Wv/.v.'.w///!*; ,X' »t«!K;;^^ f-ff Si m WM'¥A\W/A\''YAAA*\WAi VA'w//A,\*A///AA/^*<'\'^*AAAA< ^^-'•^'Y/AAAAAWAAA/AAAAAA^ 'AA*A%%WA//AAA<*iwA- '< tf^C THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES I . K) CKJOLifY^ ENGLISH PROSE H. CRAIK VOL. IV EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH PROSE SELECTIONS WITH CRITICAL INTRODUCTIONS BY VARIOUS WRITERS AND GENERAL INTRODUCTIONS TO EACPI PERIOD EDITED BY HENRY CRAIK VOL. IV^ EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ILontion MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1894 All ri stilts reserved PR V.Jj- CONTENTS Introduction .... CONYERS MiDDLETON The First Triumvirate Letter to Venn A Defence of Free Enquiry in Religion Bishop Berkeley The Advantages of Immateriahsm The Virtues of Vice The Dekisions of Sense The Peblile Argument answered by Anticipation William Law Confirmation . Character of Ouranius The Fall of Adam The Atonement Divine Knowledge Samuel Richardson Miss Clarissa Harlowe to Miss Howe Mr. Lovelace to John Belford, Esq. Mr. Belford to Robert Lovelace, Esq. Bishop Butler . . . . The Habit of Casual Reading . Actions Natural and Unnatural Self-love and Appetites ' The Editor I George Saintslmry 13 . 17 . 19 . 22 George Saintsbitry 25 ' 29 • 31 . 34 jation 36 J. H. Overton 41 . 44 . 46 • 49 • 52 • 54 /. //. Millar 57 . 59 . 61 63 James Bonar 67 . 69 . 70 , 71 A-QOQAOa VI ENGLISH PROSE PAGE Providence punishes Vice, and mitigates the Punishment 72 The Argument from Probability in Religion . 73 The Practical Rule of Conduct . . . . 74 The Burden of Much Talking o . 76 Lord Chesterfield The Editor 79 Manners makyth Man . 83 The Falsehood of Commonplaces 85 A Good and a Bad Style . 87 Voltaire .... 90 William Warburton W. Macneile Dixi m 93 Language helped by Action . 97 How to meet Attacks . 99 God's Moral Government 100 John Wesley .... J. H. Ovo-ton 103 A Man of One Book . - . a 105 On Dress , 105 On the Results of Methodism . • 107 Henry Fielding . George Saintsbury 109 The Passengers to Hades • 116 Poet and Player . , 118 A Political Microcosm . • 121 Partridge on Valour . 123 Paternal Advice • 125 Mrs. Francis of Ryde . • 127 The Give-and-Take of Friendship . 130 The Qualifications of the Historian 131 Samuel Johnson . The Editor 13s Critics .... 141 Good Humour . 144 Pedantry 148 Travellers' Affectations 151 Praises of Solitude 155 Conversation . 159 CONTENTS vu PAGE Style i6i English Literature 163 The Flying Machine . 165 Poetry ..... 168 A Life according to Nature 171 The Loss of a Friend . 173 INIetaphysical Poets 175 Milton ..... 177 Religious Poetry 178 Dryden as Critic 180 A Digression .... 182 A Task completed 183 Letter to Lord Chesterfield 184 David Hume /. H. Millar 187 A Defence of Philosophy 189 King and Parliament . 195 Character of Himself . 202 Where Philosophy is helpless . 203 The State's Interest in Stored Labour 204 Reason no Aid to Religion 205 Laurence Sterne H. D. Traill 207 My Uncle Toby's Siege Operations 211 The Death of Bobby . 213 Corporal Trim and the Curate 216 Tristram and the Ass . 217 A Franciscan Monk 219 Thomas Gray John IF. Hales 221 To Grasmere . • 225 By Ingleborough to Gordale Scar • 227 Netley Abbey . - • • 230 A Sunrise . 231 Horace Walpole W. P. Ker 233 A Summary of the Progress of Taste . . 238 Hogarth's Genius . 239 Vlll ENGLISH PROSE P.\GE Character of Pitt ...... 240 Alpine Scenery : The Grande Chartreuse 242 The War : Burke ...... 244 Old Age : France : Madame D'Arblay . 245 Gilbert White .... Norman I\Ioore . 247 Migration of Birds 249 Miscellaneous Observations . 251 On the Flight of Birds . 253 The Fern-Owl .... . 255 The Rook .... . 255 Tobias Smollett. George Saintsbury 257 Roderick at Surgeon's Hall . 261 Sir Launcelot in the Madhouse 265 The Cheerful Society of Bath . 269 William Robertson William Wallace 273 The Death of Rizzio . . 278 The Reformation • 280 The Feudal System . • 282 Resignation of a Crown • • 284 Columbus nearing Land • 2S8 Montezuma . . • • • 290 Richard Price . J. Boiiar . 293 Do our Faculties deceive us ? . • 295 The Effects of Custom . • 296 The Vision of the World • 296 Sir Joshua Reynolds . . Reginald Brimky Johnso I 299 Michael Angelo . . . • • 303 Maxims of Art . 312 Beauty .... • • • 314 Johnson against Garrick . 314 Adam Smith J. Boiiar . 317 Humour . 320 The Aspect of Nature to the Savage 321 CONTENTS IX Austin Dob son How Art produces its Effects . Remorse .... The Supreme Tribunal of Conduct Power sacrificed to Selfishness Public Benefit promoted by Individual Aims Thomas Warton .... The Editor Feudalism .... Chaucer's House of Fame Gower's Mistakes Chatterton's Forgeries . Mediaeval Imitations of the Classics A Flood of Classicism . The Elizabethan Age . Oliver Goldsmith A City Night-piece The Strolling Player . • The Man in Black Beau Tibbs at Home . Beau Tibbs at Vauxhall The Family of Wakefield Family Misfortunes Dedication of The Deserted Village Edmund Burke . . . . ]V. Macneile Dixon The True Policy of Great Britain towards her American Colonies Defence of his Political Conduct Liberty .... The Mistaken Methods, and the Resulting Crimes of the French Revolution The Rights of Man The End of the Age of Chivalry The Tendency of Democracy to excess in the Exercise, and in the Desire, of Power .... The Rights of the Majority .... The Duke of Bedford's Censure on the Bounty of the Crown The House of Lords and Warren Hastings PAGE 322 325 326 327 329 332 333 334 338 339 342 345 349 350 352 355 361 365 2,^7 370 1 "7 -» J/J 379 385 390 391 398 402 403 405 410 419 ENGLISH PROSE ■^s. PAGE William Cowpe^. W. P. Ker 423 Mr. Village to Mr. Town . 426 A Visit from a Candidate . 429 Mr. Newton as Inquisitor 432 Beau and the Water- Lily • 434 •Joseph Priestley J. Bonar . 437 Of Correction . . . . • 439 Ridicule as a Test of Faith . 440 Effects of a Code of Education . 441 Samuel Horsley . . . . /. //. Overton 447 The Platonic and Christian Trinity . 449 The Water and the Blood • 450 The Heathen Poet and the Bible • 452 Edward Gibbon . . . . George Saintsbiiry 455 Constantius at Rome . . 460 The Diet of the Tartars 461 The Battle of Chalons . 463 Justinian's Code 466 The Moslem Capture of Aleppo and h intioch 468 Byzantine Literature . 470 iNIagdalen College, Oxford 472 Finale .... 473 James Boswell . T/ie Editor 477 The Pains and Pleasures of Authorshi 3 481 To Sir Joshua Reynolds . 482 Boswell's Litroduction to Johnson . • 484 Oliver Goldsmith . 487 Johnson's Peculiarities of Manner • 489 Johnson's Interview with the King 491 Clear your Mind of Cant . 494 William Paley . /. Boiar . 497 A Popular Maxim Examined . . 499 Saint Paul . 499 The Advantage of Proofs for the Bein g of Go d 501 CONTENTS XI Henry Mackenzie Old Edwards and the Press-gang Miss Homespun and My Lady Mackenzie on Burns . George Saintsln'jy Reginald Briiiiley /ohiison Hannah More .'. Profession anti Practice A Religious Family .... The Marriage Market .... A Natural Philosopher A Plain Man on his Daughter's Favourite Novels Dress and Literature .... The Art of Conversation .... Jeremy Bentham . . . . F. C. IMontague The Point at which Resistance becomes a Duty incapable o Definition . . . . 528 Government by Generalization • 532 Madame D'Arblay The Editor 537 Evelina to the Rev. Mr. Villars 541 Do. do. 543 Mr. Villars to Evelina . 547 Evelina to Miss Mirvan 548 A Man of the Ton 552 Pride and Prejudice 555 DuGALD Stewart J. Bonar . 559 The Desire of Esteem . . 561 The Use and Abuse of General Princi )les in Politics . 564 The Imagination in Science • 566 William Beckford JJ\ /. Garnet t 571 A Dream in Kent 573 The Court of the Queen of Portugal . 574 William Cohbett J. Bonar . 577 Why leave England ? . 5S0 The Crown Grub . 5S1 503 506 508 510 513 515 517 519 520 521 522 523 525 Xll ENGLISH PROSE PAGE The King's English . 5S2 Early Rising . . . . • 584 Air and Exercise • 585 James Mackintosh J. Boiiar . . 5S7 The Age of Chivalry is Gone . 591 The Right of Rebellion • 595 Freedom of Speech 599 Isaac Disraeli The Editor 605 Dennis the Critic . 609 Genius .... . 614 The Playthings of Philosophers • 616 Maria Edgeworth T/i£ Ediio)- 619 Types of Irish Landlords . 622 The Hibernian Mendicant . 626 The Bore • 631 Notes . . . . . 635 INTRODUCTION The contents of the present volume range from the days of Queen Anne to the eariier part of the present century. Literary con- vention connects the eighteenth century with certain distinctive and striking characteristics. But distinctive and striking as these are, who shall presume to gauge them with anything approaching completeness ? To do so, would indeed be to estimate the real forces that are at work in modern society. These forces have, in their later working, developed new exaggerations, new antagonisms, new perplexities and complications ; but in their essential features they are present in the great intellectual movements of the eighteenth century, which may be said to have arranged, summed up, and catalogued, the confused inheritance bequeathed by the struggles of the preceding centuries, and to have prepared the stage for the new movements that were to agitate the nineteenth. The eighteenth century is often said to be the age of aristocracy : and it is so no less in the sphere of intellect than in that of politics and society. Its interests were far too complicated not to present plenty of exceptions to the general rule ; but this aspect of it remains nevertheless, the most essential and the most pervading. The intellectual and literary class drew itself into a camp of its own, bound together by certain passwords, obeying a certain unwritten discipline, and linked by certain sympathies in spite of all divergencies of taste, and style, and habit, and opinion. Each variety and type borrowed more than before from other types, restrained itself less within narrow grooves, and was less absorbed in some special theme, less the slave of some special theory. The age was indeed adverse to specialising of any kind ; the VOL. IV B ENGLISH PROSE greater intellects had shaken off the power of enthusiasm and fanaticism, carried themselves with a more tranquil air, had acquired more of scientific precision and lucidity, and attained to a wider outlook, and a greater variety of treatment. The cumbrous and pedantic learning that had lingered down to the opening of the century was laid aside ; the sense of proportion became more strong, and the most vigorous trusted more to their own innate powers and less to the painful toil and heavy ecjuip- ments of the methodical student. The first impulse to this movement was undoubtedly given by the leading spirits of the previous generation — such men as Dryden, Swift, Addison, and Pope. But the note struck thus early in the century continued to be the dominant note down to its close. The effect of this upon prose style was exactly what might have been predicted. It is cjuite conceivable that the English language might have been enriched by a prose coinage, struck sharp and clear from the mint of genius, working at white heat. Such a coinage in poetry is our inheritance from the Elizabethans ; but in prose it remains only one of those things that might have been, but which an adverse fate forbade. The early simplicity and directness died away in the heat of religious and political strife. There remained the old force, remnants of the old collo- quial raciness, the fire and vigour of the old intensity. But single- ness of aim had gone ; each author became a rule to himself, aiming often at gaining attention only by eccentricity, forced into exaggeration by the earnestness of religious and political partisan- ship. The weight of pedantry depressed our prose, foreign models destroyed much of its native flavour, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the few whose care preserved the tradition of courtly and even florid ornament. Had it not been for those whose over-elaboration is falsely derided by shallow criticism, English prose might have been a dreary tract, overspread by formal tillage, and bereft of all luxuriance of leaf and flower. What the eighteenth century, at its best, did for English prose was not what might have been done for it by the Elizabethans. The opportunity for that was gone, and could never conceivably return. But it did what was next best. It pruned, arranged, selected. It established a literary style. It laid down fixed laws founded upon the impregnable principles of logical and lucid thought. It waged perpetual war against what was slipshod, inaccurate, and trivial. It sought out the treatment and the style INTRODUCTION best suited for each subject, and imposed models and types for every variety of literary theme. It drew upon all the sources of English prose, and never lent itself to an affected archaicism, or prided itself upon a pedantic and silly eclecticism. It gauged with absolute truth the possibilities of the task and its own powers of accomplishment, and performed with consummate success the work it sought to do. It could not indeed protect English prose against the inroads of tawdriness, bad taste, or modishness ; and how dire might be their encroachments we shall be able to see in the fashions that came to prevail before the nineteenth century had grown old. But the code of law which the eighteenth century established, at least limited the freedom which such travesties might have assumed. That century did much, and we cannot fairly blame it because it did not do more. These then, with no more exceptions than were necessary and natural, were the general features of the eighteenth century. True to its instincts it formed a literary class, fenced off by a certain e.xclusiveness, compelling a certain measure of conformity to its rules, looking askance upon eccentricity, and linked together in all its varieties by a certain sympathy. It set its face against all fanaticism, against all extremes. It troubled itself little about details, and sought to achieve success rather by intellectual gifts than by laborious effort. It refused to allow itself to be carried away by any impetuous enthusiasm, and maintained an attitude of aloofness and detachment that contributed much to its mood of cynical humour. And moving and Cfuickening as it were behind this curtain of criticism, of cynicism, and of formality, there burned, with exceeding \\'armth, a fire of popular energy, which occasionally showed glimpses of itself as the century passed, and burst into a full ikmie before its close. Following the various lines which the literature of the century presents to us, we find in Middleton a distinct type, which is clearly distinguished from what has gone before, and is carried on con- sistently in certain features to the end. His learning, within its limits, is clear, practical, and free from pedantry. All his equip- ment is well assorted and adaptable ; there is nothing about it either of cumbrousness or mystery. His style is exact, logical, and full of common sense ; if it is bald it therein reflects the limitations of the man. Allowing for individual difference there is a small step between him and Warburton. The latter is the typical ENGLISH PROSE controversialist of liis age ; strong, uncompromising, vigorous with something of the sinewy force of the athlete, direct and even brutal in manner, swollen with the self-satisfied pride of the combatant, and without anything of sentiment or feeling. In Butler there is a strain of something infinitely higher ; a powerful individuality that cannot be stifled, a lucidity that gives to his writings the permanence of classics, and a sincerity and earnest- ness that illumine his logical acumen with the warm light of genius. The characteristics of the same school, more or less modified, and moving in a far lower scale, are seen in Price and Priestly ; commonplace in manner, fitly reflecting the mediocre whiggism of the day, with an echo from the earlier latitudinarians, but eschewing their whimsical vanities and puerilities, restrained within a certain moderation, defended against ridicule by a certain armour of common sense. Paley repeats the same characteristics of plain and vigorous reasoning, more powerful in logic, more practised in argument, with larger intellectual grasp, but equally unambitious of ornament, equally uninformed by deep feeling or by any imagination or enthusiasm. In Dugald Stewart we have more of the philosophical bias, but it is still the philosophy of common sense with no metaphysical flights. He has risen beyond the plainness, amounting almost to monotony, that had marked the previous writings of his school ; and it was owing perhaps in great measure to his consummate gifts as an academic teacher that his written work was enriched by a vein of ornament and eloquence. With something of the same training, and strongly affected by the same influence of ex catJiedrd teaching, Adam Smith added to a philosophy, vigorous and lucid rather than profound, the clear insight and energetic common sense of the man of the world, giving force and vividness to theoretic treatment by a certain raciness and homeliness of style that told the more effectively because his theories dealt with the laws that regulate practical life. In Mackintosh the same ideal of clear and common -sense exposition is present. But there is a weakening of fibre already beginning. The strength of sinew is degenerating. The style is infected by something of stilted pomposity, the e.xposition often slides from lucidity into common- place, and barrenness of thought is often imperfectly concealed behind the scafiblding of formality and conventional dignity of style. In Bentham we reach, perhaps, the ideal — not certainly a very inviting one — of prosaic, and even acrid logic. Narrow in INTRODUCTION 5 his conceptions, but inflexibly bold in their enunciation, with the force and vigour that come from absolute conviction, with the warmth — and that alone — which comes from hostility to what he believes to be erroneous or unsound, softened by no shadow of doubt, and illumined by no ray of imagination, Bentham yet commands respect even from those to whom his writings seem most barren of human interest. To him literary style was, so far as conscious effort went, a meaningless phrase ; he is correct and lucid only from the clearness of his own views, and because he found the instrument of expression wrought to perfection by the habit of his age. In Cobbett we have little of refinement, little of resource, little liberal ecjuipment ; but the tradition of common sense is still a vigorous force, and in his almost enthusiastic inculcation of lucidity and correctness of style, he keeps alive one of the best inheritances from the eighteenth century. These are all names sufficiently respectable to bring high honour to the literary work of that century. But, typical of its characteristics as they are, they represent but one, and that not its most important phase. Another is to be found in those with whom the religious vein was stronger. In Berkeley we rise to the level of a purer atmosphere, and to a range of far wider compass, than were reached by any of those just named. In his enthusiasm and in his eloquence he kept alive the torch that had been handed on to him from the theologians of another day ; in his lucid clearness he added a new element, in which he was akin to the more scientific thought of his own age ; and in the richness of his imagination, in the perfection of his philosophic style, he attains to that uniqueness which is the chief attribute of genius. There is something of the same mental quality in the mysticism of Law ; sombre and yet eloquent ; instinct with feeling ; at once severe and grim in his earnestness, and copious in the range of his imagination. But the spirit of Berkeley and of Law was not one suited to the century ; and they stand almost as solitary monuments of a phase of thoug-ht, which passed away in a crowd of opposite ideals. As a literary power Wesley stands far below them. His mind was not without something of the mysticism that dominated Law ; it has a strain of melancholy which does not lessen our interest, and he presents the rare spectacle of a scholar who dreaded lest his own scholarship might interfere with the popular work which was the supreme aim of his life. ENGLISH PROSE There was a certain Puritanism in the conscious simphcity of his style ; but he could not di\orce himself altogether from that literary sympathy that linked him to his age, and that made him the friend of one with whom he stands in many respects so much in contrast as Johnson. In Horsley we may find an example of what religious writing became in the latter part of the century, earnest and conscientious, rich in scholarship and robust in thought, but moving rather with judicial formality and dignified reverence than by any instinct of enthusiastic piety. There are others again whom it is hard to classify, who are yet no less typical of the age. They form a long list, and little as they are akin to one another in style or taste or sentiment, they are yet most distinctly the children of the eighteenth century. Who is more characteristic of its spirit than Chesterfield ? Early as he comes in its course, he seems almost of set purpose to exaggerate all its tendencies, to make himself a bold exponent of its cynicism in its most pronounced, it may perhaps be said in its most superficial, phase. Subject, treatment, tone, and style — all alike are redolent of the century ; passing over enthusiasm with a smile, treating religion and morality with a courtly politeness that savours of ridicule, wrapping itself in a garment of conventionality that it may escape the plebeianism of eccentric individuality. Yet with all this, how much of art there is ! How much deliberate and conscious preference of form over matter ! How much lightness of touch, and how much dexterous choice of the fitting phrase ! How much of exclusiveness, and how much of the careful art of the actor, avoiding above all things any awkwardness or clumsiness of deportment, and studious to preserve an unruffled composure which no strong feeling, or earnest conviction is allowed to disturb ! Chesterfield may be super- ficial, l)ut he has at least fastidiousness of literary taste. Heartless he may be, but he has the sense of humour. He may be con- ventional, but he is never vain ; and if his philosophy is barren and circumscribed, he at least knew how to adapt his language with perfection to its needs. Sterne contrasts with him in countless qualities. He is colloquial and slipshod, a chartered libertine in language ; losing all sense of dignity in his affectation and whimsical conceits ; eccentric not from impulse but from wayward artificiality, ruffled into petty and vanishing emotion by every breath of pathos, however false and tawdry ; noisy in his childish depreciation of INTRODUCTION conventionality and order ; but yet, withal, imbued with the same cynicism, aiming at the same indifference of demeanour, im- pressed by the same sense of the " ridiculous tragedy " of human life — above all, with the same vein of humour, but of a richness and fertility which has scarcely ever been approached, and which Chester- field could never, even remotely, rival. With all his carelessness of diction, with all his affected contempt of form, Sterne wrote for a literary age ; even in his wildest extravagances he knows how to attune his language to the mood of the moment, and to make it a fitting dress for the most wayward, the most fitful, the most perplexing, and yet the most invincible wit which fancy ever contrived. Take again another pair — in outward guise most unlike these two, and equally in contrast with one another, and yet steeped each of them to the finger tips in the eighteenth-century spirit — Gray and Horace Walpole. Scarcely could two letter-writers be more unlike. Gray shows himself in every page the scholarly recluse ; finished, elaborate, even artificial in his diction, incapable of writing a sentence which does not bear the impress of care and labour. No feeling is ever assumed or false ; its sincerity seems to be tested and tried by the same rigid criticism which he applies to his style. But it is the sincerity, not of impulse or enthusiasm, but of the student and man of letters. Walpole, on the other hand, is sprightly, lively, intolerant, even to nervousness, of dulness or heaviness, speaking the opinion or impression of the hour, superficial, it is true, but yet sincere in his individuality, and with a certain freshness in his freedom from conventionality. No age, fortunately, can mould character after one type, or prescribe a code so strong as to stifle individuality. The eighteenth century, like every other, had its types both of artificiality and of homeliness, of cynicism and of enthusiasm, of intellectual force and of whimsical caprice, of logical earnestness and of superficial sentiment. But in this, at least, it was peculiar, that it was endowed with literary tact ; and if it did nothing else, it proved that genius might work in ol^edience to the unwritten laws which that tact prescribed, and that even although the exuberance of earlier fancy, and the untaught raciness of an older language were gone past recall, it could still leave to posterity a rich and varied literary inheritance. It is this literary tact which links together a whole group and succession of men, differing in eveiy degree of homeliness and elaboration, ENGLISH PROSE of simplicity and pompous solemnity, of gracefulness and almost uncouth force. Gilbert White strikes us at first only by his homeliness and simplicity, by his lucid and unpretentious narrative, by the sincerity and piety of his unwearied study of nature. But in truth the scholar never forgets his books. The simplicity is the effect of the highest art ; his narrative impresses us because it is arranged with the skill of a trained thinker, who never allows his induction to be slovenly or inexact, who knows exactly how to buttress a theory with an unassuming anecdote, and who can bring a scientific reminiscence, or a recondite classification, into the midst of the homely story of some every- day incident. This is not the place to discuss the artistic theories of Sir Joshua Reynolds ; but whatever their weight and authority, he elaborated them under the dominant influence of a literary clique, whose canons he adopted, and by that literary influence he founded artistic criticism in England, and clothed it in the urbane and graceful style that was a counterpart of his own personality. Scarcely any character could have been more strong in its individuality than that of Warton. His cumbi'ous and amor- phous learning, too vast to be exact, and too tenacious to be discriminating, might seem unlikely to submit its vigorous in- dependence to any environment, however strong. But yet, as a fact, the work that Warton achieved would not have been possible to him had he lived in any previous age. His learning would have run into abstruse divagations, where pedantry and fancy would have overwhelmed all sense of proportion. To such aberrations he was by nature only too prone. But the scientific sense of his age revealed to him just the questions in literary history which called for solution. He saw, by anticipa- tion, some of the fruits which the comparative method might be made to yield ; and, as a consequence, although he essayed a task too large for any man, and achieved what is doubtless an ill-arranged and ill-proportioned fragment, yet he left the impress of his independent thought and of his vigorous grasp upon our literature, and traced the lines upon which its history must be written. Within the compass of an introduction such as this, it is not possible, nor even desirable, to pass in review all the names which are to meet us in this volume. F^or an appreciation of each the INTRODUCTION reader must be referred to the separate prefatory notes. All that is attempted here is to illustrate the spirit of the age by those who are most typical of it. But no such sketch would be com- plete without a reference to one very distinctive development of the time — that of the modern novel, by which a more literary age replaced the drama in its decay. The larger and more interest- ing questions of the ethical and social work of fiction do not here concern us. But we cannot neglect it as a potent element in the formation of style. Richardson could not aspire to any literary graces ; his resources were too few and his methods too simple for such an ambition. But in his delicate and discriminating character drawing he inevitably developed a new literary appliance. He was bound to eschew theory, to avoid any cataloguing of characteristics, to lay aside the old modes of the seventeenth- century Theophrastuses, and to subordinate his drawing of character to his story. He must perforce be simple, and proceed step by step, discarding all pedantry, and allowing the character to reveal itself with the inevitableness of reality. If our language was thus enriched by Richardson with some new feints and manoeuvres of style, far greater was its debt to Fielding^to whom we shall I'etum presently ; and even Smollett, although his art was limited, if he did nothing else at least established a current diction for comic narrative, vigorous if somewhat barbar- ous in its vigour. As the century closed, the novel passed into very different hands, in the earliest of our female writers of fiction, Madame d'Arblay and Miss Edgeworth, whose art was to culminate in Jane Austen. Contrasting with their predecessors in every feature of method and treatment, they contrasted with them no less strongly in their style. Obedient to the dictatorship of Johnson, they made their ideal (if we shut out of view the later aberrations of Madame d'Arblay) one of lucid simplicity and studied accuracy, and in this as in all else assisted towards the perfection of that ideal in the consummate art of Jane Austen. There remain certain names, apart from all classification of subject and of treatment, supreme in their sovereignty, the pillars of the century, summing^ up in themselves its highest achievement, and secure from all rivalry and competition. These are Johnson, Gibbon, Fielding, Hume, and Burke. The age that comprises them need fear no comparison. We may surely by this time claim that Johnson has shaken oft" the inept cavillings of petty criticism, and has blunted the shafts of the witlings. Of 10 ENGLISH PROSE his dignity of character, of the keenness of his insight, of the boldness and breadth of his criticism, of the range of his sym- pathy and his humour, this is not the place to speak. But, in style alone, we may justly claim that he is the vertebrate column of our prose. He could not accomplish the impossible. Once more I venture to express the conviction that the highest conceivable perfection of English prose was possible only to the Elizabethans, and that when the task passed unaccomplished from their hands, the hopes of it vanished beyond recall. But what Johnson could do, he did with consummate power. To him it was left to establish a code, to evolve order out of disorderly materials, to found a new ideal of style in absolutely logical precision, adding to that pre- cision dignity and eloquence and force. To ascribe to him a slavish propensity to cumbrous and pedantic sesquipedalianism is to mistake the travesty for the orginal. His dictatorship in literature, based on native strength, was most unquestioned in the sphere of style ; and it is not too much to say that all that is best in English prose since his day is his debtor in respect of not a few of its highest qualities, above all in respect of absolute lucidity, unfailing vigour, and saving common sense. Just in so far as Gibbon was not so great a man as Johnson, does his style fall below Johnson's level. The strain of affectation, the undue elaboration, the tone of artificial irony are always unduly marked in that style. But the massiveness of Gibbon's intellect, the largeness of his grasp, his unfailing sense of literary proportion, the fearless vigour of his historical conception, — all these are too great to be buried beneath the affectation. He towers above all competitors as a giant amongst the pigmies, the type and model of the historian, whose example remains un- touched by time, and remote from rivalry. As a master of style. Fielding has a claim on our admiration, apart from all the other attributes of his genius. It seems strange in regard to Fielding to set aside all the wealth of human sympathy, all the range of humour, all the vividness of character-drawing, and to restrict ourselves solely to the one aspect that interests us here, his place as a writer of prose. His style reflects much that is distinctive of his genius, its massive carelessness, its strong simplicity, its clearness of outline, and its consummate ease. But above all things he repeats two leading characteristics of his age, its irony and its scholarship. Fielding was from first to last a man of letters, as the character was conceived in his time — with- INTR OD UCTION 1 1 out pedantry, without strain, without the constraint of subtlety, but always imbued with the instinct of the scholar, never for- getting that, in the full rush of his exuberant fancy and his audacious humour, he must give to his style that indescribable quality that makes it permanent, that forces us to place it in the first rank of literary effort, that, even when irregular, pleads for no allowance on the score of neglect of art. He challenges comparison on merely literary grounds with the best models of literary art, and he is no loser by the comparison. So it is with Hume. We do not, for our purpose, seek to gauge his place as a philosopher, nor dwell upon his boldness, his unswerving logic, the keen directness of his insight, the indomitable and uncompromising force that pushed conclusion so far that reaction became inevitable. But what we have to observe is that his style reflected all these qualities. Its limpid flow, its simplicity side by side with its studied art, its undercurrent of sarcasm, its irony and its epigram, all these made it a part of his genius, made its place in our literature secure, and made it one of those forces that compel respect for the century of which he was the characteristic product. Lastly, in Burke we have to recognise not the politician only, instinct with sincerity, unfettered by convention, illimitable in range, and giving shape and utterance to impulses that were true not for one age only but for all time ; but we have to see in him the writer of a prose illumined as with fire ; enthusiastic and yet supremely logical : fearless and yet absolutely obedient to order and to law : eloquent and yet restrained : stirred by every popular movement, and yet suggestive and philosophical. More com- pletely than any man he showed, in style no less pei-fectly than in spirit and in sympathy, all that was most typical of the best genius of his age — its restraint, its philosophy, its obedience to order .and to law, and its gift of literary instinct — removed as far from the exaggeration and pedantry of what had gone before, as from the vulgar platitude and superficial complacency of what was to follow. H. Craik. CONYERS MIDDLETON [Conyers Middleton, who belonged to an affluent and well connected York- shire family, was born at Richmond on 27th December 1683. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of seventeen, and obtained a Fellow- ship, which, however, he vacated ten years after his matriculation, on his marriage with a very wealthy widow, a Mrs. Drake. His connection with the College, nevertheless, drew him into the celebrated and desperate quarrel between the Fellows and their Master, Bentley — a quarrel, the vicissitudes of which cannot be told here, though they are reflected in many of Middleton's works. He was made Librarian to the University in 1722, which post he retained to his death, and Woodwardian Professor of Geology in 1731, but he only held that appointment for three years. He travelled in Italy after the death of his first wife, married a second in 1734, and a third in 1745 ; but his headquarters were always at Cambridge, or close by at Hildersham, where he had property. He held more than one living at different times of his life, but in no case for long. He died at Hildersham on 28th July 1750. Besides the frequently reprinted Life of Cicero, which originally appeared in 1741, his works were numerous, and are nearly all collected in five volumes, which reached their second edition five years after his death. Besides polemical pamphlets against Bentley, Waterland, and others, they contain miscellanies on subjects rather unusually wide apart, as well as two larger and more famous productions — A Letter from Rome showing an exact Conformity bctivecn Popery and Paganism (1729), and A Free Inquiry into the Aliraculous Powers tohich are supposed to have existed in the Christian Church (1748).] The name and fame of Conyers Middleton liave always lain under a rather ciu'ious cloud, which has latterly extended from his per- sonal to his literary reputation. He has been violently attacked, and on the whole very faintly if at all defended, on three different grounds : first as a dishonest man who, while taking the pay of the Church of England and pretending to acquiesce in her doc- trines, seized every opportunity of undehnining the faith of his co-religionists ; secondly as a controversialist, equally virulent and disingenuous, both in religious and non-religious subjects ; thirdly as a wholesale and impudent plagiarist from Bellendenus (William Bellenden, 1555- 1633) in his Life of Cicero. During the eighteenth century, as a kind of set-off to these imputations, he 14 ENGLISH PROSE enjoyed the credit of a remarkable proficiency in English prose style ; but De Quincey, partly out of partisanship for Bentley, partly from his preference for ornate over severe writing, and partly also out of mere crotchet, laboured to destroy this reputa- tion with a certain success. The controversial part of Middleton's writings has lost its savour ; his erudition, which was consider- able, has been superseded, and his attacks (if attacks they are to be called) on orthodoxy proceed on a method which has long been exchanged for others by his successors. It is therefore very improbable that he finds many readers now, or will ever find them again, except among students of his special subjects and gifts. He was, however, a man of remarkable and altogether excep- tional ability, of wide and curiously diversified literary interests, and in my judgment at least much more deserving of his earlier than of his later reputation as a prose writer. Of his supposed theological dishonesty not much should, but something'' must be said here. He himself grappled boldly and, as far as dialectics go, not ineffectively with the charge, in a Lctlcr to Venn, who had called him an apostate. A specimen of this letter will be found hip-a. It is open to any one to say that though it displays extreme skill of fence and much dignity, it neither contains any direct and satisfactory confession or profession of belief, nor displays that genuine indignation which might have been expected from innocence. I do not myself think that Middleton was consciously or intention- ally anti-Christian, or that in his professed attacks on "Popery" and on " Superstition " he meant more than he said. But he was evidently possessed strongly by the eighteenth-century hatred of " enthusiasm," and not less strongly by the mania of that century for incjuiring into everything, by its disrelish for mysticism and metaphysics, and by its rather crude contempt for former ages. He is thus the opposite, or rather the complement of Berkeley, who was almost exactly his contemporary (they were born within two and died within three years of each other), and exhibits on the negative and lower side the same restless and vigorous love of research and argument which Berkeley shows on the higher and positive. It is particularly noteworthy in how many odd directions Middleton's thoughts exercised themselves. He has for instance a paper on Latin pronunciation which is quite beyond his time, and he took an interest in early printing, which was also not at all of that time, though it may have been prompted in him by a little inter-university jealousy. CON VERS MIDDLETON 15 For his style, so far as it is matter of controversy, the following extracts will probably speak better than elaborate comment. He is best at argument and narration — better perhaps in the former than in the latter, where he is apt to follow the ancients in using English relatives as if they had the Latin distinctions of gender, number, and case to preserve their connection with the antecedent from obscurity. In his pugnacious passages the necessity of driving home his argument saves him from this. Indeed I think it would be hardly possible to find a better example than Middle- ton's of the severely plain style, not quite so homely as Swift's, but not excessively academic. Of ornament, especially in his con- troversial writings, he has little or nothing ; and this of itself accounts for the scant affection with which the nineteenth century has regarded him. He is not merely, as most of his contempor- aries were, intolerant of gorgeous or flowery language, but it is the rarest thing for him to attempt a flight, a trope, an epigram in the modern as opposed to the classical sense. His temper was not genial, and he is rather sarcastic than humorous ; but his sarcasm was rarely marred by the mere rude horseplay to which his great adversary Bentlcy too often descended. Thus his series of Remarks on Bentley's Proposals^ though their fragmentary nature and their constant Cjuotations make them unsuitable for excerpt here, are really distinguished examples of uncompromising hostile criticism, and it is seldom that nearly as much may not be said for his voluminous and di\ crsified controversies with others. In the Letter from Rome and the Free Enquiry, the seml^lance at least of an open and candid examination is largely assisted by the perfect perspicuity of the phrase, the apparent abstinence from all flings, shifts, and evasions under cover of declamation on the one side, or of buffoonery on the other. In the Life of Cicero, though the vehicle of communication is somewhat more negligently polished and equipped, there is the same perfect clearness, with very rare exceptions, due to the cause above glanced at and a few others of the same kind. And it is fair or rather necessary to remember that when Middleton began to write, the new balanced English style had had very few applications to historical narrative. It had been used in sermons, in essays, in short critical disserta- tions and so forth, and already great examples of it had appeared in philosophy. But even Johnson, a much younger man than Middleton, could still speak of Knolles, whose work was more than a century old, as the chief example of historical writing in i6 ENGLISH PROSE English, and though Johnson's well-known prejudices might have made him purposely ignore Robertson and Hume, neither of these writers made a name till long after Middleton. It is thus very important to observe dates and correspondences of dates in regard to him. And when they are observed, perhaps the best summing up of his position in the history of English prose will be that he wrote with a remarkable combination of vigour and correctness, that he carried the unadorned style almost to its limit, and that while he sometimes went perilously near to being bald he never actually reached baldness. George Saintsbury. THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE In the midst of these transactions, Julius Caesar returned from the government of Spain, which had been allotted to him for his prsetorship, with great fame, both for his military and political acts. He conquered the barbarous nations by his arms, and civilised them by his laws ; and having subdued the whole country as far as the ocean, and being saluted emperor by the soldiers, came away in all haste to Rome, to sue, at the same time, for the double honour of a triumph and the consulship. He designed L. Lucceius for his colleague, and privately joined interests with him, on condition that Lucceius, who was rich, should furnish money sufficient to bribe the centuries. But the senate, always jealous of his designs, and fearing the effects of his power, when supported by a colleague subservient to his will, espoused the other candidate, Bibulus, with all their authority, and made a common purse, to enable him to bribe as high as his competitors ; which Cato himself is said to have approved. By this means they got Bibulus elected, to their great joy ; a man firm to their interests, and determined to obstruct all the ambitious attempts of Ctesar. Upon Caesar's going to Spain, he had engaged Crassus to stand bound for him to his creditors, who were clamorous and troublesome, as far as two hundred thousand pounds sterling : so much did he want to be worth nothing, as he merrily said of himself. Crassus hoped, by the purchase of his friendship, to be able to make head against Pompey in the administration of public affairs ; but Caesar, who had been long courting Pompey, and labouring to disengage him from a union with Cicero, and the aristocratical interest, easily saw, that as things then stood, their joint strength would avail but little towards obtaining what they aimed, unless they could induce Pompey also to join with them : on pretence, therefore, of reconciling Pompey and Crassus, who had been constant enemies, he fomied the project of a VOL. IV C i8 ENGLISH PROSE triple league between the three, by which they should mutually oblige themselves to promote each other's interest, and to act, nothing but by common agreement : to this Pompey easily con- sented, on account of the disgust which the senate had impoliti- cally given him, by their perverse opposition to everything which he desired or attempted in the state. This is commonly called the first triumvirate; which was nothing else, in reality, but a traitorous conspiracy of three, the most powerful citizens of Rome, to extort from their country, by violence, what they could not obtain by law. Pompey's chief motive was to get his acts confirmed by Cassar in his consul- ship ; Cassar's, by giving way to Pompey's glory, to advance his own ; and Crassus's, to gain that ascendant, which he could not sustain alone, by the authority of Pompey and the vigour of Caesar. But Cresar, who formed the scheme, easily saw that the chief advantage of it would necessarily redound to himself: he knew that the old enmity between the other two, though it might be palliated, could never be healed without leaving a secret jealousy between them ; and as, by their common help, he was sure to make himself superior to all others, so, by managing the one against the other, he hoped to gain, at last, a superiority also over them both. To cement this union there- fore the more strongly, by the ties of blood, as well as interest, he gave his daughter Julia, a beautiful and accomplished young lady, in marriage to Pompey : and, from this era, all the Roman writers date the origin of the civil wars which afterwards ensued, and the subversion of the Republic, in which they ended. . . . tu causa jnalorum Facta trihus doininis communis Roma. — Lucan, i. 85. Hence flowed our ills, hence all that civil flame, "When Rome the common slave of three became. — Cicero. Cicero might have made what terms he pleased with the triumvirate ; been admitted even a partner of their power and a fourth in their leagaie, which seemed to want a man of his character to make it complete. For while the rest were engaged in their governments, and the command of amiies abroad, his authority would have been of singular use at home, to manage the affairs of the city, and solicit what they had to transact with the senate or people. Ctesar, therefore, was extremely desirous to add him to the party, or to engage hin\ rather in particular CON VERS MIDDLETON 19 measures with himself; and no sooner entered into the consul- ship, than he sent him word, by their common friend, Balbus, that he would be governed in every step by him and Pompey, with whom he would endeavour to join Crassus too. But Cicero would not enter into any engagements, jointly with the three, whose union he abhorred ; nor into private measures with Caesar, whose intentions he always suspected. He thought Pompey the better citizen of the two ; took his views to be less dangerous and his temper more tractable ; and imagined that a separate alliance with him would be sufficient to screen him from the malice of his enemies. Yet this put him under no small difficulty ; for, if he opposed the triumvirate, he could not expect to continue well with Pompey ; or if he served it, with the senate ; in the first, he saw his ruin, in the second, the loss of his credit. He chose, therefore, what the wise will always choose in such circumstances, a middle way ; to temper his behaviour so, that, with the constancy of his duty to the Republic, he might have a regard also to his safety, by remitting somewhat of his old vigour and contention, without submitting to the meanness of consent or approbation ; and when his authority could be of no use to his country, to manage their new masters so as not to irritate their power to his own destruction ; which was all that he desired. This was the scheme of politics, which, as he often laments, the weakness of the honest, the perverseness of the envious, and the hatred of the wicked, obliged him to pursue. (From the Life of Cicero.^ LETTER TO VENN Sir, I have been well informed, that some time ago you took the liberty to call me by name an apostate priest. I find the same calumny more publicly repeated in the Miscellany of 15th Felaruary, on a certain person, not named, whose writings have had the misfortune to displease you ; and as you are said to be concerned in the furnishing out this weekly paper, in partnership with another worthy divine, so I cannot avoid con- sidering myself as the object of your abuse in both cases. The only thing that puzzles me, is to discover by what principle of Christianity you think yourself justified in such a licence of 20 ENGLISH PROSE calumniating ; or how you can imagine a behaviour so shocking" to good nature, good sense, and g^ood manners, to be the effect of any good rehgion. There must needs be some strange mistake between us on one side or the other. The word rehgion, perhaps, may have something in it equivocal, and denote quite a different thing with you and with me. If your religion prescribes, pemiits, or does not condemn, all such defamation as impious and detestable, you clear me at once of apostasy ; for that religion was never mine ; and I cannot be charged with deserting" what I had never professed. Be so good, sir, as to favour me with some account of this matter. I have a right, I think, to require at least this satisfac- tion. You are the only man who has ventured to call me an apostate ; and if you are an honest man, you would not be particular in your accusation without a particular assurance of the truth of it ; nor so forward with your charge, without being as ready with your proof. Tell me, then, in God's name, nay, tell the public all that you know of me : speak out freely ; charge everything, that cither your own malice suggests, or that of others has supplied you with. If you can convict me of anything immoral or irreligious, of any apostacy from \\hat is laudable or virtuous, I will take shame to myself and own it ; if not, shall seek no other revenge than that of leaving you to the reproach of your conscience, and the scorn of all good men. I could wish likewise to be informed, of what use it can be to the interest of Christianity, of what advantage to religion, to proclaim to the world that I am an apostate. Should your Miscellany fall into the hands of men wavering in the faith, staggering at eveiy scrujilc, shaken 1)y every breath of scandal, and there must be many such in this sceptical age, might it not be of weight enough in the equilibrium of their doubts, to turn the scale on the infidel side, to be assured by you, that a clergy- man, trained in the bosom of the church, of some reputation and many friends, after a life spent in temperance, study, and the search of truth, had by choice and judgment deserted it ? It is the constant policy of all sects, to challenge to their party any man of merit, supposed even on the slightest grounds to have discovered some inclination to them ; but your absurd zeal would forcil^ly drive from the service of religion men of virtue and learning, against their will, against iheii" profession, against truth. CON VERS MIDDLETON 21 These were the men, who first began the clamour, and raised the first envy upon me ; and I am now but paying the arrears of that old grudge, as you seem to intimate in this very Misccllatty j for you say, that it was natural for me to hate, what I had before betrayed ; as if there was a guilt upon me, previous to that I have been lately charged with, and the era of my apostacy was to bear the same date with my Letter from Rome. The more I reflect on your rashness, the more I am inclined to impute it to some selfish motive of interest, some hopes of glory or of gain to accrue from it. It is common with the writers of your class to run the risk of a pillory to raise the fame and value of their weekly productions ; and we read of a hero in antiquity, who set the temple of his country on fire, to perpetuate his name to posterity. In this view you act consistently, though in all views wickedly. But to talk of reforming morals, and recommending religion, by a method destructive of all morality, and contrary to all religion, is a mere banter and affront to common sense. But whilst you dis- pense so freely the titles of profane and apostate, let me recommend to you to consider the history of that first and chief apostate, the pattern, as well as author, of every apostacy in the world. You will find his abominable qualities summed up in this short char- acter, " The accuser of the brethren " (Rev. xii. i o). You will find him described as defaming day and night ; continually going about roaring and seeking to devour. This, says St. John, " is the old dragon, which is the Devil, and Satan (Rev. xx. 2). And what, sir, is the Devil, that is Satan, but names drawn from his very essence, signifying the adversary, the hater, the accuser of mankmd ? His followers, like their master, are described by David, under the person of Doeg, the malicious accuser of the priests, " with tongues that devise mischief, that love devouring words " (Psal. lii. 2, 4) ; and as " men set on fire, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword" (Psal. Ivii. 4). This is the grand, the sovereign apostasy, the defection from all religion ; a delight in defaming, an alacrity in accusing ; and I leave it to you to determine, where the reproach of it is the most likely to fall, on yourself or on me. You have called me an apostate ; all people, I daresay, or at least all who know me, will be shocked at it ; but should I chance to describe a certain priest by the title of the accuser, there is scarce a man in England who would not immediately think on Mr. Venn. A reflection sufficient, methinks, to admonish vou, that instead of being so busy with other men's 22 ENGLISH PROSE characters, it behoves you much more to turn your thoughts and attention to your own. But if it be possible, after all, that I should ever have it in my power to say of you, what you declare of me, that through a con- viction of your wickedness, you had changed your conduct, and desisted from calumniating ; I should still act on this, as I shall do on every occasion, just contrary to the example you set me ; I should rejoice in the change, begin to entertain hopes and a better opinion of you, and forget the accuser to applaud the con- vert. CONYERS MiDDLETON. A DEFENCE OF FREE ENQUIRY IN RELIGION If the religion of a country was to be considered only as an im- posture ; an engine of government to keep the people in order ; even then an endeavour to unhinge it, unless with a design to substitute a better in its stead, would in my opinion be highly unreasonable. But should the priests of such a religion, for the sake of their authority and power, labour to impose their own failures for divine truths ; to possess the people with an enthusi- astic zeal for them ; manageable only by themselves and to be played even against the government, as oft as it served their separate interests ; in such a case, 'tis the duty of every man who loves his country and his fellow creatures, to oppose all such attempts ; to confine religion to its pro])er bounds ; to the use for which it was instituted ; of inspiring benevolence, modesty, sub- mission into the people ; nor suffer the credit of it to grow too strong for that of the State ; the authority of the priest, for that of the magistrate. Was religion, I say, to l)c considered as an imposture, all men would think this conduct reasonable ; and where it is really a revelation from heaven, the case is not altered, as far as the end of that revelation is perverted and abused by the arts or the folly of men ; as the Jewish was by the Pharisees ; the Christian by some of its modern advocates. In such circumstances, in propor- tion as a man values his religion, and believes it to be of God, he will exert himself to clear it from all human impositions ; which render it either of no effect, or of a mischievous one to society ; propagating rage and strife and every evil work, instead of the CON VERS MIDDLETON 23 peace and happiness 'twas designed to introduce. And if the end of all revelation be to enforce with greater vigour, and by means more affecting to sense, the obligations of the natural law ; those priests are the truest friends to God and man, who labour to adapt it the most effectually to that end ; to expound it by the known principles of reason and morality ; and to make it amiable, by making it plain, rational, intelligible to common understandings. As for those, \\ho take the contrary way ; who either deny all natural law, or make it bend as they please, to their own com- ments on Scripture ; who build religion on a principle of faith, distinct from reason ; look on the latter with a jealous eye, as an instrument and engine of Satan ; who measure all truth by authority ; all credibility by testimony ; by which authority still and testimony they mean little more than their own, and to draw the greater dependence on themselves ; for these writers, I say, 'tis the duty of every rational Christian to expose their principles as slavish and superstitious ; destructive of that good, for which all religion was given ; turning the best thing in the world into the worst ; a revelation from heaven, into a doctrine hurtful and pernicious to mankind. And where religion, as with us, is received as of divine authority, and on the best grounds and reasons embraced as such, though I greatly condemn the perverseness of contesting truths so strongly established, yet I cannot think it agreeable either to reason or religion to punish even such as are hardy enough to call in question the reality of revelation itself, for 'tis the greatest weakness and absurdity to think that truth can ever be hurt by any examination whatsoever ; it may be oppressed awhile by faction, stifled by power ; but in a free debate, as in free air and exercise, it always regains its strength and vigour ; controversy to truth is like a gentle wind to trees ; it shakes the head but fastens the root. Truth is naturally so amiable, that wherever 'tis exposed to view it necessarily draws all to admire it, and the more 'tis exposed, the more strongly it attracts. Where artifice indeed and fraud prevail in the stead of it, there all inquiry must industriously be discouraged as a dangerous and fatal enemy, sure to detect and e.xpose the cheat ; and wherever 'tis discouraged, there is always some reason to suspect some latent imposture ; now as sure as truth and falsehood are contrary to each other, so sure it is that the same method of treating them cannot possibly be of service in both. 24 ENGLISH PROSE As far as my experience has reached, either in ancient or modern history, there's not an instance on record, where a fair examination has ever done harm to a good cause. The attacks on Christianity, urged on by its warmest enemies, ahvays turn to its advantage ; they engage the clergy to study and search into the true grounds of it ; keep them in breath and exercise, and train them by constant disciphne to be able champions and de- fenders of it ; they clear religion itself of all the dust and rubbish, which by the negligence or the art of its managers, it may have contracted ; and above all, they enforce and lay open the genuine proofs of it, which by time itself, naturally grow languid and ineffectual, till a new debate like a new publication sends them fresh again into the world, in their original force and lustre. 'Tis then my firm principle and persuasion that a free inquiry into all points of religion is always useful and beneficial ; and for that reason never to be punished or prohibited. It ojaens the minds and reforms the manners of the people ; makes them reasonable, sociable, governable ; easy to such as differ from them, and as little scandalised at the different opinion, as the different complexion of their neighbour ; whereas the restraint of this liberty, and the imposition of systems and articles, that must be called in question, nourishes a churlish spirit of bigotry, vmcharit- ableness, enthusiasm, which no civil power can moderate ; a spirit that has so oft involved mankind in wars and bloodshed ; and by turns endangered the ruin of every Christian country in the world. (From Remarks on Observations to the Aictlwr of a Letter to Dr. Waterland.) BISHOP BERKELEY [George Berkeley was born near Kilkenny on the i6th March 1685, and was educated at the Grammar School of that town, going thence at the age of fifteen to Trinity College, Dublin. He remained in residence there till he was eight and twenty, and diu'ing the latter years of this residence, young as he was, produced his most remarkable philosophical works — the New Theory of Vision in 1709, the Principles of Human K7iovjledge in 1710, and the Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous in 1713. In the last named year he went to London, where Swift, who was then at the zenith of his influence, intro- duced him to the wits and the great. After staying some time in the capital, Berkeley travelled for nearly seven years as tutor to more than one pupil, and returned to Ireland in 1721. He resigned his Fellowship in Trinity College, Dublin, three years later, on being appointed to the valuable deanery of Derry. But he shortly afterwards took up his famous scheme of a Missionary College at the Bermudas, and, having obtained a promise of a government grant and married, set out for America, where he lived for three years at Rhode Island. His hopes, however, were deceived ; the gi'ant, though voted, was withdrawn, and he returned in 1731, publishing ne.xt year the liveliest and most literary of his works, Alcipliron, or the Minute Philosopher. In 1734 he was made Bishop of Cloyne, and hved there, a model bishop, for eighteen years, doing much good, and publishing his Querist, and his curious speculations on tar- water and other things, which were formally embodied in the quaint but admirable work called Siris. His health becoming very weak he went to O.xford for change, and died in January 1753, si.x months after his arrival there. His works were never completely published till twenty years ago, when they appeared at the Clarendon Press, under the care of Professor Fraser. But the older editions, which are numerous, though lacking much matter of, biographical interest and curiosity, contain all the great philosophical and literary pieces which made, and which will, it is to be hoped, ever preserve his fame.] To any one who combines a fondness for metaphysical study with some sense both of perfection in hterature and perfection in humanity it is rather difficult to write about Berkeley with due critical detachment. The assignment of " every virtue under heaven to him " was made early, and should have necessarily excited the not wholly unhealthy feeling of antagonism which greeted the description of Aristides. But Berkeley has " passed 26 ENGLISH PROSE the pikes " of a century and more of unqualified analysis, not only without any loss, but with a positive increase of fame. His astonishing intellectual vigour, and his perfect literary art, could have borne with depreciation of his personal character. But no such depreciation has ever been seriously attempted ; none such has ever had the least chance of success. In two of these respects there is not much which could properly be dealt with here at any great length. Berkeley was an almost perfect model of a Christian gentleman, a pattern of that sort of character which, though it may at one time be held conventional, and at another go out of fashion, emerges again and again from the ruins of time in pretty identical condition. Through all the storms and quicksands of the history of philosophy his repute passes unscathed, as hardly any other since the great masters of Greek thought has passed. He is one of the most eminent and constant of what the late Mr. Arnold, borrowing the phrase from the French, used to call points dc repcre. He is one of those who make an end, and who maintain themselves victoriously at that end. He might have been impossible without Locke, but he seized the essentials of the Lockian doctrine without delay, and consciously or unconsciously all subsequent j^hilosophers have either recoiled from the impreg- nable fortress of his idealism into devious paths intended to cir- cumvent it, have "masked" it, or have endeavoured to attack its apparently antiquated but still solid curtains and bastions with this or that device, suitable to the passing fashions of the day. All Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy, that is to say, all the philo- sophy of the world for the last century, professedly and honestly dates itself from Hume. And Hume, again, by the honest confes- sion of all competent criticism, did little but apply an acute but unimaginative intellect partly to the caricature and partly to the evasion of the conclusions of Berkeley. These things, however, great as they are, belong to another department of enquiry. We have to do with Berkeley here as with a great writer of English prose. And here, fortunately, there is even less possibility of difference between competent persons than elsewhere. Berkeley had almost every advantag^e that a writer can hope for. He was born with a solid English intellect, and a cjuick Irish wit ; he was thoroughly well educated ; he was not forced by indigence to the premature employment of his liter- ary gifts in manners and on subjects unworthy of himself. But the gifts of fortune to him were greater even than the statement BISHOP BERKELEY 27 of these things shows. The period of his birth set him at one of these moments when men of Hterary gifts have the opportunity of using a comparatively new hterary style before it has become hackneyed or exaggerated, and while it is still crisp and effective. He was born when Dryden and Tillotson and Halifax and Temple were still shaping the new English prose ; he reached the prime of early manhood when the great essayists were suppling and refining it ; he was introduced to them and their society in a manner which put at his disposal those influences of coterie or clique which, if they have never long succeeded in keeping vogue for anything that was bad, have sometimes been fatally lacking to that which was good. And even this did not exhaust his good luck. He fell in, at the very flush of his talent and energy, with two movements, a philosophical and a religious, which were of all possible things suited to his genius. Born a little earlier, he would either have had to work out the Lockian destructive criti- cism for himself, or have wasted himself in uncertain gropings, like his great predecessors Cudworth and Norris. Born a little later, he would have fallen in with that period of the eighteenth century when metaphysical enquiries proper were tabooed, and when his own special philosophical faculty would have met with little respect and less sympathy. So in religion his gifts of thought and style were exactly suited to cope with the crude fanaticism of the earlier deists, and the strictly negative criticism of men like Middleton. But the hour would have been nothing if the man had not been so thoroughly suited to it. It may seem to some, after reading philosophers of all ages, from Plato to Schopen- hauer, and from Erigena to Descartes, that there are only three styles perfectly suited to philosophy, that they are those of Plato himself, of Malebranche, and of Berkeley. In all philosophical writing there is a certain antinomy. By so much as it is popular, figurative, literary, imaginative, it seems to lack philosophical precision ; by so much as it is technical, austere, unliterary, and what has been called "jargonish," it loses humanity and general appeal. If the golden mean was ever hit between these extremes it seems to have been hit in the style of Berkeley. Take the more popular expositions of it as in Ahip/iron and S/r/s, the less popular as in the Theory of Vision, or Hylas and P/ii/onoi/s, com- pare them together, note their excellences, and, if any can be detected allow for their defects, and such a philosophical medium as nowhere else exists will, I believe, be found. A crystalline clear- 28 ENGLISH PROSE ness, a golden eloquence, a supreme urbanity, a mixture of fancy and logic which is nowhere else discernible except in Plato, an allowance for sentiment and unction which exists side by side with a readiness to play the game of sheer rough-and-tumble argument at any moment and with any adversary ; a preciseness of phrase which is never dull or dry ; a felicity of ornament and illustration which never condescends to the merely popular or trivial, and is never used to cloak controversial feebleness ; an incapacity of petulance, and an omnipresence of good breeding — these are the characteristics of the style of Berkeley. Since his time only one analogue has appeared to him, and that analogue exhibits rather glaringly the defects of the qualities which, without defects, Berkeley possessed. Take reverence, logic, and taste from Berkeley, and there would be left an English version of the late M. Renan ; add taste, reverence, and logic to M. Renan, and you would hardly have made a Berkeley. Nay, if Berkeley is inferior, as he no doubt is, to Plato, it may be questioned whether the inferiority is due to any other cause than the inferi- ority of the English of the eighteenth century after Christ, as a medium of literary expression, to the Greek of the fourth century before. George Saintsbury. THE ADVANTAGES OF IMMATERIALISM As a balance, therefore, to this weight of prejudice, let us throw into the scale the great advantages that arise from the belief of immaterialism, both in regard to religion and human learning. The being of a God, and incorruptibility of the soul, those great articles of relig'^ion, are they not proved with the clearest and most immediate evidence ? When I say the being of a God, I do not mean an obscure g'eneral cause of things, whereof we have no conception, but God, in the strict and proper sense of the word. A being whose spirituality, omnipresence, providence, omnisci- ence, infinite power and goodness, arc as conspicuous as the existence of sensible things, of which (notwithstanding the falla- cious pretences and affected scruples of sceptics) there is no more reason to doubt, than of our own being'^. Then with relation to human sciences : in natural philosophy, what intricacies, what obscurities, what contradictions hath the belief of matter led men into I To say nothing about the numberless disputes about its extent, continuity, homogeneity, gravity, divisibility, etc., do they not pretend to explain all these things by bodies operating on bodies, according to the laws of motion ? and yet, are they able to comprehend how any one body should move another ? Nay, admitting there was no difficulty in reconciling the notion of an innate body with a cause ; or in conceiving how an accident niight pass from one body to another ; yet, by all their strained thoughts and extravagant suppositions, have they been able to reach the mechanical production of any one animal or vegetable body ? Can they account, by the laws of motion, for sounds, tastes, smells, or colours, or for the regular course of things ? Have they accounted by physical principles for the aptitude and contrivance, even of the most inconsiderable parts of the universe ? But laying aside matter and corporeal causes, and admitting onl)- the efficiency of an all-perfect mind, are not all the effects of nature easy and intelligible ? If the phenomena arc nothing else 30 ENGLISH PROSE but ideas ; God is a spirit, but matter an unintelligent, unper- ceiving being. If they demonstrate an unlimited power in their cause ; God is active and omnipotent, but matter an inert mass. If the order, regularity, and usefulness of them can never be sufficiently admired ; God is infinitely wise and provident, but matter destitute of all contrivance and design. These surely are great advantages in physics. Not to mention that the appre- hension of a distant Deity naturally disposes men to a negligence in their moral actions, which they would be more cautious of, in case they thought him immediately present, and acting on their minds without the interposition of matter, or unthinking second causes. Then in metaphysics ; what difficulties concerning entity in abstract, substantial forms, hylarchic principles, plastic natures, substance and accident, principle of individuation, possibility of matters thinking, origin of ideas, the manner how two inde- pendent substances so widely different as spirit and matter, should mutually operate on each other ? what difficulties, I say, and endless disquisitions concerning these and innumerable other the like points, do we escape by supposing only spirits and ideas ? Even the mathematics themselves, if we take away the absolute existence of extended things, become much more clear and easy ; the most shocking paradoxes and intricate speculations, in those sciences depending on the infinite divisibility of finite extension, which depends on that supposition. But what need is there to insist on the particular sciences ? Is not that opposition to all science whatsoever, the phrensy of the ancient and modem sceptics, built on the same foundation .-' Or can you produce so much as one argument against the reality of corporeal things, or in behalf of that avowed utter ignorance of their natures, which doth not suppose their reality to consist in an external absolute existence ? Upon this supposition, indeed, the objection from the change of colours in a pigeon's neck, or the appearances of a broken oar in the water, must be allowed to have weight. But these and the like objections vanish, if we do not maintain the being of absolute external originals, but place the reality of things in ideas, fleeting indeed, and changeable, however not changed at random, but according" to the fixed order of nature. For herein consists that constancy and truth of things, which secures all the concerns of life, and distinguishes that which is real from the irregular visions of the fancy. (From TJiird Dialogue of Hylas and Philonous.) BISHOP BERKELE V THE VIRTUES OF VICE Next morning, Alciphron and Lysicles said the weather was so fine that they had a mind to spend the day abroad, and take a cold dinner under a shade in some pleasant part of the country. Whereupon, after breakfast, we went down to a beach about half a mile off; where we walked on the smooth sand, with the ocean on one hand, and on the other wild l^roken rocks, intermixed with shady trees and springs of water, till the sun began to be uneasy. We then withdrew into a hollow, glade, between two rocks, where we had no sooner seated ourselves than Lysicles, addressing him- self to Euphranor, said : — " I am now ready to perform what I undertook last evening, which was to show that there is nothing in that necessary connection which some men imagine between those principles you contend for, and the public good. I freely own that, if this question were to be decided by the authority of legislators or philosophers, it must go against us. P^or these men generally take it for granted that vice is pernicious to the public ; and that men cannot be kept from vice but by the fear of Cod, and the sense of a future state : whence they are induced to think the belief of such things necessary to the wellbeing of human kind. This false notion hath prevailed for many ages in the world, and done an infinite deal of mischief, being in truth the cause of religious establishments, and gaining the protection and encouragement of laws and magistrates to the clergy and their superstitions. Even some of the wisest among the ancients, who agreed with our sect in denying a Providence and the immortality of the soul, had nevertheless the weakness to be under the common prejudice that vice was hurtful to societies of men. But England hath of late produced great philosophers who have undeceived the world, and proved to a demonstration that private vices are public benefits. This discovery was reserved to our times, and our sect hath the glory of it." Crito. " It is possible some men of fine understanding might in former ages have had a glimpse of this important truth ; but it may be presumed they lived in ignorant times and bigoted countries, \\hich were not ripe for such a discovery." Lysicles. " Men of narrow capacities and short sight, Ijeing 32 ENGLISH PROSE able to see no further than one hnk in a chain of consequences, are shocked at small evils which attend upon vice. But those who can enlarge their view, and look through a long series of events, may behold happiness resulting from vice, and good springing out of evil in a thousand instances. To prove my point I shall not trouble you with authorities or far-fetched argu- ments, but bring you to plain matter of fact. Do but take a view of each particular vice, and trace it through its effects and con- sequences, and then you will clearly perceive the ad\antage it brings to the puljlic. " Drunkenness, for instance, is by your sober moralists thought a pernicious vice, but it is for want of considering the good effects that flow from it. For, in the first place, it increases the malt- tax, a principal source of his Majesty's revenue, and thereby promotes the safety, strength, and gloiy of the nation. vSecondly, it employs a great number of hands, the brewer, the maltster, the ploughman, the dealer in hops, the smith, the carpenter, the brasier, the joiner, with all other artificers necessary to supply those enumerated with their respective instruments and utensils. All which advantages are procured from drunkenness in the vulgar way, by strong beer. This point is so clear it will admit of no dispute. But while you are forced to allow this much, I foresee you are ready to object against drunkenness occasioned by wines and spirits, as exporting wealth into foreign countries. But you do not reflect on the number of hands which even this sets on work at home ; the distillers, the vintners, the merchants, the sailors, the shipwrights, with all those who are employed towards victualling and fitting out ships, which, upon a nice com- putation, will be found to include an incredible variety of trades and callings. Then, for freighting our ships to answer these foreign importations, all our manufacturers throughout the king- dom are employed, the spinners, the weavers, the dyers, the wool- combers, the carriers, the packers. And the same may be said of many other manufactures, as well as the woollen. And if it be further considered, how many men are connected by all the fore- mentioned ways of trade and business, and the expenses of these men and their families, in all the several articles of convenient and fashionable living, whereby all sorts of trades and callings, not only at home, but throughout all parts wherever our commerce reaches, are kept in employment ; you will be amazed at the wonderfully extended scene of benefits which arise from the single BISHOP BERKELEY jj vice of drunkenness, so much run down and declaimed against by all grave reformers. With as much judgment your half-witted folks are accustomed to censure gaming. And indeed (such is the ignorance and folly of mankind) a gamester and a drunkard are thought no better than public nuisances, when, in truth, they do each in their way greatly conduce to the public benefit. If you look only on the surface and first appearance of things, you will no doubt think playing at cards a very idle and fruitless occupation. But dive deeper, and you shall perceive this idle amusement employs the card-maker, and he sets the paper-mills at work, by which the poor rag-man is supported ; not to mention the builders and workers in wood and iron that are employed in erecting and furnishing these mills. Look still deeper, and you shall find that candles and chair-hire employ the industrious and the poor, who by these means come to be relieved by sharpers and gentlemen, who would not give one penny in charity. But you will say that many gentlemen and ladies are ruined by play, without considering that what one man loses another gets, and that consequently as many are made as ruined : money changeth hands, and in this circulation the life of business and commerce consists. When money is spent, it is all one to the public who spends it. Suppose a fool of quality becomes the dupe of a man of mean birth and circumstance, who has more wit ; in this case what harm doth the public sustain ? Poverty is relieved, ingenuity is rewarded, the money stays at home, and has a lively circulation, the ingenious sharper being enabled to set up an equipage and spend handsomely, which cannot be done without employing a world of people. But you will perhaps object that a man reduced by play may be put upon desperate courses, hurtful to the public. Suppose the worst, and that he turns highwayman ; such men have a short life and a merry. While he "lives, he spends, and for one that he robs makes twenty the better for his expense. And when his time is come, a poor family may be relieved by fifty or a hundred pounds set upon his head. A vulgar eye looks on many a man as an idle or mischievous fellow whom a true philosopher, viewing in another light, considers as a man of pleasant occupation who diverts himself, and benefits the public ; and that with so much ease, that he employs a multitude of men, and sets an infinite machine in motion, without knowing the good he does, or even intending to do any ; which is peculiar to that gentleman-like way of doing good by vice. I was considering VOL. IV D 34 ENGLISH PROSE play, and that insensibly led me to the advantages which attend robbing on the highway. O the beautiful and never-enough- admired connection of vices ! It would take too much time to show how they all hang together, and what an infinite deal of good takes its rise from every one of them. One word for a favourite vice, and I shall leave you to make out the rest your- self, by applying the same mode of reasoning to all other vices. A poor girl, who might not have the spending of half-a-crown a week in what you call an honest way, no sooner hath the good fortune to be a kept mistress, but she employs milliners, laun- dresses, tire-women, mercers, and a number of other trades, to the benefit of her country. It would be endless to trace and pursue every particular vice through its consecjuences and effects, and show the vast advantage they all are of to the public. The true springs that actuate the great machine of commerce, and make a flourishing state, have been hitherto little understood. Your moralists and divines have for so many ages been corrupting the genuine sense of mankind, and filling their heads with such absurd principles, that it is in the power of few men to contem- plate real life with an unprejudiced eye. And fewer still have sufficient parts and sagacity to pursue a long train of conse- cjuences, relations, and dependences, which must be done in order to form a just and entire notion of the public weal. But, as 1 said before, our sect hath produced men capable of these dis- coveries, who have displayed them in full light, and made them public for the benefit of their country. ( F rom A IcipJi ran . ) THE DELUSIONS OF SENSE Body is opposite to spirit or mind. We have a notion of spirit from thouglit and action. We have a notion of body from resist- ance. So far forth as there is real power, there is spirit. So far forth as there is resistance, there is inability or want of power ; that is, there is a negation of spirit. We are embodied, that is, we are clogged by weight, and hindered by resistance. But in respect of a perfect spirit, there is nothing hard or impenetrable ; there is no resistance to the deity ; nor hath he any body ; nor is tlie supreme being united to the world, as the soul of an animal BISHOP BERKELEY 35 is to its body, which necessarily implieth defect, both as an in- strument and as a constant weight and impediment. Thus much it consists with piety to say, that a di\ ine agent doth by his virtue permeate and govern the elementary fire or light which sei'ves as animal spirit to enliven and actuate the whole mass, and all the members of this visible world. Nor is this doctrine less philosophical than pious. We see all nature alive or in motion. We see water turned into air, and air rarified and iTiade elastic by the attraction of another medium, more pure indeed, more subtile and more volatile than air. But still, as this is a moveable, extended, and conseciuently a corporeal being, it cannot be itself the principle of motion, but leads us naturally and necessarily to an incorporeal spirit or agent. We are conscious that a spirit can begin, alter, or determinate motion, but nothing of this appears in body. Nay, the contrary is evident, both to experiment and reflection. Natural phenomena arc only natural appearances. They are, therefore, such as we see and perceive them. Their real and objective natures are, therefore, the same ; passi\e without any- thing active, fluent and changing without anything permanent in them. However, as tliese make the first impressions, and the mind takes her first flight and spring, as it were, by resting her foot on these objects, they are not only first considered by all men, but most considered by most men. They and the phantoms that result from those appearances, the children of imagination grafted upon sense, such for example as pure space, are thought by many the very first in existence and stability, and to embrace and comprehend all other beings. Now although such phantoms as corporeal forces, absolute motions and real spaces, do pass in physics for causes and principles, yet are they in truth but hypotheses, nor can they be the objects of real science. They pass nevertheless in physics conversant about things of sense, and confined to experiments and mechanics. But when we enter the province of the philo- sophia prima, we discover another order of beings, mind and its acts, permanent being, not dependent on corporeal things, nor resulting'', nor connected, nor contained ; but containing, connect- ing, enlivening the whole frame ; and imparting those motions, forms, cjualities, and that order and symmetry to all those transient phenomena which we term the course of nature. It is with our faculties as with our affections, what first seizes 36 ENGLISH PROSE holds fast. It is a vulgar theme that man is a compound of contrarieties, which breed a restless struggle in his nature between flesh and spirit, the beast and the angel, earth and heaven, e\er weighed down and ever bearing up. During which conflict the character fluctuates ; when either side prevails, it is then fixed for vice or virtue. And life from different principles takes a different issue. It is the same in regard to our faculties. Sense at first besets and overbears the mind. The sensible appearances are all in all ; our reasonings are employed about them ; our desires terminate in them ; we look no farther for realities or causes, till intellect begins to dawn, and cast a ray on this shadowy scene. We then perceive the true principle of unity, identity and exist- ence. Those things that before seemed to constitute the whole of being, upon taking an intellectual view of things, prove to be but fleeting phantoms. (From Siris.) THE PEBBLE ARGUMENT ANSWERED BY ANTICIPATION Before we proceed any further, it is necessary to spend some time in answering objections which may probably be made against the principles hitherto laid down. In doing of which if I seem too prolix to those of quick apprehensions, I hope it may be pardoned, since all men do not equally apprehend things of this nature ; and I am willing to be understood of every one. First, then, it will be objected that by the foregoing principles, all that is real and substantial in nature is banished out of the world ; and instead thereof a chimerical scheme of ideas takes place. All things that exist, exist only in the mind, that is, they are purely notional. What therefore becomes of the sun, moon, and stars ? What must we think of houses, rivers, mountains, trees, stones ; nay, even of our own bodies ? Are all these but so many chimeras and illusions on the fancy ? To all which, and whatever else of the same sort may be objected I answer, that by the principles promised, we are not deprived of any one thing in nature. Whatever we see, feel, hear, or in any wise conceive or under- stand, remains as secure as e\-er, and is as real as ever. There is BISHOP BERKELEY 37 a rerum natura^ and the distinction between realities and chimeras retains its full force. This is evident from sections 29, 30, and 2)'})^ where we have shown what is meant by real things in oppo- sition to chimeras or ideas of our own framing ; but then they both equally exist in the mind, and in that sense are like ideas. I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with mine eyes and touch with my hands do exist, I make not the least question. The only thing- whose existence we deny, is that which the philosophers call matter or corporeal substance. And in doing of this, there is no damage done to the rest of man- kind, who, I daresay, will never miss it. The atheist indeed will want the colour of an empty name to support his impiety ; and the philosophers may possibly find they have lost a great handle for trifling and disputation. If any man thinks this detracts from the existence or reality of things, he is very far from understanding what hath been promised in the plainest terms I could think of Take here an abstract of what has been said. There are spiritual substances, minds, or human souls which will or excite ideas in themselves at pleasure ; but these are faint, weak, and unsteady in respect of others they perceive by sense, which being impressed upon them according to certain rules or laws of nature, speak themselves the effect of a mind more powerful and wise than human spirits. These latter are said to have more reality in them than the former ; by which is meant that they are more affecting, orderly, and distinct, and that they are not fictions of the mind perceiving them. And in this sense, the sun that I see by day is the real sun, and that which I imagine by night is the idea of the former. In the sense here given of reality, it is evident that every vegetable, star, mineral, and in general each part of the mundane system, is as much a real being by our principles as any other. Whether others mean anything by the term really different from what I do, I entreat them to look into their own thoughts and see. It will be urged that thus much at least is true, to wit, that we take away all corporeal substances. To this my answer is, that if the word substance be taken in the vulgar sense, for a combination of sensible qualities, such as extension, solidity, weight, and the like ; this we cannot be accused of taking away. But if it be taken in a philosophic sense, for the support of acci- dents or qualities without the mind, then indeed I acknowledge 38 ENGLISH PROSE that we take it away, if one may be said to take that away which never had any existence, not even in the imagination. But say you, it sounds very harsh to say we eat and drink ideas, and are clothed with ideas. I acknowledge it does so, the word idea not being used in common discourse to signify the several combinations of sensible qualities, which are called things ; and it is certain that any expression which varies from the familiar tise of language will seem harsh and ridiculous. But this doth not concern the truth of the proposition, which in other words is no more than to say, we are fed and clothed with those things which we perceive immediately by our senses. The hardness or softness, the colour, taste, warmth, figure, and such like qualities, which, combined together, constitute the several sorts of victuals and apparel, have been shown to exist only in the mind that perceives them ; and this is all that is meant by calling them ideas ; which word, if it was as ordinarily used as " thing," would sound no harsher or more ridiculous than it. I am not for disputing about the propriety, but the truth of the expression. If therefore you agree with me that we eat and drink, and are clad with the immediate objects of sense which cannot exist unperceived or without the mind ; I shall readily grant it is more proper or con- formable to custom that they should be called things rather than ideas. If it be demanded why I make use of the word idea, and do not rather, in compliance with custom, call them things, I answer, I do it for two reasons : First, because the term " thing," in con- tradistinction to " idea," is generally supposed to denote some- what existing without the mind : secondly, because "thing" hath a more comprehensive signification than " idea," including spirits or thinking things as well as ideas. Since, therefore, the objects of sense exist only in the mind, and are withal thoughtless and inactive, I chose to mark them by the word " idea," which implies those properties. But say what we can, some one perhaps may be apt to reply, he will still believe his senses, and never suffer any arguments, how plausible soever, to prevail over the certainty of them. Be it so, assert the evidence of sense as high as you please, we are willing to do the same. That what I see, hear, and feel doth exist, that is to say, is perceived by me, I no more doubt than I do of my own being. But I do not see how the testimony of sense can be alleged as a proof for the existence of any thing BISHOP BERKELE Y 39 which is not perceived by sense. We are not for having any man turn sceptic, and disbeheve his senses ; on the contrary, we give them all the stress and assurance imaginable ; nor are there any principles more opposite to scepticism than those we have laid down, as shall be hereafter clearly shown. (From Principles of Human Knowledge.) WILLIAM LAW [William Law (1686-1761) was born in 1686 at King's Cliff in North- amptonshire, where his father was a grocer. He entered as a sizar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1705, took his B. A. degree and was elected Fellow of Ennnanuel in 1708, and received holy orders in 1711. For some years he resided at Cambridge, taking pupils ; but in 17 14 he had to resign his Fellow- ship because he could not conscientiously take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration which were imposed on the accession of George I. For some years it is not easy to trace the course of his life, but some time before 1727 he became an inmate in the house of Mr. Gibbon at Putney, the grandfather of the historian, as tutor to his son, whom he accompanied to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His pupil left the university without a degree, and Law returned to Mr. Gibbon's house, his whole stay there lasting more than twelve years. On the death of Mr. Gibbon the Putney establishment was broken up, and Law returned to his native county, and settled first at Thrapston, and then in a house of his own at King's Cliff. Two pious ladies. Miss Hester Gibbon, a sister of his pupil, and Mrs. Hutchison, widow of an M. P. , joined him for the sake of his spiritual direction ; and the " Hall Yard " (the name of Law's residence) became the centre of an establishment not unlike that at Little Gidding under Nicolas Ferrar. Almshouses and schools were built and endowed, and Law's outer life consisted mainly in attending to these, and in ministering to the poor of the parish. He attended every service at the Parish Church, and observed regularly all the canonical hours of devotion. He strongly disapproved of clerical marriages, and remained a bachelor until his death in the spring of 1761. His whole life was an endeavour to follow out literally the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. A complete list of Law's works, wliich fill nine 8vo volumes, will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. '\ As a writer of English prose, William Law holds a very high rank ; but the reasons why his writings, with one or two e.xceptions, have been, until quite recent years, so little known and appreciated are not far to seek. In his various phases of mind he was quite out of sympathy with the popular current of thought iill through the Georgian era. He began as a marked high churchman and nonjuror, and, indeed, never lost his sympathies in that direction to the end of his life, though they were certainly crossed by 42 ENGLISH PROSE another influence in his later years. There were of course numbers, especially of the clergy, who would agree with him generally in these views. But few would take quite the same line that he did. That odd mixture of the "methodist" (in the i8th century sense of the tenii) and the high churchman, though intelligible enough now, was a strange anomaly then. Even his strictly practical treatises, the Christian Perfection and the Serious Call, though they produced, directly or indirectly, an immense effect, did not cjuite hamionise with any of the phases of religious thought that were then rife. They savoured too much of enthusi- asm to suit the orthodox, and too much of legalism to suit the evangelical. His later and (so called) mystic works, which to mapy are now by far the most interesting and suggestive of all his writings, appeared to the plain, matter of fact, and rather prosaic age in which they were written, sheer nonsense, and hardly con- sistent with sanity. Of course there were exceptions, and the few who did admire Law, admired him enthusiastically; but mysticism, and especially mysticism tinctured with Behmenism, was quite alien from the tone of that scccuhiin rationalisticum, and still more so from the popular evangelicalism which followed. And Law was not less out of sympathy with the philosophy than with the religion of his age. He set himself steadily against the dominant school of Locke, which he thought responsible for the unspiritual tone of the period. A writer who is thus antagonistic in every way to the spirit of his time can scarcely expect to be popular ; and probably Law neither expected nor desired to be so. It is wonderful, however, to ol^serve how, more than one hundred and thirty years after his death, the interest in him seems to be awakened. From the point of view of the present work, such an awakening must be looked upon as a hopeful sign. Masters of English Prose are not so plentiful that we can afford to allow one who stands in the very first rank to slip into oblivion. And it would be difficult to find many who combine as Law does so much vigour and raciness of thought and diction, so pure and luminous a style, such brilliant, if somewhat grim, humour, such pungent sarcasm, such powers of reasoning. There is, indeed, a stern severity about the writer which is very characteristic of the man ; but it is equally characteristic that amid this sternness he some- times breaks out into passages of sweet tenderness, which are all the more touching from their contrast with the ruggedness of their surroundings. Like many other men and writers, Law became WILLIAM LAW 43 softened and mellowed with age, as any one may see who com- pares, say, The Spirit of Love with the Letters to the Bishop of Bangor. It is difficult to do full justice to Law by giving extracts from his writings ; because one of his chief merits lies in the con- scientiousness of his reasoning. He never loses sight of his subject, and, granting his premisses, it is impossible to put a pin's point between his deductions from them. He is, moreover, a singularly equal writer ; unlike the good Homer, he never nods, never descends below himself. One might take passages almost at random, and yet convey as favourable an impression of him, as by carefully selecting specimens which shew him at his best. The following selections, therefore, have been made, not on the principle of picking out the plums, but simply as illustrations of the various stages in the development of his very remarkable mind. J, H. Overton. CONP^IRMATION Amongst the \ain contemptible things whereof your lordship would create an abhorrence in the laity are the trifles and niceties of authoritative benedictions, absolutions, excommunications. Again, you say, that to expect the grace of God from any hands but His own is to affront Him. And, that all depends upon God and ourselves ; that human benedictions, human absolutions, human excommunications, have nothing to do with the favour of God. It is evident from these maxims (for your lordship asserts them as such) that whatever institutions are observed in any Christian society, upon this supposition, that thereby grace is conferred through human hands, or by the ministry of the clergy, such institutions ought to be condemned, and are condemned by your lordship, as trifling, useless, and affronting to God. There is an institution, my lord, in the yet established Church of England, which we call confirmation. It is founded upon the express words of Scripture, primitive observance, and the universal practice of all succeeding ages in the Church. The design of this institution is, that it should be a means of conferring grace, by the prayer and imposition of the bishop's hands, on those who have been already baptized. But yet, against all this authority both divine and human, and the express order of our own Church, your lordship teaches the laity that all human benedictions are useless niceties, and that to expect God's grace from any hands but His own is to affront Him. If so, my lord, what shall we say in defence of the Apostles ? We read (Acts viii. 14) that when Philip the deacon had baptized the Samaritans, the Apostles sent Peter and John to them, who having pra^'cd, and laid their hands on them, they received the Holy Ghost, who before was fallen upon none of them ; only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. WILLIAM LA IV 45 My lord, several things are here out of question : First, that something else, even in the Apostolical times, was necessary, besides baptism, in order to qualify persons to become complete members of the body, or partakers of the grace of Christ. They had been baptized, yet did not receive the Holy Ghost till the Apostles' hands were laid upon them. Secondly, that God's graces were not only conferred by means of human hands, but of some particular hands, and not others. Thirdly, that this office was so strictly appropriated to the Apostles, or chief governors of the Church, that it could not be performed by inspired men, though empowered to work miracles, who were of an inferior order, as Philip the deacon. Fourthly, that the power of the Apostles for the performance of this ordinance was entirely owing to their superior degree in the ministry, and not to any extraordinary gifts they were endowed with, for then Philip might have performed it who was not wanting in those gifts, himself being- an evangelist and worker of miracles ; which is a demonstration that his in- capacity arose from his inferior degree in the ministry. And now, my lord, are all human benedictions niceties and trifles ? Are the means of God's grace in His own hands alone ? Is it wicked, and affronting to God, to suppose the contrary ? How then come Peter and John to confer the Holy Ghost by the imposition of their hands ? How comes it, that they appropriate this office to themselves ? Is the dispensation of God's grace in His own hands alone ? And yet can it be dispensed to us by the ministry of some persons, and not by that of others ? Were the Apostles so wicked as to distinguish themselves by a pretence to vain powers which God had reserved to Himself, and which your lordship supposes, from the title of your preser- vative, that it is inconsistent with common sense to imagine that God could or would have communicated to men ? Had any of your lordship's well-instructed laity lived in the Apostles' days, with what indignation must they have rejected this senseless chimerical claim of the Apostles ? They must have said. Why do you, Peter and John, pretend to this blasphemous power ? Whilst we believe the gospel, we cannot expect the grace of God from any hands but His own. You give us the Holy Ghost ! You confer the grace of God ! Is it not impious to think that He should make our improvement in grace depend upon your ministry, or hang our salvation on any particular order of clergymen ? We know that God is Just and good and true, 46 ENGLISH PROSE and that all depends upon Him and ourselves, and that human benedictions are trifles. Therefore, whether you Peter, or you Philip, or both or neither of you lay your hands upon us, we are neither better nor worse ; but just in the same state of grace as we were before. This representation has not one syllable in it but what is founded on your lordship's doctrine, and perfectly agreeable to it. The late most pious and learned Bishop Beveridge has these remarkable words upon Confirmation : " How any bishops in our age dare neglect so considerable a part of their office, I know not ; but fear they will have no good account to give of it, when they come to stand before God's tribunal." But we may justly, and therefore I hope with decency, ask your lordship, how you dare perform this part of your office ? For you have condemned it as trifling and wicked ; as trifling, because it is a human benediction ; as wicked, because it supposes grace conferred by the hands of the bishop. If therefore any baptized persons should come to your lordship for confirmation, if you are sincere in what you have delivered, your lordship ought, I humbly conceive, to make them this declaration : — " My friends, for the sake of decency and order, I have taken upon me the episcopal character, and, according to custom, which has long prevailed against common sense, am now to lay my hands upon you. But I beseech you, as you ha\e any regard to the truth of the Gospel, or to the honour of God, not to imagine there is anything in this action, more than a useless empty ceremony ; for if you expect to have any spiritual advantage from human benedictions, or to receive grace from the imposition of a bishop's hands, you affront God, and, in effect, renounce Christi- "^"''•y- (From Second Letter to BisJiop of I^aiigor.) CHARACTER OF OURANIUS OURANIUS is a holy priest, full of the spirit of the gospel, watching, labouring, and praying for a poor country village. Everj'^ soul in it is as dear to him as himself; and he loves them all as he loves himself, because he prays for them all as often as he prays for himself. JVILIJAni LAIV 47 If his whole hfe is one continual exercise of great zeal and labour, hardly ever satisfied with any degrees of care and watch- fulness, it is because he has learned the great value of souls, by so often appearing before God, as an intercessor for them. He never thinks he can love, or do enough for his flock ; because he never considers them in any other view than as so many persons that, by receiving the gifts and graces of God, are to become his hope, his joy, and his crown of rejoicing. He goes about his parish, and visits everybody in it ; but visits in the same spirit of piety that he preaches to them ; he \isits them, to encourage their virtues, to assist them with his advice and counsel, to discover their manner of life, and to know the state of their souls, that he may intercede with God for them according to their particular necessities. When Ouranius first entered into holy orders, he had a haughtiness in his temper, a great contempt and disregard for all foolish and unreasonable people ; but he has prayed away this spirit, and has now the greatest tenderness for the most obstinate sinners ; because he is always hoping that God will sooner or later hear those prayers that he makes for their repentance. The rudeness, ill-nature, or perverse behaviour of any of his flock used at first to betray him into impatience ; but now it raises no other passion in him, than a desire of being upon his knees in prayer to God for them. Thus have his prayers for others altered and amended the state of his own heart. It would strangely delight }ou to see with what spirit he converses, with what tenderness he reproves, with what affection he e.xhorts, and with what vigour he preaches ; and it is all owing to this, because he reproves, e.xhorts, and preaches to those, for whom he first prays to God. This devotion softens his heart, enlightens his mind, sweetens his temper, and makes everything that comes from him instructive, amiable, and affecting. At his first coming to his little village, it was as disagreeable to hini as a prison, and every day seemed too tedious to be endured in so retired a place. He thought his parish was too full of jjoor and mean people, that were none of them fit for the conversation of a gentleman. This put him upon a close application to his studies. He kept much at home, writ notes upon Homer and Plautus, and some- 48 ENGLISH PROSE times thought it hard to be called to pray by any poor body, when he was just in the midst of one of Homer's battles. This was his polite, or I may rather say, poor, ignorant turn of mind, before devotion had got the government of his heart. But now his days are so far from being tedious, or his parish too great a retirement, that he now only wants more time to do that variety of good, which his soul thirsts after. The solitude of his little parish is become matter of great comfort to him, because he hopes that God has placed him and his flock there, to make it their way to heaven. He can now not only converse with, but gladly attend and wait upon the poorest kind of people. He is now daily watching over the weak and infirm, humbling himself to perverse, rude, ignorant people, wherever he can find them ; and is so far from desiring to be considered as a gentleman, that he desires to be used as the servant of all ; and in the spirit of his Lord and Master girds himself, and is glad to kneel down and wash any of their feet. He now thinks the poorest creature in his parish good enough, and great enough, to deserve the humblest attendances, the kindest friendships, the tenderest offices he can possibly show them. He is now so far from wanting agreeable company, that he thinks there is no better conversation in the world, than to be talking with poor and mean people about the kingdom of heaven. All these noble thoughts and divine sentiments are the effects of his great devotion ; he presents every one so often before God, in his prayers, that he never thinks he can esteem, reverence, or serve those enough, for whom he implores so many mercies from God. Ouranius is mightily affected with this passage of Holy Scripture, " The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." This makes him practise all the arts of holy living, and aspire after every instance of piety and righteousness, that his prayers for his flock may have their full force, and avail much with God. For this reason he has sold a small estate that he had, and has erected a charitable retirement for ancient poor people, to live in prayer and piety, that his prayers being assisted by such good works, may pierce the clouds, and bring down blessings upon those souls committed to his care. WILLIAM LA IV 49 Ouranius reads how God himself said unto Abimelech concern- ing Abraham, He is a prophet ; he shall pray for thee and thou shalt live. And again, how He said of Job, And my servant Job shall pray for you, for him will I accept. From these passages Ouranius justly concludes, that the prayers of men eminent for holiness of life have an extraordinary power with God ; that He grants to other people such pardons, reliefs, and blessings, through their prayers, as would not be granted to men of less piety and perfection. This makes Ouranius exceeding studious of Christian perfection, searching after every grace and holy temper, purifying his heart all manner of ways, fearful of every error and defect in his life, lest his prayers for his flock should be less availing with God, through his own defects in holiness. This makes him careful of every temper of his heart, give alms of all he hath, watch and fast and mortify and live according to the strictest rules of temperance, meekness, and humility, that he may be in some degree like an Abraham or a Job in his parish, and make such prayers for them as God will hear and accept. These are the happy effects which a devout intercession hath produced in the life of Ouranius. (From Serious Call.) THE FALL OF ADAM Ag.\in, is it not the plain letter of Scripture that Adam died the day that he did eat of the earthly tree ? Have we not the most solemn asseveration of God for the truth of this ? Was not the change which Adam found in himself a demonstration of the truth of this fact ? Instead of the image and likeness of God in which he was created, the beauty of paradise, he was stript of all his glory, confounded at the shameful deformity of his own bod)', afraid of being seen, and unable to see himself uncovered ; delivered up a slave to the rage of all the stars and elements of this world, not knowing which way to look, or what to do in a world where he was dead to all he formerly felt, and alive only to a new and dreadful feeling of heat and cold, shame and fear, and horrible remorse of mind at his sad entrance in a world whence paradise and God and his own glory were departed. Death enough surely ! VOL. IV E b 50 ENGLISH PROSE Death in its highest reahty, much greater in its change, than when an animal of earthly flesh and blood is only changed into a cold lifeless carcase. A death that in all nature has none like it, none equal to it, none of the same nature with it, but that which the angels died, when from angels of God they became living devils, serpentine hideous forms, and slaves to darkness. Say that the angels lost no life, that they did not die a real death, because they are yet alive in the horrors of darkness ; and then you may say, with the same truth, that Adam did not die when he lost God, and paradise, and the first glory of his creation, because he afterwards lived and breathed in a world which was outwardly, in all its parts, full of the same curse that was within himself, but further, not only the plain letter of the text, and the change of state which Adam found in himself, demonstrated a real death to his fonner state ; but the whole tenor of Scripture absolutely requires it ; all the system of our redemption proceeds upon it. For tell me, I pray, what need of a redemption, if Adam had not lost his first state of life .'' What need of the deity to enter again into the human nature, not only as acting, but taking a birth in it, and from it ? What need of all this mysterious method, to bring the life from above again into man, if the life from above had not been lost ? Say that Adam did not die, and then tell me what sense or reason there is in saying that the Son of God became man, and died on the cross to restore to him the life that he had lost ? It is true indeed that Adam, in his death to the divine life, was left in the possession of an earthly life. And the reason is plain why he was so, for his great sin consisted in liis desire and longing to enter into the life of this world, to know its good and evil as the animals of this world do ; it was his choosing to have a life of this world after this new manner, and his entering upon the means of attaining it, that was his death to the divine life. And therefore it is no wonder, that after his death to heaven and paradise he found himself still alive as an earthly animak For the desire of this earthly life was his great sin, and the possession of this earthly life was the proper punishment and misery that belonged to his sin ; and therefore it is no wonder, that that life which was the proper punishment, and real discovery of the fruits of his sin, should subsist after his sin had put an end to the life of paradise and God in him. But wonderful it is to a great degree, that any man should imagine that Adam did not die on the day of his sin, WILLIAM LA IV 51 because he had as good a hfe left in him, as the beasts of the field have. For is this the life, or is the death that such animals die, the life and death with which our redemption is concerned ? Are not all the Scriptures full of a life and death of a much higher kind and nature ? And do not the Scriptures make man the perpetual subject to whom this higher life and death belong ? What ground or reason therefore can there be to think of the death of an animal of this world, when we read of the death that Adam was assuredly to die the day of his sin ? For does not all that befel him on the day of his sin show that he lost a much greater life, suffered a more dreadful change, than that of giving up the breath of this world ? For in the day of his sin, this angel of paradise, this lord of the new creation, fell from the throne of his gdory (like Lucifer from heaven) into the state of a poor, awakened, naked, distressed animal of gross flesh and blood, unable to bear the odious sight of that which his newly opened eyes forced him to see ; inwardly and outwardly feeling the curse awakened in himself and all the creation, and reduced to have only the faith of the devils, to believe and tremble. Proof enough surely, that Adam was dead to the life and light and spirit of God ; and that, with this death, all that was divine and heavenly in his soul, his body, his eyes, his mind and thoughts, was quite at an end. Now this life to which Adam then died, is that life which all his posterity are in want of, and cannot come out of that state of that death into which he fell, but by having this first life of heaven born again in them. Now is there any reason to say, that mankind, in their natural state, are not dead to that first life in which Adam was created, because they are alive to this world ? Yet this is as well as to say, that Adam did not die a real death, because he had afterwards an earthly life in him. How comes our Lord to say, that unless ye eat the flesh, and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you ? Did he mean you have no earthly life in you ? How comes the Apostle to say, he that hath the Son of God hath life, but he that hath not the Son of God hath not life ? Does he mean the life of this world ? No. But both Christ and His Apostle assert this great truth, that all mankind are in the state of Adam's first death till they are made alive again by a birth of the Son and Holy Spirit of God brought forth in them. So plain is it, both from the express letter and spirit of Scripture, that Adam died a real death to the kingdom 52 ENGLISH PROSE of God in the day of his sin. Take away this death, and all the scheme of our redemption has no ground left to stand upon. Judge now, Academicus, who leaves the letter of Scripture, your learned friends, or the author of this appeal ? They leave it, they oppose it, in that which is the very life of Christianity. For without the reality of a new birth, founded on the certainty of a real death on the fall of Adam, the Christian scheme is but a skeleton of empty words, a detail of strange mysteries between God and man, that do nothing, and have nothing to do. (From Second Part of The Spirit of Prayer.) THE ATONEMENT Look we now at the Scripture account of the nature of the atonement and satisfaction of Christ, and this will further show us, that it is not to atone, or alter any quality or temper in the divine mind, nor for the sake of God, but purely and solely to atone, to quench and overcome that death and wrath and hell, under the power of which man was fallen. As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. This is the whole work, the whole nature, and the sole end of Christ's sacrifice of Himself; and there is not a syllable in Scripture that gives you any other account of it ; it all consists, from the beginning to the end, in carrying on the one work of regeneration ; and therefore the Apostle says, the first Adam was made a living soul, but the last or second Adam was made a quickening spirit, because sent into the world by God, to quicken and revive that life from above, which we lost in Adam. And He is called our ransom, our atonement, etc., for no other reason but because that which He did and suffered in our fallen nature, was as truly an efficacious means of our being born again to a new heavenly life, of Him and from Him, as that which Adam did, was the true and natural cause of our being born in sin, and the impurity of bestial flesh and blood. And as Adam, by what he did, may be truly said to have purchased our misery and corruption, to have bought death for us, and to have sold us into a slavery under the world, the flesh, and the devil, though all that we have from him, or suffer by him is only the inward working of his own nature and life within us ; WILLIAM LAW 53 so, according to the plain meaning of the words, Christ may be said to Idc our price, our ransom, and atonement, though all that He does for us, as buying, ransoming, and redeeming us, is done wholely and solely by a birth of His own nature and spirit brought to life in us. The Apostle says, Christ died for our sins. Thence it is that He is the great sacrifice for sin, and its true atonement. But how and why is He so ? The Apostle tells you in these words. The sting of death is sin. But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore Christ is the atonement of our sins, when by and from Him, li\-ing in us, we ha\-e victory over our sinful nature. The Scriptures frequently say, Christ gave Himself for us. But what is the full meaning, effect, and benefit of His thus gi\ing Himself for us 1 The Apostle puts this out of all doubt, when he says, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to Himself a peculiar people; that He might deli\er us from this present evil world, from the curse of the law, from the power of Satan, from the wrath to come ; or, as the Apostle says in other words, that He might be made unto us wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification. The whole truth therefore of the matter is plainly this : Christ given for us, is neither more nor less than Christ given into us. And He is in no other sense our full, perfect, and sufficient atone- ment, than as His nature and spirit are born and formed in us, which so purge us from our sins, that we are thereby in Him, and by Him dwelling in us, laecome new creatures, having our con\er- sation in heaven. As Adam is truly our defilement and impurity by his biilh in us, so Christ is our atonement and purification, by our being born again of Him, and ha\ing thereby quickened and revived in us that first divine life, which was extinguished in Adam. And therefore, as Adam purchased death for us, just so in the same manner, in the same degree, and in the same sense, Christ purchases life for us. And each of them solely by their own inward life within us. This is the one Scripture account of the whole nature, the sole end, and full efficacy of all that Christ did, and sufTered for us. It is all comprehended in these two texts of Scripture, (i) That Christ was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. (2) That as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. 54 ENGLISH PROSE From the beginning to the end of Christ's atoning work, no other power is ascribed to it, nothing else is intended by it, as an appeaser of wrath, iDut the destroying of all that in man which comes from the devil ; no other merits, or value, or infinite worth, than that of its infinite ability, and sufficiency to quicken again in all human nature that heavenly life that died in Adam. (From The Spirit of Love) DIVINE KNOWLEDGE Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth, is the only way by which any man ever did, or ever can attain divine knowledge and divine goodness. To knock at any other door but this is but like asking life of that which is itself dead, or praying to him for bread who has nothing but stones to give. Now strange as all this may seem to the laljour-learned possessor of far-fetched book-riches, yet it is saying no more, nor anything else, Ijut that which Christ said in these words, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God. For if classic Gospellers, linguist critics, Scripture-logicians, salvation orators, able dealers in the grammatic powers of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman phrases, idioms, tropes, figures, etc. etc. can show, that by raising themselves high in these attainments, they are the very men that are sunk down from themselves into Christ's little children of the kingdom of God, then it may be also said, that he who is labouring, scheming, and fighting for all the riches he can get from both the Indies, is the very man that has left all to follow Christ, the very man that labours not for the meat that perishes. Show me a man whose heart has no desire, or prayer in it, but to love God with his whole soul and spirit, and his neighbour as himself, and then you have shown me the man who knows Christ, and is known of Him ; — the best and wisest man in the world, in whom the first paradisical wisdom and goodness are come to life. Not a single precept in the Gospel but is the precept of his own heart, and the joy of that new-born heavenly love which is the life and light of his soul. In this man all that came from the old serpent is trod under his feet ; not a spark of self, of pride, of wrath, of envy, of covetousness or worldly wisdom can have WILLIAM LAW 55 the least abode in him, because that love, which fulfilleth the whole law and the prophets, that love which is God and Christ, both in angels and men, is the love that gives birth, and life, and growth to every thing that is either thought or word or action in him. And if he has no share or part with foolish errors, cannot be tossed about with every wind of doctrine, it is because, to be always governed by this love is the same thing as to be always taught of God. (p^om Address to the Clergy.) SAMUEL RICHARDSON [Samuel Richardson was born in 1689, and died in 1761. He was a printer by trade, and was the author of three works: Pamela, or I'irttic Rewarded (1740) ; Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1749) ; and The History of Sir Charles Gratidison (1753).] The conscious and ostentatiously avowed end of Richaixlson's writings was moral edification ; and doubtless much of what he wrote can serve no other. In Pamela he designed to recommend virtue to young women through a series of familiar letters ; and the result is a monument of vulgarity, and an outrage upon morals. Sir Charles Grandison carries no less hea\'y a burden of moral purpose ; but the picture of the ideal man, whose sole fault is a trifling hastiness of temper, and whom fortune has endowed with vast wealth, an agreeable person, engaging manners, and every- thing that can make virtue easy and vice detestable — if frequently ridiculous and not seldom fatiguing, is never offensive. But Richardson is to be reckoned in the not inconsiderable number of those artists whose practice has triumphed over their principles. In Clarissa he attempted to compose a tract to prove (apparently) that a sincere belief in religion may consist with the most unbridled profligacy ; and he contri\ed to produce one of the masterpieces of English literature. The characters are dis- criminated with nicety, and sustained with consistency ; of the innumerable details scarce one is irrelevant ; of the countless subtle strokes, scarce one superfluous ; for Richardson was no niggler. The conduct of the plot is a model of ingenuity and artifice ; every incident contributes to the one supreme effect ; nor is any other modern tragedy so informed with the sense of the imminent inevitable. The character of Clarissa is noble and affecting. She meets her peril with courage, her ruin with dignity, and her end with cheerfulness. But it is in the portrayal of 58 ENGLISH PROSE Lovelace that Richardson's genius reaches its cuhnination. His plottings may seem, at first sight, too elaborate, his villanies over- charged, his confidences childish. But regarded in their true proportions, they combine to produce one harmonious and triumphant whole, which at once satisfies and captivates the imagination. Among the villains of fiction Lovelace still stands lonely, inimitable, and unapproached. Richardson has undoubtedly a stronger claim than any other writer to be considered the father of the English novel ; and in many of the essentials of his art he has never been surpassed. His convention of a correspondence between the characters is probably as good as a better, though he does nothing to help it out by inventing excuses for such an excess of letter writing. His style, at its worst, is diffuse, clumsy, and involved ; and, at its best, is no more than blunt, direct, and unaffected. When his characters are discussing the " social problems " of their day the diction is no better than the average contemporary pam- phleteer's. His vocabulary is commonplace, shows no trace of selection, and is disfigured by that abuse of the current poetical phraseology into which even a Thomson was sometimes be- trayed, and by force of which tears are transformed into " pearly fugitives." We are not, indeed, to look to Richardson for that nameless quality of style which is the property of a scholar and a gentleman, such as Fielding was ; for Richardson belonged to neither category. On the other hand, it would be grossly unfair to be blind to the great knack of extremely racy and idiomatic colloquial English which he displays in his dialogue ; or to grudge him the merits of straightforwardness and spirit ; or to refuse to admit that at times he shows complete command over an instru- ment of moderate powers and compass. The effects, indeed, which he more than once achieves seem out of all proportion to the poverty of his means. Simple as these are, who that has been thrilled with righteous anger at Lovelace's triumph, or melted with compassion at Clarissa's death, will venture to deny that, twice or thrice at all events, he has turned them to the best possible account ? J. H. MILL.A.R. MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE Fnday, three o'clocJ;. . . . My sister is but tliis moment gone from me. She came up all in a flame ; which obliged me abruptly to lay down my pen ; she ran to me — Spirit ! said she, tapping my neck a little foo hard. And is it come to this at last ! Do you beat me, Ijclla ? Do you call this beating you ? only tapping your shoulder thus, said she, tapping again more gently — this is what we expected it would come to — you want to be independent — my father has lived too long for you ! 1 was going to speak with vehemence ; but she put her handkerchief before my mouth, very rudely — You have done enough with your pen, mean listener, as you are ! But know that neither your independent scheme, nor any of your visiting ones, will be granted you. Take your course, perverse one ! Call in your rake to help you to an independence upon your parents, and a dependence upon him ! — Do so ! — Prepare this moment — resolve what you will take with you — to-morrow you go — depend upon it to-morrow you go ! — No longer shall you stay here, watching and creeping about to hearken to what people say. — 'Tis determined, child ! — You go to-morrow — my brother would have come up to tell you so ; but I persuaded him to the contrary — for I know not what had become of you if he had. — Such a letter ! such an insolent, such a conceited challenger ! Oh thou vain creature ! But prepare yourself, I say — to-morrow you go — my brother will accept of your bold challenge ; but it must be personal : and at my uncle Antony's — • or perhaps at Mr. Solmes's — Thus she ran on, almost foaming with passion ; till, quite out of patience, I said, No more of your violence, 15clla. — Had I o 6o ENGLISH PROSE known in what way you designed to come up, you should not have found my chamber-door open — talk to your servant in this manner. Unlike you, as I bless God I am, I am nevertheless your sister — and let me tell you that I won't go to-morrow, nor the next day, nor next day to that — except I am dragged away by violence. What ! not if your father or your mother command it — Girl ! said she, intending another word, by her pause and manner before it came out. Let it come to that, Bella ; then I shall know what to say. But it shall be from their own mouths, if I do — not from yours, nor your Betty's. — And say another word to me, in this manner, and be the consecjuence what it may, 1 will force myself into their presence ; and demand what I have done to be used thus ! Come along child I Come along, Meekness — taking my hand, and leading me towards the door — Demand it of them now— you'll find both your despised parents together ! — What ! does your heart fail you ? — for I resisted being thus insolently offered to be led, and pulled my hand from her. I want not to be led, said I ; and since I can plead your invitation, I will go : and was posting to the stairs accordingly in my passion — l)ut she got between me and the door, and shut it — Let me first, bold one, said she, apprise them of your visit — for your own sake let me — for my brother is with them. But yet opening it again, seeing me shrink back — Go, if you will ! — Why don't you go ? — Why don't you go, Miss ? — following me to my closet, whither I retired, with my heart full, and pulled the sash-door after me ; and could no longer hold in my tears. Nor would I answer one word to her repeated aggravations, nor to her demands upon me to open the door (for the key was on the inside) ; nor so much as turn my head towards her, as she looked through the glass at me. And at last, which vexed her to the heart, I drew the silk curtain that she should not see me, and down she went muttering all the way. Is not this usage enough to provoke a rashness never before thought of? As it is but too probable that I may be hurried away to uncle's without being able to give you previous notice of it ; I beg 3'ou that as soon as you shall hear of such a violence, you SAMUEL RICHARDSON 6i would send to the usual place, to take back such of your letters as may not have reached my hands, or to fetch any of mine that may be there. — May you, my dear, be always happy, prays your Clarissa Harlowe. (From Clarissa.) MR. LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. At J/rs. Sinclair's^ Monday aflcrnoon. . . Dreading what might happen as to her intellects, and being very apprehensive that she might go through a great deal before morning (though more violent she could not well be with the worst she dreaded), I humoured her, and ordered Will to endeavour to get a coach directly, to carry us to Hampstead ; I cared not at what price. Robbers, with whom I would have terrified her, she feared not — / was all her fear, I found ; and this house her terror : for 1 saw plainly that she now believed that Lady Betty and Miss Montague were both impostors. But her mistrust is a little of the latest to do her service ! And, O Jack, the rage of love, the rage of revenge is upon me ! by turns they tear me ! The progress already made — the women's instigations — the power I shall have to try her to the utmost, and still to marry her, if she be not to be brought to cohabitation — let me perish, Belford, if she escape me now 1 Will is not yet come back. Near eleven. Will is this moment returned. No coach to be got either for love or money. Once more she urges — to Mrs. Leeson's, let me go, Lovelace ! Good Lovelace, let me go to Mrs. Leeson's. What is Miss Montague's illness to my terror ? For the Almighty's sake, Mr. Lovelace ! — her hands clasped ! Oh, my angel ! What a wildness is this ! Do you know, do you see, my dearest life, what appearances your causeless apprehensions have given you ? Do you know it is past eleven o'clock ? Twelve, one, two, three, four — any hour, I care not — if you mean me honourably, let me go out of this hated house ! 62 ENGLISH PROSE Thou'lt observe, Belford, that though this was written after- wards, yet (as in other places) I write it as it was spoken and happened, as if I had retired to put down every sentence as spoken. I know thou hkest this lively present-tense manner, as it is one of my peculiars. Just as she had repeated the last words, " If you mean me honourably, let me go out of this hated house," in came Mrs. Sinclair, in a great ferment — And what, pray, Madam has this house done to you .'' Mr. Lovelace, you have known me some time ; and if I have not the niceness of this lady, I hope I do not deserve to be treated thus ! She set her huge arms akimbo — Hoh ! Madam, let me tell you that I am amazed at your freedoms with my character ! And, Mr. Lovelace (holding up and violently shaking her head), if you are a gentleman and a man of honour — Having never before seen anything but obsequiousness in this woman, little as she liked her, she was frighted at her masculine air and fierce look — God help me ! she cried, what will become of me now ! then, turning her head hither and thither, in a wild kind of amaze. Whom have I found protector ! What will become of me now ! I will be your protector, my dearest love ! — But indeed you arc uncharitably severe upon poor Mrs. Sinclair ! Indeed you are ! — She is a gentlewoman born, and the relict of a man of honour ; and though left in such circumstances as to oblige her to let lodgings, yet would she scorn to be guilty of a wilful baseness. I hope so — it may be so — I may be mistaken — but — but there is no crime, I presume, no treason to say I don't like her house. The old dragon straddled up to her, with her arms kimboed again, her eye-brows erect, like the bristles upon a hog's back, and scowling over her shortened nose, more than half hid her ferret eyes. Her mouth was distorted. She pouted out her blubber-lips, as if to bellows up wind and sputter into her horse- nostrils ; and her chin was curdled, and more than usually prominent with passion. With two " Hoh — Madams," she accosted the frighted fair one ; who, terrified, caught hold of my sleeve. I feared she would fall into fits ; and with a look of indigna- tion, told Mrs. Sinclair that these apartments were mine ; and I SAMUEL RICHARDSON 63 could not imagine what she meant, either by Hstening to what passed between me and my spouse, or to come in uninvited ; and still more I wondered at her giving herself these strange liberties. 1 may be to blame, Jack, for sufifering this wretch to give herself these airs ; but her coming in was without my orders. The old beldam, throwing herself into a chair, fell a blubbering and exclaiming. And the pacifying of her, and endeavouring to reconcile the lady to her, took up till near one o'clock. And thus, between terror, and the late hour, and what followed, she was diverted from the thoughts of getting out of the house to Mrs. Leeson's, or anywhere else. MR. LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. Tuesday moniiiig. And now, Belford, 1 can go no further. The affair is over. Clarissa lives. And I am, Your humble servant, R. LOVKLACK. (From the Same.) MR. BELFORD TO ROBERT LOVELACE, Y.