life. Dr. Parr lived about eleven months less than eighty years ; and he was about two months more than forty when he came to live at Hatton. 174 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. hardly be supposed possible) that his situation was materially different. Writing to a man whom he valued, but then under a cloud of distress, and perhaps wishing to excuse himself for not sending him money, he thus states the result of his labours up to that date : " You desire my confidence ; and I therefore add, that the little progress I have made in worldly matters, the heavy loss I have sustained by the war, the inconsiderable advantages I have gained by a laborious and irksome employment, and the mortifying discouragements I have met with in my clerical profession, have all conspired to depress my spirits, and undermine my constitution. I was content to give up ecclesiastical preferment, while I had a prospeat of making some comfortable provision for my old age in my business as a teacher : but the best of my years have now elapsed ; and I am, through a most vexatious and trying series of events, not a shilling richer than when I went to Stanmore. I have this very week closed an account, on which I stood indebted near 2OOO/., which I was obliged to borrow when I launched into active life. My house at Stanmore, I sold literally for less money than I expended on the repairs only. To this loss of more than a thousand pounds, I am to add near ;oo/., which I may lose entirely, and must lose in a great measure, by the reduction of St. Vincent and St. Kitt's. My patience, so far as religion prescribes it, is sufficient to support me under this severity of moral trial. But the hour is past in which I might hope to secure a comfortable independency ; and I am now labouring under the gloomy prospect of toiling, with exhausted strength, for a scanty subsistence to myself and my family. It is but eighteen months that I could pronounce a shilling my own. Now, indeed, meo sum -paitfier in are but my integrity I have ever held fast." Possibly ; but integrity might also have been held fast in a deanery, and certainly Dr. Parr will not pretend to hoax us with such a story, as, that "integrity " was all that he contemplated from his black saddle in Stanmore. Undoubtedly, he framed to himself some other good things, so fortunately arranged, that they could be held in commendam with integrity. Such, however, was the naked fact, and we are sorry for it, at the time when Dr. Parr drew near to his fortieth year at which age, as all the world knows, a man must be a fool if he is not a physician. Pass on, reader, for the term of almost another generation ; suppose Dr. Parr to be turned of sixty, and the first light snows of early old age to be just beginning to descend upon him, and his best wig to be turning gray; were matters, we ask, improved at that time ? Not much. Twenty years from that Easter on which he had entered the gates of Hatton, hal brought him within hail of a bishopric ; for his party were ju:t then in power. Already he could descry his sleeves and his rochet; already he could count the pinnacles of his cathedral ; when sud- denly Mr. Fox died, and his hopes evanesced in spiral wreaths of fuming Orinoco. Unfortunate Dr. Parr ! Once before he had con- ceived himself within an inch of the mitre ; that was in the king's 175 DR. PARR AND first illness, when the regency intrigue gave hopes, at one time, that Mr. Pitt would be displaced. Dr. Parr had then been summoned up to London ; and he had gone so far as to lay down rules for his episcopal behaviour. But the king suddenly recovered ; many a grasping palm was then relaxed abruptly ; and, alas ! for Dr. Parr, whether people died or recovered, the event was equally unfortunate. Writing, on August 25, 1807, to the Bishop of Down, he says, " If Mr. Fox had lived and continued in power, he certainly would have made me a bishop." Now if Dr. Parr meant to say that he had a distinct promise to that effect, that certainly is above guessing ; else we should almost presume to guess, that Mr. Fox neither would, nor possibly could have made Dr. Parr a bishop. It is true, that Mr. Fox meant to have promoted the Bishop of Llandaff of that day, who might seem to stand in the same circumstances as a literary supporter; at least Lord Holland said to a friend of ours, " Had our party remained in office, we should have raised the Bishop of Llandaff to the Archbishopric of York." But then why? Lord Holland's reason was this, "For he" (meaning Dr. Watson) " behaved very well, I can assure you, to us," (meaning by us the whole coalition probably of Grenvilles and Foxes.) Now, this reason (we fear) did not apply, in Mr. Fox's mind, to Dr. Parr ; he had behaved violently, indiscreetly, foolishly, on several occasions ; he had thoroughly disgusted all other parties ; he had not satisfied his own. And once, when, for a very frivolous reason, he gave a vote for Mr. Pitt at the Cambridge election, we are satisfied our- selves that he meditated the notable policy of ratting ; conceiving, perhaps, that it was a romantic and ideal punctilio of honour to adhere to a doomed party ; and the letter of Lord John Townshend, on that occasion, convinces us that the Whigs viewed this very sus- picious act in that light. Even Dr. Johnstone, we observe, doubts whether Mr. Fox would have raised Dr. Parr to the mitre. And, as to everybody else, they shuddered at his very name. The Chancellor, Lord Thurlow, gave him a hearty curse, more suo, instead of a pre- bend; and Lord Grenville assigned, as a reason against making him a bishop, his extreme unpopularity * with his own order. As one proof of that, even the slight distinction of preaching a visita- tion sermon had never once been offered to Dr. Parr, as he himself tells us in 1816, when he had completed his seventieth year, notwith- standing he had held preferment in five different counties. Nor was it, in fact, offered for six years more ; and then, being a hopeful young gentleman of seventy-six, he thought proper to decline the invitation. * Parr's extreme and well-merited unpopularity with an order whom he had, through life, sneered at and misrepresented, is a little disguised to common readers by the fact, that he corresponds with more than one bishop on terms of friendship and confidence. But this arose, generally speaking, in later life, when early schoolfellows and pupils of his own, in several instances were raised to the mitre. I 7 6 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. Next, for the emoluments of his profession Was he better off as regards them? Else, whence came the coach-and-four? We answer, that, by mere accidents of good luck, and the falling-in of some extraordinary canal profits, Dr. Parr's prebend in the cathedral of St. Paul's, given to him by Bishop Lowth, upon the interest of Lord Dartmouth, in his last year or two, produced him an unusually large sum; so that he hadabout three thousanda-year; and weare glad of it. He had also an annuity of three hundred a-year, granted by the Dukes of Norfolk and Bedford in consideration of a subscription made for Dr. Parr by his political friends. But this was a kind of charity which would not have been offered, had it not been felt that, in the regular path of his profession, he had not drawn, nor was likely to draw, any conspicuous prizes. In fact, but for the two accidents we have mentioned, his whole regular income from the church, up to a period of advanced age, when Sir Francis Burdett presented him to a living of about 200/. per annum, was g$l. on account of his living and 177. on account of his prebend. Such were the ecclesiastical honours, and such the regular ecclesias- tical emoluments of Samuel Parr. We do not grudge him the addition, as regards the latter, which, in his closing years, he drew from the liberality of his friends and the accidents of luck. On the contrary, we rejoice that his last days passed in luxury and pomp ; that he sent up daily clouds of undulating incense to the skies ; and that he celebrated his birthday with ducal game and venison from the parks of princes ; finally, we rejoice that he galloped about in his coach- and-four, and are not angry that, on one occasion, he nearly galloped over ourselves. Still, we rejoice that all these luxuries came to him irregularly, and not at all, or indirectly, and by accident, through the church. As regards that, and looking not to the individual, but entirely to the example, we rejoice that, both for her honours and emoluments, Dr. Parr missed them altogether. Such be the fate, we pray heartily, of all unfaithful servants, in whatsoever profession, calling, or office of trust ! So may those be still baffled and confounded, who pass their lives in disparaging and traducing their own honourable brethren ; and who labour (whether consciously and from treachery, or half-consciously and from malice and vanity) for the subversion of institutions which they are sworn and paid to defend ! Our conclusion, therefore, the epimuthion of our review, is this that, considered as a man of the world, keenly engaged in the chase after rank and riches, Dr. Parr must be pronounced to have failed ; that his rare and late successes were casual and indirect; whilst his capital failures were due exclusively to himself. His two early bosom friends and schoolfellows, Dr. Bennet and Sir W. Jones, he saw raised to the rank of a bishop and a judge whilst he was him- self still plodding as a schoolmaster. And this mortifying distinc- tion in their lots was too obviously imputable, not to any more scrupulous integrity in him, flattering and soothing as that hvpo- 177 DR. PARR AND thesis was to his irritated vanity, but solely to his own hot-headed defect of self-control baffling the efforts of his friends, and neutral- izing the finest opportunities. Both of those eminent persons, the bishop, as well as the judge, deeply disapproved of his conduct ; though they agreed in candour, and in the most favourable con- struction of his meaning ; and though they allowed him the largest Mtitude for his politics one of them being a liberal Tory, and the other an ardent Whig. And yet, with the full benefit of this large privilege, he could not win their toleration to his indiscretion. So that, purely by his own folly, and in headstrong opposition to the concurring tendencies of his opportunities and his aids, Samuel Parr failed utterly as a man of the world. It remains to inquire how much better he succeeded in establishing his character as a poli- tician, a scholar, and a divine. PART II. READER ! perhaps you have heard of churls, who, being em- barked in the same ship for an East India voyage, or engaged as associates in the same literary undertakings, have manifested no interest at all in the partners of their hopes and hazards. We, for our parts, have heard of a monster and otherwise not a bad monster among the contributors to this very Journal, who sent his "article " most punctually punctually received his honoraritim punctually acknowledged its receipt by return of post, but in no one instance, through a period of several years, thought proper to ex- press satisfaction in any one "article" of his collaborateurs , or interest in their characters, or curiosity about their names ; who seemed, in fact, wilfully and doggedly unaware of their existence ; and, in one word, by a single act of profound selfishness, annihilated, to his own consciousness, all contemporary authors, however closely brought into connection with himself. Far be such apathy from Christopher North and his friends ! The merest poco-curante, or misanthrope, whom long experience of the world has brought to the temper of fixed and contemptuous disregard for man as a species, not seldom makes an exception in favour of the particular John, William, or James, whom accident has embarked in the same little boat with himself. Dan Dancer, the miser, fought the battles of the paupers in his own neighbourhood, and headed them in their campaigns for rights of common and turbary with the most disinterested heroism. Elwes, the prince of misers, sometimes laid aside his narrow cares for the duties of a patriot. No man so memorably selfish, who has not, on some occasion of his life, felt the social instinct which connects his else contemptible race, and acknow HIS CONTEMPORARIES. ledged the duties which grow out of it. As to the good and generous, they cannot travel so much as a Jewish Sabbath-day's journey in company with another, participating in common purposes for the time, and liable to common inconveniences of weather or accident, and even to common possibilities of danger, without recognizing something beyond a stranger's claim to offices of kindness or cour- tesy in the transient relations of a fellow-traveller. Yet these are, in their nature, felt to be perishable connections ; neighbourhood is a relation either purely of accident, or of choice not determined by consideration of neighbours. And 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 in a moment. Seldom, indeed, does a second sun shine upon fellow-travellers in modern England. And neighbourhood, if a more durable tie, is often one even less consciously made known to the parties concerned. If, then, connections casual as these, where the vinculum of the rela- tion is so finely spun as to furnish rather a verbal classification to the logician than a practical subject of duties to the moralist, are yet acknowledged by the benevolent as imposing some slight obliga- tions of consideration and service, much more ought an author to find, in the important circumstances which connect the ministers of the press, in their extensive fellowship of duties, rights, powers, interests, and necessities, a bond of fraternal alliance, and more than fraternal sympathy. Too true it is, that authors are sometimes blockheads, very probably coxcombs, and by possibility even knaves. Too commonly it happens that, in the occasions and the motives which originally drew them into authorship, there is little or nothing to command respect. Venter largitor ingeni is the great feeder of the Metropolitan press ; and, amongst the few who commence authors upon arguments less gross and instant, there are not many who do so from impulses entirely honourable. Considerations such as these are at war with all sentiments of regard for the mere hacks of the press, who, having no natural summons to so fine a vocation, pervert literature the noblest of professions into the vilest of trades. But wherever that is not $rima facie presumable, wherever circumstances allow us to sup- pose that a man has taken up the office of author with adequate pretensions, and a proper sense of his responsibilities every other author of generous nature will allow him the benefit of that privilege which all over the world attaches to co-membership in any craft, calling, or guild whatsoever even those which are illiberal or mechanical; a fortiori in those which are intellectual. Surgeons bleed surgeons for love, physicians assassinate physicians gratis. Superannuated actors are everywhere free, or ought to be, of the theatre. And an author who has exercised his craft in a liberal and gentlemanly spirit, is entitled in that character to the courtesies of all professional authors, and to entire amnesty as respects his poli- tics. These claims we cheerfully allow ; and we come to the con- 179 DR. PARR AND sideration of Dr. Parr as a scholar and as an author with perfect freedom from all prejudice, anxious to give him the fullest benefit of his real merits, and dismissing all unpleasant recollections of tha factious and intemperate character t/hich he put forward in politics and divinity. Dr. Parr as an author ! That very word in our ear sounds ridiculous, apart from every question upon the quality or value of what he wrote. As a literary man, as a scholar, prepared by reading and research for appreciating a considerable proportion of the past or the current literature we are willing to concede that Dr. Parr stood upon somewhat higher ground than the great body of his clerical brethren. But even this we say with hesitation. For it is scarcely to be believed, except by those who have gone with an observing eye into English society, how many rural clergyman go down to their graves unheard of by the world, and unacquainted with the press, unless perhaps by some anonymous communication to a religious magazine, or by an occasional sermon ; who have beguiled the pains of life by researches unusually deep into some neglected or unpopular branches of professional learning. Such persons, it is true, are in general unequally learned ; so indeed are most men ; so, beyond all men, was Dr. Parr. We do not believe that he possessed anyone part of knowledge accurately, unless it were that section of classica* learning which fell within his province as a schoolmaster. The practice of a long life naturally made him perfect in that ; perfect at least in relation to the standard of that profession. But how small a part of classical researches lies within the prescriptive range of a practising schoolmaster ! The duties of a professor in the univer- sities or final schools have a wider compass. But it must be a pure labour of supererogation in a teacher of any school for boys, if he should make his cycle of study very comprehensive. Even within that cycle, as at this time professed by some first-rate teachers, was Dr. Parr master of everything ? In some of its divisions was he even master of anything ? For example, how much did he know has h? left it upon record, in any one note, exegetical or illustrative, upon anyone obscure or disputed passage of any one classic, that he knew anything at all in the vast and interminable field of classical antiquities ? The formulas of the Roman calendar were known to him as a writer of Latin epitaphs. True, but those are mastered easily in ten minutes : did he know, even on that subject, anything farther ? To take one case amongst a thousand, when the year 1800 brought up a question in its train was it to be considered the last year of the eighteenth century, or the first of the nineteenth ? Did Dr. Parr come forward with an oracular determination of our scruples, or did he silently resign that pleading to the humble hands of the laureate Pye ? Or again, shifting from questions of time to those of space, has Dr. Pan- contributed so much as his mite to the very interesting, important, and difficult subject of classical geography ? Yet these were topics which lay within his beat as a schoolmaster. If we should come 180 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. upon the still higher ground of divinity, and Christian antiquities, perhaps upon those it might appear tha't Dr. Parr had absolutely no pretensions at all. But not to press such questions too closely or in- vidiously, whatever might be the amount of his attainments under these heads, were it little or were it much, scanty as the measure of our faith in them, or co-extensive with the vaunts of his friends still all this has reference only to his general capacity as a man of letters : whereas we are called upon to consider Dr. Parr also as an author; indeed we have now no other means for estimating his posse as a scholar, than through his esse as a writer for the press. This is our task ; and this it is which moves our mirth, whilst it taxes the worthy doctor and his friends with a spirit of outrageous self-delusion. Dr. Parr as an author! and what now might happen to be the doctor's works ? For we protest, upon our honour, that we never heard their names. Was ever case like this? Here is a learned doctor, whose learned friend has brought him forward as a first-rate author of his times ; and yet nothing is extant of his writing, beyond an occasional preface, or a pamphlet on private squabbles. But are not his Opera Omnia collected and published by this friendly biographer, and expanded into eight enormous tomes ? True, and the eight tomes contain, severally, the following hyperbolical amount of pages : PAGES. Vol. r. . . 850 II 701 I" 715 iv 718 v 715 vi 699 VII 680 viii. ... ^ .... 656 Total, 5734 Yes ! Five thousand seven hundred and thirty-four octavo pages, many of them printed in a small type, are the apparent amount of Samuel Parr's works in the edition of Dr. Johnstone ; and it is true, besides, that the very elite of his papers are omitted such as his critical notices of books in the Monthly and Critical Reviews, or the British Critic, and his essay on the word Sublime, addressed to Mr. Dugald Stewart. Add what is omitted, and the whole would be little short of seven thousand pages. And yet, spite of that, not one work of Dr. Parr's is extant, which can, without laughter, assume that important name. The preface to Bellenden is, after all, by much the weightiest and most regular composition, and the least of a fugitive tract. Yet this is but a.jeu d' esprit, or classical prolusion. And we believe the case to be unexampled, that, upon so slender a basis, a man of the world, and reputed a man of sense, should set up for an author. Well might the author of the Pursuits of Literature (1797) demand "What has Dr. Parr written? A sermon or two,. 181 DR. PARR AND rather long ; a Latin preface to Bellendenus, (rather long too,) con- sisting of a cento of Latin and Greek expressions, applied to political subjects ; another Preface to some English Tracts ; and two or three English Pamphlets about his own private quarrels and this man is to be compared with Dr. Samuel Johnson ! ! " [;th Edit. p. 219.] Certainly the world had never before seen so great a pomp of pretension rising from so slight a ground. The delusion was absolutely unrivalled, and prevailed throughout Dr. Parr's long life. He and his friends seemed constantly to appeal to some acknowledged literary reputation, established upon foundations that could not be shaken, and notorious to all the world. Such a mis- take, and in that extent, was never heard of before. Dr. Parr talked, and his friends listened, not only as giving and receiving oracles of moral wisdom, but of wisdom owned as such by all the world ; whereas, this auctoritas (to borrow a Roman word for its Roman sense) whether secretly due to the doctor or not, evidently could not exist as a fact, unless according to the weight and popu- larity of published works, by which the w r orld had been taught to know him and respect him. Starting, originally, from the erroneous assumption insinuated by his preposterous self-conceit, that he was Johnson redivivus, he adopted Johnson's colloquial pretensions ; and that was vain-glorious folly ; but he also conceived that these pretensions were familiarly recognized ; and that was frenzy. To Johnson, as a known master in a particular style of conversation, everybody gave way ; and upon all questions with moral bearings, he was supposed to have the rights and precedency of a judical chair. But this prerogative he had held in right of his works ; works not which he ought to have written, (see Dr. Johnstone's Memoirs of Parr, p. 464,) but which he had written, printed, and published. Strange that Dr. Parr should overlook so obvious a distinction ! Yet he did so for fifty years. Dining for instance, at Norfolk House, the Duke having done him the honour to invite him to the same table with the Prince of Wales, such was his presump- tion in the presence of the heir apparent, of the Premier Peer of England, and all the illustrious leaders from the Opposition side of the two houses, that he fully believed it to be his vocation to stand forward as the spokesman of the company. It gave him no check, it suggested no faltering scruple, that Mr. Fox was on one side the table, and Sheridan on the other. His right he conceived it to be to play the foremost part, and to support the burden of conversation between His Royal Highness and the splendid party assembled to meet him. Accordingly, on some casual question arising as to the comparative merits of Bishop Kurd and Archbishop Markham, as Greek scholars, in which the Prince delivered a plain and sensible evi- dence in favour of the latter, from facts of his own youthful experi- ence ; Parr strutted forward with the mingled license of jacobinism and paradox, to maintain a thesis against him. " I," said the Prince of Wales, " esteem Markham a much greater, wiser, and more learned man than Hurd, and a better teacher ; and you will 182 IHS CONTEMPORARIES. allow me to be a judge, for they were both my preceptors." Here was a direct opinion ; and the Prince afterwards gave reasons tot it equally direct. A simple answer, as brief as the original posi. tion, was all that good breeding or etiquette allowed. But Dr. Parr found an occasion for a concio, and prepared to use it. "Sir," said he, " is it your Royal Highness's pleasure that I should enter upon the topic of their comparative merits as a subject of discus- sion ? " " Yes," said the Prince. "Then r sir," said Dr. Parr, " I differ entirely from your Royal Highness in opinion." One would suppose by his formal preparation, that Parr was some serjeant-at- law rising to argue a case before the judges in Westminster Hall. The Prince, however, had permitted him to proceed : what else could a gentleman do ? And, by way of acknowledging this cour- teous allowance, Parr with the true soul of a low-bred democrat, starts with a point blank contradiction of his Royal Highness, put as broadly and as coarsely as he knew how : this was to show his " independence," for Jacobins always think it needful to be brutal, lest for one moment they might pass for gentlemen.* * As disputing with a Prince of Wales is something rarer even than waltzing with a Lord Chancellor, or smoking a cigar with the Pope things which have been done, however we suppose it may entertain our readers to see the rest of the discussion ; especially as it concerns two persons eminent in their day, and one of them still interesting to our literature : " As I knew them both so intimately, (replied the Prince,) you will not deny, that I had the power of more accurately appreciating their respective merits than you can have had. In their manner of teaching, you may judge of my estimation of Markham's superiority his natural dignity and authority, compared with the Bishop of Worcester's smoothness and softness, and I now add, (with proper submission to your authority on such a subject,) his experi- ence as a schoolmaster, and his better scholarship." " Sir, (said Parr,) your Royal Highness began this conversation ; and, if you permit it to go on, must tolerate a very different inference." "Go on, (said the Prince;) I declare that Markham understood Greek better than Kurd ; for, when I read Homer, and hesitated about a word, Markham immediately explained it, and then we went on ; but, when I hesitated with Hurd, he always referred me to the dic- tionary ; I therefore conclude he wanted to be informed himself." " Sir, (replied Parr,) I venture to differ from your Royal Highness's conclusion. I am myself a schoolmaster ; and I think that Dr. Hurd pursued the right method, and that Dr. Markham failed in his duty. Hurd desired your Royal Highness to find the word in the lexicon, not because he did not know it, but because he wished you to find by search, and learn it thoroughly. Dr. Hurd was not eminent as a scholar ; but it is not likely that he would have presumed to teach your Royal Highness, without knowing the lesson himself." " Have you not changed your opinion of Dr. Hurd ? " exclaimed the Prince. " I have read a work in which you attack him fiercely."" Yes, sir, I 'attacked him on one point which I thought important to letters ; and I summoned the whole force of my mind, and took every possible pains to do it well ; for I con- sider Hurd to be a great man. He is celebrated as such by foreign critics, who appreciate justly his wonderful acuteness, sagacity, and dexterity, in doing what he has done with his small stock of learning. There is no com- U '83 DR. PARR AND Perhaps there are not ten men in Europe, occupying at the time no higher station than that of country schoolmaster, who would > have had the front in the presence of the Prince of Wales, or the Dauphin of France to step before the assembled wits of Paris or London, and the great leaders of parties, as the rightful claimant of the royal ear, and natural representative of the illustrious party assembled at Norfolk House all distinguished by high birth, talents, or station. Brass, triply bronzed, was requisite for this. " Thou art the great toe of this society ; because that thou, being