^0. Thiasday night. I MAY as well try to write ; since, were I to go to bed, 1 shall not sleep. I never had such a weight of grief upon my mind in my life, as upon the demise of this admirable woman ; whose soul is now rejoicing in the regions of light. You may be glad to know the particulars of her happy exit. I will try to proceed ; for all is hush and still ; the family retired ; but not one of them, and least of all her poor cousin, 1 daresay, to rest. At four o'clock, as I mentioned in my last, I was sent for down ; and as thou usedst to like my descriptions, 1 will give thee the woful scene that presented itself to me as I approached the bed. The Colonel was the first that took my attention, kneeling on the side of the bed, the lady's right hand in both his, which his face covered, bathing it with his tears ; although she had been 64 ENGLISH PROSE comforting him, as the women since told me, in elevated strains, but broken accents. On the other side of the bed sat the good widow ; her face overwhelmed with tears, leaning her head against the bed's head in a most disconsolate manner ; and turning her face to me, as soon as she saw me — O Mr. Belford, cried she with folded hands — the dear lady — a heavy sob permitted her not to say more. Mrs. Smith, with clasped fingers and uplifted eyes, as if imploring help from the only power which could give it, was kneeling down at the bed's foot, tears in large drops trickling down her cheeks. Her nurse was kneeling between the widow and Mrs. Smith, her arms extended. In one hand she held an ineffectual cordial which she had just been offering her dying mistress ; her face was swollen with weeping (though used to such scenes as this) ; and she turned her eyes towards me, as if she called upon me by them to join in the helpless sorrow ; a fresh stream bursting from them as I approached the bed. The maid of the house with her face upon her folded arms, as she stood leaning against the wainscot, more audibly expressed her grief than any of the others. The lady had been silent a few minutes, and speechless, as they thought, moving her lips without uttering a word ; one hand, as I said, in her cousin's. But when Mrs. Lovick, on my approach, pronounced my name — O Mr. Belford, said she, with a faint inward voice, but very distinct nevertheless — Now! — Now — (in broken periods she spoke). I bless God for His mercies to His poor creature — all will soon be over — a few — a very few moments — will end the strife — and I shall be ha])py ! Comfort here, sir (turning her head to the Colonel) — comfort my cousin — see ! the blame — able kind- ness — he would not wish me to be happy — so soon ! Here she stopped for two or three minutes, earnestly looking upon him. Then resuming — My dearest cousin, said she, be comforted — what is dying but the common lot ? — -The mortal frame may seem to labour — but that is all ! — It is not so hard to die as I believed it to be ! — The preparation is the difficulty — I bless God I have had time for that — the rest is worse to beholders than to me ! — -I am all l^Icssed hope — hope itself. She looked what she said, a sweet smile beaming over her countenance. After a short silence — Once more, my dear cousin, said she but still in broken accents, commend me most dutifully to my father and mother. — There she stopped. And then proceeding SAMUEL RICHARDSON 65 — To my sister, to my brother, to my uncles — and tell them, I bless them with my partinj,-- breath— for all their goodness to me — even for their displeasure, I bless them — most happy has been to me my punishment here ! Happy indeed ! She was silent for a few moments, lifting up her eyes, and the hand her cousin held not between his. Then O death ! said she, where is thy sting ! (the words I remember to have heard in the burial-service read over my uncle and poor Belton). And after a pause — It is good for me that I was afflicted ! Words of Scripture, I suppose. Then turning towards us, who were lost in speechless sorrow — O dear, dear gentlemen, said she, you know not what foretastes — what assurances — and there she again stopped, and looked up as if in a thankful rapture, sweetly smiling. Then turning her head towards me — Do you, sir, tell your friend that I forgive him ! And I pray to God to forgive him ! Again pausing, and lifting up her eyes, as if praying that he would. Let him know how happily I die : — and that, such as my own, I wish to be his last hour. She was again silent a few moments : and then resuming — My sight fails me ! — Your voices only — (for we both applauded her Christian, her divine frame, though in accents as broken as her own) and the voice of grief is ahke in all. Is not this Mr. Morden's hand ? pressing one of his with that he had just let go — Which is Mr. Belford's ? holding out the other. I gave her mine. God Almighty bless you both, said she, and make you both — in your last hour — for you must come to this — happy as I am. She paused again, her breath growing shorter ; and after a few minutes — And now, my dearest cousin, give me your hand — nearer — -'still nearer — drawing it towards her ; and she pressed it with her dying lips — God protect you, dear, dear sir, and once more receive my best and most grateful thanks — and tell my dear Miss Howe, and vouchsafe to see and to tell my worthy Norton — -she will be one day, I fear not, though now lowly in her fortunes, a saint in heaven — tell them both that I remember them with thankful blessings in my last moments ! And pray God to give them happiness here for many, many years for the sake of their friends and lovers ; and a heavenly crown hereafter ; and such assurances of it, as I have, through the all-satisfying merits of our blessed Redeemer. Her sweet voice and broken periods methinks still fill my ears, and never will be out of my memory. After a short silence, in VOL. IV F 66 ENGLISH PROSE a more broken and faint accent — And you, Mr. Belford, pressing my hand, may God preserve you, and make you sensible of all your errors — you see, in me, how all ends — may you be- — and down sank her head upon her pillow, she fainting away and drawing from us her hands. We thought she was then gone ; and each gave way to a violent burst of grief. But soon showing signs of returning life, our attention was again engaged ; and I besought her, when a little recovered, to complete in my favour her half-pronounced blessing. She waved her hand to us both, and bowed her head six times, as we have since recollected, as if distinguishing every person present ; not forgetting the nurse and the maid-servant ; the latter having approached the bed, weeping as if crowding in for the divine lady's last blessing ; and she spake faltering and inwardly — Bless — bless — bless — you all — and — ^now — and now — (holding up her almost lifeless hands for the last time) come — -O come— Blessed Lord JESUS ! And with these words, the last but half-pronounced, expired : — such a smile, such a charming serenity overspreading her sweet face at the instant, as seemed to manifest her eternal happiness already begun. O Lovelace ! — But I can write no more ! , -o' (From the Same.) BISHOP BUTLER [Joseph Butler, born at Wantage, 1692, was trained for the Presbyterian ministry, but went to Oriel College, Oxford, 17 14, and eventually took orders in the Church of England. In 1718 (largely through Dr Samuel Clarke, with whom he had corresponded) he was made preacher at the Rolls Chapel, where he delivered the famous Sermons, published 1726. From 1721 to 1725 he held the Rectory of Haughton, and from 1725 to 1733 that of Stanhope, in Durham. In 1733 he became chaplain to Lord Chancellor Talbot. In 1736 he published his Analogy of Religion, natural and revealed, to the constitution and course of Nature. Thereafter he became successively Bishop of Bristol (1737), Dean of St. Paul's (1740), and Bishop of Durham (1750). He died at Bath and was buried in Bristol Cathedral 1752.] Bishop Butler was a logical writer, not simply in the sense of one who argues correctly when he argues at all, but of one who loves to reason. He was a man of understanding ; and his understanding was applied rarely to political or ecclesiastical subjects, chiefly and with peculiar fondness to broad general questions of ethics and natural theology. His leading idea was the Stoic idea of an order of nature, parallel with the lesser world of human beings, or (more accurately) forming one system with it. Perhaps in the Sermons (of which by far the greater number are philosophical) the idea of a Law of nature predomi- nates, and in the Analogy the idea of an Order of nature. But the two ideas pervade the whole of his thought. Virtue is defined by Butler as " following Nature," vice as " departing from " it. Metaphysically, vice is contrary to the nature and reason of things : — this was Dr. Clarke's way of approaching the subject, and Butler will not cjuarrel with it. But he himself prefers the argument from experience ("vice is a violation of our own nature ") as, in the Analogy he prefers the argument from design to Clarke's a firiori argument for the existence of God. " It is from considering the relations which the several appetites and passions in the inward frame have to each other, and above 68 ENGLISH PROSE all the supremacy of reflection or conscience, that we get the idea of the system or constitution of human nature." Our nature (he says) is made for virtue as a watch is made to measure time. Whereas in the brutes there is nothing but appetites and passions ; they have no conscience. Their passions have power ; but they have no principle in them possessing authority. Man has such a principle in conscience : " To preside and govern, from the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world." In Butler's writings, the influence of Greek philosophy is very plain and his very notion of an order or system of the passions leads us beyond the Stoics to Aristotle and his "golden mean." This is no place to estimate the value of his ethical philosophy, and his criticisms of predecessors and contemporaries. But it may be remarked that the influence of the Scrmotis has been con- fessedly greater in ethics than the influence of the Attalogy in apologetics. No doubt some of the sayings in the latter have become household words (for example : " Probability is the very guide of life"); but the former will rank higher even in literary merit. The crisp clear sentences are features of the author's style in both ; but when he rises to eloquence it is in the Sermons (as in the often copied sermon on Balaam). He could on occasion deliver what is called a " practical " discourse (as in the " Charity Sermons ") ; and his " Charge to the Clergy of Durham " contained plain speaking that brought some obloquy on the speaker. But even on such occasions his thoughts seemed to fall naturally into the form of arguments. He appeals at all times to the reason, and only incidentally to the feelings. There is probably no writer from whose works so little could be pruned away as a mere superfluity of oratory. His very quotations from Scripture are usually of aphorisms ; and very characteristic is his fondness for Jesus the Son of Sirach, with whom he has certainly helped to make the English people familiar. Yet there is no one who is more successful in infecting his readers with his own ardour and impressing them with a feeling of his entire sincerity. James Bonar. THE HABIT OF CASUAL READING Though it is scarce possible to avoid judging, in some way or other, of almost every thing which offers itself to one's thoughts ; yet it is certain, that many persons, from difierent causes, never exercise their judgment upon what comes before them, in the way of determining whether it be conclusive and holds. They are perhaps entertained with some things, not so with others ; they like, and they dislike : but whether that which is proposed to be made out be really made out or not ; whether a matter be stated according to the real truth of the case, seems to the generality of people merely a circumstance of no considera- tion at all. Arguments are often wanted for some accidental purpose : but proof as such is what they never want for themselves ; for their own satisfaction of mind, or conduct in life. Not to mention the multitudes who read merely for the sake of talking, or to qualify themselves for the world, or some such kind of reasons ; there are, even of the few who read for their own entertainment, and have a real curiosity to see what is said, several, which is prodigious, who have no sort of curiosity to see what is true : I say, curiosity ; because it is too obvious to be mentioned, how much that religious and sacred attention, which is due to truth, and to the important question. What is the rule of life ? is lost out of the world. For the sake of this whole class of readers, for they are of different capacities, different kinds, and get into this way from different occasions, I have often wished, that it had been the custom to lay before people nothing in matters of argument but premises, and leave them to draw conclusions themselves ; which, though it could not be done in all cases, might in many. The great number of books and papers of amusement, which, of one kind or another, daily come in one's way, have in part occasioned, and most perfectly fall in with and humour this idle 70 ENGLISH PROSE way of reading and considering things. By this means, time even in soHtude is happily got rid of, without the pain of atten- tion ; neither is any part of it more put to the account of idleness, one can scarce forbear saying, is spent with less thought, than great part of that which is spent in reading. Thus people habituate themselves to let things pass through their minds, as one may speak, rather than to think of them. Thus by use they become satisfied merely with seeing what is said, without going any further. Review and attention, and even forming a judgment, becomes fatigue ; and to lay anything before them that requires it, is putting them quite out of their way. (From the Preface to Seriiioiis.) ACTIONS NATURAL AND UNNATURAL The whole argument which I have been now insisting upon, may be thus summed up, and given you in one view. The nature of man is adapted to some course of action or other. Upon comparing some actions with this nature, they appear suitable and correspondent to it : from comparison of other actions with the same nature, there arises to our view some unsuitableness or disproportion. The correspondence of actions to the nature of the agent renders them natural : their disproportion to it, unnatural. That an action is correspondent to the nature of the agent, does not arise from its being agreeable to the principle which happens to be the strongest : for it may be so, and yet be quite disproportionate to the nature of the agent. The corre- spondence therefore, or disproportion, arises from somewhat else. This can be nothing but a difference in nature and kind, altogether distinct from strength, between the inward principles. Some then are in nature and kind superior to others. And the correspondence arises from the action being comformable to the higher principle ; and the unsuitableness from its being contrary to it. Reasonable self-love and conscience are the chief or superior principles in the nature of man : because an action may be suitable to this nature, though all other principles be violated ; but becomes unsuitable, if either of those are. Conscience and self-love, if we understand our true happiness, always lead us the same way. Duty and interest are perfectly coincident ; for the BISHOP BUTLER 71 most part in this world, but entirely and in every instance if we take in the future, and the whole ; this being implied in the notion of a good and perfect administration of things. Thus they who have been so wise in their generation as to regard only their own supposed interest, at the expense and to the injury of others, shall at last find, that he who has given up all the advantages of the present world, rather than violate his conscience and the relations of life, has infinitely better provided for himself, and secured his own interest and happiness. ,„ {yxoxw Scniioiis.) SELF-LOVE AND APPETITES Every man hath a general desire of his own happiness ; and likewise a variety of particular affections, passions, and appetites to particular external objects. The former proceeds from, or is self-love ; and seems inseparable from all sensible creatures, who can reflect upon themselves and their own interest or happiness, so as to have that interest an object to their minds : what is to be said of the latter is, that they proceed from, or together make up that particular nature, according to which man is made. The object the former pursues is somewhat internal, our own happiness, enjoyment, satisfaction ; whether we have, or have not, a distinct particular perception what it is, or wherein it consists : the objects of the latter are this or that particular external thing, which the affections tend towards, and of which it hath always a particular idea or perception. The principle we call self-love never seeks anything external for the sake of the thing, but only as a means of happiness or good : particular affections rest in the external things themselves. One belongs to man as a reasonable creature reflecting upon his own interest or happiness. The other, though quite distinct from reason, are as much a part of human nature. That all particular appetites and passions are towards external things themselves^ distinct from Xhe pleasure arising from them, is manifested from hence ; that there could not be this pleasure, were it not for that prior suitableness between the object and the passion : there could be no enjoyment or delight from one thing more than another, from eating food more than from swallowing a stone, if there were not an affection or appetite to one thing more than another. ^^^^^^^ ^^^ S^^^^^^ 72 ENGLISH PROSE PROVIDENCE PUNISHES VICE, AND MITIGATES THE PUNISHMENT And though the natural miseries which are foreseen to be annexed to a vicious course of life are providentially intended to prevent it, in the same manner as civil penalties are intended to prevent civil crimes ; yet those miseries, those natural penalties admit of and receive natural reliefs, no less than any other miseries, which could not have been foreseen or prevented. Charitable providence then, thus manifested in the course of nature, which is the example of our heavenly Father, most evidently leads us to relieve, not only such distresses as were unavoidable, but also such as people by their own faults have brought upon themselves. The case is, that we cannot judge in what degree it was intended they should suffer, by considering what, in the natural course ofL things, would be the whole bad con- sequences of their faults, if those consec[uences were not prevented when nature has provided means to prevent great part of them. We cannot, for instance, estimate what degree of present suffer- ings God has annexed to drunkenness, by considering the diseases which follow from this vice, as they would be if they admitted of no reliefs or remedies ; but by considering the remaining misery of those diseases, after the application of such remedies as nature has provided. For as it is certain on the one side, that those diseases are providential corrections of intemperance, it is as certain on the other, that the remedies are providential mitigations of those corrections ; and altogether as much providential, when administered by the good hand of charity in the case of our neighbour, as when administered by self-love in our own. Thus the pain, and danger, and other distresses of sickness and poverty remaining, after all the charitable relief which can be procured ; and the many uneasy circumstances which cannot but accompany that relief, though distributed with all supposable humanity ; these are the natural corrections of idleness and debauchery, supposing these vices brought on those miseries. And very severe correc- tions they are : and they ought not to be increased by withholding that relief, or by harshness in the distribution of it. Corrections of all kinds, even the most necessary ones, may easily exceed their proper bound : and when they do so, they become mischievous ; BISHOP BUTLER 73 and mischievous in the measure they exceed it. And the natural corrections which we have been speaking of would be excessive, if the natural mitigations provided for them were not administered. (From the Same.) THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBABILITY IN RELIGION Persons who speak of the evidence of religion as doubtful, and of this supposed doubtfulness as a positive argument against it, should be put upon considering, what that evidence indeed is, which they act upon with regard to their temporal interests. For, it is not only extremely difficult, but in many cases absolutely impossible, to balance pleasure and pain, satisfaction and un- easiness, so as to be able to say on which side the overplus is. There are the like difficulties and impossibilities in making the due allowances for a change of temper and taste, for satiety, disgusts, ill health : any of which render men incapable of en- joying, after they have obtained what they most eagerly desired. Numberless too are the accidents, besides that one of untimely death, which may even probably disappoint the best concerted schemes : and strong objections are often seen to lie against them, not to be removed or answered, but which seem over- balanced by reasons on the other side ; so as that the certain difficulties and dangers of the pursuit are, by every one, thought justly disregarded, upon account of the appearing greater ad- vantages in case of success, though there be but little probability of it. Lastly, every one observes our liableness, if we be not upon our guard, to be deceived by the falsehood of men, and the false appearances of things : and this danger must be greatly increased, if there be a strong bias within, suppose from indulged passion, to favour the deceit. Hence arises that great uncertainty and doubtfulness of proof, wherein our temporal interest really consists ; what are the most probable means of attaining it ; and whether those means will eventually be successful. And number- less instances there are, in the daily course of life, in which all men think it reasonable to engage in pursuits, though the probability is greatly against succeeding : and to make such provision for themselves, as it is supposable they may have 74 ENGLISH PROSE occasion for, though the plain acknowledged probability is, that they never shall. Then those who think the objection against revelation, from its light not being universal, to be of weight, should observe, that the Author of Nature, in numberless instances, bestow That upon some, which He does not upon others, who seem equally to stand in need of it. Indeed He appears to bestow all His gifts with the most promiscuous variety among creatures of the same species : health and strength, capacities of prudence and of knowledge, means of improvement, riches, and all external advantages. And as there are not any two men found, of exactly like shape and features ; so it is probable there are not any two, of an exactly like constitution, temper, and situation, with regard to the goods and evils of life. Yet, not- withstanding these uncertainties and varieties, God does exercise a natural government over the world : and there is such a thing as a prudent and imprudent institution of life, with regard to our health and our affairs, under that His natural government. (From the Analogy of Religion.) THE PRACTICAL RULE OF CONDUCT It is most readily acknowledged, that the foregoing treatise is by no means satisfactory ; very far indeed from it : but so would any natural institution of life appear, if reduced into a system, together with its evidence. Leaving religion out of the case, men are divided in their opinions, whether our pleasures over- balance our pains : and whether it be, or be not, eligible to live in this world. And were all such controversies settled, which perhaps, in speculation, would be found involved in great difficulties ; and were it determined upon the evidence of reason, as nature has determined it to our hands, that life is to be preserved : yet still, the rules which God has been pleased to afford us, for escaping the miseries of it, and obtaining its satisfactions, the rules, for instance, of preserving health, and recovering it when lost, are not only fallible and precarious, but very far from being exact. Nor are we informed by nature, in future contingencies and accidents, so as to render it at all certain, what is the best method of managing our affairs. What will be the success of our temporal pursuits, in the common sense of the word success, BISHOP BUTLER 75 is highly doubtful. And what will be the success of them in the proper sense of the word ; i.e. what happiness or enjoyment we shall obtain by them, is doubtful in a much higher degree. Indeed the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, with which we are obliged to take up, in the daily course of life, is scarce to be expressed. Yet men do not throw away life or disregard the interests of it, upon account of this doubtfulness. The evidence of religion then being admitted real, those who object against it, as not satisfactory, i.e. as not being what they wish it, plainly forget the very condition of our being : for satisfaction, in this sense, does not belong to such a creature as man. And, which is more material, they forget also the very nature of religion. For, religion presupposes, in all those who will embrace it, a certain degree of integrity and honesty ; which it was in- tended to try whether men have or not, and to exercise in such as have it, in order to its improvement. Religion presupposes this as much, and in the same sense, as speaking to a man pre- supposes he understands the language in which you speak ; or as warning a man of any danger presupposes that he hath such a regard to himself, as that he will endeavour to avoid it. And therefore the question is not at all. Whether the evidence of religion be satisfactory ; but Whether it be, in reason, sufficient to prove and discipline that virtue, which it presupposes. Now the evidence of it is fully sufficient for all those purposes of proba- tion ; how far soever it is from being satisfactory, as to the purposes of curiosity or any other : and indeed it answers the purposes of the former in several respects, which it would not do if it were as overbearing as is required. One might add further ; that whether the motives or the evidence for any course of action be satisfactory, meaning here by that word, what satisfies a man that such a course of action will in event be for his good ; this need never be, and I think, strictly speaking, never is, the practical question in common matters. But the practical question in all cases is. Whether the evidence for a course of action be such, as, taking in all circumstances, makes the faculty within us, which is the guide and judge of conduct, determine that course of action to be prudent. Indeed, satisfaction that it will be for our interest or happiness, abundantly determines an action to be prudent : but evidence almost infinitely lower than this de- termines actions to be so too ; even in the conduct of every day. (From the Same.) 76 ENGLISH PROSE THE BURDEN OF MUCH TALKING The Wise Man observes, that there is a time to speak and a time to keep silence. One meets with people in the world, who seem never to have made the last of these observations. And yet these great talkers do not at all speak from their having anything to say, as every sentence shows, but only from their inclination to be talking. Their conversation is merely an exercise of the tongue : no other human faculty has any share in it. It is strange these persons can help reflecting, that unless they have in truth a superior capacity, and are in an extra- ordinary manner furnished for conversation ; if they are enter- taining, it is at their own expense. Is it possible, that it should never come into people's thoughts to suspect, whether or no it be to their advantage to show so very much of themselves .'' Oh that you would altogether hold your peace, and it should be your wisdom. Remember likewise there are persons who love fewer words, an inoffensive sort of people, and who deserve some regard, though of too still and composed tempers for you. Of this number was the son of Sirach : for he plainly speaks from experience, when he says, As hills of sands are to the steps of the aged, so is one of many words to a quiet man. But one would think it should be obvious to every one, that when they are in company with their superiors of any kind, in years, knowledge, and experience, when proper and useful subjects are discoursed of, which they cannot bear a part in ; that these are times for silence : when they should learn to hear, and be attentive ; at least in their turn. It is indeed a very unhappy way these people are in : they in a manner cut themselves out from all advantage of conversation, except that of being entertained with their own talk : their business in coming into company not being at all to be informed, to hear, to learn ; but to display them- selves ; or rather to exert their faculty, and talk without any design at all. And if we consider conversation as an entertain- ment, as somewhat to unbend the mind : as a diversion from the cares, the business, and the sorrows of life ; it is of the very nature of it, that the discourse be mutual. This I say, is implied in the very notion of what we distinguish by conversation, or BISHOP BUTLER 77 being in company. Attention to the continued discourse of one alone grows more painful often, than the cares and business we come to be diverted from. He therefore who imposes this upon us is guilty of a double offence ; arbitrarily enjoining silence upon all the rest, and likewise obliging them to this painful attention. (From Sermon On the Government 0/ the Tongue.) LORD CHESTERFIELD [Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, was born in 1694. He entered the House of Commons in 1715, and after a youth which he describes as absorbed in pedantry until liberated by his initiation into fashion- able society, he devoted much industry to acquire a facile oratorical style, and succeeded in gaining a high reputation both in the House of Commons, and, after his succession to the peerage in 1726, in the House of Lords. He spent a large part of his life on foreign embassies : was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland i" 1755. and Secretary of State in 1746. He died in 1773. His reputation in his lifetime was that of a shrewd man of the world and a cynical wit. His Miscellaneous Works, consisting partly of contributions to the periodicals of the day, were published in 1777. These have fallen into complete oblivion. Posterity has chosen instead to retain as a living classic those Letters to his Son, which were addressed to his natural son, Philip Stanhope, and which present a perfect picture of the most polite cynicism of his age — a cynicism always careful to conceal with some ostentation (if the expression is not too bold) such goodness of heart as it really contained. They were published in 1 774-] In some respects Lord Chesterfield is one of the men most typical of his age. With high natural abilities, born to fortune and posi- tion, introduced before he had reached his majority into the House of Commons, with all the opportunities for observation offered by long service on foreign embassies, the friend or acquaintance of all the men of distinction of his time, he yet left no mark upon history, and seemed to contemn the aims of ambi- tion or the possession of power under the influence of an over- mastering cynicism. Conspicuous success, he appears to have thought, might interfere with the cynical calm at which he aimed, as much as conspicuous failure. He would identify himself closely with no party ; avoided the restraints which power would have brought to him ; and above all shunned any ardent belief, or the enthusiastic support of any cause. To some slight extent he affected the character of a literary Maecenas : but the most con- spicuous episode of his life, in that character, is the collision with So ENGLISH PROSE Johnson, which brought to him an unenviable notoriety, and to us a rich inheritance, in that famous letter preserved by Boswell, which marks the highest triumph of dignified sarcasm. Within the limits which he imposed upon himself, Chesterfield's political and diplomatic career is not without importance. His literary essays were few, and were such as might be expected from a man who laboured under the impediment of self-consciousness, not seldom the accompaniment of overstrained cynicism. But, for us, he is interesting chiefly, if not solely, as the author of the Letters to his Son, which were published after his death. Other letters have been published by the late Lord Carnarvon ; but although they show different moods, they do not materially alter the impression made by the unique letters to his son, where we have Chesterfield's theory of life set forth with reiterated detail. These letters have run the whole gauntlet of every sort of criticism, from the demure expostulation of conventional propriety to the fierce outburst of Johnson's half-personal indignation, " He teaches the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master." In these letters Chesterfield gives us a complete picture of himself and his opinions. In politics he is a Whig, repeating the commonplaces of Whiggism because they appear to him to be most consistent with the moderation of common sense. To make a boast of atheism would be contrary to the rules of good breeding, and he therefore indulges his absolute contempt for religious principle in constantly sneering at the superstitions of Roman Catholicism. Flagrant immorality, and above all dishonourable conduct, would endanger the reputation of a gentleman, and on that account they are to be avoided. Industry, attention, com- petent knowledge — all these are useful because they train us to self-discipline, and strengthen us against others ; but we must take care not to push our knowledge to the length of pedantry, nor to let it overburden us for playing oiir part in the comedy of life. A superficial familiarity with the arts is useful to a fine gentleman ; but any technical acciuaintance with their practice is a thing only to be despised. Solid acquirements need not be neglected, but the chief and ruling aim of life is first to gain that outer armour which knowledge of the world gives, and then to learn how to wear it. To this end all other objects — morality, literature, the sciences and the arts, are alike secondary or sub- servient. A man is sufficiently moral if he avoids those vices which disgrace a gentleman, or interfere with his dignity and LORD CHESTERFIELD 8i independence ; sufficiently learned if he knows how to avoid mis- takes, or the display of ignorance ; sufficiently furnished with literature, if he knows how to choose his words and to give grace to his style ; sufficiently imbued with science and art if he knows how to give a superficial appreciation to their professional repre- sentatives. It is a work of supererogation to point out the defects of Chesterfield's philosophy. It is, of course, profoundly immoral, profoundly selfish, profoundly cynical. In literary taste he is almost as open to criticism. Shakespeare had scarcely any exist- ence for him ; Milton, he avows, is no favourite ; and in Dante he finds nothing but laborious and misty obscurity. These are failures of taste that lie on the very surface. The real defect, and that of which Chesterfield would most have resented the imputation, is the absolute weight of conventionality under which he is borne down. His chief aim was the attainment of a sort of cynical independence of life : as a fact he tied himself hand and foot in a very network of conventionality and routine. But on the other hand there is much that extorts our respect. It is to be observed that the inculcation of solid qualities bears a much larger part in the earlier letters, and that it is only as advancing years show how far his son fell short in the graces of life, that the letters dwell chiefly on the necessity for these. He detests cant, just as he detests casuistical quibbles. He never indulges, consciously, in any personal vanity. He allows no mis- apprehension to grow up with regard to his moti\es. He never forgets the duty of a stoical self-control. Throughout all these letters we see the indomitable bravery of a man who may be pur- suing a false aim, but who lets no disappointment, no disillusion, no failure, daunt his spirits or ruffle the imperturbable front , which he wears to the world. In his last years, and in some later letters, the cynicism failed him, disappointment broke him, ill- health conquered his spirit ; but nothing of this is allowed to appear in these letters, written over a course of thirty years to a son who disappointed all his hopes, and failed utterly to pay that sacrifice to the Graces for which his father so passionately pleaded. But the closing melancholy only shows that Chesterfield was human. If we look to the famous letters alone — and it is these that have kept his name alive — there is no breach in the armour of cynical, but withal resolute, Stoicism. If his literary taste gave him no sympathy with what was VOL. IV G 82 ENGLISH PROSE highest in literary genius, it yet preserved him from all false or spurious fashions, and made him representative of a style which was dignified, correct, and chaste. It was a part of his whole system that the form was more important than the substance, and he carried it out rigidly in his literary style. Not what was to be said, but how to say it, was his chief thought ; and no author, intent upon polishing his diction for an exacting public, could have spent more pains upon the work than Chesterfield did upon the turning of every line that went to accomplish this long penance of epistles destined to fall upon such ungenial soil. From all accounts the son was not an unworthy man ; but he was absolutely unfitted to fulfil his Mentor's aspirations in the achievement of the graces of a man of the world. The correspondence was broken off only by the son's death at the age of thirty-five. The failure of the long efforts was tragic ; but no word of complaint was drawn from the courageous cynic. Only in the weakness of old age, deafness, and decrepitude, did the dreariness of despair creep over him. H. Craik. MANNERS MAKYTH MAN Spa, zi^thjiily 1741. Dear Boy — I have often told you in my former letters (and it is most certainly true) that the strictest and most scrupulous honour and virtue can alone make you esteemed and valued by mankind ; that parts and learning can alone make you admired and celebrated by them ; but that the possession of lesser talents was most absolutely necessary towards making you liked, beloved, and sought after in private life. Of these lesser talents good breeding is the principal and most necessary one, not only as it is very important in itself, but as it adds great lustre to the more solid advantages both of the heart and the mind. I have often touched upon good breeding to you before ; so that this letter shall be upon the next necessary qualification to it, which is a genteel, easy manner, and carriage, wholly free from those odd tricks, ill habits, and awkwardnesses, which even many very worthy and sensible people have in their behaviour. However trifling a genteel manner may sound, it is of very great conse- quence towards pleasing in private life, especially the women ; which, one time or other, you will think worth pleasing ; and I have known many a man from his awkwardness, give people such a dislike of him at first, that all his merit could not get the better of it afterwards. Whereas a genteel manner prepossesses people in your favour, bends them towards you, and makes them wish to like you. Awkwardness can proceed from two causes ; either from not having kept good company, or from not having attended to it. As for your keeping good company, I will take care of that ; do you take care to observe their ways and manners, and to form your own upon them. Attention is absolutely necessary for this, as indeed it is for everything else ; and a man without attention is not fit to live in the world. When an awkward fellow first comes into the room, it is highly probable, S4 ENGLISH PROSE that his sword gets between his legs, and throws him down, or makes him stumble at least ; when he has recovered this accident, he goes and places himself in the very place of the whole room where he should not ; then he soon lets his hat fall down, and, in taking it up again, throws down his cane ; in recovering his cane, his hat falls a second time ; so that he is a quarter of an hour before he is in order again. If he drinks tea or coffee, he certainly scalds his mouth, and lets either the cup or the saucer fall, and spills the tea or coffee in his breeches. At dinner, his awkwardness distinguishes itself particularly, as he has more to do : there he holds his knife, fork, and spoon differently from other people ; eats with his knife to the great danger of his mouth, picks his teeth with his fork, and puts his spoon, which has been in his throat twenty times, into the dishes again. If he is to carve, he can never hit the joint ; but, in his vain efforts to cut through the bone, scatters the sauce in every- body's face. He generally daubs himself with soup and grease, though his napkin is commonly stuck through a button-hole and tickles his chin. When he drinks, he infallibly coughs in his glass, and besprinkles the company. Besides all this, he has strange tricks and gestures ; such as snufffng up his nose, making faces, putting his fingers in his nose, or blowing it and looking afterwards in his handkerchief, so as to make the company sick. His hands are troublesome to him, when he has not something in them, and he docs not know where to put them ; but they are in perpetual motion between his bosom and his breeches : he does not wear his clothes, and, in short, does nothing, like other people. All this, I own, is not in any degree criminal ; but it is highly disagreeable and ridiculous in company, and ought most carefully to be avoided by whoever desires to please. From this account of what you should not do, you may easily judge of what you should do ; and a due attention to the manners of people of fashion, and who have seen the world, will make it habitual and familiar to you. There is likewise an awkwardness of expression and words, most carefully to be avoided ; such as false English, bad pronunciation, old sayings, and common proverbs ; which are so many proofs of having kept bad and low company. For example ; if, instead of saying that tastes are different, and that every man has his own peculiar one, you should let off a proverb, LORD CHESTERFIELD 85 and say, That what is one man's meat is another man's poison ; or else, Every one as they Hke, as the good man said when he kissed his cow ; everybody would be persuaded that you had never kept company with anybody above footmen and house- maids. Attention will do all this ; and without attention nothing is to be done ; want of attention, which is really want of thought, is either folly or madness. You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe, at once, all the people in the room ; their motions, their looks, and their words ; and yet without staring at them, and seeming to be an observer. This quick and unobserved observation is of infinite advantage in life, and is to be acquired with care ; and, on the contrary, what is called absence, which is a thoughtless- ness, and want of attention about what is doing, makes a man so like either a fool or a madman, that, for my part, I see no real difference. A fool never has thought ; a madman has lost it ; and an absent man is, for the time, without it. Adieu ! Direct your next to me, CJic2 Monsieur C/iabcrt, Banqtiier, A Pan's; and take care I find the improvements I expect, at my return. (From Lciicrs fo /lis So;;.) THE FALSEHOOD OF COMiMONPLACES London, May 10///, 174S. De.\R Boy — I reckon that this letter will find you just returned from Dresden, where you have made your first Court Ca;-(n'a;i;;c. What inclination for courts this taste of them may have given you, I cannot tell ; but this I think myself sure of, from your good sense, that, in leaving Dresden, you have left dissipation too ; and have resumed at Leipzig that application, which, if you like courts, can alone enable you to make a good figure at them. A mere courtier, without parts or knowledge, is the most frivolous and contemptible of beings ; as, on the other hand, a man of parts and knowledge, who acquires the easy and noble manners of a court, is the most perfect. It is a trite, common- place observation that courts arc seats of falsehood and dissimu- lation. That, like many, I might say most, commonplace 86 ENGLISH PROSE observations, is false. Falsehood and dissimulation are certainly to be found at courts ; but where are they not to be found ? Cottages have them, as well as courts ; only with worse manners. A couple of neighbouring farmers, in a village, will contrive and practice as many tricks to overreach each other at the next market, or to supplant each other in the favour of the squire, as any two courtiers can do to supplant each other in the favour of their prince. Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true, that shepherds and ministers are both men ; their nature and passions the same, the modes of them only different. Having mentioned commonplace observations, I will particu- larly caution you against either using, believing, or approving them. They are the common topics of witlings and coxcombs ; those who really have wit, have the utmost contempt for them, and scorn even to laugh at the pert things that those would-be wits say upon such subjects. Religion is one of their favourite topics ; it is all priestcraft ; and an invention carried on by priests of all religions, for their own power and profit ; from this absurd and false principle flow the commonplace insipid jokes and insults upon the clergy. With these people every priest of every relig'ion is either a public or a concealed unbeliever, drunkard, and whoremaster ; whereas I conceive that priests are extremely like other men, and neither the better nor the worse for wearing a gown or a surplice ; but, if they are different from other people, probably it is rather on the side of religion and morality, or at least decency, from their education and manner of life. Another common topic for false wit, and cold raillery is matrimony. Every man and his wife hate each other cordially, whatever they may pretend, in public, to the contrary. The husband certainly wishes his wife at the devil, and the wife certainly cuckolds her husband. Whereas I presume that men and their wives neither love nor hate each other the more upon account of the form of matrimony, which has been said over them. The cohabitation indeed, which is the consequence of matrimony, makes them either love or hate more, accordingly as they respectively deserve it ; but that would be exactly the same between any man and woman who lived together without being married. LORD CHESTERFIELD 87 These and many other commonplace reflections upon nations, or professions, in general (which are at least as often false as true) are the poor refuge of people who have neither wit nor invention of their own, but endeavour to shine in company by secondhand finery. I always put these pert jackanapes out of countenance, by looking extremely grave, when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries ; and by saying well, a7id so; as if they had not done, and that the sting had still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon. Men of parts are not reduced to these shifts, and have the utmost contempt for them : they find proper subjects enough for either useful or lively conversations ; they can be witty without satire or commonplace and serious without being dull. (From the Same.) A GOOD AND A BAD STYLE &) I HAVE written to you so often of late upon good breeding, address, les matticres liatites, the graces, etc. that I shall confine this letter to another subject, pretty near akin to them, and which, I am sure, you are full as deficient in ; I mean, style. Style is the dress of thoughts ; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received as your person, though ever so well proportioned, would, if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters. It is not every understanding that can judge of matter ; but every ear can and does judge more or less of style ; and were I either to speak or write to the public, I should prefer moderate matter, adorned with all the beauties and elegancies of style, to the strongest matter in the world, ill-worded and ill-delivered. Your business is Negotiation abroad and Oratory in the House of Commons at home. What figure can you make in either case if your style be inelegant, I do not say bad ? I imagine yourself writing an office-letter to a Secretary of State, which letter is to be read by the whole Cabinet Council, and very possibly after- wards laid before Parliament ; any one barbarism, solecism, or vulgarism in it would, in a very few days, circulate through the whole kingdom to your disgrace and ridicule. For instance ; I 88 ENGLISH PROSE will suppose you had written the following letter from the Hague, to the Secretary of State at London ; and leave you to suppose the consequences of it. My Lord — I ]iad\ii%\. night, the honour of your Lordship's letter of the 24th ; and will set about doing the orders contained tliet-ein ; and if so be that I can get that affair done by the next post, I will not {'m\ fo7- to give your Lordship an account of it by next post. I have told the French Minister, as how., that if ihsii affair be not soon concluded, your Lordship would think it all long of hi/n ; and that he must have neglected for to have wrote to his Court about it. I must beg leave to put your Lordship in mind, as hotc., that I am now full three cjuarters in arrear ; and if so be that I do not very soon receive at least one half-year, I shall ei/t a very bad figure ; for tliis here place is very dear. I shall be 7'astly beholden to your Lordship for that there mark of your favour ; and so I rest., or frmaiji, Your, etc. You will tell me, possibly that this is a caricatiira of an illiberal and inelegant style ; I will admit it : but assure you, at the same time, that a despatch with less than half these faults would blow you up for ever. It is by no means sufficient to be free from faults in speaking and writing ; you must do both correctly and elegantly. In faults of this kind, it is not ille optiinus qui minimis nrgetiirj but he is unpardonable that has any at all, because it is his own fault : he need only attend to, observe, and imitate the best authors. It is a very true saying, that a man must be born a poet, but that he may make himself an orator ; and the very first principle of an orator is, to speak his own language, particularly, with the utmost purity and elegance. A man will be forgiven, even great errors, in a foreign language ; but in his own even the least slips are justly laid hold of and ridiculed. A person of the House of Commons, speaking two years ago upon naval affairs, asserted that we had then the finest navy upon the face of tJie yearth. This happy mixture of blunder and vulgarism, you may easily imagine, was matter of immediate ridicule ; but I can assure you that it continues so still, and will be remembered as long as he lives and speaks. Another, speak- ing in defence of a gentleman upon whom a censure was moved, happily said that he thought that gentleman was more liable to be thanked and rewarded, than censured. You know, I presume, that liable can never be used in a good sense. . LORD CHESTERFIELD S9 You have with you three or four of the best EngHsh authors, Dryden, Atterbury, and Swift ; read them with the utmost care, and with a particular view to their language, and they may possibly correct that curious infelicity of diction, which you acquired at Westminster. Mr. Harte excepted, I will admit that you have met with veiy few English abroad who could improve your style ; and with many, I dare say, who speak as ill as yourself, and it may be worse ; you must therefore take the more pains, and consult )-our authors and Mr. Harte the more. I need not tell you how attentive the Romans and Greeks, particularly the Athenians were to this object. It is also a study among the Italians and the French, witness their respective Academies and Dictionaries, for improving and fixing their languages. To our shame be it spoken, it is less attended to here than in any polite country ; but that is no reason why you should not attend to it ; on the contrary it will distinguish you the more. Cicero says, very truly, that it is glorious to excel other men in that very article, in which men excel brutes, speech. Constant experience has shown me, that great purity and elegance of style, with a graceful elocution, cover a multitude of faults in either a speaker or a writer. For my own part, I confess (and I believe most people are of my mind) that if a speaker should ungracefully mutter or stammer out to me the sense of an angel, deformed by barbarisms and solecisms, or larded with vulgarisms, he should never speak to me a second time, if I could help it. Gain the heart, or you gain nothing ; the eyes and the ears are the only, road to the heart. Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained. Pray have that truth ever in your mind. Eng-age the eyes by your address, air, and motions ; sooth the ears by the elegance and harmony of your diction ; the heart will certainly follow, and the whole man or woman will as certainly follow the heart. I must repeat it to you over and over again, that with all the know- ledge which you may have at present or hereafter acquire, and with all the merit that ever man had, if you have not a graceful address, liberal and engaging manners, a prepossessing air, and a good degree of eloquence in speaking and writing, you will be nobody ; but will have the daily mortification of seeing people, with not one-tenth part of your merit or knowledge, get the start of you and disgrace you both in company and in business. (From the Same.) 90 ENGLISH PROSE VOLTAIRE I consider you now as at the Court of Augustus, where, if ever the desire of pleasing animated you, it must make you exert all the means of doing it. You will see there, full as well, I dare say as Horace did at Rome, how states are defended by arms, adorned by manners, and improved by laws. Nay, you have an Horace there, as well as an Augustus ; I need not name Voltaire qui nil niolitur incpic^ as Horace himself said of another poet. I have lately read over all his works that are published, though I had read them more than once before. I was induced to this by his Siccle dc Louis XIV. which I have read but four times. In reading over all his works, with more attention I suppose than before, my former admiration of him is, I own, turned into aston- ishment. There is no one kind of writing in which he has not excelled. You are so severe a classic, that I question whether you will allow me to call his Hetiriadc an epic poem, for want of the proper number of gods, devils, witches, and other absurdities, requisite for the machinery ; which machinery is (it seems) necessary to constitute the Epopee. But whether you do or not, I will declare (though possibly to my own shame) that I never read an epic poem with near so much pleasure. I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke ; but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones. In this disposition of mind, judge whether I can read all Homer through tout de sitite. I admire his beauties ; but, to tell you the truth, when he slumbers I sleep. Virgil I confess is all sense, and therefore I like him better than his model ; but he is often languid, especially in his five or six last books, during which I am obliged to take a good deal of snuff. Besides I profess my- self an ally of Turnus's against the pious vEneas, who, like many soi-disaftt pious people, does the most flagrant injustice and vio- lence, in order to execute what they impudently call the will of Heaven. But what will you say, when I tell you truly, that I cannot possibly read our countryman Milton through. I acknow- ledge him to have some most sublime passages, some prodigious flashes of light ; but then you must acknowledge that light is often followed by darkness visible, to use his own expression. LORD CHESTERFIELD 91 Besides, not having the honour to be acquainted with any of the parties in his poem, except the Man and the Woman, the charac- ters and speeches of a dozen or two of angels and of as many devils are as much above my reach as my entertainment. Keep this secret for me, for if it should be known, I should be abused by every tasteless pedant and every solid divine in England. Whatever I have said to the disadvantage of these three poems, holds much stronger against Tasso's Gicri{sale)inne : it is true he has very fine and glaring rays of poetry ; but then they are only meteors, they dazzle, then disappear, and are succeeded by false thoughts, poor concetti^ and absurd impossibilities : witness the Fish and the Parrot extravagances, unworthy of an heroic poem, and would much better become Ariosto, who professes le coglio7terie. I have never read the Liisiade of Camoens except in a prose translation, consecjuently I have never read it at all, so shall say nothing of it ; but the Hc7triade is all sense from beginning to end, often adorned by the justest and liveliest reflections, the most beautiful descriptions, the noblest images, and the sublimest sentiments ; not to mention the harmony of the verse, in which Voltaire undoubtedly exceeds all the French poets ; should you insist upon an exception in favour of Racine, I must insist, on my part, that he at least equals him. What hero ever interested more than Henry the Fourth, who, according to the rules of epic poetry, carries on one great and long action, and succeeds in it at last ? What description ever excited more horror than those, first of the massacre, then of the famine, at Paris ? Was love ever painted with more truth and viorbidesza than in the ninth book ? Not better, in my mind, even in the fourth of Virgil. Upon the whole, with all your classical rigour, if you will but suppose St. Louis a god, a devil, or a witch, and that he appears in person, and not in a dream, the Hcnriade will be an epic poem, according to the strictest statute laws of the Epopee; but in my Court of Equity it is one as it is. (From the Same.) WILLIAM WARBURTON [William Warburton, the son of the town-clerk of Newark, was born Dec. 24, 1698. He was educated at the Grammar-schools of Oakham and Newark, but did not proceed to the University, and at sixteen entered an attorney's office. In private however he studied with great diligence, and at twenty-five was admitted to orders in the Church of England. His first work, An Alliance between Church and State (1736), attracted considerable attention, but it was not until the publication of his great book, The Divine Legation of Moses (Books i.-iii., 1738 ; iv.-vi., 1740) that his native powers and the extensive learning he had acquired were accorded full recognition. This is a very remarkable, and in many respects a very able work, but without any real or enduring value, and aptly described by Gibbon as "a monument already crumbling in the dust of the vigour and weakness of the human mind." One of the excursions, with which it abounds, into all manner of side issues, afterwards drew forth an early work of Gibbon, Critical Obsetvations on the Sixth Book of the ^neid (1770). In 1739 Warburton replied to an attack made upon Pope's Essay on Man as irreligious by Crousaz, a Swiss divine, and the defence won for him the gratitude and life-long friendship of the poet, who introduced him to many of his own powerful friends, and at death left him his literary executor — a bequest valued by Johnson at ;^4ooo. Warburton married Gertrude Tucker, a niece of Ralph Allen, in 1745, and his preferment was rapid — Preacher at Lincoln's Inn, 1746 ; Prebendary of Gloucester, 1753; King's Chaplain, 1754; Dean of Bristol, 1757; and on the nomination of Pitt, Allen's strong friend. Bishop of Gloucester, 1759. His life was a series of fierce debates, not only with his natural enemies, the Deists and Freethinkers, but also with theologians whose tenets at all differed from his own. Hume, Lowth, Voltaire, Jortin, Wesley were each in turn the object of his controversial fury. Beside the works above mentioned the most noticeable of Warburton's writings are Julian (1750), The Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (3 vols. 1753-67), and The Doctrine of Grace (1762), an attack upon Wesley. Warburton deviated from polemics into literary criticism only to produce the worst Shakespeare commentary ever published. He died in 1779.] To take by storm the Temple of Fame seems to have been the valiant resolve of the once -renowned author of Tlic Divine Legation of Moses. He flung its warders a loud defiant suinmons to surrender, and thundered at its doors. Had violence 94 ENGLISH PROSE sufficed for the achievement, so fierce and arrogant a knight of the pen would assuredly have added enduring reputation to his worldly success ; but though he proved himself an eftective soldier in the controversial campaigns of his own day, it was inevitable that the judgment of time should go in his disfavour. The sword and lance of Warburton's mental ecjuipment, however fitted to put an adversary to silence, were powerless to overawe " the incorruptible Areopagus of posterity." Churchman as he was, and in the end prelate, the weapons of his warfare were not spiritual, nor the virtues of his character and temper the dis- tinctive Christian graces. But Warburton was not all churlish priest, — " He praised me, sir," said Dr. Johnson, " when praise was of value to me " — and an estimate of the man cannot be separated from an estimate of his age. It was an age in which men proved their doctrines sound by apostolic blows and knocks, identified opinions with the individuals who professed them, and regarded truth as a kind of entity with a sharply outlined objective existence, a species of personal property, the rights to whose sole possessorship ought properly to be preferred and argued by claimants, after the procedure of a court of law. Two camps divided the thinking England into which Warburton was born. The fruitless struggle between theologian and deist, which threatened to absorb the entire mental life of the eighteenth century, and enlisted, only to squander in barren logomachies, the powers of so many of the best minds, offered a field of exercise thoroughly congenial to his nature, and he entered upon it with zeal indefatigable, and matchless insolence of temper. It must be admitted that Warburton had reasons for his assurance. Among the debaters, his contemporaries, he takes, if not the first place, at least a place in the very first rank. But no writings have so swift a foot on the road to oblivion as books of contro- versy, and notwithstanding the fact that his works occupy noble room in the catalogues of our great libraries, and that no reader can fail to recognise the immense strength of the personality that lay behind them, they can scarcely be said to belong to literature proper ; and only the curious student of the outworn methods of theological debate will care to clear away the dust from bulky volumes, at once so exclusively polemical and so recklessly unscientific. In defence of his opinions, Warburton was an opponent to be reckoned with, and his enthusiasm for them was such as passes easily for a love of truth. But truth is differently WILLIAM IVARBURTON 95 conceived of nowadays, and rather than as a searcher after truth, we must think of him as a doughty disputant, with the quaUties moral and intellectual that go to make one. Intolerable in point of fairness or of taste as Warburton's philippics are, his confident alert attitude and eye, the gusto with which he administers a coup de grace, the inexhaustible fertility of his invention for paradoxes, even the monstrous character of many of his arguments, aid in dissolving our resentment. To pass now and then into the zone of his stormy polemics may be found a change of moral atmos- phere not altogether unhealthy for us who breathe the air of weak convictions and superfine controversial courtesies. It is not needful to criticise Warburton's works in detail, the outline of the ScJionc of the Divine Legation will be sufficiently illustrative of his mental habit. This book, though running to four volumes, is really a long-drawn-out controversial pamphlet, whose main reasoning, diversified by numerous subsidiary dis- cussions, rests on a paradox — a device for which, and especially as a point of departure in an argument, Warburton had a cherished fondness. The absence from the Mosaic books of any reference to a future life had, it appears, been pressed by the deists as sufficient proof that the expectation of a life to come formed no part of the Jewish belief, and the theologians were hard put to it in the effort to frame a satisfactory reply. War- burton admits the absence of any such reference, but draws a very unexpected conclusion. His syllogism runs thus : the Jew was taught by Moses to look to no future charged with punishment or reward ; but by universal consent the moral law demands these sanctions for its support, and they have been found indispensable by all other lawgivers since the beginnings of society. It follows therefore that, for the Jew, in this present life divine reward and retribution attended virtue and vice — -in a word, God was the actual civil governor of the Jewish community. Upon such frail support does the whole structure of this extraordinary book rest ; " his syllogism," as De Quincey says, " is so divinely poised, that if you shake the keystone of his great arch, you will become aware of a vibration, a nervous tremor running through the entire dome of the Divine Legation." A strange feeling accompanies the modern reader on his way through the book ; the mere count of years that ha\e passed since it was written is no measure of the mental interval that separates us from the author ; the whole problem has altered 96 ENGLISH PROSE beyond recognition, the whole horizon of thought is changed. His curious multifarious learning, his subtile lawyer-like method in speculative matters, his almost incredible confidence in the torch of logic to light the way to truth, these are now subjects of antiquarian rather than of living interest. Since Warburton belongs more properly to the history of intel- lectual method than to the history of literature, there is little for the critic to say of his style. He aimed at effectiveness, and attained not an effectiveness due to any unity, but of a fragmentary kind, as of well-placed blows. The mass of his work is amorphous. It is not surprising that he did not care to pay court to the graces of expression. Purple patches or poetic imagery would have been sadly incongruous in books that are best described as pillories for the author's adversaries. But if it lack beauty, his style possesses many of the elements of strength — directness, precision, and that high quality, freedom from all affectations and conceits. Before the eye that contemplates the intellectual past Warbur- ton looms out a lofty but receding figure, for he was in no sense a man of ideas, of thought that outlives or serves to keep alive in the world's memory the social or intellectual conditions that gave it birth, such thought as makes Berkeley and Burke, or their peers of an elder day, stationary and inviolate influences that win upon us like those of living friends. He may stand for us as a perfect representative of that class of writers whose work, without root in any soil of permanent human interest, makes no claim upon the gratitude of following generations. Warburton served himself better than his party, and his party better than mankind. W. Macneile Dixon. LANGUAGE HELPED BY ACTION Language, as appears from the nature of the thing, from the records of history, and from the remains of the most ancient languages yet remaining, was at first extremely rude, narrow, and equivocal : so that men would be perpetually at a loss, on any new conception, or uncommon accident, to explain themselves intelligibly to one another ; the art of enlarging language by a scientific analogy being a late invention, this would necessarily set them upon supplying the deficiencies of speech by apt and significant signs. Accordingly, in the first ages of the world, mutual converse was upheld by a mixed discourse of words and actions ; hence came the Eastern phrase of the voice of iJie sign, and use and custom, as in most other affairs of life, improving what had arisen out of necessity, into ornament, this practice subsisted long after the necessity was over ; especially amongst eastern people, whose natural temperament inclined them to a mode of conversation, which so well exercised their vivacity by motion, and so much gratified it, by a perpetual representation of material images. Of this we have innumerable instances in Holy Scripture : as where the false prophet pushed with horns of iron, to denote the entire overthrow of the Syrians ; where Jeremiah, by God's direction, hides the linen girdle in a hole of the rock near Euphrates ; where he breaks a potter's vessel in sight of the people, puts on bonds and yokes, and casts a book into Euphrates ; where Ezekiel, by the same appointment, delineates the siege of Jerusalem on a tile ; weighs the hair of his beard in balances; carries out his household stuff; and joins together the two sticks for Judah and Israel. By these actions the prophets instructed the people in the will of God, and conversed with them in signs ; but where God teaches the prophet, and in compliance to the custom of that time, condescends to the same mode of instruction, then the significative action is generally changed into VOL. IV H 98 ENGLISH PROSE a vision, either natural or extraordinar}' : as where the prophet Jeremiah is bid to regard the rod of the almond-tree and the seething pot ; the work on the potter's wheel and the baskets of good and bad figs ; and the prophet Ezekiel, the ideal scene of the resurrection of the dry bones. The significative action, I say, was in this case generally changed into a vision ; but not always. For as, sometimes, where the instruction was for the people, the significative action was, perhaps, in vision : so, sometimes again, though the information was only for the prophet, God would set him upon a real expressive action, whose obvious meaning conveyed the intelligence proposed or sought. Of this, we shall give, at the expense of infidelity, a very illustrious instance. The excellent Maimonides, not attending to this primitive mode of information, is much scandalized at several of these actions, unbecoming, as he supposed, the dignity of the prophetic office ; and is therefore for resolving them in general into supernatural visions, impressed on the imagination of the prophet ; and this, because some few of them may, perhaps, admit of such an interpretation. In which he is followed by Christian writers, much to the discredit, as I conceive, of Revelation and to the triumph of libertinism and infidelity ; the actions of the prophets being delivered as realities ; and these writers represent- ing them as inean, absurd, and fanatical, and exposing the propJiet to contempt. But what is it they gain by this expedient ? The charge of absurdity and fanaticism will follow the prophet in his visions, when they have removed it from his waking actions ; for if these actions were absurd and fanatical in the real representa- tion, they must needs be so in the imaginary ; the same turn of mind operating both asleep and awake. The judicious reader therefore cannot but observe that the reasonable and true defence of the prophetic writings is what is here offered : where we show, that information by action was, at this time, and place, a very familiar mode of conversation. This once seen, all charge of absurdity, and suspicion of fanaticism, vanish of themselves : the absurdity of an action consists in its being extravagant and insignificativc ; but use and a fixed application made these in question both sober and pertinent : the fanaticism of an action consists in a fondness for unusual actions and foreign modes of speech ; but those in question were idiomatic and familiar. To illustrate this last observation by a domestic example : when the sacred writers talk of being born after the spirit, of being fed WILLIAM WARBURTON 99 with the sincere milk of the word, of putting their tears into a bottle, of bearing testimony against lying vanities, of taking the veil from men's hearts, and of building up one another ; they speak the common, yet proper and pertinent phraseology of their country ; and not the least imputation of fanaticism can stick upon these original expressions. But when we see our own countr}'men reprobate their native idiom, and affect to employ only scripture phrases in their whole conversation, as if some inherent sanctity resided in the Eastern modes of expression, we cannot choose but suspect such men far gone in the delusions of a heated imagination. The same may be said of significative actions. (From The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated.) HOW TO MEET ATTACKS As to the manner in which I have answered some of my adver- saries : their insufferable abuse, and my own love of quiet, made it necessary. I, had tried all ways to silence an iniquitous clamour : by neglect of it ; by good words ; by an explanation of my meaning ; and all without effect. The first volume of this obnoxious work had not been out many days, before I was fallen upon by a furious ecclesiastical news- writer, with the utmost brutality. All the return I then made, or then ever intended to make, was a vindication of my moral character, wrote with such temper and forbearance as seemed affectation to those who did not know tliat I only wanted to be quiet. But I reckoned without my host. The angiy man became ten times more outrageous. WHiat was now to be done ? I tried another method with him. I drew his picture ; I exposed him naked ; and showed the pul^Iic of what parts and principles this tumour was made up. It had its effect ; and I never heard more of him. On this occasion, let me tell the reader a stoiy. As a Scotch bagpiper was traversing the mountains of Ulster, he was, one evening, encountered by a hunger-starved Irish wolf. In this distress, the poor man could think of nothing better than to open his wallet, and try the effects of his hospitality. He did so : and the savage swallowed all that was thrown him with so improving a voracity, as if his appetite was but just coming to him. The loo ENGLISH PROSE whole stock of provision, you may be sure, was soon spent. And now, his only recourse was to the virtue of the bagpipe ; which the monster no sooner heard, than he took to the mountains with the same precipitation that he had come down. The poor piper could not so perfectly enjoy his deliverance, but that, with an angry look at parting, he shook his head, and said, " Ay ! are these your tricks ? — Had I known your humour, you should have had your music before supper." But though I had the cadiiceus of peace in my hands, yet it was only in cases of necessity that I made use of it. And there- fore I chose to let pass, without any chastisement, such impotent railers as Dr. Richard Grey, and one Bate, a zany to a mounte- bank. On the other hand, when I happened to be engaged with such very learned and candid writers as Dr. Middleton and the Master of the Charter-house, I gave sufficient proof how much I preferred a different manner of carrying on a controversy, would my answerers but afford me the occasion. But alas ! as I never should have such learned men long my adversaries, and never would have these other my friends, I found that, if I wrote at all, I must be condemned to a manner, which all, who know me, know to be most abhorrent to my natural temper. So, on the whole, I resolved to quit my hands of them at once ; and turn again to nobler game, more suitable, as Dr. Stebbing tells me, to my clerical function, that pestilent herd of libertine scribblers, with which this island is overrun ; whom I would hunt down, as good King Edgar did his wolves ; from the mighty author of Christianity as old as the Creatioti^ to the drunken blaspheming cobbler, who wrote against Jesus and the Resurrection. (From Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections.') GOD'S MORAL GOVERNMENT " Lord, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him ! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him ! " — Psalm cxliv. 3. Thus the holy prophet, seized with a sacred horror at an universe stretched out through the immensity of boundless space ; and with a rapturous gratitude for that Goodness who has graced his favourite, man, with so tender and so intimate a regard. WILLIAM WARBURTON loi Meditations of this kind are, indeed, most obvious and affecting. The religionist and the man of the world have equally employed them to reduce humanity to its just value ; though for very different purposes : the first to excite religious gratitude in others ; the second, to encourage himself in an impious naturalism. When the Religionist compares this small spot of earth to the whole of its system ; and sees a number of primary and secondary planets, habitations like his own, if he may judge by probable analogy, rolling round with it, and performing their various revolutions about one central fire, the common source of light and warmth to all, he is abashed at the mean and diminished rank his own world bears in this solemn and august assembly. When, by the aid of improved astronomy, he compares this subastral economy with the systems of the fixed stars ; every one of which reigns a sun, directing and influencing the revolutions of its attendant planets ; and sees that, as the earth is but a point compared to the orb of Saturn, so the orb of Saturn itself grows dimensionless when compared to that vast extent of space which the stellar-solar systems possess and occupy ; this lord of the creation shrinks suddenly from his height, and mingles with the lowest crowd of unheeded and undistinguished beings. But when, by the further aids of science, he understands, that a new host of heaven, too remotely stationed for the naked sight to draw out and review, hath been made to issue into day ; each of which shining strangers is the leader of a troop of others, whose borrowed lustre, too weakly reflected, no assistance of art can bring forward ; and that still, when sense stops short, science pursues the great disco\ery, and reason carries on the progress through the mighty regions of boundless space ; the fatigued imagination, tracing system after system, as they rise to light in endless succession, turns frightened back upon itself, and over- whelms the labouring mind with terror and astonishment ; whence, it never can disengage itself till it rises on the wings of faith, which bear this humbled creature from himself, and place him before the throne of God ; where he sees the mysteries of that Providence laid open, whose care and bounty so magnificently provides for the meanest of his creatures. Thus piously affected is the religionist with the sacred horrors of this amazing scene ; an universe stretched out through the wide regions of space, and terminated on all sides by the depths of infinity. I02 ENGLISH PROSE But let us turn now to the man of the world, whom this view of things rather degrades than humbles. Calmly contemplative in the chair of false science he derides the mistaken gratitude of the benighted religionist ; a gratitude rising not on reason, but on pride. " For whether," says he, " we consider this earth, the mansion of evil, or man, its wretched inhabitant ; what madness is it to suppose, that so sordid a corner, and so forlorn an occupant, can be the centre of God's moral government ? What but the lunacy of self-love could make this short-lived reptile, shuffled hither as it were by fate, and precariously sustained by fortune, imagine himself the distinguished care, and the peculiar favourite of Heaven .'' " As well," says he, " might the blind in- habitants of an ant-hill, which chance had placed on the barren frontier of an extended empire, flatter themselves with being the first object of their monarch's policy, who had unpeopled those mighty deserts only to afford room and safety for their busy colonies. The most that reasoning pride can tempt us to presume is, that we may not be excluded from that general providence governing by laws mechanical, and, once for all, impressed on matter when it was first harmonised into systems. But to make God the moral, that is the close, the minute and immediate inspector into human actions, is degrading him from that high rank in which this philosophy of enlarged crea- tion hath so fitly placed him : and returning him to the people, travestied to the mortal size of local godship ; under which idea, the superstitious vulgar have been always inclined to regard the Maker and Governor of the world." (From a Sermon on the Governor of the World.) JOHN WESLEY [John Wesley (1703-1791), was born 17th June (o.S.) 1703, at Epworth, in Lincolnshire, where his father was rector. He owed his early training chiefly to his mother (/n'e Susanna Wesley). In 1709 the rectory was burnt down and John was with great difficulty rescued from the flames. This narrow escape made a life-long impression upon him, and many years later he described himself as " a brand plucked out of the burning." In 1713 he received, through the Duke of Buckingham, a nomination to the Charterhouse, and there he received his education until his entrance at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1720. In 1725 he was ordained by the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Potter), and in 1726 he was elected Fellow of Lincoln College. He retained his Fellowship until his unfortunate marriage with the widow Vazeille in 1791. In 1727 he became his father's curate at Epworth and Wroot. In 1729 he was summoned back to Oxford to take part in the college tuition. At Oxford he found a religious society, founded by his brother Charles, then a student of Christ Church. Of this society John became the head. The "Oxford Methodists " were ascetics of a markedly church type, and they were warmly encouraged in their lives of devotion and practical work by the Rector of Epworth. In 1735 Samuel Wesley died, and in the same year John went out as a missionary of the S.P.G. to the newly founded colony of Georgia. He was deeply impressed with the piety of some Mora- vians he met on the voyage out and in the Colony. He met with many difficulties in Georgia, and returned home, bitterly disappointed, in 1738. He then fell under the influence of another Moravian, Peter Bohler. He visited the Moravian settlement at Herrnhut, and on his return commenced that career of incessant activity, physical and mental, in the cause of what he believed to be the truth, which ended only with his death. He founded societies, itinerated in all parts of the kingdom, preaching wherever he went, and arranging the elaborate organisation of his societies, of which he was the absolute master. He visited .Scotland and Ireland frequently, and at last died in harness, 2nd March 1791. Long before his death, he had outlived all the opposition (sometimes amounting to actual violence) which he had encountered in his earlier career. He was generally respected in the church of his baptism, to which he never ceased to affirm his adherence, while by his own followers he was regarded with a veneration, to which there is scarcely a parallel in the history of religious leaders.] It is not, of course, as a writer of English Prose that John Wesley is best known. Nevertheless he could and did write I04 ENGLISH riiOSE exceedingly well ; and his publications, if we include all that he edited, abridged, or translated as well as his original compositions, were far more numerous than those of any man of his time. For more than half a century scarcely a year elapsed without some- thing, and generally a great number of things, appearing in print for which John Wesley was responsible. He was not at all ambitious of literary fame, and declared that he dare no more use a fine word than he would wear a fine coat. But he could not help writing like a scholar and a gentleman ; and the long logical training lie had received at Oxford, first as a learner, and then as a " moderator of the classes," had taught him how to marshal his arguments lucidly and effectively. " As for me," he writes, " I never think of my style at all, but just set down the words that come first." Perhaps that is the very reason why his style is good ; there is no straining after effect, nothing- artificial about it ; it is terse, racy, and vigorous. In everything he wrote, as in everything he said and did, he had some practical object in view ; and he always makes straight for that object. Surprise has often been expressed at the wonderful effects which his sermons unquestionably produced. No one would dream of quoting them as specimens of pulpit eloquence ; nor do they show any remarkable originality of thought or depth of learning. But the want of these things was the very cause of their success ; for what seem to us commonplaces were to all intents and purposes new truths to the multitudes who were roused from their torpor by Wesley. Florid language and original ideas would have flown far above their heads. Plain truth expressed in plain language was what they wanted : and Wesley gave it to them to perfection. John Wesley, however, as a prose writer, cannot be reckoned among the immortals ; and therefore for the purpose of this work a few very brief extracts from his writings will suffice. J. H. Overton. A MAN OF ONE BOOK To candid, reasonable men, I am not afraid to lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I am a creature of a day, passing through Hfe as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God : just hovering over the great gulf ; till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen ; I drop into an unchangeable eternity ! I want to know one thing, — the way to heaven ; how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. For this very end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book ! At any price, give me the book of God ! I have it : here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be Jioino miius libri. Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone ; only God is here. In His presence I open, I read His book ; for this end, to find the way to heaven. Is there a doubt concerning the meaning of what I read ? Does anything' appear dark or intricate ? I lift up my heart to the Father of Lights : — " Lord, is it not Thy word, ' if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God ? ' Thou givest liberally, and upbraidest not. Thou hast said, ' if any be willing to do Thy will, he shall know.' I am willing to do, let me know Thy will." I then search after and consider parallel passages of Scripture, " comparing spiritual things with spiritual." I medi- tate thereon with all the attention and earnestness of which my mind is capable. If any doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God : and then the writings whereby, being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach. (p^-o^^^ Preface to Sermons.) ON DRESS 1 CONJURE you all who have any regard for me, show me Ijcfore I go hence that I have not laboured, even in this respect, in vain io6 ENGLISH PROSE for near half a century. Let me see, before I die, a Methodist congregation, full as plain dressed as a Quaker congregation. Only be more consistent with yourselves. Let your dress be cheap as well as plain, otherwise you do but trifle with God, and me and your own souls. I pray, let there be no costly silks among you, how grave soever they may be. Let there be no Quaker linen, p^^overbially so called, for their exquisite fineness ; no Brussels lace, no elephantine hats or bonnets, — those scandals of female modesty. Be all of a piece, dressed from head to foot as persons professing godliness ; professing to do everything, small and great, with the single view of pleasing God. Let not any of you who are rich in this world endeavour to excuse yourselves from this by talking nonsense. It is stark staring nonsense to say " Oh, I can afford this or that." No man living can afford to waste any part of what God has committed to his trust. None can afford to throw any part of that food and raiment into the sea, which was lodged with him on purpose to feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. And it is far worse than simple waste, to spend any part of it in gay or costly apparel. For this is no less than to turn wholesome food into deadly poison. It is giving so much money to poison both yourself and others, as far as your example spreads, with pride, vanity, anger, lust, love of the world, and a thousand foolish and hurtful desires, which tend to pierce them through with many sorrows. And is there no harm in all this ? O God, arise, and maintain Thine own cause ! Let not men or devils any longer put out our eyes, and lead us blindfold into the pit of destruction ! I beseech you every man that is here present before God, every woman, young or old, married or single, yea, every child that knows good from evil, take this to yourself. Each of you, for one, take the Apostle's advice ; at least, hinder not others from taking it. I beseech you, O ye parents, do not hinder your children from following their own convictions, even though you might think they would look prettier if they were adorned with such gewgaws as other children wear ! I beseech you O ye husbands, do not hinder your wives ! You, O ye wives do not hinder your husbands, either by word or deed, from acting just as they are persuaded in their own minds. Above all, I conjure you ye half-Methodists, you that trim between us and the world, you that frequently, perhaps constantly, hear our preaching, but are in no further connection with us ; yea, and all you that were once in JOHN WESLEY 107 full connection with us, but are not so now ; whatever ye do your- selves, do not say one word to hinder others from recovering and practising the advice which has been now given ! Yet a little while, and we shall not need these poor co\crings ; for this corruptible body shall put on incorruption. Yet a few days hence and this mortal body shall put on immortality. In the meantime, let this be our only care, to put off the old man — our old nature, which is corrupt, which is altogether evil — and to put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. In particular, put on, as the elect of God, bowels of mercies, kindness, gentleness, long- suffering. Yea, to sum all up in one word ; put on Christ ; that when He shall appear, ye may appear with Him in glory, (From Sermon Ixxxviii.) ON THE RESULTS OF METHODISM Behold, the day of the Lord is come ! He is again visiting and redeeming His people. Having eyes, see ye not ! Having ears, do ye not hear, neither understand with your hearts ? At this hour the Lord is rolling away our reproach. Already His standard is set up. His spirit is poured forth on the outcasts of men, and His love shed abroad in their hearts. Love of all mankind, meekness, gentleness, humbleness of mind, holy and heavenly affections do take place of hate, anger, pride, revenge, and vile or vain affections. Hence, whenever the power of the Lord spreads, springs outward affection in all its fonns. The houses of God are filled ; the table of the Lord is thronged on every side. And those who thus show their love of God, show they love their neighbour also, by being careful to maintain good works, by doing all manner of good, as they have time, to all men. They are likewise careful to abstain from all evil. Cursing, Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness, with all other (however fashionable) works of the devil, are not once named among them. All this is plain demon- strable fact. For this also is not done in a corner. Now, do you acknowledge the day of your visitation ? Do you bless God and rejoice therein ! What hinders? Is it this, — that men say all manner of evil of those whom God is pleased to use as instruments in His work ? io8 ENGLISH PROSE O ye fools did ye suppose the devil was dead ? Is he not a liar and the father of it ? Suffer ye then thus far, let the devil and his children say all manner of evil of us. And let them go on deceiving each other, and being deceived. But ye need not be deceived also ; or if you are, if you will believe all they say, be it so,— that we are weak, silly, wicked men ; without sense, without learning, without even a desire or design of doing good ; yet I insist upon the fact : Christ is preached, and sinners are con- verted to God. This none but a madman can deny. We are ready to prove it by a cloud of witnesses. Neither, therefore, can the inference be denied, that God is now visiting His people. O that all men may know, in this their day, the things that make for their peace ! (From An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion.') HENRY FIELDING [Henry Fielding was born on the 22nd of April 1707 at Sharpham Park, in Somersetshire. His father was Edmund Fielding, an officer and subsequently a general in the army, who was himself the son of John Fielding, canon of Salisbury, and grandson of the first Earl of Desmond of the Fielding family. That family also possessed the title of Denbigh, with which at present that of Desmond is united. The novelist's mother was .Sarah Gould, daughter of a judge whose seat Sharpham was ; and there, or at East .Stour in Dorset, Fielding spent his childhood. He was sent to Eton and subsequently to the University of Leyden ; but our knowledge of the events of his youth (as indeed of most of his life) is very scanty and uncertain. At about the time when he came of age we find him back in London, where for some seven years he occupied himself in writing numerous plays, the best or the least bad of which is Tom Thumb. About 1735 he married a young lady named Charlotte Cradock, who is said to have possessed great beauty and charm, and to have been the model of his heroines, especially Amelia ; and for a time he seems to have retired to East Stour and lived the life of a country gentleman. But if he did he soon returned to town, to play-writing, to the management of the Haymarket Theatre, and to the composition of miscellaneous literature, including in 1739 great part of a periodical called The Champion. He also was called to the bar and practised a little. But in 1742 his first novel, Joseph Andrexos, appeared, and was warmly received by good judges. This may have encouraged him to issue next year three volumes of Miscellanies, which with much inferior work included not only the Journey from fhis World to the Next but also Jonathan Wild. Shortly afterwards his wife died ; and four years later he married her maid. In the crisis of 1745 he had edited or written two Whig periodicals, the Tnce Patriot and \h& Jacobite' s Journal ; but again very little is known of him till the influence of Mr. Lyttelton procured him the Bow Street magistrateship, and he published Tom Jones in 1749. He worked very hard in his office; published Amelia in 1751, wrote not a few pamphlets and a fresh periodical, tlie Covcnt Garden Journal, which lasted for the greater part of 1752. Next year his health, which had long been un- satisfactory, grew steadily worse, and a journey to some warmer climate was ordered. He started for Lisbon in June 1754 and reached it in August, but died there on the 8th October. His Journal of the voyage, one of his not least charming things, was published shortly afterwards, but contains no account of anything subsequent to his landing.] Considering how much has been said of the qualities of Fieldinfj as a novelist by authorities of all deyrces of competence, and how 1 1 o ENGLISH PR OSE little pains in comparison have been bestowed on him strictly as a writer, the part of the subject with which it will be most profit- able to deal here seems to be pretty clearly indicated. On the first head indeed, though it cannot be said that agreement is absolute, belief in Fielding's extraordinary excellence is unques- tionably the orthodox faith, while the dissenters from it are few and, with rare exceptions among those few, unimportant. Objec- tions in detail have indeed been taken, and may in part be taken justly, to the digressions and secondary stories which interrupt and prolong the narrative in almost all the books, to the some- what easy-going morality, and the very complaisant dealing with loose if engaging incidents, to the relentless picture of human villainy in Jonathan Wild, to the obtrusion of political and other dissertation in Amelia. Some of these objections (as well as others which might be mentioned) are of force. But they touch mere details, and fall altogether short of the level of the excellencies which may on the other hand be assigned to him. The highest praise of all has sometimes been claimed for the mathematical exactness of construction which has been thought to make the plot of Tom Jones the most symmetrical and faultless to be found in modern times. A still higher value has been assigned — perhaps justly — by others to the combination of inventiveness and truth in character-drawing wherein Fielding has hardly a rival. It is almost impossible for him to produce a class of character wh.ich, even after a great lapse of time and a greater change of manners, does not strike us now as real and alive ; nor has he any difficulty in differentiating his characters of the same class from each other by little living touches and shades. His descriptions of persons, of places, of incidents, have this same veracity and brilliancy of drawing in a hardly less extraordinary degree. Others again have fixed for special admiration on the acuteness and (within certain limits) the profundity of his general observations on human life and nature ; others on his irony — a gift in which among English writers he is only excelled by Swift and only approached by Thackeray ; others on the genial and humane conception of life which, though certainly not coupled with any very great optimism of philosophical view, distinguishes his books ; others on the lambent easy light of the humour which — deriving in part from qualities and gifts already referred to, but containing in it something peculiar and additional — illuminates the whole of his work. It is not necessary to attempt to rank HENR y FIELDING 1 1 1 these gifts in order ; the more excellent way is to admire and enjoy them all in their certainly unique combination. A question too important to omit altogether, but too complicated to examine thoroughly, is the relation of this wonderful work in fiction to earlier members of the same class in English Literature. The delusive and rhetorical title of " Father of the English Novel " has been applied to Fielding, as to Richardson, to Defoe and to others. What is certain is, that he raised that novel at once in the scales of complexity, of variety, and of truth to life. Ikit we have nothing whatever to guide us in seeking to discover the motives which put him upon the practice of this art ; and not very much to help us to his own theory of the novel. He calls it indeed in one place a comic epic poem in prose ; but it would be distinctly dangerous to accept this definition in too good faith, and other passages in which he claims for the novelist a sort of parity with the historian proper in the philosophical arrangement of moti\e and event, may not be more serious. He did not, it must be remembered, produce /^j-^/// Andrews, his first published novel, till he was just ceasing to be a young man even at the liberal computation of youth, which makes it cease at thirty-five ; and it is very improbable that he wrote Jonathan Wild much earlier, even if its age in production be not identical with its date of publication. I should indeed judge from internal evidence — there is no other — that \\-\& Journey from tJtis World to the Next was a good deal the senior of both of these. But here, though there is much of Fielding's acute observation and shrewd recording of traits of human nature, neither gift is put to any real degree at the service of the art of story-telling proper, and the book is merely a string of character-sketches, not much if at all more like those of a novel or even a romance, than the essays with personages of Addison and his group. Surprising therefore as it may seem that such a masterpiece as Joseph Andrews should be a mere recoil from something else, a mere parody not to say caricature, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the desire to ridicule Richardson and Pamela was its real original ; while I am inclined to think that no very different motive need be assigned to the possibly Qon- \.(tw-\\iQ)X7K.xy Jonathan Wild. Indeed, careful readers oi Jonathan, especially of the curious episode of Mrs. Heartfree's adventures, will have noticed not a few attempts at burlesque of the French and other romances. That these two exercises must have revealed to Fielding his own powers and set him on the construction of 1 1 2 ENGLISH PROSE the far more ambitious edifice of Tom Jones is not so much probable as certain ; while no additional disposing causes except remin- iscences of his youth and observations made in his Bow Street office need be assigned for Amelia. The acquired accomplishments, as distinguished from the natural genius, with which Fielding set about the production of his masterpieces, and the qualities of craftsman in English as distinguished from those of expert in human nature which he possessed are not uninteresting or unimportant to investigate. Although a man of good reading, and (as is now known) the possessor in his later years at any rate of a considerable library, he can hardly be ranked among the most scholarly of English writers. He enjoyed indeed the inestimable advantage — some- times flouted by ungrateful persons who have had it, or disdained in fox-and-grapes fashion by those who have not, but absolutely unmistakable in the results of its presence or absence — which is conferred, and conferred only, by the old-fashioned classical education. But it is uncertain how long he was exposed to its influence at Eton, and certain that the greater part of his intellectual breeding was rather haphazard. And when he began to write (which he did very early, and when most men are still at the University) it was in the service of the most careless and ungirt of all the Muses, the Muse of Farce and stage burlesque. Nor can it be said that, even after many years of practice in somewhat severer kinds, he was ever a very correct writer ; though there is a great advance in correctness to be noticed between Xhe Jouftiey from tJiis World to the Next and the Voyage to Lisbon. In the former, as elsewhere, the distinction which he himself both ingeni- ously and ingenuously puts in his Epistle to Sir Robert Walpole, " Latin I write and Greek — I read," is illustrated ; for a translator of the First Olynthiac ought to have known better than to use the non-existent and indeed impossible form " Nousphoric." In this same piece the mere English is also far from perfect. Relatives and demonstratives are perpetu- ally used without precision and with confusion ; the sentences are piled up with addition after addition in the old fashion ; and it is particularly noteworthy that Fielding is here trying-, with very partial success, at the crisp ironic phrase to which he afterwards attained in perfection. In Joseph and Jonathan, l)ut especially in the former, he was HENR V FIELDING 1 1 face to face with a new task — the recounting of lively and vivid action ; and here what Carlyle might have called " the coming together of the man and the tools " produces at once a great improvement. This is considerably less noticeable in Jonathan Wild, which for that reason, as well as others, I should suppose to have been composed earlier than its forerunner in print ; but it is noticeable here to some extent, and in Joseph Andrews to an extent much greater. The sentences are not indeed invariably but frequently shortened ; the ambiguities of reference in the pronouns are less frequent ; and from this time forward most of what looks like incorrectness will be found to be confined to passages in which Fielding — according to a practice rather dubious but evidently a favourite with him — puts into the mouth of his characters, not speeches in the first person, but a sort of summary in oratio obliqiia of the substance of what they said. A still further improvement is noticeable in Tom Jones j indeed by the date of that great book Fielding had in every way attained the majority and climax of his powers. .He cannot have written it hurriedly ; and though we know extremely little of his life during the seven years between 1742 and 1749, what we do know authorises us in supposing a quieter and less distracted existence than that of his early manhood, when he boxed the compass of experiences between the stage and the bar, the hunting-field and the gaol. The abundance of incident and the pungency of the con- versation are apt to divert the attention in Tom Jones from merely scholastic questions of style ; but the frequent digressions and dissertations, which still form part of the author's plan, show him in the possession of a far freer, crisper, more higdily organised vehicle and medium of discussion, than he had attained in the Journey, or even in his earlier novels. And if this advance was not pushed further, it was at least fully maintained in Amelia and in the Voyage io Lisbon. Indeed this little posthumous Memoir exhibits Fielding for the most part quite at his best as far as writing goes. Yet even here we may note lapses — allowing, of course, for the fact that the author never saw the book in type, but noting at the same time that all the little imperfections notice- able are to be paralleled in the books which he himself passed through the press. Here, for instance, is an example taken from that interesting passage in which Fielding expresses his wonder that yachting is not a more popular amusement, thus following Roger North (I think) as the second Englishman of letters to VOL. IV I 1 1 4 ENGLISH PR OSE eulogise the most English of sports. " The truth," he says, " I believe is that sailing in the manner I have just mentioned is a pleasure rather unknown or unthought of than rejected by those who have experienced it ; unless, perhaps, the apprehension of daftger or sea-sickness may be supposed by the timorous and delicate to make too large deductions — insisting that all their enjoyments should come to them pure and unmixed, and ever being ready to cry out — Nocet empta dolore voluptas. " Now this awkward construction of "insisting" with "the timorous and delicate " would not in the least surprise us in the middle of the seventeenth century, but it is a little surprising to find a writer of the first class employing it in the middle of the eighteenth. In fact, however, imperfections of this kind (on the criticism whereof Fielding himself, perhaps not without some touch of con- science, is not unfrequently a little severe) are of less importance in the kind of literature to which he fortunately addicted himself than anywhere else. In history, in philosophy, in oratory, in essay-writing they are much more material ; and I am rather dis- posed to believe that the impatience sometimes shown of Fielding's digressions and divagations is in part due to the fact that the shortcomings of his mere style are most obvious there. But in novel-writing proper they matter comparatively little. It is true that only the veriest glutton of romance is entirely indifferent to the style of the romancer when it is positively and shockingly bad ; while the taste for the novel of character can hardly coexist with a complete insensibility to the merits and defects of writing. But relatively the goodness and badness of mere writing count for less in either case than in the case of any other kind of com- position ; and as a matter of fact the practitioners of fiction have, for this reason or that, been more careless than any of their brethren in regard to this point. There are only two other writers whom I at least should rank with Fielding in the very topmost class of English novelists. And both Scott and Thackeray were notoriously careless in the mint and anise and cumin of style. Yet Fielding had, and had eminently, the style which belongs to his own kind of work. The picked and outlandish epithets, the elaborately set conceits, of some writers would have been not more or less inappropriate to his downright and massive grasp of human nature, than the flourish and ornament of others, would HENR V FIELDING 1 1 5 have been awkwardly suited with his direct and piercing irony, his simple and sincere humour. It was not his object, and it would not have fitted his nature, to give his readers " blessed words " to chew and puzzle over, conundrums to guess, dainty tissues of writing to admire independently of the subject and the meaning. He might, if his education and early practice had been different, have written with more formal correctness and yet none the worse ; he could hardly, if the paradox may be pardoned, have written otherwise than he did and yet have written much the better. Of no one is the much-quoted and much-misquoted maxim of Bufifon more justified than of him. His style is exactly suited to his character and his production — which latter, be it remembered, considering the pleasures of his youth and the busi- ness of his age, was very considerable. No fault of his style can ever, either in the general reader or in the really qualified critic, have hindered the enjoyment of the best part of his work : and like the work itself the style in which it is clothed is eminently English. It is English no less in its petty shortcomings of correct- ness, precision, and grace, than in its mighty merits of power and range. Of the letter Fielding may be here and there a little neglectful ; in the spirit he always holds fast to the one indispens- able excellence, the adjustment of truth and life to art. George Saintsbury. THE PASSENGERS TO HADES It was very dark when we set out from the inn, nor could we see any more than if every soul of us had been alive. We had travelled a good way before any one offered to open his mouth ; indeed, most of the company were fast asleep, but, as I could not close my own eyes, and perceived the spirit who sat opposite to me to be likewise awake, I began to make overtures of conversation, by complaining Jiow dark it luas. "And extremely cold too," answered my fellow-traveller ; " (hough I thank God, as I have no body, I feel no inconvenience from it : but you will believe, sir, that this frosty air must seem very sharp to one just issued forth out of an oven ; for such was the inflamed habitation I am lately departed from." — " How did you come to your end, sir?" said I. "I was murdered, sir," answered the gentleman. "I am surprised then," replied 1, "that you did not divert yourself by walking up and down and playing some merry tricks with the murderer." — "O sir," returned he, "I had not that privilege, I was lawfully put to death. In short, a physician set me on fire, by giving me medicines to throw out my distemper. I died of a hot regimen, as they call it, in the smallpox." One of the spirits at that word started up and cried out, " the smallpox ! Ijless me ! 1 hope I am not in company w ith that distemper, which I have all my life with such caution avoided, and have so happily escaped hitherto ! " This fright set all the passengers who were awake into a loud laughter ; and the gentleman, recollecting himself, with some confusion, and not without blushing, asked pardon, crying, " I protest I dreamt I was alive." — " Perhaps, sir," said I, "you died of that distemper, which therefore made so strong an impression on you." — " No, sir," answered he, " 1 never had it in my life ; but the continual and dreadful apprehension it kept me so long under cannot, I see, be so immediately eradicated. You must know, sir, I HENR \ ' FIELDING 1 1 7 avoided coming to London for thirty years together, for fear of the smallpox, till the most urgent business brought me thither about five days ago. I was so dreadfully afraid of this disease that I refused the second night of my arrival to sup with a friend whose wife had recovered of it several months before, and the same evening got a surfeit by eating too many mussels, which brought me into this good company." " I will lay a wager," cried the spirit who sat next him, "there is not one in the coach able to guess my distemper." I desired the favour of him to acquaint us with it, if it was so uncommon. " Why, sir," said he, " I died of honour." — " Of honour, sir!" repeated I, with some surprise. "Yes, sir," answered the spirit, " of honour, for I was killed in a duel." " For my part," said a fair spirit, " I was inoculated last summer, and had the good fortune to escape with a very few marks in my face. I esteemed myself now perfectly happy, as I imagined I had no restraint to a full enjoyment of the diversions of the town ; but within a few days after my coming up I caught cold by overdancing myself at a ball, and last night died of a violent fever." After a short silence which now ensued, the fair spirit who spoke last, it being now daylight, addressed herself to a female who sat next her, and asked her to what chance they owed the happiness of her company. She answered, she apprehended to a consumption, but the physicians were not agreed concerning her distemper, for she left two of them in a very hot dispute about it when she came out of her body. " And pray, madam," said the same spirit to the sixth passenger, " how came you to leave the other world ? " But that female spirit, screwing up her mouth, answered, she wondered at the curiosity of some people ; that perhaps persons had already heard some reports of her death, which were far from being true ; that, whatever was the occasion of it, she was glad at being delivered from a world in which she had no pleasure, and where there was nothing but nonsense and impertinence ; particularly among her own sex, whose loose conduct she had long been entirely ashamed of (From A Join-ncy fro)ii fJiis World to ihc Neri.) 1 1 8 ENGLISH PR OSE POET AND PLAYER The poet, addressing the player, proceeded thus, "As I was saying" (for they had been at this discourse all the time of the engagement above-stairs), " the reason you have no good new plays is evident ; it is from your discouragement of authors. Gentlemen will not write, sir, they will not write, without the expectation of fame or profit, or perhaps both. Plays are like trees, which will not grow without nourishment ; but like mush- rooms, they shoot up spontaneously, as it were, in a rich soil. The muses, like vines, may be pruned, but not with a hatchet. The town, like a peevish child, knows not what it desires, and is always best pleased with a rattle. A farce-writer hath indeed some chance for success ; but they have lost all taste for the sublime. Though I believe one reason of their depravity is the badness of the actors. If a man writes like an angel, sir, those fellows know not how to give a sentiment utterance." — " Not so fast," says the player ; " the modern actors are as good at least as their authors, nay, they come nearer their illustrious predeces- sors ; and I expect a Booth on the stage again, sooner than a .Shakespeare or an Otway ; and indeed I may turn your observa- tion against you, and with truth say, that the reason no authors are encouraged is because we have no good new plays." — " I have not affirmed the contrary," said the poet ; " but I am sur- prised you grow so warm ; you cannot imagine yourself interested in this dispute ; I hope you have a better opinion of my taste than to apprehend I squinted at yourself. No, sir, if we had six such actors as you, we should soon rival the Bettertons and Sandfords of fonner times ; for, without a compliment to you, I think it impossible for any one to have excelled you in most of your parts. Nay, it is solemn truth, and I have heard many, and all great judges, express as much ; and, you will pardon me if I tell you, I think every time I have seen you lately you have constantly acquired some new excellence, like a snow-ball. You have deceived me in my estimation of perfection, and have outdone what I thought inimitable." — " You are as little interested," answered the player, " in what I have said of other poets ; for d me if there are not many strokes, aye, whole scenes, in your last tragedy which at least equal Shakespeare. There is a delicacy of sentiment, a dignity of expression in it, which 1 will own many of our gentle- HENR Y FIELDING 1 1 9 men did not do adequate justice to. To confess the truth, they are bad enough, and I pity an author who is present at the murder of his works." — " Nay, it is but seldom that it can happen," returned the poet ; " the works of most modern authors, hke dead-born children, cannot be murdered. It is such wretched half- begotten, half-writ, lifeless, spiritless, low, grovelling stuff, that I almost pity the actor who is obliged to get it by heart, which must be almost as difficult to remember as words in a language you don't understand." — " I am sure," said the player, " if the sentences have little meaning when they are writ, when they are spoken they have less. I know scarce one who ever lays an emphasis right, and much less adapts his action to his character. I have seen a tender lover in an attitude of fighting with his mistress, and a brave hero suing to his enemy with his sword in his hand. I don't care to abuse my profession, but rot me if in my heart I am not inclined to the poet's side." — " It is rather generous in you than just," said the poet ; "and, though I hate to speak ill of any person's production — nay, I never do it, nor will — but yet to do justice to the actors, what could Booth or Betterton have made of such horrible stuff as Fenton's Mariamne, Frowd's Philotas, or Mallet's Eurydice ; or those low, dirty, last-dying speeches, which a fellow in the city of Wapping, your Dillo or Lillo, what was his name, called tragedies?" — " Veiy well," says the player; "and pray what do you think of such fellows as Quin and Delane, or that face-making puppy young Gibber, that ill-looked dog Macklin, or that saucy slut Mrs. Clive 1 What work would they make with your Shakespeares, Otways, and Lees ? How would those harmonious lines of the last come from their tongues ? . . . No more ; for I disdain All pomp when thou art by : far be the noise Of kings and queens from us, whose gentle souls Our kinder fates have steer' d another way. Free as the forest birds we'll pair together. Without rememb'ring who our fathers were : Fly to the arbours, grots, and flow'ry meads ; There in soft murmurs interchange our souls ; Together drink the crystal of the stream, Or taste the yellow fruit which autumn yields, And, when the golden evening calls us home, Wing to our downy nests, and sleep till morn. Or how would this disdain of Otway — \\'ho'd be that foolish sordid thing called man ?" I20 ENGLISH PROSE " Hold ! hold ! hold ! " said the poet. " Do repeat that tender speech in the third act of my play which you made such a figure in." — " I would willingly," said the player, "but I have forgot it." — " Ay, you was not quite perfect in it when you played it," cries the poet, " or you would have had such an applause as was never given on the stage ; an applause I was extremely concerned for your losing." — " Sure," says the player, " if I remember, that was hissed more than any passage in the whole play." — "Ay, your speaking it was hissed," said the poet. — " My speaking it ! " said the player. — " I mean your not speaking it," said the poet. " You was out and then they hissed." — " They hissed, and then I was out, if I remember," answered the player ; " and I must say this for myself, that the whole audience allowed I did your part justice ; so don't lay the damnation of your play to my account." — " I don't know what you mean by damnation," replied the poet. — " Why, you know it was acted but one night," cried the player. — " No," said the poet, " you and the whole town were enemies ; the pit were all my enemies, fellows that would cut my throat, if the fear of hanging did not restrain them. All tailors, sir, all tailors." — " Why should the tailors be so angry with you .'' " cries the player. " I suppose you don't employ so many in making your clothes." — "I admit your jest," answered the poet; "but you remember the affair as well as myself; you know there was a party in the pit and upper gallery that would not suffer it to be given out again ; though much, ay infinitely the majority, all the boxes in particular, wtrt desirous of it ; nay, most of the ladies swore they would never come to the house till it was acted again. Indeed, I must own their policy was good in not letting it be given out a second time ; for the rascals knew if it had gone a second night it would have run fifty ; for if ever there was distress in a tragedy — I am not fond of my own performance ; but if I should tell you what the best judges said of it — Nor was it entirely owing to my enemies neither that it did not succeed on the stage as well as it hath since among the polite readers ; for you cannot say it had justice done it by the performers." — " I think," answered the player, " the performers did the distress of it justice ; for I am sure we were in distress enough, who were pelted with oranges all the last act ; we all imagined it would have been the last act of our lives." {Yrom Joseph Afidreius.) HENR V FIELDING 1 2 1 A POLITICAL MICROCOSM There resided in the castle at the same time with Mr. Wild one Roger Johnson, a very great man, who had long been at the head of all the prigs in Newgate, and had raised contributions on them. He examined into the nature of their defence, procured and instructed their evidence, and made himself, at least in their opinion, so necessary to them, that the whole fate of Newgate seemed entirely to depend upon him. Wild had not been long in confinement before he began to oppose this man. He represented him to the prigs as a fellow who, under the plausil^le pretence of assisting their causes, was in reality undermining the liberties of Newgate. He at first threw out certain sly hints and insinuations ; but, having by degrees formed a party against Roger, he one day assembled them together, and spoke to them in the following florid manner : " Friends and fellow-citizens — The cause which I am to mention to you this day is of such mighty importance, that when I consider my own small abilities, I tremble with an apprehension lest your safety may be rendered precarious by the weakness of him who hath undertaken to represent to you your danger. Gentlemen, the lil^erty of Newgate is at stake ; your privileges have been long undermined, and are now openly violated by one man ; by one who hath engrossed to himself the whole conduct of your trials, under colour of which he exacts what contributions on you he pleases ; but are those sums appropriated to the uses for which they are raised t Your frequent convictions at the Old Bailey, those degradations of justice, must too sensibly and sorely demonstrate the contrary. What evidence doth he ever pi'oduce for the prisoner which the prisoner himself could not have provided, and often better instructed ? How many noble youths have there been lost when a single alibi would have saved them. Should I be silent, nay, could your own injuries want a tongue to remonstrate, the very breath which by his neglect hath been stopped at the cheat would cry out loudly against him. Nor is the exorbitancy of his plunders visible only in the dreadful consequences it hath produced to the prigs, nor glares it only in the miseries brought on them : it blazes forth in the more desirable effects it hath wrought for himself, in the rich perquisites acquired by it ; witness that silk night-gown, that robe of shame, which, to 122 ENGLISH PROSE his eternal dishonour, he pubHcly wears ; that gown which I will not scruple to call the winding-sheet of the liberties of Newgate. Is there a prig who hath the interest and honour of Newgate so little at heart that he can refrain from blushing when he beholds that trophy, purchased with the breath of so many prigs ? Nor is this all. His waistcoat embroidered with silk, and his velvet cap, bought with the same price, are ensigns of the same disgrace. Some would think the rags which covered his nakedness when first he was committed hither well exchanged for these gaudy trappings ; but in my eye no exchange can be profitable when dishonour is the condition. If, therefore, Newgate " Here the only copy which we could procure of this speech breaks off abruptly ; however, we can assure the reader, from very authentic information, that he concluded with advising the prigs to put their affairs into other hands. After which one of his party, as had been before concerted, in a very long speech recommended him (Wild himself) to their choice. Newgate was divided into parties on this occasion, the prigs on each side representing their chief or great man to be the only person by whom the affairs of Newgate could be managed with safety and advantage. The prigs had indeed very incompatible interests ; for whereas the supporters of Johnson, who was in the possession of the plunder of Newgate, were admitted to some share under their leader, so the abettors of Wild had, on his promotion, the same views of dividing some part of the spoil among themselves. It is no wonder, therefore, they were both so warm on each side. What may seem more remarkable was, that the debtors, who were entirely unconcerned in the dispute, and who were the destined plunder of both parties, should interest themselves with the utmost violence, some on behalf of Wild, and others in favour of Johnson. So that all Newgate resounded with Wild for ever, Johnson for ever. And the poor debtors re-echoed the liberties of Newgate, which, in the cant language, signifies plunder, as loudly as the thieves themselves. In short such quarrels and animosities happened between them, that they seemed rather the people of two countries long at war with each other than the inhabitants of the same castle. Wild's party at length prevailed, and he succeeded to the place and power of Johnson, whom he presently stripped of all his finery ; but when it was proposed that he should sell it and divide the money for the good of the whole, he waived that HENRY FIELDING I2t motion, saying it was not yet time, that he should find a better opportunity, that the clothes wanted cleaning, with many other pretences, and within two days, to the surprise of many, he appeared in them himself; for which he vouchsafed no other apology than that they fitted him much better than they did Johnson, and that they became him in a much more elegant {From. Jonathan IVz'M.) PARTRIDGE ON VALOUR As Partridge was inhibited from that topic which would have first suggested itself, he fell upon that which was next uppermost in his mind, namely, the Man of the Hill. "Certainly, sir," says he, " that could never be a man, who dresses himself and lives after such a strange manner, and so unlike other folks. Besides, his diet as the old woman told me, is chiefly upon herbs, which is a fitter food for a horse than a Christian ; nay, landlord at Upton says the neighbours thereabouts have very fearful notions about him. It runs strangely in my head that it must have been some spirit, who perhaps might be sent to forewarn us ; and who knows but all that matter which he told us, of his going to fight, and of his being taken prisoner, and of the great danger he was in of being hanged, might be intended as a warning to us, considering what we are going about ? Besides, I dreamt of nothing all last night but of fighting ; and methought the blood ran out of my nose as liquor out of a tap. Indeed, sir, infanditm^ rcgina, jubcs 7-enovare dolorein." " Thy stoiy. Partridge," answered Jones, is almost as ill-applied as thy Latin. Nothing can be more likely to happen than death to men who go into battle. Perhaps we shall both fall in it — and what then?" — "What then.?" replied Partridge, "why then there is an end of us, is there not ? When I am gone, all is over with me. What matters the cause to me, or who gets the victory, if I am killed ? I shall never enjoy any advantage from it. What are all the ringing of bells, and bonfires to one that is six foot under ground ? there will be an end of poor Partridge." — " And an end of poor Partridge," cries Jones, " there must be one time or other. If you love Latin I will repeat you 124 ENGLISH PROSE some fine lines out of Horace, which would inspire courage into a coward. ' Dulce et decornm est pro pa/rid mori. Mors et fiigacem persequitur vinim Nee pair if imbellis juverita; Poplitibus timidoque tcrgo.' " I wish you would construe them," cries Partridge, " for Horace is a hard author, and I cannot understand as you repeat them." " I will repeat you a bad imitation, or rather paraphrase, of my own," said Jones, "for I am but an indifferent poet : ' Who would not die in his dear country's cause ? Since, if base fear his dastard step withdraws. From death he cannot fly : — One common grave Receives, at last, the coward and the brave.' " " That's very certain," cries Partridge. " Ay, sure. Mors omnibus coiiuniim's j but there is a great difference between dying in one's bed a great many years hence, like a good Christian, with all our fi^ends crying about us, and being shot to-day or to-morrow like a mad dog ; or perhaps hacked in twenty pieces with the sword, and that too before we have repented of all our sins, O Lord have mercy upon us ! to be sure the soldiers are a wicked kind of people. I never loved to have anything to do with them. I could hardly bring myself ever to look upon them as Christians. There is nothing but cursing and swearing among them. I wish )'our honour would repent, I heartily wish you would repent before it is too late, and not think of going among them. Evil communication corrupts good manners. That is my principal reason. For as for that matter, I am no more afraid than another man, not I, as to matter of that. I know all human flesh must die ; but yet a man may live many years for all that. Why, I am a middle-aged man now, and yet I may live a great number of years. I have read of several who have lived to be above a hundred. Not that I hope, I mean that I promise myself, to live to any such age as that, neither. But if it be only to eighty or ninety. Heaven be praised, that is a great way off yet ; and I am not afraid of dying then, no more than another man ; but, surely, to tempt death before a man's time is come seems to me downright wickedness and presumption. Besides, if it was to do any good indeed ; but, let the cause be what it will. HENR y FIELDING 1 25 what mighty matter of good can two people do ? and, for my part, I understand nothing of it. I never fired off a gun above ten times in my life, and then it was not charged with bullets. And for the sword, I never learned to fence, and know nothing of the matter. And then there are those cannons, which certainly it must be thought the highest presumption to go in the way of; and nobody but a madman — I ask pardon ; upon my soul I meant no harm : I beg I may not throw your honour into another passion." " Be under no apprehension, Partridge," cries Jones ; " I am now so well convinced of thy cowardice, that thou couldst not provoke me on any account." — " Your honour," answered he, "may call me a coward, or anything- else you please. If loving to sleep in a whole skin makes a man a coward, /lo/i iDunuiics ab Hits malis suvius. I never read in my grammar that a man can't be a good man without fighting. Vir bonus est qiiis ? Qui coiistilta patruni^ qui leges juraque scrvat. Not a word of fighting ; and I am sure the Scripture is so much against it that a man shall never persuade me he is a good Christian while he sheds Christian blood." ,„ r^ t ^ ( r rom / oin Junes. ) PATERNAL ADVICE The doctor's answer was, that he would wait on the lady directly ; and then, turning to his friend, he asked him if he would not take a walk in the park before dinner. " I must go," says he, " to the lady who was with us last night ; for I am afraid, by her letter, some bad accident hath happened to her. Come, young gentleman, I spoke a little too hastily to you just now ; but I ask your pardon. Some allowance must be made to the warmth of your blood. I hope we shall in time both think alike." The old gentleman made his friend another compliment ; and the young one declared he hoped he should always think, and act too, with the dignity becoming his cloth. After which the doctor took his leave for a while, and went to Amelia's lodgings. As soon as he was gone the old gentleman fell very severely on his son. " Tom," says he, " how can you be such a fool to undo, by your perverseness, all that I have been doing ? Why will you not learn to study mankind with the attention which I 126 ENGLISH PROSE have employed to that purpose ? Do you think, if I had affi^onted this obstinate old fellow as you do, I should ever have engaged his friendship ? " " I cannot help it, sir," said Tom : " I have not studied six years at the University to give up my sentiments to every one. It is true, indeed, he put together a set of sounding words ; but, in the main, I never heard any one talk more foolishly." " What of that .'' " cries the father ; " I never told you he was a wise man, nor did I ever think him so. If he had any under- standing, he would have been a bishop long ago, to my certain knowledge. But, indeed, he hath been always a fool in private life ; for I cjuestion whether he is worth ^loo in the world, more than his annual income. He hath given away above half his fortune to the Lord knows who. I believe I have had above ^200 of him, first and last ; and would you lose such a milch- cow as this for want of a few compliments ? Indeed, Tom, thou art as great a simpleton as himself. How do you expect to rise in the church if you cannot temporise and give into the opinions of your superiors ? " " I don't know, sir," cries Tom, " what you mean by my superiors. In one sense, I own, a doctor of divinity is superior to a bachelor of arts, and so far I am ready to allow his superiority ; but I understand Greek and Hebrew as well as he, and will maintain my opinion against him, or any other in the schools. " Tom," cries the old gentleman, " till thou gettest the better of thy conceit I shall never have any hopes of thee. If thou art wise, thou wilt think every man thy superior of whom thou canst get anything ; at least thou wilt persuade him that thou thinkest so, and that is sufficient. Tom, Tom, thou hast no policy in thee." " What have 1 been learning these seven years," answered he, "in the University? However, father, I can account for your opinion. It is the common failing of old men to attribute all wisdom to themselves. Nestor did it long ago ; but if you will inquire my character at college, I fancy you will not think I want to go to school again." The father and the son then went to take their walk, during which the former repeated many good lessons of policy to his son, not greatly perhaps to his edification. In truth, if the old gentle- man's fondness had not in a great measure blinded him to the imperfections of his son, he would have soon perceived that he HENR Y FIEL DING 1 27 was sowing all his instructions in a soil so choked with self- conceit that it was utterly impossible they should ever bear any ^^"'^- (From Amelia.) MRS. FRANCIS OF RYDE Wk brought with us our provisions from the ship, so llial we wanted nothing but a fire to dress our dinner, and a room in which we might eat it. In neither of these had we any reason to apprehend a disappointment, our dinner consisting only of beans and bacon ; and the worst apartment in his majesty's dominions, either at home or abroad, being fully sufficient to answer our present ideas of delicacy. Unluckily, however, we were disappointed in both ; for when we arrived about four at our inn, exulting in the hopes of immediately seeing our beans smoking on the table, we had the mortification of seeing them on the table indeed, but without that circumstance which would have made the sight agreeable, being in the same state in which we had dispatched them from our ship. In excuse for this delay, though we had exceeded, almost purposely, the time appointed, and our provision had arrived three hours before, the mistress of the house acquainted us that it was not for want of time to dress them that they were not ready, but for fear of their being cold or overdone before we should come ; which she assured us was much worse than wait- ing a few minutes for our dinner ; an observation so very just, that it is impossible to find any objection to it ; but, indeed, it was not altogether so proper at this time, for we had given the most absolute orders to have them ready at four, and had been ourselves, not without much care and difficulty, most exactly punctual in keeping to the very minute of our appointment. But tradesmen, inn-keepers, and servants never care to indulge us in matters contrary to our true interest, which they always know better than ourselves ; nor can any bribes corrupt them to go out of their way whilst they are consulting our good in our own despite. Our disappointment in the other particular, in defiance of our humility, as it was more extraordinary, was more provoking. In 128 ENGLISH PROSE short, I\Irs. P'rancis (for that was the name of the good woman of the house) no sooner received the news of our intended arrival than she considered more the gentiHty than the humanity of her guests, and appHed herself not to that which kindles but to that which extinguishes fire, and, forgetting to put on her pot, fell to washing her house. As the messenger who had brought my venison was impatient to be dispatched, I ordered it to be brought and laid on the table in the room where I was seated ; and the table not being large enough, one side, and that a very bloody one, was laid on the brick floor. I then ordered Mrs. Francis to be called in, in order to give her instructions concerning it ; in particular, what I would have roasted and what baked ; concluding that she would be highly pleased with the prospect of so much money being spent in her house as she might have now reason to expect, if the wind continued only a few days longer to blow from the same points whence it had blown for several weeks past. I soon saw good cause, I must confess, to despise my own sagacity. Mrs. Francis, having received her orders, without making any answer, snatched the side from the floor, which remained stained with blood, and, bidding a servant to take up that on the table, left the room with no pleasant countenance, muttering to herself that, " had she known the litter which was to have been made, she would not have taken such pains to wash her house that morning. If this was gentility, much good may it do such gentlefolks ; for her part she had no notion of it." From these murmurs I received two hints. The one, that it was not from a mistake of our inclination that the good woman had starved us, but from wisely consulting her own dignity, or rather perhaps her vanity, to which our hunger was offered up as a sacrifice. The other, that I was now sitting in a damp room, a circumstance, though it had hitherto escaped my notice from the colour of the bricks, which was by no means to be neglected in a valetudinary state. My wife, who, besides discharging excellently well her own and all the tender offices becoming the female character ; who, besides being a faithful friend, an amiable companion, and a tender nurse, could likewise supply the wants of a decrepit husband, and occasionally perform his part, had, before this, discovered the immoderate attention to neatness in Mrs. P^-ancis and provided against its ill consequences. She had found. HENR V FIELDING 1 29 though not under the same roof, a very snug apartment belonging to Mr. Francis, and which had escaped the mop by his wife's being satisfied it could not possibly be visited by gentlefolks. This was a dry, warm, oaken-floored barn, lined on both sides with wheaten straw, and opening at one end with a green field and a beautiful prospect. Here, without hesitation, she ordered the cloth to be laid, and came hastily to snatch me from worse perils by water than the common dangers of the sea. Mrs. Francis, who could not trust her own ears, or could not believe a footman in so extraordinary a phenomenon, followed my wife, and asked her if she had indeed ordered the cloth to be laid in the barn .'' She answered in the affirmative ; upon which Mrs. Francis declared she would not dispute her pleasure, but it was the first time she believed that quality had ever preferred a barn to a house. She showed at the same time the most preg- nant marks of contempt, and again lamented the labour she had undergone through her ignorance of the absurd taste of her guests. At length, we were seated in one of the most pleasant spots, I believe, in the kingdom, and were regaled with our beans and bacon, in which there was nothing deficient but the c^uantity. This defect was however so deplorable that we had consumed our whole dish before we had visibly lessened our hunger. We now waited with impatience the arrival of our second course, which necessity, and not luxury, had dictated. This was a joint of mutton which Mrs. Francis had been ordered to provide ; but when, being tired with expectation, we ordered our servants to see for something else we were informed that there was nothing else ; on which Mrs. Francis, being summoned, declared there was no such thing as mutton to be had at Ryde. When I expressed some astonishment at their having no butcher in a village so situated, she answered they had a very good one, and one that killed all sorts of meat in season, beef two or three times a year, and mutton the whole year round ; but that it being then beans and peas time, he killed no meat by reason he was not sure of selling it. This she had not thought worthy of communica- tion, any more than there lived a fisherman at next door, who was then provided with plenty of soles, and whitings, and lobsters, far superior to those which adorn a city feast. This discovery being made by accident, we completed the best, the pleasantest, and the merriest meal, with more appetite, more real solid luxury, and more festivity, than was ever seen in an entertainment at White's. VOL. IV K I30 ENGLISH PROSE It may be wondered at, perhaps, that Mrs. Francis should be so neghgent of providing for her guests, as she may seem to be thus inattentive to her own interest ; but this was not the case ; for, having clapped a poll-tax on our heads at our arrival, and determined at what price to discharge our bodies from her house, the less she suffered any other to share in the levy the clearer it came into her own pocket ; and that it was better to get twelve pence in a shilling than ten pence, which latter would be the case if she afforded us fish at any rate. (From A Voyage to Lisbon.') THE GIVE-AND-TAKE OF FRIENDSHIP It is possible, however, that Mr. Allworthy saw enough to render him a little uneasy ; for we are not always to conclude that a wise man is not hurt, because he doth not cry out and lament himself, like those of a childish or effeminate temper. But indeed it is possible he might see some faults in the captain without any uneasiness at all ; for men of tme wisdom and goodness are contented to take persons and things as they are, without com- plaining of their imperfections, or attempting to amend them. They can see a fault in a friend, a relation, or an acquaintance, without ever mentioning it to the parties themselves, or to any others ; and this often without lessening their affection. Indeed, unless great discernment be tempered with this overlooking dis- position, we ought never to contract friendship but with a degree of folly which we can deceive : for I hope my friends will pardon me when I declare, 1 know none of them Avithout a fault ; and I should be sorry if I could imagine I had any friend who could not see mine. Forgiveness of this kind we give and demand in turn. It is an exercise of friendship, and perhaps none of the least pleasant. And this forgiveness we must bestow, without desire of amendment. There is, perhaps no surer mark of folly, than an attempt to correct the natural infirmities of those we love. The finest composition of human nature, as well as the finest china, may have a flaw in it ; and this, I am afraid, in either case, is equally incurable ; though, nevertheless, the pattern may remain of the highest value. (From Tom Jones.) HENRY FIELDING 131 THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE HISTORIAN To prevent therefore, for the future, such intemperate abuses of leisure, of letters, and of the hberty of the press, especially as the world seems at present to be more than usually threatened with them, I shall here venture to mention some qualifications, every one of which are in a pretty high degree necessary to this order of historians. The first is, genius, without a full vein of which no study, says Horace, can avail us. By genius I would understand that power or rather those powers of the mind, which are capable of pene- trating into all things within our reach and knowledge, and of distinguishing their essential differences. These are no other than invention and judgment ; and they are both called by the collective name of genius, as they are of those gifts of nature which we bring with us into the world. Concerning each of which many seem to have fallen into very great errors ; for by invention, I believe, is generally understood a creative faculty, which would indeed prove most romance writers to have the highest pretensions to it ; whereas by invention is really meant no more (and so the word signifies) than discovery, or finding out ; or to explain it at large, a quick and sagacious penetration into the true essence of all the objects of our contemplation. This, I think, can rarely exist without the concomitancy of judgment ; for how we can be said to have discovered the true essence of two things without discerning their difference, seems to me hard to conceive. Now this last is the undisputed province of judgment, and yet some few men of wit have agreed with all the dull fellows in the world in representing these two to ha\e been seldom or never the property of one and the same person. But though they should be so, they are not sufficient for our purpose, without a good share of learning ; for which I could again cite the authority of Horace, and of many others, if any was necessary to prove that tools are of no service to a workman, when they are not sharpened by art, or when he wants rules to direct him in his work, or hath no matter to work upon. All these uses are supplied by learning ; for nature can only furnish us with capacity ; or, as I have chose to illustrate it, with the tools of our profession ; learning must fit them for use, must 132 ENGLISH PROSE direct them in it, and, lastly, must contribute part at least of the materials. A competent knowledge of history and of the belles- lettres is here absolutely necessary ; and without this share of knowledge at least, to affect the character of an historian is as vain as to endeavour at building a house without timber or mortar, or brick or stone. Homer and Milton, who, though they added the ornament of numbers to their works, were both his- torians of our order, were masters of all the learning of their times. Again there is another sort of knowledge, beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had by conversation. So necessary is this to the understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges, and among books ; for however excjuisitely human nature may have been described by writers, the true practical system can be learnt only in the world. Indeed the like happens in every other kind of knowledge. Neither physic nor law are to be practically known from books. Nay, the farmer, the planter, the gardener, must perfect by experience what he hath acquired the rudiments of by reading. How accurately soever the ingenious Mr. Miller may have described the plant, he himself would advise his disciple to see it in the garden. As we must perceive, that, after the nicest strokes of a Shakespeare or a Jonson, of a Wycherly or an Otway, some touches of nature will escape the reader, which the judicious action of a Garrick, of a Gibber, or a Glive, can convey to him ; so, on the real stage, the character shows himself in a stronger and bolder light than he can be described. And if this be the case in those fine and nervous descriptions which great authors themselves have taken froin life, how much more strongly will it hold when the writer himself takes his lines not from nature, but from books ? Such characters are only the faint copy of a copy, and can have neither the justness nor spirit of an original. Now this conversation in our historian must be universal, that is, with all ranks and degrees of men ; for the knowledge of what is called high life will not instruct him in low ; nor, c converso, will his being accjuainted with the inferior part of mankind teach him the manners of the superior. And though it may be thought that the knowledg-e of either may sufficiently enable him to describe at least that in which he hath been conversant, yet he will even here fall greatly short of perfection ; for the follies of HENRY FIELDING 133 either rank do in reality illustrate each other. For instance the affectation of high Hfe appears more glaring and ridiculous from the simplicity of the low ; and ag^ain, the rudeness and barbarity of this latter strikes with much stronger ideas of absurdity, when contrasted with, and opposed to, the politeness which controls the former. Besides, to say the truth, the manners of our historian will be improved by both these conversations ; for in the one he will easily find examples of plainness, honesty, and sincerity ; in the other of refinement, elegance, and a liberality of spirit ; which last quality I myself have scarce ever seen in men of low birth and education. Nor will all the qualities I have hitherto given my historian avail him, unless he have what is generally meant by a good heart, and be capable of feeling. The author who will make me weep, says Horace, must first weep himself. In reality, no man can paint a distress well which he doth not feel while he is paint- ing it ; nor do I doubt, but that the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with tears. In the same manner it is with the ridiculous. I am convinced I never make my reader laugh heartily but where I have laughed before him ; unless it should happen at any time, that instead of laughing with me he should be inclined to laugh at me. ^^^^^ ^j^^ 5,^^^^^^ SAMUEL JOHNSON [Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield in 1709, and after a desultory education in various schools, entered at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1728, but left in 1731, without taking his degree. After endeavouring for a time to gain his living as a schoolmaster, he came to London, and spent some 3-ears of exceeding hardship and direst poverty as a bookseller's hack. In 1735 he published a translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, and for some time contributed to the pages of the Gc?itle»ia?i's Magazine, writing the Debates in the Senate of Lilliput, which were intended to represent the speeches actually delivered, but not then reported, in the House of Commons. In 1738 he published London, an imitation of the third Satire of Juvenal ; in 1749, his second conspicuous poem. The Vanity of Hianan Wishes, an imitation of the tenth Satire ; and in the same year appeared Irene, a tragedy, which was brought out by his friend David Garrick, but was entirely unsuccessful. He had before this projected the Dictionary, the chief monumei-ft of that strenuous literary toil which he occasionally exerted, though naturally detesting it ; and the work was accomplished in 1755. Meantime he had written the Rambler, a periodical series of essays from 1750 to 1752 ; had contributed to the Adventurer, and projected an edition of Shakespeare. In 1758 he wrote the Idler, another series of periodical essays ; and in 1759, in feverish haste and under the pressure of poverty, he produced Rasselas. The grant of a pension of ;^300 a year soon after relieved him of the burden of poverty : he had achieved the rank of undisputed dictator in the world of letters, not only by his wide, though discursive, learning, but also by the force of his imposing personality and his conversational supremacy ; and he became more and more averse to labour, both from constitutional bias and social occupation. He intervened by many pamphlets in the political controversies of the clay, and in 1780 completed the Lives of the Poets, — that one of his works which has stirred most of controversy, and has at the same time compelled most of admiration ; written with the ease and vigour of one who drew only from his own resources of wide reading, bold and incisive critical faculty, and abundant humour, and who scorned the humbler methods of careful and minute research. He died in London in 1784.] Johnson stands out pre-e.ninently as the one man for wliom biography has clone more than she has done for any other. By her help he is no mere name in literary history, luit a personal 136 ENGLISH PROSE friend and aquaintance, whose strength and whose weakness we know by heart ; whose picture is impressed upon us down to the smallest details with a vivid force. The powerful personality of the man, and the perfection of the portrait, have obscured the fame that properly belongs to him as an author ; and the popular notion of his work is based upon little more than a superficial tradition, which is rarely corrected by any real familiarity with his writings. Johnson is conceived as a man of a pedantic turn of mind, cumbrous in his ideas and inflated in his diction ; the slave of convention, the enemy of humour, dictatorial in argument, without tolerance for the graces of simplicity, and lacking all keenness of critical insight. It would be hard to conceive any picture more unlike the truth. Johnson rightly despised the easy triumph* of paradox and eccentricity. He saw — ^just as the best of the previous generation had seen — that excellence in literature must be based on form, and that its advances, to be sure, must be secured by rigid adherence to rule. The masters of English prose in the Augustan age had all of them protested against anarchy in literature, and with all their variety, they had been careful to claim for themselves no right to set convention at defiance. Dryden, Swift, and Addison had never permitted themselves to forget that English