lowest, basest, meanest, still goest foremost." But arrogance towards his fellow-claimants was not enough for Dr. Parr, unless he might also be arrogant towards the prince. In high-bred society, all disputation whatsoever nay, all continued discussion is out- rageously at war with the established tone of conversation ; a dis- pute must be managed with much more brilliancy, much more command of temper, a much more determinate theme, and a much mere obvious progress in the question at issue, than are commonly found not to prove grievously annoying to all persons present, except the two disputants. High-breeding and low-breeding differ not more in the degrees of refinement, which characterize their usages, than in the good sense upon which these usages have arisen. Certainly mere good sense is sufficient, without any ex- perience at all of high life, to point out the intolerable absurdity of parison, in my opinion, between Markham and Hurd as men of talents. Markham was a pompous schoolmaster Hurd was a stiff and cold, but a cor- rect gentleman. Markham was at the head of a great school, then of a great college, and finally became an archbishop. In all these stations he had trumpeters of his fame, who called him great, though he published one concio only, which has already sunk into oblivion. From a farm-house and village school, Hurd emerged, the friend of Gray, and a circle of distinguished men. While fellow of a small college, he sent out works praised by foreign critics, and not despised by our own scholars. He enriched his understanding by study, and sent from the obscurity of a country village, a book, sir, which your royal father is said to have declared made him a bishop. He made himself unpopular in his own profession by the defence of a fantastical system. He had decriers ; he had no trumpeters ; he was great in and by himself; and perhaps, sir, a portion of that power and adroitness, you have manifested in this debate, might have been owing to him." Fox, when the prince was gone, exclaimed in his high tone of voice, "He thought he had caught you ! but he caught a Tartar." In the last words only Parr seems to have remembered that he was address- ing a prince : in what he said of Kurd's Greek scholarship, and motive of referring the prince to the lexicon, though probably wrong as to the matter of fact, he might be right as to the principle ; and at least he was there talking on a point of his own profession, which he might be presumed to understand better than the rest of the company. But who can forbear smiling, and think- ing of the professor who lectured Hannibal on the art of war at that passage, where Parr, addressing the Prince of Wales, undertakes to characterize Hurd's pretensions as a gentleman ? 184 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. allowing two angry champions to lock up and sequestrate, as it were, the whole social enjoyment of a large party, and compel them to sit "in sad civility" witnesses of a contest, which can interest the majority neither by its final object nor its management. Social pleasure is the end and purpose of society ; and whatsoever inter- feres with that should be scourged out of all companies. But, if disputing be intolerable, what shall we say of blank contradiction offered to a Prince of Wales not in prosecution of some point of public service, but as an eloquent condiment to the luxuries of colloquial intercourse ? To turn your back upon the king, to put a question to him, to pull out your watch in his presence all these are notorious trespasses against the etiquette of courts, and reason- ably so; because they are all habits which presuppose a carelessness of demeanour, incompatible with that reverence and decorous homage which should never slumber in the presence of a king, considered not as an individual, but as a state creature, embodying the majesty of a great nation. A Prince of Wales, or whosoever occupies that near relation to the throne, has the same sanctity of public character ; and a man of sense, though a red-hot republican from the banks of the Potomac, would as little allow himself to forget that, as to insult a judge upon the bench. Had the matter in dispute been some great question of constitu- tional policy, or in anyway applicable to the Prince's future behaviour in life, or in many other circumstances that might be imagined, we can suppose a sort of propriety in the very breach of propriety. But the question was, in this case, too trivial to justify the least eccentri- city of manner. He who courts the character of an abnormissapiens, should be careful that his indecorums and singularity cover some singular strength of character or some weight of fine sense. As it was, Dr. Parr was paradoxical and apparently in the wrong : the Prince, direct and rational. With what disadvantage to Dr. Parr, on this occasion, and afterwards in his relation to Queen Caroline, do we recall the simple dignity of Dr. Johnson,* when presented to George III. ! Dr. Parr's introduction was at a dinner-table ; Dr. Johnson's in a library; and in their separate styles of behaviour, one might fancy each to have been governed by the presiding genius of the place. Johnson behaved with the dignity of a scholar and a loyal son of the Muses, under the inspiration of "strong book- mindedness ; " Parr with the violence of a pedagogue, under the irritations of wine and indigestion. In reality, Dr. Parr's effrontery * Johnson had many of the elements to the composition of a gentleman in a very high degree, though it is true that these were all neutralized, at times, by some one overmastering prejudice or disgust. His silent acquiescence in the royal praise, and the reason on which he justified his acquiescence that it did not become him to bandy compliments with his Sovereign, is in the finest spirit of high breeding, and reminds us of a similar test of gentle- manly feeling, applied to the English Ambassador by the Regent Duke of Orleans . '85 DR. PARR AND was chiefly to be traced to that one fact in his life that, for forty years, he swayed the sceptre of a pedagogue. Native arrogance was the root; but the " bright consummate flower " was unfolded and matured by his long reign as a tyrant over schoolboys. To borrow his own words with one slight omission, in speaking of a Cambridge head, his " manners and temper were spoiled by the pendantries, and pomposities, and fooleries which accompany the long exercise of petty archididaschalian authority." " Petty archididaschalian authority /" Thanks to Dr. Parr for one, at least, of his sesquipedalian words ; for that one contains the key to his whole life, and to the else mysterious fact that a pam- phleteer, a party pamphleteer, a pamphleteer in the service of private brawls, trod the stage, on all occasions, with the air of some great patriarch of letters or polemic champion of the church. Who could believe that Dr. Parr's friend and biographer, in the very act of publishing eight volumes, entitled, " Works of Dr. Parr," should yet have no better answer to the contemptuous demand of the author of the Pursuits of Literature " What has Dr. Parr written ? " than simply an expression of regret, (vol. i. p. 464,) " that with such Snvers, and such means of gathering information from every quarter, r. Parr did not produce some great work on some great subject." He goes on to lament that he did not, "like Clarendon, give the history of that awful period of which he saw the spring-tide, and in part the issue ; or, like Burnet, that he did not relate, in a familiar manner, the transactions of the period in which he lived ; or, like Tacitus, paint in caustic and living colours the atrocities, of some of which he was a witness, and deliver, as an everlasting memorial to posterity, the characters of those who bore a part in them." But, with submission, Posterity are a sort of people whom it is very difficult to get at; whatever other good qualities they may have, accessibility is not one of them. A man may write eight quartos to them, a fortiori then, eight octavos, and get no more hearing from the wretches, than had he been a stock and they been stones. As to those " everlasting memorials," which Dr. Johnstone and Thu- cydides talk of, it is certainly advisable to "deliver" thembut troublesome and injurious to the digestive organs. Another biographer, who unites with Dr. Johnstone in lamenting, " that he did not undertake some work of a superior kind calculated for permanent utility and more durable fame," goes on in the following terms : " It is hinted, however, by a periodical writer, that he could not produce more creditable works ; and for this reason that he was, as it were, overlaid with acquired knowledge ; the flood of his memory burst in on his own original powers and drowned them." But, in that case, we shall venture to hope that some Humane Society, like that on the banks of the Serpentine, will arise to save hopeful young men from such sad catastrophes ; so that "acquired knowledge" may cease to prove so fatal a possession, and native ignorance be no longer a conditio sine qua non for writing " credit- able works." Meantime, whatever were the cause, th > fact, we see, 1 86 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. is admitted by Dr, Parr's best friends that he did not write jny great, durable, or creditable work; and the best excuse for hir^. which Dr. Johnstone's ingenuity can devise is that neither Arch- bishop Markham, nor Dean Cyril Jackson wrote anything better. True : but the reason which makes such an excuse not entirely available to the case is this that neither the Archbishop nor the Dean arrogated that place and authority in letters which they had not won : they had both been employed in the same sort of labour as Dr. Parr ; they had severally assisted in the education of a great prince, and they were content with the kind of honour which that procured them. And for Cyril Jackson in particular, he was con- tent with less : for he persisted to the last in declining the mitre which he had earned. No : the simple truth is, as we have stated, that Dr. Parr assumed his tone of swagger and self-sufficiency in part, perhaps, from original arrogance of nature and a confidence which he had in his own powers, but chiefly from a long life of absolute monarchy within the walls of a school-room. The nature of his empire was absolute and unlimited despotism, in the worst form described by Aristotle in his politics. There is no autocrat so com- plete, not the Czar of all the Russias, as the captain of a king's ship, and the head master of a grammar school. Both of them are irresponsible, awirev8vvot, in the utmost degree. And for Part ; n particular, not only was he an autocrat, but, if he is not greatly belied, he was a capricious tyrant, an Algerine tyrant, who went the whole length of his opportunities for showing partial favour, or inflicting savage punishment. And he had this peculiarity, thai whilst other tyrants find a present gratification in their severities, but shiink from their contemplation, Parr treated his as Plato suppers they were luxuries for the moment, and subjects of con- tinued exultation in the retrospect. Long after a man had entered the world as an active citizen, Dr. Parr used to recall, a& the most interesting tie which could connect him with himseU, that at some distant period he had flogged him : and from ont biographer it appears that, in proportion to his approbation cf a boy, and the hopes with which he regarded him, were the frequency and the severity of his flagellations. To a man who reigned in blood, and fed (like Moloch) with din of children's cries, we may suppose that resistance was unheard of : and hence, we repeat, the arrogance with which he came abroad before the world. But what, it will be asked, on the side of the public, gave success to this arrogance ? How was it that in his lifetime this insolence of assump- tion fit fortune i> Partly, we answer, through the insolence itself: in all cases that does wonders. The great majority of men are ready to swear by any man's words if he does but speak with audacity. In process of time, however, this resource will fail a man, unless reinforced by auxiliary means ; and these we conceive to have lain in two circumstances, without which Parr never would have gained a height so disoroportionedto his performances. The circumstances 187 DR. PARR AND were, first, that Parr was a Whig ; and the Whigs, as the party militant, make much of all who stick by them. Hence the excessive compliments which flowed in upon Dr. Parr from Edinburgh, and from persons such as Dugald Stewart, who had otherwise no par- ticular value for Dr. Parr's pretensions. The Whigs are wise in their generation ; and, like the Dissenters from the Church of Eng- land, they make men sensible that it is good to be of their faction ; for they never forsake those who stick closely to them. Dr. Parr, indeed, was rather a slippery partizan ; but this was not generally known. His passions carried him back to Whiggism ; and his gen- eral attachment was notorious, whilst his little special perfidies or acts of trimming were secrets to all but a very few. The other cir- cumstance in his favour was this that, as a schoolmaster, he was throwing into public life a continual stream of pupils, who naturally became partizans and obstinate fironeurs. In some instances, he educated both father and son ; and, though it is true that here and there an eccentric person retains too lively a remembrance of past flagellations, and is with some difficulty restrained from cudgelling or assassinating the flagellator still, as a general case, it may be held that such recollections of the boy do not weigh much in the feelings of the man. Most certain it is, that, had Dr. Parr been other than an active Whig in politics or had he not been a school- master of ancient and extensive practice, he never could, as a literary man, have risen so abruptly above the natural level of his perform- ances as in fact he did. And now that he is dead, and the activity of such adventitious aids is rapidly beginning to fail him, he will sink doubtless quite as abruptly to his just standard ; or, perhaps, by the violence of the natural reaction, will be carried below it. There is another scale, in which it is probable that some persons may have taken their literary estimate of the Doctor, viz., the scale avoirdupois. For, it is very possible that, upon putting the eight volumes of works (as edited by Dr. Johnstone) on a butcher's steel- yard, they may have ascertained that they draw against a weight of three stone six pounds. Infinite levity in particular cases amounts to gravity ; and a vast host of fluttering pamphlets, and stray leaves, make up one considerable mass. It becomes necessary, therefore, to state the substance of the whole eight volumes. Briefly, then, the account stands thus : Volume the First contains Memoirs, (with some Extracts from Letters.) The last two contain Correspondence. Three other volumes contain sermons : of which two volumes are mere parish discourses, having no more right to a place in a body of literary works than the weekly addresses to his congregation of any other rural clergyman. Thus, out of six volumes, one only is really privileged to take its rank under the general title of the Collection. The two remaining volumes, (the Third and Fourth,) contain Dr. Parr's miscellaneous pamphlets, with some considerable omissions not accounted for by the Editor. These two volumes are, in fact, all that can properly be described as of a literary nature ; and to these we shall resort for matter in the close of our review. 188 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. Meantime, we are satisfied that the correspondence of Dr. Parr and his friends, for the very reason that it was written with no view (or no uniform view) to the press, is that part of the whole collection which will be read by most readers, and with most interest by all readers. We shall throw a glance on such parts of this corre- spondence as have a value in reference to the development of Dr. Parr's character, or any singular interest on their own account. Among the earliest of the literary acquaintances which Dr. Parr had the opportunity of forming was that of Dr. Johnson. Writing in 1821 (Jan. 6th), to Mr. Joseph Cradock, who had said a few days before, that perhaps, upon the death of Dr. Strahan, he himself " must be the oldest of Dr. Johnson's friends, who knew him inti- mately during the last five or six years of his life," Dr. Parr takes occasion to retrace the nature of his own connection with that eminent person : " Well, dear sir, I sympathize with you in your pleasure and in your pride, when you represent yourself as the oldest remaining scholar who lived upon terms of intimacy with Samuel Johnson. You saw him often, and you met him often, in the presence of Goldsmith, Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other literary heroes. I acknowledge the great superiority of your claims. Lord Stowell, I should suppose, will stand in the next place ; and I challenge for myself the third. For many years, I spent a month's holidays in London, and never failed to call upon Johnson. I was not only admitted, but welcomed. I conversed with him upon num- berless subjects of learning, politics, and common life. I traversed the whole compass of his understanding; and, by the acknow- ledgment of Burke and Reynolds, I distinctly understood the peculiar and transcendental properties of his mighty and virtuous mind. I intended to write his life. I laid by sixty or seventy books for the purpose of writing in such a manner as would do no dis- credit to myself. I intended to spread my thoughts over two volumes quarto ; and if I had filled three pages, the rest would have followed. Often have I lamented my ill fortune in not building this monument to the fame of Johnson, and (let me not be accused of arrogance when I add) my own." William Wordsworth, when he dedicated, in a few lines at once modest and dignified, his "Excursion" to the present Lord Lonsdale, with that accurate valuation of words which is one of his greatest poetical accomplishments, offers it as " A token may it prove a monument Of honour," &c. A token, or pledge of his attachment, the poem was, at any rate, "by the act of dedication ; whether it should also be a monument, a monumental token, that was for posterity to determine ; and if others were at liberty to anticipate that result, the author at least was not. And, at all events, the mere logic of the case made it inevitable, that .whatever proved a monument to the fame of Dr. Johnson, should be DR. PARR AND so to the fame of him who raised it ; for of a structure which should happen to be durable as a record of Dr. Johnson, it is mere tautology to say that it must also be durable as the workmanship of Dr. Parr. One and the same work could not have a divided character, or a separate destiny in its different relations. But we cannot imagine that Dr. Parr's clumsy masonry could raise a monument to anybody. For Dr. Johnson, in particular, all that he could have done with effect would have been a short excursus or appendix to Boswell, on the pretensions of Johnson as a classical scholar. These were greater than it is the custom to suppose. Dr. John Johnstone, indeed, somewhere has thought fit to speak of him in that character as immeasurably inferior to Parr. This is not true. Certainly, we are satisfied that Dr. Johnson was no very brilliant Grecian ; the haste and trepidation which he showed in declining Dr. Burney's application for assistance on the Greek tragedians, sufficiently establish that. But there is no reason to suppose, that, in this part of scholarship, Dr. Parr had the least advantage of him : if he had, why are the evidences of his superiority so singularly wanting ? or in what corner of forgotten literature are we to seek them? As Latin scholars, both were excellent : Parr, from practice, had the greater command over the delicacies and varieties of prose diction : Johnson, from natural talent, had by much the greater facility in verse. Elaborate ingenuity is far more in request for metrical purposes in Latin knowledge of the idiom for prose. It might be shown, indeed, that exquisite facility in the management of thoughts, artifices of condensation, or of substitution, of variation or inversion, are for the writer of Latin verse, transcendent to any acquaintance with the Latin idiom : the peculiar treatment of an idea, which metre justifies and vindicates from what would else seem affectation, creates its own style. Johnson, in those relics of his Latin verses which have been preserved, benefitted by that advantage ; Parr, writing in Latin prose, and writing purely as a rhetorician, was taxed in the severest degree for a command over the idiomatic wealth of the language, and, for what is still less to be obtained from dic- tionaries, for a command over a Latin structure of sentence, and over the subsidiary forms of connection and transition. In the preface to Bellenden, he answered the demand upon him, and displayed very unusual skill in the accomplishments of a Latin, scholar. Latin composition, in fact, if we except bell-ringing, was the one sole thing, in the nature of accomplishments, which Dr. Parr seems to have possessed. Among the fine arts, certainly, we admit, that he understood bell-ringing thoroughly; and we were on the point of for- getting to add, that in the art of slaughtering oxen, which he cul- tivated early as an amateur, his merit was conspicuous. Envy itself was driven to confess it ; and none but the blackest-hearted Tory would go about at this time of day to deny it.* Still, of these * "The doctor begged me one morning to take him into S. P.'s belfry. Secure from interruption, he proceeded with his intended object, which was, I 9 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. three accomplishments, one only seems available to a biography of Dr. Johnson ; and that would barely have sufficed for the least im- portant chapter of the work. After all, was Parr really intimate with Johnson ? We doubt it : for he must in that case have submitted to a kind of dissimulation bitter to a proud spirit. He was a Jacobite by inheritance : that would have pleased Dr. Johnson well ; but then by profession he was a Whig a sort of monster which the Doctor could not abide ; and (worse than that !) he was a Whig renegado such a combination of monstrous elements in a man's character as none of us can abide. To be a Whig is bad to be a traitor is bad but to be a Whig and a traitor is too much for humanity. Such features of his character Parr must have dissembled ; and this would at once pique his self- love, and limit his power. One anecdote, rich in folly and absurdity, is current about an interview between Johnson and Parr, in which the latter should have stamped whenever the other stamped ; and being called upon to explain this sonorous antiphony, replied, that he could not think of allowing his antagonist to be so much as a stamp ahead of him. Miss Seward, we think, was in the habit of telling this story : for she was one of the dealers in marvels, who are for ever telling of "gigantic powers" and "magnificent displays," in conversation, beyond anything that her heroes were ever able to effect in their writings. We remember well that she used to talk of a particular dispute between Johnson and Parr, which in her childish conceit (for she had not herself been present) was equal to some conflict between Jupiter and one of the Titans. Possibly it was the stamping dispute, which we may be assured was a fiction. No man falling into any gesticulation or expression of fervour from a natural and uncontrollable impulse, would bear to see his own involuntary acts parodied and reverberated as it were in a cool spirit of mimicry ; that would be an insult ; and Johnson would have resented it by flooring his man instanter a matter very easy indeed to him for in every sense he was qualified to " take the conceit " out of Dr. Parr. Or, perhaps, though we rather incline to think that Miss Seward's dispute turned upon some political question, the following, as recorded by Parr himself, (Parriana, p. 321,) might be the par- ticular case alluded to : " Once, sir, Sam and I " [z. e. Sam John- son] " had a vehement dispute upon that most difficult of all subjects the origin of evil. It called forth all the powers of our minds. No to raise and full (pull ?) scientifically the tenth or largest bell. He set to work in silent, solemn formality. It took some time, I suppose a full quarter of an hour ; for there was the raising, the full funereal toll, and the regular toll. When it was over, he stalked about the belfry in much pomposity. On recomposing himself, he looked at me with a smile, and said, ' There, what think you of that ? ' He was evidently very proud of the effort." In a Greek character of Dr. Parr by Sir William Jones, among the /cei^Ata of his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, neither the bell-ringing nor the ox-massacreing is overlooked; "KM fb '6\ot> Ktatitavi^tiv Svvarbi, Ka.1 irapoi>o[j.d(iv, at Sitricfvfiv, al ravpOKOirfiv." DR. PARR AND two tigers ever grappled with more fury. But we never lost sight of good manners. There was no Boswell present to detail our con- versation. Sir, he would not have understood it. And then, sir, who do you think was the umpire between us ? That fiend Horsley." Miserable fudge ! " Grappling like tigers " upon the origin of evil ! How, but by total confusion of mind, was that possible upon such a question ? One octavo page would state the outline of all that has ever been accomplished on this subject ; and the German philoso- pher, Kant, whom Dr. Parr professed to have studied, and from whom he borrowed one polysyllable, and, apparently, one solitary idea, has in a short memoir sketched the outline of all past attempts, (especially that of Leibnitz,) and the causes of failure. Libraries may be written upon any question ; but the whole nodus of this, as of most questions, lies in a single problem of ten words : and, as yet, no real advance has been made in solving it. As to Dr. John- son, we all happen to know what he could do in this matter; for he has given us the cream of his meditations in a review of Soame Jenyns. Trifling more absolute, on a philosophic subject, does not exist. Could Dr. Parr do better? Had he one new idea on the question ? If so, where is it ? We remember obscurely some sen- tence or other of purest commonplace on this point in one of his sermons. Further on we may have an occasion for producing it. At present it is sufficient to say that, as philosophers only, could Parr and Johnson ever converse upon equal terms ; both being equally blind by natural constitution of mind, and equally unpre- pared by study or reading in that department, there was no room for differences between them, except such as were extra-essential or alien to the subject. On every other topic that could have arisen to divide them, Johnson, with one grasp of his muscular hand, would have throttled the whole family of Parrs. Had Parr presumed to talk that sort of incendiary politics in which he delighted, and which the French revolution ripened into Jacobinism, Johnson would have committed an assault upon him. As that does not appear to have happened, we venture to suppose that their intercourse was but trifling ; still, for one who had any at all with Johnson, many of his other acquaintance seem a most incongruous selection. The whole orchestra of rebels, incendiaries, state criminals, all who hated the church and state, all who secretly plotted against them, or openly maligned them, the faction of Jacobinism through its entire gamut, ascending from the first steps of disaffection or anti-national feeling, to the full-blown activity of the traitor and conspirator, had a plenary indulgence from the curate of Hatton, and were inscribed upon the roll of his correspondents. We pause with a sense of shame in making this bold transition from the upright Sam Johnson, full of prejudice, but the eternal champion of social order and religion, to the fierce Septembrizers who came at intervals before us as the friends, companions, or correspondents, (in some instances as the favourites,) of Dr. Parr. Learning and good morals are aghast at .the association ! 