prose had to obey a certain law that was fixing on it more and more of order and regularity. They had, it is true, by their genius, breathed into that order and regularity their own force, and directness, and easy familiarity. But these last were the supreme effect of their own individual genius : neither the impetuous flow of Dryden's prose, nor the easy lissomeness of Swift's, nor the delicate conversational tone of Addison's, could repeat or perpetuate themselves in English prose, and establish a common model for all time. What was necessary in the generation when Johnson wrote, was some com- manding authority that might set a standard of prose style, that might establish its laws beyond all gainsaying, and that by the force of its own virility might compel obedience. This was just what Johnson did. It was hardly possible that this work could be done without occasional austerity. Prose that aimed at a certain formal sequence, that preserved an equable balance of clause against clause, that imposed a certain uniformity in the use of pronouns, and that sought to impress by clear and forcible antithesis, could not avoid fomiality. The mannerisms are apt to assume undue prominence, and lend themselves to imitation SA MUEL JOHNSON 1 3 7 and to parody. The popular impression ends there. It fancies that it has caught the trick of Johnson's style when it has adopted a certain arrangement of pronouns, when it has marshalled the sentences in well-drilled parallels of antithetical clauses, when it has sprinkled the whole with sesquipedalian words, and given an air of pedantic solemnity to the treatment of the subject. This is to miss all that is really characteristic in Johnson's style. Our debt to him is twofold. In the first place, he preserved us against the inevitable triviality and feebleness that would have come from the imitation of Addison's prose by the ordinary writer, who had not the secret of Addison's genius. Had not such a dictator as Johnson arisen, English prose would inevitably have dwindled into decay, pleasing itself all the while with the fancy that it was repeating the subtle and inimitable achievements of the preceding generation. In the next place, he set a model which could be safely followed, and which was secure for a generation at least, against the intrusion of slipshod banality. P or more than a generation after his death, the im- pression of his sovereignty remained ; and it is not too much to say that no competent writer of prose since Johnson's day, has not, in spite of all diversities of genius, and in spite even of earnest resistance to his sway, owed much of such rhythm, and balance, and lucidity as he has attained, to the example and the model set by Johnson. In some of the authors who might least of all be supposed to accept his dictatorship, it will be interesting to trace examples of this unconscious influence, in the later pages of this selection. When we turn to an examination of Johnson's own style, we shall find that its characteristics are very difterent from those of the parody which lives in the popular estimation. No man could better discard long words, and use more pithy English when he chose, than could Johnson. " Wit is that which he who hath never found it wonders how he missed ; " such a sentence shows that Johnson could express himself tersely when it suited him to do so. Often the long words and the formal expression are adopted of a set purpose, which is humorous much more than pedantic. No man could assume a manner of greater ease and directness, and no one could achieve with more perfect art that most difficult of literary manoeuvres, the introduction of a con- venient but entirely irrelevant digression. We have only to turn over a few pages of the Lives of the Poets to see how a stinging 138 ENGLISH PROSE sarcasm no less than a touch of playful humour, is enhanced by the formal dignity of manner, and would have lost half its raciness if the ceremonial stateliness of phraseology were absent. One of the secrets of Johnson's style is that it was hammered out upon the anvil of conversational combat. It was wrought into shape by no persevering and continuous labour. His work was done, all his life through, in those sudden starts by which he shook off the lethargy that burdened him, and toiled with fierce and untiring" energy, with all the muscles of his mind strained to tensity. So it was with his conversation and with the style that grew out of that conversational habit. All his thoughts turned upon questions of direct human interest, upon the science of character, and the casuistry of ethics. These were just the cjuestions that rejected all technical terms, and Johnson is singularly free from technicalities : they were also the questions that admitted most variety of treatment, in regard to which Johnson might most readily alter his position with the ease of the intellectual athlete ; which admitted of endless disputation, and in regard to which skilful argument, clear exposition, and ready epigram could best win a conversational triumph. Addison's style was conversational in its ease and its familiarity : Johnson's style has not the ease, but it has the force, the epigram, and the dialectical readiness of successful conversation. We have his own account of it to Sir Joshua Reynolds ; " He told him that he had early laid it down as a rule to do his best on every occasion and in every company ; to impart whatever he knew in the most forceful language he could put it in ; and that, by constant practice, and never suffering any careless expression to escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts without arranging them in the clearest manner, it became habitual to him " (Boswell). Another characteristic of Johnson's work which largely affects his style, is its occasional calm and condescending frankness. It is not the frankness of a familiar friend. When he confesses to his dislike of tedious investigation and elaborate research, it is with the frankness which despises concealment, not with that which deprecates criticism or craves indulgence. When he draws aside the curtain and speaks of the loneliness and ill health and poverty under which he toiled, he gives the confidence with the air of one who defies sympathy, not with the humility of one who begs for pity. But in both cases, the effect on his style is the same, to increase the force of its dignified formality, which SAMUEL JOHNSON I39 can on occasion be frank and even confidential, but which indi- cates clearly enough that he will neither welcome nor permit the slightest intrusion beyond the limits he has set to that confidence. The first specimens of Johnson's original prose were the parliamentary debates (composed almost entirely according to his own notion of probabilities) which he contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine. The Rambler was written in the midst of his most severe and prolonged toil, and under conditions of grinding poverty, and in point of style it has more than his usual stateliness, and less than his usual variety and humour. The Idler was written when he had escaped from the long burden of the Dictionary and was already a literary dictator, and its style is more varied by light and shade, more quickened by humour ; ' but the weight of poverty still pressed him, and its sadness still hangs heavily over Rasselas, which was written in order to pay for his mother's funeral. It represents perhaps the best specimen of Johnson's more formal style. From first to last it has a strain of melancholy, relieved by few lighter touches ; but its literary skill is seen in the perfect symmetry, and com- pleteness of its construction, all the more remarkable because it wants beginning, and end, and story. But Johnson's style is not seen in its richness and perfection, nor in its consummate ease, until we come to his last and greatest work — the Lives of the Poets. That was not begun until he was nearly seventy years of age. His time for careful and methodic labour was now past. His opinions were fixed, and he was not likely to examine or modify them. He was undisputed literary dictator, and indisposed to bend to others' views. But all these circumstances contributed to the consummate literary qualities of the book. This is not the place either to impugn or defend the justice of his literary criticisms. But for vigour and ease and variety of style, for elasticity of confidence, for keenness of sarcasm, for brightness of humour, the Lives hold the first place, absolutely free from competition, amongst all works of English criticism of similar range. We may carp at Johnson's judgments, and rail against the prejudice and injustice of his decrees. We may be disposed to accord to more modern critics, all the advantages of balanced judgment and sympathetic insight which they may claim ; but they must yield to Johnson the palm for boldness, for wit, for extent of range, and for brilliancy of style. I40 ENGLISH PROSE To those at least, who, Hke the present writer, look upon Johnson as a man and as a genius with the most profound admiration, it may be permitted to point to passages, to be found even amongst the scanty selections that follow, which may fitly take rank amongst the most consummate and perfect specimens of English prose, clothing thoughts of highest wisdom in language which is a model of dignity and grace. H. Craik. CRITICS The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them ; either to let new hght in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as to give them fresh grace and more powerful attractions, to spread such flowers over the regions through which the intellect has already made its progress, as may tempt it to return, and take a second view of things hastily passed over, or negligently regarded. Either of these labours is very difficult, because that they may not be fruitless, men must not only be persuaded of their errors, but reconciled to their guide ; they must not only confess their ignorance, but, what is still less pleasing, must allow that he from whom they are to learn is more knowing than themselves. It might be imagined that such an employment was in itself sufficiently irksome and hazardous ; that none would be found so malevolent as wantonly to add weight to the stone of Sisyphus ; and that few endeavours would be used to obstruct those advances to reputation, which must be made at such an expense of time and thought, with so great hazard in the miscarriage, and with so little advantage from the success. Yet there is a certain race of men, that either imagine it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon gi\ing ignorance and envy the first notice of a prey. To these men, who distinguish themselves by the appellation of Critics, it is necessary for a new author to find some means of recommendation. It is probable, that the most malignant of these persecutors might be somewhat softened, and prevailed on, for a short time, to remit their imy. Having for this purpose 142 ENGLISH PROSE considered many expedienls, I find in the records of ancient times, that Argus was lulled by music, and Cerberus quieted with a sop ; and am, therefore, inclined to believe that modern critics, who, if they have not the eyes, have the watchfulnessof Argus, and can Ijark as loud as Ceiberus, though, perhaps, they cannot bite with e(-[ual force, might be subdued by methods of the same kind. I have heard how some have been pacified with claret and a supper, and others laid asleep with the soft notes of flattery. Though the nature of my undertaking gives me sufficient reason to dread the united attacks of this violent generation, yet, I have not hitherto persuaded myself to take any measures for flight or treaty. For I am in doubt whether they can act against me by lawful authority, and suspect that they have presumed upon a forged commission, styled themselves the ministers of Criticism, without any authentic evidence of delegation, and uttered their own determinations as the decrees of a higher judicature. Criticism, from whom they deri\e their claim to decide the fate of writers, was the eldest daughter of Labour and of Truth : she was, at her birth, committed to the care of Justice, and brought up by her in the palace of Wisdom. Being soon dis- tinguished by the celestials for her uncommon qualities, she was appointed the governess of Fancy, and empowered to beat time to the chorus of the Muses, when they sung before the throne of Jupiter. When the Muses condescended to visit this lower world, they came accompanied by Criticism, to whom, upon her descent from her native regions. Justice gave a sceptre, to be carried aloft in her right hand, one end of which was tinctured with ambrosia, and enwreathed with a golden foliage of amaranths and bays ; the other end was encircled with cypress and poppies, and dipped in the waters of oblivion. In her left hand, she bore an un- extinguishable torch, manufactured by Labour, and lighted by Truth, of which it was the -particular quality immediately to show every thing in its true form, however it might be disguised to common eyes. Whatever art could complicate, or folly could confound, was, upon the first gleam of the torch of Truth, exhibited in its distinct parts and original simplicity ; it darted through the labyrinths of sophistry, and showed at once all the absurdities to which they served for refuge ; it pierced through the robes which SAMUEL JOHNSON 143 Rhetoric often sold to Falsehood, and detected the disproportion of parts which artificial veils had been contrived to cover. Thus furnished for the execution of her office, Criticism came down to survey the performances of those who professed them- selves the votaries of the Muses. Whatever was brought before her, she beheld by the steady light of the torch of Truth, and when her examination had convinced her, that the laws of just writing had been observed, she touched it with the amaranthine end of the sceptre, and consigned it over to immortality. But it more frequently happened, that in the works which required her inspection, there was some imposture attempted ; that false colours were laboriously laid ; that some secret inequality was found between the words and sentiments, or some dis- similitude of the ideas and the original objects ; that incongruities were linked together, or that some parts were of no use but to enlarge the appearance of the whole, without contributing to its beauty, solidity, or usefulness. Wherever such discoveries were made, and they were made whenever these faults were committed, Criticism refused the touch which conferred the sanction of immortality, and, when the errors were frequent and gross, reversed the sceptre, and let drops of Lethe distil from the poppies and cypress a fatal mildew, which immediately began to waste the work away, till it was at last totally destroyed. There were some compositions brought to the test. In which, when the strongest light was thrown upon them, their beauties and faults appeared so equally mingled, that Criticism stood with her sceptre poised in her hand, in doubt whether to shed Lethe or ambrosia, upon them. These at last increased to so great a number, that she was weary of attending such doubtful claims, and, for fear of using improperly the sceptre of Justice, referred the cause to be considered by Time. The proceedings of Time, though very dilatory, were, some few caprices excepted, conformable to justice ; and many who thought themselves secure by a short forbearance, have sunk under his scythe, as they were posting down with their volumes in triumph to futurity. It was observable that some were destroyed little by little, and others crushed for ever by a single blow. Criticism having long kept her eye fixed steadily upon Time, was at last so well satisfied with his conduct, that she withdrew 144 ENGLISH PROSE from the earth with her patroness Astrea, and left Prejudice and False Taste to ravage at large as the associates of Fraud and Mischief; contenting herself thenceforth to shed her influence from afar upon some select minds, fitted for its reception by learn- ing and by virtue. Before her departure she broke her sceptre, of which the shivers that formed the ambrosial end were caught up by Flattery, and those that had been infected with the waters of Lethe were, with eciual haste, seized by Malevolence. The followers of Flattery, to whom she distributed her part of the sceptre, neither had nor desired light, but touched indiscriminately whatever power or interest happened to exhibit. The companions of Malevolence were supplied by the Furies with a torch, which had this quality pecuUar to infernal lustre, that its light fell only upon faults. No light, but rather darkness visible, Served only to discover sights of woe. With these fragments of authority, the slaves of Flattery and Malevolence marched out at the command of their mistresses, to confer immortality or condemn to oblivion. But the sceptre had now lost its power ; and Time passes his sentence at leisure, without any regard to their determinations. From Tlic Rambler. GOOD HUMOUR Those who e.xalt themselves into the chair of instruction, without inquiring whether any will submit to their authority, have not sufficiently considered how much of human life passes in little incidents, cursory conversation, slight business, and casual amuse- ments ; and therefore they have endeavoured only to inculcate the more awful virtues, without condescending to regard those petty qualities, which grow important only by their frequency, and which, though they produce no single acts of heroism, nor astonish us by great events, yet are every moment exerting their influence upon us, and make the draught of life sweet or bitter by imper- ceptible instillations. They operate unseen and unregarded, as change of air makes us sick or healthy, though we breathe it SAMUEL JOHNSON 145 without attention, and only know the particles that impregnate it by their salutary or malignant effects. You have shown yourself not ignorant of the value of those subaltern endowments, yet have hitherto neglected to recommend good-humour to the world, though a little reflection will show you that it is the balm of beings the quality to which all that adorns or elevates mankind must owe its power of pleasing. Without good-humour, learning and bravery can only confer that superiority which swells the heart of the lion in the desert, where he roars without reply, and ravages without resistance. Without good- humour, virtue may awe by its dignity, and amaze by its bright- ness ; but must always be viewed at a distance, and will scarcely gain a friend or attract an imitator. Good-humour may be defined a habit of being pleased ; a constant and perennial softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition ; like that which every man perceives in himself, when the first transports of new felicity have subsided, and his thoughts are only kept in motion by a slow succession of soft impulses. Good-humour is a state between gaiety and unconcern ; the act of emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another. It is imagined by many, that whenever they aspire to please, they are required to be merry, and to show the gladness of their souls by flights of pleasantry, and bursts of laughter. But, though these men may be for a time heard with applause and admiration, they seldom delight us long. We enjoy them a little, and then retire to easiness and good-humour, as the eye gazes awhile on eminences glittering with the sun, but soon turns aching away to verdure and to flowers. Gaiety is to good-humour as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance ; the one overpowers weak spirits, and the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain ; the hearers either strain their faculties to accompany its towerings, or are left behind in envy and despair. Good-humour boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending. It is well known that the most certain way to give any man pleasure, is to persuade him that you receive pleasure from him, to encourage him to freedom and confidence, and to avoid any such appearance of superiority as may overbear and depress him. We see many that by this art only spend their days in the midst VOL. IV L 146 ENGLISH rROSE of caresses, invitations, and civilities, and without any extraor- dinary qualities or attainnients, are the universal favourites of both sexes, and certainly find a friend in every place. The darlings of the world will, indeed, be generally found such as excite neither jealousy nor fear, and are not considered as candidates for any eminent degree of reputation, but content themselves with common accomplishments, and endeavour rather to solicit kindness, than to raise esteem ; therefore in assemblies and places of resort it seldom fails to happen, that though at the entrance of some particular person every face brightens with gladness, and every hand is extended in salutation, yet if you pursue him beyond the first exchange of civilities, you will find him of very small importance, and only welcome to the company as one by whom all conceive themselves admired, and with whom any one is at liberty to amuse himself when he can find no other auditor or companion ; as one with whom all are at case, who will hear a jest without criticism, and a narrative without contra- diction, who laughs with every wit, and yields to every disputer. There are many whose vanity always inclines them to associate with those from whom they have no reason to fear mortification ; and there are times in which the wise and the knowing are willing to receive praise without the labour of deserving it, in which the most elevated mind is willing to descend, and the most active to be at rest. All therefore are at some hour or another fond of companions whom they can entertain upon easy terms, and who will relie\'e them from solitude, without condemning them to vigilance and caution. We are most inclined to love when we have nothing to fear, and he that encourages us to please ourselves, will not be long without j^reference in our affection to those whose learning holds us at the distance of pupils, or whose wit calls all attention from us, and leaves us without importance and without regard. It is remarked by Prince Henry, when he sees Falstaff lying on the ground, that " he could have better spared a better man." He was well acquainted with the vices and follies of him whom he lamented, but while his conviction compelled him to do justice to superior qualities, his tenderness still broke out at the remembrance of Falstaff, of the cheerful companion, the loud buffoon, with whom he had passed his time in all the luxury of idleness, who had gladdened him with unenvied merriment, and whom he could at once enjoy and despise. SAMUEL JOHNSON 147 VoLi may perhaps think this account of those who are dis- tinguished for their good-humour, not very consistent with the praises which I have bestowed upon it. But surely nothing can more evidently show the value of this quality, than that it recommends those who are destitute of all other excellencies, and procures regard to the trifling, friendship to the worthless, and affection to the dull. Good-humour is indeed generally degraded by the characters in which it is found ; for, being considered as a cheap and vulgar cjuality, we find it often neglected by those that, having excellencies of higher reputation and brighter splendour, perhaps imagine that they have some right to gratify themselves at the expense of others, and arc to demand compliance, rather than to practise it. It is by some unfortunate mistake that almost all those who have any claim to esteem or love, press their pretensions with too little consideration of others. This mistake, my own interest, as well as my zeal for general happiness, makes me desirous to rectify ; for I have a friend, who, because he knows his own fidelity and usefulness, is never willing to sink into a companion : I have a wife whose beauty first subdued me, and whose wit confirmed her conquest, but whose beauty now serves no other purpose than to entitle her to tyranny and whose wit is only used to justify perverseness. Surely nothing can be more unreasonable than to lose the will to please, when we are conscious of the power, or show more cruelty than to choose any kind of influence before that of kind- ness. He that regards the welfare of others, should make his virtue approachable, that it may be loved and copied ; and he that considers the wants which every man feels, or will feel, of external assistance, must rather wish to be surrounded by those that love him, than by those that admire his excellencies, or solicit his favours ; for admiration ceases with novelty, and interest gains its end and retires. A man whose great qualities want the ornament of superficial attractions, is like a naked mountain with mines of gold, which will be frecjuented only till the treasure is e.xhausted. (From the Same.) 148 ENGLISH PROSE PEDANTRY As any action or posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the limbs ; so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas. It is easy to guess the trade of an artizan by his knees, his fingers, or his shoulders ; and there are few among men of the more liberal professions, whose minds do not carry the brand of their calling, or whose conversation does not quickly discover to what class of the com- munity they belong. These peculiarities have been of great use, in the general hostility which every part of mankind exercises against the rest, to furnish insults and sarcasms. Every art has its dialect, uncouth and ungrateful to all whom custom has not reconciled to its sound, and which therefore becomes ridiculous by a slight misapplication, or unnecessary repetition. The general reproach with which ignorance revenges the superciliousness of learning, is that of pedantry ; a censure which every man incurs, who has at any time the misfortune to talk to those who cannot understand him, and by which the modest and timorous are sometimes frighted from the display of their acqui- sitions, and the exertion of their powers. The name of a pedant is so formidable to young men when they first sally from their colleges, and is so liberally scattered by those who mean to boast their elegance of education, easiness of manners, and knowledge of the world, that it seems to require particular consideration ; since, perhaps, if it were once under- stood, many a heart might be freed from painful apprehensions, and many a tongue delivered from restraint. Pedantry is the unseasonable ostentation of learning. It may be discovered either in the choice of a subject, or in the manner of treating it. He is undoubtedly guilty of pedantry, who, when he has made himself master of some abstruse and uncultivated part of knowledge, obtrudes his remarks and discoveries upon those whom he believes unable to judge of his proficiency, and from whom, as he cannot fear contradiction, he cannot properly expect applause. To this error the student is sometimes betrayed by the natural recurrence of the mind to its common employment, by the pleasure which every man receives from the recollection of SAMUEL JOHNSON 149 pleasing images, and the desire of dwelling upon topics, on which he knows himself able to speak with justness. But because we are seldom so far prejudiced in favour of each other, asJ;o search out for palliations, this failure of politeness is imputed always to vanity ; and the harmless collegiate, who perhaps intended entertainment and instruction, or at worst only spoke without sufificient reflection upon the character of his hearers, is censured as arrogant or overbearing, and eager to extend his renown, in contempt of the convenience of society, and the laws of con- versation. AH discourse of which others cannot partake, is not only an irksome usurpation of the time devoted to pleasure and entertain- ment, but, what never fails to excite very keen resentment, an insolent assertion of superiority, and a triumph over less enlightened understandings. The pedant is, therefore, not only heard with weariness, but malignity ; and those who conceive themselves insulted by his knowledge, never fail to tell with acrimony how injudiciously it was exerted. To avoid this dangerous imputation, scholars sometimes divest themselves with too much haste of their academical formality and, in their endeavours to accommodate their notions and their style to common conceptions, talk rather of any thing than of that which they understand, and sink into insipidity of sentiment and mean- ness of expression. There prevails among men of letters an opinion, that all appearance of science is particularly hateful to women ; and that therefore, whoever desires to be well received in female assemblies, must qualify himself by a total rejection of all that is serious, rational, or important ; must consider argument or criticism, as perpetually interdicted ; and devote all his attention to trifles, and all his eloquence to compliment. Students often form their notions of the present generation from the writings of the past, and are not very early informed of those changes which the gradual diffusion of knowledge, or the sudden caprice of fashion, produces in the world. Whatever might be the state of female literature in the last century, there is now no longer any danger lest the scholar should want an adequate audience at the tea-table ; and whoever thinks it necessary to regulate his conversation by antiquated rules, will be rather despised for his futility than caressed for his politeness. To talk intentionally in a manner above the comprehension of 150 ENGLISH PROSE those whom we address, is unquestionable pedantry ; but surely complaisance requires, that no man should, without proof, con- clude his company incapable of following him to the highest elevation of his fancy, or the utmost extent of his knowledge. It is always safer to err in favour of others than of ourselves, and therefore we seldom hazard much by endeavouring to excel. It ought at least to be the care of learning, when she quits her exaltation, to descend with dignity. Nothing is more despicable than the airiness and jocularity of a man bred to severe science and solitary meditation. To trifle agreeably is a secret which schools cannot impart ; that gay negligence and vivacious levity, which charm down resistance wherever they appear, are never attainable by him who, having spent his first years among the dust of libraries, enters late into the gay world with an unpliant attention and established habits. It is observed in the panegyric on Fabricius the mechanist, that though forced by public employments into mingled conver- sation, he never lost the modesty and seriousness of the convent, nor drew ridicule upon himself by an affected imitation of fashion- able life. To the same praise every man devoted to learning ought to aspire. If he attempts the softer arts of pleasing, and endeavours to learn the graceful bow and the familiar embrace, the insinuating accent and the general smile, he will lose the respect due to the character of learning, without arriving at the envied honour of doing anything with elegance and facility. Theophrastus was discovered not to be a native of Athens, by so strict an adherence to the Attic dialect, as shewed that he had learned it not by custom, but by rule. A man not early formed to habitual elegance, betrays in like manner the effects of his education, by an unnecessary anxiety of behaviour. It is as possible to become pedantic by fear of pedantry, as to be trouble- some by ill-timed civility. There is no kind of impertinence more justly censurable, than his who is always labouring to level thoughts to intellects higher than his own ; who apologises for every word which his own narrowness of converse inclines him to think unusual ; keeps the exuberance of his faculties under visible restraint ; is solicitous to anticipate enquiries by needless explan- ations ; and endeavours to shade his own abilities, lest weak eyes should be dazzled with their lustre. (From the Same.) SAMUEL JOHNSON 151 TRAVELLERS' AFFECTATIONS It has been observed, I think by Sir WiUiam Temple, and after him by ahnost every other writer, that England affords a greater variety of characters than the rest of the world. This is ascribed to the liberty prevailing amongst us, which gives every man the privilege of being wise or foolish his own way, and preserves him from the necessity of hypocrisy or the servility of imitation. That the position itself is true, I am not completely satisfied. To be nearly acciuainted with the people of different countries can happen to very few ; and in life, as in everything else beheld at a distance, there appears an even uniformity : the petty dis- criminations which diversify the natural character, are not dis- coverable but by a close inspection ; we, therefore, find them most at home, because there we have most opportunities of remarking them. Much less am I convinced, that this peculiar diversification, if it be real, is the consequence of peculiar liberty : for where is the government to be found that superintends individuals with so much vigilance, as not to leave their private conduct without restraint ? Can it enter into a reasonable mind to imagine, that men of every other nation are not equally masters of their own time or houses with ourselves, and equally at liberty to be parsimonious or profuse, frolic or sullen, abstinent or luxurious 1 Liberty is certainly necessary to the full play of pre- dominant humours ; but such liberty is to be found alike under the government of the many or the few, in monarchies or in commonwealths. How readily the predominant passion snatches an interval of liberty, and how fast it expands itself when the weight of restraint is taken away, I had lately an opportunity to discover, as I took a journey into the country in a stage-coach ; which, as every journey is a kind of adventure, may be very properly related to you, though I can display no such extraordinary assembly as Cervantes has collected at Don Quixote's inn. In a stage-coach the passengers are for the most part wholly unknown to one another, and without expectation of ever meeting again when their journey is at an end ; one should therefore imagine, that it was of little importance to any of them, what conjectures the rest should form concerning him. Yet so it is, that as all think themselves secure from detection, all assume 152 ENGLISH PROSE that character of which they are most desirous, and on no occasion is the general ambition of superiority more apparently indulged. On the day of our departure, in the twilight of the morning, I ascended the \ehicle with three men and two women, my fellow- travellers. It was easy to observe the affected elevation of mien with which every one entered, and the supercilious civility with which they paid their compliments to each other. When the first ceremony was dispatched, we sat silent for a long time, all employed in collecting importance into our faces, and endeavour- ing to strike reverence and submission into our companions. It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say. We began now to wish for conversation ; but no one seemed inclined to descend from his dignity, or first propose a topic of discourse. At last a corpulent gentleman, who had equipped himself for this expedition with a scarlet surtout and a large hat with a broad lace, drew out his watch, looked on it in silence, and then held it dangling at his finger. This was, I suppose, understood by all the company as an invitation to ask the time of day, but nobody appeared to heed his overture ; and his desire to be talking so far overcame his resentment, that he let us know of his own accord that it was past five, and that in two hours we should be at breakfast. His condescension was thrown away ; we continued all obdurate ; the ladies held up their heads ; I amused myself with watching their behaviour ; and of the other two, one seemed to employ himself in counting the trees as we drove by them, the other drew his hat over his eyes and counterfeited a slumber. The man of benevolence, to show that he was not depressed by our neglect, hummed a tune and beat time upon his snuff-box. Thus universally displeased with one another, and not much delighted with ourselves, we came at last to the little inn appointed for our repast ; and all began at once to recompense themselves for the constraint of silence, by innumerable questions and orders to the people that attended us. At last, what every one had called for was got, or declared impossible to be got at that time, and we were persuaded to sit round the same table ; when the gentleman in the red surtout looked again upon his watch, told us that we had half an hour to spare, but he was sorry to see so little merriment among us ; that all fellow-travellers were for the time upon the level, and that it was always his way SAMUEL JOHNSON 153 to make himself one of the company. " I remember,'' says he, " it was on just such a morning as this, that I and my Lord Mumble and the Duke of Tenterden were out upon a ramble : we called at a little house as it might be this ; and my landlady, I warrant you, not suspecting" to whom she was talking", was so jocular and facetious, and made so many merry answers to our questions, that we were all ready to burst with laughter. At last the gooci woman happening to overhear me whisper the duke and call him by his title, was so surprised and confounded, that we could scarcely get a word from her ; and the duke never met me from that day to this, but he talks of the little house, and quarrels with me for terrifying the landlady." He had scarcely time to congratulate himself on the venera- tion which this narrative must have procured him from the company, when one of the ladies having reached out for a plate on a distant part of the table, began to remark "the incon- veniences of travellings, and the difficulty which they who never sat at home without a great number of attendants found in per forming for themselves such offices as the road required ; but that people of quality often travelled in disguise, and might be generally known from the vulgar by their condescension to poor inn-keepers, and the allowance which they made for any defect in their entertainment ; that for her part, while people were civil and meant well, it was never her custom to find fault, for one was not to expect upon a journey all that one enjoyed at one's own house." A general emulation seemed now to be excited. One of the men, who had hitherto said nothing", called for the last news- paper, and having perused it a while with deep pensiveness, " It is impossible," says he, " for any man to guess how to act with regard to the stocks ; last week it was the general opinion that they would fall ; and I sold out twenty thousand pounds in order to a purchase : they have now risen unexpectedly : and I make no doubt but at my return to London I shall risk thirty thousand pounds among them again." A young man, who had hitherto distinguished himself only by the vivacity of his looks, and a frecjuent diversion of his eyes from one object to another, upon this closed his snuff-box, and told us, that "he had a hundred times talked with the chancellor and the judges on the subject of the stocks ; that for his part he did not pretend to be well acquainted with the principles on 1 54 ENGL IS II PR OSE which they were established, but had always heard them reckoned pernicious to trade, uncertain in their produce, and unsolid in their foundation ; and that he had been advised by three judges, his most intimate friends, never to venture his money in the funds, but to put it out upon land security, till he could light upon an estate in his own country." It might be expected, that upon these glimpses of latent dignity, we should all have began to look round us with venera- tion ; and have behaved like the princes of romance, when the enchantment that disguises them is dissolved, and they discover the dignity of each other : yet it happened, that none of these hints made much impression on the company ; every one was apparently suspected of endeavouring to impose false appearances upon the rest ; all continued their haughtiness in hopes to enforce their claims ; and all grew every hour more sullen, because they found their representations of themselves without effect. Thus we travelled on four days with malevolence perpetually increasing-, and without any endeavour but to outtire each other in superciliousness and neglect ; and when any two of us could separate ourselves for a moment, we vented our indignation at the sauciness of the rest. At length the journey was at an end ; and time and chance, that strip off all disguises, have discovered that the intimate of lords and dukes is a nobleman's butler, who has furnished a shop with the money he has saved ; the man who deals so largely in the funds, is a clerk of a broker in 'Change Alley ; the lady who so carefully concealed her quality, keeps a cook-shop behind the Exchange ; and the young man, who is so happy in the friendship of the judges, engrosses and transcribes for bread in a garret of the Temple. Of one of the women only I could make no dis- advantageous detection, because she had assumed no character, but accommodated herself to the scene before her, without any struggle for distinction or superiority. I could not forbear to reflect on the folly of practising a fraud, which, as the event showed, had been already practised too often to succeed, and by the success of which no advantage could have been obtained ; of assuming a character, which was to end with the day ; and of claiming upon false pretences honours which must perish with the breath that paid them. But, Mr. Adventurer, let not those who laugh at me and my companions, think this folly confined to a stage-coach. Every SA MUEL JOHNSON 1 5 5 man in the journey of life takes the same advantage of the ignorance of his fellow-travellers, disguises himself in counterfeited merit, and hears those praises with complacency which his conscience reproaches him for accepting. Every man deceives himself, while he thinks he is deceiving others, and forgets that the time is at hand when every illusion shall cease, when fictitious excellence shall be torn awa)', and yill must be shown to all in their real estate. {Adventurer, No. 84.) PRAISES OF SOLITUDE There has always prevailed among that part of mankind that addict their minds to speculation, a propensity to talk much of the delights of retirement ; and some of the most pleasing compositions produced in every age contain descriptions of the peace and happiness of a country life. I know not whether those who thus ambitiously repeat the praises of solitude have always considered how much they depre- ciate mankind by declaring that whatever is excellent or desirable is to be obtained by departing from them ; that the assistance which we may derive from one another is not eciuivalent to the evils which we have to fear ; that the kindness of a few is overl^alanced by the malice of many ; and that the protection of society is too dearly purchased, by encountering its dangers and enduring its oppressions. These specious representations of solitary happiness, however opprobrious to human nature, have so far spread their influence over the world, that almost every man delights his imagination with the hopes of obtaining some time an opportunity of retreat. Many, indeed, who enjoy retreat only in imagination, content themselves with believing, that another year will transport them to rural tranc[uillity, and die while they talk of doing what, if they had lived longer, they would never have done. But many likewise there are, either of greater resolution or more credulity, who in earnest try the state which they have been taught to think thus secure from cares and dangers ; and retire to privacy, either that they may improve their happiness, increase their knowledge, or exalt their virtue. The greater part of the admirers of solitude, as of all other 156 ENGLISH PROSE classes of mankind, have no higher or remoter view, than the present gratification of their passions. Of these some, haughty and impetuous, fly from society only because they cannot bear to repay to others the regard which themselves exact ; and think no state of life ehgible, but that which places them out of the reach of censure or control, and aftbrds them opportunities of living in a perpetual compfcance with their own inclinations, without the necessity of regulating their actions by any other man's convenience or opinion. There are others of minds more delicate and tender, easily offended by every deviation from rectitude, soon disgusted by ignorance or impertinence, and always expecting from the con- versation of mankind more elegance, purity, and truth, than the mingled mass of life will easily afford. Such men are in haste to retire from grossness, falsehood, and brutality, and hope to find in private habitations at least a negative felicity, an exemption from the shocks and perturbations with which public scenes arc continually distressing them. To neither of these votaries will solitude aflord that content, which she has been taught so lavishly to promise. The man of arrogance will quickly discover, that by escaping from his opponents he has lost his fiatterers, that greatness is nothing where it is not seen, and power nothing where it cannot be felt : and he, whose faculties are employed in too close an observation of failings and defects, will find his condition very little mended by transferring his attention from others to himself; he will probably soon come back in quest of new objects, and be glad to keep his captiousness employed upon any character rather than his own. Others are seduced into solitude merely by the authority of great names, and expect to find those charms in tranquillity which have allured statesmen and conquerors to the shades ; these likewise are apt to wonder at their disappointment, for want of considering that those whom they aspire to imitate carried with them to their country seats minds full fraught with subjects of reflec- tion, the consciousness of great merit, the memory of illustrious actions, the knowledge of important events, and the seeds of mighty designs to be ripened by further meditation. Solitude was to such men a release from fatigue, and an opportunity of usefulness. But what can retirement confer upon him, who, having done nothing, can receive no support from his own importance, who, having known nothing, can find no entertainment in reviewing SAMUEL JOHNSON 1 5 7 the past, and who intending nothing can form no hopes from prospects of the future ? He can, surely, take no wiser course than that of losing himself again in the crowd, and filling the vacuities of his mind with the news of the day. Others consider solitude as the parent of philosophy, and retire in expectation of greater intimacies with science, as Numa repaired to the groves when he conferred with Egeria. These men have not always reason to repent. Some studies require a continued prosecution of the same train of thought, such as is too often interrupted by the petty avocations of common life : sometimes, likewise, it is necessary, that a multiplicity of objects be at once present to the mind ; and everything, therefore, must Idc kept at a distance, which may perplex the memory, or dissipate the attention. But, though learning may be conferred by solitude, its applica- tion must be attained by general converse. He has learned to no purpose, that is not able to teach ; and he will always teach unsuecessfully, who cannot recommend his sentiments by his diction or address. Even the acquisition of knowledge is often much facilitated by the advantages of society : he that never compares his notions with those of others, readily accjuiesces in his first thoughts, and very seldom discovers the objections which may be raised against his opinions ; he, therefore, often thinks himself in possession of truth, when he is only fondling an error long since exploded. He that has neither companions nor rivals in his studies, will always applaud his own progress, and think highly of his performances, because he knows not that others have equalled or excelled him. And I am afraid it may be added, that the student who withdraws himself from the world will soon feel that ardour extinguished which praise or emulation had enkindled, and take the advantage of secrecy to sleep, rather than to labour. There remains yet another set of recluses, whose intention entitles them to higher respect, and whose motives deserve a more serious consideration. These retire from the world, not merely to bask in ease or gratify curiosity ; but that being disengaged from common cares, they may employ more time in the duties of religion : that they may regulate their actions with stricter vigilance, and purify their thoughts by more frequent meditation. To men thus elevated above the mists of mortality I am far 158 ENGLISH PROSE from presuming myself qualified to give directions. On him that appears " to pass through things temporary," with no oth?r care than " not to lose finally the things eternal," I look with such veneration as inclines me to approve his conduct in the whole, with- out a minute examination of its parts, yet I could never forbear to wish, that while vice is every day multiplying seducements, and stalking forth with more hardened effrontery, virtue would not with- draw the intluence of her presence, or forbear to assert her natural dignity by open and undaunted perseverance in the right. Piety practised in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men ; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and how- ever free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of beneficence. Our Maker, who, though he gave us such varieties of temper and such difference of powers, yet designed us all for happiness, undoubtedly intended that we should attain that happiness by difterent means. Some are unable to resist the temptations of importunity, or the impetuosity of their own passions incited by the force of present temptations : of these it is undoubtedly the duty to fly from enemies which they cannot conquer, and to cultivate, in the calm of solitude, that virtue which is too tender to endure the tempests of public life. But there are others, whose passions grow more strong and irregular in privacy ; and who cannot maintain an uniform tenor of virtue, but by exposing their manners to the public eye, and assisting the admonitions of conscience with the fear of infamy : for such it is dangerous to exclude all witnesses of their conduct, till they have formed strong habits of virtue, and weakened their passions by frequent victories. ]?ut there is a higher order of men so inspired with ardour, and so fortified with resolution, that the world passes before them without influence or regard ; these ought to consider themselves as appointed the guardians of mankind : they are placed in an evil world, to exhibit public examples of good life ; and may be said, when they withdraw to solitude, to desert the station which Providence assigned them. {Adven/urer, No. 126.) SAMUEL JOHNSON 159 CONVERSATION To illustrate one thing by its resemblance to another has been always the most popular and efficacious art of instruction. There is indeed no other method of teaching that of which any one is ignorant but by means of something already known ; and a mind so enlarged by contemplation and inquiry, that it has always many objects within its view, will seldom be long without some near and familiar image through which an easy transition may be made to truths more distant and obscure. Of the parallels which have been drawn by wit and curiosity, some are literal and real, as between poetry and painting, two arts which pursue the same end, by the operation of the same mental faculties, and which differ only as the one represents things by marks permanent and natural, the other by signs accidental and arbitrary. The one therefore is more easily and generally understood, since similitude of form is immediately perceived ; the other is capable of conveying more ideas, for men have thought and spoken of many things which they do not see. Other parallels are fortuitous and fanciful, yet these have sometimes been extended to many particulars of resemblance by a lucky concurrence of diligence and chance. The animal body is composed of many members, united under the direction of one mind ; any number of individuals, connected for some common purpose, is therefore called a body. From this participation of the same appellation arose the comparison of the body natural and the body politic, of which, how far soever it has been deduced, no end has hitherto been found. In these imaginary similitudes, the same word is used at once in its primitive and metaphorical sense. Thus health ascribed to the body natural, is opposed to sickness ; but attributed to the body politic stands as contrary to adversity. These parallels, therefore, have more of genius but less of truth ; they often please but they never convince. Of this kind is a curious speculation frequently indulged by a philosopher of my acquaintance, who had discovered that the qualities requisite to conversation are very exactly represented by a bowl of punch. Punch, says this profound investigator, is a liquor compounded i6o ENGLISH PROSE of spirit and acid juices, sugar and water. The spirit, volatile and fiery, is the proper emblem of vivacity and wit ; the acidity of the lemon will very aptly figure pungency of raillery, and acrimony of censure ; sugar is the natural representative of luscious adulation and gentle complaisance ; and water is the proper hieroglyphic of easy prattle, innocent and tasteless. Spirit alone is too powerful for use. It will produce madness rather than merriment ; and instead of quenching thirst will inflame the blood. Thus wit, too copiously poured out, agitates the hearer with emotions rather violent than pleasing ; every one shrinks from the force of its oppression, the company sits entranced and overpowered ; all are astonished, but nobody is pleased. The acid juices give this genial liquor all its power of stimulating the palate. Conversation would become dull and vapid, if negligence were not sometimes roused, and sluggishness cjuickened, by due severity of reprehension. But acids unmixed will distort the face, and torture the palate ; and he that has no other qualities than penetration and asperity, he whose constant employment is detection and censure, who looks only to find faults, and speaks only to punish them, will soon be dreaded, hated, and avoided. The taste of sugar is generally pleasing, but it cannot long be eaten by itself Thus meekness and courtesy will always recommend the first address, but soon pall and nauseate, unless they are associated with more sprightly qualities. The chief use of sugar is to temper the taste of other substances, and softness of behaviour in the same manner mitigates the roughness of contradiction, and allays the bitterness of unwelcome truth. Water is the universal vehicle by which are conveyed the particles necessary to sustenance and growth, by which thirst is quenched, and all the wants of life and nature are supplied. Thus all the business of the world is transacted by artless and easy talk, neither sublimed by fancy, nor discoloured by affecta- tion, without either the harshness of satire, or the lusciousness of flattery. By this limpid vein of language, curiosity is gratified, and all the knowledge is conveyed which one man is required to impart for the safety or convenience of another. Water is the only ingredient of punch which can be used alone, and with which man is content till fancy has framed an artificial want. Thus while we only desire to have our ignorance informed, we are most delighted with the plainest diction ; and it is only in the SAMUEL JOHNSON i6i moments of idleness or jDiide, that we call for the gratifications of wit or flattery. He will only please long, who, by tempering the acid of satire with the sugar of civility, and allaying the heat of wit with the frigidity of humble chat, can make the true punch of conversation ; and as that punch can be drunk in the greatest quantity which has the largest proportion of water, so that companion will be the oftenest welcome, whose talk flows out with inoffensive copious- ness, and unenvied insipidity. (From The Idler.) STYLE Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words. If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in pursuit of truth ; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflictive severity of neglect. But words are only hard to those who do not understand them, and the critic ought always to inquire, whether he is incommoded by the fault of the writer, or by his own. Every author does not write for every reader ; many questions are such as the illiterate part of mankind can have neither interest nor pleasure in discussing, and which therefore it would be an useless endeavour to level with common minds, by tiresome circumlocutions or laborious e.xplanations ; and many subjects of general use may be treated in a different manner, as the book is intended for the leamed or the ignorant. Diffusion and explica- tion are necessary to the instruction of those who, being neither able nor accustomed to think for themselves, can learn only what is expressly taught ; but they who can form parallels, discover consequences, and multiply conclusions, are best pleased with involution of argument and compression of thought ; they desire only to receive the seeds of knowledge which they may branch out by their own power, to have the way to truth pointed out which they can then follow without a guide. VOL. IV M 1 62 ENGLISH PROSE The Guardian directs one of his pupils to think witli the wise, but speak with the vulgar. This is a precept specious enough, but not ahvays practicable. Difference of thoughts will produce difference of language. He that thinks with more extent than another will want words of larger meaning ; he that thinks with more subtlety will seek for terms of more nice discrimination : and where is the wonder, since words are but the images of things, that he who never knew the original should not know the copies ? Yet vanity inclines us to find faults anywhere rather than in ourselves. He that reads and grows no wiser, seldom suspects his own deficiency : but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood. Among the hard words which are no longer to be used, it has long been the custom to number terms of art. " Every man," says Swift, "is more able to explain the subject of an art than its professors : a farmer will tell you, in two words, that he has broken his leg ; but a surgeon, after a long discourse, shall leave you as ignorant as you were before." This could only have been said by such an exact observer of life, in gratification of malignity, or in ostentation of acuteness. Every hour produces instances of the necessity of terms of art. Mankind could never conspire in uniform affectation : it is not but by necessity that every science and every trade has its peculiar language. They that content themselves with general ideas may rest in general terms ; but those whose studies or employments force them upon closer inspection, must have names for particular parts, and words by which they may express various modes of combination, such as none but themselves have occasion to consider. Artists are indeed sometimes ready to suppose that none can be strangers to words to which themselves are familiar, talk to an incidental inquirer as they talk to one another, and make their knowledge ridiculous by injudicious obtrusion. An art cannot be taught but by its proper terms, but it is not always necessary to teach the art. That the vulgar express their thoughts clearly is far from true ; and what perspicuity can be found among them proceeds not from the easiness of their language, but the shallowness of their thoughts. He that sees a building as a common spectator, contents himself with relating that it is great or little, mean or splendid, lofty or low ; all these words are intelligible and common, but they convey SAMUEL JOHNSON 163 no distinct or limited ideas ; if he attempts, without the terms of architecture, to dehneate the parts, or enumerate the ornaments, his narration at once becomes unintelligible. The terms, indeed, generally displease, because they are understood by few, but they are little understood only because few that look upon an edifice, examine its parts, or analyse its columns into their members. The state of every other art is the same ; as it is cursorily surveyed or accurately examined, different forms of expression become proper. In morality it is one thing to discuss the niceties of the casuist, and another to direct the practice of common life. In agriculture, he that instructs the farmer to plough and sow, may convey his notions without the words which he would find necessary in explaining to philosophers the process of vegetation ; and if he, who has nothing to do but to be honest by the shortest way, will perplex his mind with subtle speculations ; or if he, whose task is to reap and thresh, will not be contented without examining the evolution of the seed and circulation of the sap, the writers whom either shall consult are very little to be blamed, though it should sometimes happen that they are read in vain. (From the Same.) ENGLISH LITERATURE It is common to overlook what is near, by keeping the eye fixed upon something remote. In the same manner present opportuni- ties are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges, and intent upon future advantages. Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time, and its progress towards happiness, though naturally slow, is yet retarded by unnecessary labour. The difficulty of obtaining knowledge is universally confessed. To fix deeply in the mind the principles of science, to settle their limitations, and deduce the long succession of their consequences ; to comprehend the whole compass of complicated systems, with all the arguments, objections, and solutions, and to reposit in the in- tellectual treasury the numberless facts, experiments, apophthegms, and positions, which must stand single in the memory, and of which none has any perceptible connection with the rest, is a task 1 64 ENGLISH PROSE which, though undertaken with ardour and pursued with diligence, must at last be left unfinished by the frailty of our nature. To make the way to learning either less short or less smooth, is certainly absurd ; yet this is the apparent effect of the prejudice which seems to prevail among us in favour of foreign authors, and of the contempt of our native literature, which this excursive curiosity must necessarily produce. Every man is more speedily instructed by his own language than by any other ; before we search the rest of the world for teachers, let us try whether we may not spare our trouble by finding them at home. The riches of the English language are much greater than they are commonly supposed. Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning. I am far from intending to insinuate, that other languages are not necessary to him who aspires to eminence, and whose whole life is devoted to study ; but to him who reads only for amusement, or whose purpose is not to deck himself with the honours of literature, but to be qualified for domestic usefulness, and sit down content with subordinate repu- tation, we have authors sufficient to fill up all the vacancies of his time, and gratify most of his wishes for information. Of our poets I need say little, because they are perhaps the only authors to whom their country has done justice. We consider the whole succession from Spencer to Pope, as superior to any names which the continent can boast ; and therefore the poets of other nations, however familiarly they may be sometimes mentioned, are very little read, except by those who design to borrow their beauties. There is, I think, not one of the liberal arts which may not be competently learned in the English language. He that searches after mathematical knowledge may busy himself among his own countrymen, and will find one or other able to instruct him in every part of those abstruse sciences. He that is delighted with experiments, and wishes to know the nature of bodies from certain and visible effects, is happily placed where the mechanical philosophy was first established by a public institution, and from which it was spread to all other countries. The more airy and elegant studies of philology and criticism have little need of any foreign help. Though our language, not being very analogical, gives few opportunities for grammatical SAMUEL JOHNSON 165 researches, yet we have not wanted authors who have considered the principles of speech ; and with critical writings we abound sufficiently to enable pedantry to impose rules which can seldom be observed, and vanity to talk of books which are seldom read. But our own language has, from the Reformation to the present time, been chiefly dignified and adorned by the works of our divines, who, considered as commentators, controvertists, or preachers have undoubtedly left all other nations far behind them. No vulgar language can boast such treasures of theological knowledge, or such multitudes of authors at once learned, elegant, and pious. Other countries and other communions have authors perhaps equal in abilities and diligence to ours ; but if we unite number with excellence there is certainly no nation which must not allow us to be superior. Of morality little is necessary to be said, because it is comprehended in practical divinity, and it is perhaps better taught in English sermons than in any other books ancient and modern. Nor shall I dwell on our excellence in metaphysical speculations, because he that reads the works of our divines will easily discover how far human subtlety has been able to penetrate. Political knowledge is forced upon us by the form of our constitution ; and all the mysteries of government are discovered in the attack or defence of every minister. The original law of society, the rights of subjects, and the prerogatives of kings, have been considered with the utmost nicety, sometimes profoundly investigated, and sometimes familiarly explained. Thus copiously instructive is the English language, and thus needless is all recourse to foreign writers. Let us not therefore make our neighbours proud by soliciting help which we do not want, nor discourage our own industry by difficulties which we need not suffer. ,„ , r. x (1* rom the Same.) THE FLYING MACHINE Among the artists that had been allured into the happy \alley, to labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its inhabitants, was a man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanic powers, who had contrived many engines both of use and recreation. 1 66 ENGLISH PR OSE By a wheel, which the stream turned, he forced the water into a tower, whence it was distributed to all the apartments of the palace. He erected a pavilion in the garden, around which he kept the air always cool by artificial showers. One of the groves, appropriated to the ladies, was ventilated by fans, to which the rivulet that ran through it gave a constant motion ; and instru- ments of soft music were placed at proper distances, of which some played by the impulse of the wind, and some by the power of the stream. This artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas, who was pleased with every kind of knowledge, imagining that the time would come when all his acquisitions should be of use to him in the open world. He came one day to amuse himself in his usual manner, and found the master busy in building a sailing chariot : he saw that the design was practicable upon a level surface, and with expressions of great esteem solicited its completion. The workman was pleased to find himself so much regarded by the prince, and resolved to gain yet higher honours. " Sir," said he, " you have seen but a small part of what the mechanic sciences can perform. I have been long of opinion, that instead of the tardy conveyance of ships and chariots, man might use the swifter migration of wings ; that the fields of air are open to knowledge, and that only ignorance and idleness need crawl upon the ground." This hint rekindled the prince's desire of passing the mountains ; having seen what the mechanist had already performed, he was willing to fancy that he could do more ; yet resolved to incjuire further, before he suffered hope to afflict him by disappointment. "I am afraid," said he to the artist, "that your imagination prevails over your skill, and that you now tell me rather what you wish, than what you know. Every animal has his element assigned him ; the birds have the air, and man and beasts the earth." " So," replied the mechanist, " fishes have the water, in which yet beasts can swim by nature, and men by art. He that can swim needs not despair to fly : to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air, if you can renew any impulse upon it, faster than the air can recede from the pressure." " But the e.Kercise of swimming," said the prince, " is very SAMUEL JOHNSON 167 laborious ; the strongest limbs are soon wearied ; I am afraid the art of flying will be yet more violent, and wings will be of no great use, unless we can fly further than we can swim." " The labour of rising from the ground," said the artist, " will be great, as we see it in the heavier domestic fowls, but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished, till we shall arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall : no care will then be necessary but to move forwards, which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, sir, whose curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher furnished with wings, and hovering in the sky, would see the earth, and all its inhabitants, rolling beneath him, and presenting to him successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the same parallel. How must it amuse the pendent spectator to see the moving scene of land and ocean, cities and deserts ! To survey with equal security the marts of trade, and the fields of battle ; mountains infested by barbarians, and fruitful regions gladdened by plenty, and lulled by peace ! How easily shall we then trace the Nile through all his passage ; pass over to distant regions, and examine the face of nature from one extremity of the earth to the other ! " " All this," said the prince, " is much to be desired ; but I am afraid that no man will be able to breathe in these regions of speculation and tranquillity. I have been told, that respiration is difficult upon lofty mountains, yet from these precipices, though so high as to produce great tenuity of air, it is veiy easy to fall : therefore I suspect, that from any height, where life can be supported, there may be danger of too cjuick descent." " Nothing," replied the artist, " will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome. If you will favour my project, I will try the first flight at my own hazard. 1 have considered the structure of all volant animals, and find the folding continuity of the bat's wings most easily accommodated to the human form. Upon this model I shall begin my task to- morrow, and in a year expect to tower into the air beyond the malice and pursuit of man. But I will work only on this condition, that the art shall not be divulged, and that you shall not require me to make wings for any but ourselves.'' " Why," said Rasselas, " should you envy others so great an advantage .^ All skill ought to be exerted for universal good ; i68 ENGLISH PROSE every man has owed much to others, and ought to repay the kindness that he has received." " If men were all virtuous," returned the artist, " I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good, if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky ? Against an army sailing throHgh the clouds, neither walls, nor mountains, nor seas, could afford any security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the wind, and light at once with irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful region that was rolling under them. Even this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of hap^Diness, might be violated by the sudden descent of some of the naked nations that swami on the coast of the southern sea." The prince promised secrecy, and waited for the performance, not wholly hopeless of success. He visited the work from time to time, observed its progress, and remarked many ingenious contrivances to facilitate motion, and unite levity with strength. The artist was every day more certain that he should leave vultures and eagles behind him, and the contagion of his con- fidence seized upon the prince. In a year the wings were finished, and, on a morning appointed, the maker appeared furnished for flight on a little promontory : he waved his pinions a while to gather air, then leaped from his stand, and in an instant dropped into the lake. His wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained him in the water, and the prince drew him to land, half dead with terror and vexation. (From Rasschis.) POETRY Wherever I went, 1 found that poetry was considered as the highest learning, and regarded with a veneration somewhat approaching to that which man would pay to the Angelic Nature. And yet it fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best : whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once ; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first : or whether, as SAMUEL JOHNSON 169 the province of poetry is to describe Nature and Passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art : that the first excel in strength and invention, and the latter in elegance and refinement. I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious fraternity. I read all the poets of Persia and Arabia, and was able to repeat by memory the volumes that are suspended in the mosque of Mecca. But I soon found that no man was ever great by imitation. My desire of excellence impelled me to transfer my attention to nature and to life. Nature was to be my subject, and men to be my auditors : I could never describe that I had not seen : I could not hope to move those with delight or terror, whose interests and opinions I did not understand. Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw everything with a new purpose ; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified : no kind of knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and deserts for images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of the forest and flower of the valley. I observed with equal care the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the changes of the summer clouds. To a poet nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful, and what- ever is dreadful, must be familiar to his imagination : he must be conversant with all that is awfully vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety : for every idea is useful for the enforce- ment or decoration of moral or religious truth ; and he who knows most will have most power of diversifying his scenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote allusions and unexpected instruction. "All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to study, and every country which I have surveyed has contributed something to iny poetical powers." " In so wide a survey," said the prince, " you must surely have left much unobserved. I have lived, till now, within the I70 ENGLISH PROSE circuit of these mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the sight of something which I had never beheld before, or never heeded." "'The business of a poet," said Imlac, "is to examine, not the individual, but the species ; to remark general properties and large appearances ; he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recall the original to every mind ; and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness. But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet ; he must be accjuainted likewise with all the modes of life. His character requires that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition ; observe the power of all the passions in all their comliinations, and trace the changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country ; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state ; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same : he must therefore content himself with the slow progress of his name ; contemn the applause of his own time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as the interpreter of nature, and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations ; as a being superior to time and place. "His labour is not yet at an end: he must know many languages and many sciences ; and, that his style may be worthy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, familiarise to himself every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony." Imlac now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding to aggrandise his own profession, when the Prince cried out, " Enough ! thou hast convinced me, that no human being can ever be a poet." (Prom the Same.) SAMUEL JOHNSON 1 7 1 A LIFE ACCORDING TO NATURE Rasselas went often to an assembly of learned men, who met at stated times to unbend their minds, and compare their opinions. Their nranners were somewhat coarse, but their conversation was instructive, and their disputations acute, though sometimes too violent, and often continued till neither controvertist remembered upon what question they began. Some faults were almost general among them : every one was desirous to dictate to the rest, and every one was pleased to hear the genius or knowledge of another depreciated. In this assembly Rasselas was relating his interview with the hermit, and the wonder with which he heard him censure a course of life which he had so deliberately chosen, and so laudably followed. The sentiments of the hearers were various. Some were of opinion, that the folly of his choice had been justly punished by condemnation to perpetual perseverance. One of the youngest among them, with great vehemence, pronounced him a hypocrite. Some talked of the right of society to the labour of individuals, and considered retirement as a desertion of duty. Others readily allowed, that there was a time when the claims of the people were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself to review his life, and purify his heart. One who appeared more affected with the narrative than the rest, thought it likely, that the hermit would in a few years, go back to his retreat, and, perhaps if shame did not restrain, or death intercept him, return once more from his retreat into the world : " For the hope of happiness," said he, " is so strongly impressed, that the longest experience is not able to efface it. Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel, and are forced to confess, the misery ; yet, when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable. But the time will surely come, when desire will be no longer our tomient, and no man shall be wretched but by his own fault." " This," said a philosopher, who had heard him with tokens of great impatience, " is the present condition of a wise man. The time is already come, when none are wretched but by their own fault. Nothing is more idle, than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach. The way to be 172 ENGLISH PROSE happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed ; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity. He that lives according to nature will suffer nothing from the delusions of hope, or importunities of desire : he will receive and reject with equability of temper ; and act or suffer as the reason of things shall alternately prescribe. Other men may amuse themselves with subtle definitions, or intricate ratiocinations. Let them learn to be wise by easier means : let them observe the hind of the forest, and the linnet of the grove : let them consider the life of animals, whose motions are regulated by instinct ; they obey their guide and are happy. Let us therefore, at length, cease to dispute, and learn to live ; throw away the incumbrance of precepts, which they who utter them with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with us this simple and intelligible maxim, That deviation from nature is deviation from happiness." When he had spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence. " Sir," said the prince, with great modesty, " as I, like all the rest of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been fixed upon your discourse : I doubt not the truth of a position which a man so learned has so confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live according to nature." " When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the philosopher, " I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to afford. To live according to nature, is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects ; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity ; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things." The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was silent, and the philosopher, supposing' him satisfied, and the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had co-o^jerated with the present system. (From the Same.) SAMUEL JOHNSON 173 THE LOSS OF A FRIEND " Since Pekuah was taken from me " said the princess, " I have no pleasure to reject or to retain. She that has no one to love or trust has little to hope. She wants the radical principle of happiness. We may, perhaps, allow that what satisfaction this world can afford, must arise from the conjunction of wealth, knowledge, and goodness : wealth is nothing but as it is bestowed, and knowledge nothing but as it is communicated ; they must therefore be imparted to others, and to whom could I now delight to impart them ? Goodness affords the only comfort which can be enjoyed without a partner, and goodness may be practised in retirement." " How far solitude may admit goodness or advance it, I shall not," replied Imlac, "dispute at present. Remember the confession of the pious hermit. You will wish to return into the world when the image of your companion has left your thoughts." "That time," said Nekayah, " will never come. The generous frankness, the modest obsequiousness, and the faithful secrecy of my dear Pekuah, will always be more missed, as I shall live longer to see vice and folly." "The state of a mind oppressed with a sudden calamity," said Imlac, " is like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the new created earth, who when the first night came upon them, supposed that day would never return. When the clouds of sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can imagine how they will be dispelled : yet a new day succeeded to the night, and sorrow is never long without a dawn of ease. But they who restrain themselves from receiving comfort, do as the savages would have done, had they put out their eyes when it was dark. Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux ; something is hourly lost, and something acquired. To lose much at once is inconvenient to either, but while the vital powers remain uninjured, nature will find the means of reparation. Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude. Do not suffer life to stagnate ; it will grow muddy for want of motion : commit yourself again to the current of the world ; Pekuali will 174 ENGLISH PROSE vanish by degrees ; you will meet in your way some other favourite or learn to diffuse yourSelf in general conversation." " At least," said the prince, " do not despair before all remedies have been tried : the inquiry after the unfortunate lady is still continued, and shall be carried on with greater diligence, on condition that you will promise to wait a year for the event, with- out any unalterable resolution." Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the promise to her brother, who had been advised by Imlac to require it. Imlac had, indeed, no great hope of regaining Pekuah, but he supposed, that if he could secure the interval of a year, the princess would be then in no danger of a cloister. Nekayah, seeing that nothing was omitted for the recovery of her favourite, and having, by her promise, set her intention of retirement at a distance, began imperceptibly to return to common cares and common pleasures. She rejoiced without her own consent at the suspension of her sorrows, and sometimes caught herself with indignation in the act of turning away her mind from the remembrance of her whom yet she resolved never to forget. She then appointed a certain hour of the day for meditation on the merits and fondness of Pekuah, and for some weeks retired constantly at the time fixed, and returned with her eyes swollen and her countenance clouded. By degrees she grew less scrupulous, and suffered any important and pressing avocation to delay the tribute of daily tears. She then yielded to less occasions ; sometimes forget what she was indeed afraid to remember, and at last wholly released herself from the duty of periodical affliction. Her real love of Pekuah was yet not diminished. A thousand occurrences brought her back to memory, and a thousand wants, wliich nothing but the confidence of friendship can supply, made her frequently regretted. She, therefore, solicited Imlac never to desist from incjuiry, and to leave no art of intelligence untried, that, at least, she might have the comfort of knowing that she did not suffer by negligence or sluggishness. " Yet, what," said she, " is to be expected from our pursuit of happiness, when we find the state of life to be such, that happiness itself is the cause of misery .-' Why should we endeavour to attain that, of which possession cannot be secured ? I shall henceforward fear to yield my heart to excellence, however bright, or to fondness, however tender, lest 1 should lose again what I have lost in Pekuah." (From the Same.) SAMUEL JOHNSON I75 METAPHYSICAL POETS Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing- intellectual pleasures in the minds of men, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neglected at another. Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets ; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to give some account. The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour ; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear ; for the modulation was so imperfect that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry rky\>i] lufxr]TtKi]^ an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets ; for they cannot be said to have imitated anything : they neither copied nature nor life ; neither painted the forms of matter nor represented the operations of intellect. Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries that they fall below Donne in wit ; but maintains that they surpass him in poetry. If wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed," they certainly never attained nor ever sought it ; for they endeavoured to be singular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous ; he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language. If by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledg-ed to be just ; if it be that which he that never found it, wonders how he missed ; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom 176 ENGLISH PROSE risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural ; they are not obvious, but neither are they just ; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of dis- cordia concors ; a combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together ; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions ; their learning in- structs and their subtlety surprises ; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased. From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections. As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising, they had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment which enables us to conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds : they never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done, but wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature ; as beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure ; as epicurean deities, making remarks on the actions of men and the vicissitudes of life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they hoped had been never said before. Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetic ; for they never attcmjated that comprehension and expanse of thought which at once fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion, (ireat thoughts are always general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to minuteness. It is with great propriety that subtilty, which in its original import means exility of particles, is taken in its meta- phorical meaning for nicety of distinction. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness ; for great things cannot have escaped fomier observation. Their attempts were always analytic ; they broke every image into frag- ments, and could no more represent, by their slender conceits and SAMUEL JOHNSON 177 laboured particularities, the prospects of nature, or the scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon. What they wanted, however, of the sublime, they endeavoured to supply by hyperbole ; their amplification had no limits ; they left not only reason but fancy behind them, and produced com- binations of confused magnificence that not only could not be credited, but could not be imagined. Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost ; if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth ; if their conceits were far fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan it was at least necessary to read and think. No man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme and volubility of syllables. In perusing the works of this race of authors, the mind is exer- cised either by recollection or incjuiry ; either something already learned is to lae retrieved, or something new is to be examined. If their greatness seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination is not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison are employed, and in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found buried, perhaps in grossness of expression, but useful to those who know their value, and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity, and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which have more propriety though less copiousness of sentiment. (From Tiic Lives of iJic Poets.) MILTON Dryden remarks that Milton has some flats among his elevations. This is only to say that all the parts are not equal. In every work one part must be for the sake of others ; a palace must have passages, a poem must have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work there is a VOL. IV N 178 ENGLISH PROSE vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the sky, may be allowed sometimes to revisit earth ; for what other author ever soared so high, or sustained his flight so long ? Milton, being well versed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed often from them ; and, as every man catches some- thing from his companions, his desire of imitating Ariosto's levity has disgraced his work with the " Paradise of Fools," a fiction not in itself ill-imagined, but too ludicrous for its place. This play on words, in which he delights too often ; his equivocations, which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients ; his unnecessary and ungraceful use of terms of art — it is not necessary to mention, because they are easily remarked and generally censured ; and at last bear so little proportion to the whole that they scarcely deserve the attention of a critic. Such are the faults of that wonderful perfomiance Paradise Losf, which he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered not as nice but as dull, as less to be censured for want of candour, than pitied for want of sensibility. (From the Same.) RELIGIOUS POETRY It has been the frequent lamentation of good men that verse has been too little applied to the purposes of worship, and many attempts have been made to animate devotion by pious poetry. That they have very seldom attained their end is sufficiently known, and it may not be improper to inquire why they have miscarried. Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic poem ; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse will not lose it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and grandeur of nature, the flowers of the spring, and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide, and the revolutions of the sky, and praise the Maker for his works, in SAMUEL JOHNSON 1 7 9 lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, Ijut the motives to piety, that of the description is not (]od, but the works of God. Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer. The essence of poetry is invention, such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are few, and being few are universally known ; but, few as they are, they can be made no more ; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression. Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those which repel the imagination ; but religion must be showed as it is ; suppression and addition equally corrupt it ; and such as it is, it is known* already. From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy ; but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted ; infinity cannot be amplified ; perfection cannot be improved. The employments of pious meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication of man to man may diffuse itself through many topics of jaer- suasion ; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy. Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most stiblime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of some- thing more excellent than itself All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful, but it supplies nothing to the mind. The i8o ENGLISH PROSE ideas of Christian theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament ; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere. ,„ ^, ^ \ ^ (rrom the hame.) DRYDEN AS CRITIC Dryden may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled, and rarely deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of jDropriety had neglected to leach them. Two Arts of English Poctiy were written in the days of Elizabeth by Webb and .Puttenham, from which something might be learned, and a few hints had been given by Jonson and Cowley ; but Dryden's Essay on Dramatic Poetry was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing. He who, having formed his opinions in the present age of English literature, turns back to peruse this dialogue, will not perhaps find much increase of knowledge, or much novelty of instruction ; but he is to remember that critical principles were then in the hands of a few, who had gathered them partly from the ancients, and partly from the Italians and French. The structure of dramatic poems was then not generally understood. Audiences applauded by instinct ; and poets perhaps often pleased by chance. A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre. Of an opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence ceases to be examined. Of an art universally practised, the first teacher is forgotten. Learning once made popular is no longer learning ; it has the appearance of something which we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew appears to rise from the field which it refreshes. To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time, and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his means of supplying them. That which is SA MUEL JOHNSON 1 8 1 easy at one time was difificult at another. Diyden at least imported his science, and gave his country what it wanted before ; or rather, he imported only the materials, and manufactured them by his own skill. The Dialogue on tJic Drmna was one of his first essays of criticism, written when he was yet a timorous candidate for reputation, and therefore laboured with that diligence which he might allow himself somewhat to remit, when his name gave sanction to his positions, and his awe of the public was abated, partly by custom, and partly by success. It will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imager)', so brightened with illustrations. His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakespeare may stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism ; exact without minute- ness, and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus, on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, so extensive in its comprehension, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed ; nor can the editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence, of having changed Dryden's gold for baser metal of lower value, though of greater bulk. In this, and in all his other essays on the same subject, the criticism of Dryden is the criticism of a poet ; not a dull collection of theorems, nor a rude detection of faults, which perhaps the censor was not able to have committed ; but a gay and vigorous dissertation, where delight is mingled with instruc- tion, and where the author proves his right of judgment by his power of performance. The different manner and effect with which critical knowledge may be conveyed, was perhaps never more clearly exemplified than in the performances of Rymer and Dryden. It was said of a dispute between two mathematicians, "malimcum Scaligero errare, quam cum Clavio recte sapere," that " it was more eligible to go wrong with one than right with the other." A tendency of the same kind every mind must feel at the perusal of Dryden's prefaces and Rymer's discourses. With Diyden we arc wandering 1 82 ENGLISH PROSE in quest of truth, whom we find, if we find her at all, drest in the graces of elegance ; and if we miss her, the labour of the pursuit rewards itself ; we are led only through fragrance and flowers. Rymer, without taking a nearer, takes a rougher way ; every step is to be made through thorns and brambles ; and truth, if we meet her, appears repulsive by her mien, and ungraceful by her habit. Dryden's criticism has the majesty of a cjueen ; Rymer's has the ferocity of a tyrant. (From the Same.) A DIGRESSION Of Gilbert Walmsley, thus presented to my mind, let me indulge myself in the remembrance. I knew him very early ; he was one of the first friends that literature procured me, and I hope that at least my gratitude made me worthy of his notice. He was of an advanced age, and I was only yet a boy ; yet he never received my notions with contempt. He was a Whig, with all the virulence and malevolence of his party ; yet difference of opinion did not keep us apart. I honoured him, and he endured me. He had mingled with the gay world without exemption from its vice or its follies, but had never neglected the cultivation of his mind ; his belief of revelation was unshaken ; his learning preserved his principles • he grew first regular, and then pious. His studies had been so various that I am not able to name a man of equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great ; and what he did not immediately know he could at least tell where to find. Such was his amplitude of learning, and such his copiousness of communication, that it may be doubted whether a day now passes in which I have not some advantage from his friendship. At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours, with companions such as are not often found — with one who has lengthened, and one who has gladdened life ; with Dr. James, whose skill in physic will be long remembered, and with David Garrick, whom 1 hoped to have gratified with this character of our common friend ; but what are the hopes of man ! I am dis- appointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure. (From the Same.) SAMUEL JOHNSON 183 A TASK COMPLETED In hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature for- bids to be immortal, I have devoted this book, the labour of years, to the honour of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm of philology, without a contest, to the nations of the con- tinent. The chief glory of every people arises from its authors : whether I shall add anything by my own writings to the reputa- tion of English literature, must be left to time : much of my life has been lost under the pressure of disease ; much has been trifled away, and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me ; but I shall not think my employ- ment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations and distant ages gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth ; if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle. When I am animated by this wish, I look with pleasure on my book, however defective, and deliver it to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavoured well. That it will immedi- ately become popular I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance in contempt ; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and there never can be wanting some who dis- tinguish desert, who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since while it is hastening to publica- tion some words are budding, some falling away ; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole hfe would not be sufficient ; that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand ; that a writer will sometimes be hurried by eager- ness to the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task which Scaliger compares to the labours of the anvil and the mine ; that what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present ; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning, and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need for that 1 84 ENGLISH PROSE which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow. In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed ; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it that the EuglisJi Diciioftary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great ; not in the soft obscurities of retirement or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and com- prised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive ; if the aggregated knowledge and co- operating diligence of the Italian academicians did not secure them from the censure of Beni ; if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if I could obtain in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me ? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds : I therefore dismiss it with frigid trancjuillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise. (From Preface to Dictionary.') LETTER TO LORD CHESTERFIELD 'jth February 1755. My Lord — I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of The World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recom- mended to the public, were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour, which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your SAMUEL JOHNSON 185 lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vainqticur du vainqiiciir de la tcrre; — that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contend- ing ; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could ; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. Seven years, my lord, have now past, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door ; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks. Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help ? The notice which you have loeen pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind ; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it : till I am solitary, and cannot impart it ; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron, which providence has enabled me to do for myself. Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less ; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation. My Lord, Your lordship's most humble, most obedient servant, Sam. Johnson. DAVID HUME [David Hume was born in 171 1, and died in 1776. Rewrote many essays upon the topics whicli philosophy, morals, and politics supply ; and was, besides, the author of a History of England. His most striking and con- siderable performance is, perhaps, the Treatise of Human Nature.^ Hume's pre-eminence in the field of speculation has somewhat thrown into the shade his merits as a man of letters ; and, in truth, he has been surpassed by none of his countrymen in the acuteness, the penetration, and the intrepidity uith which he treated the problems of philosophy. While his opponents must concede that he possessed the courage of his opinions in no ordinary degree, and that he never shrank from following whither the argument seemed to lead, but, on the contrary, applied his canons with a consistency as admirable as it was singular, his supporters would find it hard to point to any subsequent writer who has presented the case for the philosophy of Experience with greater — or even with ecjual — thoroughness and cogency. The discoveries of modern science have supplied the empirical philo- sopher with no weapon which may not be found in Hume's well- stocked armoury ; while, as a political enquirer, he attained a position second only to that of his close friend, Adam Smith. A studied and artful — sometimes a strained — simplicity is the chief characteristic of his style. He never attempts the majestic periods of Johnson or Gibbon ; while a certain air of stiffness and precision effectually prevents his being spirited on the one hand, or colloquial on the other. His prose flows on with a steady and even motion, which no obstacle ever retards, nor any passion ever agitates. In the whole of his writings there is scarce one of those outbursts of emotion which at times animate the pages even of the coolest metaphysicians. Scorn there is in abundance ; but it is the amused and pitying contempt of a superior being who watches from afar the frailties and vices ENGLISH PROSE from which himself is consciously exempt. Enthusiasm, or righteous indignation, was a total stranger to Hume's cast of mind. But his sneer and his sarcasm, though by far less elaborate and less diligently sustained, are hardly less efifective and pointed than Gibbon's. As a historian, he makes little pretence to absolute impartiality, but his opinions are insinuated with the utmost delicacy and address ; and at least he never wilfully falsifies his facts. He appeals little to the modern taste in the capacity either of the pedant or the journalist ; yet his judgment of character is at once cautious and discriminating, and he inter- jects many shrewd and dry remarks. Such, for example, is the observation that to inspire the Puritans with a better humour was, both for their own sake and that of the public, a laudable inten- tion of the Court ; " but whether pillories, fines, and prisons were proper expedients for that purpose may admit of some question " ; or the description of the Solemn League and Covenant as "com- posed of many invectives, fitted to inflame the minds of men against their fellow-creatures, whom Heaven has enjoined them to cherish and to love." Hume's vocabulary is copious and well chosen, but never picturesque. He compiled for his own guidance a list of Scotticisms; and it argues a nice literary sense and an attentive study of the best models that, having in him a strong dash of the provincial, he should have not only sought but contrived to avoid these not unnatural solecisms. Many men have written English prose with greater ease, fluency, and freedom, and many with greater dignity and effect ; but few with more accuracy, purity, and elegance of diction than David Hume. J. H. Millar. A DEFENCE OF PHILOSOPHY This deficiency in our ideas is not, indeed, perceived in common life, nor are we sensible, that in the most usual conjunctions of cause and effect we are as ignorant of the ultimate principle, which binds them together, as in the most unusual and extra- ordinary. But this proceeds merely from an illusion of imagination ; and the question is, how far we ought to yield to these illusions. This C|uestion is very difficult, and reduces us to a very dangerous dilemma, whichever way we answer it. For if we assent to every trivial suggestion of the fancy ; besides that these suggestions are often contrary to each other ; they lead us into, such errors, absurdities, and obscurities, that we must at last become ashamed of our credulity. Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers. Men of bright fancies may in this respect be compared to those angels, whom the Scripture represents as covering their eyes with their wings. This has already appeared in so many instances that we may spare ourselves the trouble of enlarging upon it any further. But on the other hand, if the consideration of these instances makes us take a resolution to reject all the trivial suggestions of the fancy, and adhere to the understanding, that is, to the general and more established properties of the imagination ; even this resolution, if steadily executed, would be dangerous and attended with the most fatal consequences. For I have already shown, that the understanding, when it acts alone, and -according to its most general principles, entirely subverts itself, and leaves not the lowest degree of evidence in any proposition, either in philosophy or common life. We save ourselves from this total scepticism only by means of that singular and seemingly trivial property of the fancy, by which we enter with difficulty into remote views of I90 ENGLISH PROSE things, and we are not able to accompany them with so sensible an impression, as we do those, which are more easy and natural. Shall we, then, establish it for a general maxim, that no refined or elaborate reasoning is ever to be received ? Consider well the consequences of such a principle. By this ineans you cut off entirely all science and philosophy. You proceed upon one singular cjuality of the imagination, and by a parity of reason must embrace all of them. And you expressly contradict your- self; since this maxim must be built on the preceding reasoning, which will be allowed to be sufficiently refined and metaphysical. What jnirty, then, shall we choose among these difficulties ? if we embrace this principle, and condemn all refined reasoning, we run into the most manifest absurdities. If we reject it in favour of these reasonings, we subvert entirely the human understanding. We have therefore no choice left but betwixt a false reason and none at all. For my part, I know not what ought to be done in the present case. I can only observe what is commonly done ; which is, that this difficulty is seldom or never thought of; and even where it has once been present to the mind is quickly forgot, and leaves but a small impression behind it. Very refined reflections have little or no influence upon us : and yet we do not and cannot establish it for a rule, that they ought not to have any influence, which implies a manifest contradiction. But what have I here said, that reflections, very refined and metaphysical, have little or no influence upon us ? This opinion I can scarce forbear retracting, and condemning from my present feeling and experience. The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me and heated my brain that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what ? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return ? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread ? What beings surround me. ? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence upon me .'' I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty. Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of DAVID HUME 191 dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of the mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends ; and when after three or four hours' amusement I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any further. Here then I find myself absolutely and necessarily determined to live and talk and act like other people in the common affairs of life. But, notwithstanding that my natural propensity, and the course of my animal spirits and passions reduce me to this indolent belief in the general maxims of the world, I still feel such remains of my former disposition, that I am ready to throw all my books and papers into the fire, and resolve never more to renounce the pleasures of life for the sake of reasoning and philosophy. For those arc my sentiments in that splenetic humour which governs me at present. I may, nay I must yield to the current of nature, in submitting to my senses and under- standing ; and in this blind submission I show most perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles. But does it follow that I must strive against the current of nature which leads me to indolence and pleasure; that I must seclude myself, in some measure, from the commerce and society of men, which is so agreeable ; and that I must torture my brain with subtleties and sophistries, at the very time that I cannot satisfy myself concerning the reasonableness of so painful an application, nor have any tolerable prospect of arriving by its means at truth and certainty. Under what obligation do I lie of making such an abuse of time ? And to what end can it serve either for the service of mankind, or for my own private interest ? No ! If I must be a fool, as all those who reason or believe anything certainly are, my follies shall at least be natural and agreeable. Where I strive against my inclination I shall have a good reason for my resistance, and will no more be led a-wandering into such dreary solitudes, and rough passages, as I have hitherto met with. These are my sentiments of my spleen and indolence ; and indeed I must confess, that philosophy has nothing to oppose to them and expects a victor\' more from the returns of a serious 192 ENGLISH PROSE good-humoured disposition, than from the force of reason and conviction. In all the incidents of life we ought still to preserve our scepticism. If we believe that fire warms or water refreshes, 'tis only because it costs us too much pains to think otherwise. Nay, if we are philosophers, it ought only to be upon sceptical principles, and from an inclination which we feel to the employing ourselves after the manner. Where reason is lively and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it never can have any title to operate upon us. At the time, therefore, that I am tired with amusement and company, and have indulged a reverie in my chamber, or in a solitary walk by a river side, I feel my mind all collected within itself, and am naturally inclined to carry my view into all those subjects about which I have met with so many disputes in the course of my reading and conversation. I cannot forbear having a curiosity to be acquainted with the j^rinciples of moral good and evil, the nature and foundation of government, and the cause of those several passions and inclinations, which actuate and govern me. I am uneasy to think I approve of one object, and disapprove of another ; call one thing beautiful, and another deformed ; decide concerning truth and falsehood, reason and folly, without knowing upon what principles I proceed. I am concerned for the condition of the learned world, which lies under such a deploral^le ignorance in all these particulars. I feel an ambition to arise in me of contributing to the instruction of man- kind, and of acquiring a name by my inventions and discoveries. These sentiments spring up naturally in my present disposition ; and should I endeavour to banish them, by attaching myself to any other business or diversion, I feel I should be a loser in point of pleasure ; and this is the origin of my philosophy. But even suppose this curiosity and ambition should not trans- port me into speculations without the sphere of common life, it would necessarily happen, that from my very weakness I must be led into such inquiries. 'Tis certain, that superstition is much more bold in its systems and hypotheses than philosophy ; and while the latter contents itself with assigning new causes and principles to the phenomena, which appear in the visible world, the former opens a world of its own, and presents us with scenes, and beings, and objects, which are altogether new. Since there- fore 'tis almost impossible for the mind of man to rest, like those of beasts, in that narrow circle of objects, which are the subject DAVID HUME 193 of daily conversation and action, we ought only to deliberate con- cerning the choice of our guide, and ought to prefer that which is safest and most agreeable. And in this respect I make bold to recommend philosophy, and shall not scruple to give it the pie- ference to superstition of every kind or denomination. For as superstition arises naturally and easily from the popular opinions of mankind, it seizes more strongly on the mind, and is often able to disturb us in the conduct of our lives and actions. Philosophy on the contrary, if just, can present us only with mild and moder- ate sentiments ; and if false and extravagant, its opinions are merely the objects of a cold and general speculation, and seldom go so far as to interrupt the course of our natural propensities. The Cynics are an extraordinary instance of philosophers, who from reasonings purely philosophical ran into as great extravag- ancies of conduct as any monk or dervish that was ever in the world. Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous ; those in philosophy only ridiculous. I am sensible, that these two cases of the strength and weak- ness of the mind will not comprehend all mankind, and that there are in England, in particular, many honest gentlemen, who being always employed in our domestic affairs, or amusing themselves in common recreations, have carried their thoughts very little beyond those objects, which are every day exposed to their senses. And indeed, of such as these I pretend not to make philosophers, nor do I expect them either to be associates in these researches or auditors of these discoveries. They do well to keep themselves in their present situation ; and instead of refining them into philo- sophers, I wish we could communicate to our founders of systems a share of this gross earthy mixture, as an ingredient, which they commonly stand much in need of, and which would serve to temper those fiery particles, of which they are composed. While a warm imagination is allowed to enter into philosophy, and hypotheses embraced merely for being specious and agreeable, we can never have any steady principles, nor any sentiments, which will suit with common practice and experience. But were these hypotheses once removed, we might hope to establish a system or set of opinions, which, if not true (for that, perhaps, is too much to be hoped for), might at least be satisfactory to the human mind, and might stand the test of the most critical examination. Nor should we despair of attaining this end, because of the many chimerical systems, which have successively arisen and decayed VOL. IV O 194 ENGLISH PROSE away among men, would we consider the shortness of that period wherein these questions have been the subjects of inquiry and reasoning. Two thousand years with such long interruptions, and under such mighty discouragements are a small space of time to give any tolerable perfection to the sciences ; and perhaps we are still in too early an age of the world to discover any principles, which will bear the examination of the latest posterity. For my part, my only hope is that I may contribute a little to the advance- ment of knowledge, by giving in some particulars a different turn to the speculations of philosophers, and pointing out to them more distinctly those subjects, where alone they can expect assurance and conviction. Human nature is the only science of man ; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected. 'Twill be sufficient for me, if I can bring it a little more into fashion ; and the hope of this serves to compose my temper from that spleen, and invigor- ate it from that indolence, which sometimes prevail upon me. If the reader finds himself in the same easy disposition, let him follow me in my future speculations. If not, let him follow his inclina- tion, and wait the returns of application and good humour. The conduct of a man who studies philosophy in this careless manner, is more truly sceptical than that of one who, feeling in himself an inclination to it, is yet so overwhelmed with doubts and scruples, as totally to reject it. A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction ; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them. Nor is it only proper we should in general indulge our inclina- tion in the most elaborate philosophical researches, notwithstand- ing our sceptical principles, but also that we should yield to that propensity, which inclines us to be positive and certain in particu- lar points, according to the light in which we survey them in any particular instant. 'Tis easier to forbear all examination and inquiry, than to check ourselves in so natural a propensity, and guard against that assurance, which always arises from an exact and full survey of an object. On such an occasion we are apt not only to forget our scepticism, but even our modesty too ; and make use of such terms as these, 'tis evident, 'tis certain, 'tis undeniable : -sNhich a due deference to the public ought, perhaps, to prevent. I may have fallen into this fault after the example of others ; but I here enter a cn7>eaf against any objections, which may be offered on that head, and declare that such expressions DAVID HUME 195 were extorted from me by the present view of the object, and imply no dogmatical spirit, nor conceited idea of my own judg- ment, which are sentiments that I am sensible can become no- body, and a sceptic still less than any other. (From A Treatise of H 11 in an Naiiar.) KING AND PARLIAMENT In the summer of 1643, while the negotiations were carried on with Scotland, the parliament had summoned an assembly at Westminster, consisting of one hundred and twenty-one divines and thirty laymen, celebrated in their party for piety and learning. By their advice, alterations were made in the Thirty-nine Articles, or in the metaphysical doctrines of the Church ; and what was of greater importance, the liturgy was entirely abolished, and in its stead a new Directory for worship was established ; by which, suitably to the spirit of the Puritans, the utmost liberty both in praying and preaching was indulged to the public teachers. By the Solemn League and Covenant, Episcopacy was abjured, as destructive of all true piety ; and a national engagement, attended with every circumstance that could render a promise sacred and obligatory, was entered into with the Scots, never to suffer its readmission. All these measures showed little spirit of accommo- dation in the parliament ; and the king's commissioners were not surprised to find the establishment of Presbytery and the Directory positively demanded, together with the subscription of the Covenant, both by the king and kingdom. Had Charles been of a disposition to neglect all theological controversy, he yet had been obliged, in good policy, to adhere to episcopal jurisdiction; not only because it was favourable to monarchy, but because all his adherents were passionately de- voted to it ; and to abandon them, in what they regarded as so important an article, was forever to relinciuish their friendship and assistance. But Charles had never attained such enlarged principles. He deemed bishops essential to the very being of a Christian church ; and he thought himself bound, by more sacred ties than those of policy, or even of honour, to the support of that order. His concessions, therefore, on this head, he judged sufficient, when he agreed that an indulgence should be given to 196 ENGLISH PROSE tender consciences with regard to ceremonies ; that the bishops should exercise no act of jurisdiction or ordination without the consent and counsel of such presbyters as should be chosen by the clergy of each diocese ; that they should reside constantly in their diocese, and be bound to preach every Sunday ; that pluralities be abolished, that abuses in ecclesiastical courts be redressed, and that a hundred thousand pounds be levied on the bishops' estates and the chapter lands for payment of debts contracted by the parliament. These concessions, though con- siderable, gave no satisfaction to the parliamentary commissioners ; and, without abating anything of their rigor on this head, they proceeded to their demands with regard to the militia. The king's partisans had all along maintained that the fears and jealousies of the parliament, after the securities so early and easily given to public liberty, were either feig'ned or groundless ; and that no human institution could be better poised and adjusted than was now the government of England. By the abolition of the star chamber and court of high commission, the prerogative, they said, has lost all that coercive power by which it had formerly suppressed or endangered liberty ; by the establishment of triennial parliaments, it can have no leisure to acquire new powers, or guard itself, during any time, from the inspection of that vigilant assembly ; by the slender revenue of the crown, no king can ever attain such influence as to procure a repeal of these salutary statutes, and while the prince commands no military force, he will in vain by violence attempt an infringement of laws so clearly defined by means of late disputes, and so passionately cherished by all his subjects. In this situation, surely the nation, governed by so virtuous a monarch, may for the present remain in tranquillity, and try whether it be not possible, by peaceful arts, to elude that danger with which it is pretended its liberties are still threatened. But though the royalists insisted on these plausible topics before the commencement of war, they were obliged to own, that the progress of civil commotions had somewhat abated the force and evidence of this reasoning. If the power of the militia, said the opposite party, be intrusted to the king, it would not now be difficult for him to abuse that authority. By the rage of intestine discord, his partisans are inflamed into an extreme hatred against their antagonists ; and have contracted, no doubt, some prejudices against popular privileges, which, in their apprehension, have DAVID HUME 197 been the source of so much disorder. Were the arms of the state, therefore, put entirely into such hands, what pubHc security, it may be demanded, can be given to Hberty, or what private security to those who, in opposition to the letter of the law, have so generously ventured their lives in its defence ? In compliance with this apprehension, Charles offered that the arms of the state should be intrusted, during three years, to twenty commissioners, who should be named either by common agreement between him and the parliament, or one half by him, the other by the parlia- ment. And after the expiration of that term, he insisted that his constitutional authority over the militia should again return to him. The parliamentary commissioners at first demanded, that the power of the sword should forever be entrusted to such persons as the parliament alone should appoint ; but afterwards they re- laxed so far as to require that authority only for seven years ; after which it was not to return to the king, but to be settled by bill, or by common agreement between him and his parliament. The king's commissioners asked, whether jealousies and fears were all on one side ; and whether the prince, from such violent attempts and pretensions as he had experienced, had not at least as great reason to entertain apprehensions for his authority, as they for their liberty ? Whether there were any equity in securing only one party, and leaving the other, during the space of seven years, entirely at the mercy of their enemies ? Whether, if un- limited power were intrusted to the parliament during so long a period, it would not be easy for them to frame the subsecjuent bill in the manner most agreeable to themselves, and keep forever possession of the sword, as well as of every article of civil power and jurisdiction. The truth is, after the commencement of war, it was very difficult, if not impossible, to find security for both parties, especially for that of the parliament. Amidst such violent ani- mosities, power alone could insure safety ; and the power of one side was necessarily attended with danger to the other. Few or no instances occur in history of an equal, peaceful, and dural)le accommodation that has been concluded between two factions which had been inflamed into civil war. With regard to Ireland, there were no greater hopes of agree- ment between the parties. The parliament demanded, that the truce with the rebels should be declared null ; that the manage- 198 ENGLISH PROSE ment of the war should be given over entirely to the parliament ; and that, after the conquest of Ireland, the nomination of the lord lieutenant and of the judges, or in other words the sovereignty of that kingdom, should likewise remain in their hands. What rendered an accommodation more desperate was, that the demands on these three heads, however exorbitant, were acknowledged, by the parliamentary commissioners, to be nothing but preliminaries. After all these were granted, it would be necessary to proceed to the discussion of those other demands, still more e.xorbitant, which a little before had been transmitted to the king at Oxford. Such ignominious terms were there insisted on, that worse could scarcely be demanded, were Charles totally vanquished, a prisoner, and in chains. The king was required to attaint and except from a general pardon forty of the most considerable of his English subjects, and nineteen of his Scottish, together with all Popish recusants in both kingdoms who had borne arms for him. It was insisted that forty-eight more, with all the members who had sitten in either house at Oxford, all lawyers and divines who had embraced the king's party, should be rendered incapable of any office, be forbidden the exercise of their profession, be prohibited from coming within the verge of the court, and forfeit the third of their estates to the parliament. It was required that whoever had borne arms for the king, should forfeit the tenth of their estates ; or, if that did not suffice, the sixth, for the payment of public debts. As if royal authority were not sufficiently annihilated by such terms, it was demanded that the court of wards should be abolished ; that all the considerable officers of the crown, and all the judges, should be appointed by parliament ; and that the right of peace and war should not be exercised without the consent of that assembly. The Presbyterians, it must be confessed, after insist- ing on such conditions, differed only in words from the Indepen- dents, who required the establishment of a pure republic. When the debates had been carried on to no purpose during twenty days among the commissioners, they separated, and returned ; those of the king to Oxford, those of the parliament to London. A little before the commencement of his fruitless treaty, a deed was executed by the parliament, which proved their determined resolution to yield nothing, but to proceed in the same violent and imperious manner with which they had at first entered on these dangerous enterprises. Archbishop Laud, the most DAVID HUME 199 favoured minister of the king, was brought to the scaftbld ; and in this instance the pubhc might see, that popular assembhes, as, by their very number, they are in a great measure exempt from the restraint of shame, so when they also overleap the bounds of law, naturally break out into acts of the greatest tyranny and injustice. From the time that Laud had been committed, the House of Commons, engaged in enterprises of greater moment, had found no leisure to finish his impeachment, and he had patiently endured so long an imprisonment, without being brought to any trial. After the union with Scotland, the bigoted prejudices of that nation revived the like spirit in England ; and the sectaries resolved to gratify their vengeance in the punishment of this prelate who had so long, by his authority and by the execution of penal laws, kept their zealous spirit under confinement. He was accused of high treason, in endeavouring to subvert the fundamental laws, and of other high crimes and nrisdemeanours. The same illegality of an accumulative crime and a constructive evidence which appeared in the case of Straftord, the same violence and inicjuity in conducting the trial, are conspicuous throughout the whole course of this prosecution. The groundless charge of Popery, though belied by his whole life and conduct, was continually urged against the prisoner ; and every error rendered unpardon- able by this imputation, which was supposed to imply the height of all enormities. " This man, my lords," said Serjeant Wilde, concluding his long speech against him, " is like Naaman the Syrian ; a great man, Ijut a leper." We shall not enter into a detail of this matter, which at present seems to admit of little controversy. It suffices to say, that after a long trial, and the examination of above a hundred and fifty witnesses, the Commons found so little likelihood of obtaining a judicial sentence against Laud, that they were obliged to have recourse to their legislative authority, and to pass an ordinance for taking away the life of this aged prelate. Notwith- standing the low condition into which the House of Peers was fallen, there appeared some intention of rejecting this ordinance ; and the popular leaders were again obliged to apply to the multitude, and to extinguish, by threats of new tumults, the small remains of liberty possessed by the Upper House. Seven peers alone voted in this important question. The rest, either from shame or fear, took care to absent themselves. 200 ENGLISH PROSE Laud, who had behaved during his trial with the spirit and vigour of genius, sunk not under the horrors of his execution, but though he had usually professed himself apprehensive of a violent death, he found all his fears to be dissipated before that superior courage by which he was animated. " No one," said he, " can be more willing to send me out of life, than 1 am desirous to go." Even upon the scaffold, and during the intervals of his prayers, he was harassed and molested by Sir John Clotworthy, a zealot of the reigning sect, and a great leader in the Lower House : this was the time he chose for examining the principles of the dying primate, and trepanning him into a confession, that he trusted for his salvation to the merits of good works, not to the death of the Redeemer. Having extricated himself from these theological toils, the archbishop laid his head on the block, and it was severed from the body at one blow. Those religious opinions for which he suffered, contributed, no doubt, to the courage and constancy of his end. Sincere he undoubtedly was, and, however misguided, actuated by pious motives in all his pursuits ; and it is to be regretted that a man of such spirit, who conducted his enterprises with so much warmth and industry, had not entertained more enlarged views, and embraced principles more favourable to the general happiness of society. The great and important advantage which the party gained by Strafford's death, may in some degree palliate the iniquity of the sentence pronounced against him ; but the execution of this old, infirm prelate, who had so long remained an inoffensive prisoner, can be ascribed to nothing but vengeance and bigotry in those severe religionists by whom the parliament was entirely governed. That he deserved a better fate was not questioned by any reasonable man ; the degree of his merit in other respects was disputed. Some accused him of recommending slavish doctrines, of promoting persecution, and of encouraging supersti- tion ; while others thought that his conduct in these three particulars would admit of apology and extenuation. That the letter of the law, as much as the most flaming court sermon, inculcates passive obedience is apparent ; and though the spirit of a limited government seems to require, in extra- ordinary cases, some mitigation of so rigorous a doctrine, it must be confessed that the presiding genius of the English constitution had rendered a mistake in this particular very natural and excus- able. To inflict death, at least, on those who depart from the DA VID HUME 201 exact line of truth in these nice questions, so far from being favorable to national liberty, savors strongly of the spirit of tyranny and proscription. Toleration had hitherto been so little the principle of any Christian sect, that even the Catholics, the remnant of the religion professed by their forefathers, could not obtain from the English the least indulgence. This very House of Commons, in their famous remonstrance, took care to justify themselves, as from the highest imputation, from any intention to relax the golden reins of discipline, as they called them, or to grant any toleration ; and the enemies of the Church were so fair from the beginning as not to lay claim to liberty of conscience, which they called a toleration for soul-murder. Theyopenly challenged the superiority, and even menaced the Established Church with that persecution which they afterwards exercised against her with such severity. And if the question be considered in the view of policy, though a sect, already formed and advanced, may, with good reason, demand a toleration, what title had the Puritans to this indulgence, who were just on the point of separation from the Church, and whom, it might be hoped, some wholesome and legal severities would still retain in obedience ? Whatever ridicule to a philosophical mind, may be thrown on pious ceremonies, it must be confessed that, during a very religious age, no institutions can be more advantageous to the rude multitude, and tend more to mollify that fierce and gloomy spirit of devotion to which they are subject. Even the English Church, though it had retained a share of Popish ceremonies, may justly be thought too naked and unadorned, and still to approach too near the abstract and spiritual religion of the Puritans. Laud and his associates, by reviving a few primitive institutions of this nature, corrected the error of the first reformers, and presented to the afifrightened and astonished mind some sensible, exterior observances, which might occupy it during its religious exercises, and abate the violence of its disappointed efiforts. The thought, no longer bent on that divine and mysterious essence, so superior to the narrow capacities of mankind, was able, by means of the new model of devotion, to relax itself in the contemplation of pictures, postures, vestments, buildings ; and all the fine arts which minister to religion, thereby received additional encourage- ment. The primate, it is true, conducted this scheme, not with the enlarged sentiments and cool reflection of a legislator, but 202 ENGLISH PROSE with the intemperate zeal of a sectary ; and by overlooking the circumstances of the times, served rather to inflame that religious fury which he meant to repress. But this blemish is more to be regarded as a general imputation on the whole age, than any particular failing of Laud's ; and it is sufficient for his vindication to observe, that his errors were the most excusable of all those which prevailed during that zealous period. (From the History of England.) CHARACTER OF HIMSELF To conclude historically with my own character. I am, or rather was (for that is the st>'le I must now use in speaking of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments) ; I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappoint- ments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary ; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men anywise eminent, have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched, or even attacked by her baleful tooth ; and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be dis- armed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct ; not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disad- vantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a mis- placed one ; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained. iZih April 1776. (From My Ozun Life.) DAVID HUME 203 WHERE PHILOSOPHY IS HELPLESS Whoever considers, without prejudice, the course of human actions, will find that mankind are almost entirely guided by con- stitution and temper, and that general maxims have little influence so far as they affect our taste or sentiment. If a man have a lively sense of honour and virtue, with moderate passions, his conduct will always be conformable to the rules of morality ; or if he depart from them, his return will be easy and expeditious. On the other hand, where one is born of so perverse a frame of mind, of so callous and insensible a disposition as to have no relish for virtue and humanity, no sympathy with his fellow-creatures, no desire of esteem and applause, such a one must be allowed entirely incur- able, nor is there any remedy in philosophy. He reaps no satis- faction but from low and sensual objects, or from the indulgence of malignant passions : he feels no remorse to control his vicious inclinations : he has not even that sense or taste which is requisite to make him desire a better character. For my part, I know not how I should address myself to such an one, or by what arguments I should endeavour to reform him. Should I tell him of the inward satisfaction which results from laudable and humane actions, the delicate pleasure of disinterested love and friendship, the lasting enjoyments of a good name and an established character, he might still reply that these were, perhaps, pleasures to such as were susceptible of them ; but that, for his part, he finds himself of a quite different turn and disposition. I must repeat it, my philosophy affords no remedy in such a case, nor could I do any- thing but lament this person's unhappy condition. But then I ask, If any other philosophy can afford a remedy.^ or If it be possible by any system to render all mankind virtuous, however perverse may be their natural frame of mind ? Experience will soon convince us of the contrary ; and I will venture to affirm that, perhaps, the chief benefit which results from philosophy arises in an indirect manner, and proceeds more from its secret, insensible influence, than from its immediate application. (From T/ic Sceptic.') 