192 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. It is singular, or at first sight it seems so, that brigaded with so 'many scowling republicans are to be found as occasional corre- spondents of Dr. Parr, nearly one-half of our aristocracy two or three personages of royal blood, eight dukes, five marquesses, six- and-twenty earls, thirteen viscounts, one-and-thirty barons, or courtesy lords ; to say nothing of distinguished women a queen, several duchesses, countesses, and daughters of earls, besides baronesses and honourables in ample proportion. Many of these, however, may be set down as persons altogether thoughtless, or as systematically negligent of political principles in correspondents of no political power. But what are we to think of ten judges (besides Lord Stowell) addressing, with the most friendly warmth, one who looked upon all their tribe as the natural tools of oppression ; and no fewer than forty bishops, and four archbishops, courting the notice of a proud priest, who professed it as an axiom that three out of every five on the Episcopal bench were downright knaves. Oh ! for a little homely consistency ; and, in a world where pride so largely tyrannizes, oh for a little in the right place ! Dr. Parr did not in so many words proclaim destruction to their order as a favourite and governing principle : but he gave his countenance to principles that v/ould, in practice, have effected that object, and his friendship to men that pursued no other. His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex opens the correspondence, according to the present arrangement of the letters ; if that may be called arrangement, where all is anarchy. At first we anticipated, from this precedency granted to a Prince, that the peerage and the Red Book would dictate the principle of classification ; this failing, we looked to the subject, and next to the chronology. But at length we found that pretty much the same confusion obtains as in a pack of cards, that has first of all been accurately arranged in suits, and then slightly shuffled : in such a case, symptoms occur of the sorting continually disturbed by symptoms of the shuffling ; two or three hearts, crossed by two or three spades ; and a specious promise of diamonds suddenly thrown into the shade by a course of clubs. Letters from the same person are usually thrown together, and sometimes a vein of the same subject prevails through a consider- able tract of pages. But, generally speaking, a printer's devil seems to have determined the order of succession. The Duke of Sussex, who has actually placed the bust of a hack dissenting book-maker, (Dr. Rees, to wit,) rather than that of Aristotle or Lord Bacon, as the presiding and tutelar genius of his fine library in Kensington palace, could not, of course, find any objections to Dr. Parr in his hostility to the Church of England. His Royal Highness is probably indifferent on this point ; whilst others, as Mr. Jeremy Bentham, can hardly fail to esteem a defect in "Church of Englandism " one amongst the Doctor's very positive recommendations to their favour. The Duke's letters are amiable and pleasing in their temper, but otherwise (for want of a .;.-. pacific subject) not very interesting. Mr. Bentham, in more senses J93 DR. PARR AND than one the Lucifer of the radical politicians, is still less so ; nnd simply because he affects the humorous, in a strain of very elabo- rate and very infelicitous trifling, upon the names of Parr and Fox, (which he supposes to have been anticipated by Homer, in the ad- dress to Paris, Awirapi, &c., and in the description of Thersites, *ofos tt\v KfQaXyv, &c.) In a second letter, (Feb. 17, 1823,) which abundantly displays the old gentleman's infirmity, who (like Lord Byron) cannot bear a rival in the public interest, no matter whether otherwise for good or for bad, there is one passage, which, amusing on its own account, furnishes also an occasion for bringing forward one of Parr's most extravagant follies in literature. It is this : "The ist of March," says Mr. Bentham, "or the ist of April, comes out a number of the European Magazine, with another portrait of ME by another hand ; considerable expectations are entertained of this likewise. When you see a copy of a print of the House of Lords, at the time of the Queen's Trial, in the hand of Bowyer, and expected to come out in a month or two, you will (if Bowyer does not deceive me) see the phiz of your old friend" [Jeremy, to wit] "among the spectators ; and these, how small soever elsewhere, will, in this print, forasmuch as their station is in the foreground, be greater than lords. Oddly enough made up the group will be. Before me he had got an old acquaintance of mine of former days- Sir Humphry Davy: he and I might have stood arm in arm. But then came the servile poet and novelist ; and then the ultra-servile sack guzzler. Next to him, the old radical. What an assortment!" Certainly a strange lot of clean and unclean beasts were in that ark at that time ; what with Mr. Bentham's " assortment " what with the non mi ricordo Italians the lawyers, pro and con and some others that we could name. But with regard to Mr. Jeremy's companions in Bowyer' s print, does the reader take his meaning? We shall be "as good as a chorus" to him, and interpret: The "servile poet and novelist" is Sir Walter Scott; the " ultra-servile sack guzzler," Mr. Southey, a pure and high- minded man ; the " old radical," Mr. Corporal Cobbett. Now with regard to the last of these, Dr. Parr considered him a very creditable acquaintance : he visited the Corporal at Botley ; and the Corporal wrote him a letter, in which he talked of visiting Hatton. (What a glorious blunder, by the way, if the old ruffian had chanced to come whilst Dr. Bridges was on duty !) Cobbett would do : but for Sir Walter, in Dr. Parr's estimation, he was stark naught. One reason may be guessed at the Queen ; * there may have been others ; but * We are the last persons to apologize for that most profligate woman. That men of sense and honour could be found who seriously doubted of her guilt, is the strongest exemplification, to our minds, of the all-levelling strength of party rage that history records. As little are we likely to join the rare and weak assailants of Sir Walter Scott, whose conduct, politically, and as a public man, has been as upright and as generous as his conduct in private life. Yet in one single instance, Sir Walter departed from his usual chivalry of 194 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. this was the main reason, and the reason of that particular year. Well : so far we can all allow for the Doctor's spite. Queen Caroline was gracious and confiding towards the Doctor, until, by some mysterious offence, he had incurred her heavy displeasure. It was natural that a person in Parr's rank should be grateful for her notice ; and that a person of Parr's politics should befriend her cause. In that same degree, it was natural, perhaps, that he should dislike Sir Walter Scott, and look with jealousy upon his public mfluence, as pledged to the service of her enemies. Both were in this case party men, with the single difference in Sir Walter's favour, that he was of the right party ; a fact that Dr. Parr could not be expected to perceive. But was any extremity of party violence to be received as an apology for the Doctor's meanness and extra- vagant folly in treating so great a man (which uniformly he did) as a miserable pretender in literature ? Not satisfied with simply lower- ing or depreciating his merits, Dr. Parr spoke of him as an arrant charlatan and impostor. Discussing Sir Walter's merits as a poet, there is room for wide difference of estimates. But he that can affect blindness to the brilliancy of his claims as a novelist, and generally to the extraordinary grace of his prose, must be incapaci- tated for the meanest functions of a critic, by original dulness of sensibility. Hear the monstrous verdict delivered by this ponderous mechanist of style, when adjudicating the quantum meruit of a writer who certainly has no rival among ancient or modern classics in the rare art of narrating with brilliancy and effect : " Dr. Parr's taste," says a certain Irish poet, a Rev. Mr. Stewart, of whom or his works the reader probably now hears for the first time " Dr. Parr's taste was exquisite, his judgment infallible. One morning he sent for me to attend him in his library. I found him seated at one side of the fire, Mrs. Parr leaning against the mantel on the feeling, and most unseasonably joined in insulting a woman dissolute, it is :rue, beyond example, but at that time fallen, and on that very morning reap- ing the bitter first fruits of her enormous guilt. Describing the morning of her Coronation, and the memorable repulse of the poor misguided Queen, Sir Walter allowed himself to speak of her as the great Lady, with her body-guard of blackguards. These words we doubt not that Sir Walter soon, and often, and earnestly deplored ; for the anguish of her mortification, by the testimony of all who witnessed the tumultuous succession of passions that shook her, and convulsed her features, as she argued the point with the officer at the entrance of Westminster Hall, was intense ; and those pitied her then who never pitied her before. There were also other reasons that must have drawn a generous regret from Sir Walter, upon remembering these words afterwards. But we all know that it was not in his nature to exult over the fallen, or to sympathize with triumphant power. In fact, he could not foresee her near approaching death ; and he was reasonably disgusted with her violence at the moment; and finally, the words escaped him under circumstances of hurry, which allowed no time for revision. Few indeed are the writers who have'so little to blot as this wonderful man. US DR. PARR AND opposite side, and a chair placed for me between them. "Mrs. Parr," he began, " you have seen Moore in this spot, some- time ago, you now see Mr. Stewart! the race of true poets is now nearly extinct. There is you, (turning to me,) and Moore, and Byron, and Crabbe, and Campbell I hardly know of another." [All these, observe, were Whigs !] " You, Stewart, are a man of genius, of real genius, and of science, too, as well as genius. I tell you so. It is here, it is here," shaking his head, and sagaciously touching his forehead with his finger. " I tell you again, it is here. As to Walter Scott, his jingle will not outlive the next century. It is namby-pamby." Dr. Parr is here made to speak of Sir Walter Scott merely as a poet ; but for the same person, in any other cha- racter, he had no higher praise in reserve. In the heroic and chivalrous spirit of the poetry of Sir Walter, we pardon the Doctor for taking little interest. But what must be the condition of sense and feeling in that writer, who without participating probably in the Doctor's delusions, could yet so complacently report to the world a body of extravagances, which terminated in placing himself, an author unknown to the public, conspicuously above one of the most illustrious writers of any age ! Dr. Parr might perhaps plead the privilege of his fireside, kindness for a young friend, and a sudden call upon him for some audacity to give effect and powerful expression to his praise, as the apology for his share in such absurdities ; but Mr. Stewart, by recording them in print, makes himself a deliberate party, under no apology or temptation whatsoever, to the whole injustice and puerility of the scene. Mr. Bentham, Dr. Parr, and Mr. Douglas of Glasgow, are pro- bably the three men in Europe, who have found Sir Walter Scott a trifler. Literature, in fact, and the fine arts, hold but a low rank in the estimate of the modern Utilitarian republicans. All that is not tangible, measurable, ponderable, falls with them into the account of mere levities, and is classed with the most frivolous decorations of life : to be an exquisite narrator is tantamount to dressing well ; a fine prose style is about equal to a splendid equipage ; and a finished work of art is a showy piece of upholstery. In this vulgarity of sentiment, Dr. Parr could not entirely accompany his coarsest friends ; for he drew largely on their indulgence himself as a tres- passer in the very worst form he was guihy of writing Latin with fluency and striking effect. It is certain, however, that the modern school of reformers had an injurious effect upon Dr. Parr's literary character, by drawing out and strengthening its hardest features. His politics became harsher, and his intellectual sensibilities coarser^, as he advanced in years. How closely he connected himself with these people, we shall show in the sketch we propose to give of his political history. For the present we turn with pleasure to his more elegant, though sometimes not less violent, friends, amongst the old established Whig leaders. These, in their very intemperances, maintained the tone, breeding, and cultivation of gentlemen. They cherished and esteemed all parts of elegant letters ; and, however 196 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. much they have been in the habit of shocking our patriotism of constitutional principles, seldom offered annoyance to our tastes, as scholars and men of letters. Foremost amongst these, as foremost in politics, stood Charles Fox. His letters in this collection are uniformly in the unpretending man- ner which he courted : what we have too generally to regret is the absence of Dr. Parr's answers, especially to those letters of Mr. Fox. or his friends, which communicated his jeuxd 'esprit 'in Greek verse. One of these we shall notice. Meantime, as perhaps the most inte- resting passage in the whole collection of Dr. Parr's correspondence, we shall make the following extract from a letter, in which Mr. Fox states the final state of his feelings with regard to Edmund Burke : the immediate occasion was a plan, at that moment agitated, for raising a monument to his memory. The date of this memorable letter is Feb. 24, 1802 : " Mackintosh wrote to me upon the subject you mention; and I. think he took my answer rather more favourably than he was strictly warranted to do. When he said I would second the proposition, I told him su^orfvfa.s my word. "The truth is, though I do not feel any malice against Burke, nor would I have in any degree thwarted any plan for his advantage or honour : though I feel the greatest gratitude for his continued kind- ness to me during so great a part of our lives, and a strong con- viction that I owe to his friendship and conversation, a very great portion of whatever either of political or oratorical merit my friends suppose me to have displayed; notwithstanding all this, I must own, that there are some parts of his conduct that I cannot forgive so entirely as perhaps I ought, and as I wish to do. " His public conduct may have arisen from mistaken motives of right, carried to a length to which none but persons of his ardent imagination would have pursued them. But the letter to the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, with the worst possible opinion of me, is what I never can think of without sensations which are as little habitual to me as to most men. To attempt to destroy me in the opinion of those whom I so much value, and in particular that of Fitzwilliam, with whom I had lived in the strictest friendship from our infancy ; to attempt it, too, at a time and in a way which made it almost certain that they would not state the accusation to me, and consequently, that I should have no opportunity to defend myself this was surely not only malice, but baseness in the extreme ; and if I were to say that I have quite forgiven it, it would be boasting a magnanimity which I cannot feel. " In these circumstances, therefore, I think that, even not oppos- ing, much more supporting any motion made in honour of his memory as an individual amongst the rest, without putting myself forward as a mover or seconder, is all that can be expected or desired of me by those who are not admirers of hypocrisy. I shall have great pleasure, however, in seeing your plan for an epitaph for him, and will tell you freely my opinion of it, both in general and in the- 197- DR. PARR AND detail. He was certainly a great man, and had very many good as well as great qualities ; but his motto seems the very reverse of ^5^ tiyav; and, when his mind had got hold of an object, his whole judgment, as to prudent or imprudent, unbecoming or indecent, nay, right or wrong, was perverted when that object was in question. What Quintilian says of Ovid, ' Si ingenio temperare quam indul- gere maluisset,' was eminently applicable to him, even with respect to his passions. 'Si animi sui affectibus temperare quam indulgere maluisset quid vir iste praestare non potuerit?' would be my short character of him. By the way, I do not know that affectibus is the right word ; but I know no other." Monstrous as we must consider this view of Mr. Burke's conduct, which, under every provocation from the underlings of Mr. Fox's party, continued irreproachably honourable towards those whom he had been compelled (and whom others had been compelled) to abandon, still, under the perverse prejudices which had possession of Mr. Fox, we must allow his temper and his conduct, as here stated by himself, to have been sincere, manly, and liberal. That he did not speak with more fervour of admiration, in summing up the claims of a man so immeasurably beyond his contemporaries in the fineness and compass of his understanding, is not to be imputed to jealousy of his powers, or to the smothered resentments which Mr. Fox ac- knowledges but entirely to the extreme plainness, simplicity, and almost homely character of his own mind, which laboured under a specific natural inaptitude for appreciating an intellect so complex, subtle, and elaborate, as that of Burke. We see how readily he clings to the slang notion of Burke's " imagination " as explaining the differences between them; and how resolutely he mistakes, for an original tendency to the violence of extremes, what in fact was the mere breadth and determinateness of principle which the extremity of that crisis exacted from a mind of unusual energy. Charles Fox had one sole grandeur, one origi- nality, in his whole composition, and that was the fervour, the inten- sity, the contagious vehemence of his manner. He could not endure his own speeches when stripped of the advantage they had in a tumultuous and self-kindling delivery. " I have always hated th(i thought," says he to Dr. Parr, "of any of my speeches being pub- lished." Why was that? Simply because in the mere matter, he could not but feel himself, that there was nothing to insure attention, nothing that could give a characteristic or remarkable expression to the whole. The thoughts were everybody's thoughts : Mr. Burke's, on the other hand, were so peculiarly his own, that they might have been sworn to as private property in any court of law. How was Dr. Parr affected by the great schism in politics, the greatest which ever hinged upon pure difference of abstract principle ? A schism which was fatal to the unity of the Whig Club, could not but impress new determinations on the political bias, conduct, and language of every Whig partizan. At the time of the Bellenden Preface, it was a matter of course to praise Burke ; he was then the 198 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. ally of Fox, and the glory of the Whigs. But what tone of sentiment did Dr. Parr maintain towards this great man after he had become an alien to the revolutionary cause which he himself continued to patronize, and the party whom he continued to serve? For pre- viously to that change his homage was equivocal. It might be to the man, or it might be to his position. There are many ways of arriving at a decision : in letters, in tracts, (Letter on Fox's James II.) and in recorded conversations, Dr. Parr's sincere opinions, on this question (a question as com- prehensive as any personal question ever can have been) were re- peatedly obtained. He wrote, besides, an inscription for Burke's public monument ; and this, which (in common with all his epitaphs) was anxiously weighed and meditated in every syllable, happens to have been the most felicitous in the opinion of himself and his friends of all which he executed. What was its prevailing tone ? "I re- member," says Parr himself, writing to Lord Holland, "one or two of Mr. Burke's admirers said to me that it was cold ; and I answered, that I had indeed been successful ; for as I really did not feel warmth, I had not attempted to express it." Perhaps in these words, Dr. Parr, with a courtier's consideration of the person whom he was addressing, has done some injustice to himself. Enough remains on record, both in the epitaph and elsewhere, to show that he had not indeed attained to a steady consciousness of Burke's characteristic merits ; but it is manifest that he struggled with a reluctant instinct of submission to the boldest of his views, and fought up against a blind sense of his authority as greater than on many accounts it pleased him or suited him to admit. Even in this personal accident, as it may seem, taken in connec- tion with the fetters of party, lay a snare to the sobriety of Parr's understanding. The French Revolution, with him as with multitudes beside, unhinged the sanity of his moral judgments. Left to the natural influences of things, he, like many of his political friends, might have recovered a steady equilibrium of mind upon this great event, and " all which it inherited." He might have written to others, as Lady Oxford, (once the most violent of democrats,) sickened by sad experience of continental frenzies, had occasion to write to him " Of Burke's writings and principles I am now a very treat admirer; he was a great lover of practical liberty. In my ays of darkness, prejudice, and folly, I never read a line of Burke ; but I am now, thank heaven, in a state of regeneration." Obstinacy, and (except by occasional starts) allegiance to his party, made this noble confession of error impossible to Dr. Parr. And the intel- lectual results to one who lived chiefly in the atmosphere of politics, and drew his whole animation from the fluctuations of public ques- tions, were entirely mischievous. To those who abided by the, necessities of error, which grew upon a systematic opposition to Mr. Burke, the French Revolution had destroyed all the landmarks of constitutional distinctions, and impressed a character of indeter- minate meaning upon ancient political principles. From that time 14 IQO DR. PARR AND forward, it will be seen, by those who will take the trouble t examine, that Dr. Parr, struggling (as many others did) between the obscure convictions of his conscience, and the demands of his party, or his personal situation, maintained no uniform opinions at all; gave his faith and his hopes by turns to every vagrant adventurer, foreign or domestic, military scourge, or political reformer, whom the disjointed times brought forward ; and was consistent in nothing but in those petty speculations of philology, which, growing out of his professional pursuits, served at last no end so useful as that of relieving the asperities of his political life. PART III. HOW peculiarly painful it is to all parties judges and juries, government, the public in general, the culprit, and his friends in particular when a literary man falls under the lash of the law ! How irritating to himself and others that he should be transported how disgusting that he should be hanged ! Such fates, however, befel some of Dr. Parr's dearest connections ; he lived to see his most valued pupil expatriated, in company with felons, to " the Great Botanic Bay;" and he lived to accompany another friend, (who also by one biographer is described as a pupil) to the foot of the gallows. We mention not these things by way of reproach to Dr. Parr's memory. The sufferings of his unhappy friends, after they came into trouble, called out none but the good qualities of his nature. Never, indeed, was Samuel Parr seen to greater advantage, than when animating the hopes, supporting the fortitude, or ministering to the comforts of the poor dejected prisoner in his gloomy cell, at a time when self-reproaches had united with the frowns of the world to make the consolations of friendship somewhat more than usually trying to the giver, and a thousand times more valuable to the receiver. When all others forsook the wretched and fled, Dr. Parr did not ; his ear was open to the supplications of all who sate in darkness and sorrow ; and wherever the distress was real, remember- ing that he himself also was a poor frailty-laden human creature, he did not think it became him too severely to examine in what degrees guilt or indiscretion had concurred to that effect. Sam Parr ! these things will make the earth lie light upon your last abode ; flowers will flourish on its verdant roof; and gleams of such remembrances extort an occasional twinge of compunction even from us at the very moment when we are borrowing old Sir Christopher's gentler knout [No. 3 his scutica, no this flagellum~\ gently to " er- strtnge" your errors. Sam Parr ! we love you ; we said so once before. But $erstring- * v .f , which was a favoured word of your own, was a no less favoured 200 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. act. You also in your lifetime perstringed many people ; some of whom perstringed you, Sam, smartly in return ; some kissed the rod ; and some disdained it in silence. Complaint, therefore, on your behalf, would be unreasonable ; that same -parresia, which in your lifetime furnished a ground for so many thousand discharges of the same Grecian pun on your own name, (each duly delivered by its elated author as the original explosion,) obliges us to deal frankly with your too frequent errors, even when we are most impressed by the spectacle of your truly Christian benignity. Indeed, the greater your benignity, the better is our title to tax those errors which so often defeated it. For why, let us ask of Dr. Parr's friends, should he choose to testify his friendship to men, in standing by them and giving his countenance to their affliction, rather than in the wiser course so suitable to his sacred calling of interposing his gentler counsels between their frantic designs, and the dire extremities which naturally conducted to that affliction ? In Gerrald's case, he certainly had counselled and warned him of the precipice on which he stood, in due season. But to him, as to the chamois hunter of the Alps, danger was a temptation even for its own sake : he hungered and thirsted after political martyrdom. And it is possible, that in that case, Dr. Parr found no grounds of self-reproach. Possible, we say ; even here we speak doubtingly, because, if Dr. Parr applied sedatives to his fiery nature in 1794, he had in 1/90- 92 applied stimulants ; if, finally, when Mr. Pitt and the French Reign of Terror showed that no trifling could be allowed, he pulled vainly at the curb-rein (as his letters remain to show) originally, it is beyond all doubt that he used the spur. Violence and intem- perance, it is true, in Mr. Gerrald, were constitutional ; yet there can be little doubt that, for the republican direction which they took, his indiscreet tutor was nearly altogether answerable. Joseph Gerrald was a man of great talents : his defence upon his trial shows it ; and we have the assurance of an able critic, who was himself present at its delivery, in March, 1794, that no piece of forensic eloquence on record better deserved the profound attention with which it was received : "youmight," as he assured us, "during the whole time have heard a pin drop." Under happier auspices* than Dr. Parr's, how distinguished a citizen might this man have become ! As to Mr. Oliver, it is Dr. Parr's own statement of the * And perhaps in candour it should be added, under happier fortunes and more prudence in his liaisons with the other sex. He was in some degree a dissolute man ; but perhaps he might have been otherwise under more noble treatment from the woman of his heart. His unhappiness, on this point, latterly, was great ; and there is reason to think that he secretly wished to lay down his life, and resorted to politics as the best means of doing so with reputation. He had a passionate love for an unworthy woman, whom he had strong reasons for thinking unfaithful to him. And at all events, like top many of her sex, she had the baseness to trifle with his apparent misery. 