204 ENGLISH PROSE THE STATE'S INTEREST IN STORED LABOUR Everything in the world is purchased by labour, and our passions are the only causes of labour. When a nation abounds in manufactures and mechanic arts, the proprietors of land, as well as the fanners, study agriculture as a science, and redouble their industry and attention. The superfluity, which arises from their labour, is not lost, but is exchanged with manufactures for those commodities which men's luxury now makes them covet. By this means land furnishes a great deal more of the necessaries of life than what suffices for those who cultivate it. In times of peace and tranquillity this superfluity goes to the maintenance of manufacturers, and the improvers of liberal arts. But it is easy for the public to convert many of these manufacturers into soldiers, and maintain them by that superfluity which arises from the labour of the fanners. Accordingly we find that this is the case in all civilised governments. When the sovereign raises an army, what is the consequence ? He imposes a tax. This tax obliges all the people to retrench what is least necessary to their subsistence. Those who labour in such commodities must either enlist in the troops, or turn themsehes to agriculture, and thereby oblige some labourers to enlist for want of business. And to con- sider the matter abstractedly, manufactui^ers increase the power of the state only as they store up so much labour, and that of a kind to which the public may lay claim without depriving anyone of the necessaries of life. The more labour, therefore, is employed beyond mere necessaries, the more powerful is any state ; since the persons engaged in that labour may easily be converted to the jjublic service. In a state without manufacturers, there may be the same number of hands, but there is not the same quantity of labour, nor of the same kind. All the labour is there bestowed upon necessaries, which can admit of little or no abatement. Thus the greatness of the sovereign and the happiness of the state are, in a great measure, united with reg"ard to trade and manufactures. It is a violent method, and in most cases imprac- ticable, to oblige the labourer to toil in order to raise from the land more than what subsists himself and family. Furnish him with manufactures and commodities, and he will do it of himself. Afterwards you will find it easy to seize some part of his superflu- ous labour, and employ it in the public service without giving him DA VID HUME 205 his wonted return. Being accustomed to industry, he will think his less grievous than if, at once, you obliged him to augmenta- tion of labour without any reward. The case is the same with regard to the other members of the state. The greater is the stock of labour of all kinds, the greater quantity may be taken from the heap, without making any sensible alteration in it. (From Of Commerce.) REASON NO AID TO RELIGION I AM the better pleased with the method of reasoning here delivered, as I think it may serve to confound those dangerous friends or disguised enemies to the Christian religion, who have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason. Our niost holy religion is founded on faith, not on reason ; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is by no means fitted to endure. To make this more evident, let us examine those miracles related in Scripture ; and not to lose our- selves in too wide a field, let us confine ourselves to such as we find in the PcntatcucJi, which we shall examine according to the principles of those pretended Christians, not as the word or testi- mony of God himself, but as the production of a mere human writer and historian. Here then we are first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they are still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts which every nation gives of its origin. Upon reading this book we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It gives an account of a state of the world and of human nature entirely different from the present ; of our fall from that state ; of the age of man, extended to near a thousand years ; of the destruction of the world by a deluge ; of the arbitrary choice of one people as the favourites of heaven, and that people the countrymen of the author ; of their deliverance from bondage by prodigies the most astonishing imaginable. I desire any one to lay his hand upon his heart, and after a serious consideration declare whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book, supported by such a testimony, would be more extraor- 2o6 ENGLISH PROSE dinary and miraculous than all the miracles it relates ; which is, however, necessary to make it be received, according to the mea- sures of probability above established. What we have said of miracles may be applied, without any variation, to prophecies ; and, indeed, all prophecies are real miracles, and as such only can be admitted as proofs of any revelation. If it did not exceed the capacity of human nature to foretell future events, it would be absurd to employ any prophecy as an argument for a divine mission or authority from heaven. So that, upon the whole, we may conclude that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity. And whoever is moved by faith to assent to it, is conscious of a con- tinued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. (From A)i Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.) LAURENCE STERNE [Laurence Sterne was born at Clonmel on the 24th of Xovemlier 171 3. His father, Roger Sterne, was an ensign of Foot, who had served in the great war which was brought to a close by the treaty of Utrecht, and whose regiment had just been disbanded on its arrival in Ireland a day or two before the infant's birth took place. After some months of enforced idleness his regiment was again embodied, and for the first ten years of his life Laurence accompanied his father and mother in their continual movements, under military orders, from place to place. In the autumn of 1723, however, or the spring of the following year, the boy was sent to Halifax Grammar School, whence, after a stay of about eight years, near the end of which period his father died, he was sent, at the charges of a cousin on the paternal side, to Cambridge, where he obtained a sizarship at Jesus and duly proceeded to his B.A. degree. Dr. Jacques Sterne, an elder brother of his father's, now undertook the advancement of his fortunes ; and immediately on his taking priest's orders procured for him the Yorkshire living of Sutton in the Forest, into which he was inducted in 1738, and which he held in complete obscurity for upwards of twenty years. In 1759, in consequence, as he alleged, of a coolness having arisen between him and his uncle, for whose advantage he had, according to his own account, been employing his brain and his pen witliout adequate recognition, he " turned author" on his own account. The first two volumes of Tristram Shandy appeared in 1760 ; and Sterne leaped at one bound into fame. The book became the rage of London, and the author the lion of its fashionable society. One of his aristocratic patrons, Lord Fauconberg, presented him to the living of Coxwold in Yorkshire, whither he retired after his London triumph, and whence in the following year he sent forth the third and fourth volumes of this famous extravaganza of fiction. About the middle of 1761, however, the health of the author, never very robust, began to fail ; and during the six following years the remaining volumes V. to IX., appeared at irregular intervals determined by Sterne's repeated visits to and prolonged sojourns in France and Italy. The ninth, and as it proved, the last volume of Tristram Shandy appeared in January 1767, and was followed in February of the next year by the Sentimental Journey. A month later, on the i8th March 1768, Sterne died of pleurisy at his lodgings in Bond .Street.] To talk of " the style " of Sterne is almost to play one of those tricks with language of which he himself was so fond. For there 2o8 ENGLISH PROSE is hardly any definition of the word which can make it possible to describe him as having any style at all. It is not only that he manifestly recog^nised no external canons whereto to conform the expression of his thoughts, but he had apparently no inclination to invent and observe, except indeed in the most negative of senses, any style of his own. The " style of Sterne," in short, is as though one should say " the form of Proteus." He was determined to be uniformly eccentric, regularly irregular, and that was all. His digressions, his " asides," and his fooleries, in general, would of course have in any case necessi- tated a certain jerkiness of manner ; but this need hardly have extended itself habitually to the structure of individual sentences, and as a matter of fact he can at times write, as he does for the most part in his sermons, in a style which is not the less vigorous for being fairly correct. But as a rule his mode of expressing himself is destitute of any pretensions to precision ; and in many instances it is a perfect marvel of literary slipshod. Nor is there any ground for believing that the slovenliness was invariably intentional. Sterne's truly hideous French — French at which even the average English tourist would stand aghast — is in itself sufficient evidence of a natural insensibility to grammatical accuracy. Here there can be no suspicion of designed defiance of rules ; and more than one solecism of rather a serious kind in his use of English words and phrases affords confirmatory testi- mony to the same point. His punctuation is fearful and wonder- ful, even for an age in which the rationale of punctuation was more imperfectly understood than it is at present ; and this, though an apparently slight matter, is not without value as an indication of ways of thought. But if we can hardly describe Sterne's style as being in the literary sense a style at all, it has a very distinct colloquial character of its own, and as such it is nearly as much desei-ving of praise as from the literary point of view it is open to exception. Chaotic as it is in the syntactical sense, it is a perfectly clear vehicle for the conveyance of thought. We are as rarely at a loss for the meaning of one of Sterne's sentences, as we are, for very different reasons, for the meaning of one of Macaulay's. And his language is so full of life and colour, his tone so animated and vivacious, that we forget we are reading and not listening, and we are as little disposed to be exacting in respect to form as though we were listeners in actual fact. Sterne's manner, in short, may be that of a bad and care- LAURENCE STERNE 209 less writer^ but it is the manner of a first-rate talker; and this of course enhances rather than detracts from the unwearying charm of his wit and humour. It is by the latter of these qualities — though he had the former in almost equal abundance — that he lives. No doubt he valued himself no less, perhaps even more highly, on his sentiment, and was prouder of his acute sensibility to the sorrows of man- kind, than of his keen eye for their absurdities, and his genially satiric appreciation of their foibles. But posterity has not confirmed Sterne's judgment of himself. His passages of pathos, sometimes genuine and deeply moving, too often on the other hand only impress the modern reader with their artificial and overstrained sentimentalism. The affecting too often degenerates into the affected. To trace the causes of this degeneration would be a work involving too complex a process of analysis to be undertaken in this place. But the sum of the whole matter seems to be that the "sentiment" on which Sterne so prided himself — the acute sensibilities which he regarded with such extra- ordinary complacency — were in reality the weakness and not the strength of his pathetic style. When Sterne the artist is uppermost, when he is surveying the characters with that penetrating eye of his, and above all when he is allowing his subtle and tender humour to play around them unrestrained, he can touch the cords of compassionate emotion in us with a potent and unerring hand. But when Sterne the man is uppermost, when he is looking inward and not outward, contemplating his own feelings and not those of his personages, his cunning fails him altogether. In other words he is at his best in pathos when he is most the humourist ; or rather, we may almost say, his pathos is never true unless when it is closely interwoven with his humour. Still it is comparatively seldom that this foible of Sterne obtrudes itself upon the strictly narrative and dramatic part of his work. It is, generally speaking, in the episodical passages, such, for instance, as the story of the distraught Maria of Moulines, or that incident of the dead donkey of Nampont which Thackeray so mercilessly, though not unfairly, ridiculed, that Sterne most " lays himself out " to be pathetic ; it is in these digressions, as they may almost be called, that he becomes lugubrious " of malice aforethought," so to say ; and it is therefore only in such excep- tional cases that the expectation is disappointed, and the critical VOL. IV P 2IO ENGLISH PROSE judgment offended, by the failures of the kind above, described. On the main road of his story — if it can be said to have a main road — he is usually saved from such lapses of artistic taste by his strong dramatic instinct. Perpetual as are his affectations, and tire- some as his eternal self-consciousness, when he is speaking in his own person, often becomes, yet when once this dramatic instinct fairly lays hold of him there is no writer who can make us more completely forget him in the presence of his characters, none who can bring them and their surroundings, their looks and words before us with such convincing force of reality. But if he makes us see them thus clearly, and thus plainly hear them, it is of course because of the matchless vigour and truth of touch with which their figures are first made to stand forth upon his canvass. And it is in fact the union with Sterne's other rare intellectual and artistic qualities of this rarest gift of all which has won for him his unique place in our literature. Neither wit, nor humour, nor creative power, nor skill of dramatic handling, would have done that for him if it had stood alone. They might, any of them, have made him famous in his time ; but, except in con- junction, they could not have raised him to the rank he holds among the classics of English prose fiction. The extravagant Rabelaisian drollery that revels through the pages of Tristram S/iandv, the marvellous keenness of eye, the inimitable delicacy of touch to which we owe the exquisite vignettes of the Scnthnental Jourficy, would hardly of themselves have secured the place for Sterne. But it is for ever assured to him in right of that com- bination of subjective and personal with objective and dramatic humour in which he has never been excelled by any one save the creator of Falstaff. In Mr. Shandy and his wife, in Corporal Trim, in Yorick, and above all in that masterpiece of mirthful, subtle, tenderly humorous portraiture, " My Uncle Toby," Sterne has created imperishable types of character and made them remarkably his own. H. D. Traill. MY UNCLE TOBY'S SIEGE OPERATIONS When Corporal Trim had brought his two mortars to bear, he was dehyhted with his handy- work above measure ; knowing what a pleasure it woukl be to his master to see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of carrying them directly into his parlour. Now, to the next moral lesson I had in view, in mentioning the affair of hinges, I had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it is this. Had the parlour-door opened and turned upon its hinges, as a door should do ;— Or, for example, as cleverly as our government has been turn- ing upon its hinges, — (that is, in case things have all along gone well with your worship, — otherwise I give up my simile) — in this case, I say, there had been no danger, either to master or man, in Corporal Trim's peeping in : the moment he had beheld my father and my uncle Toby fast asleep, — the respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would have retired as silent as death, and left them both in their arm-chairs, dreaming as happy as he had found them : but the thing was, morally speaking, so very impracticible, that for the many years in which this hinge was suffered to be out of order, and amongst the hourly grievances my father submitted to on its account, — this was one ; that he never folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but the thoughts of being unavoidably awakened by the first person who should open the door, was almost uppermost in his imagina- tion, and so incessantly stepped in betwixt him and the first balmy presage of his repose, as to rob him, as he often declared, of the whole sweets of it. 'When things move upon bad hinges, an' please your lord- ships, how can it be otherwise ?' " Pray what's the matter .? Who is there ? " cried my father, 212 ENGLISH PROSE waking, the moment the door began to creak, " I wish the smith would give a peep at that confounded hinge." "It is nothing, an' please your honour," said Trim, " but two mortars I am bringing in." "They shan't make a clatter with them here," cried my father, hastily. " If Doctor Slop has any drugs to pound, let him do it in the kitchen." " May it please your honour," cried Trim, " they ai^e two mortar-pieces for a siege next summer, which I have been making out of a pair of jack- boots, which Obadiah told me your honour had left off wearing." " By heaven ! " cried my father, springing out of his chair, as he swore, " I have not one appointment belonging to me, which 1 set so much store by, as I do by these jack-boots : they were our great-grandfather's, brother Toby : they were hereditary." " Then I fear," quoth my uncle Toby, " Trim has cut off the entaiL" " I have only cut off the tops, an' please your honour" cried Trim, " I hate perpetuities as much as any man alive," cried my father, " but these jack-boots," continued he (smiling, though very angry at the same time) " have been in the family, brother, ever since the civil wars : Sir Roger Shandy wore them at the battle of Marston-Moor. I declare I would not have taken ten pounds for them." " I'll pay you the money, brother Shandy," cjuoth my uncle Toby, looking at the two mortars with infinite pleasure, and putting his hand into his breeches pocket as he viewed them, " I'll pay you the ten pounds this moment, with all my heart and soul." " Brother Toby," replied my father, altering his tone, " you care not what money you dissipate and throw away provided," continued he, " it is but upon a siege." " Have I not a hundred and twenty pounds a year, besides my half-pay ? '' cried my uncle Toby. " What is that," replied my father hastily, " to ten pounds for a pair of jack-boots ? twelve guineas for your pontoons ? half as much for your Dutch drawbridge ? to say nothing of the train of little brass artillery you bespoke last week, with twenty other preparations for the siege of Messina. Believe me, dear brother Toby," continued my father, taking him kindly by the hand, " these military operations of yours are above your strength : you mean well, brother, but they carry you into greater expenses than you were first aware of; and take my word, dear Toby, they will in the end, quite ruin your fortune, and make a beggar of you." " What signifies it if they do, brother," replied my uncle Toby, " so long as we know it is for the good of the nation ? " LAURENCE STERNE 213 My father could not help smiling, for his soul — his anger, at the worst, was never more than a spark — and the zeal and simpli- city of Trim, and the generous (though hobby-horsical) gallantry of my uncle Toby, brought him into perfect good humour with them in an instant. " Generous souls ! (jod prosjier you both, and your mortar- pieces too ! " quoth my father to himself. (From Tri strain SJiaudy.) THE DEATH OF BOBBY Now let us go back to my brother's death. Philosophy has a fine saying for everything. For death it has an entire set ; the misery was, they all at once rushed into my father's head, that 'twas difficult to string them together, so as to make anything of a consistent show out of them. He took them as they came. "It is an inevitable chance — the first statute in Magna Charta — it is an everlasting act of parliament, my dear brother, all must die. " If my son could not have died it had been matter of wonder — not that he is dead. " Monarchs and princes dance in the same ring with us. " To die, is the great debt and tribute due unto nature : tombs and monuments, which should perpetuate our memories, pay it themselves ; and the proudest pyramid of them all, which wealth and science have erected, has lost its apex, and stands obtruncated in the traveller's horizon." (My father found he got great ease, and went on) — " Kingdoms and provinces, towns and cities, have they not their periods ? And when those principles and powers, which at first cemented and put them together, have performed their several evolutions, they fall back." " Brother Shandy," said my uncle Toby, laying down his pipe at the word evolutions. '•'• Revolutions, I meant," quoth my father ; by Heaven ! I meant revolutions, brother Toby ; evolutions is nonsense." " It is not nonsense," said my uncle Toby. " But is it not nonsense to break the thread of such a discourse, upon such an occasion ? " cried my father, " do not — dear Toby," continued he, taking him by the hand " do not — 214 ENGLISH PROSE do not, I beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis." My uncle Toby put his pipe into his mouth. " Where is Troy and Mycenae, and Thebes and Delos, and PersepoHs, and Agrigentum?" continued my father, taking up his book of post-roads, which he had laid down. " What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh and Babylon, of Cyzicum and Mitylenae .'' The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon are now no more ; the names only are left, and those (for many of them are wrong spelt) are falling themselves by piecemeals to decay, and in length of time will be forgotten, and involved with everything in a perpetual night ; the world itself, brother Toby, must — must come to an end. " Returning out of Asia, when I sailed from ^gina towards Megara," ["When can this have been ?" thought my uncle Toby] " I began to view the country round about. /Egina was behind me, Megara was before, Piraeus on the right hand, Corinth on the left. — What flourishing towns now prostrate upon the earth ! ' Alas ! alas ! ' said I to myself, ' that man should disturb his soul for the loss of a child, when so much as this lies awfully buried in his presence ! ' ' Remember,' said I to myself again, ' Remember thou art a man.' " Now, my uncle Toby knew not that this last paragraph was an extract of Servius Sulpicius's consolatory letter to TuUy. He had as little skill, honest man, in the fragments, as he had in the whole pieces of antiquity. And as my father, whilst he was concerned in the Turkey trade, had been three or four different times in the Levant, in one of which he had staid a whole year and a half at Zante, my uncle Toby naturally concluded that, in some one of these periods, he had taken a trip across the Archipelago into Asia ; and that all this sailing affair, with yEgina behind, and Megara before, and Pirteus on the right hand, etc., etc., was nothing more than the true course of my father's voyage and reflections. 'Twas certainly in his manner, and many an undertaking critic would have built two stories higher upon worse foundations. "And pray, brother," quoth my uncle Toby, laying the end of his pipe upon my father's hand in a kindly way of interruption, but waiting till he had finished the account, — "what year of our Lord was this?" "It was no year of our Lord," replied my father. " That's impossible ! " cried my uncle Toby. " Simple- ton ! " said my father — " it was forty years l^efore Christ was born." LAURENCE STERNE 215 My uncle Toby had but two things for it ; either to suppose his brother to be the Wandering Jew, or that his misfortunes had disordered his brain. — "May the Lord God of Heaven and earth protect him and restore him ! " said my uncle Toby, praying silently for my father, and with tears in his eyes. My father placed the tears to a proper account, and went on with his harangue with great spirit. "There is not such great odds, brother Toby, betwixt good and evil, as the world imagines." (This way of setting off, by the bye, was not likely to cure my uncle Toby's suspicions.) " Labour, sorrow, grief, sickness, want, and woe, are the sauces of life." " Much good may it do them ! " said my uncle Toby to himself. " My son is dead ! — so much the better ; — 'tis a shame, in such a tempest to have but one anchor. "But he is gone for ever from us! — Be it so. He is got from under the hands of his barber before he was bald ; but he is risen from a feast before he was surfeited ; from a banquet before he had got drunken. "The Thracians wept when a child was born" ("And we were very near it," quoth my uncle Toby), "and feasted and made merry when a man went out of the world ; and with reason. Death opens the gate of Fame and shuts the gate of Envy after it : it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hands. " Show me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads it, and I'll show thee a prisoner who dreads his liberty. "Is it not better my dear brother Toby (for mark, our appetites are but diseases), is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat ? not to thirst, than to take physic to cure it ? "Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a galled traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his journey afresh ? " There is no terror, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groans and convulsions, and the blowing of noses and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man's room. Strip it of these. What is it?" "It is better in battle than in bed," said my uncle Toby. " Take away its hearses, its mutes, and its mourning, its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic aids. What is it ? Better in battle ! " con- 2i6 ENGLISH PROSE tinued my father, smiling, for he had absolutely forgot my brother Bobby ; " 'tis terrible no way, for consider, brother Toby, when we are, death is not ; and when death is, we are not." My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to consider the proposition : my father's eloquence was too rapid to stay for any man ; away it went, and hurried my uncle Toby's ideas along with it. (From the Same.) CORPORAL TRIM AND THE CURATE " When I gave him the toast," continued the corporal, " I thought it was proper to tell him I was Captain Shandy's servant, and that your honour (though a stranger) was extremely concerned for his father ; and that if there was anything in your house or cellar ('and thou mightest have added my purse too,' said my uncle Toby) he was welcome to it. He made a very low bow (which was meant to your honour), but no answer ; for his heart was full ; so he went upstairs with the toast. ' I warrant you, my dear,' said 1, as I opened the kitchen door, ' your father will be well again.' Mr. Yorick's curate was smoking a pipe by the kitchen fire ; but said not a word, good or bad, to comfort the youth. — I thought it wrong," added the corporal. — " I think so too," said my uncle Toby. " When the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast, he felt himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen, to let me know, that, in about ten minutes, he should be glad if I would step upstairs. " ' 1 believe,' said the landlord, ' he is going to say his prayers ; for there was a book laid upon the chair by his bed-side, and, as I shut the door, 1 saw his son take up a cushion.' " ' I thought,' said the curate, ' that you gentleman of the army, Mr. Trim, never said your prayers at all.' ' I heard the poor gentleman say his prayers last night,' said the landlady very devoutly, ' and with my own ears, or I could not have believed it.' ' Are you sure of it ? ' replied the curate. ' A soldier, an' please your reverence,' said I, ' prays as often, of his own accord, as a parson ; and when he is fighting for his king, and for his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray to God of any one in the whole world.' " " It was well LAURENCE STERNE 217 said of thee, Trim," said my uncle Toby. " ' But when a soldier,' said I, 'an' please your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches, up to his knees in cold water, or engaged,' said I, ' for months together in long and dangerous marches ; harassed, perhaps, in his rear to-day ; harassing others to-morrow ; detached here ; countermanded there ; resting this night out upon his arms ; beat up in his shirt the next, benumbed in his joints ; perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on ; must say his prayers how and ivhoi he can ; I believe,' said I, for I was piqued," quoth the corporal, " for the reputation of the army, 'I believe, an't please your reverence,' said I, 'that when a soldier gets time to pray, he prays as heartily as a parson — though not with all his fuss and hypocrisy. ' " "Thou should'st not have said that. Trim," said my uncle Toby, " for God only knows who is a hypocrite, and who is not. At the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then) it will be seen who have done their duties in this world, and who have not ; and we shall be advanced. Trim, accordingly." " I hope we shall,'' said Trim. " It is in the Scripture," said my uncle Toby ; " and I will show it thee to-morrow. In the meantime we may depend upon it. Trim, for our comfort," said my uncle Toby, " that God Almighty is so good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it, it will never be inquired into whether we have done them in a red coat or a black one." " I hope not," said the corporal. " But go on. Trim," said my uncle Toby, " with thy story." (From the Same.) TRISTRAM AND THE ASS 'TWAS by a poor ass, who had just turned in with a couple of large panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and cabbage leaves ; and stood dubious, with his two fore feet on the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he was to go in or not. Now, it is an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike ; there is a patient endurance of sufferings wrote so 2i8 ENGLISH PROSE unafifectedly in his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily for him, that it always disarms me ; and to that degree, that I do not like to speak unkindly to him : on the contrary, meet him where I will, whether in town or country, in cart or under panniers, — whether in liberty or bondage, I have ever something civil to say to him on my part ; and, as one word begets another (if he has as little to do as I) I generally fall into conversation with him ; and surely never is my imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of his countenance, — and where those carryme not deep enough, — in flyingfrom myown heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to think, — as well as a man upon the occasion. In truth, it is the only creature of all the classes of beings below me, with whom I can do this ; for parrots, jackdaws, etc., I never exchange a word with them, — nor with apes, etc., for pretty near the same reason ; they act by rote, as the others speak by it, and equally make me silent : nay, my dog and my cat, though I value them both (and, for my dog, he would speak if he could) yet somehow or other, they neither of them possess the talents for conversation ; I can make nothing of a discourse with them beyond the proposition, the reply, and rejoinder, which terminated my father's and my mother's con- versations in his beds of justice ; — and those uttered, there's an end of the dialogue. But with an ass, I can commune for ever. Come, honesty ! said I, seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate, art thou for coming in, or going out ? The ass twisted his head round to look up the street. Well, replied I, we'll wait a minute for thy driver. He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the opposite way. I understand thee perfectly, answered I ; if thou takest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death. Well ! a minute is but a minute, and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill-spent. He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and in the little peevish contentions of nature betwixt hunger and unsavouriness, had dropped it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and picked it up again. God help thee, Jack ! said 1, thou hast a bitter breakfast on't, and many a bitter day's labour, and many a bitter blow, I fear for its wages ! 'tis all — all bitterness to thee, whatever life is to others ! And now thy mouth, if one LAURENCE STERNE 219 knew the truth of it, is as bitter I dare say as soot — (for he had cast aside the stem), and thou hast not a friend perhaps in all this world, that will give thee a macaroon. In saying this, I pulled out a paper of them, which I had just purchased, and ga\'e him one, and at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites me, that there was more of pleasantry in the conceit of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon, than of benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act. When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I pressed him to come in ; the poor beast was heavily loaded, his legs seemed to tremble under him, he hung rather backwards ; and as I pulled at his halter it broke short in my hand. He looked up pensive in my face — " Don't thrash me with it ; but, if you will you may." If I do, said I, I'll be d^d. The word was but one half of it pronounced, like the Abbess of Andonillet's — so there was no sin in it — when a person coming in, let fall a thundering bastinado upon the poor devil's crupper, which put an end to the ceremony. /From the Same \ A FRANCISCAN MONK The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure, a icw scattered white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it, might be about seventy ; but, from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty. Truth might lie between, — he was certainly sixty-five ; and the general air of his counten- ance, notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the account. It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted — mild, pale, penetrating, free from all commonplace ideas of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth — it looked forwards ; but looked as if it looked at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, heaven above who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders best knows : but it would have suited a Brahmin, and had I met it upon the plains of Hindoostan, I had reverenced it. The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes ; one might put it into the hands of any one to design, for 'twas neither 220 ENGLISH PROSE elegant or otherwise, but as character and expression made it so : it was a thin spare form, something above the common size, if it lost not the distinction by a bend forward in the figure, — but it was the attitude of entreaty ; and as it now stands presented to my imagination, it gained more than it lost by it. When he had entered the room three paces he stood still, and laying his left hand upon his breast (a slender white staff with which he journeyed being in his right) — when I had got close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants of his convent, and the poverty of his order ; and did it with so simple a grace and such an air of deprecation was there in the whole cast of his look and figure, I was bewitched not to have been struck with it. A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him a single sou. (From A Sentimental Journey.) THOMAS GRAY [Gray was born in Cornhill, London, 20th December 1716, the son of a money scrivener (a kind of solicitor). Tlianks to his mother and her brothers — his father was not a very satisfactory person — he was educated at Eton and then at Cambridge. He left the University, with whose then prevailing study of mathematics he had little or no sympathy, without taking a degiee, in September 1738. In the following year he accepted his friend Horace Walpole's invitation to travel abroad with him ; ancl for over two years cul- tivated and matured himself by visiting places and people of interest in France and in Italy. In the winter of 1742 he drifted back to Cambridge, the study of the law, which had been jjroposed for his profession, not attracting him, and nothing else recommending itself. His private means seem to have been sufficient for his wants ; and Cambridge, though he was but little in harmony with the society and tone there, was his home for all his remaining years, though he enjoyed frequent and long absences, spent in visiting his mother so long as she lived (she died 1753), and in tours about the more picturesque parts of England and Scotland, which indeed were the great events and delights of his singularly quiet life. His removal from Peterhouse to Pem- broke in 1765 " may be looked upon as a sort of era in a hfe so barren of events as mine. " He studied much and very various subjects, — the classics, notably those of Greece, Italian literature, old English poetry, architec- ture, zoology, botany, history, music, — and became a highly accomplished man. But for various reasons he wrote very little poetry, and not much formal prose except his Letters, though he left behind large collections of notes. To use his own phrase, he was " but a shrimp of an author." In 1768 he was appointed professor of modern history ; but, thougli he drew up a plan for an inaugural address, and also some rules concerning a course in modern history, he never in fact lectured. He was taken ill in his College Hall on the 24th of July, and died on the 30th, 1771.] "In Gray's Commonplace Books at Pembroke College there is much interesting matter," says Dr. Bradshaw {Aldiiie Edition of Gray's Poetical Works, ed. 1891), " and many notes and essays that have never been printed," though Mr. Gosse has drawn from them in his Works of Gray in Prose and Verse. But the prose writings by which Gray is best known, and deserves to be best 222 ENGLISH PROSE known, the contents of his MSS. being for the most part of the nature of notes and fragments, are certainly his Letters. Letter-writing was an art carefully and assiduously cultivated in the last century, as never before, and never comparably since. In many instances beyond doubt a correspondent fully entertained the idea of future publication. He wrote consciously for the press, and not only for the private perusal of his friend. In any case he would be assured that generally what he wrote would be read, not only by his friend, but by his friend's circle. Hence special pains were taken with this kind of composition, a.nd it became a branch of literature. Thus a habit of epistolary care and finish was formed ; and a certain ease and charm marks even the most ordinary communications. Now, if such attention to style was common, as it was, we may be sure it is to be found in a high degree in Gray's correspondence. A man so critical and fastidious as Gray could indeed do nothing carelessly and like a sloven. The idea of perfection was ever before his eyes. Even his handwriting was significant in this respect. " I have seen and transcribed many and many a page of it," says Mr. Torry, in his interesting volume entitled Gray and his Friends; "but I do not recollect to have noticed a single carelessly written word, or even a letter. The mere sight of it suggests refinement, order, and infinite pains." Lady Jane Grey, in a well-known anecdote of her given by Ascham, complains that whatever she had to do before her father or mother — whether to " speak or keep silence, sit, stand, or g-o, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else" — she was expected to do it "as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the world," or else she had a very bad time, being "sharply taunted" and "cruelly threatened" and pinched and nipped and otherwise tortured. Gray was scarcely less exacting and stern towards himself than those austere parents in the old house in Bradgate Park towards their child. He was one of the severest of self-critics. Was ever any other poet so remorseless with himself? Those stanzas omitted from the Elegy written in a Country ChiircJi- vard we believe Gray's taste was sound and true in excising ; still they are in themselves such as perhaps no other author would have had the heart to excise. And yet both in his poetry and, what now more closely concerns us, in his prose, he exhibits the art of concealing his art. We feel ourselves in the presence of a most finished artist, but we do not see him mixing his colours, or THOMAS GRAY 223 fingering his brushes. We enjoy the effect without having thrust upon our notice the process or processes by which it has been produced. In his Letters the habit of a refined and poHshed manner has become second nature. He writes Hke a scholar, but without stiffness or effort. He is classical, but never pedantic. In addition to all the culture that so eminently distinguished Gray, he possessed natural gifts without which all his culture would have done little to endear him to the general reader. He had a genuine vein of humour, which not only prevents his being dull, but makes him at times highly entertaining. He had a keen sense of the beauty of landscape, and one of his greatest pleasures was to gaze upon it and to describe it. He was Wordsworthian before Wordsworth was born. Lastly, though reserved and seemingly dry and cynical, he was a man of the tenderest affections. He does not wear his heart upon his sleeve ; but it would be a gross mistake to conclude because he does not so wear it, that he had none to wear. " Sunt lacriincE rerum et mcutem tnorfalia taiigimi" was a saying he felt deeply. His intimate friend West died in 1742; but we are told that all the rest of his life he never heard his name mentioned without a change of countenance — without a thrill of pain. In the Elegy, begun when the sorrow of that bereavement was still fresh, he writes of himself — " He gained from Heaven — 'twas all he wished — a friend ; " and this gain of " all he wished " was in one sense never lost ; it was a blessed experience that was never forgotten, but to the end saved him from the dangers of self-absorption and misanthropy. And so he happily remained capable of forming fresh friend- ships. Not only, to use his own exquisite words, is it " the parting soul" that "on some fond breast relies," but the soul throughout its period of embodiment. And Cray must needs ha\e his confidants, to whom he could unbosom himself in prose at least, and speak of the high enjoyments he derived both from nature and art. His mother and father, West, Horace Walpole, Ashton, Wharton, Mason, Norton, Nicholls — all these and others, in a greater or less degree of frankness and fulness, this Cambridge recluse admits to a share of his thoughts and observations. And of thoughts and observations there was not any lack, however quiet and retired his life, however " far from the madding crowd." At Cambridge his books were his world, and a world he keenly explored. In the summer he surrendered himself to 224 ENGLISH PROSE the beauties of natural scenery. He was the eaj-Uest annual tourist, in this respect as in many others anticipating the taste of a coming age. These wanderings in the more picturesque parts of the country, often companionless, became a passion with him ; and it was a real relief to detail them to an appreciative friend with a faithful and loving pen that was also exquisitely skilful and graphic. John W. Hales. TO GRASMERE 8//^ October 1769. Bid farewell to Keswick and took the Ambleside road in a gloomy morning ; wind east and afterwards north-east ; about two miles from the town mounted an eminence called Castle Rigg, and the sun breaking out discovered the most beautiful view I have yet seen of the whole valley behind me, the two lakes, the river, the mountain, all in their glory ! had almost a mind to have gone back again. The road in some little patches is not completed, but good country road, through sound, but narrow and stony lanes, very safe in broad daylight. This is the case about Causeway-foot, and among Naddle-fells to Lanthwaite. The vale you go in has little breadth, the mountains are vast and rocky, the fields httle and poor, and the inhabitants are now making hay, and see not the sun by two hours in a day so long as at Keswick. Came to the foot of Helvellyn, along which runs an excellent road, looking down from a little height on Lee's water, (called also Thirl-meer or Wiborn-water) and soon descending on its margin. The lake from its depth looks black (though really as clear as glass), and from the gloom of the vast crags, that scowl over it : it is narrow and about three miles long, resembling a river in its course ; little shining torrents hurry down the rocks to join it, with not a bush to overshadow them, or cover their march : all is rock and loose stones up to the very brow, which lies so near your way, that not above half the height of Helvellyn can be seen. Passed by the little chapel of Wiborn, out of which the Sunday congregation were then issuing. Past a beck near Dunmailraise and entered Westmoreland a second time, now begin to see Helm-crag, distinguished from its rugged neighbours not so much by its height, as by the strange broken outline of its top, like some gigantic building demolished, and the stones that composed it flung across each other in wild confusion. Just be- VOI. IV Q 226 ENGLISH PROSE yond it opens one of the sweetest landscapes that art ever attempted to imitate. The bosom of the mountains spreading here into a broad bason discovers in the midst Grasmere-water, its margin is hollowed into small bays with bold eminences : some of them rocks, some of soft turf that half conceal and vary the figure of the little lake they command. From the shore a low promontory pushes itself far into the water, and on it stands a white village with the parish church rising in the midst of it, hanging enclosures, corn-fields, and meadows green as an emerald, with their trees and hedges and cattle, fill up the whole space from the edge of the water. Just opposite to you is a large farm-house, at the bottom of a steep smooth lawn embosomed in old woods, which climb half way up the mountain's side, and discover above them a broken line of crags, that crown the scene. Not a single red tile, no flaming gentleman's house, or garden walls break in upon the repose of this little unsuspected paradise, but all is peace, rusticity, and happy poverty in its neatest, most becoming attire. The road winds here over Grasmere-hill, whose rocks soon conceal the water from your sight, yet it is continued along behind them, and contracting itself to a river communicates with Ridale-water, another small lake but of inferior size and beauty ; it seems shallow too, for large patches of reeds appear pretty far within it. Into this vale the road descends : on the opposite banks large and ancient woods mount up the hills, and just to the left of our way stands Ridale-hall, the family seat of Sir Michael Fleming, but now a farm-house, a large old-fashioned fabric surrounded with wood, and not much too good for its present destination. Sir Michael is now on his travels, and all this timber far and wide belongs to him, I tremble for it when he returns. Near the house rises a huge crag called Ridale-head, which is said to command a full view of Wynander-mere, and I doubt it not, for within a mile that great lake is visible even from the road. As for going up the crag, one might as well go up Skiddaw. Came to Ambleside eighteen miles from Keswick, meaning to lie there, but on looking into the loest bed-chamber, dark and damp as a cellar, grew delicate, gave up Wynander-mere in despair, and resolved I would go on to Kendal directly, fourteen miles farther : the road in general, fine turnpike, but some parts (about three miles in all) not made, yet without danger. THOMAS GRAY 227 Unexpectedly was well rewarded for my determination. The afternoon was fine, and the road for full five miles runs along the side of Wynander-mere, with delicious views across it, and almost from one end to the other : it is ten miles in length and at most a mile over, resembling the course of some vast and magnificent river, but no flat marshy grounds, no osier beds, or patches of scrubby plantation on its banks : at the head two valleys open among the mountains, one, that by which we came down, the other Langsledale in which Wrynose and Hard -knot, two great mountains, rise above the rest. From thence the fells visibly sink and soften along its sides, sometimes they run into it, (but with a gentle declivity) in their own dark and natural com- plexion, oftener they are green and cultivated, with farms inter- spersed, and round eminences on the border covered with trees : towards the South it seems to break into larger bays with several islands and a wider extent of cultivation : the way rises continually till at a place called Orresthead it turns south-east, losing sight of the water. Passed by Ing's chapel and Stavely, but I can say no farther for the dusk of the evening coming on I entered Kendal almost in the dark, and could distinguish only a shadow of the castle on a hill, and tenter grounds spread far and wide round the town, which I mistook for houses. My inn promised sadly, having two wooden galleries (like Scotland) in front of it. It was indeed an old ill-contrived house, but kept by civil, sensible people, so I stayed two nights with them, and fared and slept very comfortably. (Yxom Joiirinil in tJic Lakes.) BY INGLEBOROUGH TO GORDALE SCAR October 12 . . . Set out for Settle by a fine turnpike road, 29 miles. Rich and beautiful enclosed countiy, diversified with frccjuent villages and churches, very uneven ground, and on the left the river Lune winding in a deep valley, its hanging banks clothed with fine woods, through which you catch long reaches of the water as the road winds about at a considerable height above it. Passed the park (Hon. Mr. Clifford's, a Catholic) in the most picturesque part of the way. The grounds between him and the 22S ENGLISH PROSE riv^er are indeed charming : the house is ordinary, and the park nothing but a rocky fell scattered over with ancient hawthorns. Came to Hornby, a little town on the river Wanning, over which a handsome bridge is now in building. The castle, in a lordly situation, attracted me, so I walked up the hill to it. First presents itself a large but ordinary white gentleman's house, sashed, behind it rises the ancient keep built by Edward Stanley, Lord Monteagle, in Henry the eighth's time. It is now a shell only, though rafters are laid within it as for flooring. I went up a winding stone staircase in one corner to the leads, and at the angle is a single hexagon watch-tower, rising some feet higher, fitted up in the taste of a modern Foot with sash-windows in gilt frames, and a stucco cupola, and on the top a vast gilt eagle, by Mr. Charteris, the present possessor. But he has not lived here since the year 174 5, when the people of Lancaster insulted him, threw stones into his coach, and almost made his wife (Lady Catherine Gordon) miscarr)\ Since that he has built a great ugly house of red stone (thank God it is not in England) near Haddington, which I remember to have passed by. He is the second son of the Earl of Wemyss, and brother to the Lord Elcho ; grandson to Colonel Charteris, whose name he bears. From the leads of the tower there is a fine view of the countr)' round, and much wood near the castle. Ingleborough, which I had seen before distinctly at Lancaster, to north-east, was now completely wrapped in clouds, all but its summit, which might have been easily mistaken for a long black cloud too, fraught with an approaching storm. Now our road began gradually to mount towards the Appennine, the trees growing less and thinner of leaves, till we came to Ingleton, 18 miles : It is a pretty village, situated very high and yet in a valley at the foot of that huge creature of God Ingleborough. Two torrents cross it with great stones rolled along their bed instead of water, over them are two handsome arches flung. Here at a little ale-house, where Sir Bellingham Graham, and Mr. Parker, lord of the manor (one of them six feet and a half high, and the other as much in breadth), came to dine. The nipping air (though the afternoon was growing very bright) now taught us we were in Craven ; the road was all up and down (though nowhere very steep), to the left were mountain-tops, to the right a wide valley (all enclosed ground), and beyond it high hills again. In approaching Settle, the crags on the left draw nearer to our way ; till we ascended THOMAS GRAY 229 Brunton-brow, into a cheerful valley (though thin of trees) to Giggleswick, a village with a small piece of water by its side, covered over with coots. Near it a church which belongs also to Settle, and half a mile further, having passed the Ribble over a bridge, arrived at Settle. It is a small market-town standing directly under a rocky fell, there are not a dozen good-looking houses, the rest are all old and low, with little wooden porticoes in front. My inn pleased me much (though small) for the neatness and civility of the good woman that kept it, so I lay there two nights, and went October 13, to visit Gordale-scar. Wind N.E. : day gloomy and cold. It lay but six miles from Settle, but that way was directly over a fell, and it might rain, so I went round in a chaise the only way one could get near it in a carriage, which made it full thirteen miles ; and half of it such a road ! but I got safe over it so there's an end, and came to Mallhem (pronounce it Maum) a village in the bosom of the mountains seated in a wild and dreary valley : from thence I was to walk a mile over very rough ground. A torrent rattling along on the left hand. On the cliffs above hung' a few goats ; one of them danced and scratched an ear with its hind foot in- a place where I would not have stood stock still for all beneath the moon. As I advanced the crags seemed to close in, but discovered a narrow entrance turning to the left between them. I followed my guide a few paces, and lo, the hills opened again into no large space, and then all farther away is barred by a stream, that at the height of above 50 feet gushes from a hole in the rock, and, spreading in large sheets over its broken front, dashes from steep to steep and then rattles away in a torrent down the valley. The rock on the left rises perpendicular with stubbed yew-trees and shrubs staring from its side to the height of at least 300 feet ; but those are not the things : it is that to the right under which you stand to see the fall that forms the principal horror of the place. From its very base it begins to slope forwards over you in one block and solid mass without any crevice in its surface, and overshadows half the area below with its dreadful canopy. When I stood at (I believe) full four yards distance from its foot, the drops which perpetually distil from its brow, fell on my head, and in one part of the top more e.xposed to the weather there are loose stones that hang in the air and threaten visibly some idle spectator with instant destruction. It is safer to shelter yourself 230 ENGLISH PROSE close to its bottom, and trust to the mercy of that enormous mass which nothing but an earthquake can stir. The gloomy uncom- fortable day well suited the savage aspect of the place, and made it still more formidable. I stayed there (not without shuddering) a quarter of an hour, and thought my trouble richly paid, for the impression will last for life. At the alehouse where I dined in Maum, Vivares the landscape painter had lodged for a week or more ; Smith and Bellers had also been there ; and two prints of Gordale have been engraved by them. (From the Same.) NETLEY ABBEY To the Rev. N. Nichols. Monday, i^th November 1764. Sir — I received your letter at Southampton, and as I would wish to treat everybody according to their own rule and measure of good-breeding, have against my inclination waited till now before I answered it, purely out of fear and respect and an ingenuous diffidence of my own abilities. If you will not take this as an excuse, accept it at least as a well-turned period, which is always my principal concern. So I proceed to tell you, that my health is much improved by the sea ; not that I drank it, or bathed in it, as the coininojt people do. No I I only walked by it and looked upon it. The climate is remarkably mild, even in October and November. No snow has been seen to lie there for these thirty years past, the myrtles grow in the ground against the houses, and Guernsey lilies bloom in every window. The town, clean and well built, surrounded by its old stone walls, with their towers and gateways, stands at the point of a peninsula, and opens full south to an arm of the sea, which having formed two beautiful bays on each hand of it, stretches away in direct view till it joins the British Channel. It is skirted on either side with gently rising grounds, clothed with thick wood ; and directly across its mouth rise the high lands of the Isle of Wight, at distance, but distinctly seen. In the bosom of the woods (concealed from profane eyes) lie hid the ruins of Netley Abbey. There may be richer and greater houses of religion, but the abbot is content with his situation. See there, at the top of that hanging meadow under the shade of THOMAS GRA V 231 those old trees that bend into half a circle about it, he is walking slowly (good man ! ) and bidding his beads for the souls of his benefactors interred in that venerable pile that lies beneath him. Beyond it (the meadow still descending) nods a thicket of oaks, that mask the building and have excluded a view too garish and too luxuriant for a holy eye : only, on either hand, they leave an opening to the blue glittering sea. Did not you observe how, as that white sail shot by and was lost, he turned and crossed himself to drive the tempter from him that had thrown distraction in his way. I should tell you, that the ferryman who rowed me, a lusty young fellow, told me that he would not, for all the world, pass a night at the Abbey (there were such things seen near it), though there was a power of money hid there. From thence I went to Salisbury, Wilton, and Stonehenge ; but of these things I say no more, they will be published at the University press. (From the Letters.') A SUNRISE I MUST not close my letter without giving you one principal event of my history, which was, that (in the course of my late tour) I set out one morning before five o'clock, the moon shining through a dark and misty autumnal air, and got to the sea-coast time enough to be at the sun's levee. I saw the clouds and dark vapours open gradually to right and left, rolling over one another in great smoky wreaths, and the tide (as it flowed gently in upon the sands) first whitening, then slightly tinged with gold and blue ; and all at once a little line of insufferable brightness that (before I can write these five words) was grown to half an orb, and now to a whole one, too glorious to be distinctly seen. It is very odd it makes no figure on paper, yet I shall remember it as long as the sun, or at least as long as I endure. I wonder whether anybody ever saw it before, I hardly believe it. (From the Same.) HO POLE [The works of Horace Walpole, Earl W Orford (1717-1797). edited by Miss Berry, were published in 5 vols. 410. in 1798. In the author's lifetime were printed .'Ed0<~fFa^ps^/icv, 1747, 1752, papers in the World, 1753 ; Lei/er from Xo I Ho, a clufrnic Philosopher, 1757 ; Catalogue of the Royal and Nx and Verse, 1758; A/h%iA>tes of Engravers, and Tht atid Reign of King Ri Tragedy, 1768 ; Hieroglym The Memoirs of the Last Ten 1 1822 ; the Memoirs of tae fol came out in 1845 and ^859 Fugitive Pieces in Prose thors of Enghikd,^ 1758 ; of Painting in England, 1762-1771 ptranto, 1765 ; Historic Doubts 'hird, 1768 ; The Mys «, 17^ ; Essay on Modern Gar drs^ GeoT^ II. (begun 1751) werj ngl t^lgrr ^ begun in 1766, finish Catalogue \i the Life Mother, A 1785- for Miss ^„„„ „^ ,„ a.v,^j ^. -"o^. rhe Reminiscences, written ni 17; Berry and her sister, were publisned among-^lie collected works in 1798. The fifth volume of this edition conta\s lettsrs,^ varlbj^s persons : others were published in 1818 (to George MontagH^nd othef5);4tta^>8^(to Lor 1 Hereford), and in 1B33 (to Sir Horace Mann). J^^llect^d editidivWas issied in 1840. The publication of further correspondence~-WT^ Sir Horace Mainn in 1843, and of Letters to the Countess of Ossory in 1818, and the Rev. ^V. Mason in 1 85 1, led to a fuller collection by Mr. Peter Cttim«igJaaiIl_Ui-*^57. which has not yet been superseded. ] "Unhealthy and disorganised mind," "a bundle of whims and affectations," " mask within mask " ; these are the phrases that go to make up the popular estimate of a writer who was distin- guished by the sincerity of his taste and judgment, and by the quickness and truth of his response to all impressions. Horace Walpole wrote and thought exactly as he pleased ; his letters are the expression, direct and clear, of a mind that could not condescend to dull its reflections by any compromise about the values of things, or any concession to opinion. He never tampered with his instinctive appreciation of anything. Whether his judgments are sound in themselves is a question of small importance in com- parison with his virtue of self-respect and self-restraint. It is because he had a mind of his own and would not pretend to like 234 ENGLISH PROSE what he could not hke, that he has been pointed out by the literary demagogue. In the matter of his opinions he was less exceptional or eccen- tric than he has sometimes been made to appear. While his discrimination was keener, and his sense more delicate than in most people, he did not set himself to disagree with popular opinion. His confidence in himself was so secure that even to find himself in agreement with the vulgar gave him no uneasiness. His opinions are not those of a fantastic or effeminate recluse. No man was ever more alive to the political interests of that century ; he is the historian of the inner life of Parliament ; the commentator day by day on the news of battles in Germany, America, and India. Yxovc\. the day when Sir Robert Walpole, after his defeat in 1743, drank the health of Lord Stair and Lord Carteret (who were not his friends) for the victory of Dettingen, saying that he did not care by whom the thing was done, so long as it was done, Horace Walpole's letters are an index to the history of England. The falls of ministers, the victories of the " wonderful year," the revolutions of America and France are interpolated in a chronicle of vanities. The irony of the historian may be vexatious to some readers, but it does not deprive the letters of their effect as a continuous narrative of unequalled liveliness and spirit. Their injustice is the injustice of the near view. The writer ignored the virtues of many of his contempor- aries, frequently with reason. He did not discover in Mr. Pitt, the factious partizan of 1742, any of the qualities which he after- wards was able to recognise in the heroic statesman of the Seven Years' War. He wrote what he saw and knew. In speaking of books and authors, Horace Walpole is httle given to dissimulation. His opinions about his contemporaries have been hardly dealt with, as though it were an exceptional thing or a mark of incurable levity to make critical statements that are not generally ratified in the following generation. His opinions are commonly much like Gray's. " He would rather have written the most absurd lines in Lee than Thomson's Seasons?'' It will be generally admitted that Walpole was wrong about Thomson's Seasons. But if wrong, he was wrong in no absurd or affected way. The Seasons had not taken his fancy ; he confused them with the other didactic blank verse of his time. Walpole in his antipathy to dulness had sworn a feud against monotonous poetiy. " If one has a mind to be read one must write metaphysical HORACE WALPOLE 235 poems in blank verse which have not half the imagination of romances, and are dull without any agreeable absurdity. Only think of the gravity of this wise age that have exploded Cleopatra and Pharainond and approved the Pleasures of the Iiua^^i/iation, the Art of Preserving Health, and Leonidas ! I beg the age's pardon ; it has done approving these poems and has forgot them." This piece of criticism is sent off to Mr. Conway in the year of Culloden, to amuse him in his garrison at Stirling. It was some time before this, in March 1745 and in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, that he had committed himself in respect of the Seasons : — "The town flocks to a new play of Thomson's called Tancred and Sigzsmunda; it is very dull ; I have read it. I cannot bear modern poetry : those refiners of the stage and of the incorrectness of English verse are most wofuUy insipid. I had rather have written the most absurd lines in Lee than Leonidas or the Seasons, as I had rather be put into the roundhouse for a wrong-headed quarrel than sup quietly at 8 o'clock with my grandmother. There is another of these tame geniuses, a Mr. Akenside, who writes Odes : in one he has lately published he says Light the tapers, urge the f re. Had you not rather \\\ake gods jostle in the dark than light the candles for fear they should break their heads ? " All this may be wrong, but it is unquestionably sane and lively. " Have you waded through or into Lord Lyttelton ? How dull we may be, if we will but take pains for si.x or seven and twenty years tog'ether." It may be unamiable to write like this, but it is still worse to pretend to admire, without admiring, the tragedy, the epic, the philosophical history. In the style of his letters as in everything else he has baffled his critics. The phantasm of Strawberry Hill comes between them and the page ; his grammar is associated in their minds with ideas of Gothic toy-shops, it is pronounced to be full of affectations, as though writing came by nature. It is true that Walpole's words and phrases are perpetually crying out to be admired. The style is not like that of Cowper's letters, where nothing inter- rupts the story by distracting attention to the words in which it is told. Nevertheless, in Walpole's letters, the phrases and conceits, however noticeable, are not mere external ornament, they are all alive, they belong to the discourse, they are not stitched on like spangles. To be offended by the style is a gratuitous vexation, and even pitiful, if it stands in the way of a 236 ENGLISH PROSE proper acquaintance with the letters. For the matter of them, if matter it be, is one of the most brilhant of all the pageants of Vanity Fair, and the record, from the first letters of the " Quadruple Alliance," and the Virgilian reminiscences of Eton and the waters of Thames, to the letter of farewell to the Countess of Ossory, sixty years later, is, throughout, with all its variety and multiplicity of details, a record free from any compromise with things distasteful to the writer. It displays the same vivacity of mind, the same general principles, the same wit and spirit everywhere. No ancient philosopher was ever more secure and self-consistent. Of his writings, apart from his letters, the Memoirs are the most valuable, the Anecdotes of Painti)ig the most laborious. The latter work, founded upon the papers of Vertue the engraver, is antiquarian rather than literary, an arrangement of documentary materials ; it contains, however, in a style often curiously like that of Johnson's Lives, many brilliant passages of biography and criticism. The Memoirs were intended by their author to fill up the gaps in solemn history, by giving an account of particular things apt ]to be overlooked by the historian, and easily supplied by Horace Walpole. It would be a mistake, however, to look on the Memoirs as an unheroic history, giving the reverse of all contemporary fame ; it is not Walpole's business to write the history of battles, but he is far from indififerent to them, as may be seen by reference to his notes on the death of Wolfe, and many other passages besides. The Memoirs are of course deprived of the extraordinary charm that is found only in letters and in no other historical writing whatever ; for only letters can give the impression, not of the past time merely, but of the expectations and uncertainties of the past. In reading the letters one catches the look of things as they were when they were happening, and when their meaning was not fully evident : in the Memoirs, revised and corrected by the author, things are fixed, and the conventional interpretation of the historical fact has begun. Walpole's romance of the Castle of Otrajito has lost its former reputotion. His aim in writing it is characteristic. His admiration of romantic and Gothic art was one variety of his love of wit ; it was the quaintness, the surprises, that he appreciated, not the " natural magic " such as fascinated the readers of Ossian. The Castle of Otranto was an attempt to HORACE JVALPOLE 237 vivify the medieval matter and present it in a modern style. To keep the grace and the variety of medieval romance, with- out any parody of medieval style, or any loss of independence ; to deliver romance from the helpless rhetoric of the books of chivalry, and make it modern and ironical, has been the purpose of many stories, from the Or/ajido Furioso to the Misfortunes oj ElpJiin. Walpole's experiment was one of this sort. It came naturally from his unscrupulous combination of romantic studies with precision of thought ; from his antipathy to confused and overburdened forms of literature, together with his intellectual curiosity. W. P. Ker. A SUMMARY OF THE PROGRESS OF TASTE . The stages of no art have been more distinctly marked than those of architecture in Britain. It is not probable that our masters the Romans ever taught us more than the construction of arches. Those, imposed on clusters of disproportioned pillars, composed the whole grammar of our Saxon ancestors. Churches and castles were the only buildings, I should suppose, they erected of stone. As no taste was bestowed on the former, no beauty was sought in the latter. Masses to resist and uncouth towers for keeping watch were all the conveniences they demanded. As even luxury was not secure but in a Church, succeeding refine- ments were solely laid out on religious fabrics, till by degrees was perfected the bold scenery of Gothic architecture, with all its airy embroidery and pensile vaults. Holbein, as I have shown, checked all that false, yet venerable style, and first attempted to sober it to classic measures ; but not having gone far enough, his imitators, without his taste, compounded a mongrel species, that had no boldness, no lightness, and no system. This lasted till Inigo Jones, like his countryman and cotemporary, Milton, dis- closed the beauties of ancient Greece, and established simplicity, harmony, and proportion. That school, however was too chaste to flourish long. Sir Christopher Wren lived to see it almost expire before him ; and after a mixture of French and Dutch ugliness had expelled truth, without erecting any certain style in its stead, Vanbrugh, with his ponderous and unmeaning masses overwhelmed architecture in mere masoni-y. Will posterity believe that such piles were erected in the very period when St. Paul's was finishing ? Vanbrugh's immediate successors had no taste ; yet some of them did not forget that there was such a science as regular architecture. Still, there was a Mr. Archer, the groom-porter, who built Hcthrop, and a temple at Wrest ; and one Wakefield, HORACE WALPOLE 239 who gave the design of Helmsley ; each of whom seemed to think that Vanbrugh had dehvered the art from shackles, and that they might build whatever seemed good in their own eyes. (From Anecdotes of Painiing.') HOGARTH'S GENIUS Having despatched the herd of our painters in oil, I reserve to a class by himself that great and original genius, Hogarth ; con- sidering him rather as a writer of comedy with a pencil, than as a painter. If catching the manners and follies of an age living as they rise, if g^eneral satire on vices and ridicules, familiarised by strokes of nature, and heightened by wit, and the whole animated by proper and just expressions of the passions, be comedy, Hogarth composed comedies as much as Moliere : in his "Marriage a la Mode " there is even an intrigue carried on throughout the piece. He is more true to character than Congreve ; each per- sonage is distinct from the rest, acts in his sphere, and cannot be confounded with any other of the dramatis persons'. The alder- man's footboy, in the last print of the set I have mentioned, is an ignorant rustic ; and if wit is struck out from the characters in which it is not expected, it is from their acting comformably to their situation and from the mode of their passions, not from their having the wit of fine gentlemen. Thus there is wit in the figure of the alderman, who, when his daughter is expiring in the agonies of poison, wears a face of solicitude, but it is to save her gold ring, which he is drawing gently from her finger. The thought is parallel to Molicre's, where the miser puts out one of the candles as he is talking. Moliere, inimitable as he has proved, brought a rude theatre to jierfection. Hogarth had no model to follow and improve upon. He created his art, and used colours instead of language. His place is between the Italians whom we may consider as epic poets and tragedians, and the Flemish painters, who are as writers of farce and editors of burlesque nature. They are the Tom Iirowns of the mob. Hogarth resembles Butler, but his subjects are more universal, and amidst all his pleasantry, he observes the true end of comedy, reformation ; there is always a moral in his pictures. Sometimes he rose to tragedy, not in the catastrophe of kings and heroes, but 2 40 ENGLISH PR OSE in marking how vice conducts insensibly and incidentally to misery and shame. He warns against encouraging cruelty and idleness in young minds, and discerns how. the different vices of the great and the vulgar lead by various paths to the same unhappiness. The fine lady in " Marriage a la Mode^'' and Tom Nero in the " Four Stages of Cruelty," terminate their story in blood — she occasions the murder of her husband, he assassinates his mistress. How delicate and superior too is his satire, when he intimates in the College of Physicians and Surgeons that preside at a dissection, how the legal habitude of viewing shocking scenes hardens the human mind, and renders it unfeeling. The presi- dent maintains the dignity of insensibility over an executed corpse, and considers it but the object of a lecture. In the print of the sleeping judges, this habitual indifference only excites our laughter. , (F rom the Same.) CHARACTER OF PITT Pitt had roused us from this ignoble lethargy : he had asserted that our resources were still prodigious — he found them so in the intrepidity of our troops and navies — but he went further, and perhaps too far. He staked our revenues with as little manage- ment as he played with the lives of the subjects ; and as if we could never have another war to wage, or as if he meant, which was impracticable, that his administration should decide which alone should exist as a nation, Britain or France, he lavished the last treasures of this country with a prodigality beyond example and beyond excuse ; yet even that profusion was not so blame- able as his negligence. Ignorant of the whole circle of finance, and consequently averse from corresponding with financiers, a plain set of men who are never to be paid with words instead of figures, he kept aloof from all details, drew magnificent plans and left others to find the magnificent means. Disdaining, too, to descend into the operations of an office which he did not fill, he affected to throw on the treasury the execution of measures which he dictated, but for which he thus held himself not responsible. The conduct was artful, new, and grand ; and to him proved most advantageous. Secluded from all eyes, his orders were received as oracles ; and their success, of conse- HORACE WALPOLE 241 quence, was imputed to his inspiration. Misfortunes and miscarriages fell to the account of the more human agents ; corruption and waste were charged on the subordinate priests. They indeed were charmed with this dispensation. As Mr. Pitt neither granted suits nor received them, Newcastle revelled in a boundless power of appointing agents, commissaries, victuallers, and the whole train of leeches, and even paid his court to Pitt by heaping extravagance on extravagance \ for the more money was thrown away, the greater idea Pitt conceived of his system's grandeur. But none flattered this ostentatious prodigality like the Germans. From the King of Prussia and Prince Ferdinand to the lowest victualler in the camp, all made advantage of English easiness and dissij^ation. As the minister was proud of such pensioners they were not coy in begging his alms. Fox, too, was not wanting to himself during this harvest, to which his office of paymaster opened so commodious an inlet. Depressed, annihilated as a statesman, he sat silent, indemnifying himself by every opportunity of gain which his rival's want of economy threw in his way. The larger and more numerous are subsidies, the more troops are in commission, the more are on service abroad, the ampler means has the paymaster of enriching himself. An unfortunate campaign, or an unpopular peace might shake the minister's establishment ; but till this vision of expensive glory should be dissipated. Fox was determined to take no part. But thence, from that inattention on one hand, and rapacity on the other, started up those prodigious private fortunes which we have seen suddenly come forth — and thence we remained with a debt of an hundred and forty millions ! The admirers of Mr. Pitt extol the reverberation he gave to our councils, the despondence he banished, the spirit he infused, the conquests he made, the security he affixed to our trade and plantations, the humiliation of France, the glory of Britain, carried under his administration to a pitch at which it never had arrived — and all this is exactly true. When they add, that all this could not be purchased too dearly, and that there was no option between this conduct and tame submission to the yoke of France — even this is just in a degree ; but a material objection still remains, not depreciating a grain from this bill of merits, which must be gratefully acknowledged by whoever calls himself an Englishman — yet very derogatory from Mr. Pitt's cliaracter, as virtually trusted with the revenues, the property of his country. VOL. IV R 242 ENGLISH PROSE A few plain words will explain my meaning, and comprehend the force of the question. All this was done — but might have been done for many millions less — the next war will state this objection more fully. Posterity, this is an impartial picture. I am neither dazzled by the blaze of the times in which I have lived, nor if there are spots in the sun, do I deny that I have seen them. It is a man I am describing, and one whose greatness will bear to have his blemishes fairly delivered to you — not from a love of censurie in me, but of truth ; and because it is history I am writing, not romance. I pursue my subject. (From Memoirs of t/ie Reign of King George II.) ALPINE SCENERY: THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE From a Hainlct among the Afouitfaius of Savoy, z'&th Sept. 1739, N.S. To Richard West, Esq. Precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings, Salvator Rosa — the pomp of our park and the meekness of our palace ! Here we are, the lonely lords of glorious, desolate prospects. I have kept a sort of resolution which I made, of not writing to you as long as I staid in France : I am now a quarter of an hour out of it, and write to you. Mind, 'tis three months since we heard from you. I begin this letter among the clouds ; where I shall finish my neighbour Heaven probably knows : 'tis an odd wish in a mortal letter, to hope not to finish it on this side the atmosphere. You will have a billet tumble to you from the stars when you least think of it ; and that I should write it too ! Lord, how potent that sounds ! But I am to undergo many transmigrations before I come to " yours ever." Yesterday I was a shepherd of Dauphine : to-day an Alpine savag'e ; to- morrow a Carthusian monk ; and Friday a Swiss Calvinist. I have one quality which I find remains with me in all worlds and in all aethers ; I brought it with me from your world, and am admired for it in this — 'tis my esteem for you : this is a common thought among you, and you will laugh at it, but it is new here, as new to remember one's friends in the world one has left, as for you to remember those you have lost. HORACE WALPOLE 243 Aix IN Savov, TyOth Sept. We are this minute come in here, and here's an awkward Abbd this minute come in to us. I asked him if he would sit down. Out, out. Old. He has ordered us a radish soup for supper, and has brought a chess-board to play with Mr. Conway. I have left 'em in the act, and am set down to write to you. Did you ever see anything like the prospect we saw yesterday ? I never did. We rode three leagues to see the Grande Chartreuse ; e.xpected bad roads and the finest convent in the kingdom. We were disappointed pro and con. The building is large and plain, and has nothing remarkable but its primitive simplicity ; they entertained us in the neatest manner, with eggs, pickled salmon, dried fish, conserves, cheese, butter, grapes, and figs, and pressed us mightily to lie there. We tumbled into the hands of a lay- brother, who unluckily having charge of the meal and bran showed us little besides. They desired us to set down our names in the list of strangers, where, among^ others, we found two mottoes of our countrymen, for whose stupidity and brutality we blushed. The first was of Sir J D , who had wrote down the first stanza of Jusiuni ct ioiacciii altering the last line to Mente qicatit Carl/msla/ia. The second was of one D , Ccchuii ipsum petimus sttdtitidj et liic ventri zjidico bell 11 ni. The Goth ! — But the road. West, the road ! winding round a prodigious mountain, and surrounded with others, all shagged with hanging woods, obscured with pines, or lost in clouds ! Below, a torrent breaking through cliffs, and tumbling through fragments of rocks ! Sheets of cascades forcing their silver speed down channelled precipices, and hasting into the roughened river at the bottom ! Now and then an old foot-bridge, with a broken rail, a leaning cross, a cottag'e, or the ruin of an hermitage ! This sounds too bombast and too romantic to one that has not seen it, too cold for one that has. If I could send you my letter post between two lovely tempests that echoed each other's wrath, you might have some idea of this noble roaring scene, as you were reading it. Almost on the summit, upon a fine verdure, but without any prospect, stands the Chartreuse. We staid there two hours, rode back through this charming picture, wished for a painter, wished to be poets ! Need I tell you we wished for you ? Good night ! 244 ENGLISH PROSE THE WAR: BURKE Strawberry Hill, iznd July 1761. To George Montagu, Esq. For my part, I believe Mademoiselle Scuderi drew the plan of this year. It is all royal marriages, coronations, and victories ; they come tumbling so over one another from distant parts of the globe, that it looks just like the handywork of a lady romance writer, whom it costs nothing but a little false geography to make the great Mogul in love with a Princess of Mecklenburg and defeat two marshals of France as he rides post on an ele- phant to his nuptials. I don't know where I am. I had scarce found Mecklenburg Strelitz with a magnifying-glass before I am whisked to Pondicherry. — Well, I take it, and raze it. I begin to grow acquainted with Colonel Coote, and to figure him packing up chests of diamonds, and sending them to his wife against the King's wedding — thunder go the Tower guns, and behold, Broglio and Soubise are totally defeated ; if the mob have not much stronger heads and quicker conceptions than I have, they will conclude my Lord Granby is nabob. How the deuce in two days can one digest all this ? Why is not Pondicherry in Westphalia ? I don't know how the Romans did, but I cannot support two victories every week. Well, but you will want to know the particulars. Broglio and Soubise united, attacked our army on the 15th, but were repulsed; the next day, the Prince Mahomet AUi Cawn — no, no, I mean Prince Ferdinand, returned the attack and the French threw down their arms and fled, run over my Lord tiarcourt, who was going to fetch the new Queen ; in short I don't know how it was, but Mr. Conway is safe, and I am as happy as Mr. Pitt himself. We have only lost a Lieutenant- Colonel Keith ; Colonel Marlay and Harry Townshend are wounded. I could iDeat myself for not having a flag ready to display on my round tower, and guns mounted on all my battlements. Instead of that, I have been foolishly trying on my new pictures upon my gallery. However, the oratory of our Lady of Straw- berry shall be dedicated next year on the anniversary of Mr. Conway's safety. Think with his intrepidity, and delicacy of honour wounded, what I had to apprehend ; you shall absolutely be here on the sixteenth of next July. Mr. Hamilton tells me your King does not set out for his new dominions till the HORACE IVALPOLE 245 day after the Coronation ; if you will come to it, I can give you a very good place for the procession ; where, is a profound secret, because, if known, I should be teased to death and none but my first friends shall be admitted. I dined with your secretary yesterday ; there were Garrick and a young Mr. Burke, who wrote a book in the style of Lord Bolingbroke, that was much admired. He is a sensible man, but has not worn off his authorism yet, and thinks there is nothing so charming as writers, and to be one. He will know better one of these days. I like Hamilton's little Marly ; we walked in the great alk'c and drank tea in the arbour of ireillage : they talked of Shakespeare and Booth, of Swift and my Lord Bath, and I was thinking of Madam Sevigne. Good night — I have a dozen other letters to write ; I must tell my friends how happy I am — not as an Englishman, but as a cousin. OLD AGE : FRANCE : MADAME D'ARBLAY Strawberry IIii.l, 29/// Aniens/, 1796. To Miss Hannah More. You are not only the most beneficent, but tlie most benevolent of human beings. Not content with being a perfect saint yourself, which (forgive me for saying) does not always imply j^rodigious compassion for others ; not satisfied with being the most disin- terested, nay, the reverse of all patriots, for you sacrifice your very slender fortune, not to improve it, but to keep the poor honest instead of corrupting them ; and you write politics as simply, intelligibly, and unartfully, not as cunningly as you can to mis- lead. Well, with all these giant virtues, you can find room and time in your heart and occupations for harbouring and exercising what those monkeys of pretensions, the French, invented and called les pctitcs morales, which were to supply society with filigrain duties, in the room of all virtues, which they abolished on their road to the adoption of philosophy and atheism. Yes, though for ever busied in exercising services and charities for individuals, or for whole bodies of people, you do not lea\e a cranny empty into which you can slip a kindness. Your inquiry after me to Miss Berry is so friendly, that I cannot trust solely to her thanking you for your letter, as I am sure she will, having sent it to her as she is bathing in the sea at Bognor Rocks ; but I must with infinite gratitude give you a brief account of myself — 246 ENGLISH PROSE a very poor one indeed must I give. Condemned as a cripple to my couch for the rest of my days I doubt I am. Though per- fectly healed, and even without a scar, my leg is so weakened that I have not recovered the least use of it, nor can move across my chamber unless lifted up and held by two servants. This con- stitutes me totally a prisoner. But why should not I be so ? What business had I to live to the brink of seventy-nine ? And why should one litter the world at that age ? Then, I thank God 1 have vast blessings ; I have presei-ved my eyes, ears, and teeth ; I have no pain left ; and I would bet with any dormouse that it cannot outsleep me. And when one can afford to pay for every relief, comfort, or assistance that can be procured at fourscore, dares one complain ? Must not one reflect on the thousands of old poor, who are suffering martyrdom, and have none of these alleviations. O, my good friend, I must consider myself as at my best ; for if I drag on a little longer, can 1 expect to remain even so tolerably ? Nay, does the world present a pleasing scene ? Are not the devils escaped out of the swine, and overrunning the earth headlong ? What a theme for meditation, that the excellent humane Louis Seize should have been prevented from saving himself by that monster Drouet, and that that execrable wretch should be saved even by those, some of whom one may suppose he meditated to massacre ; for at what does a Frenchman stop .? But I will quit this shocking subject, and for another reason too : I omitted one of my losses, almost the use of my fingers : they are so lame that I cannot write a dozen lines legibly, but am forced to have recourse to my secretary. I will only reply by a word or two to a question you seem to ask ; how I like " Camilla " .? I do not care to say how little. Alas ! she has reversed experience, which I have long thought reverses its own utility by coming at the wrong end of our life when we do not want it. This author knew the world and penetrated characters before she had stepped over the threshold ; and, now she has seen so much of it, she has little or no insight at all : perhaps she apprehended having seen too much, and kept the bags of foul air that she brought from the Cave of Tempests too closely tied. Adieu, thou who mightest be one of the cleverest of women if thou didst not prefer being 07:c of the best ! And when I say 07ie of the best I have not engaged my vote for the second. — Yours most gratefully. GILBERT WHITE [Gilbert White was born at Selborne, Hampshire, where his father had a small estate, on i8th July 1720. His schoolmaster was Thomas Warton, father of the Professor of Poetry, and he entered at Oriel College, Oxford, in December 1739, and was elected a fellow of the College in March 1744. He took holy orders, but never held any other preferment than his fellowship. He settled at his native place and only left it to pay brief visits to friends, filling his time with the study of the natural history and antiquities of the parish. In 1789 he published The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, and died at Selborne on 26th June 1793.] The Natural History of Selborne was the first readable book in English on natural history, and before White no one had carried out the method of describing all that he had observed in a particular locality. The book consists of genuine letters to several corre- spondents. The letters are simple in style, and seldom long, and contain lucid accounts of the habits of birds and other animals. There is no attempt at decoration in the composition ; the writer, in the simplest English, succeeds in arousing in others the interest which he himself feels. His sentences convey exactly what he had seen, and he never becomes either uninteresting or rhetorical. Mingled with his own observations are questions and discussions of unsolved problems of natural history, glimpses of rural society, and sufficient allusions to literature to show that a well chosen set of books had been read, so as to form part of the author's mind. White may be regarded as the founder of a new branch of English literature, and few of those who have followed him have had so much to tell, or have succeeded in conveying so much in so short a space. In the narration of the features of events so as to give a clear idea of the details, as well as of the whole. White, in the natural world, shows skill comparable to 248 ENGLISH PROSE that of Cowper in the description of his domestic circle and its incidents. The letters of White are less numerous and briefer than those of Cowper, and of somewhat less literary power, but they have the same kind of merit, and while making clear what their writer saw, unconsciously furnish a portrait of his own mind, Norman Moore. MIGRATION OF BIRDS SELr.ORNE, Sz/i Dec. 1769. Dear Sir — I was much gratified by your communicative letter on your return from Scotland, where you spent some considerable time, and gave yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities of that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry, because men seldom allot themselves half the time they should do ; but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey that required dispatch, than as philosophers investigating the works of nature. You must have made, no doubt, many discoveries, and laid up a good fund of materials for a future edition of the British Zoology ; and will have no reason to repent that you have bestowed so much pains on a part of Great Britain that perhaps was never so well examined before. It has always been matter of wonder to me that fieldfares, which are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, should never chose to breed in England ; but that they should not think even the highlands cold and northerly, and secjuestrated enough, is a circumstance still more strange and wonderful. The ring ousel, you find, stays in Scotland the whole year round ; so that we have reasons to conclude that those migrators that visit us for a short space every autumn do not come from thence. And here, I think, will be the proper place to mention that those birds were most punctual again in their migration this autumn, appearing, as before, about the 30th of September ; but their flocks were larger than common, and their stay protracted beyond the usual time. If they came to spend the whole winter with us, as some of their congeners do, and then left us, as they do, in spring, I should not be so much struck with the occurrence, since it would be similar to that of the other birds of passage ; J50 ENGLISH PROSE but when I see them for a fortnight at Michaelmas, and again for about a week in the middle of April, I am seized with wonder, and long to be informed whence these travellers come, and whither they go, since they seem to use our hills merely as an inn or baiting place. Your account of the greater brambling or snow-fleck, is very amusing ; and strange it is that such a short-winged bird should delight in such perilous voyages over the northern ocean ! Some country people in the winter time have every now and then told me that they have seen two or three white larks on our downs ; but, on considering the matter, I begin to suspect that these are some stragglers of the birds we are talking of, which sometimes perhaps may rove so far to the southward. It pleases me to find that white hares are so frecjuent on the Scottish mountains, and especially as you inform me that it is a distinct species ; for the quadrupeds of Britain are so few, that every new species is a great acquisition. The eagle-owl, could it be proved to belong to us, is so majestic a bird, that it would grace our fauna much. I never was informed before where wild-geese are known to breed. You admit, I find, that I have proved your fen salicaria to be the lesser reed-sparrow of Ray ; and 1 think you may be secure that I am right, for I took very particular pains to clear up that matter, and had some fair specimens ; but as they were not well preserved, they are decayed already. You will, no doubt, insert it in its proper place in your next edition. Your additional plates will much improve your work. De Buffon, I know has described the water shrew-mouse ; but still I am pleased to find you have discovered it in Lincoln- shire, for the reason I have given in the article of the white hare. As a neighbour was lately ploughing in a dry, chalky field, far removed from any water, he turned out a water-rat, that was curiously lain up in an hybcrnaathim artificially formed of grass and leaves. At one end of the burrow lay above a gallon of potatoes regularly stowed, on which it was to have supported itself for the winter. But the difficuUy with me is how this amphibius imis came to fix its winter station at such a distance from the water. Was it detennined in its choice of that place by the mere accident of finding the potatoes which were planted there ; or is it the constant practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the neighbourhood of the water in the colder months ? GILBERT WHITE 251 Though I deHght very httle in analogous reasoning, knowing how fallacious it is with respect to natural history ; yet, in the following instance, I cannot help being inclined to think it may conduce towards the explanation of a difficulty that I have mentioned before, with respect to the invariable early retreat of the Hinijido apus, or swift, so many weeks before its congeners ; and that not only with us, Ijut also in Andalusia, where they also begin to retire about the beginning of August. The great large bat (which by the bye is at present a nonde- script in England, and what I have never been able yet to procure) retires or migrates very early in the summer ; it also ranges very high for its food, feeding in a different region in the air ; and this is the reason I never could procure one. Now this is exactly the case with the swifts ; for they take their food in a more exalted region than the other species, and are very seldom seen hawking for flies near the ground, or over the surface of the water. From hence I would conclude that these hirutidines and the larger bats are supported by some sorts of high-flying gnats, scarabs, or pha/crfio', that are of short continuance ; and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by the defect of their food. By my journal it appears that curlews clamoured on to October the thirty- first ; since which I have not " seen or heard any. Swallows were observed on to November the third. (From Natural History of Selbornc.') MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS Selborne, 30//; March, 1768. Dear Sir — Some intelligent country people have a notion that we have, in these parts, a species of the gc7tus MtistcUimm, besides the weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat ; a little reddish beast, not much bigger than a field-mouse, but much longer, which they call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended on ; but further inquiry may be made. A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milk-white rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding them before they were able to fly, threw them down and destroyed them, to the regret 252 ENGLISH PROSE of the owner, who would have been glad to have preserved such a curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds myself nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised to find that their bills, legs, feet, and claws were milk-white. A she]3herd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down above my house this winter : were not these idx^ Emberisa nivalis ^the snow-flake of the British Zoology ? No doubt they were. A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had been caught in the fields after it was come to its full colours. In about a year it began to look dingy ; and blackening every succeeding year, it became coal-black at the end of four. Its chief food was hempseed. Such influence has food on the colour of animals ! The pied and mottled colours of domesticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, various, and unusual food. I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint {(in/iii) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root of the arum is remarkably warm and pungent. Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us. The blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by that fierce weather in January. In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, a little l:)ird that raised my curiosity : it was of that yellow-green colour tJTat belongs to the salicaria kind, and, I think, was soft- billed. It was no panis ; and was too long and too big for the golden -crowned wren, appearing most like the largest willow- wren. It hung sometimes with its back downwards, but never continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim. I wonder that the stone-curlew, Cliaradriiis a'diaicnius, should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird : it abounds in all the champaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and breeds, I think, all the summer, having young ones, I know, very late in the autumn. Already they begin clamouring in the evening. They cannot, I think, with any propriety be called, as they are by Mr. Ray, circa aqtias 7'crsa7itcs ; for with us, by day at least, they haunt only the most dry, open, upland fields and sheep-walks, far removed from water ; what they may do in the night I cannot GILBERT WHrVE 253 say. Worms are their usual food, but they also eat toads and frogs. I can show you some specimens of my new mice. Linnaeus perhaps would call the species Mas niiiiimiis. (From the Same.) ON THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS Selborne, Tth August 1778. Dear Sir — A good ornithologist should be able to distinguish birds by their air as well by their colours and shape ; on the ground as w^ell as on the wing ; and in the bush as well as in the hand. For though it must not be said that every species of birds has a manner peculiar to itself, yet there is somewhat in most genera at least, that at first sight discriminates them, and enables a judicious observer to pronounce upon them with some certainty. Put a bird in motion . . . ct vera incesstt patuit . . . Thus kites and buzzards sail round in circles with wings ex- panded and motionless ; and it is from their gliding manner that the former are still called in the north of England gleads, fiom the Saxon verb glidan^ to glide. The kestrel, or windhover, has a peculiar mode of hanging in the air in one place, his wings all the while being briskly agitated. Hen-harriers fly low over heaths or fields of corn, and beat the ground regularly like a pointer or setting-dog. Owls move in a buoyant manner, as if lighter than the air ; they seem to want ballast. There is a peculiarity belonging to ravens that must draw the attention even of the most incurious — they spend all their leisure time in striking and cuffing each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish ; and, when they move from one place to another, frequently turn on their backs with a loud croak and seem to be falling to the ground. When this odd gesture betides them, they are scratching themselves with one foot, and thus lose the centre of gravity. Rooks sometimes dive and tumble in a frolicsome manner ; crows and daws swagger in their walk ; wood-peckers fly volatu u/idoso, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are always rising or falling in curves. All of this genus 254 ENGLISH PROSE use their tails, which inchne downward, as a support while they run up trees. Parrots, like all other hook-clawed birds, walk awkwardly and make use of their bill as a third foot, climbing and descending with ridiculous caution. All the GaUincc parade and walk gracefully and run nimbly ; but fly with difficulty with an impetuous whirring, and in a straight line. Magpies and jays flutter with powerless wings, and make no dispatch ; herons seem encumbered with too much sail for their light bodies, but these vast hollow wings are necessary in earring burdens, such as large fishes and the like ; pigeons, and particularly the sort called smiters, have a way of clashing their wings, the one against the other, over their backs with a loud snap ; another variety, called tumblers, turn themselves over in the air. Some birds have movements peculiar to the season of love ; thus ringdoves, though strong and rapid at other times, yet in the spring hang about on the wing in a toying and playful manner ; thus the cock- snipe, while breeding, forgetting his former flight, fans the air like the windhover ; and the greenfinch in particular, exhibits such languishing and faltering gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying bird ; the kingfisher darts along like an arrow ; fern-owls or goat-suckers, glance in the dusk over the tops of trees like a meteor ; starlings as it were swim along, while missel-thrushes use a wild and desultoiy flight ; swallows sweep over the surface of the ground and water, and distinguish them- selves by rapid turns and quick evolutions ; swifts dash round in circles ; and the bank-martin moves with frequent vacillations like a butterfly. Most of the small birds fly by jerks, rising and falling as they advance. Most small birds hop ; but wagtails and larks walk, moving their legs alternately. Skylarks rise and fall perpendicularly as they sing ; woodlarks hang poised in the air ; and titlarks rise and fall in large curves, singing in their descent. The whitethroat uses odd jerks and gesticulations over the tops of hedges and bushes. All the duck kind waddle ; divers and auks walk as if fettered ; and stand erect on their tails ; these are the Compedes of Linnaeus. Geese and cranes, and most wild fowls move in figured flights, often changing their position. The secondary rc/niges of Tringcc, wild ducks, and some others, are very long, and give their wings, when in motion, a hooked appearance. Dabchicks, moor-hens, and coots, fly erect, with their legs hanging down, and hardly make any dis- patch ; the reason is plain, their wings are placed too forward GILBERT WHITE 255 out of the true centre of gravity ; as the legs of auks and divers are situated too backward. (From the Same.) THE FERN-OWL On the twelfth of July I had a fair opportunity of contemplating the motions of the cafirimu/giis, or fern-owl, as it was playing round a large oak that swarmed with Scarabcct solstitiales, or fern-chafers. The powers of its wing were wonderful, exceeding, if possible, the various evolutions and quick turns of the swallow genus. But the circumstance that pleased me most was, that I saw it distinctly, more than once, put out its short leg while on the wing, and, by a bend of the head, deliver somewhat into its mouth. If it takes any part of its prey with its foot, as I have now the greatest reason to suppose it does these chafers, I no longer wonder at the use of its middle toe, which is curiously furnished with a serrated claw. (From the Same.) THE ROOK The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks arc curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over Selborne down, where they wheel round in the air and sport and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding ; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an occurence, in the true spirit of physico-theology, that the rooks were saying their prayers ; and yet this child was much too young to be aware that the Scriptures have said of the Deity — that " He feedeth the ravens who call upon him." (From the Same.) TOBIAS SMOLLETT [Tobias George Smollett was born (i 721) at Dalquhurn, in Dumbartonshire. His family (Smollett of Ronhill) was a good one, and his grandfather, Sir James, was a judge and a member of Parliament : but the novelist's father was a younger son who died when the boy was a child ; and though Smollett himself would have succeeded to the family estate had he lived a few years longer, he was throughout his life dependent, or mainly so, on his own earnings. Educated at Glasgow, and apprenticed to a surgeon, he took an appointment as surgeon's mate on board one of the ships of the Carthagena e.xpedition in 1741. On this voyage he met Anne Lascelles, a supposed heiress of Jamaica, whom he married. He endeavoured to practice both in London and in Bath, but without success. Before entering the navy he had submitted a bad tragedy. The Regicide, to Garrick ; and turning later with better success to novel-writ- ing, he produced in 1748 Roderick Random, which was very popular, and fi.xed him for the rest of his life as an author. Pcrcgriiie Pickle followed in 1751 ; Ferdinand, Count Fathom, in 1753. He afterwards translated or fathered a translation of Don Quixote, and became editor of The Critical Review — a post which brought him into no little trouble, including in one case imprison- ment and fine. His History of England — very rapidly written and not of great value, but extremely profitable to the author — appeared in 1758, Sir Launcclot Greaves in 1761. Then Smollett, whose health was extremely bad, journeyed to France and Italy, publishing in 1766, after his return, a very ill-tempered book of Travels. Three years later followed the Adventures of an Atom. Its author once more went abroad, and died at Leghorn on October 21, 1771, very shortly after the publication of his last and best book, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. ] It is probable that in that vague reflection of critical opinion in general judgment which rarely goes very far wrong, Smollett takes on the whole the lowest place among the four great novelists of the mid -eighteenth century in England. Scott indeed tried to make him out Fielding's equal ; but this was the almost solitary example of national prejudice warping that sane and shrewd intellect. Smollett is undoubtedly far more amusing to the general reader than Richardson ; and it may be contended that his altogether astonishing foulness (which e.xcecds as a VOL. IV S 2S8 ENGLISH PROSE pervading trait if it does not equal in individual instances the much discussed failing of Swift) is not to a nice morality more offensive than the sniggering indelicacy of Sterne. With very young readers who are not critical from the literary side, Smollett is' probably the most popular of the four. But the reader who begins to " pull him to pieces," to ask what is his idiosyncrasy, what his special contribution to letters, cannot very long remain in doubt as to the fact and the reason of his inferiority. Thackeray, with the native shrewdness of a critic and the acquired tact of a brother of the mystery, hit one side of this inferiority in the remark, " He did not invent much, I fancy." In truth, observation, and observation of the outside rather than of the inside, is Smollett's characteristic. He had seen much ; he had felt much ; he had desired, and enjoyed, and failed in, and been indignant at much. And he related these experiences, or something like them, with a fresh and vigorous touch, giving them for the most part true life and nature, but not infusing any great individuality into them either from the artistic or the ethical side. He was a good writer but not one of distinction. He never takes the veiy slightest trouble about construction : his books are mere lengths cut off from a conceivably infinite bead-roll of adventures. Vivid as are his sketches they all run (except perhaps in his last and best book) to types. His humour though exuberant is for the most part what has been called " the humour of the stick." He has no commanding' or profound knowledge of human nature below the surface. And this brings us to the one idiosyncrasy or characteristic which Smollett did very unfortunately succeed in impressing on his books, and not least on those of them which have survived — the novels. He seems himself to have had many good personal qualities, to have been a fervent lover, a staunch friend, a steadfast politician, a generous acquaintance and patron, a man of dauntless courage and (except in the ugly passage of his taking money to foist in the " Memoirs of a Lady of Quality " into Peregritje Pickle) of incorruptible integrity. But these good things were " dashed and brewed " not merely with the above- mentioned coarseness but with a savage ferocity of temper, which not only vented itself on the unlucky authors whom he criticised and the unlucky patrons who did not patronise him enough, but took form in his two first heroes, Roderick and Peregrine — two of the most unmitigated young ruffians who ever escaped condign punish- ment. The good-natured and often tpite valid plea of " dramatic TOBIAS SMOLLETT 259 presentment " will not avail here ; for Roderick and Peregrine are not merely presented without the slightest effort on the part of their introducer to apologise for them, but the keynote of both characters corresponds only too exactly to that of the character of the O'/V/Vc?/ journalist, the traveller in France and Italy, and the chronicler of the Aioii. When to this drawback is added the others above referred to, especially the almost total absence of construction, and of what may be called projection of character, in the earlier novels, it becomes tolerably easy to understand why Smollett has not on the whole been a favourite with critics, and why he pleases far more at a first, especially an early and un- fastidious reading, than at nicer reperusal in later years. Yet no estimate which refused him a very high place among those who do not attain the highest would be either critical or generous. The profusion of scene and incident which led Scott into the undoubted blunder of ascribing to Smollett "more brilliancy of genius and more inexhaustible fertility of invention " than to Fielding, as well as into the particular oddity of preferring Fcrdinafid, Count Fathom^ \.o JonatJian Wild, is real and wonderful, while the naval personages in both Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle, the scenes on shipboard in the former novel, the "Roman dinner" in the latter, the forest adventures of Fathom, and even not a few passages in that rather unjustly depreciated book Sir Laiincelot Greaves, remain as masterpieces of their kind. If Smollett adds nothing to the pillar- to -post manner of the Spaniards and of Le Sage he is a thorough adept in it, and succeeds in holding the reader's interest perhaps better than any of them. And if he never communicates to any character, much less to any story, the subtle truth and nature of which Fielding was a master, it can hardly be said that any of his characters are distinctly untrue or lacking in life. Nor did his plans and schemes lack a general verisimilitude save only in the singular crotchet which made him attribute to his Sir Launcelot the actual costume and procedure as well as the crazes and virtues of Don Quixote. There can, however, be very little doubt that if he had left nothing but HunipJtry Clinker^ though the body and variety of delight which he would have given to readers would have been much less, his literary standing- would have been higher. In this charming book his defects appear softened and his merits heightened in a way difficult to parallel elsewhere in any single 26o ENGLISH PROSE work of a voluminous and strongly-gifted author. Hardly any novel better carries off the too frequently troublesome and teasing scheme of epistolary narrative ; the false spelling of Winifred Jenkins if it is only farce, and rather facile farce, is excellently funny, and has never been so well done by any one except by Thackeray who copied it ; the stream of loosely con- nected adventure never flags or becomes monotonous ; while here, and perhaps here only, Smollett has really created characters as well as " humours." Bramble and Lismahago by common consent need not fear to hold their heads up (a process to which both were well inclined) in any fictitious company ; and the others are not far behind them. Such an increase of mellowness and art with such a maintenance of vigour and resource are indeed rare in the work of a hack of letters who has been writing at full speed and on almost every subject for nearly five and twenty years, It has not seemed necessary in the brief space available here to draw on anything except the novels. The History, still venal at every stall and obvious on many shelves, is but hack-work, and not eminent hack-work of its kind, though it is very fairly written. Indeed Smollett is, as regards the mechanical minutenesses of composition, a A-ery careful and correct craftsman. The criticism has the same drawback, not to mention that Smollett was one of those who mistake criticism for fault-finding, and who confuse the scholarly with the vulgar meaning of " censure." The Travels though not contemptible are too ill-tempered, too ambitious, and too much stuffed with guide-book detail ; and I am sure that no one who has twice read the ferocious nastiness of the Advc7itures of an Atom would feel tempted to cull from them. Nature had made Smollett a novelist ; only necessity, assisted by ill-health and ill-temper, made him a miscellaneous writer. So let us take the advice of a creation of his greatest follower and "make the best of him, not the worst." George Saintsbury. RODERICK AT SURGEON'S HALL With the assistance of this faithful adherent, who gave me almost all the money he earned, I preserved my half-guinea entire till the day of examination, when I went with a quaking heart to Surgeon's Hall, in order to undergo that ceremony. Among the crowd of young fellows who walked in the outward hall, I per- ceived Mr. Jackson, to whom I immediately went up, and in- quiring into the state of his amour, understood it was still un- determined by reason of his friend's absence, and the delay of the recall at Chatham, which put it out of his power to bring it to a conclusion. I then asked what his business was in this place ? he replied, he was resolved to have two strings to his bow, that in case the one failed he might use the other ; and, with this view, he was to pass that night for a higher qualification. At that instant a young fellow came out from the place of examination with a pale countenance, his lip c[uivering, and his looks as wild as if he had seen a ghost. He no sooner appeared, than we all flocked about him with the utmost eagerness to know what re- ception he had met with ; which, after some pause, he described, recounting all the questions they had asked, with the answers he made. In this manner, we obliged no less than twelve to re- capitulate, which, now the danger was past, they did with pleasure, before it fell to my lot : at length the beadle called my name, with a voice that made me treml^le as much as if it had been the sound of the last trumpet : however, there was no remedy : I was conducted into a large hall, where I saw about a dozen of grim faces sitting at a long table ; one of whom bade me come forward, in such an imperious tone that I was actually for a minute or two bereft of my senses. The first question he put to me was, "Where was you born ?" To which I answered, " In Scotland." — " In Scotland," said he ; " I know that very well ; we have scarce any other countrymen to examine here ; you Scotchmen 262 ENGLISH PROSE have overspread us of late as the locusts did Egypt : I ask you in what part of Scotland was you born ? " I named the place of my nativity, which he had never before heard of: he then pro- ceeded to interrogate me about my age, the town where I served my time, with the term of my apprenticeship ; and when I in- formed him that I served three years only, he fell into a violent passion ; swore it was a shame and a scandal to send such raw boys into the world as surgeons ; that it was a great presumption in me, and an affront upon the English, to pretend to sufficient skill in my business, having served so short a time, when every apprentice in England was bound seven years at least ; that my friends would have done better if they had made me a weaver or shoemaker, but their pride would have me a gentleman, he sup- posed, at any rate, and their poverty could not afford the necessary education. This exordium did not at all contribute to the recovery of my spirits, but on the contrary, reduced me to such a situation that I was scarce able to stand ; which being perceived by a plump gentleman who sat opposite to me, with a skull before him, he said, Mr. Snarler was too severe upon the young man ; and, turning towards me, told me, I need not to be afraid, for nobody would do me any harm ; then bidding me take time to recollect myself, he examined me touching the operation of the trepan, and was very well satisfied with my answers. The next person who questioned me was a wag^, who began by asking if I had ever seen amputation performed ; and I replying in the affirmative, he shook his head, and said, " What ! upon a dead subject, I suppose? If," continued he, "during an engage- ment at sea, a man should be brought to you with his head shot off, how would you behave ? " After some hesitation, I owned such a case had never come under my observation, neither did I remember to have seen any method of cure proposed for such an accident, in any of the systems of surgery I had perused. Whether it was owing to the simplicity of my answer, or the archness of the question, I know not, but every member at the board deigned to smile, except Mr. Snarler, who seemed to have very little of the aniiJial risibile in his constitution. The facetious member, encouraged by the success of his last joke, went on thus : " Suppose you was called to a patient of a plethoric habit, who had been bruised by a fall, what would you do 'i " I answered, I would bleed him immediately. " What," said he, " before you had tied up his arm ?" But this stroke of wit not answering his TOBIAS SMOLLETT 263 expectation, he desired me to advance to the gentleman who sat next him ; and who, with a pert air, asked what method of cure I would follow in wounds of the intestines. I repeated the method of cure as it is prescribed by the best surgical writers ; which he heard to an end, and then said, with a supercilious smile, " So you think by such treatment the patient might recover." I told him I saw nothing to make me think otherwise. " That may be," resumed he, " I won't answer for your foresight ; but did you ever know a case of this kind succeed ? " I answered I did not ; and was about to tell him I had never seen a wounded intestine ; but he stopped me, by saying with some precipitation, " Nor never will. I affirm that all wounds of the intestines, whether great or small, are mortal." — " Pardon me, brother," says the fat gentle- man, " there is very good authority " Here he was inter- rupted by the other with " Sir, excuse me, I despise all authority. NiiUius in verba. I stand upon my own bottom."—" But sir, sir," replied his antag-onist, " the reason of the thing shows." — " A fig for reason," cried this sufficient member, " I laugh at reason, give me ocular demonstration." The corpulent gentleman began to wax warm, and observed, that no man acquainted with the anatomy of the parts would advance such an extravagant assertion. This inuendo enraged the other so much, that he started up, and in a furious tone, exclaimed, " What sir I do you question my knowledge in anatomy ? " By this time, all the examiners had espoused the opinion of one or other of the disputants, and raised their voices all together, when the chairman commanded silence, and ordered me to withdraw. In less than a quarter of an hour I was called in again, received my qualification sealed up, and was ordered to pay five shillings. I laid down my half-guinea upon the table, and stood some time, until one of them bade me begone ; to this I replied, " I will, when I have got my change ; " upon which another threw me five shillings and sixpence, saying, I should not be a true Scotchman if I went away without my change. I was afterwards obliged to give three shillings and sixpence to the beadles, and a shilling to an old woman who swept the hall. This disbursement sunk my finances to thirteen- pence halfpenny, with which I was sneaking off, when Jackson, perceiving it, came up to me, and begged I would tarry for him, and he would accompany me to the other end of the town, as soon as his examination should be over. I could not refuse this to a person that was so much my friend ; but I was astonished at 264 ENGLISH PROSE the change of his dress, which was varied in half an hour from what I have ah'eady described, to a very grotesque fashion. His head was covered with an old smoked tie-wig that did not boast one crooked hair, and a slouched hat over it, which would have very well become a chimney-sweeper or a dustman ; his neck was adorned with a black crape, the ends of which he had twisted, and fixed in the button-hole of a shabby great-coat that wrapped up his whole body ; his white silk stockings were converted into black worsted hose ; and his countenance was rendered venerable by wrinkles, and a beard of his own painting. When I expressed my surprise at this metamorphosis, he laughed and told me, it was done by the advice and assistance of a friend who lived over the way, and would certainly produce something very much to his advantage ; for it gave him the appearance of age, which never fails of attracting respect. I applauded his sagacity, and waited with impatience for the effects of it. At length he was called in, but whether the oddness of his appearance excited a curiosity more than usual in the board, or his behaviour was not suitable to his figure, I know not ; he was discovered to be an impostor, and put into the hands of the beadle, in order to be sent to Bridewell. So that instead of seeing him come out. with a cheer- ful countenance, and a surgeon's qualification in his hand, I per- ceived him led through the outward hall as a prisoner, and was very much alarmed and anxious to know the occasion ; when he called with a lamentable voice and piteous aspect to me, and some others who knew him, " For God's sake, gentlemen, bear witness that I am the same individual, John Jackson, who served as surgeon's second mate on board The Elizabeth, or else I shall go to Bridewell." It would have been impossible for the most austere hermit that ever lived to have refrained from laughing at his appearance and address ; we therefore indulged ourselves a good while at his expense, and afterwards pleaded his case so effectually with the beadle, who was gratified with half a crown, that the prisoner was dismissed, and, in a few moments, resumed his former gaiety ; swearing, since the board had refused his money, he would spend it, every shilling, before he went to bed in treating his friends ; at the same time inviting us all to favour him with our company. (From Roderick Random.) TOBIAS SMOLLETT 265 SIR LAUNCELOT IN THE MADHOUSE So saying he retired, and our adventurer could not but think it was very hard that one man should not dare to ask the most ordinary question without being reputed mad, while another should talk nonsense by the hour, and yet be esteemed as an oracle. The master of the house finding Sir Launcelot so tame and tractable, indulged him after dinner with a walk in a little private garden, under the eye of a servant who followed him at a distance. He was saluted by a brother prisoner, a man seemingly turned of thirty, tall and thin, with staring eyes, a hook nose, and a face covered with pimples. The usual compliments having passed, the stranger, without further ceremony, asked him if he would oblige him with a chew of tobacco, or could spare him a mouthful of any sort of cordial, declaring he had not tasted brandy since he came to the house. The knight assured him it was not in his power to comply with his request, and began to ask some questions relating to the character of their landlord, which the stranger represented in very unfavourable colours. He described him as a ruffian, capable of undertaking the darkest scenes of villany. He said his house was a repository of the most flagrant iniquities. That it contained fathers kidnapped by their children, wives confined by their husbands, gentlemen of fortune sequestered by their relations, and innocent persons immured by the malice of their adversaries. He affirmed this was his own case ; and asked if our hero had never heard of Dick Distich, the poet and satirist. " Ben Bullock and I," said he, "were confident against the world in arms — did you never see his ode to me beginning with ' Fair blooming youth ' ? We were sworn brothers, admired and praised, and quoted each other, sir. We denounced war against all the world, actors, authors, and critics ; and having drawn the sword, threw away the scabbard — we pushed through thick and thin, hacked and hewed helter-skelter, and became as formidable to the writers of the age as the Boeotian band of Thebes. My friend Bullock, indeed, was once rolled in the kennel ; but soon He vig'rous rose, and from th' effluvia strong Imbib'd new life, and scour'd and stunk along. 266 ENGLISH PROSE Here is a satire which I wrote in an ale-house when I was drunk — I can prove it by the evidence of the landlord and his wife ; I fancy you'll own I have some right to say with my friend Horace : Qui mecommorit, (melius non tangere clamo,) Flebit, et insignis tola cantabitur urbe." The knight, having perused the papers, declared his opinion that the verses were tolerably good ; but at the same time observed that the author had reviled as ignorant dunces several persons who had writ with reputation, and were generally allowed to have genius. A circumstance which would detract more from his candour than could be allowed to his capacity. " D their genius ! " cried the satirist ; " a pack of imper- tinent rascals. I tell you, sir, Ben Bullock and I had determined to crush all that were not of our own party. Besides, I said before, this piece was written in drink." — "Was you drunk too when it was printed and published ? " — " Yes, the printer shall make affidavit that I was never otherwise than drunk or maudlin, till my enemies, on pretence that my brain was turned, conveyed me to this infernal mansion " " They seem to have been your best friends," said the knight, " and have put the most tender interpretation on your conduct ; for, waiving the plea of insanity, your character must stand as that of a man who hath some small share of genius, without an atom of integrity. Of all those whom Pope lashed in his Dunciad, there was not one who did not richly desei-ve the imputation of dulness, and every one of them had provoked the satirist by a personal attack. In this respect the English poet was much more honest than his French pattern Boileau, who stigmatised several men of acknowledged genius, such as Quinault, Perrault, and the celebrated Lulli ; for which reason every man of a liberal turn must, in spite of all his poetical merit, despise him as a rancorous knave. If this disingenuous conduct cannot be forgiven in a writer of his superior genius, who will pardon it in you whose name is not half-emerged from obscurity ?" " Hark ye, my friend," replied the bard, " keep your pardon and your counsel for those who ask it ; or if you will force them upon people, take one piece of advice in return. If you don't like your present situation, apply for a committee without delay. They'll find you too much of a fool to have the least tincture of TOBIAS SMOLLETT 267 madness, and you'll be released without further scruple. In that case I shall rejoice in your deliverance, and you will be freed from confinement, and I shall be hapjoily deprived of your conversation." So saying, he flew off at a tangent, and our knight could not help smiling at the peculiar virulence of his disposition. Sir Launcelot then endeavoured to enter into conversation with his attendant, by asking how long Mr. Distich had resided in the house ; but he might as well have addressed himself to a Turkish mute. The fellow either pretended ignorance, or refused an answer to every question that was proposed. He would not even disclose the name of his landlord, nor inform him whereabouts the house was situated. Finding himself agitated with impatience and indignation, he returned to his apartment, and the door being locked upon him, began to review, not without horror, the particulars of his fate. " How little reason," said he to himself, " have we to boast of the blessings enjoyed by the British subject, if he holds them on such a precarious tenure ; if a man of rank and property may be thus kidnapped even in the midst of the capital ; if he may be seized by ruffians, insulted, robbed, and conveyed to such a prison as this, from which there seems to be no possibility of escape. Should I be indulged with pen, ink, and paper, and appeal to my relations, or to the magistrates of my country, my letters would be intercepted by those who superintend my confinement. Should I try to alarm the neighbourhood, my cries would be neglected as those of some unhappy lunatic under necessary correction. Should I employ the force which Heaven has lent me, I might imbrue my hands in blood, and after all find it impossible to escape through a number of successive doors, locks, bolts, and sentinels. Should I endeavour to tamper with the servant, he might discover my design, and then I should be abridged of the little comfort I enjoy. People may inveigh against the Bastile in France, and the Inquisition in Portugal ; but I would ask, if either of these be in reality so dangerous or dreadful as a private madhouse in England, under the direction of a ruffian ? The Bastile is a state prison, the Inquisition is a spiritual tribunal ; but both are under the direction of a govern- ment. It seldom, if ever, happens that a man entirely innocent is confined in either ; or, if he should, he lays his account with a legal trial before established judges. But, in England, the most 268 ENGLISH PROSE innocent person upon earth is liable to be immured for life under the pretext of lunacy, seciuestered from his wife, children, and friends, robbed of his fortune, deprived even of necessaries, and subjected to the most brutal treatment from a low-bred barbarian, who raises an ample fortune on the misery of his fellow-creatures, and may, during his whole life, practise this horrid oppression, without cjuestion or control." This uncomfortable reverie was interrupted by a very un- expected sound that seemed to issue from the other side of a thick party-wall. It was a strain of vocal music, more plaintive than the widowed turtle's moan, more sweet and ravishing than Philomel's love-warbled song. Through his ear it instantly pierced into his heart ; for at once he recognised it to be the voice of his adored Aurelia. Heavens ! what the agitation of his soul, when he made this discovery ! how did every nerve quiver ! how did his heart throb with the most violent emotion ! he ran round the room in distraction, foaming like a lion in the toil — then he placed his ear close to the partition, and listened as if his whole soul was exerted in his sense of hearing. When the sound ceased to vibrate on his ear, he threw himself on the bed ; he groaned with anguish, he e.xclaimed in broken accents ; and in all probability his heart would have burst, had not the violence of his sorrow found vent in a flood of tears. These first transports were succeeded by a fit of impatience, which had well nigh deprived him of his senses in good earnest. His surprise at finding his lost Aurelia in such a place, the seeming impossibility of relieving her, and his unspeakable eagerness to contrive some scheme for profiting by the interesting discovery he had made, concurred in brewing up a second ecstasy, during which he acted a thousand extravagancies, which it was well for him the attendants did not observe. Perhaps it was well for the servant that he did not enter while the paroxysm prevailed. Had this been the case, he might have met with the fate of Lychas, whom Hercules in his frenzy destroyed. Before the cloth was laid for supper, he was calm enough to conceal the disorder of his mind. But he complained of the headache, and desired he might be next day visited by the physician, to whom he resolved to explain himself in such a manner, as should make an impression upon him, provided he was not altogether destitute of conscience and humanity. (From Sir Launcelot Greaves.) TOBIAS SMOLLETT 269 THE CHEERFUL SOCIETY OF BATH Dear Lewis — I received your bill upon Wiltshire, which was punctually honoured ; but, as I don't choose to keep so much cash by me in a common lodging-house, I have deposited ^250 in the bank of Bath, and shall take their bills for it on London, when I leave this place, where the season draws to an end. You must know that now being afoot, I am resolved to give Liddy a glimpse of London. She is one of the best-hearted creatures I ever knew, and gains upon my affection every day. As for Tabby, I have dropped such hints to the Irish baronet, concerning her fortune, as, I make no doubt, will cool the ardour of his addresses. Then her pride will take the alarm ; and the rancour of stale maidenhood being chafed, we shall hear nothing but slander and abuse of Sir Ulic Mackilligut. This rupture, I foresee, will facilitate our departure from Bath ; where, at present. Tabby seems to enjoy herself with peculiar satisfaction. For my part, I detest it so much, that I should not have been able to stay so long in the place, if I had not discovered some old friends, whose conversation alleviates my disgust. Going to the coffee-house one forenoon, I could not help contemplating the company, with equal surprise and compassion. We consisted of thirteen indi- viduals : seven lamed by the gout, rheumatism, or palsy ; three maimed by accident ; and the rest either deaf or blind. One hobbled, another hopped, a third dragged his legs after him like a wounded snake, a fourth straddled betwixt a pair of long crutches, like the mummy of a felon hanging in chains ; a fifth was bent into a horizontal position, like a mounted telescope, shoved in by a couple of chairmen ; and a sixth was the bust of a man, set upright in a wheel machine, which the waiter moved from place to place. Being struck with some of their faces, I consulted the sub- scription-book ; and, perceiving the names of several old friends, began to consider the group with more attention. At length I discovered Rear-Admiral Balderick, the companion of my youth, whom I had not seen since he was appointed lieutenant of the Severn. He was metamorphosed into an old man, with a wooden leg and a weather-beaten face ; which appeared the more ancient from his grey locks, that were truly venerable. Sitting down at the table, where he was reading a newspaper, I gazed at him for 270 ENGLISH PROSE some minutes, with a mixture of pleasure and regret, which made my heart gush with tenderness ; then, taking him by the hand, " Ah Sam," said I, " forty years ago I Httle thought " I was too much moved to proceed. " An old friend, sure enough 1 " cried he, squeezing my hand, and surveying me eagerly through his glasses ; "I know the looming of the vessel, though she has been hard strained since we parted ; but I can't heave up the name." The moment I told him who I was, he exclaimed, " Ha ! Matt, my old fellow-cruiser, still afloat ! " and starting up, hugged me in his arms. His transport, however, boded me no good ; for, in saluting me, he thrust the spring of his spectacles into my eye, and, at the same time, set his wooden stump upon my gouty toe ; an attack that made me shed tears in sad earnest. After the hurry of our recognition was over, he pointed out two of our common friends in the room. The bust was what remained of Colonel Cockril, who had lost the use of his limbs in making an American campaign ; and the telescope proved to be my college chum. Sir Reginald Bentley, who, with his new title and unex- pected inheritance, commenced fox-hunter, without having served his apprenticeship in the mystery ; and in consequence of follow- ing the hounds through a river, was seized with an inflammation in his bowels, which has contracted him into his present attitude. Our former correspondence was forthwith renewed, with the most hearty expressions of mutual goodwill ; and as we had met so unexpectedly, we agreed to dine together that very day at the tavern. My friend Quin, being luckily unengaged, obliged us with his company ; and, truly, this was the most happy day I have passed these twenty years. You and I, Lewis, having been always together, never tasted friendship in this high gout, con- tracted from long absence. I cannot express the half of what I felt at this casual meeting of three or four companions, who had been so long separated, and so roughly treated l)y the storms of life. It was a renovation of youth ; a kind of resuscitation of the dead, that realised those interesting dreams in which we some- times retrieve our ancient friends from the grave. Perhaps, my enjoyment was not the less pleasing for being mixed with a strain of melancholy, produced by the remembrance of ])ast scenes, that conjured up the ideas of some endearing connections, which the hand of death has actually dissolved. The spirits and good-humour of the company seemed to triumi)h over the wreck of their constitutions. Thcv had even TOBIAS SMOLLETT 271 philosophy enough to joke upon their own calamities ; such is the power of friendship, the sovereign cordial of life. I afterwards found, however, that they were not without their moments and even hours of disquiet. Each of them apart, in succeeding con- ferences, expatiated upon his own particular grievances ; and they were all malcontents at bottom. Over and above their personal disasters, they thought themselves unfortunate in the lottery of life. Balderick complained, that all the recompense he had re- ceived for his long and hard service was the half-pay of a rear- admiral. The Colonel was mortified to see himself overtopped by upstart generals, some of whom he had once commanded ; and, being a man of a liberal turn, could ill put up with a moderate annuity, for which he had sold his commission. As for the baronet, having run himself considerably in debt, on a contested election, he has been obliged to relinquish his seat in Parliament, and his seat in the country at the same time, and put his estate to nurse. Ikit his chagrin, which is the effect of his own miscon- duct, does not affect me half so much as that of the other two, who have acted honourable and distinguished parts on the great theatre, and are now reduced to lead a weary life in this stewpan of idleness and insignificance. They have long left off using the waters, after having experienced their inefficacy. The diversions of the place they are not in a condition to enjoy. How then do they make shift to pass their time .-* In the forenoon they crawl out to the rooms or the coffee-house, where they take a hand at whist, or descant upon the General Advertiser ; and their even- ings they murder in private parties, among peevish invalids, and insipid old women. This is the case with a good number of in- dividuals, whom nature seems to have intended for better purposes. About a dozen years ago, many decent families, restricted to small fortunes, besides those that came hither on the score of health, were tempted to settle at Bath, where they could then live comfortably, and even make a genteel appearance at a small expense. But the madness of the times has made the place too hot for them, and they are now obliged to think of other migra- tions. Some have already fled to the mountains of Wales, and others have retired to Exeter. Thither, no doubt, they will be followed by the flood of luxury and extravagance, which will drive them from place to place to the very Land's End ; and there, I suppose, they will be obliged to ship themselves to some other country. Bath is become a mere sink of profligacy and extortion. 372 ENGLISH PROSE Every article of housekeeping is raised to an enoiTnous price ; a circumstance no longer to be wondered at, when we know that every petty retainer of fortune piques himself upon keeping a table, and thinks it is for the honour of his character to wink at the knavery of his servants, who are in a confederacy with the market-people, and of consequence pay whatever they demand. Here is now a mushroom of opulence, who pays a cook seventy guineas a-week for furnishing him with one meal a-day. This por- tentous frenzy is become so contagious, that the very rabble and refuse of mankind are infected. I have known a negro-driver from Jamaica, pay over-night, to the master of one of the rooms, sixty-five guineas for tea and coffee to the company, and leave Bath next morning, in such obscurity, that not one of his guests had the slightest idea of his person, or even made the least inquiry about his name. Incidents of this kind are frequent ; and every day teems with such absurdities, which are too gross to make a thinking man merry. But I feel the spleen creeping upon me apace, and therefore will indulge you with a cessation, that you may have no unnecessary cause to curse your correspond- ence with, dear Dick — Yours ever, Matt Bramble. Bath, May 5. (From The Expedition of Humphry Clinker.) WILLIAM ROBERTSON [William Robertson, historian of Scotland, America, and Charles V., was born on igth September 1721 at his father's manse, Borthvvick, Midlothian. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, and at the age of twenty-two was ordained minister of the Parish of Gladsmuir, East Lothian. He was from the first an earnest student ; and, while a faithful pastor, threw himself into the ecclesiastical politics of the day. By his thirtieth year he had made his mark in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and soon became one of the recognised leaders of the Moderate, as opposed to the Evangelical and Anti- Patronage Party. The publication of his first work. The History of Scot- land, brought him at once fame and preferment. He was appointed in rapid succession joint-minister of Greyfriars' Church, Edinburgh, Royal Chaplain, Principal of Edinburgh University, and King's Historiographer. His History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V. appeared in 1769, and his History of America in 1777. In Edinburgh he enjoyed the society of a remarkable circle of men of letters, which included Hume, Blair, Adam Smith, and " Jupiter " Carlyle, and took his full share of the social pleasures of the time. His later life was uneventful. From the publication of his History of America till his death in 1793 ^^ wrote nothing of moment, e.xcept An Historical Dis- quisition conccrnijig the Knowledge which the Aiicients had of India, which appeared in 1791.] By the middle of the eighteenth century, when Robertson was beginning to write, Scotland had begun to feel the beneficent effect of the Union with England, both in the expansion of trade and in the liberation of thought. Comparative wealth had created a fit medium for intellectual production. The only check upon the growth of a literature at once Scottish and cosmopolitan was the want of a literary vernacular. Scotland had not indeed been lacking in great writers who had gained the ear of the world. But all had been obliged to make use of a foreign language to reach readers beyond the seas or across the border. The time was now ripe for Scotland to enter into literary partner- ship with England. It is the distinctive merit of Robertson and his contemporaries that they entered the partnership on equal terms; VOL. IV T 274 ENGLISH PROSE if they had to borrow then- language from England, they paid the debt with interest by virtue of the importance and originality of their first contributions to the joint stock. In at least the three departments of political science, political economy, and history, Scotland's output in the latter half of the last century was both larger and intrinsically richer than England's. Robertson, a studious country clergyman, living within an easy distance of the capital, enjoyed the intimate friendship of David Hume, Adam Smith, John Home, Adam Ferguson, and the others who formed its select intellectual and convivial society. He does not appear to have hesitated over his choice of a nu'iicr'm letters. Tempera- ment impelled him to action rather than reflection. So much may be gathered from his escapade in the '45, as well as from his career as an ecclesiastical leader. At all events, it seems natural that history, not philosophy, should have been selected as his field for achieving literary distinction by the young minister who left his country manse to volunteer for the defence of Edinburgh against Prince Charles Edward, and offered his services to the commander of the King's troops at Haddington before the rout of Prestonpans. He was a keen student from the first. His early commonplace books have the motto vlfa sine Uteris viors est. The labour of his preparations for writing was pro- digious as compared with Hume's in the same line. It is universally acknowledged that he made the best use of the materials available in his day, and he took what his age considered exceptional pains to discover all sources of information. He had, in the first instance, moreover, to form a style, and for this purpose he studied the best models. It is probable that Swift and Defoe furnished him with the English woof for his purely classical warp, and he doubtless owed his facility of expression quite as much to the meetings of the Poker CUib, which he attended, as to the debates in the Church courts in which he took a leading part. Association with Hume, too, must have been of inestimable advantage to Robertson. It has been said of him, with truth, that he was one of the first to discover the importance of general ideas in history. And, while it would be unfair to say that he borrowed the habit of taking large views from the philosophers of his circle, he must have been greatly influenced by their — and particularly by Hume's — manner of considering everything from the root upwards. So much may be said without disparagement of his originality ; the fact that he does not appear to have appreciated the far-reaching efifect of WILLIAM ROBERTSON 275 Hume's conclusions almost compels the inference that, as a thinker, he was an imitator rather than a pioneer. It would be to little purpose to look further outside the closet for factors of influence on either the form or the contents of Robertson's work. We fail to discover in his later writings any symptoms of the change in his manner of living which followed on his translation to Edinburgh and his elevation to the headship of the University and leadership in the Church, with the concomitant large increase of income and entanglement in ecclesiastical intrigue. It was the spirit of the young volunteer of '45 that prompted Robertson's defence of John Home, author of Douglas, and of Alexander Carlyle, who boldly went to the theatre to see the play performed, against the "High-flyers" with their hostility to such " deceitful vanities " as the drama. If Robertson latterly devel- oped faults such as garrulity, over-fondness for generalisation on insufficient grounds, and the trick of skimming his friends' talk and giving it back to them in polished paraphrase, these failings, which are by no means extenuated by his admirer Carlyle, did not affect his writing. Robertson's work has been superseded, but those who have come after him in his chosen fields have not been able — even if they can be said to have tried— to magnify their own labours by disparaging his. His case is fully covered by Mark Pattison's generalisation : — " Ideas change, the whole mode and manner of looking at things alter with every age ; and so every generation requires facts to be recast in its own mould, demands the history of its forefathers be written from its own point of view." The Scottish historian whose historical learning satisfied Gibbon, and whose philosophy of history commanded the eloquent admiration of Burke, keeps his place in literature as a master of his special art. Subsequent discoveries have, indeed, taken from the authority of his works. As books of reference they are out of date. Thus the Spanish writers on whom he had mainly to depend for his History of America proved untrustworthy guides, and Prescott has pointed out that the industry of scholars of the same nation has, since Robertson's day, collected important materials which, had they been accessible, would have modified his views to a considerable e.xtent. Similarly the history of Scotland has had to be rewritten, though Robertson's work, which ran through fourteen editions in his lifetime, still finds readers ; and his Charles the Fifth has not stood the test of time, though the 276 ENGLISH PROSE view of The Progress of Society in Etirope which is prefixed to it, keeps its position as a masterly sketch, distinguished by both rapidity and breadth. As an authoritative historian, Robertson may be summed up in Buckle's words, " what he effected with his materials was wonderful." Robertson's style is essentially a made one. Dugald Stewart, who was near enough to the rise of a purely English literature in Scotland to appreciate the difficulties associated with it, gives the most reasonable explanation of Robertson's characteristic manner when he says that the historian was, by his distance from the acknowledged standard of elegance, naturally led to evade the hazardous use of idiomatical phrases by the employment of such as accord with the general analogy of language. In other words Robertson, writing in a strange tongue, had no living standard of correctness by which to regulate his use of words and phrases. The pitch of elegance as a writer which he actually attained is proof at once of his talent and of the utility of the method which he employed. Taken at his best, in narrative, Robertson is admirable. His prose flows easily, carrying the reader along by the studied but concealed art by which one sentence is made to seem the necessary secjuel to its predecessor. The general style is, indeed, too smooth for modern taste. As Robertson never allowed himself to pass a certain limit of fervency in his sermons, through fear of being dubbed " Highflyer," so he always wrote, so to speak, with the drag on. His facts are skilfully marshalled in their proper sequence ; his tone is kept exceptionally low. In passages which have been held up to admiration, such as the story of Rizzio's death, one misses a life-giving dramatic touch ; the style is stately but lacks vivacity ; the writer, instead of present- ing a vivid picture with the help of the natural phraseology of passion, falls back upon " the analogy of language." The best quality of Robertson's style is its easy motion. He constantly strives after grace and dignity. The balanced phrase, the period, the tautological adjective are perpetually employed. Such a style has undoubtedly a charm of its own ; and it is not very surprising that Brougham should have declared " when we repair to the works of Robertson for the purpose of finding facts, we are instantly carried away by the stream of his narrative, and forget the purpose of our errand to the fountain." The balanced style has, however, its inevitable defects. A phrase of ear-filling rotundity will sometimes not bear close analysis ; it is too mani- WILLIAM RVBERTSON 277 festly a phrase manufactured to make equipoise with another, which in reahty does not require its ponderous help. If never briUiant, Robertson is never dull. Brougham's chief criticism of him, that he does not sufficiently express his detestation of the crimes he portrays, does not appeal to moderns. Had he moralised more, he might have given us a gallery of " fearful examples." We are content with what Robertson has left us — a moving panorama of three interesting historical epochs. William Wallace. THE DEATH OF RIZZIO Nothing now remained but to concert the plan of operation, to choose the actors, and to assign them their parts in perpetrating this detestable crime. Every circumstance here paints and characterises the manners and men of that age, and fills us with horror at both. The place chosen for committing such a deed was the queen's bedchamber. Though Mary was now in the sixth month of her pregnancy, and though Rizzio might have been seized elsewhere without any difficulty, the king pitched upon this place, that he might enjoy the malicious pleasure of reproaching Rizzio with his crimes before the queen's face. The Earl of Morton, the lord high chancellor of the kingdom, undertook to direct an enterprise, carried on in defiance of all the laws of which he was bound to be the guardian. The Lord Ruthven, who had been confined to his bed for three months by a very dangerous distemper, and who was still so feeble that he could hardly walk, or bear the weight of his own armour, was intrusted with the executive part ; and while he himself needed to be supported by two men, he came abroad to commit a murder in the presence of his sovereign. On the ninth of March, Morton entered the court of the palace with an hundred and sixty men ; and without noise, or meeting with any resistance, seized all the gates. While the queen was at supper with the countess of Argyle, Rizzio, and a few other persons, the king suddenly entered the apartment by a private passage. At his back was Ruthven, clad in complete armour, and with that ghastly and horrid look which long sickness had given him. Three or four of his most trusty accomplices followed him. Such an unusual appearance alarmed those who were present. Rizzio instantly apprehended that he was the victim at whom the blow was aimed ; and in the utmost consternation he retired behind the cjueen, hoping that the reverence WILLIAM ROBERTSON 279 due to her person might prove some protection to him. The conspirators had proceeded too far to be restrained by any considerations of that kind. Numbers of armed men rushed into the chamber. Ruthven drew his dagger, and with a furious mien and voice commanded Rizzio to leave a place of which he was unworthy, and which he had occupied too long. Mary employed tears, and entreaties, and threatenings, to save her favourite. But notwithstanding all these he was torn from her by violence, and before he could be dragged through the next apartment, the rage of his enemies put an end to his life, piercing his body with fifty-six wounds. Athol, Huntly, Bothwell, and other confidants of the queen, who had apartments in the palace, were alanned at the uproar, and filled with the utmost terror on their own account ; but either no violence was intended against them, or the conspirators durst not shed the noblest blood in the kingdom in the same illegal manner with which they had ventured to take the life of a stranger. Some of them were dismissed, and others made their escape. The conspirators, in the meantime, kept possession of the palace, and guarded the queen with the utmost care. A proclamation was published by the king, prohibiting the parlia- ment to meet on the day appointed ; and measures were taken by him for preventing any tumult in the city. Murray, Rothes, and their followers, being informed of every step taken against Rizzio, arrived at Edinburgh next evening. Murray was graciously received both by the king and queen : by the former on account of the articles which had been agreed to between them ; by the latter, because she hoped to prevail upon hint by gentle treatment not to take part with the murderers of Rizzio. Their power she still felt and dreaded ; and the insult which they had offered to her authority, and even to her person, so far exceeded any crime she could impute to Murray, that, in hopes of wreaking her vengeance on them, she became extremely willing to be reconciled to him. The obligations, however, which Murray lay under to men who had hazarded their lives on his account, engaged him to labour for their safety. The queen, who scarce had the liberty of choice left, was persuaded to admit Morton and Ruthven into her presence, and to grant them the promise of pardon in whatever terms they should deem necessary for their own security. 28o ENGLISH PROSE The king, meanwhile, stood astonished at the boldness and success of his own enterprise, and uncertain what course to hold. The queen observed his irresolution, and availed herself of it. She employed all her art to disengage him from his new associates. His consciousness of the insult which he had offered to so illustrious a benefactress inspired him with uncommon facility and complaisance. In spite of all the warnings he received to distrust the queen's artifices, she prevailed on him to dismiss the guards which the conspirators had placed on her person ; and that same night he made his escape along with her, attended by three persons only, and retired to Dunbar. The scheme of their flight had been communicated to Huntly and Bothwell, and they were quickly joined by them and several other of the nobles. Bothwell's estate lay in that corner of the kingdom, and his followers crowded to their chief in such numbers, as soon enabled the queen to set the power of the conspirators at defiance. (p^^m History of Scotland.) THE REFORMATION From the death of Cardinal Beaton, nothing has been said of the state of religion. While the war with England continued, the clergy had no leisure to molest the Protestants ; and they were not yet considerable enough to expect anything more than connivance and impunity. The new doctrines were still in their infancy ; but during this short interval of tranquillity, they acquired strength, and advanced by large and fimi steps towards a full establishment in the kingdom. The first preachers ag"ainst popery in Scotland, of whom several had appeared in the reign of James V., were more eminent for zeal and piety than for learning. Their acquaintance with the principles of the RefoiTna- tion was partial and at second-hand ; some of them had been educated in England ; all of them had borrowed their notions from the books published there ; and, in the first dawn of the new light, they did not venture far before their leaders. But in a short time the doctrines and writings of the foreign reformers became generally known ; the inquisitive genius of the age pressed forward in quest of truth ; the discovery of one error opened the way to others ; the downfall of one imposture drew WILLIAM ROBERTSON 281 many after it ; the whole fabric, which ignorance and superstition had erected in times of darkness, began to totter ; and nothing was wanting to complete its ruin, but a daring and active leader to direct the attack. Such was the famous John Knox, who, with better qualifications of learning, and more extensive views than any of his predecessors in Scotland, possessed a natural intrepidity of mind, which set him above fear. He began his public ministry at St. Andrews in the year one thousand five hundred and forty- seven, with that success which always accompanies a bold and popular eloquence. Instead of amusing himself with lopping the branches, he struck directly at the root of popery, and attacked both the doctrine and discipline of the established church with a vehemence peculiar to himself, but admirably suited to the temper and wishes of the age. An adversary so formidable as Knox would not easily have escaped the rage of the clergy, who obser\'ed the tendency and progress of his opinions with the utmost concern. But, at first, he retired for safety into the castle of St. Andrews ; and while the conspirators kept possession of it, preached publicly under their protection. The great revolution in England, which followed upon the death of Henry VIII., contributed no less than the zeal of Knox towards demolishing the popish church in Scotland. Henry had loosened the chains and lightened the yoke of popery. The ministers of his son Edward VI. cast them off altogether, and established the Protestant religion upon almost the same footing whereon it now stands in that kingdom. The influence of this example reached Scotland, and the happy effects of ecclesiastical liberty in one nation inspired the other with an equal desire of recovering it. The reformers had hitherto been obliged to conduct themselves with the utmost caution, and seldom ventured to preach but in private houses and at a distance from court ; they gained credit, as happens on the first publication of every new religion, chiefly among persons in the lower and middle ranks of life. But several nol)lemen of the greatest distinction having, about this time, openly espoused their principles, they were no longer under the necessity of acting with the same reserve ; and with more security and encouragement they had likewise greater success. The means of acquiring and spreading knowledge became more common, and the spirit of innovation, peculiar to that period, grew every day bolder and more universal. 282 ENGLISH PROSE Happily for the reformation, this spirit was still under some restraint. It had not yet attained firmness and vigour sufficient to overturn a system founded on the deepest policy, and supported by the most formidable power. Under the present circumstances, any attempt towards action must have been fatal to the Protestant doctrines ; and it is no small proof of the authority, as well as penetration, of the heads of the party, that they were able to restrain the zeal of a fiery and impetuous people until that critical and mature juncture, when every step they took was decisive and successful. Meanwhile, their cause received reinforcement from two different causes whence they could never have expected it. The ambition of the house of Guise and the bigotry of Mary of England hastened the subversion of the papal throne in Scotland ; and, by a singular disposition of Providence, the persons who opposed the reformation in every other part of Europe with the fiercest zeal, were made instruments of advancing it in that kingdom. zr ^u c \ (f rom the Same.) *&^ THE FEUDAL SYSTEM As the conquerors of Europe had their acquisitions to maintain, not only against such of the ancient inhabitants as they had spared, but against the more formidable inroads of new invaders, self-defence was their chief care, and seems to have been the chief object of their first institutions and policy. Instead of these loose associations, which, though they scarcely diminished their personal independence, had been sufficient for their security while they remained in their original countries, they saw the necessity of uniting in more close confederacy, and of relinquishing some of their private rights in order to attain public safety. Every freeman, upon receiving a portion of the lands which were divided, bound himself to appear in arms against the enemies of the community. This military service was the condition upon which he received and held his lands ; and as they were exempted from every other burden, that tenure, among a warlike people, was deemed both easy and honourable. The king or general, who led them to conquest, continuing still to be the head of the colony, had, of course, the largest portion allotted to him. Having thus WILLIAM ROBERTSON 283 acquired the means of rewarding past services, as well as gaining new adherents, he parcelled out his lands with this view, binding those on whom they were bestowed, to resort to his standard with a number of men in proportion to the extent of the territory which they received, and to bear arms in his defence. His chief officers imitated the example of the sovereign, and, in distributing portions of their lands among their dependents, annexed the same condi- tion to the grant. Thus a feudal kingdom resembled a military establishment, rather than a civil institution. The victorious army, cantoned out in the country which it had seized, continued ranged under its proper officers, and subordinate to military command. The names of a soldier and of a freeman were synonymous. Every proprietor of land, girt with a sword, was ready to march at the summons of his superior, and to take the field against the common enemy. But though the feudal policy seems to be so admirably calculated for defence against the assaults of any foreign power, its provisions for the interior order and tranquillity of society were extremely defective. The principles of disorder and corruption are discernible in that constitution under its best and most perfect form. They soon unfolded themselves, and, spreading with rapidity through every part of the system, produced the most fatal effects. The bond of political union was extremely feeble ; the sources of anarchy were innumerable. The monarchical and aristocratical parts of the constitution, having no intermediate power to balance them, were perpetually at variance, and jostling with each other. The powerful vassals of the crown soon extorted a confirmation for life of those grants of land, which, being at first purely gratuitous, had been bestowed only during pleasure. Not satisfied with this, they prevailed to have them converted into hereditary possessions. One step more completed their usurpations, and rendered them unalienable. With an ambition no less enterprising, and more preposterous, they appropriated to themselves titles of honour, as well as offices of power or trust. These personal marks of distinction, which the public admiration bestows on illustrious merit, or which the public confidence confers on extraordinary abilities, were annexed to certain families, and transmitted like fiefs, from father to son, by hereditary right. The crown vassals having thus secured possession of their lands and dignities, the nature of the feudal institutions, which, though founded on subordination, verged to independence, led them to 284 ENGLISH PROSE new, and still more dangerous encroachments on the prerogatives of the sovereign. They obtained the power of supreme jurisdic- tion, both civil and criminal, within their own territories ; the right of coining money ; together with the privilege of carrying on war against their private enemies, in their own name, and by their own authority. The ideas of political subjection were almost entirely lost, and frequently scarce any appearance of feudal subordination remained. Nobles, who had acquired such enormous power, scorned to consider themselves as subjects. They aspired openly at being independent : the bonds which connected the principal members of the constitution with the crown were dissolved. A kingdom, considerable in name and extent, was broken into as many separate principalities as it contained powerful barons. A thousand causes of jealousy and discord subsisted among them, and gave rise to as many wars. Every country in Europe, wrested or kept in continual alarm during these endless contests, was filled with castles and places of strength erected for the security of the inhabitants ; not against foreign force, but against internal hostilities. An universal anarchy, destructive, in a great measure, of all the advantages which men expect to derive from society, prevailed. The people, the most numerous as well as the most useful part of the community, were either reduced to a state of actual servitude, or treated with the same insolence and rigour as if they had been degraded into that wretched condition. The king, stripped of almost ever)' prerogative, and without authority to enact or to execute salutary laws, could neither protect the innocent nor punish the guilty. The nobles, superior to all restraint, harassed each other with perpetual wars, oppressed their fellow-subjects, and humbled or insulted their sovereign. To crown all, time gradually fixed, and rendered venerable, this pernicious system, which violence had established. (From History of Charles V.) RESIGNATION OF A CROWN As this, then, appeared to be the proper juncture for executing the scheme which he had long meditated, Charles resolved to resign his kingdoms to his son, with a solemnity suitable to the WILLIAM ROBERTSON 285 importance of the transaction, and to perform this last act of sovereignty with such formal pomp, as might leave a lasting impression on the minds not only of his subjects but of his successor. With this view, he called Philip out of England, where the peevish temper of his queen, which increased with her despair of having issue, rendered him extremely unhappy, and the jealousy of the English left him no hopes of obtaining the direction of their affairs. Having assembled the States of the Low Countries at Brussels, on the twenty-fifth of October, Charles seated himself, for the last time, in the chair of state, on one side of which was placed his son, and on the other his sister, the Queen of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands, with a splendid retinue of the princes of the Empire and grandees of Spain standing behind him. The president of the council of Flanders, by his command, explained, in a few words, his intention in calling this extraordinary meeting of the States. He then read the instrument of resignation, by which Charles surrendered to his son Philip all his territories, jurisdiction, and authority in the Low Countries, absolving his subjects there from the oath of allegiance to him, which he recjuired them to transfer to Philip, his lawful heir, and to serve him with the same loyalty and zeal which they had manifested, during so long a course of years, in support of his government. Charles then rose from his seat, and leaning on the shoulder of the Prince of Orange, because he was unable to stand without support, he addressed himself to the audience, and from a paper which he held in his hand, in order to assist his memory, he recounted, with dignity but without ostentation, all the great things which he had undertaken and performed since the commencement of his administration. He observed, that from the seventeenth year of his age, he had dedicated all his thoughts and attention to public objects, reserving no portion of his time for the indulgence of his ease, and very little for the enjoyment of private pleasure ; that, either in a pacific or hostile manner, he had visited Germany nine times, Spain six times, France four times, Italy seven times, the Low Countries ten times, England twice, Africa as often, and had made eleven voyages by sea ; that while his health permitted him to discharge his duty, and the vigour of his constitution was equal, in any degree, to the arduous office of governing such extensive dominions, he had never shunned labour, nor repined under fatigue ; that 2S6 ENGLISH PROSE now, when his health was broken, and his strength exhausted by the rage of an incurable distemper, his growing infirmities admonished him to retire ; nor was he so fond of reigning, as to retain the sceptre in an impotent hand, which was no longer able to protect his subjects, or to secure to them the happiness which he wished them to enjoy ; that instead of a sovereign worn out with diseases, and scarcely half alive, he gave them one in the prime of life, accustomed already to govern, and who added to the vigour of youth all the attention and sagacity of maturer years 5 that if, during the course of a long administration, he had committed any material error in government, or if, under the pressure of so many and great affairs, and amidst the attention which he had been obliged to give to them, he had either neglected or injured any of his subjects, he now implored their forgiveness ; that, for his part, he should ever retain a grateful sense of their fidelity and attachment, and would carry the remembrance of it along with him to the place of his retreat, as his sweetest consolation, as well as the best reward for all his services, and in his last prayers to Almighty God would pour forth his most earnest petitions for their welfare. Then turning towards Philip, who fell on his knees and kissed his father's hand : — " If," says he, " I had left you by my death this rich inheritance, to which I have made such large addi- tions, some regard would have been justly due to my memory on that account ; but now, when I voluntarily resign to you what I might have still retained, I may well expect the warmest ex- pressions of thanks on your part. With these, however, I dispense, and shall consider your concern for the welfare of your subjects, and your love of them, as the best and most acceptable testimony of your gratitude to me. It is in your power, by a wise and virtuous administration, to justify the extraordinary proof which I, this day, give of my paternal affection, and to demonstrate that you arc worthy of the confidence which I repose in you. Preserve an inviolable regard for religion ; maintain the Catholic faith in its purity ; let the laws of your country be sacred in your eyes ; encroach not on the rights and privileges of your people ; and, if the time should ever come, when you shall wish to enjoy the tranquillity of private life, may you have a son endowed with such qualities, that you can resign your sceptre to him, with as much satisfaction as I give mine to you." As soon as Charles had finished his long address to his WILLIAM ROBERTSON 287 subjects and to their new sovereign, he sunk into the chair, exhausted and ready to faint with the fatigue of such an extra- ordinary effort. During his discourse, the whole audience melted into tears, some from admiration of his magnanimity, others softened by his expressions of tenderness towards his son, and of love to his people ; and all were affected with the deepest sorrow at losing a sovereign, who, during his administration, had dis- tinguished the Netherlands, his native country, with particular marks of his regard and attachment. Philip then arose from his knees, and after returning thanks to his father, with a low and submissive voice, for the royal gift which his unexampled bounty had bestowed upon him, he addressed the assembly of the States, and regretting his inability to speak in the Flemish language with such facility as to express what he felt on this interesting occasion, as well as what he owed to his good subjects in the Netherlands, he begged that they would permit Granvelle, Bishop of Arras, to deliver what he had given him in charge to speak in his name. Granvelle, in a long discourse, expatiated on the zeal with which Philip was animated for the good of his subjects, on his resolution to devote all his time and talents to the promoting of their happiness, and on his intention to imitate his father's example in distinguishing the Netherlands with particular marks of his regard. Maes, a lawyer of great eloquence, replied, in the name of the States, with large professions of their fidelity and affection to their new sovereign. Then Mary, Queen Dowager of Hungary, resigned the regency with which she had been entrusted by her brother during the space of twenty-five years. Next day Philip, in the presence of the States, took the usual oaths to maintain the rights and privileges of his subjects ; and all the members, in their own name, and in that of their constituents, swore allegiance to him. A few weeks after this transaction, Charles, in an assembly not less splendid, and with a ceremonial equally pompous, resigned to his son the crowns of Spain, with all the territories depending on them, both in the old and in the new world. Of all these vast possessions, he reserved nothing for himself but an annual pension of a hundred thousand crowns, to defray the charges of his family, and to afford him a small sum for acts of beneficence and charity. As he had fixed on a place of retreat in Spain, hoping that the dryness and the warmth of the climate in that country might 288 ENGLISH PROSE mitigate the violence of his disease, which had been much increased by the moisture of the air and the rigour of the winters in the Netherlands, he was extremely impatient to embark for that kingdom, and to disengage himself entirely from business, which he found to be impossible while he remained in Brussels. But his physicians remonstrated so strongly against his venturing to sea at that cold and boisterous season of the year, that he con- sented, though with reluctance, to put off his voyage for some "^o^ths. (From the Same.) COLUMBUS NEARING LAND As they proceeded, the indications of approaching land seemed to be more certain, and excited hope in proportion. The birds began to appear in flocks, making towards the south-west. Columbus, in imitation of the Portuguese navigators, who had been guided in several of their discoveries by the motion of birds, altered his course from due west towards that quarter whither they pointed their flight. But, after holding on for several days in this new direction, without any better success than formerly, having seen no object, during thirty days, but the sea and the sky, the hopes of his companions subsided faster than they had risen ; their fears revived with additional force ; impatience, rage, and despair appeared in every countenance. All sense of subordination was lost : the officers, who had hitherto concurred with Columbus in opinion, and supported his authority, now took part with the private men ; they assembled tumultuously on the deck, expostulated with their commander, mingled threats with their expostulations, and required him instantly to tack about and return to Europe. Columbus perceived that it would be of no avail to have recourse to any of his former arts, which having been tried so often had lost their effect ; and that it was impossible to rekindle any zeal for the success of the expedition among men in whose breasts fear had extinguished every generous sentiment. He saw that it was no less vain to think of employ- ing either gentle or severe measures to quell a mutiny so general and so violent. It was necessary on all these accounts, to soothe passions which he could no longer command, and to give way to WILLIAM ROBERTSON 289 a torrent too impetuous to be checked. He promised solemnly to his men that he would comply with their request, provided they would accompany him, and obey his command for three days longer, and if, during that time, land were not discovered, he would then abandon the enterprise, and direct his course towards Spain. Enraged as the sailors were, and impatient to turn their faces again towards their native country, this proposition did not appear to them unreasonable. Nor did Columbus hazard much in confining himself to a term so short. The presages of discovering land were now so numerous and promising, that he deemed them in- fallible. For some days the sounding line reached the bottom, and the soil which it brought up indicated land to be at no great distance. The flocks of birds increased, and were composed not only of sea-fowl, but of such land birds as could not be supposed to fly far from the shore. The crew of the Pinta observed a cane floating, which seemed to have been newly cut, and likewise a piece of timber artificially curved. The sailors aboard the Nina took up the branch of a tree with red berries, perfectly fresh. The clouds around the setting sun assumed a new appearance ; the air was more mild and warm, and, during night, the wind became unequal and variable. From all these symptoms, Columbus was so confident of being near land, that on the even- ing of the eleventh of October, after public prayers for success, he ordered the sails to be furled, lest they should be driven ashore in the night. During this interval of suspense and expectation, no man shut his eyes, all kept upon deck, gazing intently towards that quarter where they expected to discover the land, which had been so long the object of their wishes. About two hours before midnight, Columbus, standing on the forecastle, observed a light at a distance, and privately pointed it out to Pedro Guttierez, a page of the queen's wardrobe. Guttierez perceived it, and calling to Salcedo, comptroller of the fleet, all three saw it in motion, as if it were carried from place to place. A little after midnight the joyful sound of land ! land ! was heard from the Pinta, which kept always ahead of the other ships. But, having been deceived so often by fallacious appear- ances, every man was now become slow of belief, and waited in all the anguish of uncertainty and impatience for the return of day. As soon as morning dawned, all doubts and fears were dispelled. From every ship an island was seen about two leagues VOL. IV U 290 ENGLISH PROSE to the north, whose flat and verdant fields, well stored with wood, and watered with many rivulets, presented the aspect of a delightful country. The crew of the Pinta instantly began the Te Ueum, as a hymn of thanksgiving to God, and were joined by those of the other ships, with tears of joy and transports of congratulation. This office of gratitude to heaven was followed by an act of justice to their commander. They threw themselves at the feet of Columbus, with feelings of self-condemnation mingled with reverence. They implored him to pardon their ignorance, incredulity, and insolence, which had created him so much unnecessary disquiet, and had so often obstructed the prosecution of his well-concerted plan ; and passing, in the warmth of their admiration, from one extreme to another, they now pro- nounced the man whom they had lately reviled and threatened, to be a person inspired by heaven with sagacity and fortitude more than human, in order to accomplish a design so far beyond the ideas and conception of all former ages. (From History of Ai/ioiai.) MONTEZUMA The firmness with which Cortez adhered to his original proposal should naturally have brought the negotiation between him and Montezuma to a speedy issue, as it seemed to leave the Mexican monarch no choice but either to receive him with confidence as a friend, or to oppose him openly as an enemy. The latter was what might have been expected from a haughty prince in posses- sion of extensive power. The Mexican empire, at this period, was at a pitch of grandeur to which no society ever attained in so short a period. Though it had subsisted, according to its own tradi- tions, only a hundred and thirty years, its dominion extended from the north to the south sea, over territories stretching, with some small interruption, above five hundred leagues from east to west, and more than two hundred from north to south, compre- hending provinces not inferior in fertility, population, and opulence, to any in the torrid zone. The people were warlike and enterprising ; the authority of the monarch unbounded, and his revenues considerable. If, with the forces which might have been suddenly assembled in such an empire, Montezuma had WILLIAM ROBERTSON 291 flillen upon the Spaniards while encamped on a barren unheahhy coast, unsupported by any ally, without a place of retreat, and destitute of provisions, it seems to be impossible, even with all the advantages of their superior discipline and arms, that they could have stood the shock, and they must either have perished in such an unecjual contest, or have abandoned the enterprise. As the power of Montezuma enabled him to take this spirited part, his own dispositions were such as seemed naturally to prompt him to it. Of all the princes who had swayed the Mexican sceptre, he was the most haughty, the most violent, and the most impatient of control. His subjects looked up to him with awe, and his enemies with terror. The former he governed with unexampled rigour ; but they were impressed with such an opinion of his capacity, as commanded their respect ; and by many victories over the latter, he had spread far the dread of his arms, and had added several considerable provinces to his dominions. But though his talents might be suited to the transac- tions of a state so imperfectly polished as the Mexican empire, and sufficient to conduct them while in their accustomed course, they were altogether inadequate to a conjuncture so extraordinary, and did not qualify him either to judge with the discernment, or to act with the decision, requisite in such a trying emergence. . From the moment that the Spaniards appeared on his coast, he discovered symptoms of timidity and embarrassment. Instead of taking such resolutions as the consciousness of his own power, or the memory of his former exploits might have inspired, he deliberated with an anxiety and hesitation which did not escape the notice of his meanest courtiers. The perplexity and dis- composure of Montezuma's mind upon this occasion, as well as the general dismay of his subjects, were not owing wholly to the impression which the Spaniards had made by the novelty of their appearance and the terror of their arms. Its origin may be traced up to a more remote source. There was an opinion, if we may believe the earliest and most authentic Spanish historians, almost universal among the Americans, that some dreadful calamity was impending over their heads, from a race of formidable invaders who should come from regions towards the rising sun, to overrun and desolate their country. Whether this disquieting apprehension flowed from the memory of some natural calamity which had afflicted that part of the globe, and impressed the minds of the inhabitants with superstitious fears and fore- 292 ENGLISH PROSE bodings, or whether it was an imagination accidentally suggested by the astonishment which the first sight of a new race of men occasioned, it is impossible to determine. But as the Mexicans were more prone to superstition than any people in the New World, they were more deeply affected by the appearance of the Spaniards, whom their credulity instantly represented as the instruments destined to bring about this fatal revolution which they dreaded. Under those circumstances, it ceases to be incredible that a handful of adventurers should alarm the monarch of a great empire, and all his subjects. (From the Same.) RICHARD PRICE [Richard Price, son of the Rev. Rhys Price, was born in Glamorganshire, 1723, and became, hke his father, a dissenting minister. His first charge was at Newington Green, 1755. In the intervals of sermon writing he composed his chief philosophical book. The Principal Questio)is and Difficulties in Morals, 1758 ; and his studies of the theory of probabilities, expectation of life and kindred subjects, gained him admission to the Royal Society. He wrote also Dissertations on Providence, etc., 1767, which attracted some notice. But he became soon much better known by his Observations on Re- versionary Payments (1769), and by his Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt (1772). It is admitted that Pitt derived from him the credit (or discredit) of his New Sinking Fund. Price incurred much obloquy by his Observations on Civil Liberty (1776), in which he went further than Burke in his defence of the revolted colonies. He "looked to the United States as now the hope and likely soon to become the refuge of mankind." He taught for a short time in the Dissenting College at Hackney on its foundation (1787), and the College is associated with him, as that at Hoxton with William Godwin. Price was soon again before the public as an ardent champion of the PYench Revolution, which is the subject of his Discourse on the Love of our Country, delivered on 4th November 1789, at the IVleeting- House in the Old Jewry. Burke shows him no mercy in the Reflections on the French Revolution (1790), but there is something of real pathos and eloquence in the old man's visions of a new era. He died in the spring of 1791.] If a man could be judged hy his friends, Price's deserts would Ijc high. He was intimate with Benjamin Franklin and John Howard ; he corresponded with Hume and Turg-ot. He was visited by Lyttelton, Shelbourne, and Mrs. Montague. The now nearly-for- gotten Mrs. Chapone has written high praise of him in the character of " Simplicius " (^Miscellanies., Essay I.); .Simplicius is modest, learned, and candid. Nevertheless he has not left a name worthy to be called great in our literature. He was a man of vigorous, independent judgment, who did good public service in his g-diera- tion. He stimulated discussion on philosophical, theological, and political questions, and showed taste and sobriety in dealing with 294 ENGLISH PROSE opponents. He had the moral courage to advocate unpopular causes. But, unlike greater men who had made greater mistakes than he ever committed, Price has left the first principles of ethics, politics, and finance substantially where he found them. When he is asked, " What is the power within us that perceives the distinc- tions of right and wrong?" he answers "The understanding." Moral distinctions are founded on the fitness of things, and are necessary truths like those relating to space or causation. " The more we inquire, the more indisputable, I imagine, it will appear to us that we express necessary truths when we say of some actions they are right and of others they are wrong." He is opposing Hume's Human Nature on the principles of Plato, Aris- totle, Cudworth, and Bishop Butler. Sensation cannot give us general notions ; and yet general notions are not therefore false, on the contrary they are therefore necessary. Kant has once for all amended this contention, and put the argument in the form in which it must be met ; and at this distance of time Price's arguments seem only valuable historically, as interesting protests against Hutcheson's moral sense and Hume's utility. In theology he was then considered too latitudinarian ; but though a Unitarian he was in many matters of faith hardly less orthodox than Archdeacon Paley, while he was certainly more emotional. In finance, though pronounced by a great contempor- ary " by no means an able calculator," he was the cause of able calculation in other men, one of whom (William Morgan) was at pains to edit his chief financial tracts, as well as to write his Life (1 8 1 5). In political philosophy he abode by the principles of Locke's Civil Governmc?it^ and did no harm by re-affirming them in 1776 and 1789. He gave Burke occasion to point out the weak points in Locke's case, and to press home the general principle that in politics general principles must never be pressed home. Price had strong faith in the " natural improvableness " of the human race ; but it was Godwin whose exaggerations of this doctrine brought out the full strength of the case against it. J. BONAR. DO OUR FACULTIES DECEIVE US? Let us consider, first, that we are informed of this difificuUy by our faculties, and that, consequently, if we do not know that any regard is due to their information, we likewise do not know that there is any regard due to this difficulty. It will appear presently to be a contradiction to suppose that our faculties can teach us universally to suspect themselves. Secondly, our natures are such, that whatever we see, or think we see evidence against, we cannot believe. If then there should appear to us, on the whole, any evidence against the supposition that our faculties are so contrived as always to deceive us, we are obliged to reject it. Evidence must produce conviction propor- tioned to the imagined degree of it ; and conviction is inconsistent with suspicion. It will signify nothing to urge that no evidence in this case can be regarded because discovered by our suspected faculties ; for we cannot suspect, we cannot in any case doubt with- out reason or against reason. Doubting supposes evidence, and there cannot, therefore, be any such thing as doubting whether evidence itself is to be regarded. A man who doubts of the veracity of his faculties, must do it on their own authority ; that is, at the very time, and in the very act of suspecting them, he must trust them. As nothing is more plainly self-destructive than to attempt to prove by reason that reason deserves no credit, or to assert that we have reason for thinking that there is no such thing as reason ; it is certainly no less so to pretend that we have reason to doubt whether reason is to be regarded, or which comes to the same, whether our faculties are to be regarded. And, as far as it is acknowledged, there is no reason to doubt, so far it will be ridi- culous to pretend to doubt. ,„ ^ ,■ „^ r \ ^ (I'rom Questions in Morals.) 296 ENGLISH PROSE THE EFFECTS OF CUSTOM All that custom and education can do is to alter the direction of natural sentiments and ideas, and to connect them with wrong objects. It is that part of our moral constitution which depends on instinct, that is chiefly liable to the corruption produced by these causes. The sensible horror at vice and attachment to virtue, may be impaired, the conscience seared, the nature of par- ticular practices mistaken, the sense of shame weakened, the judgment darkened, the voice of reason stifled, and self-deception practised, to the most lamentable and fatal degree. Yet the grand lines and primary principles of morality are so deeply wrought into our hearts, and one with our minds, that they will be for ever legible. The general approbation of certain virtues, and dislike of their contraries, must always remain, and cannot be erased but with the destruction of all intellectual perception. The most depraved never sink so low as to lose all moral discern- ment, all ideas of right and wrong, justice and injustice, honour and dishonour. This appears sufficiently from the judgments they pass on the actions of others ; from the resentment they discover whenever they are themselves the object of ill-treatment ; and from the inward uneasiness and remorse which they cannot avoid feeling, and by which, on some occasions, they are severely tor- "^^"^^^- (From the Same.) THE VISION OF THE WORLD It is too evident that the state of this country is such as renders it an object of concern and anxiety. It wants (I have shown you) the grand security of public liberty. Increasing luxury has multiplied abuses in it. A monstrous weight of debt is crippling it. Vice and venality are bringing down upon it God's dis- pleasure. That spirit to which it owes its distinctions is declining ; and some late events seem to prove that it is becoming every day more reconcileable to encroachments on the securities of its liberties. It wants therefore your patriotic services ; and, for the sake of the distinctions it has so long enjoyed, for the sake of our RICHARD PRICE 297 brethren and companions, and all that should be dear to a free people, we ought to do our utmost to save it from the dangers that threaten it, remembering that by acting thus, we shall promote in the best manner our private interest as well as the interest of our own country, for when the community prospers the individuals that compose it must prosper with it. But, should that not happen, or should we even suffer in our secular interest by our endeavours to promote the interest of our country, we shall feel a satisfaction in our own breasts which is preferable to all this world can give ; and ^\•e shall enjoy the transporting hope of soon becoming members of a perfect community in the heavens, and having "an entrance ministered to us abundantly into the ever- lasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." You may reasonably expect that I should now close this address to you. But I cannot yet dismiss you. I must not conclude without recalling particularly to your recollection a consideration to which I have more than once alluded, and which, probably, your thoughts have been all along anticipating : a consideration with which my mind is impressed more than I can express : I mean the consideration of the favourableness of the present times to all exertions in the cause of public liberty. What an eventful period is this ! I am thankful that I have lived to it, and I could almost say, " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." I have lived to see a diffusion of knowledge which has undermined superstition and error — I have lived to see the rights of men better understood than ever, and nations panting for liberty which seemed to have lost the idea of it ; I have lived to see thirty millions of people, indignant and resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty with an irresistible voice ; their king led in triumph, and an arbitrary monarch surrendering himself to his subjects. After sharing in the benefits of one revolution, I have been spared to be a witness to two other revolutions, both glorious. And now, methinks, I see the ardour for liberty catching and spreading ; a general amendment beginning in human affairs ; the dominion of kings changed for the dominion of laws, and the dominion of priests giving way to the dominion of reason and conscience. Be encouraged all ye friends of freedom and writers in its defence ! The times are auspicious. Your labours have not been in vain. Behold kingdoms, admonished by you, starting from sleep, breaking their fetters, and claiming justice from their 298 ENGLISH PROSE oppressors ! Behold, the hght you have struck out, after setting America free, reflected to France, and there kindled into a blaze that lays despotism in ashes, and warms and illuminates Europe ! Tremble all ye oppressors of the world ! Take warning all ye supporters of slavish governments, and slavish hierarchies ! Call no more (absurdly and wickedly) reformation innovation. You cannot now hold the world in darkness. Struggle no longer against increasing light and liberality. Restore to mankind their rights, and consent to the correction of abuses, before they and you are destroyed together. (From Discourse on the Love of our Country.^ SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS [Sir Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton Earls, near Plymouth, i6th July 1723. He studied in London under Thomas Hudson, and in Italy, whicli he was enabled to visit by the generosity of Lord Keppel. He returned to London in 1752, where his genius and geniality soon secured him the friend- ship of Dr. Johnson and his circle, for whom he established the famous Literary Club in 1764. He was elected President of the Royal Academy at its foundation in 1768, and retained that position, except during a brief rupture with the Academicians, until his death in February 1792. It was as President of the Royal Academy that he delivered the Discourses on which his literary f;ime rests. They were published one by one, and collected in Malone's editions of his Works, 17^7, which also contained his Three Letters to the Idler, Nos. 76, 79, and 82 ; A Journey to Flatiders arid Holland in the Year MDCCLXXI. ; and his Notes on Du Fresnoy s Art of Painting. He contributed five notes to Dr. Johnson's Shakespeare, 1775, which may be found in the appendices at the end of vol. viii. His Johnson atid Garrick was privately printed by his niece in 1815, and W. Cotton has published various fragments from his diaries and notebooks in the volumes called Sir Joshua Reynolds arid his Works, 1856, Sir Joshua Reynolds' Notes and Observations on Pictures, 1859-] In this country the science of criticism may be said to have begun, in hterature with Addison, perhaps the greatest of English essayists, in art with Sir Joshua Reynolds, perhaps the greatest of English painters. The Discourses of Reynolds, at least, are the earliest art criticisms we have of any permanent value, for in this province even Dryden is scarcely of more account than Jonathan Richardson, Spence, Webb, or Harris. These writers to some extent anticipated Reynolds' ideas, but their work has no important place in the evolution of the subject, and therefore does not affect the value of his. His methods, like Addison's, were based on a foundation of sobriety and common sense. In lecturing at the Academy, "he expatiated upon the cjualities which go to form a fine picture ; he 300 ENGLISH PROSE described the various schools of painting, with the merits and defects of each ; he specified the characteristics of the several masters, showing what was to be imitated and what to be avoided, and he detailed to learners the modes of proceeding which would best enable them to appropriate the beauties of their forerunners." As an instructor he laboured under the difficulty of reconciling certain traditional formulas, the truth of which he never questioned, with the particular judgments resulting from his vigorous critical faculty. Like the poets of his day he showed " a disposition to edge away from the types which he professed to admit as ideally correct." In extolling the "grand style," for instance, he ad- vocated the theory, so persistently denounced by Mr. Ruskin, "that Nature herself is not to be too closely copied," yet in many passag'es he applauded the very practice which, according to his principles, he ought to have condemned. Indeed the technical teaching in the Eighth Discourse might be almost entirely adopted by the Pre-Raphaelites.^ " But the age," as Mr. Leslie Stephen remarks, " was not favourable to consistency and thoroughness." It has been further objected, by Hazlitt, Blake, and others, that Reynolds' glorification of industiy tended to the extinction of genius, and that he showed his igmorance of human nature by expecting the knowledge of rules to bear fruit in enthusiasm and inspiration. But while accepting the general theories of such men as Du Fresnoy and De Piles, and discouraging the expression of youthful eccentricity, he commended independence and originality, and relied finally on his own unrivalled technical experience. He believed that excellence and facility could only be attained by a thoughtful study of nature and of art. The study of art should incite to imitation, by which alone "variety and even originality of invention is produced. ... It will be necessary for you, in the first place, never to lose sight of the great rules and principles of the art, as they are collected from the full body of the best general practice and the most constant and uniform experience ; this must be the ground-work of all your studies : afterwards you may profit ... by the peculiar experience and personal talents of artists living and dead ; you may derive lights and catch hints from their practice ; but the moment you turn tliem into models, you fall infinitely below them ; you may be corrupted by excellencies, not so much belonging to the art, as personal and appropriated ^ .See also Hazlitt, On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reymolds^ Dis- courses. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 301 to the artist ; and become bad copiers of good painters, instead of excellent imitators of the great universal truth of things." It was upon " the great universal truth of things " that he founded a theory of beauty, largely resembling that of Pere Bufifier. He did not enter into the speculations of such writers as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, regarding the nature of a special sense for the perception of beauty ; but maintained, with Burke and Hogarth, the existence of an objective standard of beauty. " Ideal Beauty," according to his view, " is the invariable general form which nature most frecjuently produces, and always seems to intend in her productions. ... In every particular species there are various central forms, undeniably beautiful," ..." but perfect beauty in any species must combine all the characters which are beautiful in that, species." To the ideally perfect taste these central forms appear most beautiful because they are most general, and not, as Burke and Hogarth would have said, because of their correspondence to a determinable " criterion of form." Though the types of different species are thus all equally beautiful, yet from accidental associations we may prefer one to another, and there are certain "apparent or secondary truths" or beauties, "pro- ceeding from local and temporary prejudices," which "deserve and require the attention of the artist, z/i proportion to tJicir stability or duration, or as tJicir itijluencc is more or less exten- sive^' ; but these inust not "prevent or weaken the influence of those general principles, which alone can give to art its true and permanent dignity." But the spirit of his teaching was perhaps as helpful as its philosophy. By setting before his students an ideal of culture, earnestness, and reverence, he raised their whole conceptions of art ; and by keeping their minds on high things, he taught them the uses of humility and ambition. His Discourses, moreover, were very popular with " The Town," the reading public of the day. He established a national standard in art, as Addison had done in literature, and, according to Mr. Courthope, these two critics accomplished more than any others in England towards " the end of criticism, which is to produce a habit of reasoning rightly in matters of taste and imagination." The personal charm and strength of character, which doubtless assisted the universal recognition of his genius may account in part for the great influence of his writings. His style, though somewhat formal, was graceful, simple, and urbane. He had 302 ENGLISH PROSE been trained in the classical school of Dr. Johnson, who " qualified him to think justly," but fortunately his admiration of the master did not tempt him to forget, in composition, the true principles of imitation which he expounded in the Discourses. The spirited imaginary dialogues, called Johnson and Garrtck, must not be forgotten in an estimate of Reynolds' work in literature. This witty jcie iVcsprit, in which the doctor's manner is most happily burlesqued, was written by Reynolds to illustrate his saying that " Dr. Johnson considered Garrick as his property, and would not suffer any one to praise or blame him but himself." As its author's only attempt at imaginative composition, it is a remarkable achievement. Reginald Brimley Johnson. MICHAEL ANGELO The sudden maturity to which Michael Angelo brought our an, and the comparative feebleness of his followers and imitators, might perhaps be reasonably, at least plausibly explained, if we had time for such an examination. At present I shall only observe, that the subordinate parts" of our art, and perhaps of other arts, expand themselves by a slow and progressive growth ; but those which depend on a native vigour of imagination generally burst forth at once in fulness of beauty. Of this Homer probably, and Shakespeare more assuredly, are signal examples. Michael Angelo possessed the poetical part of our art in a most eminent degree : and the same daring spirit, which urged him first to explore the unknown regions of the imagination, delighted with the novelty, and animated by the success of his discoveries, could not have failed to stimulate and impel him forward in his career beyond those limits, which his followers, destitute of the same incentives, had not strength to pass. To distinguish between correctness of drawing, and that part which respects the imagination, we may say the one approaches to the mechanical (which in its way too may make just pretensions to genius), and the other to the poetical. To encourage a solid and vigorous course of study, it may not be amiss to suggest, that perhaps a confidence in the mechanic produces a boldness in the poetic. He that is sure of the goodness of his ship and tackle puts out fearlessly from the shore ; and he who knows that his hand can execute whatever his fancy can suggest, sports with more freedom in embodying the visionary forms of his own creation. I will not say Michael Angelo was eminently poetical, only because he was greatly mechanical ; but I am sure that mechanic excellence invigorated and emboldened his mind to carry painting into the regions of poetry, and to emulate that art 304 ENGLISH PROSE in its most adventurous flights. Michael Angelo equally possessed both qualifications. Yet of mechanic excellence there were certainly great examples to be found in ancient sculpture, and particularly in the fragment known by the name of the Torso of Michael Angelo ; but of that grandeur of character, air, and attitude, which he threw into all his figures, and which so well corresponds with the grandeur of his oudine, there was no example ; it could therefore proceed only from the most poetical and sublime imagination. It is impossible not to express some surprise, that the race of painters who preceded Michael Angelo, men of acknowledged great abilities, should never have thought of transferring a little of that grandeur of outline which they could not but see and admire in ancient sculpture, into their own works ; but they appear to have considered sculpture as the later schools of artists look at the inventions of Michael Angelo, — as something to be admired, but with which they have nothing to do : quod super 7tos, nihil ad ?20s. The artists of that age, even Raffaelle himself, seemed to be going on very contentedly in the dry manner of Pietro Perugino ; and if Michael Angelo had never appeared, the art might still have continued in the same style. Beside Rome and Florence, where the grandeur of this style was first displayed, it was on this foundation that the Caracci built the truly great academical Bolognian school, of which the first stone was laid by Pellegrino Tibaldi. He first introduced this style amongst them ; and many instances might be given in which he appears to have possessed as by inheritance, the true, genuine, noble, and elevated mind of Michael Angelo. Though we cannot venture to speak of him with the same fondness as his countrymen, and call him, as the Garacci did, Nostra Michael Angelo riformato, yet he has a right to be considered amongst the first and greatest of his followers : there are certainly many drawings and inventions of his, of which Michael Angelo himself might not disdain to be supposed the author, or that they should be, as in fact they often are, mistaken for his. I will mention one particular instance, because it is found in a book which is in every young artist's hand ; Bishop's A?uietil Statues. He there has introduced a print, representing Polyphemus, from a drawing of Tibaldi, and has inscribed it with the name of Michael Angelo, to whom he has also in the same book attributed a Sybil of Raffaelle. Both these figures, it is true, are professedly in SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 305 Michael Angelo's style and spirit, and even worthy of his hand. But we know that the former is painted in the Institute a Bologna by Tibaldi, and the other in the Pace by Raffaelle. The Caracci, it is acknowledged, adopted the mechanical part with sufficient success. But the divine part, which addresses itself to the imagination, as possessed by Michael Angelo or Tibaldi, was beyond their grasp : they formed, however, a most respectable school, a style more on the level, and calculated to please a greater number ; and if excellence of this kind is to be valued according to the number, rather than the weight and quality of admirers, it would assume even a higher rank in Art. The same, in some sort, may be said of Tintoret, Paolo Veronese, and others of the Venetian painters. They certainly much advanced the dignity of their style by adding to their fascinating powers of colouring something of the strength of Michael Angelo ; at the same time it may still be a doubt, how far their ornamental elegance would be an advantageous addition to his grandeur. But if there is any manner of painting which may be said to unite kindly with his style, it is that of Titian. His handling, the manner in which his colours are left on the canvass, appears to proceed (as far as that goes) from a congenial mind, equally disdainful of vulgar criticism. Michael Angelo's strength thus qualified, and made more palatable to the general taste, reminds me of an observation which I heard a learned critic make, when it was incidentally remarked, that our translation of Homer, however excellent, did not convey the character, nor had the grand air of the original. He replied, that if Pope had not clothed the naked majesty of Homer with the graces and eiegancies of modern fashions— though the real dignity of Homer was degraded by such a dress — his translation would not have met with such a favourable reception, and he must have been contented with fewer readers. Many of the Flemish painters, who studied at Rome in that great era of our art, such as Francis Floris, Hemskerk, Michael Coxis, Jerom Cock, and others, returned to their own country with as much of this grandeur as they could carry. But like seeds falling on a soil not prepared or adapted to their nature, the manner of Michael Angelo thrived but little with them ; perhaps, however, they contributed to prepare the way for that free, unconstrained, and liberal outline, which was afterwards in- troduced by Rubens, through the medium of the Venetian painters. VOL. IV X 3o6 ENGLISH PROSE The grandeur of style has been in different degrees dis- seminated over all Europe. Some caught it by living at the time, and coming into contact with the original author, whilst others received it at second hand ; and being everywhere adopted, it has totally changed the whole taste and style of design, if there could be said to be any style before his time. Our art, in consequence, now assumes a rank to which it could never have dared to aspire, if Michael Angelo had not discovered to the world the hidden powers which it possessed. Without his assistance we never could have been convinced, that painting was capable of producing an adequate representation of the persons and actions of the heroes of the Iliad. I would ask any man qualified to judge of such works whether he can look with indifference at the personification of the Supreme Being in the centre of the Capella Sistina, or the figures of the sybils which surround that chapel, to which we may add the statue of Moses ; and whether the same sensations are not excited by those works, as what he may remember to have felt from the most sublime passages of Homer ? I mention those figures more particularly, as they come nearer to a comparison with his Jupiter, his demi-gods, and heroes ; those sybils and prophets being a kind of intermediate beings between men and angels. Though instances may be produced in the works of other painters which may justly stand in competition with those I have mentioned, such as the Isaiah, and the Vision of Ezekiel, by Raffaelle, the St. Mark of Frate Bartolomeo, and many others ; yet these, it must be allowed, are inventions so much in Michael Angelo's manner of thinking, that they may be truly considered as so many rays, which discover manifestly the centre from whence they emanated. The sublime in painting, as in poetry, so overpowers and takes such a possession of the whole mind, that no room is left for attention to minute criticism. The little elegancies of art in the presence of these great ideas thus greatly expressed, lose all their value, and are, for the instant at least, felt to be unworthy of our notice. The correct judgment, the purity of taste, which characterise Raffaelle, the exquisite grace of Coreggio and Parmegiano, all disappear before them. That Michael Angelo was capricious in his inventions cannot be denied ; and this may make some circumspection necessary in studying his works ; for though they appear to become him, an SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 307 imitation of them is always dangerous, and will prove sometimes ridiculous. " Within that circle none durst walk but he." To me, I confess his caprice does not lower the estimation of his genius, even though it is sometimes, I acknowledge, carried to the extreme : and however these eccentric excursions are considered, we must at the same time recollect that those faults, if they are faults, are such as never could occur to a mean and vulgar mind ; that they flowed from the same source which produced his greatest beauties, and were therefore such as none but himself was capable of committing ; they were the powerful impulses of a mind unused to subjection of any kind, and too high to be controlled by cold criticism. Many see his daring extravagance who can see nothing else. A young artist finds the works of Michael Angelo so totally different from those of his own master, or of those with whom he is surrounded, that he may be easily persuaded to abandon and neglect studying a style which appears to him wild, mysterious, and above his comprehension, and which he therefore feels no disposition to admire ; a good disposition, which he concludes that he should naturally have, if the style deserved it. It is necessary, therefore, that students should be prepared for the dis- appointment which they may experience at their first setting out ; and they must be cautioned that probably they will not, at first sight, approve. It must be remembered that this great style itself is artificial in the highest degree ; it presupposes in the spectator a cultivated and prepared artifical state of mind. It is an absurdity, therefore, to suppose that we are born with this taste, though we are with the seeds of it, which, by the heat and kindly influence of his genius, may be ripened in us. A late philosopher and critic has observ^ed, speaking of taste, that we are on no account to expect thai Jine thiitgs should dcscc?id to us — our taste, if possible, must be made to ascend to them. The same learned writer recommends to us cvc?i to feign a rel/'sh till we find a relish come ; and feel, that what began in fiction, terminates in reality. If there be in our art anything of that agreement or compact, such as I apprehend there is in music, with which the critic is necessarily required previously to be acquainted in order to form a correct judgment, the comparison with this art will illustrate what I have said on these points, and lend to show the probability, we may say the certainty, that men 3o8 ENGLISH PROSE are not born with a relish for those arts in their most refined state, which, as they cannot understand, they cannot be impressed with their effects. This great style of Michael Angelo is as far removed from the simple representation of the common objects of nature as the most refined Italian music is from the inartificial notes of nature, from whence they both profess to originate. But without such a supposed compact we may be very confident that the highest state of refinement in either of those arts will not be relished without a long and industrious attention. In pursuing this great art it must be acknowledged that we labour under greater difficulties than those who were born in the age of its discovery, and whose minds from their infancy were habituated to this style ; who learned it as a language, as their mother tongue. They had no mean taste to unlearn ; they needed no persuasive discourse to allure them to a favourable reception of it, no abstruse investigation of its principles to convince them of the great latent truths on which it is founded. We are con- strained, in these latter days, to have recourse to a sort of grammar and dictionary, as the only means of recovering a dead language. It was by them learned by rote, and perhaps better learned that way than by precept. The style of Michael Angelo, which I have compared to language, and which may, poetically speaking, be called the language of the gods, now no longer exists as it did in the fifteenth century ; yet, with the aid of diligence, we may in a great measure supply the deficiency which I mentioned, of not having his works so perpetually before our eyes, by having recourse to casts from his models and designs in sculpture, to drawings, or even copies of those drawings, to prints which, however ill executed, still con- vey something by which this taste may be formed, and a relish may be fixed and established in our minds for this grand style of invention. Some examples of this kind we have in the Academy, and I sincerely wish there were more, that the younger students might in their first nourishment imbibe this taste ; whilst others, though settled in the practice of the commonplace style of painters, might infuse, by this means, a grandeur into their works. I shall now make some remarks on the course which I think most proper to be pursued in such a study. I wish you not to go so much to the derivative streams, as to the fountain- head ; though the copies are not to be neglected ; because they may give you hints in what manner you may copy, and how SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 309 the genius of one man may be made to fit the pecuhar manner of another. To recover this lost taste, I would recommend young artists to study the works of Michael Angelo, as he himself did the works of the ancient sculptors ; he began when a child, a copy of a mutilated Satyr's head, and finished in his model what was wanting in the original. In the same manner, the first exercise that I would recommend to the young artist when he first attempts invention, is, to select every figure, if possible, from the inventions of Michael Angelo. If such borrowed figures will not bend to his purpose, and he is constrained to make a change to supply a figure himself, that figure will necessarily be in the same style with the rest ; and his taste will by this means be naturally initiated, and nursed in the lap of grandeur. He will sooner perceive what constitutes this grand style by one practical trial than by a thousand speculations, and he will in some sort procure to himself that advantage which in these later ages has been denied him : the advantage of having the greatest of artists for his master and instructor. The next lesson should be, to change the purpose of the figures without changing the attitude, as Tintoret has done with the Sampson of Michael Angelo. Instead of the figure which Sampson bestrides, he has placed an eagle under him ; and instead of the jawbone, thunder and lightning in his right hand ; and thus it becomes a Jupiter. Titian, in the same manner, has taken the figure which represents God dividing the light from the darkness in the vault of the Capella Sistina, and has introduced it in the famous battle of Cadore, so much celebrated by Vasari ; and extraordinary as it may seem, it is here converted to a general falling from his horse. A real judge who should look at this picture, would immediately pronounce the attitude of that figure to be in a greater style than any other figure of the composition. These two instances may be sufficient, though many more might be given in their works, as well as in those of other great artists. When the student has been habituated to this grand con- ception of the art, when the relish for this style is established, makes a part of himself, and is woven into his mind, he will, by this time, have got a power of selecting from whatever occurs in nature that is grand, and corresponds with that taste which he has now acquired ; and will pass over whatever is common- 3 1 o ENGLISH PROSE place and insipid. He may then bring to the mart such works of his own proper invention as may enrich and increase the general stock of invention in our art. I am confident of the truth and propriety of the advice which I have recommended ; at the same time I am aware, how much by this advice I have laid myself open to the sarcasms of those critics who imagine our art to be a matter of inspiration. But I should be sorry it should appear even to myself that I wanted that courage which I have recommended to the students in another way : equal courage perhaps is required in the adviser and the advised ; they both must equally dare and bid defiance to narrow criticism and vulgar opinion. That the art has been in a gradual state of decline, from the age of Michael Angelo to the present, must be acknowledged, and we may reasonably impute this declension to the same cause to which the ancient critics and philosophers have imputed the corruption of eloquence. Indeed the same causes are likely at all times and in all ages to produce the same effects : indol- ence, — not taking the same pains as our great predecessors took, — desiring to find a shorter way, are the general imputed causes. The words of Petronius are very remarkable. After opposing the natural chaste beauty of the eloquence of former ages to the strained inflated style then in fashion, " neither," says he, " has the art in painting had a better fate, after the boldness of the Egyptians had found out a compendious way to execute so great an art." By compendious, I understand him to mean a mode of painting, such as has infected the style of the later painters of Italy and France ; common-place, without thought, and with as little trouble, working as by a receipt ; in contra-distinction to that style for which even a relish cannot be acquired without care and long attention, and most certainly the power of executing cannot be obtained without the most laborious application. I have endeavoured to stimulate the ambition of artists to tread in this great path of glory, and, as well as I can, have pointed out the track which leads to it, and have at the same time told them the price at which it may be obtained. It is an ancient saying, that labour is the price which the gods have set upon everything valuable. The great artist who has been so much the subject of the present discourse, was distinguished even from his infancy for SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 311 his indefatigable diligence ; and this was continued through his whole life, till prevented by extreme old age. The poorest of men, as he observed himself, did not labour from necessity, more than he did from choice. Indeed, from all the circum- stances related of his life, he appears not to have had the least conception that his art was to be acquired by any other means than great labour ; and yet he, of all men that ever lived, might make the greatest pretensions to the efficacy of native genius and inspiration. I have no doubt that he would have thought it no disgrace that it should be said of him, as he himself said of Raffaelle, that he did not possess his art from nature, but by long study. He was conscious that the great excellence to which he arrived was gained by dint of labour, and was unwilling to have it thought that any transcendent skill, however natural its effect might seem, could be purchased at a cheaper price than he had paid for it. This seems to have been the true drift of his observation. We cannot suppose it made with any intention of depreciating the genius of Raffaelle, of whom he always spoke, as Condivi says, with the greatest respect : though they were rivals, no such illiberality existed between them ; and Raffaelle on his part entertained the greatest veneration for Michael Angelo, as appears from the speech which is recorded of him, that he congratulated himself, and thanked God, that he was born in the same age with that painter. If the high esteem and veneration in which Michael Angelo has been held by all nations and in all ages, should be put to the account of prejudice, it must still be granted that those prejudices could not have been entertained without a cause : the ground of our prejudice then becomes the source of our admira- tion. But from whatever it proceeds, or whatever it is called, it will not, I hope, be thought presumptuous in me to appear in the train, I cannot say of his imitators, but of his admirers. I have taken another course, one more suited to my abilities, and to the taste of the times in which I live. Yet however unequal I feel myself to that attempt, were I now to begin the world again, I would tread in the steps of that great master : to kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections, would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man. I feel a self congratulation in knowing myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite. I reflect, not without 312 ENGLISH PROSE vanity, that these discourses bear testimony to my admiration of that truly divine man ; and I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this academy, and from this place, might be the name of — Michael Angelo. (From the Fifteenth Discourse.^ MAXIMS OF ART It has been the fate of arts to be enveloped in mysterious and incomprehensible language, as if it was thought necessary that even the terms should correspond to the idea entertained of the instability and uncertainty of the rules which they expressed. To speak of genius and taste, as in any way connected with reason or common sense, would be, in the opinion of some towering talkers, to speak like a man who possessed neither ; who had never felt that enthusiasm, or, to use their own inflated language, was never warmed by that Promethean fire, which animates the canvas and vivifies the marble. If, in order to be intelligible, I appear to degrade art by bringing her down from her visionary situation in the clouds, it is only to give her a more solid mansion upon the earth. It is necessary that at some time or other we should see things as they really are, and not impose on ourselves by that false magnitude with which objects appear when viewed indistinctly as through a mist. We will allow a poet to express his meaning, when his mean- ing is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one sort of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers ; waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success ; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the vernal equinox ; sagaciously observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of imagination is cramped by attention to established rules ; and how this same imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and deadened by too much judgment ; when we talk such language, or entertain such S/R JOSHUA REYNOLDS 313 sentiments as these, we generally rest contented with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless but pernicious. If all this means, what it is very possible was originally intended only to be meant, that in order to cultivate an art, a man secludes himself from the commerce of the world, and retires into the country at particular seasons : or that at one time of the year his body is in better health, and consequently his mind fitter for the business of hard thinking than at another time ; or that the mind may be fatigued and grow confused by long and unremitted application ; this I can understand. I can likewise believe, that a man eminent when young for possessing poetical imagination, may, from having taken another road, so neglect its cultivation, as to show less of its powers in his latter life. But I am persuaded, that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising his profession to the very last, whose latter works are not as replete with the fire of imagination, as those which were produced in his more youthful days. To understand literally these metaphors, or ideas expressed in poetical language, seems to be equally absurd as to conclude, that because painters sometimes represent poets writing from the dictates of a little wing-ed boy or genius, that this same genius did really inform him in a whisper what he was to write ; and that he is himself but a mere machine, unconscious of the operations of his own mind. I have mentioned taste in dress, which is certainly one of the lowest subjects to which this word is applied ; yet, as I have before observed, there is a right even here, however narrow its foundation, respecting the fashion of any particular nation. But we have still more slender means of determining, to which of the different customs of different ages or countries we ought to give the preference, since they seem to be all equally removed from nature. If an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair on his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots, as unlike nature as he can possibly make it ; and after having rendered them immovable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost regularity ; if, when thus attired, he issues forth, and meets a Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as 314 ENGLISH PROSE much time at his toilet, and laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red oker on particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most becoming ; whoever of these two despises the other for this attention to the fashion of his country, whichever first feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian. (From the Seventh Discourse.) BEAUTY The art which we profess has beauty for its object ; this it is our business to discover and to express ; the beauty of which we are in quest is general and intellectual ; it is an idea that subsists only in the mind ; the sight never beheld it, nor has the hand expressed it : it is an idea residing in the breast of the artist, which he is always labouring to impart, and which he dies at last without imparting ; but which he is yet so far able to com- municate, as to raise the thoughts, and extend the views of the spectator ; and which, by a succession of art, may be so far diffused, that its effects may extend themselves imperceptibly into public benefits, and be among the means of bestowing on whole nations refinement of taste : which, if it does not lead directly to purity of manners, obviates at least their greatest depravation, by disentangling the mind from appetite, and conducting the thoughts through successive stages of excellence, till that con- templation of universal rectitude and harmony which began by taste, may, as it is exalted and refined, conclude in virtue. (From the Nitiih Discotirsc.) JOHNSON AGAINST GARRICK Di\ Johnsojt and Sir Jos/ma Reynolds Reynolds. Let me alone, I'll bring him out {Aside). I have been thinking. Dr. Johnson, this morning, on a matter that has puzzled me very much ; it is a subject that I daresay has often passed in your thoughts, and though / cannot, I dare ssiy yoti have made up your mind upon it. SIRJOSHUA REYNOLDS 315 Johnsofz. Tilly fally ! what is all this preparation, what is all this mighty matter ? Rtyn. Why, it is a very weighty matter. The subject I have been thinking upon is, predestination and freewill, two things I cannot reconcile together for the life of me ; in my opinion, Dr. Johnson, freewill and foreknowledge cannot be reconciled. Johns. Sir, it is not of very great importance what your opinion is upon such a question. Reyft. But I meant only, Dr. J., to know your opinion. Johns. No, sir, you meant no such thing ; you meant only to show these gentlemen that you are not the man they took you to be, but that you think of high matters sometimes, and that you may have the credit of having it said that you held an argument with Sam Johnson on predestination and freewill ; a subject of that magnitude as to have engaged the attention of the world, to have perplexed the wisdom of man for these two thousand years ; a subject on which the fallen angels, who had 7iot yd lost their original brightness., find themselves in wandering mazes lost. That such a subject would be discussed in the levity of convivial conversation, is a degree of absurdity beyond what is easily conceivable. Rcyn. It is so, as you say, to be sure ; I talked once to our friend Garrick upon this subject, but I remember we could make nothing of it. Johns. O noble pair ! Reyn. Garrick was a clever fellow. Dr. J. : Garrick, take him altogether, was certainly a very great man. Johns. Garrick, sir, may be a great man in your opinion, so far as I know, but he was not so in mine ; little things are great to little men. Reyn. I have heard you say, Dr. Johnson — Johns. Sir, you never heard me say that David Garrick was a great man ; you may have heard me say that Garrick was a good repeater — of other men's words — words put into his mouth by other men : this makes but a faint approach towards being a great man. Reyn. But take Garrick upon the whole, now, in regard to conversation — Johns. Well, sir, in regard to conversation, I never discovered in the conversation of David Garrick any intellectual energy, any wide grasp of thought, any extensive comprehension of 3i6 ENGLISH PROSE mind, or that he possessed any of those powers to which great could, with any deg'ree of propriety, be applied. Reyn. But still — Johns. Hold, sir, I have not done — there are, to be sure, in the laxity of colloquial speech, various kinds of greatness ; a man may be a great tobacconist, a man may be a great painter, he may be likewise a great mimic : now you may be the one, and Garrick the other, and yet neither of you be great men. Reyn. But, Dr. Johnson- — Johns. Hold, sir, I have often lamented how dangerous it is to investigate and to discriminate character, to men who have no discriminative powers. Reyn. But Garrick as a companion, 1 heard you say — no longer ago than last Wednesday, at Mr. Thrale's table — Johns. You tease me, sir. Whatever you may have heard me say, no longer ago than last Wednesday, at Mr. Thrale's table, I tell you I do not say so now : besides, as I said before, you may not have understood me, you misapprehended me, you may not have heard me. Reyn. I am very sure I heard you. Johns. Besides, besides, sir, besides, — do you not know, — are you so ignorant as not to know, that it is the highest degree of rudeness to quote a man against himself? Reyn. But if you differ from yourself, and give one opinion to-day — Johns. Have done, sir : the company you see are tired, as well as myself. (From Dialogues in Imitation oj Dr. Jolmsotis Conversation. ) ADAM SMITH [Born at Kirkcaldy, N. B., 1723, educated at Glasgow University (under Hutcheson) 1737-40, and at Balliol College, Oxford, 1740-47, he gave public lectures in Edinburgh on Rhetoric and Criticism, 1748-49, — lectures which bore fruit in the writings of Kames, Campbell, and Blair. In 1751 he became Professor of Logic, in 1752 Professor of Moral Philosophy, in Glasgow University. His first publications were two articles in the short-lived Edin- burgh Review of 1755, but he made his reputation by his Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759. In 1763 Charles Townshend persuaded him to resign his chair, and go as travelling tutor into France and Switzerland with the young Duke of Buccleuch, 1763-66. He had thus greater leisure and opportunities to complete his crowning achievement, the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776. In 1778 he was made a Commis- sioner of Customs for Scotland, holding office till his death, at Edinburgh, 1790.] " If I have thoughts and can't express them, Gibbon shall teach me how to dress them In terms select and terse ; Jones teach me modesty and Greek, Smith how to think, Burke how to speak, And Beauclerk to converse." These well-known verses of Dr. Barnard (in reply to Dr. John- son's taunt, " There is great room for improvement in you, and you should set about it ") give the impression that Adam Smith is a philosopher and a critic rather than an artist. Yet in the early part of his life he owed much of his fame to the " fine writing- " of his Moral Setiti/iicttts and lectures on art. His two critical papers in the Edinburgh Review (on Johnson's Dictionary and on the State of Learning in Europe) showed his learning and ingenuity more than his skill in rounding a period or unravelling a complicated subject, though he has evidently taken pains to perfect his two or three pages of translations from Rousseau in the latter paper. His literary masterpiece is the Moral Sentiments. It has far 3i8 ENGLISH PROSE more colour, polish, and elaboration, and is really more logical in arrangement, than the Wealth of Nations. A comparatively new writer in 1759, he could not afford to dispense with the arts of language ; and, like his friend David Hume, he had no desire to address a narrow circle of merely academical readers. In 1776 he could write at his ease. The nature of his subject demanded clearness more than elegance ; and the Wealth of Natiojis is always clear, often homely, even at times ungrammatical. Long sentences occur rarely (when we pass the cxo7-diuni^ ch. i. Bk. I.) The author falls into the speech of daily life, and the idioms of business, such as "the higgling of the market," "the work- man's hand does not go to it," " the goods come cheaper to market," " the pedlar principle of turning a penny wherever a penny was to be got." He will not keep up his dignity at the cost of the smallest obscurity ; and, like Socrates, he takes his illustrations rather from the courtyard than the court. He revels in facts and figures, but delights still more in general and " con- necting principles," and usually begins a chapter by stating a general proposition, which he proceeds to establish by adducing a long series of instances. His examples are almost always from actual life and history ; he is fanciful only in his similes, as when he compares a bank that lived by drawing and redrawing to a pond that had an exit but no entrance, and likens the invention of paper money to a "waggon-way through the air." He is a hard hitter, and a good hater, though his heaviest strokes are levelled at bad laws and false doctrines, and his hatred is usually kept for classes, not individuals. Here are some examples : " That insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician ; " " The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire ; " " That it was the spirit of monopoly which originally both invented and propagated this doctrine cannot be doubted ; and they who first taught it were by no means such fools as they who believed it ; " " It is a very singular government in which every member of the administration wishes to get out of the country, and con- sequently to have done with the Government, as soon as he can, and to whose interest, the day after he has left it and carried his whole fortune with him, it is perfectly indifferent though the whole country was swallowed up by an earthquake." When he came near to personal bitterness in the case of Roche- foucauld, he found reason to repent (what is said of that author in ADAM SMITH 319 the Moral Seiitimoiis in 1759 is not said of him there in 1790) ; and towards " the profligate Mandeville " {Edinburgh Review) he may perhaps have softened a httle. His caustic description of an Enghsh youth on the Continent, sent there to spare his father the pain of seeing him going to ruin before his eyes, cannot, without shir on our author's gratitude, be supposed to apply to a particular case. He is rarely ironical, and never with the concealed satire of Hume, or the transparent innuendo of Gibbon. His general judgments are formed cautiously from the facts, and expressed, where there is room for doubt, with a liberal use of qualifying phrases, "generally," "perhaps," "as it were," "it is said," and " as nearly as we can judge." Where he quotes authorities at all, he usually gives them in the text. In the Moral Sentiwefits there are (speaking broadly) no footnotes, and in the Wealth of Natio?is very few. Dugald Stewart states that Hume wrote out his books with his own hand, Adam Smith dictated his to a secretary. This may partly explain the difference in style between the two authors. Several long letters of Adam Smith in his own handwriting are still preserved, and they have all the character- istics of the printed books ; the habit of dictating and lecturing could not be shaken off. The extracts given here are selected as examples of our author's work in four departments of study — Literature, the His- tory of Science, Moral Philosophy, and Political Economy. If a philosopher's views could be summed up in short phrases, it might be said that he found the leading idea of Art to be imita- tion, of Ethics, sympathy, of Political Economy, commercial ambition and industrial liberty, while the spring of all science and philosophy was (to him) the desire of finding order and " con- necting principles " in a chaos of particular data. His influence on literature and criticism was mainly personal ; his work in philosophy is not comparable to Hume's in historical importance ; but his Wealth of Nations was the starting-point of systematic economical study in this country. Adam Smith is to English economics what Kant is to German metaphysics. Finally, Adam Smith is one of the few authors whose writings have guided the action of statesmen and moulded the policy of nations. J. RONAR. HUMOUR 1 Humour, from the Latin /nemor, in its original signification, stands for moisture in general ; from whence it has been restrained to signify the moisture of animal bodies, or those fluids which circulate thro' them. It is distinguished from moisture in general in this, that /luiiiours properly express the fluids of the body when, in a vitiated state, it would not be improper to say that the fluids of such a person's body were full of JniDiours. The only fluids of the body which, in their natural and health- ful state, are called htwwtirs, are those in the eye ; we talk of the aqueous huDiour, the crystalline huinoiir^ without meaning any- thing that is morbid or diseased : yet, when we say in general, that such a person has got a humour in his eye, we understand it in the usual sense of a vitiated fluid. As the temper of the mind is supposed to depend upon the state of the fluids in the body, humotir has come to be synonymous with temper and disposition. A person's humour, however, is different from his disposition in this, that humour seems to be the disease of a disposition ; it would be proper to say that persons of a serious temper or dis- position of mind, were subject to melancholy humours ; that those of a delicate and tender disposition, were subject to peevish humours. Humour may be agreeable, or disagreeable ; but it is still ^ From the Review of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary , Edinburgh Review, 1755, Jan. to July, Append. Art. III. pp. 71-2. The reviewer had found fault with Johnson's plan ; Johnson should have classified the senses of a word instead of simply enumerating them, and he ought to have ranged them under the principal sense, and taken more care to distinguish synonyms. To show what he wants, the reviewer takes the words " But" and " Humour," giving first Johnson's article and then his own. The above is the reviewer's version of Humour. ADAM SMITH 321 humour, something that is whimsical, capricious, and not to be depended upon : an ill-natured man may have fits of good humour, which seem to come upon him accidentally, without any regard to the common moral causes of happiness or misery. A fit of cheerfulness constitutes the whole of good humour ; and a man who has many such fits, is a good-humoured man : yet he may not be a good-natured ; which is a character that supposes something more constant, equable, and uniform, than what was requisite to constitute good humour. Humour is often made use of to express the quality of the imagination which bears a considerable resemblance to wit. Wit expresses something that is more designed, concerted, regular, and artificial ; humour, something that is more wild, loose, extravagant, and fantastical ; something which comes upon a man by fits, which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly consistent with true politeness. Humour, it has been said, is often more diverting than wit ; yet a man of wit is as much above a man of humour, as a gentleman is above a buffoon ; a buffoon, however, will often divert more than a gentleman. THE ASPECT OF NATURE TO THE SAVAGE Mankind, in the first ages of society, before the establishment of law, order, and security, have little curiosity to find out those hidden chains of events which bind together the seemingly dis- jointed appearances of nature. A savage, whose subsistence is precarious, whose life is every day exposed to the rudest dangers, has no inclination to amuse himself with searching out what, when discovered, seems to serve no other purpose than to render the theatre of nature a more connected spectacle to his imagina- tion. Many of these smaller incoherences, which in the course of things perplex philosophers, entirely escape his attention. Those more magnificent irregularities, whose grandeur he cannot overlook, call forth his amazement. Comets, eclipses, thunder, lightning, and other meteors, by their greatness, naturally overawe him, and he views theni with a reverence that approaches to fear. His inexperience and uncertainty with regard to everything about them, how they came, how they are to go, what went before, VOL. IV y 32: ENGLISH PROSE what is to come after them, exasperate his sentiment into terror and consternation. But our passions, as Father Malebranche observes, all justify themselves ; that is, suggest to us opinions which justify them. As those appearances terrify him, therefore, he is disposed to believe everything about them which can render them still more the objects of his terror. That they proceed from some intelligent though invisible causes, of whose vengeance and displeasure they are either the signs or the effects, is the notion of all others most capable of enhancing this passion, and is that therefore which he is most apt to entertain. To this too, that cowardice and pusillanimity, so natural to man in his un- civilized state, still more disposes him : unprotected by the laws of society, exposed, defenceless, he feels his weakness upon all occasions ; his strength and security upon none. (From Essay on the History of Astronomy. Before I759-) HOW ART PRODUCES ITS EFFECTS The works of the great masters in Statuary and Painting, it is to be observed, never produce their effect by deception. They never are, and it is never intended that they should be, mistaken for the real objects which they represent. Painted Statuary may sometimes deceive an inattentive eye ; proper Statuary never does. The little pieces of perspective in Painting, which it is intended should please by deception, represent always some very simple as well as insignificant object ; a roll of paper, for example, or the steps of a staircase in the dark corner of some passage or gallery. They are generally the works too of some very inferior artists. After being seen once, and producing the little surprise which it is meant they should excite, together with the mirth which commonly accompanies it, they never please more, but appear ever after insipid and tiresome. The proper pleasure which we derive from those two imitative arts, so far from being the effect of deception, is altogether incom- patible with it. That pleasure is founded altogether upon our wonder at seeing an object of one kind represent so well an object of a very different kind, and upon our admiration of the art which surmounts so happily that disparity which Nature had established between them. The nobler works of Statuary and Painting ADAM SMITH 323 appear to us a sort of wonderful phenomena, differing in this respect from the wonderful phenomena of Nature that they carry, as it were, their own explication along with them, and demonstrate, even to the eye, the way and manner in which they are produced. The eye, even of an unskilful spectator, immediately discerns, in some measure, how it is that a certain modification of figure in Statuary, and of brighter and darker colours in Painting, can represent, with so much truth and vivacity, the actions, passions, and behaviour of men, as well as a great variety of other objects. The pleasing wonder of ignorance is accompanied with the still more pleasing satisfaction of science. We wonder and are amazed at the effect, and we are pleased ourselves, and happy to find that we can comprehend, in some measure, how that wonderful effect is produced. A good looking-glass represents the objects which are set before it with much more truth and vivacity than either Statuary or Painting. But, though the science of optics may explain to the understanding, the looking-glass itself does not at all demon- strate to the eye how this effect is brought about. It may excite the wonder of ignorance ; and in a clown, who had never beheld a looking-glass before, I have seen that wonder rise almost to rapture and ecstasy ; but it cannot give the satisfaction of science. In all looking-glasses the effects are produced by the same means, applied exactly in the same manner. In every different statue and picture the effects are produced, though by similar, yet not by the same means ; and those means too are applied in a different manner in each. Every good statue and picture is a fresh wonder, which at the same time carries, in some measure, its own explication along with it. (From Essay o?i the Nature of fliat bnitation which takes place in ivliat are called the Imitative Arts. Before 17 59-) REMORSE The violator of the more sacred laws of justice can never reflect on the sentiments which mankind must entertain with regard to him, without feeling all the agonies of shame and horror and consternation. When his passion is gratified, and he begins coolly to reflect on his past conduct, he can enter into none of 324 ENGLISH PROSE the motives which influenced it. They appear now as detestable to him as they did always to other people. By sympathising with the hatred and abhorrence which other men must entertain for him, he becomes in some measure the object of his own hatred and abhorrence. The situation of the person, who suffered by his injustice, now calls upon his pity. He is grieved at the thought of it, regrets the unhappy effects of his own conduct, and feels at the same time that they have rendered him the proper object of the resentment and indignation of mankind, and of what is the natural consequence of resentment, vengeance and punish- ment. The thought of this perpetually haunts him, and fills him with terror and amazement. He dares no longer look society in the face, but imagines himself, as it were, rejected, and thrown out from the affections of all mankind. He cannot hope for the consolation of sympathy in this his greatest and most dreadful distress. The remembrance of his crimes has shut out all fellow- feeling with him from the hearts of his fellow-creatures. The sentiments which they entertain with regard to him are the very thing which he is most afraid of Everything seems hostile, and he would be glad to fly to some inhospitable desert, where he might never more behold the face of a human creature, nor read in the countenance of mankind the condemnation of his crimes. But solitude is still more dreadful than society. His own thoughts can present him with nothing but what is black, unfortunate, and disastrous, the melancholy foreboding of incomprehensible misery and ruin. The horror of solitude drives him back into society, and he comes again into the presence of mankind, astonished to appear before them, loaded with shame and distracted with fear, in order to supplicate some little protection from the countenance of those ver>' judges who he knows have already all unanimously condemned him. Such is the nature of that sentiment, which is properly called remorse ; of all the sentiments which can enter the human breast the most dreadful. It is made up of shame from the sense of the impropriety of past conduct ; of grief for the effects of it ; of pity for those who suffer by it ; and of the dread and terror of punishment from the consciousness of the justly-provoked resentment of all rational creatures. (From Moral Scntimoils. 1759.) ADAM SMITH 325 THE SUPREME TRIBUNAL OF CONDUCT The all-wise Author of Nature has, in this manner, taught man to respect the sentiments and judgments of his brethren ; to be more or less pleased when they approve of his conduct, and to be more or less hurt when they disapprove of it. He has made man, if I may say so, the immediate judge of mankind ; and has, in this respect, as in many others, created him after his own image, and appointed him his vicegerent upon earth, to superin- tend the behaviour of his brethren. They are taught by nature to acknowledge that power and jurisdiction which has thus been conferred upon him, to be more or less humbled and mortified when they have incurred his censure, and to be more or less elated when they have obtained his applause. But, though man has, in this manner, been rendered the immediate judge of mankind, he has been rendered so only in the first instance ; and an appeal lies from his sentence to a much higher tribunal, to the tribunal of their own consciences, to that of the supposed impartial and well-informed spectator, to that of the man within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of their conduct. . . . [Where there is conflict between them.] In such cases, the only effectual consolation of humbled and afflicted man lies in an appeal to a still higher tribunal, to that of the all-seeing Judge of the world, whose eye can never be deceived, and whose judg- ments can never be perverted. A firm confidence in the unerring rectitude of this great tribunal before which his innocence is in due time to be declared, and his virtue to be finally rewarded, can alone support him under the weakness and despondency of his own mind, under the perturbation and astonishment of the man within the breast, whom nature has set up, as, in this life, the great guardian, not only of his innocence but of his tranquillity. Our happiness in this life is thus, upon many occasions, dependent upon the humble hope and expectation of a life to come ; a hope and expectation deeply rooted in human nature ; which alone can support its lofty ideas of its own dignity ; can alone illumine the dreary prospect of its continually approaching mortality, and maintain its cheerfulness under all the heaviest calamities to which, from the disorders of this life, it may sometimes be 326 ENGLISH PROSE exposed. That there is a world to come, where exact justice will be done to every man, where every man will be ranked with those who, in the moral and intellectual qualities, are really his equals ; where the owner of those humble talents and virtues which, from being depressed by fortune, had, in this life, no opportunity of displaying themselves ; which were unknown, not only to the public, but which he himself could scarce be sure that he possessed, and for which even the man within the breast could scarce venture to afford him any distinct and clear testimony ; where that modest, silent, and unknown merit will be placed upon a level [with], and sometimes above those who, in this world, had enjoyed the highest reputation, and who, from the advantage of their situation, had been enabled to perform the most splendid and dazzling actions ; is a doctrine in every respect so venerable, so comfortable to the weakness, so flattering to the grandeur of human nature, that the virtuous man who has the misfortune to doubt of it cannot possibly avoid wishing most earnestly and anxiously to believe it. It could never have been exposed to the derision of the scoffer, had not the distribution of rewards and punishments, which some of its most zealous assertors have taught us was to be made in that world to come, been too frequently in direct opposition to all our moral sentiments. (From Moral Sc/iiiinc/ils. 1790.) POWER SACRIFICED TO SELFISHNESS But what all the violence of tlie feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign com- merce and manufactures gradually brought about. These gradu- ally furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers. All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the evil maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons. For a pair of diamond buckles, perhaps, or for ADAM SMITH 327 something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the mainten- ance, or, what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance, of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and authority which it could give them. The buckles, however, were to be all their own, and no other human creature was to have any share of them ; whereas, in the more ancient method of expense, they must have shared with at least a thousand people. With the judges that were to determine the preference, this difference was perfectly decisive ; and thus, for the gratification of the most childisli, the meanest, and the most sordid of all vanities, they gradually bartered their whole power and authority. (From The Wealth of Nations. 177C.) PUBLIC BENEFIT PROMOTED BY INDIVIDUAL AIMS Every individual who employs his capital in the support of domestic industry, necessarily endeavours so to direct that industry, that its produce may be of the greatest possible value. The produce of industry is what it adds to the subject or materials upon which it is employed. In proportion as the value of this produce is great or small, so will likewise be the profits of the employer. But it is only for the sake of profit that any man employs a capital in the support of industry ; and he will always, therefore, endeavour to employ it in the support of that industry of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, or to exchange for the greatest quantity either of money or of other goods. But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value, every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security ; and by directing that industry in such a 328 ENGLISH PROSE manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affecta- tion, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it. (From the Same.) THOMAS WARTON [Thomas Warton was the son of Thomas Warton, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and was born in 1728. In 1743 he was admitted to Trinity College, Oxford, of which college he was afterwards Fellow. His earliest attempts were occasional poems, some on episodes of Oxford life, others on romantic themes, and others again of a somewhat ponderous humour ; but these poetic efforts posterity has long since forgotten, although some of them are not without a certain force. He also contributed three numbers to Johnson's periodical, the Idler. But his real literary achievement was in the character of literary historian and commentator. His first effort in this kind was his Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser (1754), which opened a new vein of literary research ; and his greatest the History of English Poetry, published between 1774 and 1781. He was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1757, and held the Laureateship from 1785 till his death in 1790. A later edition was issued in 1824 ; another in 1840. A more modern edition was issued in 1871 by W. C. Hazlitt, and is an outstanding example of how a book ought 7iot to be edited. ] Warton's History of English Poetry was the first, and, in spite of obvious faults, remains, in some respects, the greatest, of Enghsh books of its class. It was distinctly typical of the age, the chief characteristics of which were a learning comprehensive rather than exact or specialised, a boldness of speculation that was often reckless, and a courage in striking out lines of its own, instead of repeating the accepted maxims of any school. Many of Warton's theories may be combated. His references were often inexact, and he was inaccurate in details. His plan was cumbrous, and its execution was amorphous. His digressions break the unity of the work, and it is hard for his reader to grasp the intention and main object of the book. His industry often failed and borrowed something of the slovenly good nature and uncouth roughness of character which made him the butt of his friends though it did not alienate their affection. But on the other hand his learning and his reading were enormous : his memory was laden with a vast amount 330 ENGLISH PROSE of matter which he could apply aptly for illustration and for com- parison. We feel ourselves at all times under the guidance of a strong, acute, and fearless mind, which refuses to be bound by any conventions, and which steers its way boldly through regions which were before unexplored. It is impossible to claim for him any very subtle or delicate critical faculty, but as we read we come every now and again to passages of wonderful vigour, which sound strange when we go back to Warton after a course of the dull school-book treatment which has been accorded to English literature in our more modern handbooks. The minute and carp- ing scholarship of Ritson was able to detect inaccuracies ; but it is with a certain sympathy that we learn that Warton good- humouredly dismissed his critic with the epithet of a " black-lettered dog." Later commentators would have little difficulty in pointing out other flaws, but they have not succeeded in reproducing anything like the grasp and originally with which Warton wielded the vast subject which he essayed. There is something attractive even in the lawless vagrancy of his digressions, and it is in these that some of his most pointed and vigorous passages are to be found. A typical instance of his digressions is that upon Dante, to which he is led by an examination of Sackville's Induction io i]ie Mirroiir for Magistrates. The digression shows a knowledge of Dante, and a power of citing apt and illustrative passages, which were rare in his age, but it also epitomises the critical taste and ideas of that age. He dwells with force and vigour, but with what to the taste of our own day would seem undue persistency, on the errors and extravagances of the CoDiiiicdia. The instinc- tive impression which Dante's genius made, almost unconsciously, upon the genius of Milton, is absent ; but Warton nevertheless sees clearly enough that even the extravagances " border on sub- limity." There is a certain raciness in the introduction of a paraphrase by Voltaire of an episode in the Inferno. He will not allow himself to be blinded to the faults by the sublimity. The fantastic and lurid colouring of mediccvalism, the overcrowded canvas, the heavy pall of legendary superstition, impressed War- ton's age more than the tragic loneliness of Dante's genius, or his " majestic sadness " at the burden of human fate. But in the passage with which the digression concludes (which is quoted below) we have an expression, in clear and vigorous language, of some points of contrast which Warton strikes out upon the anvil of his own mind, and receives from no conventional mould. THOAIAS IVARTON 331 Whatever may be his inaccuracy in detail, and however assail- able may be some of his theories, Warton deserves the credit of making the first attempt to analyse the differences between the romantic and the classical spirit, and of tracing chronologically their influence upon modern literature. If it was not his to solve all the c[uestions that arise about his subject, he was at least the first to understand and set forth the problems that had to be dealt with. He undertook a task too great, perhaps, for any man, and left it incomplete. His scholarship too was extensive rather than exact, and his account of the growth of English poetry is often inaccurate as well as incomplete. But not the less indubitable is the debt we owe to him, and not the less does he stand superior in power and grasp to all those who have attempted to follow him in the same inquiry. His later editors have overwhelmed him with a heap of annotations, and have not even refrained from pruning and correcting his text. The proper method would be to preserve his work as he left it, to suffer it to mark an epoch in our literary history, and to supplement it, if any one feels equal to the task, by a work of equal vigour and originality, enhanced by such achieve- ments of exact scholarship as another centuiy may have added. The latest editor justifies his treatment of Warton by that which has been found expedient in the case of Blackstone's Comnieti- iaries^ heedless of the fact that a literary estimate is scarcely to be dealt with like a legal compendium, and that the phases of poetical genius present no very close analogy to the growth of English law. One hardly knows whether to admire most the insolence of such treatment of a classic, or the ineptitude of such a defence of it. Warton's style has no very special characteristics, and he does not conform to any marked convention in the structure of his sentences. But it is at all times forcible, clear, and free from pedantry ; and he uncjuestionably added something to the resources of English prose, in being the first to treat literary cjuestions from the historical point of view. His digressions may cause his history to lag, but they unquestionably contain much lively reading. H. Craik. FEUDALISM Here, however, chivalry existed in its rudiments. Under the feudal establishments, which were soon afterwards erected in Europe, it received new vigour, and was invested with the for- malities of a regular institution. The nature and circumstances of that peculiar model of government were highly favourable to this strange spirit of fantastic heroism ; which, however unmean- ing and ridiculous it may seem, had the most serious and salutary consequences in assisting the general growth of refinement and the progression of civilisation, in forming the manners of Europe, in inculcating the principles of honour, and in teaching modes of decorum. The genius of the feudal policy was perfectly martial. A numerous nobility, formed into separate principalities, affecting independence, and mutually jealous of their privileges and honours, necessarily lived in a state of hostility. This situation rendered personal strength and courage the most requisite and essential accomplishments. And hence, even in time of peace, they had no conception of any diversions or public ceremonies but such as were of the military kind. Yet, as the courts of these petty princes were thronged with ladies of the most eminent distinction and quality, the ruling passion for war was tempered with courtesy. The prize of contending champions was adjudged by the ladies ; who did not think it inconsistent to be present or to preside at the bloody spectacles of the times ; and who, themselves, seem to have contracted an unnatural and unbecoming ferocity, while they softened the manners of those valorous knights who fought for their approbation. The high notions of a noble descent, which arose from the condition of the feudal constitution, and the ambition of forming an alliance with powerful and opulent families, cherished this romantic system. It was hard to obtain the fair feudatory who was the object of universal adoration. Not only the splendour of birth, but the magnificent castle surrounded with THOMAS WAR TON 333 embattled walls, guarded with massy towers, and crowned with lofty pinnacles, served to inflame the imagination, and to create an attachment to some illustrious heiress, whose point of honour it was to be chaste and inaccessible. And the difficulty of success on these occasions seems in great measure to ha\e given rise to that sentimental love of romance, which acciuiesced in a distant respectful admiration, and did not aspire to possession. The want of an uniform administration of justice, the general disorder, and state of universal anarchy, which naturally sprung from the principles of feudal policy, presented perpetual opportunities of checking the oppressions of arbitrary lords, of delivering captives injuriously detained in the baronial castles, of punishing robbers, of succouring the distressed, and of avenging the impotent and the unarmed, who were every moment exposed to the most hcentious insults and injuries. The violence and injustice of the times gave birth to valour and humanity. These acts conferred a lustre and an importance on the character of men professing arms, who made force the substitute of law. In the meantime, the crusades, so pregnant with enterprise, heightened the habits of this warlike fanaticism ; and when these foreign expeditions were ended, in which the hermits and pilgrims of Palestine had been defended, nothing remained to employ the activity of adventurers but the protection of innocence at home. Chivalry by degrees was consecrated by religion, whose authority tinctured every passion, and was engrafted into eveiy institution of the superstitious ages ; and at length composed that singular picture of manners, in which the love of a god and of the ladies were reconciled, the saint and the hero were blended, and charity and revenge, zeal and gallantry, devotion and valour, were united. (From the History of English Poetry.) CHAUCER'S HOUSE OF FAME The hall was filled with the writers of ancient tales and romances, whose subjects and names were too numerous to be recounted. In the meantime crowds from every nation and of every condition filled the hall, and each presented his claim to the queen. A messenger is dispatched to summon /Eolus from his cave in Thrace ; who is ordered to bring his two clarions 334 ENGLISH PROSE called Slander and Praise, and his trumpeter Triton. The praises of each petitioner are then resounded, according to the partial or capricious appointment of Fame ; and equal merits obtain veiy different success. There is much satire and humour in these requests and rewards, and in the disgraces and honours which are indiscriminately distributed by the queen, without discernment and by chance. The poet then enters the house or labyrinth of Rumour. It was built of sallow twigs, like a cage, and therefore admitted eveiy sound. Its doors were also more numerous than leaves on the trees, and always stood open. These are romantic exaggerations of Ovid's inventions on the same subject. It was moreover sixty miles in length, and perpetually turning round. From this house, says the poet, issued tidings of every kind, like fountains and rivers from the sea. Its inhabitants, who were eternally employed in hearing or telling news, together with the rise of reports, and the formation of lies, are then humorously described : the company is chiefly composed of sailors, pilgrims, and pardoners. At length our author is awakened at seeing a venerable personage of great authority : and thus the Vision abruptly concludes. Pope has imitated this piece, with his usual elegance of diction and harmony of versification. But in the meantime, he has not only misrepresented the story, but marred the character of the poem. He has endeavoured to correct its extravagances by new refinements and additions of another cast ; but he did not con- sider, that extravagances are essential to a poem of such a structure, and even constitute its beauties. An attempt to unite order and exactness of imagery with a subject formed on principles so professedly romantic and anomalous, is like giving Corinthian pillars to a Gothic palace. When I read Pope's elegant imitation of this piece, I think I am \\'alking among the modern monuments unsuitably placed in Westminster Abbey. (From the Same.) GOWER'S MISTAKES It is pleasant to observe the strange mistakes which Gower, a man of great learning, and tlie most general scholar of his age, has committed in this poem, concerning books which he never THOMAS IVARTON 335 saw, his violent anachronisms, and misrepresentations of the most common facts and characters. He mentions the Greek poet Menander, as one of the first historians, or " first enditours of the olde cronike," together with Esdras, SoHnus, Josephus, Claudius Sulpicius, Termegis, Pandulfe, Frigidilles, Ephiloquorus, and Pandas. It is extraordinary that Moses should not be here mentioned, in preference to Esdras. Solinus is ranked so high because he records nothing but wonders ; and Josephus, on account of his subject, had long been placed almost on a level with the Bible. He is seated on the first pillar in Chaucer's House of Fame. His Jewish History, translated into Latin by Rufinus in the fourth century, had given rise to many old poems and romances ; and his Maccahaics., or history of the seven Maccabees martyred with their father Eleazar under the persecu- tion of Antiochus Epiphanes, a separate work, translated also by Rufinus, produced the Judas Maccabee of Belleperche in the year 1240, and at length enrolled the Maccabees among the most illustrious heroes of romance. On this account too, perhaps, Esdras is here so respectably remembered. I suppose Sulpicius is Sulpicius Severus, a petty annalist of the fifth century. Termegis is probably Trismegistus, the mystic philosopher, certainly not an historian, at least not an antient one. Pandulfe seems to be Pandulph of Pisa, who wrote lives of the Popes, and died in the year 1198. Frigidilles is perhaps Fregedaire, a Burgundian who flourished about the year 641, and wrote a chronicon from Adam to his own times ; often printed, and containing the best account of the Franks after Gregory of Tours. Our author, who has partly sufiered from ignorant transcribers and printers, by Ephiloquorus undoubtedly intended Eutropius. In the next paragraph, indeed, he mentions Herodotus ; yet not as an early historian, but as the first writer of a system of the metrical art, "of metre of ryme and of cadence." We smile, when Hector in Shakespeare quotes Aristotle ; but Gower gravely informs his reader, that Ulysses was a ckrke, accomplished with a knowledge of all the sciences, a great rhetorician and magician : that he learned rhetoric of Tully, magic of Zoroaster, astronomy of Ptolemy, philosophy of Plato, divination of the prophet Daniel, proverbial instruction of Solomon, botany of Macer, and medicine of Hippocrates. And in the seventh book Aristotle, or \.\\e p/iilo- sflphre, is introduced reciting to his scholar Alexander the Great a disputation between a Jew and a pagan, who meet between 336 ENGLISH rROSE Cairo and Babylon, concerning their respective religions : the end of the story is to show the cunning, cruelty, and ingratitude of the Jew, which are at last deservedly punished. But I believe Gower's apology must be, that he took this narrative from some Christian legend, which was feigned, for a religious purpose, at the expense of all probability and propriety. (From the Same.) CHATTERTON'S FORGERIES As to internal arguments, an unnatural affectation of ancient spelling and of obsolete words not belonging to the period assigned to the poems, strikes us at first sight. Of these old words combinations are frequently formed, which never yet existed in the unpolished state of the English language : and sometimes the antiquated diction is most inartificially misapplied by an improper contexture with the present modes of speech. The attentive reader will also discern, that our poet sometimes forgets his assumed character, and does not always act his part with consistency : for the chorus, or interlude, of the damsel who drowns herself, which I have cited at length from the Tragedy of Ella, is much more intelligible, and free from uncouth expressions, than the general phraseology of these compositions. In the Baffle of Hastings, said to be translated from the Saxon, Stone- henge is called a Druidical temple. The battle of Hastings was fought in the year 1066. We will grant the Saxon original to have been written soon afterwards ; about which time, no other notion prevailed concerning this miraculous monument, than the supposition which had been delivered down by long and constant tradition, that it was erected in memory of Hengist's massacre. This was the established and uniform opinion of the W'elsh and Armorican bards, who most probably received it from the Saxon minstrels : and that this was the popular belief at the time of the battle of Hastings, appears from the evidence of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote his history not more than eighty years after that memorable event. And in this doctrine Robert of Gloucester and all the monkish chroniclers agree. That the Druids constructed this stupendous pile for a place of worship was a discovery reserved for the sagacity of a wiser age, and the THOMAS IVARTON 337 laborious discussion of modern antiquaries. In the Epistle to Lydgate, prefixed to the Tragedy^ our poet condemns the absurdity and impropriety of the religious dramas, and recommends some great story of human manners, as most suitable for theatrical repre- sentation. But this idea is the result of that taste and discrimina- tion which could only belong to a more advanced period of society. But, above all, the cast of thought, the complexion of the sentiments, and the structure of the composition, evidently prove these pieces not ancient. The Ode to Ella, for instance, has exactly the air of modern poetry ; such, I mean, as is written at this day, only disguised with antique spelling and phraseology. That Rowlie was an accomplished literary character, a scholar, an historian, and an antiquarian, if contended for, I will not deny. Nor is it impossible that he might write English poetry. But that he is the writer of the poems which I have here cited, and which have been so confidently ascribed to him, I am not yet convinced. On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that these poems were composed by the son of the schoolmaster before mentioned ; who inherited the inestimable treasures of Cannynge's chest in Radcliffe Church, as I have already related at large. This youth, who died at eighteen, was a prodigy of genius ; and would have proved the first of English poets, had he reached a maturer age. From his childhood, he was fond of reading and writing verses ; and some of his early compositions, which he wrote without any design to deceive, have been judged to be most astonishing productions by the first critic of the present age. From his situation and connections, he became a skilful practitioner in various kinds of handwriting. Availing himself therefore of his poetical talent, and his facility in the graphic art, to a miscellany of obscure and neglected parchments, which were commodiously placed in his own possession, he was tempted to add others of a more interesting nature, and such as he was enabled to forge, under these circumstances, without fear of detection. As to his knowledge of the old English literature, which is rarely the study of a young poet, a sufficient quantity of obsolete words and phrases were readily attainable from the glossary to Chaucer, and to Percy's Ballads. It is confessed that this youth wrote the Execution of Sir Charles Baldzuin; and he who could forge that poem, might easily forge all the rest. . . . Those who have been conversant in the works even of the VOL. IV Z 338 ENGLISH PROSE best of our old English poets, well know that one of their leading characteristics is inequality. In these writers, splendid descrip- tions, ornamental comparisons, poetical images, and striking thoughts, occur but rarely ; for many pages together they are tedious, prosaic, and uninteresting. On the contrary, the poems before us are everywhere supported : they are throughout poetical and animated ; they have no imbecilities of style or sentiment. Our old English bards abound in unnatural conceptions, strange imaginations, and even the most ridiculous absurdities ; but Rowlie's poems present us with no incongruous combinations, no mixture of manners, institutions, customs, and characters : they appear to have been composed after ideas of discrimination had taken place, and when even common writers had begun to conceive, on most subjects, with precision and propriety. There are indeed, in the Battle of Hastings^ some great anachronisms ; and practices are mentioned which did not exist till afterwards ; but these are such inconsistencies as proceeded from fraud as well as ignorance : they are such as no old poet could have possibly fallen into, and which only betray an unskilful imitation of ancient manners. The verses of Lydgate and his immediate successors are often rugged and unmusical ; but Rowlie's poetry sustains one uniform tone of harmony ; and if we brush away the asperities of the antic|uated spelling, conveys its cultivated imagery in a polished and agreeable strain of versification. Chatterton seems to have thought, that the distinction of old from modern poetry consisted only in the use of old words. In counterfeiting the coins of a rude age, he did not forget the usual application of an artificial rust ; but this disguise was not sufficient to conceal the elegance of the workmanship. (From the Same.) MEUI/EVAL IMITATIONS OF THE CLASSICS It must be allowed, that the scenes of Virgil's sixth book have many fine strokes of the terrible ; but Dante's colouring is of a more gloomy temperature. There is a sombrous cast in his imagination ; and he has given new shades of horror to the classical hell. We may say of Dante, that . . . Hell Grows darker at his frown. THOMAS WAR TON 339 The sensations of fear impressed by the Roman poet are less harassing to the repose of the mind ; they have a more equable and placid effect. The terror of Virgil's tremendous objects is diminished by correctness of composition and elegance of style. We are reconciled to his Gorgons and Hydras, by the grace of expression, and the charms of versification. In the meantime, it may seem a matter of surprise, that the Italian poets of the thirteenth century, who restored, admired, and studied the classics, did not imitate their beauties. But while they possessed the genuine models of antiquity, their un- natural and eccentric habits of mind and manners, their attach- ments to system, their scholastic theology, superstition, ideal love, and above all their chivalry, had corrupted eveiy true principle of life and literature, and consequently prevented the progress of taste and propriety. They could not conform to the practices and notions of their own age, and to the ideas of the ancients, at the same time. They were dazzled with the imageries of Virgil and Homer, which they could not always understand or apply, or which they saw through the mist of prejudice and misconcep- tion. Their genius having once taken a false direction, when recalled to copy a just pattern, produced only constraint and affectation, a distorted and unpleasing resemblance. The early Italian poets disfigured instead of adorning their works, by attempt- ing to imitate the classics. The charms which we so much admire in Dante, do not belong to the Greeks and Romans. They are derived from another origin, and must be traced back to a differ- ent stock. Nor is it at the same time less surprising, that the later Italian poets, in more enlightened times, should have paid so respectful a compliment to Dante as to acknowledge no other model, and with his excellencies to transcribe and perpetuate all his extravagancies. (From the Same.) A FLOOD OF CLASSICISM The books of anticiuity being thus familiarised to the great, every- thing was tinctured with ancient history and mythology. The heathen gods, although discountenanced by the Calvinists on a suspicion of their tending to cherish and revive a spirit of idolatry. 340 ENGLISH PROSE came into general vogue. When the queen paraded through a country-town, ahnost every pageant was a pantheon. When she paid a visit at the house of any of her nobiUty, at entering the haU she was sakited by the Penates, and conducted to her privy-chamber by Mercury. Even the pastry-cooks were expert mythologists. At dinner, select transformations of Ovid's Meta- morphoses were exhibited in confectionery ; and the splendid iceing of an immense histoi'ic plum-cake was embossed with a delicious basso-relievo of the destruction of Troy. In the after- noon, when she condescended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered with Tritons and Nereids ; the pages of the family were converted into Wood-nymphs who peeped from every bower ; and the footmen gambolled over the lawns in the figure of Satyrs. I speak it without designing to insinuate any unfavourable suspicions ; but it seems difficult to say, why Elizabeth's virginity should have been made the theme of perpetual and excessive panegyric ; nor does it immediately appear, that there is less merit or glory in a married than in a maiden queen. Yet, the next niorning, after sleeping in a room hung with the tapestry of the voyage of yEneas, when her majesty hunted in the park, she was met by Diana, who pronouncing our royal prude to be the brightest paragon of unspotted chastity, invited her to groves free from the intrusion of Acta^on. The truth is, she was so pro- fusely flattered for this virtue, because it was esteemed the characteristical ornament of the heroines, as fantastic humour was the chief pride of the champions, of the old barbarous romance. It was in conformity to the sentiments of chivalry, which still remained in vogue, that she was celebrated for chastity : the com- pliment, however, was paid in a classical allusion. Queens must be ridiculous when they would appear as women. The softer attractions of sex vanish on the throne. Elizabeth sought all occasions of being extolled for her beauty, of which indeed in the prime of her youth she possessed but a small share, whatever may have been her pretensions to absolute virginity. Notwithstanding her exaggerated habits of dignity and cere- mony, and a certain affectation of imperial severity, she did not perceive this ambition of being complimented for beauty, to be an idle and unpardonable levity, totally inconsistent with her high station and character. As she conquered all nations with her arms, it matters not what were the triumphs of her eyes. Of what consequence was the complexion of the mistress of the THOMAS WAR TON 341 world ? Not less vain of her person than her politics, the stately coquet, the guardian of the protestant faith, the terror of the sea, the mediatrix of the factions of France, and the scourge of Spain, was infinitely mortified if an ambassador, at the first audience, did not tell her she was the finest woman in Europe. No negocia- tion succeeded unless she was addressed as a goddess. Encomi- astic harangues drawn from this topic, even on the supposition of youth and beauty, were surely superfluous, unsuitable, and un- worthy ; and were offered and received with an equal impropriety. Yet when she rode through the streets of the city of Norwich, Cupid, at the command of the Mayor and aldermen, advancing from a group of gods who had left Olympus to grace the pro- cession, gave her a golden arrow, the most effective weapon of his well-furnished quiver, which under the influence of such irresistible charms was sure to wound the most obdurate heart. "A gift," says honest Hollinshed, "which her majesty, now verging on her fiftieth year, received very thankfullie." In one of the fulsome interludes at court, where she was present, the singing-boys of her chapel presented the stoiy of the three rival goddesses on Mount Ida, to which her majesty was ingeniously added as a fourth ; and Paris was arraigned in form for adjudg- ing the golden apple to Venus, which was due to the queen alone. This inundation of classical pedantiy soon infected our poetry. Our writers, already trained in the school of fancy, were suddenly dazzled with these novel imaginations, and the divinities and heroes of pagan antiquity decorated every composition. The perpetual allusions to ancient fable were often introduced without the least regard to propriety. Shakespeare's Mrs. Page, who is not intended in any degree to be a learned or an aflected lady, laughing at the cumbersome courtship of her corpulent lover Falstafif, says, " I had rather be a giantess and lie under mount Pelion." This familiarity with the pagan story was not, however, so much owing to the prevailing study of the original authors, as to the numerous English versions of them which were consequently made. The translations of the classics, which now employed every pen, gave a currency and a celebrity to these fancies, and had the effect of diffusing them among the people. No sooner were they delivered from the pale of the scholastic languages, than they acquired a general notoriety. Ovid's Metamorphoses translated by Golding, to instance no further, disclosed a new world of 342 ENGLISH PROSE fiction, even to the illiterate. As we had now all the ancient fables in English, learned allusions, whether in a poem or a pageant, were no longer obscure and unintelligible to common readers and common spectators. And here we are led to observe, that at this restoration of the classics, we were first struck only with their fabulous inventions. We did not attend to their regularity of design and justness of sentiment. A rude age, beginning to read these writers, imitated their extravagances, not their natural beauties. And these, like other novelties, were pursued to a blameable excess. (From the Same.) THE ELIZABETHAN AGE It may here be added, that only a few critical treatises, and but one Art of Poetry, were now written. Sentiments and images were not absolutely determined by the canons of composition ; nor was genius awed by the consciousness of a future and final arraignment at the tribunal of taste. A certain dignity of inattention to nice- ties is now visible in our writers. Without too closely consulting a criterion of correctness every man indulged his own capricious- ness of invention. The poet's appeal was chiefly to his own voluntary feelings, his own immediate and peculiar mode of con- ception. And this freedom of thought was often expressed in an undisguised frankness of diction ; — a circumstance, by the way, that greatly contributed to give the flowing modulation which now marked the measures of our poets and which soon degenerated into the opposite extreme of dissonance and asperity. Selection and discrimination were often overlooked. Shakespeare wandered in pursuit of universal nature. The glancings of his eye are from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. We behold him breaking the barriers of imaginary method. In the same scene, he descends from his meridian of the noblest tragic sublimity, to puns and quibbles, to the meanest merriments of a jslebeian farce. In the midst of his dignity, he resembles his own Richard the Second, the skippittg Khtg, who sometimes discarding the state of a monarch, Mingled his royalty witli carping fools. THOMAS IV A ETON 343 He seems not to have seen any impropriety, in the most abrupt transitions, from dukes to buffoons, from senators to sailors, from counsellors to constables, and from kings to clowns. Like Virgil's majestic oak, . . . Quantum vertice ad auras ^therias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit. (From the Same.) OLIVER GOLDSMITH [Oliver Goldsmith, son of the Rev. Cliarles Goldsmith, was born at Pallas, in County Longford, Ireland, loth November 1728. After receiving tuition at various local schools, he was, in June 1744, admitted a sizar of Trinity College, Dublin, where he ultimately took a B.A. degree in February 1749. Having undergone varied experiences as a medical student, traveller on the continent, corrector of the press, apothecary, and school usher, he became a writer-of-all-work to Griffiths, the proprietor of the Monthly Review. His first literary effort of any importance was a pseudonymous version of the French Memoirs of a Protestant condemned to the Galleys of France for his Religion, 1758. To this followed An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, April 1759, from the title-page of which, although he made no secret of its authorship, he withlield his name. Nor did he reveal it in The Bee of the same year, or in The Citizen of the World — a series of Chinese letters reprinted in May 1762 from Newbery's Public Ledger. In December 1764, however, he published, under his own name. The Traveller; or, a Prospect of Society, a poem to which, in March 1766, succeeded the famous Vicar of Wakcfeld. Two years later he essayed the stage with the comedy of The Good Natur'd Man, produced at Covent Garden by Colman in January 1768 ; and two years later again (May 1770) he published, with a singularly happy dedication to Reynolds, the well-known poem of The Deserted Village. In March 1773 appeared at Covent Garden his best play. She Stoops to Conquer ; or, the Mistakes of a Night, and in 1774 (4th April) he died at his chambers, 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple, and was interred in theburying- ground of the Temple Church. His literary legacy, in addition to the above, includes much meritorious compilation ; besides which, shortly after his death, were issued some occasional verses, comprising the admirable fragment called Retaliation, and the clever /tV/- d' esprit of The Haunch of J'enison.] There is one thing that distinguishes Goldsmith from his con- temporaries ; he was undoubtedly, in Johnson's phrase, a plant that flowered late. When, in 1757, he at last seriously entered the lists of literature, he was nearly thirty ; and for his past pro- duction he had nothing definite to show but an indifferent epigram, and the fragment of an unprintcd didactic poem which he had sent from Switzerland to his brother. One reason for this reticence is, perhaps, that he had adopted letters only as a last resource. 