14-2 *oi DR. PARR AND case, (a statement which, at this day, we presume, few persons will be found to believe,) that he was condemned and executed for drinking Mr. Fox's health, and reading Tom Paine's writings ; in short, for being a Jacobin. The little trifling circumstance that he was also a murderer, with Dr. Parr weighs nothing at all. Take then his own representation : who was it that countenanced the reading of Tom Paine, criticizing his infamous books as counterpoises to those of Burke, and as useful in bringing out a neutral product ? Who was it that gave to Warwickshire, (Mr. Oliver's part of the country,) nay, to all England, the one sole example of a " budge doctor," arrayed in the scarlet robes of the English universities, and a public instructor >if the young English aristocracy, speaking cautiously and respect- tlly of this shallow dogmatist, who, according to his power, laid the jxe to all civil government throughout the world ? Who, but one man, clothed in the character of a Christian minister, could have keen blinded by party violence to the extent of praising in a qualified Scanner, and naming, amongst creditable writers, the most insolent theomachist and ruffian infidel of ancient or modern times ? If Dr. Parr's friends acted upon Mr. Paine's principles, propagated Mr. Paine's principles, and suffered in public estimation, even to the ex- tent of martyrdom, as champions of those principles nobody can suppose that in selecting and professing a faith so full of peril, they could be other than greatly influenced by the knowledge that a learned doctor in the Church of England, guide and tutor to them- selves, had publicly spoken of that Mr. Paine as an authority not altogether without his claims to consideration. But we have insensibly wandered into political considerations at a point of our review, where the proper object before us was Dr. Parr, as a man of letters. For this we have some excuse, considering that politics and literature so naturally blended in Dr. Parr's practice of authorship, that perhaps not one of his most scholarlike performances, but is richly interveined with political allusions and sarcasms, nor one of those most professedly political, which did not often turn aside to gather flowers from the fields of the muses, or herbs of " medi- cinable power" from the gaidens of philosophy. The truth is, the Doctor wrote as he lived ; bending to momentary gusts of passion ; recovering himself by glimpses to a higher standard of professional duty ; remembering by fits that he was officially a teacher, spiritual and intellectual ; forgetting himself too often in the partizan and the zealot. However, as we shall consider Dr. Parr's politics under a separate and peculiar head, we will, for the present, confine ourselves more rigorously to his literary character, difficult as we really find it to observe a line of strict separation which the good doctor himself is for ever tempting or provoking us to forget. As a man of letters, then, what was it what power, what accomplishment, what art that Dr. Parr could emblazon upon his shield of pretence, as characteristically his own ? Latin ; Latin quoad knowledge ; Latin g uo id practical skill. "Reading," said 202 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. he, " reflection, the office of a teacher, and much practice in com- position, have given me a command over the Latin sufficient for the ordinary purposes of a scholar." This was his own estimate of himself: and it was a modest one too modest: and possibly he would not have made it had he been addressing- anybody but a Whig lord, taught from his earliest youth to take his valuation of Dr. Parr from a party who regarded him as their champion and martyr. Yet again, it is not impossible that he was sincere : for the insincere will make a general profession of humility in the abstract, and yet revolt from the test of individual comparisons : they confess how much they fall short of their own ideal ; but as to John, Thomas, or William, they would spurn a claim of superiority for them. Now, Dr. Parr sometimes goes so far in his humility as to " name names ; " Sir William Jones, Sir George Baker these we are sure of, and we think Bishop Lowth were amongst the masters of Latinity, to whom he somewhere concedes the palm for this accomplishment, on a question of comparison with himself. We must profess our own hearty dissent from such a graduation of the honours. Sir George Baker, from his subjects, is less generally known. He was an Etonian, and wrote at least with facility : but, to speak of the other two, who are within everybody's reach, we contend that, maugre their reputation, they do not write good Latin. The kind of Latin they affect is in bad taste : too florid, too rotund, too little idiomatic : its structure is vicious, and evidences an English origin. Of Lowth we say this even more determinately than of Sir W. Jones.* Some day or other we shall make a great article on this subject ; and we shall then illustrate largely : for without illustration, such a discussion is as empty and aerial as a feast of the Barmecide. Meantime, whatsoever the mechanic hounds may say who now give the tone to education, the art of writing Latin finely is a noble accomplishment ; and one, we will take upon us to say, which none but a man of distinguished talent will succeed in. All the scholar- ship in the world will not avail to fight up against the tyranny of modern idioms and modern fashions of thought the whole composi- tion will continue to be redolent of lamps not fed with Attic oil, but with gas base gas unless in the hands of a man vigorous and agile enough to throw off the yoke of vernacular custom " Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life." No custom cramps and masters a man's freedom so effectually as the household diction which he hears from all around him. And that man, who succeeds (like Dr. Parr) in throwing his thoughts into ancient moulds, does a greater feat than he that turned the Euphrates into a new channel for the service of his army. This difficulty is in itself a sufficient justification of modern Latin coupled, as it is, with so useful an activity of thought. But, apart * It is remarkable, however, that Sir William's Greek is far better than Parr's. Jones's has all the air of the genuine antique : Parr's is villanous. 203 DR. PARR AND from that, will any man contend that the establishment of a great commonwealth can be complete without artists in Latinity ? Even. rogues, swindlers, hangmen, are essential to the proper mozmting of a great metropolis : a murderer or two perhaps, in the complete subdivision of employments, would not be amiss in casting the parts for a full performance of civil life. Not that we approve of murder for murder's sake : far from it ! It is scandalous, and what every good man must decidedly condemn and pointedly discourage. But still, if murders are to be, and murders will be, and murders must be, then of course we might as well have them executed in an artist- like manner, as in the horrid bungling style so offensive in rude countries to the eye of delicate taste, and the mind of sensibility. Assuredly, it cannot be denied, that all sorts of villains, knaves, prigs, and so forth, are essential parts in the equipage of social life. Else why do we regard police as so indispensable a function of organized society : for without corresponding objects in the way of scoundrels, sharks, crimps, pimps, ring-droppers, &c., police-officers would be idle superfluities, and liable to general disgust. But, waiving the question as stretched to this extent, for artists who work in Latin we may plead more reasons than Mr. Blackwood is likely to allow us scope for in one article, we shall press but one argument, and that applied to our just national pride. Is it not truly shameful that a great nation should have occasion to go abroad for any odd bit of Latin that it may chance to want in the way of inscription for a triumphal monument, for a tomb, for a memorial pillar, for a public or official gift ? Conceding (as, under the terrors of Mr. Blackwood's pruning knife, we do concede for the moment) that Latin is of little other application is it to be endured that we should be reduced to the necessity of importing our Latin secretary ? * For instance, we will mention one memorable case. The Czar Alexander, as all the world knows, one fine day, in the summer of that immortal year 1814, went down to Oxford in com- pany with our own Regent, the King of Prussia, the Hetman of the Cossacks, and a long roll of other princely personages, with titles fatiguing to the memory, and names from which orthography recoils aghast. Some were entertained at one college some at another. The emperor's billet fell upon Merton College ; and in acknowledg- ment of the hospitality there shown, some time afterwards he sent to the warden and fellows, through Count Lieven, his ambassador to the court of London, a magnificent vase of Siberian jasper. This * We say Latin secretary, as indicating an office, so far as regards its duties, which really does exist, though the emoluments do not. There is a great deal of public work to be executed in Latin, and it is done gratis, and by various hands. But, were this an age for increasing the public burdens, we should suggest the propriety of creating anew the formal appointment of Latin secretary, which ought for many reasons never to have been abolished. The Fox Ministry would have done rightly to have restored the office, and to have rewarded Dr. Parr by the first appointment. 204 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. vase wanted an inscription a Latin inscription of course. This inscription was to be worked in Russia, and the workmen stood resting upon their tools until this should come out from England. Now, under these circumstances, John Bull ! conceive the shame and the scandal if Oxford, the golden seat of classical erudition, under the very eyes of the Czar and his ambassador, had been obliged to resort to some coxcomb on the continent for the small quantity of Latin required ! What would Mrs. Grundy have said ? What would the Hetman have said ? And Woronzoff, and Kutusoff, and Doctoroff, and Tchitchzakoff? Indeed we think it altogether becoming to Oxford, that Cambridge should have furnished the artist for Dr. Parr it was who undertook and executed the inscrip- tion, which, after all, exhibited too Spartan a nakedness to have taxed any man very severely, except for the negative quality of for- bearance ; and the scandal, as between the two universities, is actually on record and in print, of a chancellor of the one (Lord Grenville) corresponding with a doctor of the other, for a purpose which exclusively concerned Oxford. Perhaps the excuse may be, that Oxford was not interested as a body in an affair which belonged personally to the warden and fellows of one society. And at all events, the national part of the scandal was averted.* On this subject, which furnishes so many a heart-ache to a loyal- hearted Englishman, we would beg to throw a hasty glance. John Bull, who piques himself so much and so justly on the useful and the respectable, on British industry, British faith, British hardware, British morals, British muskets (which are by no means the best specimens of our morals, judging by the proportion that annually bursts in the hands of poor savages) and, generally speaking, upon British arts, provided only they are the useful and the mechanical arts this samo John Bull has the most sheepish distrust of himself in every accomplishment that professes a purpose of ornament and mere beauty. Here he has a universal superstition in favour of names in ano and ini. Every foreigner indeed, but more especially every Italian it is John's private faith is by privilege of nature a man of taste, and, by necessity, a knave. Were it only of music that he thought this, and only of Italian foreigners, perhaps he might not be so far amiss. Oh ! the barbarous leaning of British taste as regards music ! oh, the trashy songs which pollute our theatres, and are allowed to steal into the operas of Mozart ! Strange that the nation whose poetry and drama discover by degrees so infinitely the most passion, should in their music discover the least ! Not merely, however, in arts, technically so called, but in every branch of orna- mental knowledge, everything that cannot be worked in a loom, weighed on a steel-yard, measured by an ell-wand, valued by an * But surely the brother of Sir Henry Halford (as the warden of Merton Dr. Peter Vaughan, we believe, was) needed not to have gone out of his own family connections for such an assistance. For Sir Henry himself writes Latin with ease and effect. 