346 ENGLISH PROSE There is little to prove that he had ever been attracted to them by ambition, or by any secret consciousness of his gifts. On the contrary, to be a clergyman, a lawyer, a doctor, had seemed to him far more desirable ; and it was only when he had lost all hope of success in these directions, that he turned for a livelihood to the '■'■ antiqua mater of Grub Street." But his tardiness to take up the pen professionally had this advantage, that he entered upon his calling already fairly equipped. In his discursive pilgrimage towards manhood, he had seen much of life and char- acter ; and in some obscure way he had learned to write — if, indeed, any learning had been needful — since, judging from those of his early letters which have been preserved, a peculiar and almost unique charm must always have characterised his style. But however this may be, it is notable that when, without any appreciable previous experience, he began to lay down the critical law from the back-parlour at the " Dunciad," his manner and his opinions were already formed. Making reasonable allowance for seventeen years of practice, his sentences and paragraphs when, in 1774, he laid down his pen, do not differ greatly from the sen- tences and paragraphs of his first contributions to Griffiths' maga- zine. And his views in 1757 are the views which he held to the close of his career, and which, as occasion offered, he successfully illustrated by his practice. That the future author of SJic Stoops to Conquer should be the keenest adversary of the mouthing Douglas of Home ; that the future author of the Deserted Village should deplore the note of remoteness in Gray's Pi77daric Odes; and, finally, that the lucid improviser of the admirable Letters from a Nobleman to his Soft upon the LListory of E?igland should fall foul of the lumbering and pretentious platitudes of worthy Jonas Hanway — these things are logical enough, but they show a con- sistency of critical opinion not always to be found in English literature. The prose works of Goldsmith fall naturally into two classes — those which he wrote for bread, and those which he wrote for reputation. The Memoirs of Voltaire ; the LListory of Mecklefi- burgh; the Lives of Nash, of Parnell, of Bolingbroke ; the His- tories of Greece, of Rome, of England ; and the eight volumes on Natural History which Johnson predicted he would make as interesting as a Persian tale, — these and the rest were compila- tions, " honest journey work in defect of better," as Carlyle calls it — but compilations and nothing more. They were the labours OLIVER GOLDSMITH 347 by which, as he told Lord Lisburn, he " made shift to eat and drink and have good clothes." He was paid for them well, far better than for the work by which he now survives ; and he rewarded his employers by informing all he touched with the grace of a style which was always clear, always simple, always easy and spontaneous. Yet the prose works which he wrote for fame are of a far higher order, because, in addition to his gifts as a writer, he reveals in them his own engaging personality as a critic, a humorist, and a delineator of character. In the first of these capacities his strength, it is true, is least conspicuous. But his taste — apart from some queer prejudices, of which his inability to appreciate justly the genius of Sterne is perhaps the most notorious — was instinctively good, and many of his judgments, although opposed to those of his contemporaries, have been confirmed by the Superior Court of Posterity. In regard to not a few social questions, too, he was in advance of his age. It is not so much, however, to the little tour de force called A7t Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Euj-ope, or to the more didactic papers in The Bee and The Citizen of the IVotId that one turns nowadays, as to the admirable essay -comments upon contemporary quackeries and absurdities — upon the con- noisseurs, the pedants, the fine ladies, the stage favourites, — upon the humours and follies of the Town. Even more attractive than these are the dispersed sketches of character — "Jack Spindle," and " My Cousin Hannah," the " Man in Black " and the pawn- broker's widow, " Beau Tibbs " the inimitable and his faded help- mate, — all of them little studies in genre which need only the machinery of a plot to turn them into the personages of a story. Such a story Goldsmith gives us in the Vicar of Wakefield^ the outcome and developed expression of all this motley "criticism of life." If it be a test of taste in poetry to like Lycidas, it is surely a test of taste in fiction to like the delightful Primrose family. The Vicar and his wife, the philosopher Moses, Sophia and Olivia, even those " chubby rogues " Bill and Dick, are all drawn, as the old art-voucher puts it, "from the quick"; and in addition to being individual they have the merit of being typical. Their qualities good and bad, their joys and sorrows, their simple as- pirations and their venial vanities, can never be out of fashion, for they are part of the homespun wear of humanity at large. An accomplished French critic said of Tom Jones that it was " la condensation et le resume dc toiite tine existence." The phrase is 348 ENGLISH PROSE truer still of Goldsmith's famous novel. Into the two volumes of the Vicar of Wakefield he has put all the regretful memories of his departed youth, all the hard experiences of his much-enduring middle age, all the accumulation of his own life-long hunger for sympathy, and his inextinguishable love of his fellow-creatures. Whether, if he had lived, he could have repeated his success, is doubtful ; and it is certainly matter for congratulation that no failure in the same direction has ever detracted from the perennial charm of his solitary essay in fiction. One has but to turn for a moment to the pages of the great writers who were his contem- poraries to recognise at once how cosmopolitan in its conception, and how entirely independent of suggestion from any reigning models is the Vicar of Wakefield. It might have been written in any country, and it is read all over the world. From what has been said at the outset it will have been gathered that Goldsmith's style demands no lengthy examination. Indeed much of its attraction is of that native and personal kind which resists the resolvents of analysis. That he may have learnt something of phrase-building from the Rambler is possible, but he clearly, and fortunately, did not learn too much. It is demonstrable that, for certain of the qualities of his verse, he was largely indebted to French models ; and it is not unreasonable to conclude that French models generally, and Voltaire in particular, had also influenced him in prose. But when one has catalogued his peculiarities and noted his differences, when one has duly scheduled his gifts of simplicity, ease, gaiety, pathos, and humour, something still remains undefined and evasive — the something that is Genius. Austin Dobson. A CITY NIGHT-PIECE The clock has struck two, the expiring taper rises and sinks in the socket, the watchman forgets the hour in slumber, the laborious and the happy are at rest, and nothing now wakes but guilt, revelry, and despair. The drunkard once more fills the destroying bowl, the robber walks his midnight round, and the suicide lifts his guilty arm against his own sacred person. Let me no longer waste the night over the page of antic(uity, or the sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue the solitary walk, where vanity, ever changing, but a few hours past, walked before me — where she kept up the pageant, and now, like a froward child, seems hushed with her own importunities. What a gloom hangs all around I The dying lamp feebly emits a yellow gleam ; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock, or the distant watch-dog. All the bustle of human pride is forgotten, and this hour may well display the emptiness of human vanity. There may come a time when this temporary solitude may be made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away and leave a desert in its room. What cities, as great as this, have once triumphed in existence ; had their victories as great as ours ; joy as just, and as unbounded as we ; and, with short-sighted presumption, promised themselves immortality. Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some : the sorrowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others ; and as he beholds, he learns wisdom, and feels the transience of every sublunary possession. Here stood their citadel, but now grown over with weeds ; there their senate-house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile ; temples and theatres stood there, now only an undistinguished heap of ruin. They are fallen, for luxury and avarice first made them feeble. The rewards of the state were conferred on amusing 350 ENGLISH PROSE and not on useful members of society. Thus true virtue lan- guished, their riches and opulence invited the plunderer, who, though once repulsed, returned again, and at last swept the defendants into undistinguished destruction. How few appear in those streets which but some few hours ago were crowded ; and those who appear, no longer now wear their daily mask, nor attempt to hide their lewdness or their misery. But who are those who make the streets their couch, and find a short repose from wretchedness at the doors of the opulent ? These are strangers, wanderers, and orphans, whose circumstances are too humble to expect redress, and their distresses too great even for pity. Some are without the covering even of rags, and others emaciated with disease ; the world seems to have disclaimed them ; society turns its back upon their distress, and has given them up to nakedness and hunger. These poor, shivering females have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty. They have been prostituted to the gay, luxurious villain, and are now turned out to meet the severity of winter in the streets. Perhaps, now lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible to calamity, or debauchees who may curse, but will not relieve them. Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings I cannot relieve ! Poor houseless creatures ! the world will give you reproaches, but will not give you relief. The slightest misfortunes, the most imaginary uneasiness of the rich, are aggravated with all the power of eloquence, and engage our attention ; while you weep unheeded, persecuted by every sub- ordinate species of tyranny, and finding enmity in every law. Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility ! or why was not my fortune adapted to its impulse ! Tenderness, without a capacity for relieving, only makes the heart that feels it, more wretched than the object which sues for assistance. (From The Bee.) THE STROLLING PLAYER I AM fond of amusement, in whatever company it is to be found ; and wit, though dressed in rags, is ever pleasing to me. I went OLIVER GOLDSMITH 351 some days ago to take a walk in St. James's Park, about the hour in which company leave it to go to dinner. There were but few in the walks, and those who stayed seemed, by their looks, rather more willing to forget that they had an appetite, than gain one. I sat down on one of the benches, at the other end of which was seated a man in very shabby clothes, but such as appeared to have been once fashionable ; in short, I could perceive in his figure somewhat of the gentleman, but gentility (to speak like Milton) shorn of its beams. We continued to groan, to hem, and to cough, as usual upon such occasions ; and at last ventured upon conversation. " I beg pardon, sir," cried I, "but I think I have seen you before ; your face is familiar to me." — "Yes, sir," replied he, "I have a good familiar face, as my friends tell me. I am as well known in e\'ery town in England, as the dromedary or live crocodile. You must understand, sir, that I have been these sixteen years Merry Andrew to a puppet-show : last Bartholomew Fair my master and I quarrelled, beat each other, and parted ; he to sell his puppets to the pincushion-makers in Rosemary Lane, and I to starve in St. James's Park." " I am sorry, sir, that a person of your appearance should labour under any difficulties." — "O sir," returned he, "my appearance is very niuch at your service ; but, though I cannot boast of eating much, yet there are few that are merrier : if I had twenty thousand a year I should be very merry ; and thank the fates ! though not worth a groat, I am very merry still. If I have threepence in my pocket, I never refuse to be my three-half- pence ; and if I have no money, I never scorn to be treated by any that are kind enough to pay my reckoning. What think you, sir, of a steak and tankard ? You shall treat me now ; and I will treat you again, when I find you in the Park in love with eating, and without money to pay for a dinner." As I never refuse a small expense for the sake of a merry com- panion, we instantly adjourned to a neighbouring ale-house and in a few moments had a frothing tankard and a smoking steak spread on the table before us. It is impossible to express how much the sight of such good cheer improved my companion's vivacity. " I like this dinner, sir," says he, "for three reasons : first, because I am naturally fond of beef ; secondly, because I am hungry ; and, thirdly and lastly, because I get it for nothing : no meat eats so sweet as that for which we do not pay." He there- 352 ENGLISH PROSE fore now fell-to, and his appetite seemed to correspond with his inclination. After dinner was o\'er, he observed that the steak was tough : " and yet, sir," returns he, " bad as it was, it seemed a rumpsteak to me. O the delights of poverty and a good appetite ! We beggars are the very foundlings of Nature ; the rich she treats like an arrant step-mother ; they are pleased with nothing : cut a steak from what part you will, and it is insupportably tough \ dress it up with pickles, — even pickles cannot procure them an appetite. But the whole creation is filled with good things for the beggar. Calvert's butt out-tastes champagne and Sedgeley's home- brewed excels Tokay. Joy, joy, my blood ! though our estates lie nowhere, we have fortunes wherever we go. If an inundation sweeps away half the grounds of Cornwall, I am content, I have no lands there ; if the stocks sink, that gives me no uneasiness — I am no Jew." The fellow's vivacity, joined to his poverty, I own, raised my curiosity to know something of his life and circumstances, and I entreated that he would indulge my desire. "That I will, sir," said he, "and welcome; only let us drink to prevent our sleeping ; let us have another tankard while we are awake — let us have another tankard ; for ah, how charming a tankard looks when (From the Essays^ THE MAN IN BLACK Though fond of many acquaintances, I desire an intimacy only with a few. The man in black, whom 1 have often mentioned, is one whose friendship I could wish to acquire, because he possesses my esteem. His manners it is true, are tinctured with some strange inconsistencies, and he may be justly termed a humorist in a nation of humorists. Though he is generous even to profusion, he affects to be thought a prodigy of parsimony and prudence ; though his conversation be replete with the most sordid and selfish maxims, his heart is dilated with the most unbounded love. I have known him profess himself a man-hater, while his cheek was glowing with compassion ; and, while his looks were softened into pity, I have heard him use the lang^uage of the most unbounded ill-nature. Some affect humanity and tenderness, others boast of having such dispositions from nature ; but he is the only man I ever knew who seemed ashamed of his natural OLIVER GOLDSMITH 353 benevolence. He takes as much pains to hide his feeUngs as any hypocrite would to conceal his indifference ; but on every unguarded moment the mask drops off, and reveals him to the most superficial observer. In one of our late excursions into the country, happening to discourse upon the provision that was made for the poor in England, he seemed amazed how any of his countrymen could be so foolishly weak as to relieve occasional objects of charity, when the laws had made such ample provision for their support. " In every parish-house," says he, " the poor are supplied with food, clothes, fire, and a bed to lie on ; they want no more, I desire no more myself; yet still they seem discontented. I am surprised at the inactivity of our magistrates in not taking up such vagrants, who are only a weight upon the industrious ; I am surprised that the people are found to relieve them, when they must be at the same time sensible that it, in some measure, encourages idleness, extravagance, and imposture. Were I to advise any man for whom I had the least i-egard, I would caution him by all means not to be imposed upon by their false pretences ; let me assure you, sir, they are impostors every one of them, and rather merit a prison than relief" He was proceeding in this strain, earnestly to dissuade me from an imprudence of which I am seldom guilty, when an old man, who still had about him the remnants of tattered finery, implored our compassion. He assured us that he was no common beggar, but forced into the shameful profession, to support a dying wife, and five hungry children. Being prepossessed against such falsehoods, his story had not the least influence upon me ; but it was quite otherwise with the man in black ; I could see it visibly operate upon his countenance, and effectually interrupt his harangue. I could easily perceive that his heart burned to relieve the five starving children, but he seemed ashamed to dis- cover his weakness to me. While he thus hesitated between compassion and pride, I pretended to look another way, and he seized this opportunity of giving the poor petitioner a piece of silver, bidding him at the same time, in order that I should hear, go work for his bread, and not tease passengers with such impertinent falsehoods for the future. As he had fancied himself quite unperceived, he continued, as we proceeded, to rail against beggars with as much animosity as before ; he threw in some episodes on his own amazing prudence VOL. IV 2 k 354 ENGLISH PROSE and economy, with his profound skill in discovering impostors ; he explained the manner in which he would deal with beggars were he a magistrate, hinted at enlarging some of the prisons for their reception, and told two stories of ladies that were robbed by beggar men. He was beginning a third to the same purpose when a sailor with a wooden leg once more crossed our walks, desiring our pity, and blessing our limbs. I was for going on with- out taking any notice, but my friend looking wishfully upon the poor petitioner, bid me stop, and he would shew me with how much ease he could at any time detect an impostor. He now therefore assumed a look of importance, and in an angry tone began to examine the sailor, demanding in what engagement he was thus disabled and rendered unfit for service. The sailor replied, in a tone as angrily as he, that he had been an officer on board a private ship of war, and that he had lost his leg abroad, in defence of those who did nothing at home. At this reply, all my friend's importance vanished in a moment ; he had not a single cjuestion more to ask ; he now only studied what method he should take to relieve him unobserved. He had, however, no easy part to act, as he was obliged to presen-e the appearance of ill-nature before me, and yet relieve himself by relieving the sailor. Casting, therefore, a furious look upon some bundles of chips which the fellow carried in a string at his back, my friend demanded how he sold his matches ; but, not waiting for a reply, desired in a surly tone to have a shilling's worth. The sailor seemed at first surprised at his demand, but soon recollected him- self, and presenting his whole bundle, " Here, master," says he, "take all my cargo, and a blessing into the bargain." It is impossible to describe with what an air of triumph my friend marched off with his new purchase ; he assured me that he was firmly of opinion that those fellows must have stolen their goods who could thus afford to sell them for half value. He informed me of several different uses to which those chips might be applied ; he expatiated largely upon the savings that would result from lighting candles with a match instead of thrusting them into the fire. He averred that he would as soon have parted with a tooth as his money to those vagabonds, unless for some valuable con- sideration. I cannot tell how long this panegyric upon frugality and matches might have continued, had not his attention been called off by another object more distressful than either of the former. A woman in rags, with one child in her arms, and OLIVER GOLDSMITH 355 another on her back, was attempting to sing ballads, but with such a mournful voice, that it was difficult to determine whether she was singing or ciying. A wretch, who in the deepest dis- tress still aimed at good humour was an object my friend was by no means capable of withstanding : his vivacity and his discourse were instantly interrupted ; upon this occasion, his very dissimula- tion had forsaken him. Even in my presence he immediately applied his hands to his pockets, in order to relieve her ; but guess his confusion when he found he had already given away all the money he carried about him to former objects. The misery painted in the woman's visage was not half so strongly expressed as the agony in his. He continued to search for some time, but to no purpose, till at length recollecting himself, with a face of ineffable good nature, as he had no money, he put into her hands his shilling's worth of matches. (From The Citizen of the World.') BEAU TIBBS AT HOME Though naturally pensive, yet I am fond of gay company, and take every opportunity of thus dismissing the mind from duty. From this motive I am often found in the centre of a crowd, and wherever pleasure is to be sold am always a purchaser. In those places, without being remarked by any, I join in whatever goes forward ; work my passions into a similitude of frivolous earnest- ness, shout as they shout, and condemn as they happen to disapprove. A mind thus sunk for a while below its natural standard is qualified for stronger flights, as those first retire who would spring forward with greater vigour. Attracted by the serenity of the evening, my friend and I lately went to gaze upon the company in one of the public walks near the city. Here we sauntered together for some time, either praising the beauty of such as were handsome, or the dresses of such as had nothing else to recommend them. We had gone thus deliberately forward for some time, when stopping on a sudden, my friend caught me by the elbow and led me out of the public walk. I could perceive by the quickness of his pace, and by his frequently looking behind, that he was attempting- to avoid 556 ENGLISH PROSE somebody who followed : we now turned to the right, then to the left ; as we went forward, he still went faster, but in vain ; the person whom he attempted to escape hunted us through every doubling, and gained upon us at each moment, so that at last we fairly stood still, resolving to face what we could not avoid. Our pursuer came up and joined us with all the familiarity of an old acquaintance. " My dear Drybone," cries he, shaking my friend's hand, " where have you been hiding this half a century.'* Positively I had fancied you were gone down to cultivate matrimony and your estate in the country." During the reply I had an opportunity of surveying the appearance of our new companion : his hat was pinched up with peculiar smartness ; his looks were pale, thin, and sharp ; round his neck he wore a broad black riband, and in his bosom a buckle studded with glass ; his coat was trimmed with tarnished twist ; he wore by his side a sword with a black hilt ; and his stockings of silk, though newly washed, were grown yellow by long service. I was so much engaged with the peculiarity of his dress that I attended only to the latter part of my friend's reply, in which he compli- mented Mr. Tibbs on the taste of his clothes, and the bloom in his countenance. " Pshaw, pshaw. Will ! " cried the figure, " no more of that if you love me ; you know I hate flattery — on my soul I do ; and yet, to be sure, an intimacy with the great will improve one's appearance, and a course of venison will fatten ; and yet, faith, I despise the great as much as you do ; but there are a great many damn'd honest fellows among them, and we must not quarrel with one half because the other wants weeding. If they were all such as Lord Mudler, one of the most good- natured creatures that ever squeezed a lemon, I should myself be among the number of their admirers. I was yesterday to dine at the Duchess of Piccadilly's. My lord was there. ' Ned,' says he to me, ' Ned,' says he, ' I'll hold gold to silver I can tell you where you were poaching last night.' — ' Poaching, my lord ? ' says I, ' faith you have missed already ; for I stayed at home and let the girls poach for me. That's my way. I take a fine woman as some animals do their prey — stand still, and swoop, they fall into my mouth." " Ah, Tibbs, thou art a happy fellow," cried my companion, with looks of infinite pity ; " I hope your fortune is as much improved as your understanding in such company." — " Improved," replied the other ; " you shall know — but let it go no further — a great OLIVER GOLDSMITH 357 secret — five hundred a jear to begin with. My lord's word of honour for it. His lordship took ine down in his own chariot yesterday and we had a tcte-a-tcte dinner in the country, where we talked of nothing else." — " I fancy you forget, sir," cried I, " you told us but this moment of your dining yesterday in town." — " Did I say so .'' " replied he coolly ; " to be sure, if I said so, it was so — Dined in town ; egad, now I do remember, I did dine in town ; but I dined in the country too, for you must know, my boys, I eat two dinners. By the bye 1 am grown as nice as the devil in my eating. I'll tell you a pleasant affair about that : — We were a select party of us to dine at Lady Grogram's — an affected piece, but let it go no further — a secret. Well, there happened to be no assafoetida in the sauce to a turkey, upon which, says I, ' I'll hold a thousand guineas and say done first, that — — ' But dear Drybone, you are an honest creature, lend me half-a-crown for a minute or two, or so, just till But hearkee, ask me for it the next time we meet, or it may be twenty to one I forget to pay you." When he left us, our conversation naturally turned upon so extraordinary a character. " His very dress," cries my friend, "is not less extraordinary than his conduct. If you meet him this day, you find him in rags ; if the next, in embroidery. With those persons of distinction of whom he talks so familiarly he has scarce a coffee-house acquaintance. However, both for the interests of society, and perhaps for his own. Heaven has made him poor, and while all the world perceive his wants, he fancies them concealed from every eye. An agreeable companion because he understands flattery ; and all must be pleased with the first part of his conversation, though all are sure of its ending with a demand on their purse. While his youth countenances the levity of his conduct, he may thus earn a precarious subsistence ; but when age comes on, the gravity of which is incompatible with buffoonery, then will he find himself forsaken by all ; condemned in the decline of life to hang upon some rich family whom he once despised, there to undergo all the ingenuity of studied contempt, to be employed as a spy upon the servants, or a bugbear to fright the children into obedience." Adieu. I am apt to fancy I have contracted a new acquaintance whom it will be no easy matter to shake off. My little Beau yesterday overtook me again in one of the public walks, and slapping me on the shoulder, saluted me with an air of the most 358 ENGLISH PROSE perfect familiarity. His dress was the same as usual, except that he had more powder in his hair, wore a dirtier shirt, a pair of temple spectacles, and his hat under his arm. As I knew him to be a harmless amusing little thing I could not return his smiles with any degree of severity ; so we walked forward on terms of the utmost intimacy, and in a few minutes discussed all the usual topics preliminary to particular conversation. The oddities that marked his character, however, soon began to appear ; he bowed to several well-dressed persons, who, by their manner of returning the compliment, appeared perfect strangers. At intervals he drew out a pocket-book, seeming to take memorandums before all the company, with much importance and assiduity. In this manner he led me through the length of the whole walk, fretting at his absurdities and fancying myself laughed at not less than him by every spectator. When we were got to the end of our procession, " Blast me," cries he with an air of vivacity, " I never saw the Park so thin in my life before. There's no company at all to-day ; not a single face to be seen." — "No company!" interrupted I peevishly ; " no company where there is such a crowd ? Why, man, there's too much. What are the thousands that have been laughing at us but company ? " — " Lord, my dear," returned he with the utmost good humour, "you seem immensely chagrined ; but, blast me, when the world laughs at me, I laugh at the world, and so we are even. My Lord Trip, Bill Squash the Creolian, and I sometimes make a party at being ridiculous, and so we say and do a thousand things for the joke's sake. But I see you are grave, and if you are for a fine grave sentimental companion, you shall dine with me and my wife to-day ; I must insist on't. I'll intro- duce you to Mrs. Tibbs, a lady of as elegant qualifications as any in nature ; she was bred (but that's between ourselves) under the inspection of the Countess of All-night. A charming body of voice ; but no more of that — she shall give us a song. You shall see my little girl too, Carolina Wilhelma Amelia Tibbs, a sweet pretty creature : I design her for my Lord Drumstick's eldest son ; but that's in friendship, let it go no further : she's but six years old, and yet she walks a minuet, and plays on the guitar immensely already. I intend she shall be as perfect as possible in every accomplishment. In the first place I'll make her a scholar : I'll teach her Greek myself, and learn that language purposely to instruct her; but let that be a secret." OLIVER GOLDSMITH 359 Thus saying, without waiting for a reply, he took me by the arm and hauled me along. We passed through many dark alleys and winding ways ; for, from some motives to me unknown, he seemed to have a particular aversion to every frequented street ; at last, however, we got to the door of a dismal-looking house in the outlets of the town, where he informed me he chose to reside for the benefit of the air. We entered the lower door, which ever seemed to lie most hospit- ably open, and I began to ascend an old and creaking staircase, when, as he mounted to show me the way, he demanded whether I delighted in prospects ; to which answering in the affirmative, " Then," says he, " I shall show you one of the most charming in the world out of my window ; we shall see the ships sailing, and the whole country for twenty miles round, tip top, quite high. My Lord Swamp would give ten thousand guineas for such a one ; but, as I sometimes pleasantly tell him, I always love to keep my prospects at home, that my friends may see me the oftener." By this time we were arrived as high as the stairs would permit us to ascend, till we came to what he was facetiously pleased to call the first floor down the chimney ; and knocking at the door a voice from within demanded, " Who's there ? " My conductor answered that it was him. But this not satisfying the querist, the voice again repeated the demand ; to which he answered louder than before ; and now the door was opened by an old woman with cautious reluctance. When we were got in, he welcomed me to his house with great ceremony, and turning to the old woman asked where was her lady ? " Good troth," replied she in a peculiar dialect, " she's washing your twa shirts at the next door, because they have taken an oath against lending out the tub any longer." — " My two shirts ! " cried he in a tone that faltered with confusion ; "what does the idiot mean?" — "I ken what I mean weel enough," replied the other ; " she's washing your twa shirts at the next door because " " Fire and fury, no more of thy stupid exclamations ! " cried he ; " go and inform her we have got company. Were that Scotch hag," continued he, turning to me, " to be for ever in my family, she would never learn politeness, nor forget that absurd poisonous accent of hers, or testify the smallest specimen of breeding or high life ; and yet it is very surprising too, as I had her from a Parliament man, a friend of ;6o ENGLISH PROSE mine from the Highlands, one of the pohtest men in the world ; but that's a secret." We waited some time for Mrs. Tibbs' arrival, during which interval I had a full opportunity of surveying the chamber and all its furniture, which consisted of four chairs with old wrought bottoms, that he assured me were his wife's embroidery ; a square table that had been once japanned ; a cradle in one corner, a lumbering cabinet in the other ; a broken shepherdess and a mandarin without a head were stuck over the chimney ; and round the walls several paltry unframed pictures, which, he observed, were all his own drawing. " What do you think, sir, of that head in the corner, done in the manner of Grisoni ? there's the true keeping in it ; it is my own face, and though there happens to be no likeness, a Countess offered me a hundred for its fellow : I refused her, for, hang it, that would be mechanical, you know." The wife at last made her appearance, at once a slattern and a coquette ; much emaciated, but still carrying the remains of beauty. She made twenty apologies for being seen in such odious dishabille, but hoped to be excused as she had stayed out all night at the gardens with the Countess, who was excessively fond of the horns. " And, indeed, my dear," added she, turning to her husband, " his lordship drank your health in a bumper." — " Poor Jack ! " cries he, " a dear good-natured creature, I know he loves me. But I hope, my dear, you have given orders for the dinner ; you need make no great preparations neither, there are but three of us ; something elegant, and little will do — a turbot, an ortolan, a " " Or what do you think, my dear," interrupts the wife, " of a nice pretty bit of ox-cheek, piping hot, and dressed with a little of my own sauce .'' " — " The very thing," replies he ; " it will eat best with some smart bottled beer ; but be sure to let us have the sauce his Grace was so fond of. I hate your immense loads of meat ; that is country all over ; extremely disgusting to those who are in the least accjuainted with high life." By this time my curiosity began to abate, and my appetite to increase ; the company of fools may at first make us smile, but at last never fails of renderings us melancholy. I therefore pretended to recollect a prior engagement, and, after having shown my respect to the house, according to the fashion of the English, by giving the old servant a piece of money at the door, I took my OLIVER GOLDSMITH 361 leave ; Mr. Tibbs assuring me, that dinner, if I stayed, would be ready at least in less than two hours. ,„ i r- n ^ (from the Same.) BEAU TIBBS AT VAUXHALL The people of London are as fond of walking as our friends at Pekin of riding ; one of the principal entertainments of the citizens here in summer is to repair about nightfall to a garden not far from town, where they walk about, shew their best clothes and best faces, and listen to a concert provided for the occasion. I accepted an invitation a few e\enings ago from my old friend, the man in black, to be one of a party that was to sup there ; and at the appointed hour waited upon him at his lodgings. There I found the company assembled, and expecting my arrival. Our party consisted of my friend in superlative finery, his stockings rolled, a black velvet waistcoat, which was formerly new, and his grey wig- combed down in imitation of hair ; a pawn- broker's widow, of whom by the bye my friend was a professed admirer, dressed out in green damask, with three gold rings on every finger ; Mr. Tibbs the second-rate beau I have formerly described, together with his lady, in flimsy silk, dirty gauze instead of linen, and a hat as big as an umbrella. Our first difficulty was in settling how we should set out. Mrs. Tibbs had a natural aversion to the water, and the widow, being a little in flesh, as warmly protested against walking ; a coach was therefore agreed upon ; which, being too small to carry five, Mr. Tibbs consented to sit in his wife's lap. In this manner, therefore, we set forward, being entertained by the way with the bodings of Mr. Tibbs, who assured us he did not expect to see a single creature for the evening above the degree of a cheesemonger ; that this was the last night of the gardens, and that consequently we should be pestered with the nobility and gentry from Thames Street and Crooked Lane ; with several other prophetic ejaculations, probably inspired by the uneasiness of his situation. The illuminations began before we arrived, and I must confess, that upon entering the gardens I found every sense 362 ENGLISH PROSE overpaid with more than expected pleasure : the lights every- where glimmering through the scarcely-moving trees — the full- bodied concert bursting on the stillness of the night — the natural concert of the birds, in the more retired part of the grove vieing with that which was formed lay art ; the company gaily dressed, looking satisfaction, and the table spread with various delicacies, all conspired to fill my imagination with the visionary happiness of the Arabian lawgiver, and lifted me into an ecstasy of admiration. " Head of Confucius," cried I to my friend, "this is fine ! this unites rural beauty with courtly magnificence ! If we except the virgins of immortality, that hang on every tree, and may be plucked at every desire, I do not see how this falls short of Mahomet's Paradise !" — "As for virgins," cries my friend, "it is true they are a fruit that do not much abound in our gardens here ; but if ladies, as plenty as apples in autumn, and as complying as any Houri of them all, can content you, I fancy we have no need to go to heaven for Paradise." I was going to second his remarks, when we were called to a consultation by Mr. Tibbs and the rest of the company, to know in what manner we were to lay out the evening to the greatest advantage. Mrs. Tibbs was for keeping the genteel walk of the garden, where, she observed, there was always the very best company ; the widow, on the contrary, who came but once a season, was for securing a good standing-place to see the water- works, which she assured us would begin in less than an hour at the farthest ; a dispute therefore began, and as it was managed between two of very opposite characters, it threatened to grow more bitter at every reply. Mrs. Tibbs wondered how people could pretend to know the polite world who had received all their rudiments of breeding behind a counter ; to which the other replied, that though some people sat behind counters, yet they could sit at the head of their own tables too, and carve three good dishes of hot meat whenever they thought proper, which was more than some people could say for themselves, that hardly knew a rabbit and onions from a green goose and gooseberries. It is hard to say where this might have ended, had not the husband, who probably knew the impetuosity of his wife's disposition, proposed to end the dispute by adjourning to a box, and try if there was anything to be had for supper that was supportable. To this we all consented : but here a new distress arose : Mr. and Mrs. Tibbs would sit in none but a genteel bo.x — OLIVER GOLDSMITH 363 a box where they might see and be seen — one, as they expressed it, in the very focus of public view ; but such a box was not easy to be obtained, for though we were perfectly convinced of our own gentility, and the gentility of our appearance, yet we found it a difficult matter to persuade the keepers of the boxes to be of our opinion ; they chose to reserve genteel boxes for what they judged more genteel company. At last, however, we were fixed, though somewhat obscurely, and supplied with the usual entertainment of the place. The widow found the supper excellent, but Mrs. Tibbs thought every- thing detestable. " Come, come, my dear," cries the husband, by way of consolation, " to be sure we can't find such dressing here as we have at Lord Crump's or Lady Crimp's ; but, for Vauxhall dressing, it is pretty good : it is not their victuals, indeed, I find fault with, but their wine ; their wine," cries he, drinking off a glass, "indeed is most abominable." By this last contradiction, the widow was fairly conquered in point of politeness. She perceived now that she had no pre- tensions in the world to taste ; her very senses were vulgar, since she had praised detestable custard, and smacked at wretched wine ; she was therefore content to yield the victory, and for the rest of the night to listen and improve. It is true, she would now and then forget herself, and confess she was pleased, but they soon brought her back again to miserable refinement. She once praised the painting of the box in which we were sitting, but was soon convinced that such paltry pieces ought rather to excite horror than satisfaction ; she ventured again to commend one of the singers, but Mrs. Tibbs soon let her know, in the style of a connoisseur, that the singer in question had neither ear, voice, nor judgment. Mr. Tibbs, now, willing to prove that his wife's pretensions to music were just, entreated her to favour the company with a song ; but to this she gave a positive denial — " for you know very well, my dear," says she, " that I am not in voice to-day, and when one's voice is not equal to one's judgment, what signifies singing ? besides, as there is no accompaniment, it would be but spoiling music." All these excuses, however, were over- ruled by the rest of the company, who, though one would think they already had music enough, joined in the entreaty. But particularly the widow, now willing to convince the company of her breeding, pressed so warmly, that she seemed determined to 364 ENGLISH PROSE take no refusal. At last, then, the lady complied, and after humming for some minutes, began with such a voice, and such affectation, as I could perceive, gave but little satisfaction to any except her husband. He sat with rapture in his eye, and beat time with his hand on the table. You must observe, my friend, that it is the custom of this country, when a lady or gentleman happens to sing, for the company to sit as mute and motionless as statues. Every feature, every limb, must seem to correspond in fixed attention ; and while the song continues, they are to remain in a state of uni- versal petrifaction. In this mortifying situation we had continued for some time, listening to the song, and looking with tranquillity, when the master of the box came to inform us, that the water- works were going to begin. At this information I could instantly perceive the widow bounce from her seat, but correcting herself, she sat down again, repressed by motives of good - breeding. Mrs. Tibbs, who had seen the waterworks a hundred times, resolving not to be interrupted, continued her song without any share of mercy, nor had the smallest pity on our impatience. The widow's face, I own, gave me high entertainment ; in it I could plainly read the struggle she felt between good-breeding and curiosity : she talked of the waterworks the whole evening before, and seemed to have come merely in order to see them ; but then she could not bounce out in the very middle of a song, for that would be forfeiting all pretensions to high life, or high- lived company, ever after. Mrs. Tibbs therefore, kept on singing, and we continued to listen, till at last, when the song was just concluded, the waiter came to inform us that the water- works were over ! " The waterworks over ! " cried the widow ; " the waterworks over already ! that's impossible ! they can't be over so soon ! " — " It is not my business," replied the fellow, " to contradict your ladyship ; I'll run again and see." He went, and soon returned with a confirmation of the dismal tidings. No ceremony could now bind my friend's disappointed mistress ; she testified her displeasure in the openest manner : in short, she now began to find fault in turn, and at last insisted upon going home, just at the time that Mr. and Mrs. Tibbs assured the company, that the polite ho.urs were going to begin, and that the ladies would instantaneously be entertained with the horns. (From the Same.) OLIVER GOLDSMITH 365 THE FAMILY OF WAKEFIELD I WAS ever of opinion, that the honest man who married, and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population. From this motive, I had scarce taken orders a year, before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife, as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well. To do her justice, she was a good-natured, notable woman ; and as for breeding, there were few country ladies who could shew more. She could read any English book without much spelling ; but for pickling, preserving, and cookery, none could excel her. She prided herself also upon being an excellent contriver in house-keeping ; though I could never find that we grew richer with all her contrivances. However we loved each other tenderly, and our fondness increased as we grew old. There was, in fact, nothing that could make us angry with the world or each other. We had an elegant house, situated in a fine country, and a good neighbour- hood. The year was spent in a moral or rural amusement ; in visiting our rich neighbours, and relieving such as were poor. We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo ; all our adventures were by the fireside ; and all our migrations from the blue bed to the brown. As we lived near the road, we often had the traveller or stranger visit us to taste our gooseberry wine, for which we had great reputation ; and I profess, with the veracity of an historian, that I never knew one of them find fault with it. Our cousins too, even to the fortieth remove, all remembered their affinity, without any help from the herald's office, and came very frequently to see us. Some of them did us no great honour by these claims of kindred ; as we had the blind, the maimed, and the halt amongst the number. However, my wife always insisted, that, as they were the same flesh and blood, they should sit with us at the same table. vSo that, if we had not very rich, we generally had very happy friends about us ; for this remark will hold good through life, that the poorer the guest, the better pleased he ever is with being treated ; and as some men gaze with admiration at the colours of a tulip, or the wing of a butterfly, so I was by nature an admirer of happy human faces. However, when any 366 ENGLISH PROSE one of our relations was found to be a person of a very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house, I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them. By this the house was cleared of such as we did not like ; but never was the family of Wakefield known to turn the traveller or the poor dependant out of doors. Thus we lived several years in a state of much happiness ; not but that we sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favours. My orchard was often robbed by school-boys, and my wife's custards plundered by the cats or the children. The Squire would sometimes fall asleep in the most pathetic parts of my sermon, or his lady return my wife's civilities at church with a mutilated courtesy. But we soon got over the uneasiness caused by such accidents, and usually in three or four days, began to wonder how they vexed us. My children, the offspring of temperance, as they were educated without softness, so they were at once well formed and healthy ; my sons hardy and active, my daughters beautiful and blooming. When I stood in the midst of the little circle, which promised to be the supports of my declining age, I could not avoid repeating the famous story of Count Abensberg, who in Henry the Second's progress through Germany, when other courtiers came with their treasures, brought his thirty- two children, and presented them to his sovereign, as the most valuable offering he had to bestow. In this manner, though I had but six, I considered them as a very \aluable present made to my country, and con- sequently looked upon it as my debtor. Our eldest son was named George, after his uncle, who left us ten thousand pounds. Our second child, a girl, I intended to call after her aunt Grissel ; but my wife, who during her pregnancy, had been reading romances, insisted on her being called Olivia. In less than another year we had another daughter, and now I was determined that Grissel should be her name ; but a rich relation taking a fancy to stand god-mother, the girl was by her directions called Sophia : so that we had two romantic names in the family ; but I solemnly protest I had no hand in it. Moses was our next ; and after an interval of twelve years, we had two sons more. It would be fruitless to deny my exultation when I saw my little ones about me ; but the vanity and the satisfaction of my OLIVER GOLDSMITH 367 wife were even greater than mine. When our visitors would say, "Well, upon my word, Mrs. Primrose, you have the finest children in the whole country." — -"Ay, neighbour," she would answer, " they are as heaven made them, handsome enough, if they be good enough ; for handsome is that handsome does." And then she would bid the girls hold up their heads ; who to conceal nothing, were certainly very handsome. Mere outside is so very trifling a circumstance with me, that I should scarce have remem- bered to mention it, had it not been a general topic of conversation in the country. Olivia, now about eighteen, had that luxuriancy of beauty with which painters generally draw Hebe ; open, sprightly, and commanding. Sophia's features were not so striking at first, but often did more certain execution ; for they were soft, modest, and alluring. The one vanquished by a single blow, the other by efforts successively repeated. The temper of a woman is generally formed from the turn of her features ; at least it was so with my daughters. Olivia wished for many lovers ; Sophia to secure one. Olivia was often affected, from too great a desire to please ; Sophia even repressed excel- lence, from her fears to offend. The one entertained me with her vivacity when I was gay, the other with her sense when I was serious. But these qualities were never carried to excess in either ; and I have often seen them exchange characters for a whole day together. A suit of mourning has transformed my coquette into a prude, and a new set of ribbons has given her younger sister more than natural vivacity. My eldest son George was bred at Oxford, as I intended him for one of the learned professions. My second boy, Moses, whom I designed for business, received a sort of miscellaneous education at home. But it is needless to attempt describing the particular characters of young people that had seen but very little of the world. In short a family likeness prevailed through all, and, properly speaking, they had but one character, that of being all equally generous, credulous, simple, and inoffensive. ,„ „. ... ^ rf / ^ /7\ (rrom The Vicar of Ivakejichi.) FAMILY MISFORTUNES The temporal concerns of our family were chiefly committed to my wife's management ; as to the spiritual, 1 took them entirely 368 ENGLISH PROSE under my own direction. The profits of my living, which amounted but to thirty-five pounds a year, I made over to the orphans and widows of the clergy of our diocese ; for, having a sufiicient fortune of my own, I was careless of temporalities, and felt a secret pleasure in doing my duty without reward. I also set a resolution of keeping no curate, and of being accjuainted with every man in the parish, exhorting the married men to temperance, and the bachelors to matrimony : so that, in a few years, it was a common saying, that there were three strange wants at Wakefield, a parson wanting pride, young men wanting wives, and ale-houses wanting customers. Matrimony was always one of my favourite topics, and I wrote several sermons to prove its happiness ; but there was a peculiar tenet which I made a point of supporting ; for I maintained with Whiston, that it was unlawful for a priest of the Church of Eng- land, after the death of his first wife to take a second : or to express it in one word, I valued myself upon being a strict mono- gamist. I was early initiated into this important dispute, on which so many laborious volumes have been written. I published some tracts upon the subject myself, which, as they never sold, I have the consolation of thinking are read only by the happy few. Some of my friends called this my weak side ; but alas ! they had not, like me, made it the subject of long contemplation. The more I reflected upon it, the more important it appeared. I even went a step beyond Whiston in displaying my principles : as he had engraven upon his wife's tomb, that she was the only wife of William Whiston ; so I wrote a similar epitaph for my wife, though still living, in which I extolled her prudence, economy, and obedience till death ; and having got it copied fair, with an elegant frame, it was placed over the chimney-piece, where it answered several very useful purposes. It admonished my wife of her duty to me, and my fidelity to her ; it inspired her with a passion for fame, and constantly put her in mind of her end. It was thus, perhaps from hearing marriage so often recom- mended, that my eldest son, just upon leaving college, fixed his affections upon the daughter of a neighbouring clergyman, who was a dignitary in the church, and in circumstances to give her a large fortune ; but fortune was her smallest accomplishment. Miss Arabella Wilmot was allowed by all (except my two daughters) to be completely pretty. Her youth, health, and innocence, were OLIVER GOLDSMITH 369 still heightened by a complexion so transparent, and such a happy sensibility of look, as even age could not gaze on with indifference. As Mr. Wilmot knew that I could make a very handsome settle- ment on my son, he was not averse to the match ; so both families lived together in all that harmony which generally precedes an expected alliance. Being convinced, by experience, that the days of courtship are the most happy of our lives, I was willing enough to lengthen the period ; and the various amusements which the young couple every day shared in each other's company, seemed to increase their passion. We were generally awaked in the morning- by music, and on fine days rode a-hunting. The hours between breakfast and dinner the ladies devoted to dress and study : they usually read a page, and then gazed at themselves in the glass, which even philosophers might own often presented the page of greatest beauty. At dinner my wife took the lead ; for, as she always insisted upon carving everything herself, it being her mother's way, she gave us, upon these occasions, the history of every dish. When we had dined, to prevent the ladies leaving us, I generally ordered the table to be removed and sometimes, with the music-master's assistance, the girls would give us a very agreeable concert. Walking out, drinking tea, country dances, and forfeits, shortened the rest of the day, without the assistance of cards, as I hated all manner of gaming, except backgammon, at which my old friend and I sometimes took a twopenny hit. Nor can I here pass over an ominous circumstance that happened the last time we played together. I only wanted to fling a quatre, and yet I threw deuce ace five times running-. Some months were elapsed in this manner, till at last it was thought convenient to fix a day for the nuptials of the young couple, who seemed earnestly to desire it. During the prepara- tions for the wedding, I need not describe the busy importance of my wife, nor the sly looks of my daughters : in fact, my atten- tion was fixed on another object, the completing a tract which I intended shortly to publish in defence of my favourite principle. As I looked upon this as a masterpiece, both for argument and style, I could not, in the pride of my heart, avoid showing it to my old friend, Mr. Wilmot, as I made no doubt of receiving his approbation : but not till too late I discovered that he was most violently attached to the contrary opinion, and with good reason ; for he was at that time actually courting a fourth wife. This, as may be expected, produced a dispute attended with some acrimony, VOL. IV 2 B 370 ENGLISH PROSE which threatened to interrupt our intended alliance ; but, on the day before that appointed for the ceremony, we agreed to discuss the subject at large. It was managed with proper spirit on both sides. He asserted that I was heterodox ; I retorted the charge : he replied, and I rejoined. In the meantime, while the controversy was hottest, I was called out by one of my relations, who, with a face of concern, advised me to give up the dispute, at least till my son's wedding was over. " How," cried I, " relinquish the cause of truth, and let him be a husband, already driven to the very verge of absurdity ! You might as well advise me to give up my fortune as my argu- ment." — " Your fortune," returned my friend, " I am now sorry to inform you, is almost nothing. The merchant in town, in whose hands your money was lodged, has gone off, to avoid a statute of bankruptcy, and is thought not to have left a shiUing in the pound. I was unwilling to shock you or the family with the account till after the wedding ; but now it may serve to moderate your warmth in the argument ; for I suppose your own prudence will enforce the necessity of dissembling, at least till your son has the young lady's fortune secure." — " Well," returned I, "if what you tell me be true, and if I am to be a beggar, it shall never make me a rascal, or induce me to disavow my prin- ciples. I'll go this moment, and inform the company of my circumstances ; and as for the argument, I even here retract my former concessions in the old gentleman's favour, nor will I allow him now to be a husband in any sense of the expression." It would be endless to describe the different sensations of both families, when I divulged the news of our misfortune : but what others felt was slight to what the lovers appeared to endure. Mr. Wilmot, who seemed before sufficiently inclined to break off the match, was by this blow soon determined : one virtue he had in perfection, which was prudence, too often the only one that is left us at seventy-two. ,„ , „ , ^ (From the Same.) DEDICATION OF THE DESERTED VILLAGE To Sir Joshua Reynolds Dear Sir — I can have no expectations, in an address of this kind, either to add to your reputation, or to establish my own. OLIVER GOLDSMITH 371 You can gain nothing from my admiration, as I am ignorant of that art in which you are said to excel ; and I may lose much by the severity of your judgment, as few have a juster taste in poetry than you. Setting interest, therefore, aside, to which I never paid much attention, I must be indulged at present in following my affections. The only dedication I ever made was to my brother, because I loved him better than most other men. He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe this Poem to you. How far you may be pleased with the versification and mere mechanical parts of this attempt, I don't pretend to enquire ; but I know you will object (and indeed several of our best and wisest friends concur in the opinion) that the depopulation it deplores is nowhere to be seen, and the disorders it laments are only to be found in the poet's own imagination. To this I can scarce make any other answer, than that I sincerely believe what I have written ; that I have taken all possible pains, in my country excursions, for these four or five years past, to be certain of what I allege ; and that all my views and enquiries have led me to believe these miseries real, which I here attempt to display. But this is not the place to enter into an enquiry whether the country be depopu- lating or not : the discussion would take up too much room, and I should prove myself, at best, an indifferent politician, to tire the reader with a long preface, when I want his unfatigued attention to a long poem. In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries ; and here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or thirty years past, it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages ; and all the wisdom of antiquity in that par- ticular as erroneous. Still, however, I must remain a professed ancient on that head, and continue to think those luxuries preju- dicial to states by which so many vices are introduced, and so many kingdoms have been undone. Indeed, so much has been poured out of late on the other side of the question, that, merely for the sake of novelty and variety, one would sometimes wish to be in the right. — I am, dear sir, your sincere friend and ardent admirer, Oliver Goldsmith. EDMUND BURKE [Edmund Burke, the son of an attorney, was born at Dublin in 1729. He received his schoohng at BalHtore, in Kildare, and entered Trinity College, Dubhn, in 1743, the same year as Goldsmith. His academic career was un- distinguished, but he was assiduous in the practice of composition and oratory. The present Historical Society of the College, the cradle of all the more famous Irish orators, is the direct descendant of the Historical Club, founded by Burke, whose objects, according to the minutes, largely in Burke's handwriting and still preserved, were "speaking, reading, writing, and arguing in morality, history, criticism, politics, and all the useful branches of philosophy." It was here rather than in the schools that Burke prepared himself for the wider arena of the future. Many of the minutes of this Society having reference to Burke are of especial interest. This, for example, antici- pating the later verdict of the House of Commons,- — "April 28, 1747. Mr. Burke, for an essay on the Genoese, was given thanks for the matter, but not for the delivery." In 1748 Burke graduated, and two years later proceeded to keep terms at the Middle Temple, but ultimately abandoned his intention of proceeding to the Bar. For ten years his life in London was chiefly occupied with literary work, and in 1756 appeared the Vindication of Natural Society, an ironical attack upon the social philosophy of Bolingbroke. It was followed in the same year by the celebrated Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, a book which gave an impetus to the treatment of ngsthetics as an independent branch of thought. This was the year of his marriage with Miss Nugent. From 1759 until 1788 Burke contributed largely to the Annual Register, originated by himself, and in 1761 he became private secretary to "single-speech" Hamilton, then Secretary for Ireland, a post which he resigned in two years. Burke was soon fairly launched upon political waters, and in 1765 was appointed secretary to the then Premier, Lord Rockingham ; the same year he became M.P. for Wendover. He attached himself strongly to the Whigs in their opposition to the Court party under the leadership of Lord North, the favourite of George III., who was in power from 1770 to 1782. To these twelve years belong the best of Burke's speeches and pamphlets : Thoughts on the present Discontents [ij jo), America?i Taxation (1774), Conciliation with America (1775), Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777), Speech to the Bristol Electors (1780). Burke sat as member for Bristol for six years (1774-1780) but lost his seat owing to his attitude towards the American Colonies, and his votes on the remedial measures proposed in the interests of Ireland and of 374 ENGLISH PROSE the Roman Catholics. During the remainder of his political life he repre- sented Malton. During the Rockingham administration, and the coalition ministry, led by the Duke of Portland, Burke held office as Paymaster of the Forces. In 1788 he opened the case for the Commons in the impeachment of Warren Hastings. In 1790 appeared the Reflections oti the French Revol- ution, of all his works by far the most widely read, and unapproached in its immediate influence by any other of his writings. From this time until the end Burke's entire energy was devoted to an unmeasured denunciation of the principles, leaders, and defenders of the French Revolution. To this period belong the Appeal f?-ot?i the New to the Old I I'higs, Thoughts on French Affairs, and Fetters on a Regicide Peace ; works which, if less luminously wise, were no less brilliant than the earlier masterpieces. On his retirement from public life Burke was to have had a peerage, with the title of Beaconsfield from his estate, but the death of his son Richard in 1794 left him without an heir, and the idea was abandoned. The pensions granted him in 1794 were made the occasion of an attack upon him, to which the Letter to a Noble Lord was a crushing rejoinder. Burke died in 1797.] It is too late by more than a generation to pronounce any panegyric upon Burke, to offer revised estimates or new appreciations of his genius. He has long since passed through the vicissitudes of posthumous fame, and no voice, whether of praise or of detraction, can touch him further. Yet fixed as is his place among English worthies, the figure of Edmund Burke will ever occupy a niche apart, clothed with a splendid but pathetic dignity. His was an unhappy greatness, and judged by vulgar standard, a pre-eminence in failure. It seemed as if the stars in their courses warred against his best considered schemes and wisest policies, and only wearied in their opposition when the eye of his judgment became dimmed, and the ear of his reason dull of hearing. The later biographers have added little to the familiar story. He gave the best strength of his best days to the exclusive service of his country ; he was admitted to be the most powerful thinker of his age ; he was in reality, perhaps, the greatest of philosophic states- men of any age ; his thought-compelling speech was heard upon every subject which can engage the attention of serious students of politics ; time and the course of subsequent events have done abundant honour to his political foresight ; and, with all this, he never held even second-rate office ; as a statesman he can hardly be said to have left any conspicuous record of himself writ in remedial legislation upon the statute-book of England ; and, while his is absent, the names of infinitely lesser men shine among the makers of history. Burke's far-darting sagacity, his most con- vincing logic, his tireless energy were alike fruitless of curative EDMUND BURKE 375 issue for the distractions and difficulties of his time. His protest against the parliamentary tyranny which excluded Wilkes from the House passed contemptuously unheeded, When the spirit of discontent crossed the Atlantic, in eveiy phase of the troubles with the American Colonies his advice was negatived again and again by large majorities. His high-spirited independence and magnanimous advocacy of the claims of Ireland, and of the Roman Catholics, resulted in his rejection from the repre- sentation of Bristol after six years of service. He espoused in an historic trial the cause of the Indian peoples against oppression, and the representative of the policy of oppression was acquitted. By a strange irony, Burke attained popularity and influence only when, after a long and ardent career of eloquent vindication of the true principles of freedom, he declined into vehement and almost fanatical diatribe, and that in an indictment of doubtful justice against an exasperated and sorely harassed people ; a whole people who, goaded into revolution, broke from their necks the double yoke of Court and Church, a no longer tolerable tyranny, at best defensible only because aristocratic, and reverend merely by reason of its age. It needs no laboured inquiry to explain the ill-success of Burke as an influence in the conduct of public aftairs. He was in many respects seriously disqualified for success. As novns Jioino, the charge of being an adventurer, and, at times even a Jesuit in disguise, pursued him closely through life. He wor- shipped too high an ideal, cherished too nice a conscience for his age, and, more fatal than all else, he was a man of ideas. The qualities in his speeches, to which time does reverence, are the qualities that discharged them of weight in the scale of immediate effect. Weaker wits were bafiled by the breadth of a philosophic treatment which converted familiar questions into un- familiar, and were little inclined to relish the transformation of party problems soluble in their simpler fashion into complex knots of hitherto unsuspected relationships. In later years, when the early prejudices were almost outworn, the slanders lived down, and his attitude and methods better understood, the strain of the long struggle with obstinate ignorance and unreason began to betray itself in his loss of self-restraint and his irascibility of temper, and it seems to have been convincingly felt that he would prove a risky if not impossible colleague. Embitterment and despair are the common recompense of the 376 ENGLISH PROSE enthusiast. Rarely do men engage hotly, as Burke engaged, against the eidola of the den and of the market place, the follies, prejudices, animosities that sway society, and none the less pre- serve their souls in patience. In the end Burke's patience gave way. The events that preceded the Revolution in France which kindled in so many minds the hope that the great day of freedom was at hand, had for him only significance of threatening omen, but it was his heart rather than his head that first took alarm. Much has been said and written of his attitude in this great crisis ; two things are indisputable. He was not complete master of the facts, but he put his finger with instant prescience upon the weaknesses, that afterwards broadened into failure, of the revolutionary theories ; and however true it may be that the wrongs and injustices of the confiscations and massacres loomed larger before the eye of his imagination than the wrongs and injustices that inflamed the spirit and forged the weapons of revolt, Burke's allegiance was never transferred from one set of principles to another. At no period of his life could he have brooked a divorce between liberty and justice ; he saw in the existing institutions of society the collective wisdom of ages ; to him it seemed that if a choice were to be made between tyranny and anarchy, tyranny was preferable, and that peace was more than truth itself save when truth were demonstrated beyond the yea and nay of controversy. Perhaps with all its breadth and depth there is no philosophy, whether of the state or of private life, at once so human, and so manly as Burke's ; so free from affectation, so reasonable and practical ; and all this because it rests upon no abstract theory, buttressed by ingenious logic, but is rather a natural growth that has e\erywhere its roots deep struck in the soil of experience of human passion, human weakness, and human power. It was natural in one whose lifework had been the construction of a system of political faith devoted to the honour of a slow-evolving and sure-footed freedom sprung from historic tradi- tion and the sanctity of established order, — it was natural and consistent in such a man to read in the signs of the times the handwriting upon the wall prophetic of the dissolution of all ancient and sacred institutions and the ruin of the splendid fabric, slowly woven in the loom of ages, of an ordered society. Yet Burke himself at the last might hardly have cared to deny that the wisdom of his age yielded to that of his confident youth when he said " I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment EDMUND BURKE 377 against a whole people." Until the end of time there can be no other last word in defence of Revolution. How much of the artist dwelt in the brain of the statesman the record of his indefatig'able toil in composition is witness. In answer to the assertion that he is the greatest of English prose writers it is often said that his style lacks restraint and the dignity that accompanies reserve. His temper rather than any lack of taste made him too eager-voiced ; he grasped at much that did not fall naturally within his reach, lost cliiarosctiro in unrelieved emphasis, and attained the massive at the expense of the beautiful. But genius like Burke's declines the selective economy of weaker artists compelled to a choice of material easily handled. He swept into his service all that his excursive imagination took cap- tive, and frequently marshals an unequal array of arguments. But if his touch fails at times to transmute the baser metal into gold, amid such profusion as his we cannot feel ourselves the poorer. The dawn of Burke's day of real power was delayed, but its sun is not likely to set while men study the problems of govern- ment. In life he was a knig-ht-errant more renowned for prowess than for fortune, but he so ennobled the art, so enriched the philosophy of politics by a treatment at once detailed and com- prehensive, at once critical and inspiring', that his life and writings together form the noblest and most complete 07-gano7t of states- manship ever left to the world. It is his supreme distinction in an era of intense party feeling to have lifted eveiy question he touched into a higher sphere of intellectual and moral contemplation, to have broadened particular issues, and linked them with the most universal principles of human thought, to have balanced and adjusted the relations of abstract political speculation and practical statecraft, to have shown that debate may be made to yield other than provincial and temporary wisdom, and that philosophy may mingle with the affairs of parties. His influence, take it as you will, is wholly sanative. It is not resident in the lucid beauty of his diction, nor in wealth of illustrative imagery, nor even alone in the thought that gathers strength in its progress from point to point, winding, in Goldsmith's phrase, into its subject like a ser- pent. Burke speaks a word to the imagination while he deals with matters the most familiar, or handles masses of concrete detail, and the music of his speech has its secret springs in the moral ardour and swift sympathies of his nature. There goes 378 ENGLISH PROSE forth from his writings a healing virtue whose magic calls to mind the fine boast of Antiphon, that he would cure diseases of the mind with words. His political art dealt neither in drugs nor charms for the people, but only in such spiritual simples as bring the soul into harmony with the beauty of reason. W. Macneile Dixon. THE TRUE POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN TOWARDS HER AMERICAN COLONIES I AM sensible, sir, that all which I have asserted in my detail is admitted in the gross, but that quite a different conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentlemen say, is a noble object. It is an object well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people is the best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those who understand the military art will of course have some predilection for it. Those who wield the thunder of the state may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more in favour of prudent management than of force ; considering force not as an odious, but a feeble instrument, for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connexion with us. First, sir, permit me to observe, that the use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again ; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered. My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without resource ; for, conciliation failing, force remains ; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness ; but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence. A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very endeavours to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing you recover ; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest. Nothing less will content me, than whole America. I do not choose to consume its strength along t> 38o ENGLISH PROSE with our own ; because in all parts it is the British strength that I consume. I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict ; still less in the midst of it. I may escape ; but I can make no insurance against such an event. Let me add, that I do not choose wholly to break the American spirit ; because it is the spirit that has made the country. Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favour of force as an instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their growth and their utility has been owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient indulgence has been said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so. But we know, if feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt to mend it ; and our sin far more salutary than our penitence. These, sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion of untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But there is still behind a third considera- tion concerning this object, which serves to determine my opinion on the sort of policy which ought to be pursued in the manage- ment of America, even more than its population and commerce, I mean its temper and character. In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole ; and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people of the earth ; and this from a great variety of powerful causes, which, to understand the true temper of their minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely. First, the people of the colonies are descendants of English- men. England, sir, is a nation, which still I hope respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant, and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object ; and every nation has EDMUND BURKE 381 formed to itself some favourite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know, sir, that the great contests for freedom, in this country were from the earhest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exercised ; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of the English constitution, to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove, that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments, and blind usages, to reside in a certain body called a House of Commons. They went much further ; they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons, as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. The colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, those ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe, or might be endangered in twenty other particulars, without their being much pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse ; and as they found that beat they thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or wrong in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy indeed to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those general arguments ; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common principles. They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular in a high degree ; some are merely popular ; in all, 382 ENGLISH PROSE the popular representative is the most weighty ; and this share of the people in their ordinary government never fails to inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from what- ever tends to deprive them of their chief importance. If anything were wanting to this necessaiy operation of the form of government, religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or impaired ; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protestants ; and of that kind which is most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not think sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches, from all that looks like absolute government, is so much to be sought in their religious tenets, as in their history-. Everyone knows that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the governments where it prevails ; that it has generally gone hand in hand with them, and received great favour and every kind of support from authority. The Church of England too was formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular government. But the dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world ; and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and un- remitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance ; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces ; where the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more than a private sect, not compos- ing most probably the tenth of the people. The colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants was highest of all ; and even that stream of foreigners, which has been constantly flowing into these colonies, has for the greatest part been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several countries, and have brought with them a temper and character far from alien to that of the people with whom they mixed. EDMUND BURKE 383 Sir, I can perceive by their manner, that some gentlemen object to the latitude of this description ; because in the southern colonies the Church of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment. It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these colonies, which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the north- ward. It is, that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free, are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it ; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so ; and these people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty, than those to the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths ; such were our Gothic ancestors ; such in our days were the Poles ; and such will be all masters of slaves, who are not slaves them- selves. In such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. Permit me, sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profes- sion itself is numerous and powerful ; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Comment- aries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states 384 ENGLISH PROSE that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law ; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say, that this know- ledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of the legis- lature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honourable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animad- version, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honours and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abcunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance ; here they anticipate the evil and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance ; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze. The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution ; and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea. But there a power steps in, that limits the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, " So far shalt thou go, and no farther." Who are you, that should fret and rage, and bite the chains of nature ? — Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive empire ; and it happens in all the forms into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Curdistan, as he governs Thrace ; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers, which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism EDMUND BURKE 385 itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all ; and the whole of the force and vigour of his author- ity in his centre is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain in her provinces, is, perhaps, not so well obeyed as you in yours. She complies too ; she submits ; she watches times. This is the immutable condition, the eternal law, of extensive and detached empire. Then, sir, from these six capital sources ; of descent ; of form of government ; of religion in the northern provinces ; of manners in the southern ; of education ; of the remoteness of situation from the first mover of government ; from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your colonies, and increased with the increase of their wealth ; a spirit, that unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England, which, however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume us. (From Speech on Conciliaiioii ivith Amenca.) DEFENCE OF HIS POLITICAL CONDUCT I MUST fairly tell you, that so far as my principles are concerned, principles that I hope will only depart with my last breath, I have no idea of a liberty unconnected with honesty and justice Nor do I believe that any good constitutions of government, or of freedom, can find it necessary for their security to doom any part of the people to a permanent slavery. Such a constitution of freedom, if such can be, is in effect no more than another name for the tyranny of the strongest faction ; and factions in republics have been, and are, full as capable as monarchs of the most cruel oppression and injustice. It is but too true, that the love, and even the very idea, of genuine liberty is extremely rare. It is but too true, that there are many whose whole scheme of freedom is made up of pride, perverseness, and insolence. They feel themselves in a state of thraldom, they imagine that their souls are cooped up and cabined in, unless they have some man, or some body of men, dependent on their mercy. This desire of having some one below them descends to those who are the very VOL. IV 2 C 386 ENGLISH PROSE lowest of all — and a Protestant cobbler, debased by his poverty, but exalted by his share of the ruling church, feels a pride in knowing it is by his generosity alone, that the peer, whose footman's instep he measures, is able to keep his chaplain from a jail. This disposition is the true source of the passion, which many men, in very humble life, have taken to the American war. Our subjects in America, our colonies, our dependants. This lust of party-power is the liberty they hunger and thirst for, and this syren song of ambition has charmed ears that one would have thought were never organised to that sort of music. This way of proscribing the citizens by denominations and general descriptions, dignified by the name of reason of state, and security for constitutions and commonwealths, is nothing better at bottom, than the miserable invention of an ungenerous ambition, which would fain hold the sacred trust of power, without any of the virtues or any of the energies that give a title to it ; a receipt of policy, made up of a detestable compound of malice, cowardice, and sloth. They would govern men against their will ; but in that government they would be discharged from the exercise of vigilance, providence, and fortitude ; and therefore, that they may sleep on their watch, they consent to take some one division of the society into partnership of the tyranny over the rest. But let government, in what form it may be, comprehend the whole in its justice, and restrain the suspicious by its vigilance ; let it keep watch and ward ; let it discover by its sagacity, and punish by its firmness, all delinquency against its power, whenever delinquency exists in the overt acts ; and then it will be as safe as ever God and nature intended it should be. Crimes are the acts of individuals and not of denominations ; and therefore arbitrarily to class men under general descriptions, in order to proscribe and punish them in the lump for a presumed delinquency, of which perhaps but a part, perhaps none at all, are guilty, is indeed a compendious method, and saves a world of trouble about proof; but such a method, instead of being law, is an act of unnatural rebellion against the legal dominion of reason and justice ; and this vice, in any constitution that entertains it, at one time or other will certainly bring on its ruin. We are told that this is not a religious persecution, and its abettors are loud in disclaiming all severities on account of conscience. Very fine indeed ! Then let it be so ; they are not EDMUND BURKE 387 persecutors, they are only tyrants. With all my heart. I am perfectly indifferent concerning the pretext on which we torment one another, or whether it be for the constitution of the Church of England, or for the constitution of the state of England that people choose to make their fellow -creatures wretched. When we were sent into a place of authority, you that sent us had yourselves but one commission to give. You could give us none to wrong or oppress, or even to suffer any kind of oppression or wrong, on any grounds whatsoever : not on political, as in the affairs of America ; not on commercial, as in those of Ireland ; not in civil, as in the laws for debt ; not in religious, as in the statutes against Protestant or Catholic dissenters. The diversified but connected fabric of universal justice is well cramped and bolted together in all its parts ; and depend upon it, I have never employed, and I never shall employ, any engine of power which may come into my hands to wrench it asunder. All shall stand, if I can help it, and all shall stand connected. After all, to complete this work, much remains to be done ; much in the East, much in the West. But, great as the work is, if our will be ready, our powers are not deficient. Since you have suffered me to trouble you so much on this subject, permit me, gentlemen, to detain you a little longer. I am indeed most solicitous to give you perfect satisfaction. I find there are some of a better and softer nature than the persons with whom I had supposed myself in debate, who neither think ili of the act of relief, nor by any means desire the repeal ; yet who, not accusing but lamenting what was done, on account of the consequences, have frequently expressed their wish, that the late act had never been made. Some of this description, and persons of worth, I have met with in this city. They conceive that the prejudices, whatever they might be, of a large part of the people, ought not to have been shocked, that their opinions ought to have been previously taken, and much attended to ; and that thereby the late horrid scenes might have been prevented. I confess, my notions are widely different ; and I never was less sorry for any action of my life. I like the bill the better on account of the events of all kinds that followed it. It relieved the real sufferers ; it strengthened the state ; and by the disorders that ensued, we had clear evidence that there lurked a temper some- where, which ought not to be fostered by the laws. No ill consequences whatever could be attributed to the act itself. We 388 ENGLISH PROSE knew beforehand, or we were poorly instructed, that toleration is odious to the intolerant, freedom to oppressors, property to robbers, and all kinds and degrees of prosperity to the envious. We knew that all these kinds of men would gladly gratify their evil dispositions under the sanction of law and religion, if they could : if they could not, yet, to make way to their objects, they would do their utmost to subvert all religion and all law. This we certainly knew. But knowing this, is there any reason, because thieves break in and steal, and thus bring- detriment to you, and draw ruin on themselves, that I am to be sorry that you are in possession of shops, and of warehouses, and of wholesome laws to protect them ? Are you to build no houses because desperate men may pull them down upon their own heads ? Or, if a malignant wretch will cut his own throat because he sees you give alms to the necessitous and deserving, shall his destruction be attributed to your charity, and not to his own deplorable madness ? If we repent of our good actions, what, I pray you, is left for our faults and follies ? It is not the beneficence of the laws, it is the unnatural temper which beneficence can fret and sour, that is to be lamented. It is this temper which, by all rational means, ought to be sweetened and corrected. If fro ward men should refuse this cure, can they vitiate anything but themselves ? Does evil so react upon good, as not only to retard its motion, but to change its nature ? If it can so operate, then good men will always be in the power of the bad ; and virtue by a dreadful reverse of order must lie under perpetual subjection and bondage to vice. As to the opinion of the people, which some think, in such cases, to be implicitly obeyed ; nearly two years' tranquillity, which followed the act, and its instant imitation in Ireland, proved abundantly that the late horrible spirit was, in a great measure, the effect of insidious art, and perverse industry, and gross misrepresentation. But suppose that the dislike had been much more deliberate, and much more general than I am persuaded it was. — When we know, that the opinions of even the greatest multitudes are the standard of rectitude, I shall think myself to make those opinions the masters of my conscience. But if it may be doubted whether Omnipotence itself is competent to alter the essential constitution of right and wrong, sure I am, that such things as they and I are possessed of no such power. No man carries further than I do the policy of making govern- EDMUND BURKE 389 ment pleasing to the people. But the widest range of this politic complaisance is confined within the limits of justice. I would not only consult the interest of the people, but I would cheerfully gratify their humours. We are all a sort of children that must be soothed and managed. I think I am not austere or formal in my nature. I would bear, I would even myself play my part in, any innocent buffooneries to divert them. But I never will act the tyrant for their amusement. If they will mix malice in their sports, I shall never consent to throw them any living', sentient creature whatsoever, no, not so much as a kitling, to torment. " But if I profess all this impolitic stubbornness I may chance never to be elected into parliament." It is certainly not pleasing to be put out of the public service. But I wish to be a member of parliament to have my share of doing good and resisting evil. It would therefore be absurd to renounce my objects in order to obtain my seat. I deceive myself indeed most grossly, if I had not much rather pass the remainder of my life hidden in the recesses of the deepest obscurity, feeding my mind even with the visions and imaginations of such things, than to be placed on the most splendid throne of the universe, tantalized with a denial of the practice of all which can make the greatest situation any other than the greatest curse. Gentlemen, I have had my day. I can never sufficiently express my gratitude to you for having set me in a place, wherein I could lend the slightest help to great and laudable designs. If I have had my share in any measure giving quiet to private property and private conscience ; if by my vote I have aided in securing to families the best possession, peace ; if I have joined in reconciling kings to their subjects, and subjects to their prince ; if I have assisted to loosen the foreign holdings of the citizen, and taught him to look for his protection to the laws of his country, and for his comfort to the goodwill of his countrymen ; — if I have thus taken my part with the best of men in the best of their actions, I can shut the book ; — I might wish to read a page or two more, but this is enough for my measure. I have not lived in vain. And now, gentlemen, on this serious day, when I come as it were, to make up my account with you, let me take to myself some degree of honest pride on the nature of the charges that are against me. I do not here stand before you accused of venality, or of neglect of duty. It is not said that in the long period of my service, I have in a single instance sacrificed the 390 ENGLISH PROSE slightest of your interests to my ambition, or to my fortune. It is not alleged, that to gratify any anger or revenge of my own, or of my party, I have had a share in wronging or oppressing any description of men or any one man in any description. No ! the charges against me are all of one kind, that I have pushed the principles of general justice and benevolence too far ; further than a cautious policy would warrant ; and further than the opinions of many would go along with me. In every accident which may happen through life, in pain, in sorrow, in depression, and distress — I will call to mind this accusation and be comforted. (From Speech at Ih'istol ■prcinoiis to tJic Elcciio/i, 1780.) LIBERTY I FLATTER myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that society, be who he will ; and perhaps I have given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause, in the whole course of my public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do, to any other nation. But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions and human concerns, on a simple view of the object as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good ; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without incjuiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered ? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom ? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty ? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, on the recovery of his natural rights ? This would be to act over again the scene EDMUND BURKE 391 of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work ; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose ; but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver ; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government ; with public force ; with the discipline and obedience of armies ; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue ; with morality and religion ; with the solidity of property ; with peace and order ; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too ; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please ; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate insulated private men ; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of power ; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions, they have little or no experience, and in situa- tions where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real movers. (From Rcfiec(io7is on the Revolution ?';/ France.^ THE MISTAKEN METHODS, AND THE RESULTING CRIMES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION You will observe, that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity, as an 392 ENGLISH PROSE estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means our constitution preserves an unity in so great a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown ; an inherit- able peerage ; and an house of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors. This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection ; or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity who never look back to their ancestors. Besides, the people of England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission ; without at all excluding a principle of government. It leaves acquisition free ; but it secures what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a state proceeding on these maxims, are locked fast as in a sort of family settlement ; grasped as in a kind of mortmain for ever. By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, are handed down, to us and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts ; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new ; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood ; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties ; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections ; keeping inseparable, EDMUND BURKE 393 and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars. Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful instincts, to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived several other, and those no small benefits, from considering our liberties in the light of an inherit- ance. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized fore- fathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It has its galleries of portraits ; its monumental inscriptions ; its records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which nature teaches us to revere individual men ; on account of their age ; and on account of those from whom they are descended. All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories and magazines of our rights and privileges. You might, if you pleased have profited of our example, and have given to your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. Your privileges, though discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your constitution, it is true, whilst you were out of possession, suffered waste and dilapidation ; but you possessed in some parts the walls, and in all the foundations, of a noble and venerable castle. You might have repaired those walls ; you might have built on those old foundations. Your constitution was suspended before it was perfected ; but you had the elements of a constitution very nearly as good as could be wished. In your old states you possessed that variety of parts corresponding with the various descriptions of which your community was happily composed ; you had all that combination, and all that opposition of interests, you had that action and counteraction, 394 ENGLISH PROSE which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe. These opposed and conflicting interests, which you considered as so great a blemish in your old and in our present constitution, interpose a salutary check to all precipitate resolutions ; they render deliberation a matter not of choice, but of necessity ; they make all change a subject of compromise, which naturally begets moderation ; they produce temperaments preventing' the sore evil of harsh, crude, unqualified refomiations ; and rendering all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the many, for ever impracticable. Through that diversity of members and interests, general liberty had as many securities as there were separate views in the several orders ; whilst by pressing down the whole by the weight of a real monarchy, the separate parts would have been prevented from warping and starting from their allotted places. You had all these advantages in your ancient states ; but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you. You set up your trade without a capital. If the last generations of your country appeared without much lustre in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realised in them a standard of virtue and wisdom, beyond the vulgar practice of the hour ; and you have risen with the example to whose imitation you aspired. Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taug^ht to respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a nation of low-born servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789. In order to furnish, at the expense of your honour, an excuse to your apologists here for several enormities of yours, you would not have been content to be represented as a gang of Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of bondage, and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse of the liberty to which you were not accustomed, and ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend, have been wiser to have you thought, what I, for one, always thought you, a generous and gallant nation, long misled to your disadvantage by your high and romantic sentiments of fidelity, honour, and EDMUND BURKE 395 loyalty ; that events had been unfavourable to you, but that you were not enslaved through any illiberal or servile disposition ; that in your most devoted submission you were actuated by a principle of public spirit, and that it was your country you worshipped, in the person of your king ? Had you made it to be understood, that in the delusion of this amiable error you had gone further than your wise ancestors ; that you were resolved to resume your ancient privileges, whilst you preserved the spirit of your ancient and your recent loyalty and honour ; or, if diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbours in this land, who had kept alive the ancient principles and models of the old common law of Europe meliorated and adapted to its present state — by following wise examples you would have given new examples of wisdom to the world. You would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shamed despotism from the earth, by showing that freedom was not only reconcileable but as, when well disciplined it is, auxiliary to law. You would have had an unoppressive but a productive revenue. You would have had a flourishing commerce to feed it. You would have had a free constitution ; a potent monarchy ; a disciplined army ; a reformed and venerated clergy ; a mitigated but spirited nobility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay it ; you would have had a liberal order of commons, to emulate and to recruit that nobility ; you would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognise the happiness that is to be found by virtue in all conditions ; in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction, which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality, which it never can remove ; and which the order of civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in a humble state, as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy career of felicity and glory laid open to you, beyond anything recorded in the history of the world ; but you have shown that difficulty is good for man. Compute your gains : see what is got by those extravagant 396 ENGLISH PROSE and presumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to despise all their predecessors, and all their contemporaries, and even to despise themselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable. By following those false lights, France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings. France has bought poverty by crime ! France has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest ; but she has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her virtue. All other nations have begun the fabric of a new government, or the reformation of an old, by establishing originally, or by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or other of religion. All other people have laid the foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and a system of a more austere and masculine morality. France when she let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the licence of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions and practices ; and has extended through all ranks of life, as if she were com- municating some privilege, or laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy corruptions that usually were the disease of wealth and power. This is one of the new principles of equality in France. France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced the tone of lenient council in the cabinets of princes, and disarmed it of its most potent topics. She has sanctified the dark suspicious maxims of tyrannous distrust ; and taught kings to tremble at (what will hereafter be called) the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider those who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters of their thrones ; as traitors who aim at their destruction, by leading their easy good nature, under specious pretences, to admit combinations of bold and faithless men into a participation of their power. This alone, if there were nothing else, is an irreparable calamity to you and to mankind. Remember that your parliament of Paris told your king, that in calling the states together, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal excess of their zeal in providing for the support of the throne. It is right that these men should hide their heads. It is right that they should bear their part in the ruin which their counsel has brought on their sovereign and their country. Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep ; to encourage it rashly to engage EDMUND BURKE 397 in perilous adventures of untried policy ; to neglect those pro- visions, preparations, and precautions, which distinguish benevo- lence from imbecility ; and without which no man can answer for the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want of these, they have seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison. They have seen the French rebel against a mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than ever any people has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most sanguinary tyrant. Their resistance was made to concession ; their revolt was from protec- tion ; their blow was aimed at a hand holding out graces, favours, and immunities. This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They have found their punishment in their success. Laws overturned ; tribunals subverted ; industry without vigour ; commerce expiring ; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished ; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved ; civil and military anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom ; everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bank- ruptcy the consecjuence ; and to crown all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud, and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognised species that represent the lasting conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when the principle of property, whose creatures and representatives they are, was systematically subverted. Were all these dreadful things necessary ? Were they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle of determined patriots, compelled to wade through blood and tumult, to the quiet shore of a tranquil and prosperous liberty ? No ! nothing like it. The fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation of civil war ; they are the sad, but instructive, monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because unresisted and irresistible, authority. The persons who have thus squandered away the precious treasure of their crimes, the persons who have made this prodigal and wild waste of public evils (the last stake reserved for the ultimate ransom of the state) have met in their progress with 598 ENGLISH PROSE little, or rather with no opposition at all. Their whole march was more like a triumphal procession than the progress of a war. Their pioneers have yone before them, and demolished and laid everything level at their feet. Not one drop of their blood have they shed in the cause of the country they have ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projects of greater consequence than their shoe-buckles, whilst they were imprisoning their king, murdering their fellow citizens, and bathing in tears, and plunging in poverty and distress, thousands of worthy men and worthy families. Their cruelty has not even been the base result of fear. It has been the effect of their sense of perfect safety, in author- izing treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burnings throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all was plain from the beginning. (From the Same.) THE RIGHTS OF MAN Far am I from denying in theory ; full as far is my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold), the real rights of man. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence ; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule ; they have a right to do justice ; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry ; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents ; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring ; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself ; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society ; with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour. In this partnership all men have equal rights ; but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership, has as good a right to it, as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger EDMUND BURKE 399 proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock ; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the manage- ment of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society ; for I have in my con- templation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention. If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things ; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence .-* Rights which are absolutely repugnant to it ? One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is that no man should be judge in his own cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defence, the first law of nature. Man cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it. Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it ; and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection ; but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything, they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves ; and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to 400 ENGLISH PROSE that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule ; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle. The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or to medicine .'' The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics. The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science ; because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate ; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation ; and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens ; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being therefore so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the EDMUND BURKE 401 common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes. These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate ; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity ; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of con- trivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer its single end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should be imperfectly and anomal- ously answered, than that, while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected, or perhaps materially injured, by the over care of a favourite member. The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes : and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The rights of men in governments are their advantages ; and these are often in balances between differences of good ; in compromises, sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle ; adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally and not meta- physically or mathematically, true moral denominations. By these theorists the right of the people is almost always sophistically confounded with their power. The body of the community, whenever it can come to act, can meet with no effectual resistance ; but till power and right are the same, the whole body of them has no right inconsistent with virtue, and the first of all virtues, prudence. Men have no right to what is VOL. IV 2 D 402 ENGLISH PROSE not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit ; for though a pleasant writer said, Liceat perire poetis, when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have leaped into the flames of a volcanic revolution, Ardentcm frigidus u-E/nain insiluit, I consider such a frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic license than as one of the franchises of Parnassus ; and whether he were poet, or divine, or politician, that chose to exercise this kind of right, I think that more wise, because more charitable thoughts would urge me rather to save the man, than to preserve his brazen slippers as the monuments of his folly. (From the Same.) THE END OF THE AGE OF CHIVALRY It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles ; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in ; glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh ! what a revolution ! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall ! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom ; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded ; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud sub- mission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an e.xalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiments and heroic enterprise is gone ! It is gone that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, EDMUND BURKE 403 and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. (From the Same.) THE TENDENCY OF DEMOCRACY TO EXCESS IN THE EXERCISE, AND IN THE DESIRE, OF POWER I DO not wish to enter very much at large into the discussions which diverge and ramify in all ways from this productive subject. But there is one topic upon which t hope I shall be excused in going a little beyond my design. The factions, now so busy amongst us, in order to divest men of all love of their country, and to remove from their minds all duty with regard to the state, endeavour to propagate an opinion, that the people, in forming their commonwealth, have by no means parted with their power over it. This is an impregnable citadel, to which these gentlemen retreat whenever they are pushed by the battery of laws and usages, and positive conventions. Indeed it is such and of so great force that all they have done, in defending their outworks, is so much time and labour thrown away. Discuss any of their schemes ; their answer is — It is the act of the people, and that is sufficient. Are we to deny to a majority of the people the right of altering even the whole frame of their society, if such should be their pleasure ? They may change it, say they, from a monarchy to a republic to-day, and to-morrow back again from a republic to a monarchy ; and so backward and forward as often as they like. They are masters of the commonwealth ; because in substance they are themselves the commonwealth. The French Revolution, say they, was the act of the majority of the people ; and if the majority of any other people, the people of England for instance, wish to make the same change, they have the same right. Just the same undoubtedly. That is, none at all. Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obhgation. The constitution of a country being once settled upon some compact, tacit or expressed, there is no power existing of force to alter it, without the breach of the covenant, or the consent of all the parties. Such is the nature of a contract. And the votes of a majority of the people, whatever their infamous flatterers may teach in order to corrupt their minds, cannot alter 404 ENGLISH PROSE the moral any more tlian they can alter the physical essence of things. The people are not to be taught to think lightly of their engagements to their governors ; else they teach governors to think lightly of their engagements towards them. In that kind of game in the end the people are sure to be the losers. To flatter them into a contempt of faith, truth, and justice, is to ruin them ; for in these virtues consists their whole safety. To flatter any man, or any part of mankind, in any description, by asserting that in engagements he or they are free whilst any other human creature is bound, is ultimately to vest the rule of morality in the pleasure of those who ought to be rigidly submitted to it ; to subject the sovereign reason of the world to the caprices of weak and giddy men. But, as no one of us men can dispense with public or private faith, or with any other tie of moral obligation, so neither can any number of us. The number engaged in crimes, instead of turning them into laudable acts, only augments the quantity and intensity of the guilt. I am well aware that men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told of their duty. This is of course because every duty is a limitation of some power. Indeed arbitrary power is so much to the depraved taste of the vulgar, of the vulgar of every description, that almost all the dissensions, which lacerate the commonwealth, are not concerning the manner in which it is to be exercised, but con- cerning the hands in which it is to be placed. Somewhere they are resolved to have it. Whether they desire it to be vested in the many or the few, depends with most men upon the chance which they imagine they themselves may have of partaking in the exercise of the arbitrary sway, in the one mode or the other. It is not necessary to teach men to thirst after power. But it is veiy expedient that by moral instruction they should be taug^ht, and by their civil constitutions they should be compelled, to put many restrictions upon the immoderate exercise of it, and the inordinate desire. The best method of obtaining these two great points forms the important, but at the same time the difficult, problem to the true statesman. He thinks of the place in which political power is to be lodged, with no other attention, than as it may render the more or less practicable its salutary restraint, and its prudent direction. For this I'eason no legislator, at any period of the world, has willingly placed the seat of active power in the hands of the multitude ; because there it admits of no control, no EDMUND BURKE 405 regulation, no steady direction whatsoever. The people are the natural control on authority ; but to exercise and to control together is contradictory and impossible. As the exorbitant exercise of power cannot, under popular sway, be effectually restrained, the other great object of political arrangement, the means of abating an excessive desire of it, is in such a state still worse provided for. The democratic common- wealth is the foodful nurse of ambition. Under the other fonns it meets with many restraints. Whenever, in states which have a democratic basis, the legislators have endeavoured to restraints upon ambition, their methods were as violent, as in the end they were ineffectual : as violent indeed as any the most jealous despotism could invent. The ostracism could not very long save itself, and much less the state which it was meant to guard, from the attempts of ambition, one of the natural, inbred, incurable, distempers of a powerful democracy. (From An Appeal from the Nciu to the Old Whigs.) THE RIGHTS OF THE MAJORITY In a state of rude nature there is no such thing as a people. A number of men in themselves have no collective capacity. The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation. It is wholly artificial ; and made, like all other legal fictions, by common agreement. What the particular nature of that agreement was, is collected from the form into which the particular society has been cast. Any other is not their covenant. When men, there- fore, break up the original compact or agreement which gives its corporate form and capacity to a state, they are no longer a people ; they have no longer a corporate existence ; they have no longer a legal, coactive force to bind within, nor a claim to be recognised abroad. They are a number of vag-ue, loose indi- viduals, and nothing more. With them all is to begin again. Alas ! they little know how many a weary step is to be taken before they can form themselves into a mass which has a true politic personality. We hear much from men, who have not acquired their hardi- ness of assertion from the profundity of their thinking, about the omnipotence of a majority, in such a dissolution of an ancient society as hath taken place in France. But amongst men so 4o6 ENGLISH PROSE disbanded, there can be no such thing as majority or minority ; or power in any one person to bind another. The power of acting by a majority, which the gentlemen theorists seem to assume so readily, after they have violated the contract out of which it has arisen (if at all it existed), must be grounded on two assumptions ; first, that of an incorporation produced by un- animity ; and secondly, an unanimous agreement, that the act of a mere majority (say of one) shall pass with them and with others as the act of the whole. We are so little affected by things which are habitual, that we consider this idea of the decision of a majority as if it were a law of our original nature ; but such constructive whole, residing in a part only, is one of the most violent fictions of positive law, that ever has been, or can be, made on the principles of artificial incorporation. Out of civil society nature knows nothing of it ; nor are men, even when arranged according to civil order, other- wise than by very long training, brought at all to submit to it. The mind is brought far more easily to acquiesce in the proceed- ings of one man, or a few, who act under a general procuration for the state, than in the vote of a victorious majority in councils, in which every man has his share in the deliberation. For there the beaten party are exasperated and soured by the previous con- tention, and mortified by the conclusive defeat. This mode of decision, where wills may be so nearly equal, where, according to circumstances, the smaller number may be the stronger force, and where apparent reason may be all upon one side, and on the other little else than impetuous appetite ; all this must be the result of a very particular and special convention, confirmed afterwards by long habits of obedience, by a sort of discipline in society, and by a strong hand, vested with stationary, permanent power, to enforce this sort of constructive general will. What organ is it that shall declare the corporate mind is so much a matter of positive arrangement, that several states, for the validity of several of their acts, have required a proportion of voices much greater than that of a mere majority. These pro- portions are so entirely governed by convention, that in some cases the minority decides. The laws in many countries to con- demn require more than a mere majority ; less than an equal number to acquit. In our judicial trials we require unanimity either to condemn or to absolve. In some incorporations one man speaks for the whole ; in others, a few. Until the other day, in EDMUND BURKE 407 the constitution of Poland, unanimity was required to give validity to any act of their great national council or diet. This approaches much more nearly to rude nature than the institutions of any other country. Such, indeed, eveiy commonwealth must be, without a positive law to recognise in a certain number the will of the entire body. If men dissolve their ancient incorporation, in order to re- generate their community, in that state of things each man has a right, if he pleases, to remain an individual. Any number of individuals, who can agree upon it, have an undoubted right to form themselves into a state apart, and wholly independent. If any of these is forced into the fellowship of another, this is con- quest, not compact. On every principle, which supposes society to be in virtue of a free covenant, this compulsive incorporation must be null and void. As a people can have no right to a corporate capacity without universal consent, so neither have they a right to hold exclusively any lands in the name and title of a corporation. On the scheme of the present rulers in our neighbouring country, regenerated as they are, they have no more right to the territory called France than I have. I have a right to pitch my tent in any unoccupied place I can find for it ; and I may apply to my own maintenance any part of their unoccupied soil. I may purchase the house or vineyard of any individual proprietor who refuses his consent (and most proprietors have, as far as they dared, refused it) to the new incorporation. I stand in his independent place. Whose are these insolent men calling themselves the French nation, that would monopohze this fair domain of nature ? Is it because they speak a certain jargon ? Is it their mode of chattering, to me unintelligible, that forms their title to my land ? Who are they who claim by prescription and descent from certain gangs of banditti called Franks, and Burgundians, and Visigoths, of whom I may have never heard, and ninety -nine out of an hundred of themselves certainly never have heard ; whilst at the very time they tell me, that prescription and long possession form no title to property ? Who are they that presume to assert that the land which I purchased of the individual, a natural person, and not a fiction of state, belongs to them, who in the very capacity in which they make their claim can exist only as an imaginary being, and in virtue of the very prescription which they reject and disown 1 This mode of arguing might be pushed 4o8 ENGLISH PROSE into all the detail, so as to leave no sort of doubt, that on their principles and on the sort of footing on which they have thought proper to place themselves, the crowd of men, on the other side of the channel, who have the impudence to call themselves a people, can never be the lawful, exclusive possessors of the soil. By what they call reasoning without prejudice, they leave not one stone upon another in the fabric of human society. They sub- vert all the authority which they hold, as well as all that which they have destroyed. As in the abstract, it is perfectly clear, that, out of a state of civil society, majority and minority are relations which can have no existence ; and that, in civil society, its own specific conven- tions in each corporation determine what it is that constitutes the people, so as to make their act the signification of the general will : to come to particulars, it is equally clear, that neither in France nor in England has the original or any subsequent compact of the state, expressed or implied, constituted a majority of men, told by the head, to be the acting people of their several communities. And I see as little of policy or utility, as there is of right, in laying down a principle that a majority of men told by the head are to be considered as the people, and that as such their will is to be law. What policy can there be found in arrangements made in defiance of every political principle ? To enable men to act with the weight and character of a people, and to answer the ends for which they are incorporated into that capacity, we must suppose them (by means immediate or conse- quential) to be in that state of habitual social discipline, in which the wiser, the more expert, and the more opulent conduct, and by conducting enlighten and protect, the weaker, the less knowing, and the less provided with the goods of fortune. When the multitude are not under this discipline, they can scarcely be said to be in civil society. Give once a certain constitution of things, which produces a variety of conditions and circumstances in a state, and there is in nature and reason a principle which, for their own benefit, postpones, not the interest, but the judgment of those who are numero plures, to those who are viriute et hotiore majores. Numbers in a state (supposing, which is not the case in France, that a state does exist) are always of consideration — but they are not the whole consideration. It is in things more serious than a play that it may be truly said satis est cqicitem niihi plaudere. EDMUND BURKE 409 A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential integrant part of any large body rightly constituted. It is formed out of a class of legitimate presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual truths. To be bred in a place of estimation ; to see nothing low and sordid from one's infancy ; to be taught to respect oneself; to be habituated to the censorial inspection of the public eye ; to look early to public opinion ; to stand upon such elevated ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the widespread and infinitely diversified combinations of men and affairs in a large society ; to have leisure to read, to reflect, to converse ; to be enabled to draw the court and attention of the wise and learned wherever they are to be found ; — to be habitu- ated in armies to command and to obey ; to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honour and duty ; to be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance, foresight, and circumspection, in a state of things in which no fault is committed with impunity, and the slightest mistakes draw on the most ruinous consequences — to be led to a guarded and regulated conduct, from a sense that you are considered as an instructor of your fellow-citizens in their highest concerns, and that you act as a reconciler between God and man — to be employed as an administrator of law and justice, and to be thereby amongst the first benefactors of mankind — to be a i^rofessor of high science or of liberal and ingenuous art — to be amongst rich traders, who from their success are presumed to have sharp and vigorous understandings, and to possess the virtues of diligence, order, constancy, and regularity, and to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice — these are the circumstances of men, that form what I should call a natural aristocracy, without which there is no nation. The state of civil society, which necessarily generates this aristocracy, is a state of nature ; and much more truly as than a savage and incoherent mode of life. For man is by nature reasonable ; and he is never perfectly in his natural state, but when he is placed where reason may be best cultivated, and most predominates. Art is man's nature. We are as much, at least, in a state of nature in formed manhood, as in immature and help- less infancy. Men, qualified in the manner I have just described form in nature, as she operates in the common modification of society, the leading, guiding, and governing part. It is the soul to the body, without which the man does not exist. To give 4IO ENGLISH PROSE therefore no more importance in the social order to such descrip- tions of men, than that of so many miits, is a horrible usurpation. When great multitudes act together, under that discipline of nature, I recognise the People. I acknowledge something that perhaps equals, and ought always to guide, the sovereignty of convention. In all things the voice of this grand chorus of national harmony ought to have a mighty and decisive influence. But when you disturb this harmony ; when you break up this beautiful order, this array of truth and nature, as well as of habit and prejudice ; when you separate the common sort of men from their proper chieftains, so as to form them into an adverse army, I no longer know that venerable object called the People in such a disbanded race of deserters and vagabonds. For a while they may be terrible indeed ; but in such a manner as wild beasts are terrible. The mind owes to them no sort of submission. They are, as they have always been reputed, rebels. They may lawfully be fought with, and brought under whenever an advantage offers. Those who attempt by outrage and violence to deprive men of any advantage which they hold under the laws, and to destroy the natural order of life, proclaim war against them. (From the Same.) THE DUKE OF BEDFORD'S CENSURE ON THE BOUNTY OF THE CROWN The Duke of Bedford conceives, that he is obliged to call the attention of the House of Peers to his Majesty's grant to me, which he considers as excessive, and out of all bounds. I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, that, whilst his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods ; and the Duke of Bedford may dream ; and as dreams (even his golden dreams) are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach to me, but took the subject-matter from the Crown grants to his own family. This is "the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way of putting things together his Grace is perfectly in the right. The grants to the house of Russell were so enormous, as not only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the Crown. He tumbles EDMUND BURKE 411 about his unwieldy bulk ; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whale- bone, his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers me all over with the spray, — everything of him and about him is from the throne. Is it for him to question the dispensation of the royal favour ? I am really at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the public merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he holds, and these services of mine, on the favourable construction of which I have obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In private life, I have not at all the honour of acquaintance with the noble duke. But I ought to presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly deserves the esteem and love of all who live with him. But, as to public service, why truly it would not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself in rank, in fortune in splendid descent, in youth, strength, or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a parallel between his services and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any public merit of his own to keep alive the idea of the services by which his vast landed pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they are, are original and personal ; his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit, which makes his Grace so very delicate and excep- tious about the merit of all other grantees of the Crown. Had he permitted me to remain in cjuiet, I should have said, " 'Tis his estate ; that's enough. It is his by law ; what have I to do with it or its history ? " He would naturally have said on his side, " 'Tis this man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with very old pensions ; he is an old man with very young pensions, — that's all." Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to compare my little merit with that which obtained from the crown those prodigies of profuse donation, by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious individuals ? I would will- ingly leave him to the herald's college, which the philosophy of the sails culottes (prouder by far than all the Garters, and Norroys, and Clarencieux, and Rouge Dragons, that ever pranced in a procession of what his friends call aristocrats and despots) will abolish with contumely and scorn. These historians, recorders, 412 ENGLISH PROSE and blazoners of virtues and arms, differ wholly from that other description of historians, who never assign any act of politicians to a good motive. These gentle historians, on the contrary, dip their pens in nothing but the milk of human kindness. They seek no further for merit than the preamble of a patent, or the inscription on a tomb. With them every man created a peer is first a hero ready made. They judge of every man's capacity for office by the offices he has filled ; and the more offices the more ability. Every general-officer is with them a Marlborough ; every statesman a Burleigh ; every judge a Murray or a Yorke. They who, alive, were laughed at or pitied by all their acquaintance, make as good a figure as the best of them in the pages of Guillim, Edmondson, and Collins. To these recorders, so full of good nature to the great and prosperous, I would willingly leave the first Baron Russell, and Earl of Bedford, and the merits of his grants. But the aulnager, the weigher, the meter of grants, will not suffer us to acquiesce in the judgment of the prince reigning at the time when they were made. They are never good to those who earn them. Well then ; since the new grantees have war made upon them by the old, and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have always a pleasure in contemplating the heroic origin of their house. The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family raised by being a minion of Henry the Eighth. As there generally is some resemblance of character to create these relations, the favourite was in all likelihood much such another as his master. The first of those immoderate grants was not taken from the ancient demesne of the Crown, but from the recent confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, the favourites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favourite's first grant was from the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on the enormity of the first, was from the plunder of the Church. In truth his Grace is somewhat excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its quantity, but in its kind so different from his own. Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign ; his from Henry the Eighth. Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person EDMUND BURKE 41; of illustrious rank, or in the pillage of any body of unoffending men. His grants were from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the lawful proprietors, with the gibbet at their door. The merit of the grantee whom he derives from was that of being a prompt and greedy instrument of a levelling tyrant, who oppressed all descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on everything that was great and noble. Mine has been, in endeavouring to screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in defending the high and eminent who, in bad times of confiscating princes, confiscating chief governors, or confiscating demagogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy. The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was in giving his hand to the work and partaking the spoil with a prince, who plundered a part of the national church of his time and country. Mine was in defending the whole of the national church of my own time and my own country, and the whole of the national churches of all countries, from the principles and the examples which lead to ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a contempt of all prescriptive titles, thence to the pillage of all property, and thence to universal desolation. The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a favourite and chief adviser to a prince, who left no liberty to their native country. My endeavour was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine was to support with unrelaxing vigilance every right, every privilege, every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more comprehensive country ; and not only to preserve those rights in this chief seat of empire, but in every nation, in eveiy land, in every climate, language, and religion, in the vast domain that is still under the protection, and the larger that was once under the protection of the British Crown. His founder's merits were by arts in which he served his master and made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, and depopulation on his country. Mine were, under a benevolent prince, in promoting the commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom ; in which his Majesty shows an eminent example, who even in his amusements is a patriot, and in hours of leisure an improver of his native soil. 414 ENGLISH PROSE His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised by the arts of a court, and the protection of a Wolsey, to the eminence of a great and potent lord. His merit in that eminence was, by instigating a tyrant to injustice, to provoke a people to rebellion. My merit was to awaken the sober part of the country, that they might put themselves on their guard against any one potent lord, or any greater number of potent lords, or any combination of great leading men of any sort, if ever they should attempt to proceed in the same courses, but in the reverse order ; that is by instigating a corrupted populace to rebellion, and, through that rebellion, introducing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny which his Grace's ancestor supported, and of which he profited in the manner we behold in the despotism of Henry the Eighth. The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace's house was that of being concerned as a counsellor of state in advising, and in his person executing, the conditions of a dishonourable peace with France ; the surrendering the fortress of Boulogne, then our out-guai-d on the continent. I5y that surrender Calais, the key of France, and the bridle in the mouth of that power, was, not many years afterwards, finally lost. My merit has been in resisting the power and pride of France, under any forni of its rule ; but in opposing it widi the greatest zeal and earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it could assume ; the worst indeed which the prime cause and principle of all evil could possibly give it. It was my endeavour by every means to excite a spirit in the House where I had the honour of a seat, for carrying- on, with early vigour and decision, the most clearly just and necessary war, that this or any nation ever carried on ; in order to save my country from the iron yoke of its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of its principles ; to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good nature, and good humour of the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence, which, beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the whole moral, and in a great degree the whole physical, world, having done both in the focus of its most intense malignity. The ]al)ours of his Grace's founder merited the curses, not loud but deep, of the Commons of England, on whom he and his master had eff"ected a complete parliamentary reform, by making them, in their slavery and humiliation, the true and adequate representatives of a debased, degraded, and undone people. My EDMUND BURKE 415 merits were, in having had an active, though not always an ostentatious, share, in every one act, without exception, of un- disputed constitutional utility in my time, and in having supported, on all occasions, the authority, the efficiency, and the privileges of the Commons of Great Britain. I ended my services by a recorded and fully reasoned assertion on their own journals of their constitutional rights, and a vindication of their constitutional conduct. I laboured in all things to merit their inward approba- tion, and (along with the assistance of the largest, the greatest, and best of my endeavours) I received their free, unbiassed, public, and solemn thanks. Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the Crown grants which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune as balanced against mine. In the name of common sense why should the Duke of Bedford think, that none but of the house of Russell are entitled to the favour of the Crown ? Why should he imagine that no king of England has been capable of judging merit but King Henry the Eighth .'' Indeed, he will pardon me ; he is a little mistaken ; all virtue did not end in the first Earl of Bedford. All discernment did not lose its vision when his creator closed his eyes. Let him remit his rigour on the dis- proportion between merit and reward in others, and they will make no inquiry into the origin of his fortune. They will regard with much more satisfaction, as he will contemplate with infinitely more advantage, whatever in his pedigree has been dulcified by an exposure to the influence of heaven in a long flow of genera- tions, from the hard acidulous metallic tincture of the spring. It is little to be doubted, that several of his forefathers in that long series have degenerated into honour and virtue. Let the Duke of Bedford (I am sure he will) reject with scorn and horror the counsels of the lecturers, those wicked panders to avarice and ambition, who would tempt him, in the troubles of his country, to seek another enormous fortune from the forfeitures of another nobility, and the plunder of another church. Let him (and I trust that yet he will) employ all the energy of his youth, and all the resources of his wealth, to crush rebellious principles which have no foundation in morals, and rebellious movements that have no provocation in tyranny. Then will be forgot the rebellions, which, by a doubtful priority in crime, his ancestor had provoked and extinguished. On such a conduct in the noble Duke many of his countrymen might, and 4i6 ENGLISH PROSE with some excuse might, give way to the enthusiasm of their gratitude, and, in the dashing style of some of the old declaimers, cry out, that if the fates had found no other way in which they could give a Duke of Bedford and his opulence as props to a tottering world, then the butchery of the Duke of Buckingham might be tolerated ; it might be regarded even with complacency, whilst in the heir of confiscation they saw the sympathizing comforter of the martyrs, who suffer under the cruel confiscation of this day ; whilst they behold with admiration his zealous protection of the virtuous and loyal nobility of France, and his manly support of his brethren, the yet standing nobility and gentry of his native land. Then his Grace's merit would be pure, and new, and sharp, as fresh from the mint of honour. As he pleased he might reflect honour on his predecessors, or throw it forward on those who were to succeed him. He might be the propagator of the stock of honour, or the root of it, as he thought proper. Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the medi- ocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family : I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and sym- metrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient, living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived he would have re-purchased the bounty of the Crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature ; and had no enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment, the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied. But a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not tcnt, in 1770 on Perspective. In 1773 he got the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for valu- able discoveries in regard to fixed air. In 1776 he published discoveries on Respiration. Books on Natural and Revealed Religion (1772-74), and on philosophy and science followed fast ; and his profession of materialism (Matter and Spirit, 1777) and belief in " Philosophical Necessity" (appendi.x to Matter and Spirit), and perhaps also his devotion to Hartley, estranged him from Shelburne. In 1780 accordingly he left Leeds and settled in Birmingham at his old clerical duties. There, amongst other things, he wrote on the History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782), and used the book to draw Gibbon into a correspondence, the publication of which by Priestley was no doubt improper, and certainly imprudent, but as the means of preserving a masterpiece of vituperation (Gibbon's Letters, No. c.xliv.) hardly now to be regretted. Priestley, at Birmingham, was a militant dissenter and Unitarian ; he was also a warm defender of the French Revolution. Accordingly in the riots of 14th and 15th July 1791 his house was wrecked and his books and instruments were destroyed or stolen. The story is well told in the New Annual Register, 1791 (History, pp. 210-3). He was only one sufferer out of several ; and the rioters were put on their trial and two of them hung. But Priestley left Birmingham to succeed his fpiend Richard IVice at Hackney ; and finally, in 1794, he left England for Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where in 1804 he died. His works fill nearly eighty volumes, and he left an autobiography and correspondence, published soon after his death. ] Priestley's services to science are his most considerable achieve- ment. Gibbon wrote to him : " Give me leave to convey to your ear the almost unanimous and not offensive wish of the philosophic world that you would confine your talents and industry to those 438 ENGLISH PROSE sciences in which real and useful improvements can be made." But he was not only a great chemist. His sturdy force of char- acter made him a man of influence in England. His ideas of education were broad and enlightened ; he laid down (and indeed had taught) all the main articles of what is now called the " education of the Citizen." He would supplant, or at least supplement, the old classical training by a course of law and history, economic and demographical principles, and not least an acquaintance with political and local institutions. In philosophy he followed David Hartley in regarding the association of ideas as the key to psychological difficulties ; indeed he went beyond Hartley in becoming materialist, while still like Hartley remaining theist. He praised Jonathan Edwards ; of philosophical necessity, as opposed to freedom of the will, he says, " There is no truth of which I have less doubt " (^Exanii nation of Reid, p. 169). He is said by Bentham to have suggested to him (by his Civil Government, 1768) the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In his criticisms of the common-sense philosophy of Reid, Beattie, and Oswald, he treats his opponents with something of the arrogance once supposed to be characteristic of the savant. But these were times when men had not learned to express disagreement in an agreeable manner. It must Ije said that while his theological controversy with Bishop Horsley was equally warm it was more temperate in terms. Though, pace Bentham, there is nothing new in Priestley's views of Civil Govcr7ime7it, or in his Letters to Burke on the Fretich Revolution, his political writings have features of some historical interest. In the Cii'il Goveimment he makes clear the distinction between political liberty and civil liberty. In the Letters, he pleads for French reformers in the language of an English dissenter who has suffered through intolerance and injustice in his own country, and there is as much said about England and America as about Frhnce. The style of this author is adequate to his thought. There is little flexibility or vivacity ; the diction is heavy, and occasionally the preacher bestows on us the tediousness and prolixity too frequently associated with sermons. He has usually something to prove, and, if he does not prove it, the fault is not in the manner but in the matter of statement. J. BONAR. OF CORRECTION It is a maxim with many, that no parent, or tutor, should correct a child except when he is perfectly cool, and that to correct with anger defeats the purpose of it ; and in confirmation of this they quote the example of one of the old philosophers, who being asked why he did not correct his slave, who had given him just provocation, replied, " Because I am angry." It appears to me, however, that this maxim may be very easily pushed too far, and by that the proper effect of discipline be lost. Young persons seldom transgress their duty without being conscious of it, and without being sensible, at least after some time, that they deserve correction. They have also a general notion of the degree of their demerit, and consecjuently of the degree of provocation which it must give their parent or tutor ; and the disposition to transgress for the future is best prevented by their just expectations being answered, z>., by their being actually received by their parent or tutor, with what degree of displeasure, and the effects of it, which they are themselves sensible, or which they may be made sensible, that they deserve. But they will equally despise their tutor, if the displeasure which he expresses be either too little, or too great, for the occasion. In fact, they judge of him by themselves, and they have no notion either of being offended without being angry, or of being angry without correcting for the offence, and before their anger be subsided. Besides, it is not the remembrance of the mere pain which correction gives them that tends to check their disposition to repeat the offence, so much as the fear of the displeasure, which they foresee their behaviour will excite in their tutor against them ; and it is not possible to express displeasure with sufticient force, especially to a child, when a man is perfectly cool ; and 440 ENGLISH PROSE mere reproof, without sufficient marks of displeasure and emotion, affects a child very little, and is soon forgotten. It is certain, however, that upon the first intimation of an offence, a man is apt to conceive of it as much more heinous than it really is, and consecjuently to be inflamed beyond due bounds. We ought, therefore, to wait till we perfectly under- stand the nature of the offence, and have considered the punishment due to it ; but to wait longer than is necessary for this purpose is to refine beyond the dictates of nature ; which, however specious in theory, is seldom found to answer any good end in practice. (From Observations on EducaHon.) RIDICULE AS A TEST OF FAITH Had I been acquainted with these new principles, I might have saved myself a good deal of trouble ; but I am apprehensive that I should hardly have escaped a great deal of ridicule ; and we ought not to forget that ridicule has been deemed the test of truth as well as this new common sense. I think with equal reason, and I flatter myself that the reign of this new usurper will not be much longer than that of his predecessor, to whom he is very nearly related. In this some may think that I only mean to be jocular, but really I am serious. Why was ridicule ever thought to be the test of truth, but because the things at which we can laugh were supposed to be so absurd, that their falsehood was self-evident ; so that there was no occasion to examine any further 1 We were supposed to feel them to be false ; and what is a feeling but the affection of a sense ? In reality, therefore, this new doctrine of common sense being the standard of truth is no other than ridicule being the standard of truth. The words are different but not the things. I should be glad to see so acute a meta- physician as Dr. Reid, so fine a writer as Dr. Beattie, and, to adopt Dr. Beattie's compliment, so elegant an author as Dr. Oswald, separately employed to ascertain the precise difference between these two schemes. In my opinion the chief difference, besides what I have said above, consists in this, that the one may be called the sense of JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 441 truth, and the other the sense of falsehood. There is also some doubt whether Shaftesbury was really in earnest in proposing ridicule as the test of truth. Many think that he could never be so absurd. Whereas there can be no doubt but that this triumvirate of authors are perfectly serious. There is however another difference that will strongly recommend the claims of common sense in preference to those of ridicule, which is, that this was advanced in support of infidelity, but that in support of religion. But I should think that the greater weight we have to support, the stronger buttresses we should use. (From Remarks on Dr. Beat tic's Essay.) EFFECTS OF A CODE OF EDUCATION Now I appeal to any person whether any plan of education, which has yet been put in execution in this kingdom, be so perfect as that the establishing of it by authority would not obstruct the great ends of education ; or even whether the united genius of man could, at present, form so perfect a plan. Every man who is experienced in the business of education well knows, that the art is in its infancy, but advancing, it is hoped, apace to a state of manhood. In this condition, it requires the aid of every circumstance favourable to its natural growth, and dreads nothing so much as being confined and cramped by the un- seasonable hand of power. To put it (in its present imperfect state) into the hands of the civil magistrate, in order to fix the mode of it, would be like fixing the dress of a child, and forbidding its clothes ever to be made wider or larger. Manufacturers and artists of several kinds already complain of the obstruction which is given to their arts, by the injudicious acts of former parliaments ; and it is the object of our wisest statesmen to get these obstructions removed, by the repeal of those acts. I wish it could not be said, that the business of education is already under too many legal restraints. Let these be removed, and a few more fair experiments made of the different methods of conducting it, before the legislature think proper to interfere any more with it, and by that time, it is hoped, they will see no reason to interfere at all. The business would be conducted to much better purpose, even in favour of 442 ENGLISH PROSE their own views, if those views were just and honourable, than it would be under any arbitrary regulations whatever. To show this scheme of an established method of education in a clearer point of light, let us imagine that what is now proposed had been carried into execution some centuries before this time. For no reason can be assigned for fixing any mode of education at present, which might not have been made use of, with the same appearance of reason, for fixing another approved method a thousand years ago. Suppose Alfred, when he founded the University of Oxford, had made it impossible, that the method of instruction used in his time should ever have been altered. Excellent as that method might have been for the time in which it was instituted, it would now have been the worst method that is practised in the world. Suppose the number of the arts and sciences, with the manner of teaching them, had been fixed in this kingdom, before the revival of letters and of the arts, it is plain they could never have arrived at their present advanced state among us. We should not have had the honour to lead the way in the most noble discoveries, in the mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, and I may add divinity too. And for the same reason, were such an establishment to take place in the present age, it would prevent all great improvements in futurity. I may add, in this place, that if we argue from the analogy of education to other arts which are most similar to it, we can never expect to see human nature, about which it is employed, brought to perfection, but in consequence of indulging unbounded liberty, and even caprice in conducting it. The power of nature in pro- ducing plants cannot be shown to advantage, but in all possible circumstances of culture. The richest colours, the most fragrant scents and the most exquisite flavours, which our present gardens and orchards exhibit, would never have been known, if florists and gardeners had been confined in the processes of cultivation ; nay if they had not been allowed the utmost licentiousness of fancy in the exercise of their arts. Many of the finest productions of modern gardening have been the result of casual experiment, perhaps of undesigned deviation from established rules. Obser- vations of a similar nature may be made on the methods of breeding cattle, and training animals of all kinds. And why should the rational part of the creation be deprived of that opportunity of diversifying and improving itself, which the vegetable and animal world enjoy ? JOSEPH FRIESTLEY 443 From new, and seemingly irregular, methods of education, perhaps something extraordinary and uncommonly great may spring. At least there would be a fair chance for such produc- tions ; and if something odd and eccentric should, now and then, arise from this unbounded liberty of education, the various busi- ness of human life may afford proper spheres for such eccentric geniuses. Education, taken in its most extensive sense, is properly that which makes the man. One method of education, therefore, would only produce one kind of men ; but the great excellence of human nature consists in the variety of which it is capable. Instead then of endeav^ouring^, by uniform and fixed systems of education, to keep mankind always the same, let us give free scope to everything which may bid fair for introducing more variety among us. The various character of the Athenians was certainly preferable to the uniform character of the Spartans, or to any uniform national character whatever. Is it not universally considered as an advantage to England, that it contains so great a variety of original characters ? And is it not on this account preferred to France, Spain, or Italy "i Uniformity is the characteristic of the brute creation. Among them every species of bird build their nests with the same materials, and in the same form ; the genius and disposition of one individual is that of all ; and it is only the education which men give them that raises any of them much above others. But it is the glory of human nature, that the operations of reason, though variable, and by no means infallible, are capable of infinite improvement. We come into the world worse provided than any of the brutes, and for a year or two of our lives, many of them go far beyond us in intellectual accomplishments. Ikit when their faculties are at a full stand, and their enjoyments in- capable of variety or increase, our intellectual powers are grow- ing apace ; we are perpetually deriving happiness from new sources, and even before we leave this world are capable of tasting the felicity of angels. Have we, then, so little sense of the proper excellence of our natures, and of the views of Divine Providence in our formation, as to catch at a poor advantage adapted to the lower nature of brutes ? Rather, let us hold on in the course in which the Divine Being Himself has put us, by giving reason its full play, and throwing off the fetters which short-sighted and ill-judging men 444 ENGLISH PROSE have hung upon it. Though, in this course, we be hable to more extravagancies than brutes, governed by Wind but unerring instinct, or than men whom mistaken systems of poHcy have made as uniform in their sentiments and conduct as the brutes, we shall be in the way to attain a degree of perfection and happiness of which they can have no idea. However, as men are first animals before they can be properly termed rational creatures, and the analogies of individuals extend to societies, a principle something resembling the instinct of animals may, perhaps, suit mankind in their infant state ; but when we advance in the arts of life, let us, as far as we are able, assert the native freedom of our souls, and, after having been servilely governed like brutes, aspire to the noble privilege of governing ourselves like men. If it may have been necessary to establish something by law concerning education, that necessity grows less every day, and encourages us to relax the bonds of authority, rather than bind them faster. Secondly, this scheme of an established mode of education would be prejudicial to the great ends of civil society. The great object of civil society is the happiness of the members of it, in the perfect and undisturbed enjoyment of the more important of our natural rights, for the sake of which we voluntarily give up others of less consequence to us. But whatever be the blessings of civil society, they may be bought too dear. It is certainly possible to sacrifice too much, at least more than is necessary to be sacrificed for them, in order to produce the greatest sum of happiness in the community. Else why do we complain of tyrannical and oppres- sive government ? Is it not the meaning of all complaints of this kind that in such governments, the subjects are deprived of their most important natural rights, without an equivalent recompense ; that all the valuable ends of civil government might be effectually secured, and the members of particular states be much happier upon the whole, if they did not lie under those restrictions ? Now of all the sources of happiness and enjoyment in human life, the domestic relations are the most constant and copious. With our wives and children we necessarily pass the greatest part of our lives. The connections of friendship are slight in comparison of this intimate domestic union. Views of interest or ambition may divide the nearest friends, but our wives and chil- dren are, in general, inseparably connected with us and attached to JOSEPH PKIESTLE Y 445 us. With them all our joys are doubled, and in their affection and assiduity we find consolation under all the troubles and disquietudes of life. For the enjoyments which result from this most delightful intercourse, all mankind; in all ages, have been ready to sacrifice everything ; and for the interruption of this intercourse no compensation whatever can be made by man. What then can be more justly alarming to a man who has a true taste for happiness, than either that the choice of his wife, or the education of his children should be under the directions of persons who have no particular knowledge of him, or particular affection for him, and whose views and maxims he might utterly dislike ? What prospect of happiness could a man have with such a wife, or such children .f" ,„ r-- ■, t l . ^ (From Civil Liberty.) SAMUEL HORSLEY [Samuel Horsley, 1733-1806, bishop successively of St. David's, Rochester, and St. Asaph, was born in the parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, London, wliere his father was lecturer. He appears to have received a home education until his admission at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1751. When he received Holy Orders he became his father's curate at Newington, and succeeded to the living on his father's resignation in 1759. In 1767 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 176S he accompanied Heneage Finch, Lord Guernsey, to Christ Church, Oxford, as private tutor. In 1774 he was presented by his pupil's father to the rectory of Albury, in Surrey, and in 1777 he became domestic chaplain to the Bishop of London, Dr. Lowth, and Prebendary of St. Paul's. In 1781 he was appointed .Archdeacon of St. Albans and in 1777 he received through Lord Chancellor Thurlow a prebend at Gloucester. In 1788 he was raised to the Bench as Bishop of St. David's, and in 1793 he was translated to Rochester, holding with that see, as several others had done, the Deanery of Westminster. In 1802 he returned to Wales as Bishop of St. Asaph. He was an energetic and useful prelate in both his Welsh dio- ceses, as well as in his English one. He was twice married, and left one son by his first wife, who became an eminent clergyman in the Episcopal Church of Scotland, in the measures for the relief of which Bishop Horsley took a leading part in the House of Lords. He died at Brighton, 4th October 1806.] As a master of English prose Samuel Horsley had few equals in his own day. The reputation he gained among his contempo- raries and their inimediate successors was quite out of proportion to the bulk of his writings, but not at all out of proportion to their merits. He was in fact regarded in the early part of the nine- teenth century as, in point of abilities and attainments, far above all other writers and speakers on the side of the Church. Men of the most widely differing sentiments agree in this. Thus Bishop Jebb, the high churchman, calls him " our ablest modern prelate ;" Dean Isaac Milner, the low churchman, "the first Episcopal authority (if learning, wisdom, and knowledge of the Scriptures be any foundation for authority) '"' ; Bishop John Milner, the 448 ENGLISH PROSE Roman Catholic, "the hght and glory of the Established Church"; and Samuel Taylor Coleridge " the one red leaf, the last of its clan, with relation to the learned teachers of our Church." A perusal of Bishop Horsley's writings will quite bear out this testimony from different quarters. He writes in a remarkably pure, luminous, and dignified style ; his matter is weighty, his argumentative power convincing, his learning profound, and his satire, though always kept within the bounds of decency and courtesy, most cutting. There is a robustness and manliness about his tone of mind which is reflected in his style ; he takes a lofty line, which some might think supercilious, but it is certainly justified by his merits ; it is that of a judge summing up, not that of an advocate pleading his cause. His sentiments are always those of the marked high churchman, and in many points he anticipates the men of the Oxford movement. His sermons are the finest specimens of pulpit eloquence which the age produced, and they are still unrivalled in their way. He was a most for- midable antagonist in controversy, and completely demolished Dr. Priestley, though the latter was a very able man. — Horsley's "Charges," " Remarks," and " Letters," on the subject of Unitarian- ism, besides being a powerful defence of orthodoxy, are also fine specimens of English literature. To judge from the speeches which are found in the pages of Hansard, Bishop Horsley must have been even more effective as an orator than as a writer. His range of knowledge was by no means confined to theology ; but his scientific and philosophical writings scarcely afford scope for the exhibition of his powers as a writer of English prose ; and therefore the specimens here given are all drawn from his theological works. J. H. Overton. THE PLATONIC AND CHRISTIAN TRINITY The inquiry becomes more important, when it is discovered that these notions were by no means pecuHar to the Platonic school ; that the Platonists pretended to be no more than the expositors of a more ancient doctrine, which is traced from Plato to Parmenides, from Parmenides to his masters of the Pythagorean sect, from the Pythagoreans to Orpheus the earliest of the Grecian mystagogues, from Orpheus to the secret lore of the Egyptian priests, in which the foundations of the Orphic Theology were laid. Similar notions of a triple principle prevailed in the Persian and Chaldean theology ; and vestiges even of the worship of a Trinity were discernible in the Roman superstition in a very late age. This worship the Romans had received from their Trojan ancestors. For the Trojans brought it with them into Italy from Phrygia. In Phrygia it was introduced by Uardanus so early as the ninth century after Noah's flood. Dardanus carried it with him from Samothrace ; where the personages, that were the objects of it, were worshipped under the Hebrew name of the Cabirim. Who these Cabirim might be has been the matter of unsuccessful inquiry to many learned men. The utmost that is known with certainty is, that they were originally Three, and were called by way of eminence, the Great or Mighty ones : for that is the import of the Hebrew name. And of the like import is their Latin appellation, Penates. Dii per quos penitus sptrannis, per quos habemiis corpus, per qnos raiiojiem a7iimt possidenius. Dii qui sunt intrinsecus atque in intimis penetralibus cocli. Thus the joint worship of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the Triad of the Roman Capitol, is traced to that of the three mighty ones in Samothrace ; which was established in that island, at what precise time it is impossible to determine, but earlier, if Eusebius may be credited, than the days of Abraham. VOL. IV 2 G 450 ENGLISH PROSE The notion therefore of a Trinity, more or less removed from the purity of the Christian faith, is found to have been a leading principle in all the ancient schools of philosophy, and in the religions of almost all nations ; and traces of an early popular belief of it appear even in the abominable rites of idolatrous worship. If reason was insufficient for this great discovery, what could be the means of infomiation, but what the Platonists themselves assign, OcoirapaSoTo^ OeoXoyca. " A theology delivered from the gods," t.e. a Revelation. This is the account which Platonists, who were no Christians, have given of the origin of their master's doctrine. But from what Revelation could they derive their information, who lived before the Christian, and had no light from the Mosaic ? For whatever some of the early fathers may have imagined, there is no evidence that Plato or Pythagoras were at all acquainted with the Mosaic writings ; not to insist, that the worship of a Trinity is traced to an earlier age than that of Plato or of Pythagoras, or even of Moses. Their information could be only drawn from traditions founded upon earlier revelations ; from scattered fragments of the ancient patri- archal creed ; that creed, which was universal before the defection of the first idolaters, which the corruptions of idolatry, gross and enormous as they were, could never totally obliterate. Thus the doctrine of the Trinity is rather confiniied than discredited by the suffi-age of the heathen sages ; since the resemblance of the Christian faith and the pagan philosophy in this article, when fairly interpreted, appears to be nothing less than the consent of the latest and the earliest revelations. (From A Charge to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of St. Albans.) THE WATER AND THE BLOOD But how do this water and this blood bear witness that the cruci- fied Jesus was the Christ ? Water and blood were the indispensable instruments of cleansing and expiation in all the cleansings and expiations of the law. " Almost all things," saith St. Paul, " are by the law purged with blood ; and without shedding of blood there is no remission." But the purgation was not by l)lood only, but by blood and water ; for the same apostle says — "When Moses had SAMUEL HORSLEY 451 spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and sprinkled both the book and all the people." All the cleansings and expiations of the law, by water and animal blood, were typical of the real cleansing of the conscience by the water of baptism, and of the expiation of real guilt by the blood of Christ shed upon the cross, and virtually taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper. The flowing therefore of this water and this blood, immediately upon our Lord's death, from the wound opened in His side was a notification to the surrounding multitudes, though at the time understood by i^^N^ that the real expiation was now complete, and the cleansing fount set open. O wonderful exhibition of the goodness and severity of God ! It is the ninth hour, and Jesus, strong to the last in suffering, commending His spirit to the P\ither, exclaims with a loud voice that " it is finished," bows His anointed head, and renders up the ghost ! Nature is convulsed ! Earth trembles ! The sanctuary, that type of the heaven of heavens, is suddenly and forcibly thrown open ! The tombs are burst ! Jesus hangs upon the cross a corpse ! And lo ! the fountain which, according to the prophet, was this day to be set open for sin and for pollution, is seen suddenly springing from His wound ! — Who, contemplating only in imagination the mysterious awful scene, exclaims not with the centurion — "Truly this was the Son of God I'' — truly He was the Christ. Thus I have endeavoured to explain how the water and the blood, together with the Spirit, are witnesses upon earth to establish the faith which overcometh the world. Much remains untouched, but the time forbids me to proceed. One thing only I must add, — that the faith which overcometh the world consists not in the involuntary assent of the mind to historical evidence ; nor in its assent, perhaps still more involuntary, to the conclusions of argument from facts proved and admitted. All this knowledge and all this understanding the devils possess, yet have not faith ; and believing without faith, they tremble. Faith is not merely a speculative but a practical acknowledgment of Jesus as the Christ, an effort and motion of the mind toward God ; when the sinner accepts with thankfulness the proffered terms of pardon, and in humble confidence applying individually to self the benefit of the general atonement, in the elevated language of a venerable father of the Church, drinks of the stream which flows from the Redeemer's wounded side. The effect is, that in 452 ENGLISH PROSE a little he is filled with that perfect love of God which casteth out fear, he cleaves to God with the entire affection of the soul. And from this active lively faith overcoming the world, subduing carnal self, all these good works do necessarily spring', which God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them. (From Sermons.) THE HEATHEN POET AND THE BIBLE A HEATHEN poet, whose subject leads him to speak of a certain voyage, which, if it was ever really performed, was the first attempt of any European nation to cross the main seas in a large ship with masts and sails, describes in elegant and animated strains the consequences which the success of so extraordinary an undertaking might be expected to produce upon the state of man- kind, the free intercourse that was likely to be opened between distant nations, and the great discoveries to be expected from voyages in future times, when the arts of shipbuilding and naviga- tion, to which this expedition, if a real one, gave rise, should be carried to perfection. This is his general argument, and verses to this effect make the conclusion of his song : — Distant years Shall bring the fated season, when Ocean, Nature's prime barrier, shall no more obstruct The daring search of enterprising man. The earth, so wide, shall all be open, — The mariner explore new worlds ; Nor Shetland be the utmost shore. "Now give mc," says the infidel, "a prophecy from your Bible, which may be as clearly predictive of any event which you may choose to allege for the accomplishment, as these verses have by mere accident proved to be of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, — give me such a prophecy from your Bible as I have produced to you from a heathen poet, who yet was no prophet, nor claimed the character, and 1 will turn believer." We cheerfully accept this arrogant defiance : we are thankful to the adversary that hath invited us to meet him on such advan- tageous ground, by comparing what may justly be deemed the most indefinite of the Scripture prophecies, with the best specimen SAMUEL HORSLEY 453 of the power of accident for tlie completion of prophecy which his extensive reading could produce. These verses of this Latin poet are indeed a striking example of a prediction that might safely take its chance in the world, and happen what might, could not fail at some time or other to meet with its accomplishment. Indeed, it predicts nothing but what was evidently within the ken of human foresight, that men, being once furnished with the means of discovery, would make discov- eries ; that, having ships, they would make voyages ; that, when these improvements in the art of shipbuilding should have furnished larger and better ships, men would make longer and more frequent voyages ; and that, by longer and more frequent voyages, they would gain more knowledge of the surface of the globe which they inhabit. What peasant of Thessaly but might have uttered such prophecies as these, who saw the Argo bring her heroes home, and observed to what degree the avarice and curiosity of his countrymen were inflamed by the wealth which the adventurers had amassed, and the stories which they spread ? What restriction do we find of the generality of these prognostications, which may seem to put the exact com- pletion out of the reach of accidental causes ? None. Neither the parts of the world were specified from which expeditions of discovery should be fitted out, nor the quarters in which they should most succeed : or if any particular intimation upon the latter article be couched in the mention of Shetland as an island that should cease to be extreme, it is erroneous ; as it points pre- cisely to that quarter of the globe where discovery hath been ever at a stand, — where the ocean, to this hour opposes his eternal barrier of impervious unnavigable ice. (From the Same.) EDWARD GIBBON [Edward Gibbon was born at Putney on 27th April 1737. His father was a man of some fortune, and belonged to a fair family, though his own wealth was derived from speculation. Gibbon was a very weakly boy, the sole survivor of several children. He was very uncomfortable at West- minster, but picked up a good deal of miscellaneous information ; and when he was rather prematurely sent to Oxford at the age of fifteen, his disgust with his college (Magdalen) seems to have been as much due to priggishness, shyness, and irregular mixture of learning and ignorance in the scholar, as to incapacity or unworthiness in the teachers. He turned Roman Catholic at sixteen, left Oxford, found, for the time at least, nothing palateable in the Bolingbrokian philosophy of Mallet, and was sent to Lausanne to board with a pastor, M. Pavillard. Here he stayed five years. His unromantic romance with Suzanne Curchod, afterwards Madame Necker, when he " sighed as a lover but obeyed as a son," is one of the most universally known things in his life. The special purpose of his visit was so far achieved that he took the sacrament in Protestant form, and, as he characteristically remarks, "suspended his religious enquiries," which it may be observed had begun, even before his Roman stage, under the ominous auspices of Conyers Middleton. He came home in 1758, joined the Hampshire militia, got on well enough with father and stepmother (his own aunt Catherine Porten, who had brought him up, was the only person for whom he had any family, perhaps the only woman for whom he had any real, affection), returned to the Continent, and on 15th October 1764 conceived, as he has himself told, the idea of his great history. Thirty years more of life remained to him, in which, besides some minor work, he carried out the scheme of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This took something more than twenty of them ; and he has celebrated the com- pletion in a passage as stately and as famous as that which records the conception. Meanwhile he lived partly in England, partly and by preference at Lausanne, sat in Parliament for some time, and was a I_,ord of Trade and Plantations. The first volume of the Decline was published in 1776, the last in 1788. Gibbon himself died on 16th January 1794. His friend Holroyd, Lord .Sheffield, subsequently collected and published h.\s Miscellaneous Works, of which by far the most important is his masterly and characteristic auto- biography. ] Although upon the whole Gibbon is one of the rare examples of a writer whose reputation, threat and deserved at once, has deservedly increased as time went on, it cannot be said that he 456 ENGLISH PROSE has at any time escaped unjust or at least irrelevant detraction. At the time of its appearance, though it could not fail to make its mark, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was exposed to misconception from two causes. In respect of one of these the author was justly to be blamed ; while in respect of the other he was guiltless. There can be no doubt that Gibbon's attitude towards Christianity and religion generally, was even from the lowest point of view a mistake. It prejudiced one large section of his readers against him ; it introduced a disturbing and deluding influence into his own manner of view ; and what is more it was already something of an anachronism. Gibbon took it up when it was already losing its hold upon the brighter and more original spirits in all countries, when it was a fashion and not even a very new fashion. Again, the generation for whose benefit the book was written was in the habit of considering the ages with which all the best and most characteristic part of it deals as " dark," sordid, uninteresting, and unworthy the attention of any but pedants and monks. Gibbon's genius indeed com- pelled them to read ; but they cannot but have felt a certain grudge against him for the compulsion. Nor did things improve when a new generation and a new century came into being. The offence to orthodoxy remained, and if the distaste for the subject slowly yielded to the pressure of Romantic feelings, it was replaced by an even stronger distaste for the style, and a sort of double- edged political odium. Tories disliked Gibbon because of his subversive religious opinions ; Whigs made as little of him as they could because he was a Tory in politics. Accordingly a collec- tion of curious uncritical omissions or aggressions might be made from the greater critics of the first quarter of this century about him. The remarks of Coleridge, the most scholarly and philosophical, and of Leigh Hunt, the most impulsive and popular, of the Romantic critics on his style are almost equally unfavour- able ; Sydney Smith, in a context which makes oversight almost impossible, excludes him from the list of "our greatest his- torians"; Jeffrey, so far as I remember, leaves him severely alone. The massive splendour of his manner had ceased to please a time which was seeking after more fantastic literary ornament ; and the incomparable richness and art of his matter did not yet fully appeal to a time which was only beginning the history of the document. Yet even against these drawbacks Gibbon's wonderful merits EDWARD GIBBON 457 made their way ; and of late his fame on the side of matter has risen higher than ever, and on that of form has recovered much and will I think recover more appreciation. The estimate now held by all the best historians of his historical merits is some- thing unique in literary history. For the greater part of the century since his death, and for the whole of its latter half, one unceasing process of unearthing original authorities, and of correcting (not always too critically or generously) the treatment of their subjects by previous writers has been going on. Historian after historian whose name was great with our forefathers, has been justly or unjustly relegated from the shelf of history to that of dellcs Icttres if his literary merits happen to have been con- siderable, and to the garret or the cellar if they were not. Yet every critic who, himself competent to speak even on parts of the subject, has examined these parts with fairness, has confessed with astonishment the adequacy of Gibbon's treatment ; while those who are competent to judge the work as a whole have spoken with even greater astonishment of his coordination of the several parts into that whole. In the union of accuracy and grasp indeed Gibbon has absolutely no rival in literature ancient and modern. It constantly happens that a most learned, in- dustrious, and accurate scholar will show himself hopelessly incompetent for the task of arranging his knowledge of something much less than the history of the whole of the western and part of the eastern world for fifteen hundred years. It happens — not much less often — that a man of real historical range and grasp is unequal to the toil, or unprovided with the faculty of ascer- taining and stating details with accuracy. But Gibbon is ecjually great at both these things. It may be that he was not a little indebted to a gift which may be called the gift of sagaciously letting alone ; but he certainly did not abuse this gift, and one of his most remarkable characteristics is his faculty of making slight references, which on fuller knowledge of the subject are found to be perfectly exact as far as they go. Every careful critic of his own and other men's work knows that there is no more dangerous point than this one of slight reference or allusion to subjects imperfectly known, nor any in which sciolism or imposture is more certain to be found out. Yet it is scarcely too much to say that GiblDon has never been thus found out. There were some things — not many — which he did not and could not know ; but almost everything that there was for him to know he knew. 4S8 ENGLISH PROSE The merits of his manner must of necessity be far more matters of taste, of opinion, and of variations in both. The simile of the " Hampshire mihtiaman," which has sometimes been supposed to be justified by his own very innocent remark that his training in drill and tactics had been of use to him on the military side of history is smart enough of course. All that can be said is that it is a very high compliment to the Hampshire militia. To those who insist upon extreme ornamentation, or extreme simphcity of style, Gibbon's, of course, must be distasteful. But to those who judge a thing by its possession of its own ex- cellfences, and not by its lack of the excellences of others, it must always be the subject of an immense admiration. In the first place it is perfectly clear, and for all its stateliness so little fatiguing to the reader that true Gibbonians read it, by snatches or in long draughts, as others read a newspaper or a novel for mere pastime. Although full of irony and epigram it is never uneasily charged with either ; and the narrative is never broken, the composition never interrupted for the sake of a flourish or a "point." It may be thought l^y some to abuse antithesis of sense and balance of cadence ; but I should say myself that there is fully sufficient variety in the sentences and in the paragraph arrangement to prevent this. Here, no doubt, the iiltima ratio of individual taste comes in. What is not disputable is that in the style of the balanced sentence, in which antithesis was the chief figure used, and in which the writer depends upon an ironic or declamatory flavouring, as the case might be, to save his manner from stiff- ness, Gibbon has achieved the "farthest possible." That this was so, may be seen, better perhaps than in any other way by comparing the practice of Macaulay, who may be called a popular nineteenth-century Gibbon. That most ingenious and widely read historian in reality did little more than shorten the Gibbonian antithesis, substitute a sharp quick movement for the former stately roll, exchange irony for a certain kind of wit, and the declamation of oratory for the declamation of debate. These remarks of necessity apply most to the Decline and Fal/, but the manner of Ciibbon is one and indivisible, and the Autobiography, the Miscellaneous Works, and even the letters, exhibit no very difi"erent characteristics. It would indeed have been surprising if they had. For Gibbon was one of those fortunate and rare men of letters, who early conceiving a great and definite scheme of literary attempt have had the leisure and EDWARD GIBBON 459 the means to perfect their hterary undertakings. He spent about twenty years on the completion of the work which he was born to do ; and everything that as by-work and addition he felt himself inclined to grapple with, had in its preparation and execu- tion an equally unhurried maturity. There may be, and no doubt there were, other instances of faculty which had equal opportunities of developing itself, and failed. In his case the faculty was there, the scheme was there, and the opportunities were there, with the result of a perfect accomplishment. It rests with those who hold that the faculty and the scheme being present but the opportunities absent, the same or any approximately equal result is attainable, to produce an instance justifying their theory. George Saintsbury. CONSTANTIUS AT ROME The protection of the Rha;tian frontier and the persecution of the Cathohc church detained Constantius in Italy above eighteen months after the departure of Juhan. Before the Emperor re- turned into the East, he indulged his pride and curiosity in a visit to the ancient capital. He proceeded from Milan to Rome along the ^milian and Flaminian ways ; and, as soon as he approached within forty miles of the city, the march of a prince who had never vanquished a foreign enemy assumed the appearance of a triumphal procession. His splendid train was composed of all the ministers of luxury ; but in a time of profound peace, he was encompassed by the glittering arms of the numerous squadrons of his guards and cuirassiers. Their streaming banners of silk, embossed with gold, and shaped in the form of dragons, waved round the person of the emperor. Constantius sat alone on a lofty car resplendent with gold and precious gems ; and, except when he bowed his head to pass under the gates of the cities, he affected a stately demeanour of inflexible and, as it might seem, of insensible gravity. The severe discipline of the Persian youth had been introduced by the eunuchs into the imperial palace ; and such were the habits of patience which they had inculcated, that during a slow and sultry march, he was never seen to move his hand towards his face, or to turn his eyes either to the right or to the left. He was received by the magistrates and senate of Rome ; and the emperor surveyed with attention the civil honours of the republic and the consular images of the noble families. The streets were lined with an innumerable multitude. Their repeated acclamations expressed their joy at beholding, after an absence of thirty-two years, the sacred person of their sovereign ; and Constantius himself expressed, with some pleasantry, his affected surprise that the human race should thus suddenly be collected on the same spot. The son of Constantine was lodged in the EDWARD GIBBON 461 ancient palace of Augustus ; he presided in the Senate, harangued the people from the tribunal which Cicero had so often ascended, assisted with unusual courtesy at the games of the circus, and accepted the crowns of gold, as well as the panegyrics which had been prepared for the ceremony by the deputies of the principal cities. His short visit of thirty days was employed in viewing the monuments of art and power, which were scattered over the seven hills and the interjacent vallies. He admired the awful majesty of the capital, the vast extent of the baths of Caracalla and Diocletian, the severe simplicity of the Pantheon, the massy greatness of the amphitheatre of Titus, the elegant architecture of the theatre of Pompey and the temple of peace, and, above all, the stately structure of the forum and column of Trajan ; acknow- ledging that the voice of fame, so prone to invent and to magnify, had made an inadequate report of the metropolis of the world. The traveller, who has contemplated the ruins of ancient Rome, may conceive some imperfect idea of the sentiments which they must have inspired when they reared their heads in the splendour of unsullied beauty. .„ . 7-1 ;• 7 /- // \ ' (From the Dcchne and tall.) THE DIET OF THE TARTARS The corn, or even the rice, which constitutes the ordinary and wholesome food of a civilized people, can be obtained only by the patient toil of the husbandman. Some of the happy savages, who dwell between the tropics, are plentifully nourished by the liberality of nature ; but in the climates of the north, a nation of shepherds is reduced to their flocks and herds. The skilful practitioners of the medical art will determine (if they are able to determine) how far the temper of the human mind may be affected by the use of animal, or of vegetable, food ; and whether the common association of carnivorous and cruel deserves to be considered in any other light, than that of an innocent, perhaps a salutary, prejudice of humanity. Yet if it be true that the senti- ment of compassion is imperceptibly weakened by the sight and practice of domestic cruelty, we may observe that the horrid objects which are disguised by the arts of European refinement are exhibited in their naked and most disgusting simplicity in the 462 ENGLISH PROSE tent of a Tartarian shepherd. The ox, or the sheep, are slaughtered by the same hand from which they were accustomed to receive their daily food ; and the bleeding limbs are served, with very little preparation, on the table of their unfeeling murderer. In the military profession, and especially in the conduct of a numerous army, the exclusive use of animal food appears to be productive of the most solid advantages. Com is a bulky and perishalale commodity ; and the large magazines, which are indis- pensably necessary for the subsistence of our troops, must be slowly transported by the labour of men or horses. But the flocks and herds which accompany the march of the Tartars, afford a sure and increasing supply of flesh and milk ; in the far greater part of the uncultivated waste, the vegetation of the grass is quick and luxuriant ; and there are few places so extremely barren, that the hardy cattle of the north cannot find some toler- able pasture. The supply is multiplied and prolonged by the undistinguishing appetite, and patient abstinence of the Tartars. They indifferently feed on the flesh of those animals that have been killed for the table, or have died of disease. Horse-flesh, which in every age and country has been proscribed by the civilised nations of Europe and Asia, they devour with peculiar greediness ; and this singular taste facilitates the success of their military operations. The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses, who may be occasionally used, either to redouble the speed, or to satisfy the hunger, of the barbarians. Many are the resources of courage and poverty. When the forage round a camp of Tartars is almost consumed, they slaughter the greatest part of their cattle, and preserve the flesh, either smoked or dried in the sun. On the sudden emergency of a hasty march, they provide themselves with a sufficient cjuantity of little balls of cheese, or rather of hard curd, which they occasionally dissolve in water ; and this unsubstantial diet will support, for many days, the life, and even the spirits, of the patient warrior. Ikit this extraordinary abstinence, which the stoic would approve and the hermit might envy, is commonly succeeded by the most voracious indulgence of appetite. The wines of a happier climate are the most grateful present, or the most valuable commodity, that can Ije offered to the Tartars ; and the only example of their industry seems to consist in the art of extracting from mare's milk a fermented liquour, which possesses a very strong power of EDWARD GIBBON 463 intoxication. Like the animals of prey, the savages, both of the old and new world, experience the alternate vicissitudes of famine and plenty ; and their stomach is inured to sustain, with- out much inconvenience, the opposite extremes of hunger and of intemperance. ,„ ^1 c \ ^ (From the Same.) THE BATTLE OF CHALONS The discipline and tactics of the Greeks and Romans form an interesting part of their national manners. The attentive study of the military operations of Xenophon, or CjEsar, or Frederic, when they are described by the same genius which conceived and executed them, may tend to improve (if such improvement can be wished) the art of destroying the human species. But the battle of Chalons can only excite our curiosity by the magnitude of the object ; since it was decided by the blind impetuosity of barbarians, and has been related by partial writers, whose civil or ecclesias- tical profession secluded them from the knowledge of military affairs. Cassiodorus, however, had familiarly conversed with many Gothic warriors, who served in that memorable engagement ; a conflict (as they informed him) fierce, various, obstinate, and bloody ; such as could not be paralleled, either in the present, or in past ages. The number of the slain amounted to one hundred and sixty-two thousand, or, according to another account, three hundred thousand persons ; and these incredible exaggerations suppose a real and effective loss, sufficient to justify the historian's remark, that whole generations may be swept away by the mad- ness of kings, in the space of a single hour. After the mutual and repeated discharge of missile weapons, in which the archers of Scythia might signalise their superior dexterity, the cavalry and infantry of the two armies were furiously mingled in closer combat. The Huns, who fought under the eye of their king, pierced through the feeble and doubtful centre of the allies, separ- ated their wings from each other, and wheeling with a rapid effort, to the left, directed their whole force against the Visigoths. As Theodoric rode along the ranks, to animate his troops, he received a mortal stroke from the javelin of Andages, a noble Ostrogoth, and immediately fell from his horse. The wounded 464 ENGLISH PROSE king was oppressed in the general disorder, and trampled under the feet of his own cavalry ; and this important death served to explain the ambiguous prophecy of the haruspices. Attila already exulted in the confidence of victory, when the valiant Torismond descended from the hills, and verified the remainder of the pre- diction. The Visigoths, who had been thrown into confusion by the flight, or defection, of the Alani, gradually restored their order of battle ; and the Huns were undoubtedly vanquished, since Attila was compelled to retreat. He had exposed his person with the rashness of a private soldier ; but the intrepid troops of the centre had pushed forward beyond the rest of the line ; their attack was faintly supported ; their flanks were unguarded ; and the conquerors of Scythia and Germany were saved by the approach of the night from a total defeat. They retired within the circle of waggons that fortified their camp ; and the dismounted squad- rons prepared themselves for a defence, to which neither their arms, nor their temper were adapted. The event was doubtful ; but Attila had secured a last and honourable resource. The saddles and rich furniture of the cavalry were collected, by his order, into a funeral pile ; and the magnanimous barbarian had resolved, if his intrenchments should be forced, to rush headlong into the flames, and to deprive his enemies of the glory which they might have acquired, by the death or captivity of Attila. But his enemies had passed the night in equal disorder and anxiety. The inconsiderate courage of Torismond was tempted to urge the pursuit, till he unexpectedly found himself, with a few followers, in the midst of the Scythian waggons. In the confusion of a nocturnal combat, he was thrown from his horse ; and the Gothic prince must have perished like his father, if his youthful strength, and the intrepid zeal of his companions, had not rescued him from this dangerous situation. In the same manner, but on the left of the line, yEtius himself, separated from his allies, ignorant of their victory, and anxious for their fate, encountered and escaped the hostile troops that were scattered over the plains of Chalons ; and at length reached the camp of the Goths, which he could only fortify with a slight rampart of shields, till the dawn of day. The imperial general was soon satisfied of the defeat of Attila, who still remained inactive within his intrench- ments ; and when he contemplated the bloody scene, he obsei-ved, with secret satisfaction, that the loss had principally fallen on the barbarians. The body of Theodoric, pierced with honourable EDWARD GIBBON 465 wounds, was discovered under a heap of the slain : his subjects Ijewailed the death of their king and father ; but their tears were mingled with songs and acclamations, and his funeral rites were performed in the face of a vanquished enemy. The Goths, clashing their arms, elevated on a buckler his eldest son Toris- mond, to whom they justly ascribed the glory of their success : and the new king accepted the obligation of revenge, as a sacred portion of his paternal inheritance. Yet the Goths themselves were astonished by the fierce and undaunted aspect of their formidable antagonist ; and their historian has compared Attila to a lion encompassed in his den, and threatening his hunters with redoubled fury. The kings and nations, who might have deserted his standard in the hour of distress, were made sensible, that the displeasure of their monarch was the most imminent and inevitable danger. All his instruments of martial music inces- santly sounded a long and animating strain of defiance ; and the foremost troops, who advanced to the assault, were checked, or destroyed, by showers of arrows from every side of the intrench- ments. It was determined, in a general council of war, to besiege the King of the Huns in his camp, to intercept his provisions, and to reduce him to the alternative of a disgraceful treaty, or an unecjual combat. But the impatience of the barbarians soon dis- dained these cautious and dilatory measures ; and the mature policy of yEtius was apprehensive, that, after the extirpation of the Huns, the republic would be oppressed by the pride and power of the Gothic nation. The patrician exerted the superior ascendant of authority and reason, to calm the passions, which the son of Theodoric considered as a duty ; represented, with seeming affection, and real truth, the dangers of absence and delay ; and persuaded Torismond to disappoint, by his speedy return, the ambitious designs of his brothers, who might occupy the throne and treasures of Thoulouse. After the departure of the Goths, and the separation of the allied army, Attila was surprised at the vast silence that reigned over the plains of Chalons : the suspicion of some hostile stratagem detained him several days within the circle of his waggons ; and his retreat beyond the Rhine confessed the last victory which was achieved in the name of the Western Empire. ,^ , . (From the bamc.) VOL. IV 2 H 466 ENGLISH PROSE JUSTINIAN'S CODE If Caesar had achieved the reformation of the Roman law, his creative genius, enhghtened by reflection and study, would have given to the world a pure and original system of jurisprudence. Whatever flattery might suggest, the emperor of the East was afraid to establish his private judgment as the standard of equity : in the possession of legislative power, he borrowed the aid of time and opinion ; and his laborious compilations are guarded by the sages and legislators of past times. Instead of a statue cast in a simple mould by the hand of an artist, the works of Justinian represent a tessellated pavement, of anticjue and costly, but too often of incoherent, fragments. In the first year of his reign, he directed the faithful Trebonian, and nine learned associates, to revise the ordinances of his predecessors, as tliey were contained, since the time of Hadrian, in the Gregorian, Hermogenian, and Theodosian codes ; to purge the errors and contradictions, to retrench whatever was obsolete or superfluous, and to select the wise and salutary laws best adapted to the practice of the tribunals and the use of his subjects. The work was accomplished in fourteen months ; and the twelve books or tables, which the new decemvirs produced, might be designed to imitate the labours of their Roman predecessors. The new code of Justinian was honoured with his name, and confirmed by his royal signature : authentic transcripts were multiplied by the pens of notaries and scribes ; they were transmitted to the magistrates of the European, the Asiatic, and afterward, the African provinces : and the law of the empire was proclaimed on solemn festivals on the doors of churches. A more arduous operation was still behind : to extract the spirit of jurisprudence from the decisions and conjectures, the cjuestions and disputes, of the Roman civilians. Seventeen lawyers, with Tribonian at their head, were appointed by the Emperor to exercise an absolute jurisdiction over the works of their predecessors. If they had obeyed his commands in ten years, Justinian would have been satisfied with their diligence ; and the rapid composition of the Digest of Pandects, in three years, will deserve praise or censure, according to the merit of the composition. From the library of Tribonian, they chose forty, the most eminent civilians of fonner times ; two thousand EDWARD GIBBON 467 treatises were comprised in an abridgement of fifty books ; and it has been carefully recorded, that three millions of lines or sentences were reduced, in this abstract, to the moderate number of one hundred and fifty thousand. The edition of this great work was delayed a month after that of the Institutes ; and it seemed reasonable that the elements should precede the digest of the Roman law. As soon as the Emperor had approved their labours, he ratified, by his legislative power, the speculations of these private citizens : their commentaries on the twelve tables, the perpetual edict, the laws of the people, and the decrees of the senate, succeeded to the authority of the text ; and the text was abandoned, as a useless, though venerable, relic of antiquity. The Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes, were declared to be the legitimate system of civil jurisprudence ; they alone were admitted in the tribunals, and they alone were taught in the academies of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus. Justinian addressed to the senate and provinces his " eternal oracles " ; and his pride, under the mask of piety, ascribed the consummation of this great design to the support and inspiration of the Deity. Since the Emperor declined the fame and envy of original composition, we can only require at his hands method, choice, and fidelity ; the humble, though indispensable virtues of a compiler. Among the various combinations of ideas, it is difficult to assign any reasonable preference ; but as the order of Justinian is different in his three works, it is possible that all may be wrong ; and it is certain that two cannot be right. In the selection of ancient laws, he seems to have viewed his predecessors without jealousy, and with equal regard : the series could not ascend above the reign of Hadrian, and the narrow distinction of Paganism and Christianity, introduced by the superstition of Theodorus, had been abolished by the consent of mankind. But the jurisprudence of the Pandects is circumscribed within a period of a hundred years, from the perpetual edict to the death of Severus Alexander : the civilians who lived under the first Ctesars are seldom permitted to speak, and only three names can be attributed to the age of the republic. The favourite of Justinian (it has been fiercely urged) was fearful of encountering the light of freedom and the gra\ity of Roman sages. Tribonian condemned to oblivion the genuine and native wisdom of Cato, the Sctevolas, and Sulpicius ; while he invoked spirits more congenial to his own, the Syrians, Greeks, and Africans who flocked to the imperial court to study 468 ENGLISH PROSE Latin as a foreign tongue, and jurisprudence as a lucrative pro- fession. But the ministers of Justinian were instructed to labour, not for the curiosity of antiquarians, but for the immediate benefit of his subjects. It was their duty to select the useful and practicable parts of the Roman law ; and the writings of the old republicans, however curious or excellent, were no longer suited to the new system of manners, religion, and government. Perhaps, if the preceptors and friends of Cicero were still alive, our candour would acknowledge that, except in purity of language, their intrinsic merit was excelled by the school of Papinian and Ulpian. The science of the laws is the slow growth of time and experience, and the advantage both of method and materials is naturally assumed by the most recent authors. The civilians of the reign of the Antonines had studied the works of their predecessors : their philosophic spirit had mitigated the rigour of antiquity, simplified the forms of proceeding, and emerged from the jealousy and prejudice of the rival sects. The choice of the authorities that compose the Pandects, depended on the judgment of Triljonian ; but the power of his sovereign could not absolve him from the sacred obligations of truth and fidelity. As the legislator of the Empire, Justinian might repeal the acts of the Antonines, or condemn as seditious the free principles which were maintained by the last of the Roman lawyers. But the existence of past facts is placed beyond the reach of despotism ; and the Emperor was guilty of fraud and forgery, when he corrupted the integrity of their text, inscribed with their venerable names the words and ideas of his servile reign, and suppressed by the hand of power the pure and authentic copies of their senti- ments. The changes and interpolations of Tribonian and his colleagues are excused by the pretence of unifomiity ; but their cares have been insufficient, and the antinomies, or contradictions of the Code and Pandects, still exercise the patience and subtlety of modern civilians. (p^.^,^-, ^1^^, s^,^ic.) THE MOSLEM CAPTURE OF ALEPPO AND ANTIOCH To achieve what yet remained of the Syrian war, the caliph had formed two separate armies ; a chosen detachment, under Amrou EDWARD GIBBON 469 and Yezid, was left in the camp in Palestine ; while the larger division, under the standard of Abu Obeidah and Caled, marched away to the north against Antioch and Aleppo. The latter of these, the Ber^ea of the Greeks, was not yet illustrious as the capital of a province or a kingdom ; and the inhabitants, by anticipating their submission, and pleading their poverty, obtained a moderate composition for their lives and religion. But the castle of Aleppo, distinct from the city, stood erect on a lofty artificial mound : the sides were sharpened to a precipice, and faced with freestone ; and the Ijreadth of the ditch might be filled with water from the neighbouring springs. After the loss of three thousand men, the garrison was still equal to the defence ; and Youkinna, their valiant and hereditary chief, had murdered his brother, a holy monk, for daring to pronounce the name of peace. In a siege of four or five months, the hardest of the Syrian War, great numbers of the Saracens were killed and wounded : their removal to the distance of a mile could not seduce the vigilance of Youkinna : nor could the Christians be terrified l^y the execution of three hundred captives, whom they beheaded before the castle wall. The silence, and at length the complaints, of Abu Obeidah informed the Caliph, that their hope and jaatience were consumed at the foot of this impregnable fortress. " I am variously affected " (replied Omar) " by the difference of your success ; but I charge you by no nieans to raise the siege of the castle. Your retreat would diminish the reputation of our arms and encourage the infidels to fall upon you on all sides. Remain before Aleppo, till God shall detemiine the event, and forage with your horse round the adjacent country." The exhortation of the commander of the faithful was fortified by a supply of volunteers from all the tril^es of Arabia, who arrived in the camp on horses or camels. Amongst these was Dames, of a servile birth, but of gigantic size, and intrepid resolution. The forty-seventh day of his service he j^roposed, with only thirty men, to make an attempt on the castle. The experience and testimony of Calcd recommended his offer ; and Abu Obeidah admonished his men not to despise the baser origin of Dames, since he himself, could he relinciuish the public care, would cheerfully serve under the banner of the slave. His design was covered by the a]5pearancc of a retreat ; and the camp of the Saracens was pitched about a league from Aleppo. The thirty adventurers lay in ambush at the foot of the hill ; and Dames at length succeeded in his in(|uirics. 470 ENGLISH PROSE though he was provoked by the ignorance of his Greek captives. "God curse those dogs" (said the ilhterate Arab), "what a strange barbarous language they speak." At the darkest hour of the night he scaled the most accessible height, which he had diligently surveyed, a place where the stones were less entire, or the slope less perpendicular, or the guard less vigilant. Seven of the stoutest Saracens mounted on each other's shoulders, and the weight of the column was sustained on the broad and sinewy back of the gngantic slave. The foremost in this painful ascent could grasp and climb the lowest part of the battlements ; they silently stabbed and cast down the sentinels ; and the thirty brethren, repeating a pious ejaculation, " O Apostle of God, help and deliver us ! " were successively drawn up by the long folds of their turbans. With bold and cautious footsteps, Dames explored the palace of the governor, who celebrated, in riotous merriment, the festival of his deliverance. From thence returning to his companions, he assaulted on the inside the entrance of the castle. They overpowered the guard, unbolted the gate, let down the drawbridge, and defended the narrow pass, till the arrival of Caled, with the dawn of day, relieved their danger and assured their conquest. Youkinna, a formidable foe, became an active and useful proselyte ; and the general of the Saracens expressed his regard for the most humble merit, by detaining the army at Aleppo till Dames was cured of his honourable wounds. The capital of Syria was still covered by the castle of Aazaz and the iron bridge of the Orontes. After the loss of these important posts, and the defeat of the last of the Roman armies, the luxury of Antioch trembled and obeyed. Her safety was ransomed with three hundred thousand pieces of gold ; but the throne of the successors of Alexander, the seat of the Roman government in the East, which had been decorated by Ca;sar with the titles of free, and holy, and in\ iolate, was degraded under the yoke of the caliphs to the secondary rank of a provincial town. (From the Same.) BYZANTINE LITERATURE In our modern education, the painful though necessary attainment of two languages, which are no long^er living, may consume the EDWARD GIBBON 47 1 time and damp the ardour of the youthful student. The poets and orators were long imprisoned in the barbarous dialects of our western ancestors, devoid of harmony or grace ; and their genius, without precept or example, was abandoned to the rude and native powers of their judgment and fancy. But the Greeks of Con- stantinople, after purging away the impurities of their vulgar speech, acquired the free use of their ancient language, the most happy composition of human art, and a familiar knowledge of the sublime masters who had pleased or instructed the first of nations. But these advantages only tend to aggravate the reproach and shame of a degenerate people. They held in their lifeless hands the riches of their fathers, without inheriting the spirit which had created and improved that sacred patrimony : they read, they compiled, but their languid souls seemed alike incapable of thought and action. In the revolution of ten centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea has been added to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation. Not a single composition of history, philosophy, or literature has been saved froni oblivion by the intrinsic beauties of style or sentiment, of original fancy, or even of successful imitation. In prose the least offensive of the Byzantine writers are absolved from censure by their naked and unpresuming simplicity ; but the orators, most eloquent in their own conceit, are the farthest removed from the models whom they affect to emulate. In every page our taste and reason are wounded by the choice of gigantic and obsolete words, a stiff and intricate phraseology, the discord of images, the childish play of false or unseasonable ornament, and the painful attempt to elevate them- selves, to astonish the reader, and to involve a trivial meaning in the smoke of obscurity and exaggeration. Their prose is soaring to the vicious affectation of poetry : their poetry is sinking below the flatness and insipidity of prose. The tragic, epic and lyric muses were silent and inglorious : the bards of Constantinople seldom rose above a riddle or epigram, a panegyric or tale ; they forgot even the rules of prosody ; and with the melody of Homer yet sounding in their ears, they confound all measure of feet and syllables in the impotent strains which have received the name of political or city verses. The minds of the Greeks were bound in fetters of a base and imperious superstition, which extends her 472 ENGLISH PROSE dominion round the circle of profane science. Their understand- ings were bewildered in metaphysical controversy : in the belief of visions and miracles, they had lost all principles of moral evidence, and their taste was vitiated by the homilies of the monks, an absurd medley of declamation and Scripture. Even these con- temptible studies were no longer dignified by the abuse of superior talents ; the leaders of the Greek Church were humbly content to admire and copy the oracles of antiquity, nor did the schools or pulpit produce any rivals of the fame of Athanasius and Chrysostom. ,„ ,i c \ ^ (From the Same.) MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD The College of St. Mary Magdalen was founded in the fifteenth century by Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester ; and now consists of a president, forty fellows, and a number of inferior students. It is esteemed one of the largest and most wealthy of our academical corporations, which may be compared to the Benedictine abbeys of Catholic countries, and I have loosely heard that the estates belonging to Magdalen College, which are leased by those indulgent landlords at small quit-rents and occasional fines, might be raised, in the hands of private avarice, to an annual revenue of nearly ^30,000. Our colleges are supposed to be schools of science as well as of education ; nor is it unreasonable to expect that a body of literary men, devoted to a life of celibacy, exempt from the care of their own subsistence, and amply provided with books, should devote their leisure to the prosecution of study, and that some effects of their studies should be manifested to the world. The shelves of their library groan under the weight of the benedictine folios, of the editions of the fathers, and the collections of the Middle Ages, which have issued from the single Abbey of St. Germaine de Prez at Paris. A com- position of genius must be the offspring of one mind ; but such works of industry as may be divided among many heads, and must be continued during many years, are the peculiar province of a laborious community. If I inquire into the manufactures of the monks of Magdalen, if 1 extend the inquiry to the other colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, a silent blush, or a scornful frown, will be the only reply. The fellows or monks of my time EDWARD GIBBON 473 were decent easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder ; their days were filled by a series of uniform employ- ments ; the chapel and the hall, the coffee-house and the common room, till they retired, weary and well satisfied, to a long slumber. From the toil of reading, or thinking, or writing, they had absolved their conscience ; and the first shoots of learning and ingenuity withered on the ground, without yielding any fruits to the owners or the public. As a gentleman commoner, I was admitted to the society of the fellows, and fondly expected that some questions of literature would be the amusing and instructive topics of their discourse. Their conversation stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal : their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth ; and their constitutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty for the house of Hanover. A general election was now approaching ; the great Oxfordshire contest already blazed with all the malevolence of party zeal. Magdalen College was devoutly attached to the old interest ; and the names of Wenman and Dashwood were more frequently pro- nounced than those of Cicero and Chrysostom. The example of the senior fellows could not inspire the undergraduates with a liberal spirit or studious emulation ; and I cannot describe, as I never knew, the discipline of college. Some duties may possibly have been imposed on the poor scholars whose ambition aspired to the peaceful honours of a fellowship {ascribi quictis ordinilnts . . . Deoruin) ; but no independent members were admitted Ijelow the rank of a gentleman commoner, and our velvet cap was the cap of liberty. A tradition prevailed that some of our prede- cessors had spoken Latin declamations in the hall ; Ijut of this ancient custom no vestige remained : the obvious methods of public exercises and examinations were totally unknown ; and 1 have never heard that either tjie president or the society interfered in the private economy of the tutors and their pupils. (From the AiitohiograpJiy.') FINALE When I contemplate tlic common lot of mortality, I must acknowledge that 1 have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life. The far greater part of the globe is overspread with barbarism or 474 ENGLISH PROSE slavery. In the civilised world, the most numerous class is con- demned to ignorance and poverty ; and the double fortune of my birth in a free and enlightened country, in an honourable and wealthy family, is the lucky chance of an unit against millions. The general probability is that a new-born infant will not live to complete his fiftieth year. I have now passed that age, and may fairly estimate the present value of my existence in the threefold division of mind, body, and estate. ( I ) The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience, unsullied by the reproach or remembrance of an un- worthy action. Hie murus ahcncjis csto : Nil conscire sibi, nulla pal Icscerc culpa. I am endowed with a cheerful temper, a moderate sensibility, and a natural disposition to repose rather than to activity : some mischievous appetites and habits have perhaps been corrected by philosophy or time. The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigour from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure ; and I am not sensible of any decay of the mental faculties. The original soil has been highly improved by cultivation ; but it may be c[uestioned whether some flowers of fancy, some grateful errors, have not been eradicated with the roots of prejudice. (2) Since I have escaped from the long perils of my childhood, the serious advice of a physician has seldom been requisite. " The madness of superfluous health " I have never known ; but my tender con- stitution has been fortified by time, and the inestimable gift of the sound and peaceful slumbers of infancy may be imputed both to the mind and body. (3) I have already described the merits of my society and situation ; but these enjoyments would be tasteless or bitter if their possession were not assured by an annual and adequate supply. According to the scale of Switzerland I am a rich man, and I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my ex- pense, and my expense is equal to my wishes. My friend, Lord Sheffield, has kindly relieved me from the cares to which my taste and temper are most adverse ; shall I add, that since the failure of my first wishes I have never entertained any serious thoughts of a matrimonial connection ? I am disgusted with the affectation of men of letters who com- plain that they have renounced a substance for a shadow ; and that their fame (which sometimes is no insupportable weight, affords EDWARD GIBBON 475 a poor compensation for en\y, censure, and persecution. My own experience, at least, has taught me a \ery different lesson. Twenty happy years have been animated by the labour of my history ; and its success has given me a name, a rank, a character in the world, to which I should not otherwise have been entitled. The freedom of my writings has indeed provoked an implacable tribe ; but as I was safe from the stings, I was soon accustomed to the buzzing of the hornets. My nerves are not tremblingly alive, and my literary temper is so happily framed, that I am less sensible of pain than of pleasure. The rational pride of an author may be offended rather than flattered by vague indis- criminate praise ; but he cannot, he should not, be indifferent to the fair testimonies of private and public esteem. Even his moral sympathy may be gratified by the idea that now, in the present hour, he is imparting some degree of amusement or knowledge to his friends in a distant land : that one day his mind will be familiar to the grandchildren of those who are yet unborn. I cannot boast of the friendship or favour of princes ; the patronage of English literature has long since been de\oI\ed on our booksellers, and the measure of their liberality is the least ambiguous test of our common success. Perhaps the golden mediocrity of my fortune has contributed to fortify my application. The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more ; and our prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful. This day may possibly be my last ; but the laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular, still allow me about fifteen years. I shall soon enter into the period which, as the most agreeable of his long life, was selected by the judgment and ex- perience of the sage Fontenelle. His choice is approved by the eloquent historian of nature, who fixes our moral happiness to the mature season in which our passions are supposed to have calmed, our duties fulfilled, our ambition satisfied, our fame and fortune established on a solid basis. In private conversation, that great and amiable man added the weight of his own experience ; and this autumnal felicity might be exemplified in the lives of Voltaire, Hume, and many other men of letters. I am far more inclined to embrace than to dispute this comfortable doctrine. I will not suppose any premature decay of the mind or body ; but I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a Ijrowner shade the evening of life. (p^-o^-, ^j^^. Same.) JAMES BOSVVELL [James Boswell, son of a Scotch advocate who was raised to the Bench under the name of Lord Auchinleck, was born in 1740, and educated in Edinburgh. Having aheady made some Uterary essays, and become ac- quainted with the hterary notabilities of the Scottish capital, he came to London (for which he had conceived a great attachment in an even earUer visit) in 1762, chiefly to obtain an introduction to Dr. Johnson, whom he already reverenced by reputation. From 1765 he resided for some time abroad, and found access to Rousseau, and through him, to Paoli, the assertor of Corsican liberties, with whom he lived for some time, and of whom and the island of Corsica he wrote an account in 1768. He pursued his profession as advocate intermittently : but his chief occupation was the cultivation of literary society, especially that of Dr. Johnson, with whom he made a tour in the Hebrides, of which he published an account in 1785. He continued to be the intimate and observant friend of Johnson until the death of the latter in 1784, and published his biography in 1791. Its success was immediate : a second edition was published in 1793 'i"elina and Cecilia in greater numbers, and whether, when fashion has revived them, there may not be found in them some elements of enduring interest. If for no other reason, Frances Rurney has a secure place in our literature as the forerunner of Jane Austen ; but this is not her only claim. Her plots are without interest ; but we feel that her men and women live as those only can who are created by imagination working upon a quick and lively observation. She paints in strong colours, and her drawing exaggerates the features. As Macaulay has pointed out she deals with the "humours" of society, rather than with subtle delineations of character. The exaggeration to which she is prone makes her characters wear a certain monotony of contrast, often stamps them as caricatures, and not infreciuently degrades her comedy into farce, and swells her tragedy into bom- bast. But all this need not blind us to the essential excellence of her work. Her two first books were her best, and it would be well for her fame if no others were preserved. In these her observation is most keenly awake, her fancy is most quick and lively, her perception of passionate feeling most clear, and her grasp of character most strong. From first to last, even when to our mental habit she seems to verge towards rhodomontade, there is no trace of affectation. She is not without that rarest of gifts, a sense of real humour. But the quality which is most likely to give permanence to these books is the presence of one strong and consistent vein of passion, never relaxed, round which her story groups itself, and to the delineation of which each incident is subordinated with the skill of an artist. To the variety and light- ness of a picture of everyday life she adds the enduring dignity of romance, with the largeness of drawing which idealises passion. The absence of this element of romantic idealism is the chief injury to such modern fiction as most naturally suggests a compari- son with Frances Burney or Jane Austen ; and it is because the modern realistic novel gives so much attention to a strict accuracy in infinitesimal details, and so constantly neglects the welding ele- ment of romantic passion, that it seems to crumble into a series of disjointed fragments, without any permanence of cohesion, and fails to retain a lasting impression on the memory. We cannot pretend to feel that all her sentiment has the true ring of pathos ; l3ut if it is often exagg'erated and overstrained, it is never affected MADAME D'ARBLA Y 539 or false. We cannot deny that her situations often rest upon effete conventions, that her comic scenes are often childish and absurd. We cannot follow without impatience the plot of Cecilia, which bases the happiness of hero and heroine upon a ridiculous punctilio as to thesurrender of afamilyname — the condition attached to the heroine's fortune. But we must accept the conventions which were actual a hundred years ago, though they are now onl)- ludicrous : we have only to ask whether, given those conditions, she has made her personages act with tnith to nature in their pre- sence, and we must answer in the affinnative. E7>elina and Cecilia remain as types of perfect womanhood ; their surroundings are to us out of joint, but their hearts are absolutely true to nature. The cumbersome convention makes the growth of interest in them slow ; but once roused the interest does not wane, and carries us with the strong current of feeling' to the end of each novel. Frances Burney was the first in her kind. She handed on the tradition of her art to Jane Austen, in whose hands the por- traiture became more delicate, the shades of discrimination more subtle, the current of the story ran in a more secure and well-cut channel, and its interest was developed with greater art. But Frances Burney made Jane Austen possible ; and if her touch was less delicate, it was perhaps more bold, and the colours were laid on with a stronger brush. The story of Evelina is told by a series of letters, and this is one reason why the style is better than in the later novels. The authoress was then in all the freshness of her genius. She wrote by herself and for herself, troubled herself little about models, and was hampered by no advice. She looked upon authorship as something at which she might make a girlish attempt, but which she could never seriously profess. But the simplicity of style is helped also by the epistolary form. Most of the letters are written by a girl of seventeen, and the author never forgets how such a heroine would write. Of the rest the chief are written by the girl's guardian, and in their kind they are perfect, as expressions of tender and delicate affection. Four years later, when Cecilia was written, the epistolary style was abandoned. The narrative style came in its place, and fashion in that day almost forced narrative to adopt a solemn and inflated style. Frances Burney had in the interval become a literary character. .She was never left to herself, and was surrounded day after day by the most finished talkers of the time, whose talk was above all things literary 540 ENGLISH PHOSE in form. Her most cherished friend was Johnson : and Johnson's style was far too dominant in every sphere of Hterature to permit his chosen favourite, the playmate of his easier hours, to escape its influence. Macaulay rigditly perceives the impression of his style in Cecilia; but his inference that Johnson's hand was present in many passages is not so certainly true. His pervading influence was so great that no direct interference of his was necessary to make that influence felt. Unfortunately Miss Burney neither retained her own early simplicity, nor did she adhere to that measured formality which she had learned from Johnson. By whatever aberration of taste, or under whatever stress of circumstance — it may well be, as Macaulay surmises, by association with the French refugees and her subsequent residence in France— she fell into a style the most intricate, the most laboured, and the most affected that could be conceived. Her later novels had no qualities that could enable them to take their place with Evelina and Cecilia; but even if their other merits had been greater they would have been crushed into oblivion under the weight of such a style as is seen in the lWi7jdercr and in the Memoirs of Dr. Biirucy. It is interesting to observe that in one of the passages quoted below, in which Miss Burney sums up the lesson of Cecilia., Jane Austen has found the title of what some hold to be her finest novel. The note is caught by one genius from the other, and it serves as a link between these two — the earliest, but not the least memorable, of our women novelists. H. Craik. EVELINA TO THE REV. MR. VILLARS This moment arrived. Just going to Drury Lane Theatre. The celebrated Mr. Garrick performs Ranger. I am quite in ecstasy. So is Miss Mirvan. How fortunate that he should happen to play ! We would not let Mrs. Mirvan rest till she consented to go. Her chief objection was to our dress, for we have no time to Loiidonise ourselves ; but we teased her into compliance, and so we are to sit in some obscure place that she may not be seen. As to me, I should be alike unknown in the most conspicuous or most private part of the house. I can write no more now. I have hardly time to breathe — only just this, the houses and streets are not quite so superb as I expected. However, I have seen nothing yet, so I ought not to judge. Well ; adieu, my dearest sir, for the present. I could not for- bear writing a few words instantly on my arrival, though I suppose my letter of thanks for your consent is still on the road. Salitrday nii^ht. Oh, my dear sir, in what raptures am 1 returned ? Well may Mr. Garrick be so celebrated, so universally admired — I had not any idea of so great a performer. Such ease ! such vivacity in his manner ! such grace in his motions ! such fire and meaning in his eyes ! 1 could hardly believe he had studied a written part, for every word seemed to be uttered from the impulse of the moment. His action at once so graceful and so free I his voice so clear, so melodious, yet so wonderfully various in its tones ! Such animation ! every look speaks ! I would have given the world to have had the whole play acted over again. And when he danced — Oh how I envied 542 ENGLISH PROSE Clarinda ! I almost wished to have jumped on the stage and joined them. I am afraid you will think me mad, so I won't say any more ; yet I really believe Mr. Garrick would make you mad too if you could see him. I intend to ask Mrs. Mirvan to go to the play eveiy night while we stay in town. She is extremely kind to me ; and Maria, her charming daughter, is the sweetest girl in the world. I shall write to you every evening all that passes in the day, and that in the same manner as, if I could see, I should tell you. Sunday. This morning we went to Portland Chapel ; and afterwards we walked in the Mall of St. James's Park, which by no means answered my expectations : it is a long straight walk of dirty gravel, very uneasy to the feet ; and at each end, instead of an open prospect, nothing is to be seen but houses built of brick. When Mrs. Mirvan pointed out the Palace to me — I think I was never much more surprised. However the walk was very agreeable to us ; everybody looked gay, and seemed pleased ; and the ladies were so much dressed, that Miss Mirvan and I could do nothing but look at them. Mrs. Mirvan met several of her friends. No wonder, for I never saw so many people assembled together before. I looked about for some of my acquaintance, but in vain, for I saw not one person that I knew, which is very odd, for all the world seemed there. Mrs. Mirvan says we are not to walk in the Park again next Sunday, even if we should be in town, because there is better company in Kensington Gardens ; but really, if you had seen how much every body was dressed, you would not think that possible. Monday. We are to go this evening to a private ball, given by Mrs. Stanley, a very fashionable lady of Mrs. Mirvan's acquaintance. We have been a-shopping as Mrs. Mirvan calls it, all this morning, to buy silks, caps, gauzes, and so forth. The shops are really very entertaining, especially the mercers ; there seem to be six or seven men belonging to each shop ; and every one took care, by bowing and smirking to be noticed. We were conducted from one to another, and carried from room to MADAME D'ARBLAY 543 room with so much ceremony, that at first I was ahiiost afraid to go on. I thought I should never have chosen a silk : for they produced so many, I knew not which to fix upon ; and they recommended them all so strongly, that I fancy they thought I only wanted persuasion to buy every thing they showed me. And, indeed, they took so much trouble, that I was almost ashamed I could not. At the milliners, the ladies we met were so much dressed, that I should rather have imagined they were making visits than purchases. But what most diverted me was, that we were more frequently served by men than by women ; and such men ! so finical, so affected ! they seemed to understand every part of a woman's dress better than we do ourselves ; and they recom- mended caps and ribands with an air of so much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them. The dispatch with which they work in these great shops is amazing, for they have promised me a complete suit of linen against the evening. I have just had my hair dressed. You can't think how oddly my head feels ; full of powder and black pins, and a great cushion on the top of it. I believe you would hardly know me, for my face looks cjuite different to what it did before my hair was dressed. When I shall be able to make use of a comb for myself I cannot tell ; for my hair is so much entangled, /r/:?^'/^^ they call it, that I fear it will be veiy difficult. I am half afraid of this ball to-night ; for you know I have never danced but at school : however, Miss Mirvan says there is nothing in it. Yet I wish it was over. Adieu, my dear sir": pray excuse the wretched stuff 1 write ; perhaps I may improve by being in this town, and then my letters will be less unworthy your reading. — Meantime, I am, your dutiful and affectionate, though unpolished, Evelina. Poor Miss Mirvan cannot wear one of the caps she made, because they dressed her hair too large for them. (From Evelina.) EVELINA TO THE REV. MR. VILLARS . . . The relations to whom she was pleased to introduce me, consisted of a Mr. Branghton, who is her nephew, and three of 544 ENGLISH PROSE his children, the eldest of which is a son, and the two younger are daughters. Mr. Branghton appears about 40 years of age. He does not seem to want a common understanding, though he is very con- tracted and prejudiced : he has spent his whole time in the city, and I believe feels a great contempt for all who reside elsewhere. His son seems weaker in his understanding, and more gay in his temper ; but his gaiety is that of a foolish overgrown school- boy, whose wiirth consists in noise and disturbance. He disdains his father for his close attention to business, and love of money ; though he seems himself to have no talents, spirit, or generosity, to make him superior to either. His chief delight appears to be tormenting and ridiculing his sisters ; who, in return, most heartily despise him. Miss Branghton, the eldest daughter, is by no means ugly ; but looks proud, ill-tempered, and conceited. She hates the city, though without knowing why ; for it is easy to discover she has lived nowhere else. Miss Polly Branghton is rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy, and, I believe, very good-natured. The first half-hour was allotted to making themselves comfort- able; for they complained of having had a very dirty walk, as they came on foot from Snow Hill, where Mr. Branghton keeps a silversmith's shop ; and the young ladies had not only their coats to brush, and shoes to dry, but to adjust their head-dress, which their bonnets had totally discomposed. The manner in which Madam Duval was pleased to introduce me to this family extremely shocked me. " Here, my dears," said she, "here's a relation you little thought of; but you must know my poor daughter Caroline had this child after she run away from me, — though I never knew nothing of it, not I, for a long while after ; for they took care to keep it a secret from me, though the poor child has never a friend in the world besides." " Miss seems very tender-hearted, aunt," said Miss Polly ; and to be sure she's not to blame for her mamma's undutifulness, for she couldn't help it." " Lord, no," answered she, " and I never took no notice of it to her : for, indeed, as to that, my own poor daughter wasn't so much to blame as you may think ; for she'd never have gone astray, if it had not been for that meddling old parson I told you of" MADAME D'ARBLA Y 545 " If aunt pleases," said young Mr. Branghton, " we'll talk o' somewhat else, for Miss looks very uneasy-like." The next subject that was chosen was the age of the three young Branghtons and myself. The son is twenty ; the daughters upon hearing I was seventeen, said that was just the age of Miss Polly ; but their brother, after a long dispute, proved that she was two years older, to the great anger of both sisters, who agreed that he was very ill-natured and spiteful. When this point was settled, the question was put. Which was tallest ? — We were desired to measure, as the Branghtons were all of different opinions. None of them, however, disputed my being the tallest in the company ; but, in regard to one another, they were extremely quarrelsome : the brother insisted upon their measuring /a/r, and not with /icaJs and heels; but they would by no means consent to lose those privileges of our sex ; and therefore the young man was cast^ as shortest ; though he appealed to all present upon the injustice of the decree. This ceremony over, the young ladies begun, very freely, to examine my dress, and to interrogate me concerning it. " This apron's your own work, I suppose. Miss ? but these sprigs a'n't in fashion now. Pray, if it is not impertinent, what might you give a yard for this lutestring ? — Do you make your own caps, Miss ? and many other questions equally interesting and well-bred. They then asked me hoia I liked London ? and whether I should not think the country a very dull place, when I returned thither ? " Miss must try if she can't get a good husband," said Mr. Branghton, "and then she may stay and live here." The next topic was public places, or rather the theatres, for they knew of no other ; and the merits and defects of all the actors and actresses were discussed ; the young man here took the lead, and seemed to be very conversant on the subject. But during this time, what was my concern, and suffer me to add, my indignation, when I found, by some words I occasionally heard, that Madam Duval was entertaining Mr. Branghton with all the most secret and cruel particulars of my situation ! The eldest daughter was soon drawn to them by the recital ; the youngest and the son still kept their places ; intending, I believe, to divert me, though the conversation was all their own. In a few minutes, Miss Branghton coming suddenly up to her sister, exclaimed, " Lord, Polly, only think ! Miss never saw her papa ! " VOL. IV 2 N 546 ENGLISH PROSE "Lord, how odd!" cried the other, "why, then Miss I suppose you wouldn't know him ? " This was quite too much for me ; I rose hastily, and ran out of the room : but I soon regretted I had so little command of myself; for the two sisters both followed, and insisted upon comforting me, notwithstanding my earnest entreaties to be left alone. As soon as I returned to the company, Madame Duval said " Why, my dear, what was the matter with you ? why did you run away so ? " This question almost made me run again, for I knew not how to answer it. But, is it not very extraordinary, that she can put me in situations so shocking, and then wonder to find me sensible of any concern ? Mr. Branghton now inquired of me, whether I had seen the Tower, or St. Paul's Church 1 and upon my answering in the negative, they proposed making a party to show them to me. Among other questions, they also asked, if I had ever seen such a thing as an ope7'a? I told them I had. "Well," said Mr. Branghton, " I never saw one in my life, so long as I've lived in London ; and 1 never desire to see one, if I live as much longer." " Lord, papa," cried Miss Polly, " why not ? you might as well for once, for the curiosity of the thing : besides Miss Pomfret saw one, and she says it was very pretty." " Miss will think us very vulgar," said Miss Branghton, " to live in London and never have been to an opera ; but it's no fault of mine, I assure you. Miss, only papa don't like to go." The result was, that a party was proposed, and agreed to, for some early opportunity. I did not dare contradict them ; but I said that my time, while I remained in town, was at the disposal of Mrs. Mirvan. However, I am sure I will not attend them, if I can possibly avoid so doing. When we parted. Madam Duval desired to see me the next day ; and the Branghtons told me, that the first time 1 went towards Snow Hill, they would be very glad if I would call upon them. I wish we may not meet again till that time arrives. I am sure I shall not be very ambitious of being- known to any more of my relations, if they have any resemblance to those whose acquaintance I have been introduced to already. . . . (From the Same.) MADAME D'ARBLAY 547 MR. VILLARS TO EVELINA Displeasure ! My Evelina ! — You have but done your duty ; you have but shown that humanity without which I should blush to own my child. It is mine, however, to see that your generosity be not repressed by your suffering from indulging it ; I remit to you, therefore, not merely a token of my approbation, but an acknowledgment of my desire to participate in your charity. O my child, were my fortune equal to my confidence in thy benevolence, with what transport should I, through thy means, devote it to the relief of indigent virtue ! yet let us not repine at the limitation of our power ; for while our bounty is proportioned to our ability, the difference of the greater or less donation can weigh but little in the scale of justice. In reading your account of the misguided man, whose misery has so largely excited your compassion, I am led to apprehend that his unhappy situation is less the effect of misfortune than misconduct. If he is reduced to that state of poverty represented by the Branghtons, he should endeavour, by activity and industry, to retrieve his affairs, and not pass his time in idle reading in the very shop of his creditor. The pistol scene made me shudder ; the courage with which you pursued this desperate man, at once delighted and terrified me. Be ever thus, my dearest Evelina, dauntless in the cause of distress ! let no weak fears, no timid doubts, deter you from the exertion of your duty, according to the fullest sense of it that Nature has implanted in your mind. Though gentleness and modesty are the peculiar attributes of your sex, yet fortitude and firmness, when occasion demands them, are a irtues as noble and as becoming in women as in men : the I'ight line of conduct is the same for both sexes, though the manner in which it is pursued may somewhat vary, and be accommodated to the strength or weakness of the different travellers. There is, however, something so mysterious in all you have seen or heard of this wretched man, that I am unwilling to stamp a bad impression of his character upon so slight and partial a knowledge of it. Where anything is doubtful, the ties of society and the laws of humanity, claim a favourable interpretation ; but remember, my dear child, that those of discretion have an equal claim to your regard. 548 ENGLISH PROSE As to Sir Clement Willoughby, I know not how to express my indignation at his conduct. Insolence so insufferable, and the implication of suspicions so shocking, irritate me to a degree of wrath, which I hardly thought my almost worn-out passions were capable of again experiencing. You must converse with him no more : he imagines, from the pliability of your temper, that he may offend you with impunity ; but his behaviour justifies, nay, calls for your avowed resentment ; do not, therefore, hesitate in forbidding him your sight. The Branghtons, Mr. Smith, and young Brown, however ill- bred and disagreeable, are objects too contemptible for serious displeasure ; yet I grieve much that my Evelina should be exposed to their rudeness and impertinence. The very day that this tedious month expires, I shall send Mrs. Clinton to town, who will accompany you to Howard Grove. Your stay there, will I hope be short ; for I feel daily an increas- ing impatience to fold my beloved child to my bosom ! Arthur Villars. (From the Same.) EVELINA TO MISS MIRVAN You complain of my silence, my dear Miss Mirvan — but what have I to write ? Narrative does not offer, nor does a lively imagination supply the deficiency. I have, however, at present sufficient matter for a letter, in relating a conversation I had yesterday with Mr. Villars. Our breakfast had been the most cheerful we have had since my return hither ; and when it was over, he did not, as usual, retire to his study, but continued to converse with me while I worked. We might, probably, have passed all the morning thus sociably, but for the entrance of a farmer, who came to solicit advice concerning some domestic affairs. They withdrew together into the study. The moment I was alone my spirits failed me ; the exertion with which I had supported them had fatigued my mind ; I flung away my work, and leaning my arms on the table, gave way to a MADAME D'ARBLAY 549 train of disagreeable reflections, which, bursting from the restraint that had smothered them, filled me with unusual sadness. This was my situation, when, looking towards the door, which was open, I perceived Mr. Villars, who was earnestly regarding me. " Is Farmer Smith gone, sir?" cried I, hastily rising, and snatching up my work. " Don't let me disturb you," said he, gravely ; " I will go again to my study." "Will you, sir ? — I was in hopes you were coming to sit here." " In hopes ! — and why, Evelina, should you hope it ?" This question was so unexpected, that I knew not how to answer it ; but, as I saw he was moving away, I followed, and begged him to return. " No, my dear, no," said he, with a forced smile, " I only interrupt your meditations." Again I knew not what to say ; and while I hesitated, he retired. My heart was with him, but I had not the courage to follow. The idea of an explanation brought on in so serious a manner frightened me. I recollected the inference jt"/^ had drawn from my uneasiness, and I feared that he might make a similar interpretation. Solitary and thoughtful, I passed the rest of the morning in my own room. At dinner I again attempted to be cheerful ; but Mr. Villars himself was grave, and I had not sufficient spirits to support a conversation merely by my own efforts. As soon as dinner was over, he took a book, and I walked to the window. I believe I remained near an hour in this situation. All my thoughts were directed to considering how I might dispel the doubts which I apprehended Mr. Villars had formed, without acknowledging a circumstance which I had suffered so much pain merely to conceal. But while I was thus planning for the future, I forgot the present ; and so intent was I upon the subject which occupied me, that the strange appearance of my unusual inactivity and extreme thoughtfulness never occurred to me. But when, at last, I recollected myself, and turned round, I saw that Mr. Villars, who had parted with his book, was wholly engrossed in attending to me. I started from my reverie, and hardly knowing what I said, asked if he had been reading ? He paused a moment, and then replied, "Yes, my child; — a book that both afflicts and perplexes me." He means me^ thought I ; and therefore I made no answer. 550 ENGLISH PROSE " What if we read it together ? " continued he, " will you assist me to clear its obscurity ? " I knew not what to say ; but I sighed involuntarily from the bottom of my heart. He rose, and approaching me, said with emotion, " My child, I can no longer be a silent witness of thy sorrow, — is not thy sorrow my sorrow ? — and ought I to be a stranger to the cause, when I so deeply sympathise in the effect ? " "Cause, sir!" cried I, greatly alarmed, "what cause? — I don't know, — I can't tell — I — " " Fear not," said he, kindly, " to unbosom thyself to me, my dearest Evelina ; open to me thy whole heart, — it can have no feelings for which I will not make allowance. Tell me, therefore, what it is that thus afflicts us both ; and who knows but I may suggest some means of relief?" " You are too, too good," cried I, greatly embarrassed ; but indeed I know not what you mean." " I see," said he, " it is painful for you to speak : suppose, then I endeavour to save you by guessing ? " " Impossible ! impossible ! " cried I eagerly ; " no one living could ever guess, ever suppose — " I stopped abruptly ; for I then recollected I was acknowledging something was to be guessed : however, he noticed not my mistake. " At least let me try," answered he, mildly ; " perhaps I may be a better diviner than you imagine : if I guess everything that is probable, surely I must approach near the real reason. Be honest, then, my love, and speak without reserve ; — does not the country, after so much gaiety, so much variety, does it not appear insipid and tiresome ? " " No indeed ! I love it more than ever, and more than ever do I wish I had never, never quitted it ! " " Oh my child ! that I had not permitted the journey ! My judgment always opposed it, but my resolution was not proof against persuasion." " I blush, indeed," cried 1, "to recollect my earnestness ; — but I have been my own punisher ! " " It is too late now," answered he, " to reflect upon this sub- ject : let us endeavour to avoid repentance for the time to come, and we shall not have erred without reaping some instruction." Then, seating himself, and making me sit by him, he continued, " I must now guess again : perhaps you regret the loss of those MADAME D'ARBLAY 551 friends you knew in town ; — perhaps you miss their society, and fear you may see them no more ? — perhaps Lord Orville — " I could not keep my seat ; but rising hastily, said, " Dear sir, ask me nothing more ! — for I have nothing to own, — nothing to say ; — my gravity has been merely accidental, and I can give no reason for it at all. — Shall I fetch you another book ? — or will you have this again ? " For some minutes he was totally silent, and I pretended to employ myself in looking for a book. At last with a deep sigh, " I see " said he, " I see but too plainly, that though Evelina is returned, — I have lost my child ! " " No, sir, no," cried I, inexpressibly shocked, " she is more yours than ever 1 Without you, the world would be a desert to her, and life a burden : — forgive her, then, and, — if you can, — condescend to be once more, the confidant of all her thoughts." " How highly I value, how greatly I wish for her confidence," returned he, " she cannot but know ; — yet to extort, to tear it from her, — my justice, my affection both revolt at the idea. I am sorry I was so earnest with you ; leave me, my dear, leave me, and compose yourself; we will meet again at tea." " Do you then refuse to hear me ? " " No, but I abhor to compel you. I have long seen that your mind has been ill at ease, and mine has largely partaken of your concern : I forbore to question you ; for I hoped that time and absence from whatever excited your uneasiness, might best operate in silence : but alas ! your affection seems only to aug- ment, — your health declines, — your look alters !- — O, Evelina, my aged heart bleeds to see the change ! — bleeds to behold the darling it had cherished, the prop it had reared for its support when bowed down by years and infirmities, sinking itself under the pressure of internal grief! — struggling to hide what it should seek to participate ! But go my dear, go to your own room ; we both want composure, and we will talk of this matter some other time." " O sir," cried I penetrated to the soul, " bid me not leave you ! — think me not so lost to feeling, to gratitude — " " Not a word of that," interrupted he : " it pains me you should think upon that subject ; pains me you should ever remember that you have not a natural, an hereditary right to everything within my power. I meant not to affect you thus, — I hoped to have soothed you ! — but my anxiety betrayed me to an urgency that 552 ENGLISH PROSE has distressed you. Comfort yourself, my love ; and doubt not but that time will stand your friend, and all will end well." I burst into tears : with difficulty I had so long restrained them ; for my heart, while it glowed with tenderness and grati- tude, was oppressed with a sense of its own unworthiness. '• You are all, all goodness ! " cried I, in a voice scarce audible ; " little as I deserve, — unable as I am to repay, such kindness, — yet my whole soul feels, — thanks you for it ! " " My dearest child," cried he, "I cannot bear to see thy tears ; — for my sake dry them ; such a sight is too much for me ; think of that, Evelina, and take comfort, I charge thee ! " " Say then," cried I, kneeling at his feet, " say then that you forgive me ! that you pardon my reserve, — that you will again suffer me to tell you my most secret thoughts, and rely upon my promise never more to forfeit your confidence ! — my father ! — my protector ! — my ever-honoured, — ever-loved — my best and only friend ! — say you forgive your Evelina, and she will study better to deserve your goodness ! " He raised, he embraced me : he called me his sole joy, his only earthly hope, and the child of his bosom ! He folded me to his heart : and while I wept from the fulness of mine, with words of sweetest kindness and consolation, he soothed and tranquillised me. Dear to my remembrance will ever be that moment when, banishing the reserve I had so foolishly planned, and so painfully supported, I was restored to the confidence of the best of men ! (From the Same.) A MAN OF THE TON "Nay, if you do not admire Mr. Meadows," cried he, "you must not even whisper it to the winds." " Is he then so very admirable ?" " Oh ! he is now in the very height of fashionable favour ; his dress is a model, his manners are imitated, his attention is courted, and his notice is envied." "Are you not laughing ?" " No indeed ; his privileges are much more extensive than I have mentioned : his decision fixes the exact limits between what MADAME D'ARBLAY 553 is vulgar and what is elegant, his praise gives reputation, and a word from him in public confers fashion ! " " And by what wonderful powers has he acquired such influence ? " " By nothing but a happy art in catching the reigning foibles of the times, and carrying them to an extreme yet more absurd than any one had done before him. Ceremony, he found, was already exploded for ease, he therefore exploded ease for indolence : devotion to the fair sex had given way to a more equal and rational intercourse, which, to push still further, he presently exchanged for rudeness ; joviality, too, was already banished for philosophical indifference, and that, therefore, he discarded for weariness and disgust." " And is it possible that qualities such as these should recommend hiin to favour and admiration .'' " "Very possible, for qualities such as these constitute the present taste of the times. A man of the ton who would now be conspicuous in the gay world, must invariably be insipid, negligent, and selfish," "Admirable requisites!" cried Cecilia; "and Mr. Meadows, I acknowledge, seems to have attained them all." " He must never," continued Mr. Gosport, " confess the least pleasure from any thing, a total apathy being the chief ingredient of his character : he must, upon no account, sustain a conversa- tion with any spirit, lest he should appear, to his utter disgrace, interested in what is said ; and when he is quite tired of his existence, from a total vacuity of ideas, he must affect a look of absence, and pretend, on the sudden, to be wholly lost in thought." " I would not wish," said Cecilia laughing, " a more amiable companion ! " " If he is asked his opinion of any lady," he continued, "he must commonly answer by a grimace, and if he is seated next to one, he must take the utmost pains to show, by his listlessness, yawning, and inattention, that he is sick of his situation ; for what he holds of all things to be most gothic is gallantry to the women. To avoid this is, indeed, the principal solicitude of his life. If he sees a lady in distress for her carriage, he is to inquire of her what is the matter, and then with a shrug, wish her well through her fatigues, wink at some bystander, and walk away. If he is in a room where there is a crowd of company, and a scarcity of seats, he must early ensure one of the best in the place, be blind 554 ENGLISH PROSE to all looks of fatigue, and deaf to all hints of assistance and seeming totally to forget himself, lounge at his ease, and appear an unconscious spectator of what is going forward. If he is at a ball where there are more women than men, he must decline dancing at all, though it should happen to be his favourite amuse- ment, and smiling as he passes the disengaged young ladies, wonder to see them sit still, and perhaps ask them the reason ! " "A most alluring character, indeed!" cried Cecilia: "and pray how long have these been the accomplishments of a fine gentle- man ? " " I am but an indifferent chronologer of the modes," he answered ; " but I know it has been long enough to raise just expectations that some new folly will be started soon, by which the present race of Insensibilists may be driven out. Mr. Meadows is now at the head of this sect, as Miss Larolles is of the Voluble, and Miss Leeson of the Supercilious. But this way comes another, who, though in a different manner, labours with the same view, and aspires at the same reward which stimulates the ambition of this happy triplet, that of exciting wonder by peculiarity, and envy by wonder." This description announced Captain Aresby ; who, advancing from the fireplace, told Cecilia how much he rejoiced in seeing her, said he had been reduced to despair by so long missing that honour, and that he had feared she made it a principle to avoid coming in public, having sought her in vain partout. He then smiled, and strolled on to another party. " And pray of what sect," said Cecilia, " is this gentleman ? " " Of the sect of Jargonists," answered Mr. Gosport ; " he has not an ambition beyond paying a passing compliment, nor a word to make use of that he has not picked up at public places. Yet this dearth of language, however you may despise it, is not merely owing to a narrow capacity ; foppery and conceit have their shai-e in the limitation ; for though his phrases are almost always ridiculous or misapplied, they are selected with much study, and introduced with infinite pain." " Poor man ! " cried Cecilia, " is it possible it can cost him any trouble to render himself so completely absurd ? " " Yes ; but not more than it costs his neighbours to keep him in countenance. Miss Leeson, since she has presided over the sect of the Supercilious, spends at least half her life in wishing the annihilation of the other half; for as she must only speak in her MADAME D'ARBLA Y 555 own coterie, she is compelled to be frequently silent, and therefore, having nothing to think of, she is commonly grown with self- denial, and soured with want of amusement : Miss Larolles, indeed, is better off, for in talking faster than she thinks, she has but followed the natural bent of her disposition : as to this poor jargonist, he has, 1 must own, rather a hard task, from the continual restraint of speaking only out of his own Liliputian vocabulary, and denying himself the relief of ever uttering one word by the call of occasion : but what hardship is that compared with what is borne by Mr. Meadows ! who, since he commenced insensibilist, has never once dared to be pleased, nor ventured for a moment to look in good humour ! '' " Surely, then," said Cecilia, " in a short time the punishment of this affectation will bring its cure." " No ; for the trick grows into habit, and habit is a second nature. A secret idea of fame makes his forbearance of happi- ness supportable to him ; for he has now the self-satisfaction of considering himself raised to that highest pinnacle of fashionable refinement which is built upon apathy and scorn, and from which, proclaiming himself superior to all possibility of enjoyment, he views the whole world with contempt ! holding neither beauty, virtue, wealth, nor power, of importance sufficient to kindle the smallest emotion ! " (From Cecilia.) PRIDE AND PREJUDICE His conference with Dr. Lyster was long and painful, but decisive : that sagacious and friendly man knew well how to work upon his passions, and so effectually awakened them by representing the disgrace of his own family from the present situation of Cecilia that before he quitted his house he was authorised to invite her to remove to it. When he returned from his embassy, he found Delvile in her room, and each waiting with impatience the event of his negotiation. The doctor with much alacrity gave Cecilia the invitation with which he had been charged ; but Delvile, jealous for her dignity, was angry and dissatisfied his father brought it not himself, and exclaimed with much mortification, " Is this all the grace accorded me ? " 556 ENGLISH PROSE " Patience, patience, sir," answered the doctor ; " when you have thwarted anybody in their first hope and ambition, do you expect they will send you their compliments and many thanks for the disappointment ? Pray let the good gentleman have his way in some little matters, since you have taken such effectual care to put out of his reach the power of having it in greater." " Oh ! far from starting obstacles," cried Cecilia, " let us solicit a reconciliation with whatever concessions he may require. The misery of disobedience we have but too fatally experienced ; and thinking as we think of filial ties and parental claims, how can we ever hope happiness till forgiven and taken into favour ? " " True, my Cecilia," answered Delvile, " and generous and condescending as true ; and if you can thus sweetly comply, I will gratefully forbear making any opposition. Too much already have you suffered from the impetuosity of my temper, but I will try to curb it in future by the remembrance of your injuries. " "The whole of this unfortunate business," said Dr. Lyster, "has been the result of pride and prejudice. Your uncle, the Dean, began it, by his arbitrary will, as if an ordinance of his own could arrest the course of nature ! and as if he had power to keep alive, by the loan of a name, a family in the male branch already extinct. Your father, Mr. Mortimer, continued it with the same self-partiality, preferring the wretched gratification of tickling his ear with a favourite sound, to the solid happiness of his son with a rich and deserving wife. Yet this, however, remember, if to pride and prejudice you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to pride and prejudice you will also owe their termination : for all that I could say to Mr. Delvile, either of reasoning or entreaty, — and I said all I could suggest, and I suggested all a man need wish to hear, — was totally thrown away, till I pointed out to him his own disgrace in having a daughter-in-law immured in these mean lodgings ! " " Thus, my dear young lady, the terror which drove you to this house, and the sufferings which have confined you in it, will prove, in the event, the source of your future peace : for when all my best rhetoric failed to melt Mr. Delvile, I instantly brought him to terms by coupling his name with a pawnbroker's ! And he could not with more disgust hear his son called Mr. Beverley, than think of his son's wife when he hears of the Three Blue MADAME D'ARBLA Y 557 Bells ! Thus the same passions, taking but different directions, do mischief, and cure it alternately." " Such my good young friends is the moral of your calamities. You have all, in my opinion, been strangely at cross purposes, and trifled, no one knows why, with the first blessings of life. My only hope is that now, having among you thrown away its luxuries, you will have known enough of misery to be glad to keep its necessaries." .„ . .. , ^ (From the Same.) DUGALD STEWART [Dugald Stewart, son of Dr. Matthew Stewart, the mathematician, was born at Edinbui-gh 1753, and educated at Edinburgh High School and Glasgow University. In 1775 he became Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh, and in 1785 Professor of Moral Philosophy, resigning through ill health in 1810. He died at Edinburgh in 1828. He published in 1792 Elements of the Philosophy of the Humati Mind, vol. i. ; in 1793 vol. ii. ; in 1814 vol. iii. ; in 1827 Outlines of Moral Philosophy ; in 18 10 Philosophical Essays ; in 18 16 and 1821 " Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical, etc., Philosophy," in the Supplement to the 6th edition of the Encyclopcedia Britanyiica ; in 1828 Philosophy of the Active and Moral Pozvcrs of Man. His Political Economy and minor works were published in the complete edition of his works carefully and learnedly edited (1854-6) by Sir William Hamilton, his friend and pupil. Stewart published also (1795, etc. ) biographies of Adam Smith, Robertson, and Reid. vStewart's own biography has been written by Professor Veitch (for Hamilton's edition of his works).] Towards Dugald Stewart his friends and hearers felt something of the reverence of Plato's Socrates for Parmenides. " He breathed the love of virtue into whole generations of pupils." The fragrance of his character impressed such different men as Francis Horner, Henry Cockburn, Sir James Mackintosh, Robert Burns, Thomas Carlyle, and Sir William Hamilton. He was at once saint and philosopher. His fame went far beyond Scotland. "Without derogation from his writings it may be said that his disciples were among his best works " (^Mackintosh). No professor ever aroused more interest in his subject or more truly formed the minds of his students. He had' eloquence too, that fascinated hearers who cared nothing for his or any other philosophy. " He was the greatest of didactic orators " {Cockburn). Such powers must be taken on testimony ; but every one who is inclined may make proof of the wide reach of Stewart's learning, especially in philosophical and economical subjects, and gather by reading his books a notion of the fineness of 56o ENGLISH PROSE that " fine writing," which showed him a son of the eighteenth century. As a philosopher, he stands or falls with Thomas Reid. He bettered Raid's terminology. Nothing could be worse than Reid's expression " common sense," to indicate the knowledge of first principles ; and Stewart more wisely made use of the phrase "fundamental laws of belief " in describing the leading philo- sophical view of the Scottish school {Outlines of Mor. Phil., pt. i. sect. ix). If earlier adopted, this cautious phraseology might have saved the school from much ridicule. But otherwise Stewart leaves the " Scottish Philosophy " where he found it. The effect of devotion to " fundamental laws," was, at least in Stewart's case, to give undue prominence to mere classifications, and to leave details almost ostentatiously unsystematic. This applies both to his metaphysics and to his moral philosophy. Stewart's imperfect knowledge of German speculations may have saved his style, at the cost of his philosophy. Out of the classroom he enjoyed conversation of a " rambling light literary kind." He shunned the least approach to a dis- cussion. Such is Horner's account ; and Horner was his typical pupil, thoughtful, calm, studious, interested in philosophy, and still more interested in the problems of government and in the condition of the people. j J. BONAR. THE DESIRE OF ESTEEM This principle, as well as those we have now been considering, discovers itself at a very early period in infants, who, long before they are able to reflect on the advantages resulting from the good opinion of others, and even before they acquire the use of speech, are sensibly mortified by any expression of neglect or contempt. It seems, therefore, to be an original principle of our nature, that is, it does not appear to be resolvable into reason and experience, or into any other principle more general than itself An additional proof of this is the very powerful in- fluence it has over the mind, — an influence more striking than that of any other active principle whatsoever. Even the love of life daily gives way to the desire of esteem, and of an esteem which, as it is only to affect our memories, cannot be supposed to interest our self-love. In what manner the association of ideas should manufacture, out of the other principles of our constitution, a new principle stronger than them all, it is difficult to conceive. In these observations I have had an eye to the theories of those modern philosophers who represent self-love, or the desire of happiness, as the only original principle of action in man, and who attempt to account for the origin of all our other active principles from habit or the association of ideas. That this theory is just in some instances cannot be disputed. Thus, in the case of avarice it is manifest that it is from habit alone it derives its influence over the mind ; for no man surely was ever brought into the world with an innate love of money. Money is at first desired, merely as the means of obtaining other objects ; but, in consequence of being long and constantly accustomed to direct our efforts to its attainment on account of its apprehended utility, we come at last to pursue it as an ultimate end, and frequently retain our attachment to it long after we have lost all relish for the enjoyments it enables us to VOL. IV 20 562 ENGLISH PROSE command. In like manner it has been supposed that the esteem of our fellow-creatures is at first desired on account of its apprehended utility, and that it comes in time to be pursued as an ultimate end, without any reference on our part to the advantages it bestows. In opposition to this doctrine it seems to me to be clear, that as the object of hunger is not happiness but food ; as the object of curiosity is not happiness but know- ledge ; so the object of this principle of action is not happiness, but the esteem and respect of other men. That this is not in- consistent with the analogy of our nature appears from the observations already made on our appetites and desires ; and that it really is the fact may be proved by various arguments. Before touching, however, on these, I must remark that I consider this as merely a question of speculative curiosity ; for, upon either supposition, the desire of esteem is equally the work of nature, and, consequently, upon either supposition, it is equally unphilosophical to attempt, by metaphysical subtleties, to counter- act her wise and beneficent purposes. Among the different arguments which concur to prove that the desire of esteem is not wholly resolvable into the association of ideas, one of the strongest has been already hinted at ; the early period of life at which this principle of life discovers itself — long before we are able to form the idea of happiness, far less to judge of the circumstances which have a tendency to promote it. The difference in this respect between avarice and the desire of esteem is remarkable. The fomier is the vice of old age, and is, comparatively speaking, confined to a few. The latter is one of the most powerful engines in the education of children, and is not less universal in its influence than the principle of curiosity. The desire, too, of posthumous fame, of which no man can entirely divest himself, furnishes an insurmountable objection to the theories already mentioned. It is indeed an objection so obvious to the common sense of mankind, that all the philosophers who have leaned to these theories have employed their ingenuity in attempting to resolve this desire into an illusion of the imagina- tion produced by habit. . . . . . . But why have recourse to an illusion of the imagination to account for a principle which the wisest of men find it impossible to extinguish in themselves, or even sensibly to weaken ; and none more remarkably than some of those who have employed their ingenuity in attempting to turn it into DUGALD STEWART 563 ridicule ? Is it possible that men should imagine themselves present and enjoying their fame at the reading of their story after death, without being conscious of this operation of the imagination themselves ? Is not this to depart from the plain and obvious appearance of the fact, and to adopt refinements similar to those by which the selfish philosophers explain away all our disinterested affections ? We might as well suppose that a man's regard for the welfare of his posterity and friends after his death does not arise from natural affection, but from an illusion of the imagina- tion, leading him to suppose himself still present with them, and a witness of their prosperity. If we have confessedly various other propensities directed to specific objects as ultimate ends, where is the difficulty of conceiving that a desire directed to the good opinion of our fellow-creatures, without any reference to the advantages it is to yield us either now or hereafter may be among the number ? It would not indeed (as I have already hinted) materially affect the argument, although we should suppose with Wollaston, that the desire of posthumous fame was resolvable into an illusion of the imagination. For, whatever be its origin, it was plainly the intention of nature that all men should be in some measure under its influence ; and it is perhaps of little consequence whether we regard it as a principle originally implanted by nature, or suppose that she has laid a foundation for it in other principles which belong universally to the species. How very powerfully it operates, appears not only from the heroical sacrifices to which it has led in every age of the world, but from the conduct of the meanest and most worthless of mankind, who, when they are brought to the scaffold in conse- quence of the clearest and most decisive evidence of their guilt, frequently persevere to the last, with the terrors of futurity full in their view, in the most solemn protestations of their innocence ; and that merely in the hope of leavmg behind them not a fair but an equivocal or problematical reputation. With respect to the other parts of Wollaston's reasoning, that it is only the letters which compose our names that we can transmit to posterity, it is worthy of observation, that, if the argument be good for anything, it applies equally against the desire of esteem from our contemporaries, excepting in those cases in which we ourselves are personally known by those whose praise we covet, and of whose applause we happen ourselves to 564 ENGLISH PROSE be ear-witnesses : And yet undoubtedly, according to the common judgment of mankind, the love of praise is more peculiarly the mark of a liberal and elevated spirit in cases where the gratification it seeks has nothing to recommend it to those whose ruling passions are interest or the love of flattery. It is precisely for the same reason that the love of posthumous fame is strongest in the noblest and most exalted characters. If self-love were really the sole motive in all our actions, Wollaston's reasoning would prove clearly the absurdity of any concern about our memory. "Such a concern" (as Dr. Hutcheson observes) "no selfish being, who had the modelling of his own nature, would choose to implant in himself But, since we have not this power, we must be contented to be thus outwitted by nature into a public interest against our will." (From Pliilosophy of the Active and Moral Powers.) THE USE AND ABUSE OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES IN POLITICS Before proceeding farther, it is necessary for me to premise that it is chiefly in compliance with common language and common prejudices, that 1 am sometimes led, in the following observations, to contrast theory with experience. In the proper sense of the word theory, it is so far from standing in opposition to experience that it implies a knowledge of principles, of which the most extensive experience alone could put us in possession. Prior to the time of Lord Bacon, indeed, an acquaintance with facts was not considered as essential to the formation of theories ; and from these ages has descended to us an indiscriminate prejudice against general principles, even in those cases in which they have been fairly obtained in the way of induction. But not to dispute about words ; there are plainly two sets of political reasoners ; one of which consider the actual institutions of mankind as the only safe foundation for our conclusions, and think every plan of legislation chimerical, which is not copied from one which has already been realised : while the other apprehend that, in many cases, we may reason safely a priori from the known principles of human nature, combined with the particular circumstances of the times. The former are commonly DUGALD STEWART 565 understood as contending for experience in opposition to theory ; the latter are accused of trusting to theory unsupported by experience : but it ought to be remembered, that the pohtical theorist, if he proceeds cautiously and philosophically, founds his conclusions ultimately on experience, no less than the political empiric ; — as the astronomer who predicts an eclipse from his knowledge of the pi'inciples of the science, rests his expectation of the event on facts which have been previously ascertained by observation, no less than if he inferred it, without any reasoning, from his knowledge of a cycle. There is, indeed a certain degree of practical skill which habits of business alone can give, and without which the most enlightened politician must always appear to disadvantage when he attempts to carry his plans into execution. And, as this skill is often (in consequence of the ambiguity of language) denoted by the word experience, while it is seldom possessed by those men, who have most carefully studied the theory of legislation, it has been very generally concluded, that politics is merely a matter of routine, in which philosophy is rather an obstacle to success. The statesman who has been formed among official details, is compared to the practical engineer ; the speculative legislator to the theoretical mechanician who has passed his life among books and diagrams. — In order to ascertain how far this opinion is just, it may be of use to compare the art of legislation with those practical applications of mechanical principles, by which the opposers of political theories have so often endeavoured to illustrate their reasonings. In the first place, then, it may be remarked that the errors to which we are liable, in the use of general mechanical principles, are owing, in most instances, to the effect which habits of abstrac- tion are apt to have, in withdrawing the attention from those applications of our knowledge, by which alone we can learn to correct the imperfections of theory. Such errors, therefore, are in a peculiar degree, incident to men who have been led by natural taste, or by early habits, to prefer the speculations of the closet, to the bustle of active life, and to the fatigue of minute and circumstantial observation. In politics, too, one species of principles is often misapplied from an inattention to circumstances ; those which are deduced from a few examples of particular governments, and which are occasionally cjuoted as universal 23olitical axioms, which every 566 ENGLISH PROSE wise legislator ought to assume as the groundwork of his reason- ings. But this abuse of general principles should by no means be ascribed, like the absurdities of the speculative mechanician, to over-refinement, and love of theory ; for it arises from weak- nesses, which philosophy alone can remedy ; an unenlightened veneration for maxims which are supposed to have the sanction of time in their favour, and a passive acquiescence in received opinions. There is another class of principles, from which political conclusions have sometimes been deduced ; and which, notwith- standing the common prejudice against them, are a much surer foundation for our reasonings : I allude, at present, to those principles which we obtain from an examination of the human constitution, and of the general laws which regulate the course of human affairs ; principles which are certainly the result of a much more extensive induction, than any of the inferences that can be drawn from the history of actual establishments. In applying, indeed, such principles to practice, it is necessary (as well as in mechanics) to pay attention to the peculiarities of the case : but it is by no means necessary to pay the same scrupulous attention to minute circumstances, which is essential in the mechanical arts, or in the management of private business. There is even a danger of dwelling too much on details, and of rendering the mind incapable of those abstract and comprehensive views of human affairs, which can alone furnish the statesman with fixed and certain maxims for the regulation of his conduct. (From Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind.) THE IMAGINATION IN SCIENCE These objections apply in common to Bacon and D'Alembert. That which follows has a particular reference to a passage already cited from the latter, where, by some false refinements concerning the nature and functions of imagination, he has rendered the classification of his predecessor incomparably more indistinct and illogical than it seemed to be before. That all the creations, or new combinations of imagination, imply the previous process of decomposition or analysis, is abundantly manifest ; and therefore, without departing from the common and popular use of language, it may undoubtedly be DUGALD STEWART 567 said, that the faculty of abstraction is not less essential to the poet, than to the geometer and the metaphysician. But this is not the doctrine of D'Alembert. On the contrary, he affirms that metaphysics and geometry are, of all the sciences connected with reason, those in which imagination has the greatest share, an assertion which, it will not be disputed, has at first sight some- what of the air of a paradox, and which, on closer examination, will, I apprehend, be found altogether inconsistent with fact. If indeed D'Alembert had, in this instance, used (as some writers have done) the word imagination as synonymous with invention, I should not have thought it worth while (at least as far as the geometer is concerned) to dispute his proposition. But that this was not the meaning annexed to it by the author, appears from a subsequent clause, where he tells us that the most refined opera- tions of reason, consisting in the creation of generals which do not fall under the cognisance of our senses, naturally lead to the exercise of imagination. His doctrine, therefore, goes to the identification of imagination with abstraction ; two faculties so very different in the direction which they give to our thoughts, that (according to his own acknowledgment) the man who is habitually occupied in exerting the one, seldom fails to impair both his capacity and his relish for the exercise of the other. This identification of two faculties, so strongly contrasted in their characteristical features, was least of all to be expected from a logician, who had previously limited the province of imagination to the imitation of material objects ; a limitation, it may be remarked in passing, which is neither sanctioned by common use, nor by just views of the philosophy of the mind. Upon what ground can it be alleged that Milton's portrait of Satan's intellectual and moral character was not the offspring of the same creative faculty which gave birth to his g'arden of Eden ? After such a definition, however, it is difficult to conceive how so very acute a writer should have referred to imagination the abstractions of the geometer and of the metaphysician ; and still more, that he should have attempted to justify this reference by observing that these abstractions do not fall under the cognisance of the senses. My own opinion is, that in the composition of the whole passage he had a view to the unexpected parallel between Homer and Archimedes, with which he meant, at the close, to surprise his readers. If the foregoing strictures be well-founded, it seems to follow, 568 ENGLISH PROSE not only that the attempt of Bacon and of D'Alembert to classify the sciences and arts according to a logical division of our faculties, is altogether unsatisfactory ; but that every future attempt of the same kind may be expected to be liable to similar objections. In studying, indeed, the theory of the mind, it is necessary to push our analysis as far as the nature of the subject admits of it ; and, wherever the thing is possible, to examine its constituent principles separately and apart from each other : but this consideration itself, when combined with what was before stated on the endless variety of forms in which they may be blended together in our various intellectual pursuits, is sufficient to show how ill-adapted such an analysis must for ever remain to serve as the basis of an encyclopaedic distribution. The circumstance to which this part of Bacon's philosophy is chiefly indebted for its popularity, is the specious simplicity and comprehensiveness of the distribution itself; — not the soundness of the logical views by which it was suggested. That all our intellectual pursuits may be referred to one or other of these three heads, history, philosophy, and poetry, may undoubtedly be said with considerable plausibility ; the word history being understood to comprehend all our knowledge of particular facts and particular events ; the word philosophy, all the general conclusions or laws inferred from these particulars by induction ; and the word poetry, all the arts addressed to the imagination. Not that the enumeration, even with the help of this comment, can be con- sidered as complete, for (to pass over entirely the other objections already stated) under which of these three heads shall we arrange the various branches of pure mathematics ? Are we therefore to conclude that the magnificent design, con- ceived by Bacon, of enumerating, defining, and classifying the multifarious objects of human knowledge (a design, on the successful accomplishment of which he himself believed that the advancement of the sciences essentially depended), — are we to conclude that this design was nothing more than the abortive ofif- spring of a warm imagination, unsusceptible of any useful applica- tion to enlighten the mind, or to accelerate its progress ? My own idea is widely different. The design was, in every respect, worthy of the sublime genius by which it was formed. Nor does it follow, because the execution was imperfect, that the attempt has been attended with no advantage. At the period when Bacon wrote, it was of much more consequence to exhiljit to the DUGALD STEWART 569 learned a comprehensive sketch, than an accurate survey of the intellectual world : — such a sketch as, by pointing out to those whose views had been hitherto confined within the limits of particular regions, the relative positions and bearings of their respective districts as parts of one great whole, might invite them all, for the common benefit, to a reciprocal exchange of their local riches. The societies or academies which, soon after, sprang up in different countries of Europe, for the avowed purpose of contributing to the general mass of information, by the collection of insulated facts, conjectures, and queries, afford sufficient proof, that the anticipations of Bacon were not, in this instance, alto- gether chimerical. In examining the details of Bacon's survey, it is impossible not to be struck (more especially when we reflect on the state of learning two hundred years ago) with the minuteness of his information, as well as with the extent of his views ; or to forbear admiring his sagacity in pointing out to future adventurers, the unknown tracts still left to be explored by human curiosity. If his classifications be sometimes artificial and arbitrary, they have at least the merit of including, under one head or another, every particular of importance ; and of exhibiting these particulars with a degree of method and of apparent connection, which, if it does not always satisfy the judgment, never fails to interest the fancy, and to lay hold of the memory. Nor must it be forgotten, to the glory of his genius, that what he failed to accomplish remains to this day a desideratum in science, — that the intellectual chart — delineated by him is, with all its imperfections, the only one of which modern philosophy has yet to boast ; — and that the united talents of D'Alembert and of Diderot, aided by all the lights of the eighteenth century, have been able to add but little to what Bacon performed. (From Dissertatioti on ilic Progress of Ethical Philosophy.) WILLIAM BECKFORD [William Beckford of Fonthill (who must not be confounded with contem- porary authors of the same name) was the only child by his second wife of Alderman Beckford, merchant and West India planter, twice Lord Mayor of London. The birth of the boy, which has been misstated by almost all biographers, occurred on the ist October 1760 ; the elder Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, was one of his sponsors, and is said to have cautioned the future author of Vathek against reading the Arabian Nights/ Losing his father in 1770, he was sent with a tutor to Geneva at the age of seventeen, and afterwards made the grand tour. He married in 1783, and lived in Switzerland till 1786, returning to England after his wife's death. In March 1787 he visited Portugal, whence he wrote letters full of graphic description, and sparkling with sarcasm and humour. After his return to England he devoted himself entirely to the pursuits of a virtuoso and amateur architect. His lavish expense impoverished him, and he died at Bath on the 2nd May 1844, his princely inheritance of "a million sterling, and a hundred thousand a year" having dwindled down to " a beggarly eighty-thousand pounds."] Although the romantic school of fiction has had its day, the gorgeous, ahnost Miltonic tale Vathek, the admiration of Lord Byron, who preferred it to Rasselas, still survives after more than a hundred years. The statement made by its author to Mr. Redding, that it was produced at the age of twenty-two, in one sitting of three days and two nights, is a piece of imagination of like character with the work itself The time taken to write it appears to have been about three months, but however long its production may have occupied, it stands, in a fashion, unique in the language, and had the author but been visited with a little pecuniary misfortune, it might have proved the precursor to a delightful series of imaginative stories. But domestic bereave- ment and the deceitfulness of riches unhinged the mind of Beck- ford. His letters from Portugal evince that contempt for the poor, and general cynicism which, when he was no longer able to assimilate rational gratifications, degenerated into misanthropy 572 ENGLISH PROSE and absolute egotism. Of all sensuous enjoyments, that of music appears to have been that which raised him most out of himself. Amidst the sarcastic utterances evoked by the degrading super- stition prevailing in Portugal he writes : — " This very morning, to my shame be it recorded, 1 remained hour after hour in my newly arranged pavilion, without reading a word, writing a line, or entering^ into any conversation. All my faculties were absorbed by the harmony of the wind instruments, stationed at a distance in a thicket of orange and bay trees. It was to no purpose that I tried several times to retire out of the sound — I was as often drawn back as I attempted to snatch myself away." On another occasion we find that Jomelli's mass for the dead melted him to tears. Beckford's first effort. Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters, a satirical work, written at the age of seventeen, it is said, to mystify the family housekeeper, was followed by other youthful effusions, and in 1783 he published a quarto volume entitled Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents, the edition consisting of five hundred copies, but, following the mistaken advice of friends, he suppressed the whole except six copies, and afterwards brought out an expurgated edition, the lacunas in which were for the first time filled up by Mr. G. T. Bettany in the volume of the Minerva Library, edited by him. Vathek, the book by which he is best known, written in F'rench at an early age, was pirated by a clergyman to whom the MS. had been entrusted, and the first authorised edition was published in French at Paris and Lausanne in 1787. The Letters from Portugal and Spain remained unpublished for nearly fifty years after they were written. After his final return to England he ceased to write altogether, but such materials for a biography as he chose to communicate or invent were given to Mr. Cyrus Redding in 1835. W. J. Garnett. A DREAM IN KENT All through Kent did I doze as usual ; now and then I opened my eyes to take in an idea or two of the green, woody country through which I was passing ; then closed them again ; trans- ported myself back to my native hills ; thought I led a choir of those I loved best through their shades ; and was happy in the arms of illusion. The sun set before I recovered my senses enough to discover plainly the variegated slopes near Canterbury, waving with slender birch trees, and gilt with a profusion of broom. I thought myself still in my beloved solitude, but missed the companions of my slumbers. Where are they ? Behind yon blue hills, perhaps, or t'other side of that thick forest. My fancy was travelling after these deserters, till we reached the town ; vile enough o' conscience, and fit only to be passed in one's sleep. The moment after I got out of the carriage, brought me to the cathedral ; an old haunt of mine. I had always venerated its lofty pillars, dim aisles, and mysterious arches. Last night they were more solemn than ever, and echoed no other sound than my steps. I strayed about the choir and chapels, till they grew so dark and dismal, that I was half inclined to be frightened ; looked over my shoulder ; thought of spectres that have an awkward trick of syllabling men's names in dreary places ; and fancied a sepulchral voice exclaiming : " Worship my toe at Ghent ; my ribs at Florence ; my skull at Bologna, Siena, and Rome. Beware how you neglect this order ; for my bones, as well as my spirit, have the miraculous property of being here, there, and everywhere." These injunctions, you may suppose, were received in a becoming manner, and noted all down in my pocket-book by inspiration (for I could not see), and hurrying into the open air, I was whirled away in the dusk to Margate. Don't ask what were my dreams thither : — nothing but horrors, deep- vaulted tombs, and pale, though lovely figures, extended 574 ENGLISH PROSE upon them ; shrill blasts that sung in my ears, and filled me with sadness, and the recollection of happy hours, fleeting away, perhaps for ever ! I was not sorry, when the bustle of our coming in dispelled these phantoms. The change, however, in point of scenery was not calculated to dissipate my gloom ; for the first object in this world that presented itself was a vast expanse of sea, just visible by the gleamings of the moon, bathed in watery clouds ; a chill air ruffled the waves. I went to shiver a few melancholy moments on the shore. How often did I try to wish away the reality of my separation from those I love, and attempt to persuade myself it was but a dream ! (From Dreams a? id Wakittg Thoughts.') THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF PORTUGAL I WAS hardly up before the Grand Prior and Mr. Street were announced ; the latter abusing kings, queens, and princes with all his might, and roaring after liberty and independence ; the former complaining of fogs and damps. As soon as the advocate for republicanism had taken his departure, we went by appointment to the archbishop confessor's, — and were immediately admitted into his sanctum sa?u'torum, a snug apartment communicating by a winding staircase with that of the Queen, and hung with bright, lively tapestry. A lay brother, fat, round, bufifoonical, and to the full as coarse and vulgar as any carter or muleteer in Christendom, entertained us with some very amusing, though not the most decent, palace stories, till his patron came forth. Those who expect to see the Grand Inquisitor of Portugal a doleful, meagre figure, with eyes of reproof and malediction, would be disappointed. A pleasanter or more honest countenance than that kind Heaven has blessed him with one has seldom the pleasure of looking upon. He received me in the most open, cordial manner, and I have reason to think I am in mighty favour. We talked about archbishops in England being married. " Pray," said the prelate, " are not your archbishops strange fellows 1 consecrated in ale-houses, and good bottle companions ? I have been told that mad-cap Lord Tyrawley was an archbishop WILLIAM BECKFORD 575 at home." You may imagine how much I laughed at this incon- ceivable nonsense ; and though I cannot say, speaking of his right reverence, that " truths divine came mended from his tongue," it may be allowed, that nonsense itself became more conspicuously nonsensical, flowing from so revered a source. Whilst we sat in the windows of the saloon, listening to a band of regimental music, we saw Joao Antonio de Castro, the ingenious mechanician, who invented the present method of lighting Lisbon, two or three solemn Dominicans, and a famous court fool in a tawdry gala suit, bedizened with mock orders, coming up the steps which lead to the great audience chamber, all together. " Ay, ay," said the lay brother, who is a shrewd, comical fellow, " behold a true picture of our customers ! Three sorts of persons find their way most readily into this palace ; men of superior abilities, buffoons, and saints ; the first soon lose what cleverness they possessed, the saints become martyrs, and the buffoons alone prosper. To all this the archbishop gave his assent by a very significant nod of the head, and being, as I have already told you, in a most gracious, communicative disposition, would not permit me to go away, when I rose to take leave of him. " No, no," said he, " don't think of quitting me yet awhile. Let us repair to the Hall of Swans, where all the court are waiting for me, and pray tell me then what you think of our great fidalgos." Taking me by the tips of the fingers, he led me along through a number of shady rooms and dark passages to a private door, which opened from the Queen's presence-chamber, into a vast saloon, crowded, I really believe, by half the dignitaries of the kingdom : here were bishops, heads of orders, secretaries of state, generals, lords of the bed-chamber, and courtiers of all denominations, as fine and as conspicuous as embroidered uniforms, stars, crosses, and gold keys could make them. The astonishment of this group at our sudden apparition was truly laughable, and, indeed, no wonder ; we must have appeared on the point of beginning a minuet — the portly archbishop in his monastic flowing drapery, spreading himself out like a turkey in full pride, and myself bowing and advancing in a sort of " pas- grave," blinking all the while like an owl in sunshine, thanks to my rapid transition from darkness to the most glaring daylight. Down went half the party ujwn their knees, some with petitions 576 ENGLISH PROSE and some with memorials ; those begging for places and promo- tions, and these for benedictions, of which my revered conductor was by no means prodigal. He seemed to treat all these eager demonstrations of fawning servility with the most contemptuous composure, and pushing through the crowd which divided respectfully to give us passage, beckoned the Viscount Ponte de Lima, the Marquis of Lavradio, the Count d'Obidos, and two or three of the lords in waiting, into a mean little room, not above twenty by fourteen. After a deal of adulatory complimentation in a most subdued tone from the circle of courtiers, for which they got nothing in return but rebuffs and grunting, the archbishop drew his chair close to mine, and said with a very distinct and audible pro- nunciation, " My dear Englishman, these are all a parcel of flattering scoundrels ; do not believe one word they say to you. Though they glitter like gold, mud is not meaner — I know them well. Here," continued he, holding up the flap of my coat, " is a proof of English prudence ; this little button to secure the pocket is a precious contrivance, especially in grand company ; do not leave it off, or adopt any of our fashions, or you will repent it." This sally of wit was received with the most resigned com- placency by those who had inspired it, and, staring with all my eyes, and listening with all my ears, I could hardly credit either upon seeing the most complaisant gesticulations, and hearing the most abject protestations of devoted attachment to his right reverence's sacred person from all the company. (From Letters from Portugal}) WILLIAM COBBETT [William Cobbett was the son of a small farmer of Farnham, Surrey, and was born there in 1762. In 1784 he enlisted in the 54th regiment, spent a year at Chatham, and was sent with his regiment to Nova Scotia, rising to the rank of sergeant-major. He quitted the army in 1791, and married in February 1792. At this time he brought a charge against some of his officers, but instead of pressing it, went from England to France, and thence to Philadelphia, where he played the part of a vigorous champion of England, writing Observations on Priestley 5 Emigration (1794), A Bone to Gnmu for the Democrats, and the monthly paper Peter Porcupine (1795). Persecution drove him back to England (1800), and he was at first courted by Pitt's government. His first publications after his return, including the early numbers of the famous Political Register (begun 1802), were still " loyal." But soon after the renewal of the war his paper became (and remained) strongly radical, though never republican. He was prosecuted for strictures on flogging in the army (1810), and imprisoned till 1812. The Register continued to appear, edited from prison. When Sidmouth's Six Acts made agitation dangerous, Cobbett withdrew to America, editing the Register in exile (1817-19). In 1819 he reappeared, bringing with him the bones of Paine, as the great assailant of paper money. Thencefor- ward he plied his pen unmolested. Returned for Oldham in 1832, he sat in Parliament, though hardly a power there, till his death in June 1835.] Cobbett was, like Defoe, a born pamphleteer. Swift may have been his model in style, as he himself hints. The habit of writing in short clear sentences mainly of Saxon diction was common to both. But Cobbett's style was in other respects entirely his own. His words flowed as easily as his thoughts. His anecdotes, and especially his epithets, clung to the memory. He made no pretence of profound learning. He dealt out facts and arguments closely within the range of the ideas and experience of ordinary Englishmen ; and he was a "popular writer" in the sense of one who wrote what all could understand. The naivete of his egotism disarmed his critics. He rivalled Junius in the rich discursiveness of his vituperation. He had all the infallibility of a newspaper editor, without wearing the usual mask of one. A VOL. IV 2P 578 ENGLISH PROSE great many of the virtues which he claimed for himself seem really to have belonged to him. He is the model of a good husband ; he never keeps his wife waiting ; he goes home at once when a storm comes on because she is afraid of thunder ; his attention to her in small things and great is unfailing. A political agitator in season and out of season, he has all the virtues of a respectable citizen. He has improved every opportunity ; he has raised himself by pure patience, sobriety, and energy to a place of power without office, and to honourable recognition as a writer, with no teacher but himself. He has taught himself grammar, gardening, arithmetic, forestry, and farming. He loves the country, and writes charming descriptions of rural scenes and rural life. He brings back from America not only the bones of Paine, but the locust tree and Indian corn. He has taught his countrymen how to plait straw hats. He rises early. He is a lover of riding and coursing. He knows what to eat, drink, and avoid. He praises beer and detests tea, himself seldom drinking either, and smoking little, unless to gain other people's confidence. He cares little for music, and rarely quotes a poet. Hear him discourse on politics, you would believe it had been all his study. He is happy in knowing the exact causes of the distress of the country, and will be broiled on a gridiron if he is wrong. He knows (from Paine) that taxation and paper money are the root of untold evils. He abhors place- hunters, boroughmongers, stock-jobbers, political economists, Scotchmen, Quakers, and Jews. He is earnest for the emanci- pation of the Catholics, but frowns on the repeal of the Test Act. He praises the Mediiieval Church, and hates Queen Elizabeth and the " wife-killer," as cordially as " Old George Rose " and Ellenboi"ough. Yet he dissuades the Luddites from breaking machines, has great respect for the rights of property, and regards old England as, after all, the best of countries. If not on theology, he will at least deliver himself on morality ; and he prints " sermons," if not on the cardinal virtues, at least on the cardinal vices. He is a fairly sound churchman, little as it appears from many of his writings. Like other men who have been self-taught and self-made, he is most certain of his infallibility where he is most fallible. He made many mistakes in his judg- ment of events, policies, and persons; and in this respect he learned little wisdom with years. His proposal in the House of Commons that Peel should cease to be a Privy Councillor because of his WILLIAM COBBETT 579 currency measure of 1 8 1 9, canie ill from a man whose prophecies Peel had helped to falsify. His epithets are often undeserved ; and his arguments often seem to be convincing only because their language is clear. But to have written every week for thirty years and never wanted readers was a feat in itself ; and it is an additional glory that, while delighting and exasperating his contemporaries, he wrote much that posterity will not willingly let die. J. BONAR. WHY LEAVE ENGLAND ? Thp: Giffords, the Southeys, the Walters, the Stuarts, the Stoddarts, and all the hireling crew, who were unable to answer with the pen, now rush at me with their drawn knife, and exclaim, " write on ! " To use the words of the Westminster Address, they shake the halter in my face, and rattle in my ears the keys of the dungeon, and then they exclaim with a malignant grin : " Why do you not continue to write on, you coward ? " A few years ago, being at Barnet fair, I saw a battle going on, arising out of some sudden quarrel, between a butcher and the servant of a west-country grazier. The butcher, though vastly the superior in point of size, finding that he was getting the worst of it, recoiled a step or two, and drew out his knife. Upon the sight of this weapon, the grazier turned about and ran off till he came up to a Scotchman who was guarding his herd, and out of whose hand the former snatched a good ash stick about four feet long. Having thus got what he called a long arm, he returned to the combat, and, in a very short time, he gave the butcher a blow ufoon the wrist which brought his knife to the ground. The grazier then fell to work with his stick in such a style as I never before witnessed. The butcher fell down and roared and kicked, but he seemed only to change his position in order to insure to every part of his carcase a due share of the penalty of his base- ness. After the grazier had apparently tired himself, he was coming away, when, happening to cast his eye upon the knife, he ran back and renewed the basting, exclaiming every now and then, as he caught his breath : " Dra thy knife, wo't ! " He came away a second time, and a second time returned and set on upon the caitiff again ; and this he repeated several times, exclaiming always when he recommenced the drubbing : " Dra thy knife, wo't ! " Till at last the butcher was so bruised that he was actually unable to stand or even to get up ; and yet such, WILLIAM COBBETT 581 amongst Englishmen, is the abhorrence of foul fighting, that not a soul attempted to interfere, and nobody seemed to pity a man thus unmercifully beaten. It is my intention to imitate the conduct of this Grazier ; to resort to a long arm, and to combat corruption, while I keep myself out of the reach of her knife. Nobody called the Grazier a coward, because he did not stay to oppose his fists to a pointed and cutting instrument. My choice, as I said before (leaving all considerations of personal safety out of the question) lies between silence and retreat. If I remain here, all other means will be first used to reduce me to silence ; and, if all those means fail, then will come the dungeon. Therefore, that I may still be able to write, and to write with freedom, too, I shall write, if I live, from America ; and, my readers may depend on it, that it will not be more than four months from the date of this address, before the publication of the weekly Pamphlet will be resumed in London, and will be continued very nearly as regularly as it has been for years past. (From Taking Leave of Jiis Count )y vie 11) THE CROWN GRUB I WAS once going by the house of a Quaker in Long Island, and drove up to it for the purpose of getting entertainment for man and horses. After introductory matter, I said, " How is your corn ? " which is the common question in that country. He shook his head, and said, " Now, William Cobbett, can thee, that knows so many things, tell how to destroy the Crown grub ? " "Ah," said I, "that devil has mastered me all my lifetime. Your only remedy is patience, or absolutely going with a candle and lantern, and watching every plant all night long." After breakfast he took me into his field, which was in fact an orchard, with trees widely planted in it, and which, according to the custom of the country, had been ploughed up at the fourth or fifth year, for the double purpose of benefiting the trees and obtaining a crop of corn. It was fine land, some of the best in the whole island, on the side of one of the little inlets from the east river. The sight was truly distressing. The cursed creatures (saving their right of nature) had cut off the corn, when it was two inches and a half or three inches high, hill after hill, in 582 ENGLISH PROSE many places for ten hills together. The owner had been preparing himself for beating all his neighbours in this prime crop, and he saw all his hopes blasted from this miserable cause. I went and raked round some of the hills with my finger, and we found a dozen grubs together in some places, lying under the clods, contemplating the pleasures of the feast of the next evening or night. In a country where numerous hands could have been obtained at a moderate expense, the crop might have been saved to a considerable extent. Such means were not at command here ; and when I saw my friend in the fall of the year, I found that he had not had five bushels upon an acre, where he ought to have had fifty at least. ^ , , , ^, (From Cobhett s Lorn.) THE KING'S ENGLISH And, though a man may possess great knowledge as a states- man and legislator without being able to perform what this poet would call writing well ; yet surely we have a right to expect in a minister the capacity of being able to write gram- matically ; the capacity of putting his own meaning clearly down upon paper. But, in the composing of a king's speech, it is not one man, but nine men, whose judgement and practical talent are employed. A king's speech is, too, a very short piece of writing. The topics are all distinct. Very little is said upon each. There is no reasoning. It is all plain matter of fact, or of simple observation. The thing is done with all the advantages of abundant time for examination and re- examination. Each of the ministers has a copy of the speech to read, to examine, and to observe upon ; and, when no one has anything left to suggest in the way of alteration or improve- ment, the speech is agreed to, and put into the mouth of the king. Surely, therefore, if in any human effort, perfection can be expected, we have a right to expect it in a king's speech. You shall now see, then, what pretty stuff is put together, and delivered to the Parliament, under the name of king's speeches. The speech which I am about to examine, is indeed, a speech of the Regent ; but I might take any other of these speeches. I choose this particular speech, because the subjects WILLIAM COBBETT 583 of it are familiar in America as well as in England. It was spoken on the 8th of November, 18 14. I shall take a sentence at a time, in order to avoid confusion. " My lords and gentlemen, it is with deep regret that I am again obliged to announce the continuance of His Majesty's lamented indisposition." Even in this short sentence there is something equivocal ; for it may be that the Prince's regret arises from his being obliged to announce, and not from the thing announced. If he had said : " With deep regret I announce," or, " I announce with deep regret," there would ha\e been nothing equivocal. And in a composition like this, all ought to be as clear as the pebbled brook. " It would have given mc great satisfaction to have been enabled to communicate to you the termination of the war between this country and the United States of America." The double compound times of the verbs, in the first part of the sentence, make the words mean, that it would, before the prince came to the house, have given him great satisfaction to be enabled to communicate ; whereas, he meant, " it would now, have given me great satisfaction to be enabled to com- municate." In the latter part of the sentence we have a little nonsense. What does termination mean ? It means, in this case, end, or conclusion ; and, thus, the prince wished to com- municate an end to the wise men, by whom he was surrounded ! To communicate is to impart to another anything that we have in our possession or within our power. And so, the prince wished to impart the end to the noble lords and honourable gentlemen. He might wish to impart, or communicate the news, or the intelligence of the end ; but hfe could not communicate the end itself. What should we say, if some one were to tell us, that an officer had arrived, and brought home the termination of a battle, and carried it to Carlton House, and communicated it to the prince ? We should laugh at our informant's ignorance of grammar, though we should understand what he meant. And shall we then be so partial and so unjust as to reverence in king's councillors that which we should laugh at in one of our neighbours ? To act thus would be, my dear son, a base abandonment of our reason, which is, to use the words of Dr. Watts, the common gift of God to man. (l-'rom E7igJisJi Crauii/nir.) 584 ENGLISH PROSE EARLY RISING What need had we of schools ? What need of teachers ? What need of scolding and force, to induce children to read, write, and love books ? What need of cards, dice, or of any games, to "kill time " ; but, in fact, to implant in the infant heart a love of gaming, one of the most destructive of all human vices ? We did not want to "kill time" ; we were always busy, wet weather or dry weather, winter or summer. There was no force, in any case ; no command ; no authority ; none of these was ever wanted. To teach the children the habit of early rising was a great object ; and every one knows how young people cling to their beds, and how loath they are to go to those beds. This was a capital matter ; because here were industry and health both at stake. Yet I avoided command even here ; and merely offered a reward. The child that was downstairs first, was called the lark for that day ; and, further, sat at my right hand at dinner. They soon discovered that to rise early they must go to bed early, and thus was this most important object secured, with regard to girls as well as boys. Nothing is more incon- venient and, indeed, more disgusting, than to have to do with girls or young women who lounge in bed : " A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep." Solomon knew them well : he had, I dare say, seen the breakfast cooling, carriages and horses and servants waiting, the sun burning on, the day wasting, the night growing dark too early, appoint- ments broken, and the objects of journeys defeated ; and all this from the lolloping in bed of persons who ought to have risen with the sun. No beauty, no modesty, no accomplishments, are a compensation for the effects of laziness in women ; and, of all the proofs of laziness, none is so unequivocal as that of lying late in bed. Love makes men overlook this vice (for it is a vice), for awhile ; but this does not last for life. Besides, health demands early rising ; the management of a house imperiously demands it : but health, that most precious possession, without which there is nothing else worth possessing, demands it too. The morning air is the most wholesome and strengthening : even in crowded cities, men might do pretty well with the aid of the morning air ; but, how are they to rise early, if they go to bed late? (From Advice fo Youitg Mcji.') WILLIAM COBBETT 585 AIR AND EXERCISE During the whole of this ride, I have very rarely been abed after daylight ; I have drunk neither wine nor spirits. I have eaten no vegetables, and only a very moderate quantity of meat ; and it may be useful to my readers to know, that the riding of twenty miles was not so fatiguing to me at the end of my tour, as the riding of ten miles was, at the beginning of it. Some ill- natured fools will call this egotism. Why is it egotism ? Getting upon a good strong horse, and riding' about the country, has no merit in it ; there is no conjuration in it ; it recjuires neither talents nor virtues of any sort ; but health is a very valuable thing ; and, when a man has had the experience which I have had, in this instance, it is his duty to state to the world, and to his own countrymen and neighbours in particular, the happy effects of early rising, sobriety, abstinence, and a resolution to be active. It is his duty to do this ; and it becomes imperatively his duty, when he has seen, in the course of his life, so many men, so many men of excellent hearts and of good talents, rendered prematurely old, cut off ten or twenty years before their time, by a want of that early rising, sobriety, abstinence, and activity, from which he himself has derived so much benefit, and such inexpressible pleasure. During this ride, I have been several times wet to the skin. At some times of my life, after having indulged for a long while in coddling myself up in the house, these soakings would have frightened me half out of my senses ; but I care very little about them : I avoid getting wet if I can ; but it is very seldom that rain, come when it would, has prevented me from performing the day's journey that I had laid out beforehand. And this is a very good rule : stick to your intention, whether it be attended with inconveniences or not ; to look upon yourself as bound to do it. In the whole of this ride, I have met with no one untoward circumstance, properly so called except the wounding of the back of my horse, which grieved me much more on his account than on my own. (From Ri/rnI /v/tfts.) JAMES MACKINTOSH [James Mackintosh, born near Inverness (1765), son of a Highland Captain who served in the Seven Years' War, educated at Fortrose and at Aberdeen University (1780-4), was a precocious child, and in boyhood thought poetic. In 1784 he went to Edinburgh, where he studied medicine, harangued the Speculative Society with Emniett and others, and got his diploma as doctor. He went to London in 1788, where he married, became a lawyer, and wrote Whig pamphlets. None of his writings excited much notice before the famous reply to Burke's Reflections ( Mjidicicv Galliccv, 1791), written in the then quiet village of Ealing. The Letter to Pitt followed in 1793. The supposed " conversion" of Mackintosh to Burke's view of the Revolution was, as Burke himself allowed, "none at all," but the two men became personal friends. In 1797 he lost his wife, but married again in 1798. In 1799 he delivered at Lincoln's Inn his Lectures on the Laiv of Nature and Nations. On the Peace of Amiens he defended Jean Peltier for libel on the First Consul, February 1803. He was then earning ;^i200 a year at the Bar, then thought a great sum. In 1804 he became Recorder of Bombay, returning again to England in 1812. He entered Parliament for Nairn in 1813, and divided his time between politics and literature. In 1818 he became Professor of Law and History at the East India College, Ilaileybury. He sat for Knaresborough from 1819 to Iiis death, and devoted himself especially to the Reform of the Penal Laws. The first parts of his L/istory of Etigland were: \inh\\s\\ed i%2°' 1831. The "Dissertation" (for the Encycl. Britannica) on the " Progress of Ethical Philosophy," appeared in 1830. He died in London, 1832.] Hazlitt (in the Spirit of the Age) speaks of Mackintosh as " more a man of wonderful and variable talent, than a man of commanding intellect," and evidently thinks, as did Macaulay (Essay on Mackintosh), that he would have been more at home in a professor's chair, than in parliament and the law courts. John Mill disliked his "verbiage." Sydney Smith thought him given to indiscriminate praise. But he was a man deeply loved and admired. Horner never conversed with him without "a mixed consciousness of inferiority and capability"; he made others feel their own powers as well as impressed them with his. 58S ENGLISH rROSE His reading was wide and miscellaneous, though in literature he clung to Bacon and Locke, Milton and Gray, with special fondness. As it is with niany others whose calling is to be speakers, his writings read too often like printed orations ; there are more words than a reader needs, though not more than a hearer would need, for due understanding of the meaning. He won recognition early, as a defender of the Revolution of 1789. He was much moved by the Reign of Terror, and spoke so sharply of his old views and friends, that many counted him lost to the Whig cause, to say nothing of the Radical. But it was not so. He gradually re-occupied his old positions. In his letter to Conversation Sharp from Bombay 1804, he expressly recants his recantation {Lzfc, i. 128 scq.) His historical works {Causes of ilic English Revolution., etc.) have something of Macaulay's brilliancy ; but they are fragments. Macaulay has left us his opinion on them and on their author in one of his early essays. His political speeches cannot rank with his juridical, so far as we have full reports of either. His defence of Jean Peltier, though Peltier was convicted, is a masterpiece ; and, like William Hone's defence of himself, it owes its value largely to its learning, which confronts the present with the past. There is also present in it the eloquence of the advocate who knows that juries are not always to be moved by mere appeals to their reason. The Vindicitc Gallicce., like Paine's Rights of Man, has shown its merits by surviving almost alone, out of a host of answers to Burke's Reflections. In style it is a contrast to the Discoitise on the Law of Naticre and Nations, the first of a series of lectures, in which Mackintosh signalized his temporary departure from his old opinions. Here all is passion, and it must be said, all is generality ; the force of the Vindicice Galliccc had lain in its masterly treatment of specific points. These lectures went too far, he himself allows, in censure of men like Godwin ; and Godwin at least was soon restored to favour. There is a friendly notice by Mackintosh, in Xhe. Edinburgh Review, October 181 5, of his book on the Nephews of Milton. About none of his books have opinions differed more widely than about his " Dissertation on the Progressof Ethical Philosophy." It was certainly more complete in its own range than Dugald Stewart's " Dissertation," a work of a larger scope, written for an earlier edition of the same Encyclopcedia Britannica. Dugald JAMES MACKINTOSH 589 Stewart though a moral philosopher had not done full justice to the ethics of his predecessors, if indeed he had meted out fit measure to their metaphysics ; and Mackintosh was able to continue the history farther down than Stewart. The complaints that he is full of prejudice against Utilitarians, and that his style is bad, were pressed chiefly by an opponent (James Mill) who wrote unrcadably, and was possessed with a strong bias. The same opponent says that the work of Mackintosh is like a series of articles in a magazine, which the author hung together like beads on a string, and then called a history of philosophy. Later generations of philosophers have tempered the acrimony of Mill's verdict, while upholding many of his corrections in detaiL Mackintosh, though not of Bentham's school, can hardly be called an opponent of Utilitarianism. Bentham, he says, treated ethics too juridically. Ethical theorists must distinguish (i) the question concerning the existence of a moral faculty, immediately approving or disapproving certain acts ; (2) the cjuestion concerning the equality of such acts themselves ; (3) the question whether the faculty is derivative or ultimate. Now Mackintosh does not hold the faculty to be irreducible and ultimate, though he holds that moral sentiments relate always to the " state of the will," and that the moral judgment is im- mediate ; the qualities useful to ourselves, can, he thinks, by association be raised to the rank of virtues. The coincidence of virtue with utility may become perfect. The " Dissertation " is not faultless either in matter or style. The position of Kant for example, could hardly be properly understood from it ; nor do we learn much when we are told that the system of Hobbes was like a "palace of ice gradually undeniiined by the central warmth of human feeling, before it was thawed into muddy water by the sun- shine of true philosophy." Mackintosh could use the language of common life when he chose. The question whether a simple representative legislature is better than a constitution of mutual control, is (he says in the Vind. Gall.) simply the question " whether the vigilance of the master, or the scjuabbles of the servants, are the best security for faithful service." A little more of this plainness of speech would have enhanced the value of his writings ; but formed habits were too strong for him. As a rule he preferred the stilted style of the peroration Sidney Smith invented for him : " It is impossible to conclude 590 ENGLISH PROSE these observations without expressing the obhgations I am under to a person in a much more huinble scene of life — I mean, sir, the hackney coachman by whom I have been driven to this meeting. To pass safely through the streets of a crowded metropolis, must require on the part of the driver no common assemblage of qualities. He must have caution without timidity, activity without precipitation, and courage without rashness ; he must have a clear perception of his object, and a dexterous use of his means. I can safely say of the individual in question that, for a moderate reward, he has displayed unwearied skill ; and to him I shall never forget that I owe unfractured integrity of limb, exemption from pain, and perhaps prolongation of existence. Nor can I pass over the encouraging cheerfulness with which I was received by the waiter, nor the useful blaze of light communicated by the link- boys, as I descended from the carriage. It was with no common pleasure that I remarked in these men not the mercenary bustle of venial service, but the genuine effusions of untutored bene- volence ; not the rapacity of subordinate agency, but the alacrity of humble friendship. What may not be said of a country where all the little accidents of life bring forth the hidden qualities of the heart, where her vehicles are driven, her streets illumined, and her bells answered, by men teeming with all the refinements of civilized life ? "I cannot conclude, sir, without thanking you for the very clear and distinct manner in which you have announced the proposition on which we are to vote. It is but common justice to add that public assemblies rarely witness articulation so perfect, language so select, and a manner so eminently remark- able for everything that is kind, impartial, and just" (Sydney Smith, Memoirs and Letters^ vol. i. 390, termination of a speech by Mackintosh). Yet Sydney Smith would have been the first to allow that there was always something in his friend's words that was beyond caricature. J. BON.\R. THE AGE OF CHIVALRY IS GONE In the eye of Mr. Burke, however, these crimes and excesses assume an aspect far more important than can be communicated to them by their own insulated guilt. They form, in his opinion, the crisis of a revolution — a far more important one than any mere change of government — in which the sentiments and opinions that have formed the manners of the European nations are to perish. "The age of chivalry is gone, and the glory of Europe extinguished for ever." He follows this exclamation by an eloquent eulogium on chivalry, and by gloomy predictions of the future state of Europe, when the nation that has been so long accustomed to give her the tone in arts and manners is thus debased and corrupted. A caviller might remark that ages, much more near the meridian fervour of chivalry than ours, have witnessed a treatment of queens as little gallant and generous as that of the Parisian mob. He might remind Mr. Burke, that, in ' the age and country of Sir Philip Sydney, a Queen of France, whom no blindness to accomplishment, no malignity of detraction, can reduce to the level of Marie Antoinette, was, by " a nation of men of honour and cavaliers," permitted to languish in captivity and expire on a scaffold ; and he might add, that the manners of a country are more surely indicated by the systematic cruelty of a sovereign than by the licentious fury of a mob. He might remark, that the mild system of modern manners which survived the massacres with which fanaticism had for a century desolated, and almost barbarized Europe, might, perhaps, resist the shock of one day's excesses committed by a delirious populace. He might thus perhaps oppose specious and popular topics, to the declamations of Mr. Burke. But the subject itself is, to an enlarged thinker, fertile in reflec- tions of a different nature. That system of manners which arose among the Gothic nations of Europe, and of which chivalry was more properly the effusion than the source, is without doubt one of the most peculiar and interesting appearances in human aftairs. 592 ENGLISH PROSE 9 The moral causes which formed its character have not, perhaps, been liitherto investigated with the happiest success ; but, to confine ourselves to the subject before us, chivalry was certainly- one of the most prominent of its features and most remarkable of its effects. Candour must confess, that this singular institution was not admirable only as the corrector of the ferocious ages in which it flourished ; but that in contributing to polish and soften manners it paved the way for the diffusion of knowledge and the extension of commerce, which afterwards, in some measure, supplanted it. Society is inevitably progressive. Commerce has overthrown the "feudal and chivalrous system" under whose shade it first grew ; while learning has subverted the superstition whose opulent endowments had first fostered it. Peculiar circum- stances connected with the manners of chivalry favoured this admission of commerce and this growth of knowledge ; while the sentiments peculiar to it, already enfeebled in the progress from ferocity and turbulence, were almost obliterated by tranquillity and refinement. Commerce and diffused knowledge have, in fact, so completely assumed the ascendent in polished nations, that it will be difficult to discover any relics of Gothic manners, but in a fantastic exterior, which has survived the generous illusions through which these manners once seemed splendid and seductive. Their direct influence has long ceased in Europe ; but their indirect influence, through the medium of those causes which would not perhaps have existed but for the mildness which chivalry created in the midst of a barbarous age, still operates with increasing vigour. The manners of the middle age were, in the most singular sense, compulsory : enterprising benevolence was produced by general fierceness, gallant courtesy by ferocious rudeness ; and artificial gentleness resisted the torrent of natural barbarism. But a less incongruous system has succeeded, in which commerce, which unites men's interests, and knowledg-e, which excludes those prejudices that tend to embroil them, present a broader basis for the stability of civiHzed and beneficent manners. Mr. Burke, indeed, forebodes the most fatal consequences to literature from events, which he supposes to have given a mortal blow to the spirit of chivalry. I have ever been protected from such apprehensions by my belief in a veiy simple truth, — "that diffused knowledge immortalizes itself." A literature which is confined to a few, may be destroyed by the massacre of scholars and the conflagration of libraries : but the diffused knowledge of JAMES MACKINTOSH 593 the present day could only be annihilated by the extii-pation of the civilized part of mankind. Far from being hostile to letters, the French Revolution has contributed to serve their cause in a manner hitherto unexampled. The political and literary progress of nations has hitherto been simultaneous ; the period of their eminence in arts has also been the era of their historical fame ; and no example occurs in which their great political splendour has been subsecjuent to the Augustan age of a people. But in France, which is destined to refute every aliject and arrogant doctrine that would limit the human powers, the ardour of a youthful literature has been infused into a nation tending to decline ; and new arts are called forth when all seemed to have passed their zenith. She enjoyed one Augustan age, fostered by the favour of despotism : she seems about to witness another created by the energy of freedom. In the opinion of Mr. Burke, however, she is advancing by rapid strides to ignorance and barbarism. " Already," he informs us, " there appears a poverty of conception, a coarseness and vulgarity in all the proceedings of the Assembly, and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is pre- sumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and l^rutal." To animadvert on this modest and courteous picture belongs not to the present subject : and impressions cannot be disputed, more especially when their grounds are not assigned. All that is left to us to do, is to declare opposite impressions with a confidence authorized by his example. The proceedings of the National Assembly appear to me to contain models of more splendid eloquence, and examples of more profound political research, than have been exhibited by any public body in modern times. I cannot therefore augur from these proceedings the downfall of philosophy, or the extinction of eloquence. Thus various are the aspects which the French Revolution, not only in its influence on literature, but in its general tenour and spirit, presents to minds occupied by various opinions. To the eye of Mr. Burke it exhibits nothing but a scene of horror: in his mind it inspires no emotion but abhorrence of its leaders, commiseration for their victims, and alarms at the influence of an event which menaces the subversion of the policy, tlic arts, and the manners of the civilized world. Minds who view it through another medium are filled by it with every sentiment of admiration and triumph, — of admiration VOL. IV 2 Q 594 ENGLISH PROSE due to splendid exertions of virtue, and of triumph inspired by widening prospects of happiness. Nor ought it to be denied by the candour of philosophy, that events so great are never so unmixed as not to present a double aspect to the acuteness and exaggeration of contending parties. The same ardour of passion which produces patriotic and legisla- tive heroism becomes the source of ferocious retaliation, of vision- ary novelties, and of precipitate change. The attempt were hopeless to increase the fertility, without favouring the rank luxuriance of the soil. He that on such occasions expects un- mixed g'ood, ought to recollect, that the economy of nature has invariably determined the equal influence of high passions in giving birth to virtues and to crimes. The soil of Attica was observed to produce at once the most delicious fruits and the most virulent i:)oisons. It was thus with the human mind ; and to the frequency of convulsions in the ancient commonwealths they owe those examples of sanguinary tumult and virtuous heroism, which distinguish their history from the monotonous tranquillity of modern states. The passions of a nation cannot be kindled to the degree which renders it capable of great achievements, without involving the commission of violence and crime. The reforming ardour of a senate cannot be inflamed sufficiently to combat and overcome abuses, without hazarding the evils which arise from legislative temerity. Such are the immutable laws, which are more properly to be regarded as libels on our nature than as charges against the French Revolu- tion. The impartial voice of history ought, doubtless, to record the blemishes as well as the glories of that great event : and to contrast the delineation of it which might have been given by the specious and temperate Toryism of Mr. Hume, with that which we have received from the repulsive and fanatical invectives of Mr. Burke might still be amusing and instructive. Both these gentlemen would be averse to the Revolution ; but it would not be difficult to distinguish between the undisguised fuiy of an eloquent advocate, and the well - dissembled partiality of a philosophic judge. The passion of the latter would only feel the excesses which have dishonoured the Revolution ; but the philo- sophy of the fonner would instruct him, that our sentiments, raised ])y such events so much above their ordinary level, become the source of guilt and heroism unknown before, ^ — of sublime virtues and splendid crimes. (From llndicice Galliccr.) JAMES MACKINTOSH 595 THE RIGHT OF REBELLION That no man can lawfully promise what he cannot lawfully do is a self-evident proposition. That there are some duties superior to others, will be denied by no one ; and that when a contest arises the superior ought to prevail, is implied in the terms by which the duties are described. It can hardly be doubted that the highest obligation of a citizen is that of contributing to preserve the community ; and that every other political duty, even that of obedience to the magistrates, is derived from and must be subordinate to it. It is a necessary consequence of these simple truths, that no man who deems self-defence lawful in his own case, can, by any engagement, bind himself not to defend his country against foreign or domestic enemies. Though the opposite propositions really involve a contradiction in terms, yet declarations of their truth were imposed by law, and oaths to renounce the defence of our country were considered as binding, till the violent collision of such pretended obligations with the security of all rights and institutions awakened the national mind to a sense of their repugnance to the first principles of morality. Maxims, so artificial and over-strained, which have no more root in nature than they have warrant from reason, must always fail in a contest against the affections, sentiments, habits, and interests which are the motives of human conduct, — leaving little more than compassionate indulgence to the small number who con- scientiously cling to them, and fixing the injurious imputation of inconsistency on the great body who forsake them for better guides. The war of a people against a tyrannical government may be tried by the same tests which ascertain the morality of a war between independent nations. The employment of force in the intercourse of reasonable beings is never lawful but for the purpose of repelling or averting wrongful force. Human life cannot lawfully be destroyed, or assailed, or endangered, for any other object than that of just defence. Such is the nature and such the boundary of legitimate self-defence in the case of individuals. Hence the right of the lawgiver to protect un- offending citizens by the adequate punishment of crimes : hence, also, the right of an independent state to take all measures 596 ENGLISH PROSE necessary to her safety, if it be attacked or threatened from without ; provided always that reparation cannot otherwise be obtained, that there is a reasonable prospect of obtaining it by arms, and that the evils of the contest are not probably greater than the mischiefs of acquiescence in the wrong ; including, on both sides of the deliberation, the ordinary consequences of the example, as well as the immediate effects of the act. If repara- tion can otherwise be obtained, a nation has no necessary, and therefore no just cause of war ; if there be no probability of obtaining it by arms, a government cannot, with justice to their own nation, embark it in war ; and, if the evils of resistance should appear, on the whole, greater than those of submission, wise rulers will consider an abstinence from a pernicious exercise of right as a sacred duty to their own subjects, and a debt which every people owes to the great commonwealth of mankind, of which they and their enemies are alike members. A war is just against the wrongdoer when reparation for wrong cannot other- wise be obtained ; but it is then only conformable to all the principles of morality, when it is not likely to expose the nation by whom it is levied to greater evils than it professes to avert, and when it does not inflict on the nation which has done the wrong sufferings altogether disproportioned to the extent of the injury. When the rulers of a nation are required to determine a question of peace or war, the bare justice of their case against the wrongdoer never can be the sole, and is not always the chief matter on which they are morally bound to exercise a conscien- tious deliberation. Prudence in conducting the affairs of their subjects is, in them, a part of justice. On the same principles the justice of a war made by a people against their own government must be examined. A govern- ment is entitled to obedience from the people, because without obedience it cannot perform the duty, for which alone it exists, of protecting them from each other's injustice. But, when a govern- ment is engaged in systematically oppressing a people, or in destroying their securities against future oppression, it commits the same species of wrong towards them which warrants an appeal to arms against a foreign enemy. A magistrate who degenerates into a systematic oppressor shuts the gates of justice, and thereby restores them to their original right of defending themselves by force. As he witholds the protection of law from them, he forfeits his moral claim to enforce their obedience by the JAMES MACKINTOSH 597 authority of law. Thus far civil and foreign war stand on the same moral foundation : the principles which determine the justice of both against the wrongdoer are, indeed, throughout, the same. But there are certain peculiarities, of great importance in point of fact, which in other respects permanently distinguish them from each other. The evils of failure are greater in civil than in foreign war. A state generally incurs no more than loss in war : a body of insurgents is exposed to ruin. The probabilities of success are more difficult to calculate in cases of internal contest than in a war between states where it is easy to compare those merely material means of attack and defence which may be measured or numbered. An unsuccessful revolt strengthens the power and sharpens the cruelty of the tyrannical ruler ; while an unfortunate war may produce little of the former evil and of the latter nothing. It is almost peculiar to intestine war that success may be as mischievous as defeat. The victorious leaders may be borne along by the current of events far beyond their destination ; a government may be overthrown which ought to have been only repaired ; and a new, perhaps a more formidable, tyranny may spring out of victory. A regular government may stop before its fall becomes precipitate, or check a career of conquest when it threatens destruction to itself; but the feeble authority of the chiefs of insurgents is rarely able, in the one case, to maintain the courage, in the other to repress the impetuosity, of their voluntary adherents. Finally, the cruelty and misery incident to all warfare are greater in domestic dissension than in contests with foreign enemies. Foreign wars have little effect on the feelings, habits, or condition of the majority of a great nation, to most of whom the worst particulars of them may be unknown. But civil war brings the same or worse evils into the heart of a country and into the bosom of many families : it eradicates all habits of recourse to justice and reverence for law ; its hostilities are not mitigated by the usages which soften wars between nations ; it is carried on with the ferocity of parties who apprehend destruction from each other : and it may leave behind it feuds still more deadly, which may render a country depraved and wretched through a long succession of ages. As it involves a wider waste of virtue and happiness than any other species of war, it can only be warranted by the sternest and most dire necessity. The chiefs of a justly disaffected party are unjust to their fellows and their followers, as well as to all the rest of their countrymen, if 598 ENGLISH PROSE they lake up arms in a case where the evils of submission are not more intolerable, the impossibility of reparation by pacific means more apparent, and the chances of obtaining it by arms greater than are necessary to justify the rulers of a nation in undertaking a foreign war. A wanton rebellion, when considered with the aggravation of its ordinary consequences, is one of the greatest of crimes. The chiefs of an inconsiderable and ill-concerted revolt, however provoked, incur the most formidable responsibility to their followers and their country. An insurrection rendered necessary by oppression, and warranted by a reasonable prob- ability of a happy termination, is an act of public virtue, always environed with so much peril as to merit admiration. In proportion to the degree in which a revolt spreads over a large body till it approaches unanimity, the fatal peculiarities of civil war are lessened. In the insurrection of provinces, either distant or separated by natural boundaries, more especially if the inhabitants, differing in religion and language, are rather subjects of the same government than portions of the same people,^ — hostilities which are waged only to sever a legal tie may assume the regularity, and in some measure the mildness of foreign war. Free men, carrying into insurrection those habits of voluntary obedience to which they have been trained, are more easily re- strained from excess by the leaders in whom they have placed their confidence. Thus far it may be affirmed, ha]3pily for man- kind, that insurgents are most humane where they are most likely to be successful. But it is one of the most deplorable circum- stances in the lot of man, that the subjects of despotic govern- ments, and still more those who are doomed to personal slavery, though their condition be the worst, and their revolt the most just, are disabled from conducting it to a beneficial result by the very magnitude of the evils under which they groan ; for the most fatal effect of the yoke is, that it darkens the understanding and debases the soul, and that the victims of long oppression, who have never imbibed any noble princijile of obedience, throw oft" every curb when they are released from the chain and the lash. In such wretched conditions of society, the rulers may, indeed, retain unlimited power as the moral guardians of the community, while they are conducting the arduous process of gradually tr'ansforming slaves into men, but they cannot justly retain it without that purpose, or longer than its accomplishment requires ; but the extreme difficulty of such a reformation, as well JAMES MACKINTOSH 599 as the dire eftects of any other emancipation ought to be deeply considered, as proofs of the enormous guilt of those who introduce any kind or degree of unlimited power, as well as of those who increase by their obstinate resistance the natural obstacles to the pacific amendment of evils as tremendous. The frame of the human mind, and the structure of civilized society, have adapted themselves to these important differences between civil and foreign war. Such is the force of the consider- ations which have been above enumerated ; so tender is the regard of good men for the peace of their native country, so numerous are the links of interest and habit which bind those of a more common sort to an establishment, so diffi- cult and dangerous is it for the bad and bold to conspire against a tolerably vigilant administration, — the evils which exist in moderate governments appear so tolerable and those of absolute despotism so incorrigible, that the number of unjust wars between states unspeakably surpasses those of wanton rebellion against the just exercise of authority. Though the maxim, that there are no unprovoked revolts, ascribed to the Due de Sully and adopted by Mr. Burke, cannot be received without exceptions, it must be owned that in civilized times mankind have suffered less from a mutinous spirit than from a patient endurance of bad government. (From Causes of the English Revolution.^ FREEDOM OF SPEECH In the course of the eighteenth century, a great change took place in the state of political discussion in this country : — I speak of the multiplication of newspapers. I know that newspapers are not very popular in this place, which is indeed, not very surprising, because they are known here only by their faults. Their publishers come here only to receive the chastisement due to their offences. With all their faults, I own, I cannot help feeling some respect for whatever is a proof of the increased curiosity and increased knowledge of mankind ; and I cannot help thinking, that, if somewhat more indulgence and consideration were shown for the difficulties of their situation, it might prove one of the best correctives of their faults, by teaching them that self-respect which is the best 6oo ENGLISH PROSE security for liberal conduct towards others. But, however that may be, it is very certain that the multiplication of these channels of popular information has produced a great change in the state of our domestic and foreign politics. At home, it has, in truth, produced a gradual revolution in our government. By increasing the number of those who exercise some sort of judgment on public affairs, it has created a substantial democracy, infinitely more important than those democratic forms which have been the subject of so much contest. So that I may venture to say, England has not only in its fomis the most democratic government that ever existed in a great country, but, in substance, has the most democratical government that ever existed in any country ; — if the most substantial democracy be that state in which the greatest number of men feel an interest, and express an opinion upon political questions, and in which the greatest number of judgments and wills concur in influencing public measures. The same circumstance gave great additional importance to our discussion of continental politics. That discussion was no longer, as in the preceding century, confined to a few pamphlets, written and read only by men of education and rank, which reached the multitude very slowly and rarely. In newspapers an almost daily appeal was made, directly or indirectly, to the judgment and passions of almost every individual in the kingdom upon the measures and principles, not only of his own country, but of every state in Europe. Under such circumstances, the tone of these publications in speaking of foreign governments became a matter of importance. You will excuse me therefore, if, before I conclude, I remind you of the general nature of their language on one or two very remarkable occasions, and of the boldness with which they arraigned the crimes of powerful sovereigns, without any check from the laws and magistrates of their own country. This toleration, or rather this protection, was too long and uniform to be accidental. I am, indeed, very much mistaken if it be not founded upon a policy which this country cannot abandon without sacrificing her liberty, and endangering her national existence. The first remarkable instance which I shall choose to state of the unpunished and protected boldness of the English press, — of the freedom with which they animadverted on the policy of powerful sovereigns, is on the partition of Poland in JAMES MACKINTOSH 6oi 1772 — an act not perhaps so horrible in its means, nor so deplorable in its immediate effects, as some other atrocious invasions of national independence, which have followed it, but the most abominable in its general tendency and ultimate consequences of any political crime, recorded in history, because it was the first practical breach in the system of Europe, the first example of atrocious robbery perpetrated on unoffending countries, which has been since so liberally followed, and which has broken down all the barriers of habit and principle that guarded defenceless states. The perpetrators of this atrocious crime were the most powerful sovereigns of the continent, whose hostility it certainly was not the interest of Great Britain wantonly to incur. They were the most illustrious princes of their age ; and some of them were doubtless entitled to the highest praise for their domestic administration, as well as for the brilliant qualities which distinguished their character. But none of these circumstances, no dread of their resentment, no admiration of their talents, no consideration for their rank, silenced the animadversion of the English press. Some of you remember, all of you know, that a loud and unanimous cry of reprobation and execration broke out against them from every part of this kingdom. It was perfectly uninfluenced by any considerations of our own mere national interest, which might perhaps be supposed to be rather favourably affected by that partition. It was not, as in some other countries, the indignation of rival robbers, who were excluded from their share of the prey : it was the moral anger of disinterested spectators against atrocious crimes, the gravest and the most dignified moral principle which the God of justice has implanted in the human heart, that one, the dread of which is the only restraint on the actions of powerful criminals, and the promulgation of which is the only punishment that can be inflicted on them. It is a restraint which ought not to be weakened : it is a punishment which no good man can desire to mitigate. That great crime was spoken of as it deserved in England. Robbery was not described by any courtly circumlocutions : rapine was not called "policy" ; nor was the oppression of an innocent people termed a " mediation " in their domestic differences. No prosecutions, no criminal informations followed the liberty and the boldness of the language then employed. No complaints even appear to have been made from abroad ; much less any 6o2 ENGLISH PROSE insolent menaces against the free constitution which protected the EngUsh press. The people of England were too long known throughout Europe for the proudest jaotentate to expect to silence our press by such means. I pass over the second partition of Poland in 1792 (you all remember what passed on that occasion — the universal abhorrence expressed by every man and every writer of every party, — the succours that were publicly preparing by large bodies of individuals of all parties for the oppressed Poles) ; I hasten to the final dismemberment of that unhappy kingdom, which seems to me the most striking example in our history of the habitual, principled, and deep-rooted forbearance of those who administer the law towards political writers. We were engaged in the most extensive, bloody, and dangerous war that this country ever knew ; and the parties to the dismemberment of Poland were our allies, and our only powerful and effective allies. We had every motive of policy to court their friendship, every reason of state seemed to require that we should not permit them to be abused and vilified by English writers. What was the fact ? Did any Englishman consider himself at liberty, on account of temporary interests, however urgent, to silence those feelings of humanity and justice which guard the certain and permanent interests of all countries ? You all remember that every voice, and eveiy pen and every press in England, were unceasingly employed to brand that abominable robbery. You remember that this was not confined to private writers, but that the same abhorrence was expressed by every member of both Houses of Parliament who was not under the restraints of ministerial reserve. No minister dared even to blame the language of honest indignation which might be very inconvenient to his most important political projects ; and, I hope I may venture to say, no English assembly would have endured such a sacrifice of eternal justice to any miserable interest of an hour. Did the law-officers of the crown venture to come into a court of justice to complain of the boldest of the publications of that time ? They did not. I do not say that they felt any disposition to do so ; — I believe that they could not. But I do say, that if they had, — if they had spoken of the necessity of confining our political writers to cold narrative and unfeeling argument, — if they had informed a jury that they did not prosecute history, but invective, that, if private writers be at all to blame great princes, it must be with moderation and JAMES iMACKJNrOSH 603 decorum, — the sound heads and honest hearts of an English jury would have confounded such sophistry, and would have declared, by their verdict, that moderation of language is a relative term, which varies with the subject to which it is applied, — that atrocious crimes are not to be related as calmly and coolly as indifferent or trifling events, — that, if there be a decorum due to exalted rank and authority, there is also a much more sacred decorum due to virtue and to human nature, which would be outraged and trampled under foot, by speaking of guilt in a lukewarm language, falsely called moderate. Soon after, gentlemen, there followed an act, in comparison with which all the deeds of rapine and blood perpetrated in the world are innocence itself, — the invasion and destruction of Switzerland — that unparalleled scene of guilt and enormity, that unprovoked aggression against an innocent country, which had been the sanctuary of peace and liberty for three centuries, respected as a sort of sacred territory by the fiercest ambition ; raised, like its own mountains, beyond the region of the storms which raged round on every side, the only warlike people that never sent forth armies to disturb their neighbours, the only government that ever accumulated treasures without imposing taxes, an innocent treasure unstained by the tears of the poor, the inviolate patrimony of the commonwealth, which attested the virtue of a long series of magistrates, but which at length caught the eye of the spoiler, and became the fatal occasion of their ruin ! Gentlemen, the destruction of such a country — " its cause so innocent, and its fortune so lamentable ! " — made a deep impres- sion on the people of England. I will ask my learned friend, if we had then been at peace with the French Republic, whether we must have been silent spectators of the foulest crimes that ever blotted the name of humanity ? whether we must, like cowards and slaves, have repressed the compassion and indignation with which that horrible scene of tyranny had filled our hearts ? Let me suppose, gentlemen, that Aloys Reding, who has displayed in our times the simplicity, magnanimity, and piety of ancient heroes, had, after his glorious struggle, honoured this kingdom by choosing it as his refuge, that, after performing prodigies of valour at the head of his handful of heroic peasants on the field of Morgarten (where his ancestor, the Landamman Reding, had, five hundred years before, defeated the first oppressors of Switzerland), he had selected this country to be his residence, as 6o4 ENGLISH PROSE tlic chosen abode of liberty, as the ancient and inviolable asylum of the oppressed, would my learned friend have had the boldness to have said to this hero, that he must hide his tears (the tears shed by a hero over the ruin of his country !) lest they might provoke the resentment of Reubell or Rapinat, that he must smother the sorrow and anger with which his heart was loaded, that he must breathe his murmurs low, lest they might be over- heard by the oppressor ! Would this have been the language of my learned friend ? I know that it would not. I know, that by such a supposition, I have done wrong to his honourable feelings, to his honest English heart. I am sure that he knows as well as I do that a nation, which should thus receive the oppressed of other countries, would be preparing its own neck for the yoke. He knows the slavery which such a nation would deserve, and must speedily incur. He knows that sympathy with the unmerited sufferings of others and disinterested anger against their oppressors, are, if I may so speak, the masters which are appointed by Providence to teach us fortitude in the defence of our own rights, that selfishness is a dastardly principle, which betrays its charge and flies from its post, and that those only can defend themselves with valour, who are animated by the moral approbation with which they can survey their sentiments towards others, who are ennobled in their own eyes by a consciousness that they are fighting for justice as well as interest — a consciousness which none can feel, but those who have felt for the wrongs of their Ijrethren. These are the sentiments which my learned friend would have felt. He would have told the hero : — your confidence is not deceived : this is still that England, of which the history may, perhaps, have contributed to fill your heart with the heroism of liberty. Every other country of Europe is crouching under the bloody tyrants who destroyed your country : we are unchanged. We are still the same people which received with open arms the victims of the tyranny of Philip H. and Louis XIV. We shall not exercise a cowardly and clandestine humanity. Here we are not so dastardly as to rob you of your greatest consolation ; — here, protected by a free, brave, and high-minded people, you may give vent to your indignation, you may proclaim the crimes of your tyrants, you may devote them to the execration of mankind. There is still one spot upon earth in which they are abhorred without being dreaded ! (From Defence of Jean Peltier.') ISAAC DISRAELI [Isaac Disraeli was the son of Rcnjaniin Disraeli, a scion of a Jewish family which had been settled in Spain. His father came to London in 1748, and he was himself born there in 1766. He was educated partly in private schools in England, and partly abroad ; and, renouncing his father's plan for him of a commercial life, he followed his own tastes for a literary career. He first sought the patronage of Johnson, to whom he addressed a poem, when Johnson was on his death-bed ; and shortly afterwards attacked Wolcot (who subsequently became his friend) in some anonymous verses on The Abuse of Satire. In 1792, appeared the first instalment of the Ciiriosifies of Litera- ture. The book attained speedy popularity, and was enlarged to six volumes, in the course of more than forty years. His other works were stories, which obtained no permanent hold upon public attention ; political treatises, in which he maintained the cause of the .Stuart kings against the Parliamentary party, the first being the Inquiiy into the Literary and L^olitical Charaeier of James L (1816), and the next the five volumes of the Commentary on the Life and Reign of Charles L (1823) ; and a long series of works bearing upon the miscellanies of literary history. He became the friend of all thi; leading literary men of his time ; and died in 1848.] It is difficult for us at the present day fully to appreciate the work of Isaac Disraeli. His books belong to the class of which all men with any literary taste, read something : they belong also, perhaps, to the class of which few men read very much. The shadow of his son's greater fame has eclipsed his own reputation, even although it has, in a certain sense, drawn some additional attention to his name. He pursued an aim in literature which the taste of his youth dictated, he pursued it with unflagging industry and devotion, but at the same time with some of the discursiveness of the dilettante : and he brought to his work wide reading, keen literary interest and sympathy, an accurate and suggestive memory, considerable power of acute thought, and some discernment of character. Intended by his parents for mercantile pursuits, that "pre- 6o6 ENGLISH PROSE disposition " which he thought was the necessary acconipaniment of genius, repelled him from that line of life ; but an easy competence and an indulgence, kind to what his relations deemed to be foibles, enabled him to pursue his own taste without any of the struggles with adverse circumstances which might have given to his literary vein greater force, and might have strengthened the sinews of his mind. He began with writing' verse, and proceeded next, in his twenty-fifth year, to publish the first instalment of those literary anecdotes which the taste of the day encouraged, and for which a model was found in the French collections of a7ia. He meditated throughout all his life the project of a great history of literature : but his studies, although prolonged and ardent, were not sufficiently aided by mental power or genius to sustain him in a com- prehensive work, nor was he sufficiently master of the com- parative method of criticism, to have rendered such a work of any real value in point of scholarship. After the first instalments of his work were published, he devoted himself even more exclusively to storing his memory : and his more important works — TJie Calamities of Auf/iors, The (2i(arre/s of Aut//ors, T/ie Essay o?t f/ie Literary C/iaraeter, and the later series of The Curiosities of Literature — were all issued after he was forty-five years of age. All can learn something from them, all can find entertainment in dipping into their pages here and there ; but they have no claim to be considered as serious literary history ; their miscellaneous diversity wearies and baffles us : and we are hurried so fast from name to name, linked to one another often by some trifling association of ideas, that we become confused by the rapid shifting of the scene, at the most only have our curiosity tickled, and close the book with no fixed and permanent impression. He used high-sounding words in connection with his own work, which dispassionate criticism might disallow. " I still keep casting philosophy with anecdotes," he says, " and anecdotes with philosophy," — but the philosophy is of a very superficial type. We feel that many of the anecdotes so whimsically strung together, might be interesting indeed if they were the fruit of our own remembered reading, but that they should be presented to us with more of the vivifying power of genius if they are to impress us in a second-hand catalogue. Isaac Disraeli has not given us a critical history of English literature : just as little has he given ISAAC DISRAELI 607 us that which demanded perhaps even greater genius, a series of essays in the older method which might have enwoven anecdotes, and yet sustained interest by the play of fancy and of art. The Essay on tJic Literary C/iaractcr is reckoned by his son as the most perfect of his works ; and although it has not attained the secure place amongst books of common reference •which has been accorded to the Curiosities, the estimate is probably true. The iDook has more of sustained argument and definite aim than any other which he wrote. It contains many passages full of sympathy and insight, it depends less than most of his books upon the miscellaneous and rather disorderly storehouse of a retentive memory, and its defence of inborn genius as against the senseless notion then current, of genius as meaning only a certain measure of talent directed by some accidental bias, is not only successful, but, at the time, was of real importance. His political estimates were perhaps useful as protests against views of the seventeenth century which fashionable Whiggism had made prevalent ; but even if we sympathise with them, we cannot maintain that they are either persuasive in form, or povv-erful in argument. Of these the Coiiinicntary on the Life and Reign of Cliarlcs I. is the most important. His style in some of his earlier works is thoroughly bad — a vile imitation of the whimsical caprices which the genius of a Sterne might make acceptable, but which in the hands of imitators was only ridiculous. A specimen of this may be sought in Flini-Jlanis : the Life and Errors of my Unele j but, for the sake of his reputation, it is better forgotten. In his other works the style has perhaps a little too much of formality, and gives the impression that he is taking himself rather more seriously than is necessary. It is not always very correct, and is sometimes open to the charge of ambiguity. But on the other hand it has the graceful and courteous dignity of a scholar, imbued with a deep and reverent sympathy for literature : and at times there is a boldness and happy fancy in the choice and collocation of epithets which not only marks the author's Eastern origin, but gives a foretaste of that which was the crowning- oratorical glory of his son's transcendent genius. Isaac Disraeli had not the intellectual grasp nor the critical insight required for the literary historian : neither had he the subtle art of the essayist, to whom anecdotes only serve as apt illustrations, 6o8 ENGLISH PROSE and who sustains our interest by combining unity of theme with copiousness of allusion. But at his best he has all the grace, the culture, the well-stored memory, the ready sympathy of the retiring and leisurely scholar — with a formality of manner which is at times a little obtrusive. H. Craik. DENNIS THE CRITIC It is an observation frequently made by men of letters in con- versation, \vhene\er some renowned critic is mentioned, that he was a very ill-natured man. An observation which is fully verified by facts ; so that sometimes we are nearly tempted to suppose that ill-nature is the spirit of criticism. The verbal or minor critics, are persons of the slenderest faculties, and the most irascible dispositions. What can we hope from men who have consumed thirty pages in quarto, on the signification of one little word, and after this insane discussion, have left the un- happy syllable to the mercy of future literary frenzy ? But there is a species of critics, who rather attach themselves to modern than to ancient writers ; and who pursue and settle on a great genius, as summer flies attack the tails of the best fed hoi'ses, the more fervid the season and the plumper the horse, the livelier is the attack. They are born for the torment of the ingenious, and the gratification of the malicious of their age. It has too often happened, that a superior writer has been mortified during his whole life, by such a painful shadow. The ancestors of these critics appear to have flourished in the days of Terence, and this poet has distinguished them by the honourable title of the Malevoli. Zoilus, who has left them his name, the patriarch of true criticism, as Swift calls their talent, fell a martyr to their cause ; for this great man was either burnt, or crucified, or stoned. In the person of Dennis, we may contemplate the character of these disturbers of literary repose. The mind of this critic was endowed, not with refinement, but with subtlety ; not with correct- ness, but with minuteness ; not with quick sensibility, but with critical erudition. A prominent feature in his character, was that intellectual quality, called common sense, which would have rendered him an useful citizen. A virtue in a saddler, but a vice in a critic. In literature, common sense is a penurious faculty, VOL. IV 2 R 6io ENGLISH PROSE of which all the acquisitions are mean and of little value. If we allow him these qualities, we must utterly deny him that sensi- bility of taste which feels the charms of an author, by a congeni- ality of spirit ; that quick apprehension, which may occasionally point out the wanderings of genius, but which oftener confirms the pleasures we feel, by proving their propriety ; nor had he that flexibility of intellect, which yields to the touch of the object before him ; before he ventured to be pleased, he was comiaelled to consult Aristotle. His learning was the bigotry of literature. It was ever Aristotle explained by Dennis. But in the explanation of the obscure text of his master, he was led into such frivolous distinc- tions, and tasteless propositions that his works deserve inspection, as examples of the manners of a true mechanical critic ; the genius of Homer would sink blended with the dulness of Dennis. Several singular coincidences alone gave the ephemeron critic his temporary existence. Criticism was a novelty at that period of our literature. He flattered some great men, and he abused three of the greatest ; this was one mode of securing popularity ; because, by this contrivance, he divided the town into two parties ; and the irascibility and satire of Pope and Swift, were not less serviceable to him, than the partial panegyrics of Dryden and Congreve. If insulted genius had not noticed Dennis, Dennis in vain would have insulted genius. Sometimes his strictures, though virulent, were just ; even Zoilus doubtless detected many defects in Homer. But such criticisms are only a kind of plate- powder, very useful to repolish the' works of genius. The performances of our critic appear never to have been popular, and this f;ict is recorded by himself Of the favourable opinion he entertained of his own powers, and the public neglect they received, when not supported by the malignant aid of satire, the following passages will sufficiently prove. He observes in his tracts, " If I had written only the first treatise, I believe, that upon reading it, you will be of opinion, and far be presumption from that belief, that I had deserved better of the commonwealth of learning, than the authors of so many sonorous trifles, who have been too much encouraged, while I have been too much neglected. The position, which is the subject of it, viz. — That religion is that which gives principally to great poetry its spirit, its sublimity, its vehemence, and its strongest enthusiasm, is very clearly proved." ISAAC DISRAELI 6ii One more specimen may be necessary. He adds, " that though criticism has flourished for 2000 years, descending from ancient Greece and Rome, to modern France and Italy, yet that neither Greece, nor Rome, nor France, nor modern Italy, has treated of this important point ; but that it was left for a person who has the honour of being your lordship's countryman, to assert it, and demonstrate it. If what I have said may seem to some persons, into whose hands these sheets may happen to fall, to have too great a tincture of vanity in it, your lordship knows very well, that persons so much and so long oppressed as I have been, have been always allowed to say things concerning them- selves, which in others might be offensive." There is a degree of vanity and vexation in these extracts, of which the former is only excuseable for the latter. His vanity we know was excessive, and this oppression, of which he com- plains, might not be less imaginary than his alarm of being delivered over to the French, for the composition of a tragedy that could never be read. Dennis undoubtedly had laboured with zeal, which could never meet with a reward ; and perhaps, amidst his critical labours, he turned often, with an aching heart, from their barren contemplation, to that of the social comforts he might have derived from his paternal saddles. His occasional strictures on popular works had certainly a transient season. Such criticisms were assisted by the activity of envy, and by the supineness of indolence. These also were his best productions, but I must still affirm that they were the best productions of a dull writer. A beautiful tragedy may be composed, which may serve the purposes of the Dennises ; and its errors may fill their voluminous pamphlet ; but also, it is very possible to construct a tragedy which would famish the Dennises, and at the same time be destitute of whatever can impart delight to the lover of poetry. Dennis aspired also to original composition. His verse is the verse of one who lias learnt poetry, as the blind we know may practise the art ; a mechanical operation performed by substanti\es and adjectives. His sentiments are wild, and his lines irregular ; turgid expressions in rumbling verse ; the painful throes of a muse, who is made to produce monsters against the designs of nature. Such versifiers are well described by Denham in tliis line ; their works are Not the effect of poetry, l)ut pains. 6i2 ENGLISH PROSE Yet Dryden, with the usual partiality of friendship, deludes Dennis by eulogies on his poetry, and in one of his letters, published by our author, advises him to apply himself to the Pindaric. After this, I believe, Dennis produced his long rambling- ode in praise of Dryden, which, perhaps, equals the worst of Cowley's. His prose has at times animation, particularly when he warms into abuse. His conceptions, indeed, were never, never delicate ; but sometimes their grossness is striking ; as what he says of puns, in one of his letters, " there is as much difterence between the silly satisfaction which we have from a quibble and the ravishing pleasure which we receive from a beautiful thought, as there is betwixt a faint salute and fruition." His criticisms are often so many castles in the air, for almost in every work he is proposing and explaining some fantastical scheme. In his long treatise on modern poetry, he labours to show, that the strong interest which the ancients felt in their poetry, was derived from that use of religion which their poets employed ; and therefore, he concludes, that if religion is intro- duced into our poems, modern poetry will rival the ancient. But how false this system is criticism and experience have now positively decided. Polytheism indeed was a religion well adapted to poetical fancies ; since nothing can be more poetical than an endless train of being's, diversified in their characters, and distinguished by their emblems. The brilliancy of imagina- tion, the gaieties of description, and the conflict of the passions, alike formed a human interest in the deities of the ancients. But the unity of our religion teaches only the lesson of obedience, and throwing a veil over the mysterious Deity, would consider de- scription as impiety, and silence as the only expression of the human passions. Having concluded what I had to observe, on the literary character of Dennis, I shall now consider his moral one. The lesson may not prove uninstructive, for we shall have an oppor- tunity of contemplating how an ill-natured critic is an ill-natured man, and that the perversions of the head are often so many particles of venom which fly from the heart. The magisterial decisions of criticism, communicated a personal importance to this author. Accustomed to suspend the scourge over the heads of the first writers of the age, it appears, that Dennis could not sit at a table, or walk down a street without ISAAC DISRAELI 613 exerting the despotic rudeness of a literary dictator. The brutal violence of his mind, was discoverable in his manners ; an odd mixture of frantic enthusiasm, and gross dulncss. Pride now elevated and vaunting, now depressed and sore. How could the mind that devoted itself to the contemplation of masterpieces, only to reward its industry by detailing to the public their human frailties, experience one hour of amenity, one idea of grace, one generous expression of sensibility ? Pope's celebrated description of the personal manners of our critic, is an exact representation : Lo Appius reddens at each word you speak ; And stares tremendous with a threatening eye, Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry. It is recorded of Dennis, that when he read this passage at a bookseller's, he involuntarily exclaimed, " By G — he means me ! " Dennis had so accustomed himself to asperity, and felt with such facility and force the irritation he gave and he received, that without having left on record but the suspicion of one immoral action (for it is said he stabbed a man at college), we suspect the improbity of his heart when we recollect the licen- tiousness of his pen. But this has ever been the characteristic of this race of critics. They attach to the writer they attack an inveteracy, which is not permitted by common humanity. From their darkened closet, they suppose, that the affairs of civil life are suspended, in an awful pause, for their decisions ; and they think, when they have discovered the want of unity in a tragedy, that, in consequence, the same want is immediately to take place among the public. A critic resembling Dennis, was Ga^on in France. This Zoilus reproached La Motte with his blindness, and Dennis cruelly censured the feeble frame of Pope. Young, in his second epistle to Pope, sarcastically alluded to Dennis in these words, My narrow-minded satire can't extend To Codrus' form, I'm not so much his friend ; Himself should publish that (the world agree) Before his works, or in the pillory. Gacjon wrote "satirical discourses on all kinds of subjects," and compiled a volume of calumnies against the poet Rousseau, which he entitled an Anti-Rousseau ; Anti was long a favourite title to the works of such critics. Whenever there appeared a great genius, he immediately found an antipode. 6i4 ENGLISH PROSE An anecdote little known, relative to Dennis, will close his character. It appears, that the Provoked Husband was acted for his benefit, which procured him about a hundred pounds. Thom- son and Pope generously supported the old critic, and Savage, who had nothing but a verse to give, returned them poetical thanks in the name of Dennis. When Dennis heard these lines repeated (for he was then blind) his critical severity, and his natural brutality, overcame that grateful sense he should have expressed, of their kindness and their elegance. He swore " by G — they could be no one's but that fool Savage's." This, perhaps, was the last peevish snuff from the dismal torch of criticism, for two days after was the redoubted Dennis numbered with the mighty dead. Criticism has thus been often only the natural effect of bad dispositions ; when severe, if founded on truth, it is not blamed ; but this truth includes the idea of a critic convincing his reader, that he has a just taste for the beauties of a composition ; for that censure which only takes a partial review of a work, must be defective. There is a duty we owe to the public, when we defend the cause of taste, but at the same time there is a duty we owe to the author. A skilful censor will perform his task by a happy combination of humanity and criticism ; and it is elegantly said of Boileau by Voltaire, that the honey which this bee extracted from the flowers, softened the sharpness of the wound he inflicted. A critic is only the footman of a man of genius, he should respect his master, and not suffer the torch of criticism, which he carries before him, to scorch, but only to illuminate. (From Litcra>y Mzsceilanics.) GENIUS That faculty in art which individualises the artist, belonging to him and no other, and in a work forms that creative part whose likeness is not found in any other work, — is it inherent in the constitutional dispositions of the individual, or can it be formed by patient acquisition ? Astonished at their own silent and obscure progress, some have imagined that they had formed their genius solely by their ISAAC DISRAELI 615 own studies ; when they acquired, they conceived that they had generated ; and losing the distinction between nature and habit, with fatal temerity the idolatry of philosophy substituted some- thing visible and palpable, yet shaped by the most opposite fancies, called a Theory, for Nature herself! Men of genius, whose great occupation is to be conversant with the inspirations of nature, made up a factitious one among themselves, and assumed that they could operate without the intervention of the occult original. But Nature would not be mocked ; and when- ever this race of idolaters have worked without her agency, she, who is genial in all her own productions, invariably afflicts the votaries who do not feel her influence with the most stubborn sterility. Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical times : ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than their works ; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the imagination to be without imagina- tion, nor did they venture to teach how to invent invention. The character of genius, viewed as the effect of habit and education, on the principle of the ecjuality of the human mind, infers that men have an ecjual aptitude for the work of genius : a paradox which, with a more fatal one, came from the French school, and arose probably from an ecjuivocal expression. Locke employed the well-known comparison of the mind with " white paper void of all characters," to free his famous Inqtdiy from that powerful obstacle to his system, the absurd belief of innate ideas, of notions of objects before objects were presented to observation. Our philosopher considered that this simple analogy sufficiently described the manner in which he conceived the impressions of the senses write themselves upon the mind. His French pupils, the amusing Helvetius, or Diderot, for they were ecjually concerned in the paradoxical VEsprif, inferred that this blank paper served also as an evidence that men had an equal aptitude for genius, just as the blank paper reflects to us whatever characters we trace on it. This equality of minds gave rise to the same monstrous doctrine in the science of metaphysics which that of another verbal misconception, the equality of men, did in that of politics. The Scottish metaphysicians powerfully combined to illustrate the mechanism of the mind, — an important and a curious truth ; for as rules and principles exist in the nature of things, and when discovered are only thence drawn out, genius 6i6 ENGLISH PROSE unconsciously conducts itself by an uniform process ; and when this process had been traced, they inferred that what was done by some men, under the influence of fundamental laws which regulate the march of the intellect, must also be in the reach of others who, in the same circumstances, apply themselves to the same study. But these metaphysicians resemble anatomists, under whose knife all men are alike : they know the structure of the bones, the movement of the muscles, and where the connect- ing ligaments lie ; but the invisible principle of life flies from their touch : it is the practitioner on the living body who studies in every individual that peculiarity of constitution which forms the idiosyncracy. (From The Literary Character.) THE PLAYTHINGS OF PHILOSOPHERS The museums, the cabinets, and the inventions of our early virtuosi were the baby -houses of philosophers. Baptista Porta, Bishop Wilkins, and old Ashmole, were they now living, had been enrolled among the quiet members of the Society of Arts, instead of flying in the air, collecting " A wing of the phoenix, as tradition goes " : or catching the disjointed syllables of an old doting astrologer. But these early dilettanti had not derived the same pleasure from the useful inventions of the aforesaid Society of Arts, as they received from what Cornelius Agrippa, in a fit of spleen, calls " things vain and superfluous," invented to no other end but for pomp and idle pleasures. Baptista Porta was more skilful in the mysteries of art and nature than any man in his day. Having founded the Academia degli Oziosi, he held an inferior association in his own house called Di Segreti, where none was admitted but those elect who had communicated some secret ; for, in the early period of modern art and science, the slightest novelty became a secret not to be confided to the uninitiated. Porta was unquestionably a fine genius, as his works still show ; but it was his misfortune that he attributed his own penetrating sagacity to his skill in the art of divination. He considered himself a prognosticator ; and, what was more unfortunate, some eminent persons really thought he was. Predictions and secrets are harmless, provided they arc not believed ; but His Holiness finding Porta's were, warned ISAAC DISRAELI 617 him tliat magical sciences were yreat hindrances to the study of the Bible, and paid him the compliment to forbid his prophesying. I'orta's genius was now limited, to astonish, and sometimes to terrify, the more ingenious part of I Segreti. On entering his cabinet, some phantom of an attendant was sure to be hovering in the air, moving as he who entered moved ; or he obsei-ved in some mirror that his face was twisted on the wrong side of his shoulders, and did not quite think that all was right when he clapped his hand on it ; or passing through a darkened apartment a magical landscape burst on him, with human beings in motion, the boughs of trees bending, and the very clouds passing over the sun ; or sometimes banquets, battles, and hunting parties, were in the same apartment. " All these spectacles my friends have witnessed ! " exclaimed the self- delighted Baptista Porta. When his friends drank wine out of the same cup which he had used, they were mortified with wonder ; for he drank wine, and they only water ! or on a summer's day, when all complained of the sirocco, he would freeze his guests with cold air in the room ; or, on a sudden, let off a flying dragon to sail along with a cracker in its tail, and a cat tied on its back ; shrill was the sound, and awful the concussion ; so that it required strong nerves, in an age of apparitions and devils, to meet this great philosopher when in his best humour. Albertus Magnus entertained the Earl of Holland, as that Earl passed through Cologne, in a severe winter, with a warm summer scene, luxuriant in fruits and flowers. . . . Bishop Wilkin's museum was visited by Evelyn, who describes the sort of curiosities which occupied and amused the children of science. " Here, too, there was a hollow statue, which gave a voice, and uttered words by a long concealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks through it at a good distance" : a circumstance which, perhaps, they were not then aware revealed the whole mystery of the ancient oracles, which they attributed to demons rather than to tubes, pulleys, and wheels. The learned Charles Patin, in his scientific travels, records, among other valuable productions of art, a cherry stone on which were engraved about a dozen and a half of portraits 1 Even the greatest of human geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci, to attract the royal patronage, created a lion which ran before the French monarch, dropping' fleurs de lis from its shaggy breast. And another philosopher who had a spinet which played and stopped at command, might 6i8 ENGLISH PROSE have made a revolution in the arts and sciences, had the half- stifled child that was concealed in it not been forced, unluckily, to crawl into daylight, and thus it was proved that a philosopher might be an impostor ! The arts, as well as the sciences, at the first institution of the Royal Society were of the most amusing class. The famous Sir Samuel Moreland had turned his house into an enchanted palace. Everything was full of devices, which showed art and mechanism in perfection : his coach carried a travelling kitchen ; for it had a fireplace and grate, with which he could make a soup, broil cutlets and roast an o^g'g ; and he dressed his meat by clockwork. Another of these virtuosi, who is described as "a gentleman of superior order," and whose house was a knick- knackatory, valued himself on his multifarious inventions, but most in " sowing salads in the morning, to be cut for dinner." The house of Winstanley, who afterwards raised the first Eddystone lighthouse, must have been the wonder of the age. If you kicked aside an old slipper, purposely lying in your way, up started a ghost before you ; or if you sat down in a certain chair, a couple of gigantic arms would immediately clasp you in. There was an arbour in the garden, by the side of a canal ; you had scarcely seated yourself when you were sent out afloat to the middle of the canal — from whence you could not escape till this man of art and science wound you up to the arbour. What was passing at the Royal Society was also occurring at the Academic des Sciences at Paris. A great and gouty member of that philosophical body, on the departure of a stranger, would point to his legs to show the impossibility of conducting him to the door ; yet the astonished visitor never failed finding the virtuoso waiting for him on the outside, to make his final bow ! While the visitor was going downstairs, this inventive genius was descending with great velocity in a machine from the window : so that he proved, that if a man of science cannot force Nature to walk downstairs, he may drive her out at the window ! (From Curiosiiics of Literature.') MARIA EDGEWORTH [Maria Edgeworth was the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the representative of an old family of Irish proprietors, and was born in Oxford- shire in 1767. Her education was obtained chiefly in England ; and through her father's connections she became early imbued with what were held to be enlightened views on "practical education." These influenced her earliest writings, which began with the Parent's Assistant in 1796, and Practical Education in 1798. Her knowledge of literature was large; her oppor- tunities for intellectual intercoui'se abundant ; and her acquaintance with foreign languages very considerable. The most valuable part of her work was due to her acuteness of observation, her ready perception of national characteristics, especially those of the Irish, amongst whom she spent the largest part of her life, and her liveliness of description. The first book in which these powers were shown was Castle Rackrent (1800) and this was followed by a long list of tales, classified by her father's advice and influence, under various headings — Popular, Moral, Fashionable, etc. Her most active period of work closed in 1817, when Harrington and Ormond were published ; only one other novel, Heleti, followed in 1834 ; but it did not attain the popularity of its predecessors. In later life she enjoyed the warm friendship of .Scott, and was an important figure in the literary society of the day. She died in 1849.] Maria Edgeworth is one of those authors of whom it is difficuU to say whether the reputation transcends or falls below the merits. Her name is familiar to all, many of her books are read habitually, and retain their hold on a large audience, some of her characters are household words, and on the whole we of the present generation are fairly well acquainted with her methods and her aims, which were clear and definite. But, on the other hand, those books which are most read are not the books in which she allowed her talents most of free play. She is best known as a writer of children's books, of which the popularity does not show much sign of failing ; and in these her common sense and healthy didacticism rouse no opposition. The audience for whom she wrote them is fortunately not supercihous enough. 620 ENGLISH PROSE unless it has been nurtured under morbid conditions, to object to any obtrusiveness of moral teaching ; and in spite of all the caprices of fashion, Miss Edgeworth retains a perennial hold upon their sympathy. It may be cjuestioned, indeed, whether that preference will not become stronger, in the reaction against a fashion which strives to please children, and captivate their attention, by books which have some flavour of humour more readily perceived by grown-up people than by healthy-minded children. On the other hand, it may be doubted whether the books which she wrote for older readers, and in which she must stand comparison with other writers of fiction, have not been injured by the didacticism of her children's books. The influence of her early associations, the impression of her father's theories, and those of his friends, the undue consciousness of a moral purpose which impresses us so strongly, did undoubtedly tend to limit her freedom of fancy, and to give a certain air of formality to most of her pictures of life. The literary partnership between father and daughter is not unpleasing, but the little descriptive prefaces which W. Edgeworth wrote to most of his daughter's works do certainly give them an air of artificiality which his influence con- stantly impressed upon her. The very superficial views as to what he and his friends called "practical education" — which even so friendly a critic as Scott shatters in one or two sentences of sound common sense — marred all her views of human nature and of society, and gave to her world too much of the atmosphere of the schoolroom. She harps too much on one string ; the moral is unnaturally obtrusive ; her characters range themselves too distinctly as bad or good, and their fates are too uniformly regulated upon the principles of retributive justice to be quite true to nature. It would be absurd, however, to deny to her the merits of brightness and facility in constructing her stories, the power of life-like description and of vivid portrayal of character, and an observation which grasped with truth and accuracy the salient features of Irish life. Her Castle Rackrent has little of connected story, but it is the most distinctively classical of all her books, and its vitality as a picture of Irish manners is assured. She is never at a loss for incident. If she fails in painting any sustained passion or feeling, she nevertheless gives us true pictures of quick and varied impulses, superficial perhaps, but real so far as they MARIA EDGE IVOR TIT 621 go. Her imagination is limited, and she seems often to tlirow away opportunities for showing strong passion or pathos. She has none of the consummate dehcacy of workmanship that is the chief glory of Jane Austen's genius. She has just as little of the poetry and romance that have given to Scott his sovereignty. She lacks even discrimination of feeling, and sometimes jars upon us by the bluntness with which she slurs over its finer subtleties. But so far as her limit reaches, she is a truthful delineator ; sound in her methods, never deviating into absurdity, guided uniformly by good sense, and catching with accuracy and readiness all salient features of character. Her style is easy, pliant, and vigorous ; timid, perhaps, in its avoidance of all eccentricities, and somewhat overburdened by imitation of accredited literary models, but always correct, and free from tawdriness and exaggeration. Like the other attributes of her work, it shows earnestness and thoroughness of care and attention : and we are not surprised, when we watch the result, to read in one of her father's prefaces, that every page of her printed writings represents " twice as many pages as were written " ; and yet not the least convincing proof of this care is that she has been able to avoid any obtrusive evidence of toil : and that if she spent much labor li/ncr she has given no sign of it in cumbrous- ness or pedantry of style. The specimens given below are selected with a view of giving typical instances of Miss Edgeworth's style. But perhaps the reader will forgive the selector for the remark which, after a very full perusal of her works, he feels compelled to make, that the passage headed T/ie Hibernian Mendicant represents that style at its best — and that in it she rises almost above herself, every phrase and every word in it showing, almost without a flaw, how raciness and homeliness of description may be made to fit the sentiment as exactly and as perfectly as a glove. H. Craik. TYPES OF IRISH LANDLORDS Sir Patrick died that night : just as the company rose to drink his health with three cheers, he fell down in a sort of fit, and was carried off; they sat it out, and were surprised, on inquiry in the morning, to find that it was all over with poor Sir Patrick. Never did any gentleman live and die more beloved in the country by rich and poor. His funeral was such a one as was never known before or since in the county. All the gentleman in the three counties were at it ; far and near, how they flocked : my great grandfather said, that to see all the women even in their red cloaks, you would have taken them for the army drawn out. Then such a fine whillaluh ! you might have heard it to the farthest end of the county, and happy the man who could get but a sight of the hearse ! But who'd have thought it ? just as all was going on right, through his own town they were passing, when the body was seized for debt — a rescue was apprehended from the mob ; but the heir who attended the funeral was against that, for fear of consequences, seeing that those villains who came to serve acted under the disguise of the law : so, to be sure, the law must take its course, and little gain had the creditors for their pains. First and foremost, they had the curses of the country : and Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the new heir, in the ne.xt place, on account of this affront to the body, refused to pay a shilling of the debts, in which he was countenanced by all the best gentlemen of property, and others of his acquaintance ; Sir Murtagh alleging in all companies, that he all along meant to pay his father's debts of honour, but the moment the law was taken of him, there was an end of honour to be sure. It was whispered (but none but the enemies of the family believe it) that this was all a sham seizure to get quit of the debts, which he had bound himself to pay in honour. It's a long time ago, there's no saying how it was, but this for certain, the new man did not take at all after the old gentle- MARIA EDGEWORTH 623 man ; the cellars were never filled after his death, and no open house, or anything as it used to be ; the tenants even were sent away without their whiskey. I was ashamed myself, and knew not what to say for the honour of the family ; but I made the best of a bad case, and laid it all at my lady's door, for I did not like her anyhow, nor anybody else ; she was of the family of the Skinflints, and a widow ; it was a strange match for Sir Murtagh ; the people in the country thought he demeaned himself greatly, but I said nothing : I knew how it was ; Sir Murtagh was a great lawyer, and looked to the great Skinflint estate ; there, however he overshot himself; for though one of the co-heiresses, he was never the better for her, for she outlived him many's the long day — he could not see that to be sure when he married her. I must say for her, she made him the best of wives, being a \-ery notable stirring woman, and looking close to everything. But 1 always suspected she had Scotch blood in her veins ; anything else I could have looked over in her from a regard to the family. She was a strict observer for self and servants of Lent, and all fast days, but not holidays. One of the maids having fainted three times the last day of Lent, to keep soul and body together we put a morsel of roast beef into her mouth which came from Sir Murtagh's dinner, who never fasted, not he ; but somehow or other it immediately reached my lady's ears, and the priest of the parish had a complaint made of it the next day, and the poor girl was forced as soon as she could walk to do penance for it before she could get any peace or absolution in the house or out of it. However, my lady was very charitable in her own way. She had a charity school for poor children, where they were taught to read and write gratis, and where they were kept well to spinning gratis for my lady in return ; for she had always heaps of duty yarn from the tenants, and got all her household linen out of the estate from first to last ; for, after the spinning, the weavers on the estate took it in hand for nothing, because of the looms my lady's interest could get from the Linen Board to distribute gratis. Then there was a bleach-yard near us, and the tenant dare refuse my lady nothing, for fear of a lawsuit Sir Murtagh kept hanging over him about the water-course. With these ways of managing^, 'tis surprising how cheap my lady got things done, and how proud she was of it. Her table the same way, kept for next to nothing ; duty fowls and duty turkeys, and duty geese, came as fast as we could eat 'em, for my lady kept a sharp look-out, and knew to a 624 ENGLISH PROSE tub of butter everything the tenants had, all round. They knew her way, and what with fear of driving for rent and Sir Murtagh's lawsuits, they were kept in such good order, they never thought of coming near Castle Rackrent without a present of something or other — nothing too much or too little for my lady — eggs, honey, butter, meal, fish, game, grouse, and herrings fresh or salt, all went for something. As for their young pigs, we had them, and the best bacon and hams they could make up, with all young chickens in spring ; but they were a set of poor wretches, and we had nothing but misfortinies with them, always breaking and running away. This, Sir Murtagh and my lady said, was all their former landlord. Sir Patrick's fault, who let 'em all get the half year's rent into arrear ; there was something in that to be sure. But Sir Murtagh was as much the contrary way ; for let alone making English tenants of them, every soul, he was always driving and driving, and pounding and pounding, and canting and canting and replevying and replevying, and he made a good living of trespassing cattle ; there was always some tenant's pig, or horse, or cow, or calf, or goose trespassing, which was so great a gain to Sir Murtagh, that he did not like to hear me talk of repairing fences. Then his heriots and duty-work brought him in some- thing, his turf was cut, his potatoes set and dug, his hay brought home, and, in short, all the work about his house done for nothing ; for in all our leases there were strict clauses, heavy with penalties, which Sir Murtagh knew well how to enforce ; so many days' duty work of man and horse, from every tenant he was to have, and had, every year ; and when a man vexed him, why the finest day he could pitch on, when the cratur was getting in his own harvest, or thatching his cabin, Sir Murtagh made it a principle to call upon him and his horse ; so he taught 'em all, as he said, to know the law of landlord and tenant. As for law, I believe no man, dead or alive, ever loved it so well as Sir Murtagh. He had once sixteen suits pending at a time, and I never saw him so much himself ; roads, lanes, bogs, wells, ponds, eel-wires, orchards, trees, tithes, vagrants, gravel-pits, sand-pits, dunghills, and nuisances, everything upon the face of the earth furnished him good matter for a suit. He used to boast he had a lawsuit for every letter in the alphabet. How I used to wonder to see Sir Murtagh in the midst of the papers in his office ! Why he could hardly turn about for them. I made bold to shrug my shoulders once in his presence, and thanked my stars I was not born a MARIA EDGEWORTH 625 gentleman to so much toil and trouble ; but Sir Murtagh took me up short with his old proverb, " Learning is better than house ,or land." Out of forty-nine suits which he had, he never lost one but seventeen ; the rest he gained with costs, double costs, treble costs sometimes ; but even that did not pay. He was a very learned man in the law, and had the character of it ; but how it was I can't tell, these suits that he carried cost him a power of money ; in the end he sold some hundreds a year of the family estate ; but he was a very learned man in the law, and I know nothing of the matter, except having a great regard for the family ; and 1 could not help grieving when he sent me to post up notices of the sale of the fee-simple of the lands and appurtenances of Timoleague. " I know, honest Thady," says he, to comfort me, " what I'm about better than you do ; I'm only selling to get the ready money wanting to carry on my suit with spirit with the Nugents of Carrickashaughlin. He was very sanguine about that suit with the Nugents of Carrickashaughlin. He could have gained it, they say, for certain, had it pleased Heaven to have spared him to us, and it would have been, at the least, a plump two thousand a year in his way ; but things were ordered otherwise, for the best to be sure. He dug up a fairy-mount against my advice, and had no luck afterwards. Though a learned man in the law, he was a little too incredulous in other matters. I warned him that 1 heard the very banshee that my grandfather heard under Sir Patrick's window a few days before his death. But Sir Murtagh thought nothing of the banshee nor of his cough with a spitting of blood, brought on, I understand, by catching cold in attending the courts, and overstraining his chest with making himself heard in one of his favourite causes. He was a great speaker with a powerful voice ; but his last speech was not in the courts at all. He and my lady, though both of the same way of thinking in some things, and though she was as good a wife and great economist as you could see, and he the best of husbands, as to looking into his affairs, and making money for his family ; yet I don't know how it was, they had a great deal of sparring and jarring between them. My lady had her privy purse — and she had her weed ashes, and her sealing money upon the signing of all the leases, with something to buy gloves besides ; and, besides, again often took money from the tenants, if offered properly, to speak for them to Sir Murtagh about abatements and renewals. VOL. IV 2 s 626 ENGLISH PROSE Now the weed ashes and the glove money he allowed her clear perquisites ; though once when he saw her in a gown saved out of the weed ashes, he told her to my face (for he could say a sharp thing), that she should not put on her weeds before her husband's death. But in a dispute about an abatement, my lady would have the last word, and Sir Murtagh grew mad ; I was within hearing of the door, and now I wish I had made bold to step in. He spoke so loud, the whole kitchen was out on the stairs. All on a sudden he stopped and my lady too. Some- thing has surely happened, thought I — -and so it was, for Sir Murtagh in his passion broke a bloodvessel, and all the law in the land could do nothing in that case. My lady sent for five physicians, but Sir Murtagh died, and was buried. She had a fine jointure settled upon her, and took herself away, to the great joy of the tenantry. I never said anything one way or the other, whilst she was part of the family, but got up to see her go at three o'clock in the morning. " It's a fine morning, honest Thady " says she ; " good-bye to you," and into the carriage she stepped, without a word more good or bad, or even half-a-crown ; but I made my bow, and stood to see her safe out of sight for the sake of the family. (Prom Castle Rackrcut.) THE HIBERNIAN MENDICANT Perhaps the reader may wish to see-as well as hear the petitioner. At first view you might have taken him for a Spaniard. He was tall ; and if he had been a gentleman, you would have said that there was an air of dignity in his figure. He seemed very old, yet he appeared more worn by sorrow than by time. Leaning upon a thick oaken stick as he took off his hat to ask for alms, his white hair was blown by the wind. " Health and long life to you ! " said he. " Give an old man something to help to bury him. He is past his labour, and cannot trouble this world long any way." He held his hat towards us, with nothing importunate in his manner, but rather with a look of confidence in us, mixed with habitual resignation. His thanks were " Heaven bless you ! — Long life and success to you ! to you and yours ! and may you never want a friend as I do." MARIA EDGFAVORTH 627 These last words were spoken low. He laid his hand upon his heart as he bowed to us, and walked slowly away. We called him back ; and upon our questioning him furtlier, he gave the following'' account of himself " I was bred and born — but no matter where such a one as I was bred and born, no more than where I may die and be buried, 1, that have neither son, nor daughter, nor kin, nor friend, on the wide earth, to mourn over my grave when I am laid in it, as I soon must. Well ! when it pleases God to take me, I shall never be missed out of this world, so much as by a dog ; and why should I ? — having never in my life done good to any — but evil — which 1 have lived to repent me of many's the long day and night, and ever shall whilst I have sense and reason left. In my youthful days God was too good to me : I had friends and a little home of my own to go to — a pretty spot of land for a farm, as you could see, with a snug cabin, and everything complete, and all to be mine ; for I was the only one my father and mother had, and accordingly was made much of, too much ; for I grew headstrong upon it and high, and thought nothing of any man, and little of any woman but one. That one I surely did think of ; and well worth thinking of she was. Beauty, they say, is all fancy ; but she was a girl every man might fancy. Never was one niore sought after. She was then just in her prime, and full of life and spirits ; but nothing light in her behaviour — quite modest — yet obliging. She was too good for me to be thinking of, no doubt ; but ' Faint heart never won fair lady,' so I made bold to speak to Rose, for that was her name, and after a world of pains, I began to gain upon her good liking, but couldn't get her to say more than she had never seen the man she should fancy so well. This was a great deal from her, for she was coy and proud-like, as she had a good right to be ; and, besides being young, loved her little innocent pleasure, and could not easy be brought to give up her sway. No fault of hers : but all very natural. Well I I always considered she never would have held out so long, nor have been so stiff with me had it not been for an old aunt Honour of hers — God rest her soul ! One should not be talking ill of the dead ; but she was more out of my way than enough ; yet the cratur had no malice in her against me, only meaning her child's good, as she called it, but mistook it, and thought to make Rose happy by some greater match than me, counting her fondness for me, which she could not but see some- 628 ENGLISH PROSE thing of, childishness, which she would soon be broke of. Now there was a party of English soldiers cjuartered in our town and there was a sergeant amongst them, that had money and a pretty place, as they said, in his own countiy. He courted Rose, and the aunt favoured him. He was a handsome portly man, but very proud, and looked upon me as dirt under his feet, because I was an Irishman ; and at every word would say, 'That's an Irish bull ! ' or ' Do you hear Paddy's brogue ? ' at which his fellow soldiers, being all English, would look gready delighted. Now all this I could have taken in good part from any but him, for I was not an ill-humoured fellow ; but there was a spite in him I plainly saw against me, and I could not, nor would not take a word from him against me or my countr>', especially when Rose was by, who did not like me the worse for having a proper spirit. She little thought what would come of it. Whilst all this was going on, her aunt Honour found to object against me, that I was wild, and given to drink ; both which charges were false and malicious, and I knew could come from none other than the sergeant, which enraged me the more against him for speaking so mean behind my back. Now I know, that though the sergeant did not drink spirits, he drank plenty of beer. Rose took it, however, to heart and talked very serious upon it, observing she could never marry a man given to drink, and that the sergeant was remarkably sober and staid, therefore most like, as her aunt Honour said, to make a good husband. The words went straight to my heart, along with Rose's look. 1 said not a word, but went out, resolving, before I slept, to take an oath against spirits of all sorts for Rose's sweet sake. That evening I fell in with some boys of the neighbours, who would have had me along with them, but I denied myself and them ; and all I would taste was one parting glass, and then made my vow in the presence of the priest, forswearing spirits for two years. Then I went straight to her house to tell her what I had done, not being sensible that I was at that time a little elevated with the parting glass I had taken. The first thing I noticed on going into the room was the man I least wished to see there, and least looked for at this minute : he was in high talk with the aunt, and Rose sitting on the other side of him, no way strange towards him, as I fancied ; but that was only fancy, and effect of the liquor I had drunk, which made me see things wrong. I went up, and put my head between them, asking Rose did she know what I had been about 'i MARIA EDGEWORTH 629 " ' Yes ; too well ! ' said she, drawing back from my breath. And the aunt looked at her, and she at the aunt, and the sergeant stopped his nose, saying he had not been long enough in Ireland to love the smell of whiskey. I observed, that was an uncivil remark in the present company, and added, that I had not taken a drop that night, but one g-lass. At which he sneered, and said that was a bull and a blunder, but no wonder, as I was an Irishman. I replied in defence of myself and my country. We went on from one smart word to another ; and some of his soldier men being of the company, he had the laugh against me still. I was vexed to see Rose bear so well what I could not bear myself And the talk grew higher and higher ; and from talking of blunders and such trifles, we got, I cannot tell you how, on to great party matters, and politics, and religion. And I was a Catholic, and he a Protestant ; and there he had the thing still ag'ainst me. The company seeing matters not agreeable, dropped off till none were left but the sergeant, and the aunt, and Rose, and myself The aunt gave me a hint to part, but I w^ould not take it ; for I could not bear to go away worsted, and being borne down as it were by the English faction, and Rose by to judge. The aunt was called out by one who wanted her to go to a funeral next day : the Englishman then let fall something about our Irish howl, and savages, which Rose herself said was uncivil, she being an Irishwoman, which he, thinking' only of making game on me, had forgot. I knocked him down, telling him that it was he that was the savage to affront a lady. As he got up he said that he'd have the law of me, if any law was to be had in Ireland. " ' The law ! ' said I, ' and you a soldier I ' "'Do you mean to call me a coward?' said he. 'This is what an English soldier must not bear.' With that he snatches at his arms that were beside him, asking me again, ' did I mean to call an Englishman coward ?' "'Tell me first,' said I, 'did you mean to call us Irish savages ? ' "'That's no answer to my question,' says he, 'or only an Irish answer.' " ' It is not the worse for that, may be,' says I, very coolly, despising the man now, and just took up a knife, that was on the table, to cut oft' a button that was hanging at my knee. As I was opening the knife he asks me, was I going to stab at 630 ENGLISH PROSE him with my Irish knife, and directly fixes a bayonet at me ; on which I seizes a musket and bayonet one of his men had left, telling him I knew the tise of it as well as he or any Englishman, and better ; for that I should never have gone, as he did, to charge it against an unarmed man. " ' You had your knife,' said he, drawing back. " ' If I had, it was not thinking of you,' said I, throwing the knife away. ' See I I'm armed like yourself now : fight like a man and a soldier, if you dare,' says I. " ' Fight me, if you dare,' says he. " Rose calls to me to stop ; but we were both out of ourselves at the minute. We thrust at each other — he missed me — I hit him. Rose ran in between us to get the musket from my hand : it was loaded, and went off in the sti-uggle, and the ball lodged in her body. She fell ! and what happened next I cannot tell, for the sight left my eyes, and all sense forsook me. When I came to myself the house was full of people, going to and fro, some whispering, some crying ; and till the words reached my ears, 'Is she quite dead?' I could not understand where I was, or what had happened. I wished to forget again, but could not. The whole truth came upon me, and yet I could not shed a tear ! but just pushed my way through the crowd into the inner room, and up to the side of the bed. There she lay stretched, almost a corpse — cjuite still ! Her sweet eyes closed, and no colour in her cheeks, that had been so rosy ! I took hold of one of her hands, that hung down, and she then opened her eyes, and knew me directly, and smiles upon me, and says, ' It was no fault of yours : take notice, all of you, it was no fault of his if I die ; but that I won't do for his sake, if I can help it ! ' — that was the last word she spoke. I thinking, from her speaking so strong, that she was not badly hurt knelt down to whisper to her, that if my breath did smell of spirits, it was the parting glass I had tasted before making the vows I had done against drink for her sake ; and that there was nothing I would not do for her, if it would please God to spare her to me. She just pressed my hand, to show me she was sensible. The priest came in, and they forced our hands asunder, and carried me away out of the room. Presently there was a great cry, and I knew all was over." Here the old man's voice failed, and he turned his face from us. When he had somewhat recovered himself, to change MARIA EDGEWORTH 631 the course of his thoughts, we asked whether he were prosecuted for his assault on the Enghsh sergeant, and what became of him ? " Oh ! to do him justice, as one should do to everyone," said the old man, " he behaved very handsome to me when I was brought to trial ; and told the whole truth, only blamed himself more than I would have done, and said it was all his fault for laughing at me and my nation more than a man could bear, situated as I was. They acquitted me through his means. We shook hands, and he hoped all would go right with me, he said ; but nothing ever went right with me after. I took little note ever after of worldly matters : all belonging'' to me went to wrack and ruin. The hand of God was upon me : 1 could not help inyself, nor settle mind or body to anything. I heard them say sometimes I was a little touched in my head : however that might be I cannot say. But at the last I found it was as good for me to give all that was left to my friends, who were better able to manage, and more eager for it than I ; and fancying a roving life would agree with me best, I quitted the place, taking nothing with me, but resolved to walk the world, and just trust to the charity of good Christians, or die, as it should please God. How I have lived so long He only knows, and His will be done." (From Essay 0,1 Irish Bulls.-) THE BORE A BORE is a biped, but not always unplumed. There be of both kinds ; — the female frecjuently plumed, the male-military, plumed, helmed, or crested, and whisker-faced, hairy, ]3andy bore, ditto, ditto, ditto. There are bores unplumed, capped, or hatted, curled, or uncurled, bearded and beardless. The bore is not a ruminating animal, — carnivorous, not sagacious, prosing, long-winded, tenacious of life, though not vivacious. The bore is good for promoting sleep ; but though he causeth sleep in others it is uncertain whether he ever sleeps himself; as few can keep awake in his company long enough to see. It is supposed that when he sleeps it is with his mouth open. The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of 632 ENGLISH PROSE that class of irrational bipeds who hurt only themselves. To such, however, I would not advise trusting too much. The bore is harmless, no doubt, as long as you listen to him ; but disregarded, or stopped in mid career, he will turn upon you. It is a fatal, if not a vulgar error, to presume that the bore belongs to that class of animals that have no gall ; of which Pliny gives a list (much disputed by Sir Thomas Brown'e and others). That bores have gall, many have proved to their cost, as some now living, peradventure, can attest. The milk of human kindness is said to abound naturally in certain of the gentler bore kind ; but it is apt to grow sour if the animal be crossed, not in love, but in talk. Though I cannot admit to a certainty that all bores have not gall, yet assuredly they have no tact, and they are one and all deficient in sympathy. A bore is a heavy animal, and his weight has this peculiarity, that it increases every moment he stays near you. The French describe this property in one word, which, though French, I may be permitted to quote, because untranslatable, U s''appesa7itit. Touch and go, it is not in the nature of a bore to do — whatever he touches turns to lead. Much learning might be displayed, and much time wasted, on an inquiry into the derivation, descent, and etymology of the animal under consideration. Suffice it to say, that for my own part, diligence hath not been wanting in the research. Johnson's Dictionary and old Bailey have been ransacked ; but neither the learned Johnson nor the recondite Bailey, throw much light upon this matter. The Slang Dictionary, to which I should in the first place have directed my attention, was unfortunately not within my reach. The result of all my inquiries amounts to this — that "bore," "boor," and "boar," are all three spelt indifferently, and consequently are derived from one common stock, — what stock remains to be determined. I could give a string of far-fetched derivations, each of them less to the purpose than the other ; but I prefer, according to the practice of our great lexicographer, taking refuge at once in the Coptic. Of one point tliere can be little doubt, — that bores existed in ancient as well as modern times, though the Deluge has unluckily swept away all traces of the antediluvian bores — a creature which analogy leads us to believe must have been of formidable power. MARIA EDGEWORTH 633 We find them for certain in tlie days of Horace. That plague, worse as he describes, than asthma or rheumatism, that prating, praising thing which caught him in the street, stuck to him wherever he went — of which, stopping or running, civil or rude, shirking or cutting, he could never rid himself — what was he but a bore ? In Pope I read the first description in English poetry of the animal — whether imitated from Horace, or a drawing from life, may be questioned. But what could that creature be but a bore, from whom he says no walls could guard him, and no shades could hide ; who pierced his thickets ; glided into his grotto ; stopped his chariot ; boarded his barge ; from whom no place was sacred — not the church free ; and against whom John was ordered to tie up the knocker. Through the indexes to Milton and Shakespeare, 1 have not neglected to hunt ; but unfortunately, 1 have found nothing to my purpose in Milton, and in all Shakespeare no trace of a bore : except it be that thing, that popinjay, who so pestered Hotspur, that day when he, faint with toil and dry with rage, was leaning on his sword after the battle — all that bald, dis- jointed talk, to which Hotspur, past his patience, answered neglectingly, he knew not what, and that sticking to him with questions, even when his wounds were cold. It must have been a bore of foreign breed, not the good downright English bore. fFrom T /taught s on Bores.) NOTES I'AGE 91. le coglto/icric — trilles or light nonsense. morbidczza — delicacy, softness. 100. author of " Christianity as Old as the Creatio?!." Matthew Tindal, Fellow of All Souls, one of the Deistical School. 239. Tom Bro7u/ts of the mob. Thomas Brown ( 1663- 1704) was a well known author of miscellaneous scurrilities, by which he con- trived to link his name with men of note of the time, from Dryden downwards. 243. Moite qnatit Carthusiana. Al- tering the words of Horace, " mente quatit solida," in order to commemorate his connection with the Charter- house. Cccliim ipsum pctimus, etc. "In our folly we seek heaven itself.' ' The remaining words ("and here I proclaim war against my belly") are an addition to the words of Horace, as inept as the alteration of Sir I 266. Qui me commorit, etc. ' ' Hut he who has provoked me (I give him warning that he had better leave me alone) will have cause to weep, and will be the theme of many a verse throughout the city's bounds." 343. Quantum vertice ad auras, etc. ' ' Far as with his top he reaches to the breezes of the air, so far with his root, he pierces to the nether regions." 351. To the pincushion-makers. For sawdust. Rosemary Lane, or Rag Fair, in Wliitechapel, was a centre of this industry. 351. to be = \o contribute or subscribe. 360. the horns = the French horns, a special feature of the Vau.xhall programme. 361. the water. The approach to Vauxhall from the Middlese.x side was by wherry. 362. the 7vatei~iuorks. .\ " moving picture" with a cascade, that worked for a few minutes. 363. the painting. The pictures in the supper-boxes were by Hogarth and Hayman. 366. Count Abcnsbcrg. Babo, Count of Abensberg in Bavaria, had thirty sons and seven daughters (Alotiumenta Doica, xiii. 477). 371. my brother. The Rev. Henry Goldsmith, who died in 1768. 384. Abeunt studia in mores. Burke seems to read these words in the sense, ' ' Studies issue in the formation of habits." This is scarcely the meaning of the phrase which Ovid puts into the mouth of Sappho (Her. lOp. XV. 83). In her Apologia Sappho suggests as one ex- 636 ENGLISH PROSE I'AGE planation of her readiness to submit to the sway of passion, "Or whether it be that the impulses of nature turn to habits, and become wiles that act a tyrant's part." 418. Dum domiis ^■E?ic(r, etc. As long as the house of .^Eneas occupies the Capitol'sunmoved rock, and the Roman sire holds sway " {.--En. ix. 448). 432. KaKo. dripia, etc. " Evil beasts, slow bellies." 449. Dii per qiios pcnitus,&\z. "Gods, to whom we owe our inmost breath, through whom we have our body, and by whom we possess reason. Gods who dwell altogether and in the inmost shrines of heaven. " 452. ./ heathen poet. Seneta in his Medea. Says the infidel. This is ^Vnthony Collins, who achieved a certain kind of immortality as the butt of Swift. 474. Hie munis aheneus esto, etc. " Be this a brazen wall of defence — to have no twinge of conscience, and no hidden crime to make one pale." /^. END OF VOL. IV Printed by R. & R. Ci.ark, Edinburgh. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 3UN 9197^ Forii! 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