205 DR. PARR AND auctioneer, John Bull secretly distrusts himself and his own powers. He may talk big when his patriotism is irritated ; but his secret and sincere opinion is that nature has made him a barbarian as regards the beautiful ; if not for sensibility, at any rate for performance ; and that in compensation of this novercal usage, fortune has given him a long purse to buy his beauty ready made. Hence it is, that, whilst openly disavowing it, John is for ever sneaking privately to foreigners, and tempting them with sumptuous bribes, to undertake a kind of works which many times would be better done by domestic talents. Latin, we may be sure, and Greek, fall too much within the description of the ornamental to be relished of home manufacture. Whenever, therefore, a great scholar was heard of on the continent, him John Bull proceeded to buy or to bargain for. Many were importedat the Reforma- tion. Joseph Scaliger was courted in the succeeding age. A younger friend of his, Isaac Casaubon, a capital scholar, but a dull man, and rather knavish, was caught. Exultingly did John hook him, play with him, and land him. James I. determined that he would have his life written by him : and, in fact, all sorts of uses were meditated and laid out for their costly importation. But he died without doing anything that he would not have done upon the continent ; the whole profit of the transaction rested with the Protestant cause, which (but for English gold) Casaubon would surely have abandoned for the honours and emoluments of Rome. Cromwell again, perfect John Bull as he was in this feature, also preserved the national faith : he would have his martial glories recorded. Well : why not ? Especially for one who had Milton at his right hand. But no : he thought little of him he would buy a foreigner. In fact, he was in treaty for several ; and we will venture to say that Salmasius himself was not more confounded upon finding himself suddenly seized, bound, and whirled at Milton's chariot wheels, in a field where he was wont to career up and down as supreme and unquestioned arbiter, and at most expecting a few muttered insults, that would not require notice, than Cromwell was on hearing that his own champion, a Londoner born, and manufactured at Cambridge, had verily taken the conceit out of the vain-glorious but all-learned Frenchman. It was just such another essay as between Orlando and the Duke's wrestler as well for the merits of the parties, as for the pleasant disappoint- ment to the lookers-on. For even on the continent all men rejoiced at the humiliation of Salmasius. Charles II., again, and his favourite ministers, had heard of Des Cartes as a philosopher and Latinist, but apparently not of Lord Bacon, except as a lawyer. King William, though in tae age of Bishop Pearson, and Stilling- fleet, and Bentley, in the very rare glances which he condescended to bestow on literature, squinted at Grsevius, Gronovius, and other Dutch professors of humanity on a ponderous scale. And, omitting scores of other cases we could bring in illustration, even in our own day, the worthy George III. thinking it would be well to gain the imprimatur of his own pocket university of Gottingen, before he made up his mind on the elementary books used in the great 206 HIS CONTEMPORARIES. schools of England, dispatched a huge bale of grammars, lexicons, vocabularies, fables, selections, exercise-books, spelling-books, and Heaven knows what all, to that most concinnous and most rotund of professors Mr. Heyne. At Caesar's command, the professor slightly inspected them : and having done so, he groaned at the quality of the superb English paper, so much harder, stiffer, and more unaccommodating to domestic purposes than that soft German article, prepared by men of feeling and consideration in that land of sentiment, and thereupon (we pretend not to say how far in con- sequence thereof) he drew up an angry and vindictive verdict on their collective merits. And thus it happened that his Majesty came to have but an indifferent opinion of English school literature. Now, in this instance, we see the John Bull mania pushed to extremity. For surely Dr. Parr, on any subject whatever, barring Greek, was as competent a scholar as Master Heyne.* And on this particular subject, the jest i3 apparent, that Parr was, and Heyne was not, a schoolmaster. Parr had cultivated the art of teaching all his life ; and it were hard indeed, if labours so tedious and heavy might not avail a man to the 3ttent of accrediting his opinion on a capital question of his own t^-ofession. Speaking seriously, since the days of Busby that great man f who flogged so many of our avi abavi atavi and tritavi, among the schoolmasters of Europe, none could, in those days, stand forward as competitors in point of scholarship with Parr. Scholars more eminent, doubtless, there had been, but not among those who wielded the ferule ; for the learned Dr. Burney, junior, of Greenwich, and the very learned Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury, had not then commenced their reigns. How pointed, then, was the insult, in thus transferring the appeal from a golden critic at home to a silver one abroad : or rather, how strong the prejudice which could prompt such a course to one who probably meditated no insult at all. And let no man say on this occasion, that Parr, being a Jacobin, could not be decently consulted on the scruples of a king ; for Heyne was a Jacobin also, until Jacobinism brought danger to his windows, if the oracle at Hatton fihilippized, the oracle of Gottingen philippized no less, and perhaps with much less temptation, and certainly with less conspicuous neglect of his own interest. Well for him that his Jacobinism lurks in ponderous Latin notes, whilst Dr. Parr's wao proclaimed to the world in English. * We cannot fancy Heyne as a Lalm exegetet. The last time we opened a book of his, (perhaps it was his Virgil,) some sixteen years ago, he was labouring at this well-known phrase - " regione viarum." As usual, a rhap- sody of resemblances, more or less remote, was accumulated ; but if we may be believed, that sole meaning of the word regio which throws light upon the expression, that meaning which connects it with the word rego in the mathe- matical sense \i. e. to drive a straight line,] was unnoticed. All the rest meant nothing. We closed the book in disgust. t "Dr. Busby! a great man, sir, a very great man! he flogged my grand- father." Sir Roger de Coverley. 207 DR. PARR AND It is fitting, then, that we people of England should always keep a man or two capable of speaking with our enemies in the gate, when they speak Latin ; more especially when our national honour in this particular is to be supported against a prejudice so deep, and of standing so ancient. These, however, are local arguments for cultivating Latin, and kept alive by the sense of wounded honour. But there are other considerations more permanent and intrinsic to the question, which press equally upon all cultivated nations. The language of ancient Rome has certain indestructible claims upon our regard : it has a peculiar merit sui generis in the first place ; and, secondly, circumstances have brought it into a singular and unprecedented relation to the affairs and interests of the human race. Speaking carelessly of Latin, as one of two ancient languages, both included in the cycle of a perfect education, and which jointly compose the entire conservatory of all ancient literature that now survives, we are apt to forget that either of these languages differs from the other by any peculiar or incommunicable privilege : and for all the general advantages which can characterize a language, we rightly ascribe the preference in degree to the Greek. But there are two circumstances, one in the historical position of the Latin language, and one in its own internal character, which unite to give it an advantage in our esteem, such as no language besides ever did, or, in the nature of things, ever will possess. They are these : The Latin language has planetary importance ; it belongs not to this land or that land, but to all lands where the human intellect has obtained its rights and its development. It is the one sole Lingua Franca, that is, in a catholic sense, such for the whole humanized earth, and the total family of man. We call it a dead language. But how ? It is not dead, as Greek is dead, as Hebrew is dead, as Sanscrit is dead which no man uses in its ancient form in his intercourse with other men. It is still the common dialect which binds together that great imperium in im^erzothe republic of let- ters. And to express in a comprehensive way the relation which this superb language bears to man and his interests, it has the same extensive and indifferent relation to our planet, which the moon has amongst the heavenly bodies. Her light, and the means of inter- course which she propagates by her influence upon the tides, belong to all nations alike. How impressive a fact would it appear to us, if the great Asiatic family of nations from Teharan, or suppose from Constantinople and Cairo (which are virtually Asiatic) to Pekin and the remotest islands on that quarter of Asia, had some one common language through which their philosophers and statesmen could communicate with each other over the whole vast floor of Asia T Yet this sublime masonic tie of brotherhood we ourselves possess, we members of Christendom, in the most absolute sense. Gradually, moreover, it is evident that we shall absorb the whole world into the progress of civilization. Thus the Latin language is, and will be still more perfectly, a bond between the remotest places. Time also HIS CONTEMPORARIES. is connected as much as space ; and periods in the history of man, too widely separated from each other (as we might also have ima- gined) to admit of any common tie, are, and will continue to be, brought into connection by a vinculum so artificial (and, generally speaking, so fluctuating) as a language. This position of the Latin language with regard to the history of man, would alone suffice to give it an overpowering interest in our regard. As to its intrinsic merits, the peculiarity of its structure, and the singular powers which arise out of that structure, we must leave that topic undiscussed. We shall say only, that, for purposes of elaborate rhetoric, it is alto- gether unrivalled ; the exquisitely artificial mould of its structure gives it that advantage. And, with respect to its supposed penury of words, we shall mention the opinion of Cicero, who, in three separate passages of his works, maintains that in that point it has the advantage of the Greek. Many questions arise upon the qualities of Parr's Latin in par- ticular, and upon the general rules of style which he prescribed to himself. The far-famed author of the " Pursuits of Literature," has stigmatized the preface to Bellendenus * (we beseech you, courteous * William Bellenden, a Scotch writer, flourished at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and is said to have been a Professor in the University of Paris. At Paris he published, in 1608, his Cicero Princeps, a singular work, in which he extracted from Cicero's writings detached remarks, and com- pressed them into one regular body, containing the rules of monarchical govern- ment, with the line of conduct to be adopted, and the virtues proper to be encouraged by the Prince himself; and the treatise, when finished, he dedi- cated, from a principle of patriotism and gratitude, to the son of his master, Henry, then Prince of Wales. Four years afterwards (namely, in 1612) he proceeded to publish another work of a similar nature, which he called Cicero Consul, Senator, Senatus Romanus, and in which he treated the nature of the consular office, and the constitution of the Roman Senate. Finding the works received, as they deserved, with the unanimous approbation of the learned, he conceived the plan of a third work, De Statu Prisci Orbis, which was to contain a history of the progress of government and philosophy, from the times before the flood, to their various degrees of improvement, under the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. He had proceeded so far as to print a few copies of this work in 1615, when it seems to have been suggested, that his three treatises, De Statu Principis, De Statu Republics, De Statu Orbis, being on subjects so nearly resembling each other, there might be a propriety in uniting them into one work, by re-publishing the two former, and entitling the whole, Bellendenus de Statu. With this view, he recalled the few copies of his last work that were abroad, and after a delay of some months, he pub- lished the three treatises together, under their new title, in the year 1615. In the British Museum, one copy of the book De Statu Prisci Orbis, dated in 1615, still exists, which the author had probably sent into England as a present, and could not recall ; and in all the others the date appears, on a nice inspection, to have been originally MDCXV., and to have had an / afterwards added, on the alteration of the author's plan. The editor has shown great ingenuity in clearing up this typographical difficulty. The great work being row completed, Bellenden looked forward with a pretty well- 209 DR. PARR AND reader, to pronounce the penultimate short, that is, lay the accent on the syllable lend] as " a cento of Latin quotations ; " in which judgment there is a double iniquity ; for, beyond all other human performances, the " Pursuits of Literature " z's a cento, and, in any fair sense, Parr's preface is not. In fact, with all its undeniable ability, all its cloudy amplifications, tortuous energy of language, and organ notes of profounder eloquence pealing at intervals through the "sound and fury" of his political vaticinations, merits which sufficed to propel that bulky satire through nearly a score of edi- tions, yet, at this day, it cannot be denied that the " Pursuits of Literature" was disfigured by much extravagance of invective, much license of tongue, much mean and impotent spite, (see his lying attempt to retort the jest of Colman * by raising a Greek dust,) but grounded expectation for that applause which his labour and his ingenuity deserved ; but his views were disappointed by one of those events that no art of man can foresee or remedy. The vessel in which the whole impression was embarked, was overtaken by a storm before she could reach the English coasts, and foundered with all her cargo. A very few copies only, which the learned author either kept for his own use, or had sent as presents by private hands, seem to have been preserved from the destruction which awaited the others ; and this work of Bellendenus has, therefore, from its scarcity, often escaped the notice of the most diligent collectors. It is not to be found in the library of the Duke of Argyle, nor in that of the late Dr. Hunter ; neither Morhoffius nor Fabricius had ever seen it ; the Observations LiteraricE at Frankfort in 1/28, which treat learnedly and copiously on scarce books', makes no mention of it. In a word, the single treatises are so rare, that not above ten of them are to be found in all the libraries of England. And of the larger work, it does not appear that more than six copies are known to exist ; one in the public library at Cambridge, a second in that of Emanuel College in the same university, long admired as a well-chosen collection of excellent books ; a third in All-Souls' Library at Oxford, and two in the possession of the editors.t * Colman had said, that the verse in the Pursuits of Literature was only "a peg to hang the notes upon.'' Too obvious, perhaps, but also too true, for the irritable author, who had the meanness, amongst some impotent attempts at affecting a grin of nonchalance, to tell his readers that the jest was stolen and stolen from Pindar ! Great was our curiosity on hearing this. A Pin- daric jest ! What could it be, and where ? Was it an Olympic, or a Pythic jest? Why, Pindar, it seems, "said long before Mr. Colman, oiro ircwtraAow